The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • The body and spirit

    The body and spirit

    Muhammed Ali of Egypt’s biographers remember the man for a greed for the future of his kingdom. He had greed to civilize his enclave. Dreamers are gluttons of the future. They inflict themselves with borderless imaginations. The good ones have sublime fantasies. Like Ali, known as the founder of modern Egypt. A historian noted that if you asked him to build a castle in the air, he would say, “Let’s try it.”  He was an aggressor of a visionary just like the more familiar Ali, whose fury was in fisticuffs. Both were dreamers. There is no victory without imagination.

     He was a man who loved infrastructure. It means to redesign the landscape, not for aesthetics. We cannot underplay the value of beauty. Dostoyevsky said beauty will save the world. Keats proclaims beauty as truth. From ancient times, great leaders love three things, as Roman historian Tacitus has noted. Infrastructure, healthcare and education. Pericles signed off on a long armistice to redesign Greece. Julius Caesar was not content as the great war general of all time without imprints on Roman landscapes.

    So, development of this sort begins with a state of mind. Before you write the vision, and make it plain in the lives of the people, you first must imagine it. “Imagination,” declared Einstein, “is more important than knowledge.” He said further that it “encircles the world.” So, there.

    When the BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu signed off on a deal for the Fourth Mainland Bridge at the AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum, it was first the triumph of the mind.

    So, it is about taking people from one point to another. More than that, it is about disrupting the Lagos landscape. More than that, it is about jobs and commercial verve in a city pining for more. More than that, it is about the intersection of peoples, for tribe and tongue to coalesce. More than that, it is a city rebirth.

    When he became governor over four years ago, the fourth mainland bridge was placed front and centre as a big-ticket item. It was on his predecessor’s table, and the predecessor before that and the one before that. Lagosians sometimes thought it was just a fantasy, an impotent dream, a fantasy in a cage. Dreams die only for purposeless dreamers. But there is time to dream, and time to do.

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    For the BOS, it is a time to do. As it was time to complete the train programme. The blue Rail was given the blues by many who said it was a con job. But it is now revving on the city’s artery. When it chugged into being, the video went viral that those who demonized the governor could not rein in their praise.

    That is a moment in infrastructure beauty. Beauty in healing. Beauty in inter-tribal comity. Beauty in progress. That was what Keats meant by beauty is truth. And we hope to see a new Lagos as the mainland bridge starts brick after brick to change a bush path to an estate, a bald valley to a board room, a hamlet to a hospital, a dead-end to an avenue. Many of these changes may not be from a governor’s imagination but the imagination of its citizenry. The government is to dream so others can dream afterwards. In the beginning was the dream. The entrepreneur will come, ditto the culture icon, the technocrat, the educationist, the architect, the town planner, the market woman and the bricklayer. An infrastructure project is everyone’s party. Governor Sanwo-Olu sends out an invite to one and all.

    “Our vision for Lagos is becoming a reality with the Lekki-Epe International Airport and the Lagos Food Systems and Logistics Hub in Epe. These projects will further boost our economy and serve generations to come,” said the governor.

     Significant is that not a kobo of taxpayer’s money is going into this. It is, just like the Blue Rail, a work of public-private collaboration. It is creative financing. For all its big IGR, Lagos is bringing in corporate buy-in.

    It is not just the bridge, but other projects like Omu Creek Project, and the Blue line to link Mile 2 to Okokomaiko.

    Government, at its best, is like rain. It falls on lover and rival. He has, since the second term begun, focused on not just on new projects but also on reworking old familiars like markets. The great problem with our society is not just to build, but also to maintain. He focused on some of the markets that have gone out of rhythm. Some shouted discrimination. The same persons hailed the rails cutting into their strongholds and improving travel time and time to profit. Government has to be tough at times, and the governor showed his grittier side.

    For all, the projects are to bring the society together, to journey together, to party together, to share the sun and rain, grieve its inevitable sorrows, its giddy laughs and fiery plays.

    That is how the body and shadow can reconcile, to echo the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami ‘s revised novel, End of the World. Some claim to be the city’s body and others the shadow. Shadows disappear in the novel’s first coming. Now, both have come together.

    What infrastructure like BOS’ does, is to find pathways to conjoin body and soul, the flesh and spirit of Lagos. Especially the spirit that, as Jesus said, no one can kill.

    With such ideas as these, we deliver a society from sorcery.

  •  Sheriff honours Kokori

     Sheriff honours Kokori

    If man works for a cause, it is not for material reward. But the beneficiaries owe that person honour. Honour, as Greek leader Pericles wrote in his famous speech, is the top reward of human striving. For those who know how this republic was born, the name Frank Kokori stands as high as anyone. He was the leader of oil workers during the Abacha era and the June 12 turmoil. He was the dictator’s nightmare. During the Buhari era, there was controversy over what job they gave him or not. It was not about whether he had money or not, but whether a grateful nation looked his way. Now we know, he made no money.

    The old man is ailing and in an undisclosed hospital in Warri. Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori heard the call and ran to offer help. He did not look at partisan loyalty, or whether Kokori was associated with the other parties. He knew a hero and came around to say thank you.

    “I know people will think that because he is an APC chieftain, I won’t be here. Deltans voted for me as governor. It is not a party matter…I am governor of all Deltans.”

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    Kokori called the governor “a good man.”

    This is the stuff of humanitarian stewardship. We must remember our heroes. It is a great thing he is paying the man’s medical fees. Too many times, we wait for the hero to die in misery and we ask our spokesmen to write poetic eulogies and vow to care for their families. That is a charity of self-guilt, help as cynicism. It is hardly genuine gratitude. Take care of them while they are alive. But more than that, what the governor did was  to honour him. He did not send the money. He visited him in person. That is what others should do. Kokori was ready to give the ultimate prize: His life. He dared the same Abacha that slaughtered Ken Saro-Wiwa. That life is ebbing.  We ought to save him as the Sheriff is doing.

  • Is Israel God’s country?

    Is Israel God’s country?

    A New Book, The Genius of Israel by Dan Senor, is attracting love from the west today. It tells the story of how a people, bordered by fiery foes and little natural resources, has become one of the great successes. The book touts Israeli cooperative ethos, its creative energy, its  historic blessedness across centuries. Today, it is second to the U.S, in top NASDAQ firms, second to the US in patents. Over 30 percent of Nobel prizes, especially in the Sciences are Jewish. Some tend to say it is because it is their destiny. It will remain an issue of debate, and some have canvassed it to justify Israeli savagery in Gaza.

    It is the leading nation in semi-conductors today, and people say, hail Israeli. When I was reporting technology in the US, I learned that the US gave billions of dollars every year in subventions to Israel. US supports Israel in many ways. It is a nation on welfare cheques. Some critics have said any nation can do so well with so much support. Today, America’s weapons and intelligence is helping Israel. Two issues. One, unlike those who rewrite the scriptures, Israel is not God’s favoured nation today.They don’t accept Christ. They even forbid their kids to marry Christians. God deals with individuals, not nations. Or shall we say, he deals with nations based on the aggregate righteousness of the people. “Work out your salvation,” says Paul, who also says he  is a Jew not outwardly, but inwardly. Hence, he urges all to circumcise the foreskin of the heart. Two, the Jews have transformed ages of persecution into material inspiration for success. It is culture, not destiny. Israel is not less endowed than Nigeria. We hate cohesion and one-ness of spirit the Jews advance. If our leaders work a united ethos and spirit, we can develop. The destiny is not some mystical fact but, as Jose Ortega Y Gasset assert, a factor of history.

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    The author eulogises Israel that mounts an ungodly system of apartheid with Christians, Arabs and others holed up in Gaza and West Bank without light, water, and basic infrastructure. I am no Hamas fan. The Arab nations need a Nasser to work out a Two-state solution. Even their Arab leaders have little imagination and vision to compel the world to a genuine two-state solution.

  • The sins of Sim

    The sins of Sim

    Sim Fubara has apologized, but how far will that go? The question of the row between son and godfather is less about what pundits and the streets have advanced. It is essentially a breach of sonship. Nyesom Wike is glum about a betrayal of a son. He believes the fellow was trustworthy. The son looked the other way and brought enemies into the house. The same man who said he was poisoned cannot but be wary about the enemy. Maybe hence he has been Nigeria’s executive chef.

    He thought Fubara was the good son.

    But Fubara is a sort of enigma. Before he was anointed governor, he was in an EFCC furore. He was out of public glare. Some said he was in hiding. What happened to that? Wike brought him under his arm like a mother hen.

    But then he appeared beside his mentor.  The man never smiled nor frowned in public. His big, bold eyes looked as though unseeing. He must have the most mysterious mien in public office, next to the almost Mona Lisa smile of Gbenga Daniel. Fubara brings to mind Shakespeare’s characterization of Cassius, who never smiled and reads too much. I am not sure of Fubara as a book worm or music lover. But many in Wike’s camp must think him dangerous as Shakespeare called Cassius. During music performances, he never tossed his head in rhythm nor even appreciated with a blink.

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    But suddenly, he could shout. He could emote. His eyes ran in a million directions. He floated on a mosh pit and stood on a podium aluta-style. At once, he turned a student union leader, a rabble rouser, a begger and a defiant. This same man. That is where there was a breach of sonship. Power happened to Fubara.

    The other point was Wike’s structure. It was that same structure that he mobilised against Atiku, and for Tinubu. The same structure was a behemoth against his rivals in the state. The structure that made mincemeat of Atiku, who  in his near tearful press conference was making his last hurrah. Atiku is like Hobbes describes some ambitious men with ” a desire for power after power that ceaseth only in death.”  Fubara brought the enemy to the door. That compromises not only Wike’s pride but his future. Of what benefit is Wike to the president if he has no base in Rivers State? He knows somebody it has happened to. He does not want that fate on himself. That is essentially where the breach of sonship is. The father gave the kingdom to son, and son sat at dinner with Beelzebub. Was it naivety on the part of Fubara? Was he being nice, or was he scheming? Whatever the story, he has pissed in their common pond. Can both of them ever swim in it?

  • The mob of public opinion

    The mob of public opinion

    To some, he hit the bull’s eye. To others, he put himself in the eye of the storm. The chief justice had said so before the Supreme Court verdict on the presidential elections. The hooded men of the top court were going to serve the public but not servile to it. They are a product of law, not the mob. They swore to the constitution. The constitution is the only shrine of the people.

    Justice Olukayode Ariwoola knew of the dust storm ahead. He knew the social media would weep and holler. He put them on notice.

    In newspapers, on social media and television, we have had many react. Lawyers, journalists, politicians. They say the law must conform to public opinion. What public opinion? The law actually conformed to public opinion. What public opinion? Their own! They just won’t admit it.

    There are two viewpoints. One says the law is a product of the people, and so if the justices say one thing and public opinion says another, it means we have injustice in the land. It sounds precious on the surface, but it is only specious.

    The law did not come out of a vacuum. It derived from the people. The justices are supposed to abide by the law enshrined by the people. Public opinion makes the law. If the opinion changes, the masses must abide by its own vomit until it changes it. Or else, we foment anarchy.

    The argument derives from the 2023 poll where Bola Tinubu won. He polled 8.7 million votes, while the combined votes of Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi were over 13 million votes. That gives the opposition a majority of the votes. Based on that, it is obvious that a majority of the voters did not want Tinubu to be president.  That is the reason they tout and mouth the majesty of public opinion. They are seeking justice by stealth.

    So, it is understandable if proponents of public opinion argue that public opinion opposes the Supreme Court verdict. Tinubu’s supporters are a minority. But does that make the so-called public opinion right? Of course not. The presidential system and even the constitution says the winner of the majority of the votes wins the election, so long as he gets 25 per cent in two-thirds of the states in the federation. That was the public opinion that created the law.

    In spite of the Abuja clarification that a unit like Abuja cannot be universal, some stuck to Tinubu’s shortcoming in the state capital to regalise one Abuja citizen over the rest of us, to anoint a super citizen. But all men are created equal in law and democracy. The justices quoted a law that said Abuja is like any state. The outcry over Chicago was also virile with supporters of Obi and Atiku raising the decibel. So much so that they even deny the claim by the university itself.

    So, in this case, if we follow the voter trend, we can assume that the majority wanted Abuja citizens to be super citizens. In the same sense, we can say Tinubu did not attend Chicago State University. In a mob, lies can easily become truth. Therefore, it was no surprise that some churches and tribesmen invested in the reversal of Tinubu’s victory.

    In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the Shylock who wanted to rig a pound of flesh was surprised at the verdict. He asked, Is that the law?  That is the question. It is not, “is it public opinion?”

    In fact, the view tends to assume that public opinion means justice. History has shown otherwise. We have this all over the world, including in our own land. In the U.S., two-thirds of Americans did not want to be free from British colonial grip. Most women in Europe and United States did not support the feminists, including Elizabeth Caddy Stanton and Susan B, Anthony, in their fight for women equality. The civil rights act in the 1960’s was hugely unpopular when President Johnson signed it in the US. Most Europeans did not support African independence when Roosevelt set it in motion after World War II. Most Africans were not even aware enough to have an opinion. Most Jews supported Christ’s Crucifixion. The killing of twins was a popular custom here until a fragile evangelist ended it. All of these were not good, but they were right. It is when a society comes to its senses that the good triumphs. As Rousseau wrote, “The good is prior to the right.” By the same token, we have seen over time when opinion polls have been right. So an opinion poll on its own is not sufficient to pronounce justice.

    The majority can be dangerous, and John Stuart Mill, who loved liberty until it concerned British colonies in India, also suspected the majority. Hence, he wrote in his masterpiece, On Liberty, that a society is full of so few wise and so many foolish. Rousseau wrote of the collective will, but he was wary of imposing an idea that did not go through a rigour. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus demonized the rabble. Hence Rousseau wanted a creative tension between private and public personas in order to avoid hypocrisy.

    The Abuja and certificate attitudes of the mob as per the 2023 poll are instances of where the mob abandons reason for impulse. On electronic transfer, INEC stumbled by overpromising. But a promise is not a law. Electronic transfer is based on a paper vote. Atiku and Obi had their papers at the polling units, where did they hide them?

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    What many of them wanted was a re-run. They expected to coalesce the 13 million votes under one umbrella to sweep out the victor. But here again, they miss the point. They want a coup through the back door. They claimed they won the election. They had the platform of the court to prove it. Public opinion does not create evidence or mint votes. Before everyone’s eyes, they did not show where they had the votes.

    They become emotional. If it were the parliamentary system, they might have had a chance. That system often requires the winner to win a certain percentage of votes, often about 48 or 50 percent as we have seen in Italy, France, Britain and Australia. But we – our public opinion -signed on to a presidential system. The same was the case when Clinton beat George Bush (snr) and Bush (Jnr) beat Al Gore. Our own so-called public opinion today wants a Westminster logic in a presidential era. They want to subvert the constitution in order to push out the poll winner. The Supreme Court verdict was about the electoral poll, not public opinion polls. The opinion polls of today cannot overthrow the public opinion poll that gave us the law. The majority made the law. To change it midway is a coup against itself. It is a sort of autocoup. It is politics by hypocrisy. If the opinion poll made the law yesterday, opinion poll cannot overthrow the law. It cannot also interpret the law for the justices. It must wait till the last whistle, to change the rules of the game, if necessary, by changing the law.  As Montesquieu wrote, “Laws should be like death, which spares no one.” Including the mob of public opinion.

  • Healing in vain

    Healing in vain

    Even if God ruled after an appeal from the Supreme Court in favour of President Bola Tinubu and his APC, some citizens will still hoot to the heavens and even anoint Beelzebub as a superior jurist. It is rage thrashing about in a forest. Some derided them by saying they can now appeal to the tennis court. But a tennis court has rackets that plays balls, and not the racket that plays on the mind. It has tennis players, not racketeers.

    It is part of what Wole Olanipekun (SAN) derided when he said they are worse than Alice in Wonderland, adding that even Alice had a destination, unlike Atiku  and Obi. Atiku and his coattail Obidients had no shore even in their fantasy. Lewis Carroll’s work of children literature is called nonsense literature in a sublime sense, although some critics have designated it Roman a Clef. Whatever the story, it is time for the wandering disease to stop, what Cyprian Ekwensi in his The Burning Grass called Sokugo.

    The Supreme Court victory is no excuse to gloat, to emote at the expense of the losers even if the Atiku and Obi crowds continue to bellyache, especially by deploying otherwise respected minds among them to delegitimise the verdict.

    It is time to bind the wounds, to transcend the anxiety of divisions, and rebuild a nation. More than a nation, a community. More than a community, a soul.  Not since the prelude to the civil war has Nigeria lived in a neighbourhood without neighbours. It is time to follow Lincoln’s precept of malice towards none.

    It begins with the president, and he cannot do it alone. Atiku and Obi must restrain their mobs and privilege Nigeria over partisan, tribal and sectarian forces. I think the President should start an initiative and a dialogue, and once the other group sees it as heartfelt, they will have no choice but to follow. If they do not, he should not stop. Both sides must kneel to heal. Humility will give us the ideas to be brothers again. As William Wordsworth noted, “Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

    To reconcile is always an adventure, and it is no easy one. Bishop Matthew Kukah, in his latest book, Witness to Reconciliation, demonstrates how fraught and even frustrating it is to build a commonwealth in Nigeria. His book was on Ogoni, a little sliver of a vast country, and he was assigned by President Olusegun Obasanjo to reconcile the federal government, Shell and the Ogoni people.

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    In spite of his efforts, including a near assassination of his person, bitterness still roils that oil-maligned community. Watch this. Kukah did not operate as a politician or bureaucrat but as a priest on a mission of love. He had no budget, funded no office, had no retinue, sought no remuneration, had no official car. So, it was a hardscrabble job. All the ingredients of Nigerian malaise were slimy in the tale, including our institutions.

    He, however, for whatever reasons, did not mirror the media coverage and its tendencies in his book of over 200 pages. The church, the political elite, the business world, the masses of Ogoni. We witnessed factions and fracture at every turn. There were lies, witch-hunts, fears of death, corruption, bold-faced confessions, and violence. On the other side, we saw the symbolisms, the church leaders and their cleansing ceremony, two presidential visits, dances and self-serving rhetoric, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Presidential Implementation Committee.

    The stature and apparent neutrality of the Bishop was not expected to defrock him of allegations of compromise. He noted that Ledum Mitee and Magnus Abe, prominent Ogoni sons, cast him as a Shell charade, saying he was plotting with the federal government to return Shell to Ogoni land. Abe, according to the report, apologized in a public confession for amassing about a thousand signatures to the Pope to discredit the cleric and even rid him of his sacerdotal chair.

    An instance that looked amusing, if it were not tragic. The state governor had a town meeting about why the schools were not built in a community. The contractor had been given money, but the people forswore any local to work with the contractor because they wanted the money and not the school. The contractor started giving them money. Infant minds, no school. It reminds me of a senator who told me a few years ago that he had gathered his constituents to inform them he had some bulk money for projects in the community. He called for proposals to implement their visions. In one voice, the people yelled, “what projects. Just share the money.” He broke into tears. This same thing happened to another governor who gathered stakeholders on what projects they would want implemented. The shameless men said, Let’s share the money.

    In Ogoni, Bishop worked with Mitee and MOSOP to erect monuments to peace and Obasanjo was to unveil it with a peace centre. Governor Peter Odilli mobilized all the money, but when Obasanjo showed up for the event, viola, there was no monument nor a peace centre.

    Bishop was so trusted that when OBJ was leaving office, Kukah had written his report and getting ready to leave. But Yar’adua retained him and when he died, Jonathan would not let him go. Even at that, his puffy minister Allison Madueke temporised on the issue of Ogoni cleanup until she left office. The Buhari administration acted supine. He postponed a visit, raised the people’s hopes of coming only to be a no show. In the end, after a report, UNEP was given a runaround, the people saw no peace. The cleanup has still not been accomplished. Shell is not there, and there is no replacement. Some farmers even spill their own farms in quest for compensation.

    Kukah’s witness follows his earlier book, Witness to justice, on the same subject. He may write a third. But it is a parable about how a society cannot come to peace in order to enjoy the enormous wealth under its feet. It is the story of Nigeria. It is a lesson for Nigeria to learn.

  • Senator Ndume is angry

    Senator Ndume is angry

    In response to my short piece last week, Senator Ali Ndume wrote the following, warts and all.

    “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered to respond to the disrespectful comments you made on my person. But because you look matured in photographs, I decided to respond.

    First, everyone in Nigeria know that I stood for the emergence of Senator Godswill Akpabio as Senate President because of my belief in justice, fairness, stability of Nigeria and because the President begged me to lead the campaign as Director General not because of what you call “juicy committee or position.”

    In fact, I was begged to accept the positions of Chief Whip and the Vice Chairman of Appropriation Committee not that I asked for them. You can find out.

    You don’t know what happened that day and as is common with compromised journalism in this country, you didn’t care to even find out or even call me or your reporter attached to the Senate to get the facts.

    You were in a hurry to insult me, taking advantage of your pen and position. May be for a chicken fee.

    As you suggested, Insha Allah, I will always go to the mosque and as part of my prayers I will ask Almighty Allah to punish you for not only insulting me but tried to assassinate my character. Insha Allah, you will see, hear, feel, touch or sense it when Allah answers my prayers which He usually does. Fortunately most Nigerians know Ndume is not a whipping person.”

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    I wonder why the senator exposed his poor writing skill and confirmed suspicions that some of our lawmakers should return to school. He said he responded “because you look matured in photographs.” How shallow. Why would you assess a person based on a superficial thing like a photograph? For your information, it is “mature” not “matured.” English 101. He also wrote “chicken fee” instead of chicken feed. He should have employed a publicist to assess his writing before disgracing himself.

    On the idea of compromise, or being paid to write, this is not the first time this essayist would get that. It often comes from those who have lost the argument, often from lowlifes, pugnacious and callow intellectual nymphs. But for it to come from a senator, a man who wanted to lead a branch of government? He should apologise or tender evidence. Or I may contact my lawyers over such infantile rant. From his behaviour, it is obvious he did not support Akpabio from his heart. If he didn’t want the positions, why did he not turn them down? He can still leave. We practise democracy, not despotism.

    He does not even support Allah. Allah does not accommodate liars in his name. He did not address the question as to why he has not apologised to the institution of the senate. Rather he is going to ask for God to punish. The punishment will come to him for lying, and for acting like a baby deprived of a kilishi. He should beg for forgiveness.

  • Justice Okoro’s name, tribe and a retired justice

    Justice Okoro’s name, tribe and a retired justice

    In my novel, My Name is Okoro, that has been studied in universities, including at graduate level, I play on the name Okoro. The lead judge on the Supreme Court verdict on the presidential election brought it to mind.

    is from Akwa Ibom State. In my novel, the name is borne by an Urhobo man who wanders in search of his wife in Biafra, and his name throws up an anxiety of identity.

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    The name reflects our interwoven identity. In Yorubaland, there was a man called Okoro, which means bitter. The name means something else in Urhobo and Igbo, and it amused me as some trolls made light of the Justice’s authenticity as a person. The other issue from the verdict came from retiring Musa Datijo Muhammad, who implied the CJN compromised the composition of the bench because no one from the southeast was on the panel. It was an irresponsible point because he, as a justice, cannot be reading what is in the mind of a jurist. He has a point that the bench needs diversity, especially in the southeast and south-south. Okoro was the lead judge. Mohammad should have explained what role he played as deputy to the CJN on changing the scenario. He may be acting as rabble rouser. His statement detracted from the substance of the case. Justice is supposed to be blind. A tribesman on the bench suddenly loses his physical eyes but acquires a juridical one. That is what he should have said. Anyway, since he became CJN, Olukayode Arowoola has said plans are afoot to get more justices. Some have died from the southeast. He did not kill them. But he has sworn in 23 federal court judges and nine to the court of appeal. But we need them ASAP. The retired judge should not rattle the sabre. He should have focused on the substance of the matter, if he cannot say what role he himself played to improve the scenario.

  • Warri(or) in town

    Warri(or) in town

    Warri is the city of my boyhood, where I walked barefoot, and played in the sands. It was in the early 1970’s. School, play, dirt, joy, tragedy. I lost my kid sister Sarah.

    But Warri is not the city I grew up in. The city of exuberance, of a lilting, syncopating pidgin English, of spontaneous eruption of youths on football fields. We lofted kites into a benevolent sky. We threw stones to pluck down rubber seeds before we stacked up the seeds to aim and scatter. Of lo- hanging ebelebo. We adored the wealthy of those days, especially their cars. 1960 car plates belonged to Edewor. And for Odibo it was 4444. We hailed whites, quite a few in Warri, then. Oyibo Pepper if you eatie pepper, you go yellow more more. It was a revelry in chants and dances as the Caucasians walked away as though oblivious of the giddy rapture about them.

    It is a city with a great past, of proud people and fertility of business and mental agility. For business, we had oil, and companies like Chevron, Shell, AGIP had offices there, and their workers thrived and swaggered. In fact, it was urban legend that apartheid abounded in the markets. For wives of oil workers, sellers charged special prices. You anticipated their ornate appearances.

    The port worked, and some people boasted as NPA workers. Its stadium was a place of  footwork. The Warri Wolves had such star players as Martins, Owolo and Didiare. What tearjerker for me when the Benin Vipers – now Bendel Insurance – roared into Warri to humble my team. Josiah Dombraye’s ball juggling wizardry and devil’s footwork made mincemeat of us.  Such a spirit with the ball. My father Moses had to console me. I saw the match, though, at Hussey College grounds.

    But the city fell. It saw quite a few bad times. There was the violence between the Itsekiri and the Ijaws. A needless cousin war, a conflagration that lapped up the young and the sap of the city. It choked the entrepreneur’s elan and sent businesses out of town. Exit Chevron. Exit Shell. Exit profit. It brought a history to its knees. It was not a place we used to call Wafi, with its echoes of street life, parties, bonhomie, commerce. It stooped as any place bowed by blood and bombs.

    Warri went down in gasps. Some of its youth became part of the army of militants. For a long time, rather than divert resources to save the city, the state governments wanted to save the state from the ravages of errant youth stalking the city, domiciled in creeks and bushes.

    But in this republic, a lot of resources have gone to the state capital Asaba. Asaba was not “Warri’s mate”, in the language of the area. It was a sleepy town known as a gateway to the east. IBB made it capital as tribute to his late wife, the charismatic Maryam. Asaba’s gain, Warri’s gloom.

    Warri now needs a warrior, a new kind of Warri, a warrior of rebirth. A Warri(or), that is. The new Sheriff in town has now wagered part of his legacy on bringing back Warri to its lost glory. He wants to be, in the words of Isaiah, the “repairer of the breach… restorer of paths to dwell in.” He has vowed to “build up the old waste places.”

    With a new project amounting to  N78 billion, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori is putting Warri on notice. With Julius Berger, it has a 27-month onslaught into the city’s infrastructure. This will cover Enerhen Junction Flyover, the Effurun Roundabout ¾ Cloverleaf as well as expansion and pedestrian bridges. It will also have DSC roundabout flyover which will, as the  Commissioner of Works, Reuben Izeze explains, will work simultaneously after the groundbreaking ceremony  next month. The PTI Junction will not be left out but may have to wait for the relocation of the 330KVA power transmission lines on its path. This will not compromise the 27-month deadline.

    Izeze says funding is not an issue as the budgetary arrangement is in place. “The funding came and shall be coming from His Excellency’s determined and courageous decision to tighten our vaults, eradicate frivolous spending and channel our resources into meaningful development.” This will combine FAAC receipts, 13 percent derivation and internally generated revenue. Already, 25 percent of the contract sum has been mobilized.

    This is perhaps Gov. Oborevwori’s fulfilment of a vow when flood ravaged a part of the city, and it went viral. He responded with a virile pledge: “We must revamp Warri.”

    The news waves failed to capture this news item that ranks as one of the largest ever investment in infrastructure in a city of its size in one lump in this country. It is an effort of enthusiasm, and a scaling of Warri as priority.

    The greater story is not to rival Asaba but to deploy infrastructure as a conveyor belt for commercial renaissance.  Asaba remains administrative capital, Warri the commercial nerve centre, much like Lagos and Abuja, New York and Washington.

    Infrastructure work is not just about fancy roads and flyovers, although its aesthetics boosters the soul. The Warri environment can, at times, be an eyesore. I expect that the new lease will embolden the people to move from filth to finesse. It is in itself an economic venture. It means purchases of materials to make blocks and irons to prop the bridges. That is in itself a revival of market. It brings a lot of employment, and ancillary jobs, in agriculture and medicine and services.

    This is what Maynard Keynes described as demand pull. FDR revived American economy after the great Depression and even today, Joe Biden has rebooted America as the most thriving economy today after years of slow growth with his Infrastructure Plan Act.

    Infrastructure work of this sort can also signal an event as we read in David Mcculough’s epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was not only about building the best suspension bridge but also about landmark events in the lives of people. It was a well of memories of those born, those who died, those who committed crime. It was noted that Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, then.

    The suite of flyovers, bridges, road expansions and roundabouts should stir the city. It is how governors make things happen. It is, if carried out with due diligence, a triumph of the imagination. It will be a project of peace. All the work will illumine at night with streets lights. So, with work, crime will retreat. It is lack of self-pride that actuates criminal propensity.

    The project will also dovetail into the east-west road project, just as the Fourth Mainland Bridge proposed for Lagos will link the Coastal Road imagined by Works minister David Umahi.

     There are other things to do for Warri, including the ports and stadium and schools. But with a project like this, others will find a way. Warri will no longer  be a city where only comedians and stage clowns survive. The city itself gave us comedy as if laughing at itself and its squalor. It is time for the city to laugh. It is part of the governor’s MORE agenda, and one can only say, MORE of that. 

  • Whipping Ndume

    Whipping Ndume

    Ali Ndume may not understand it, but he whipped himself sore last week. The worst of it was that he lied in the name of his God. It was a simple matter. Senate president Godswill Akpabio ruled him out of order for bringing an extraneous matter to the floor. He should have collapsed like a mouse into his chair.

    Rather than play a disciplined part by taking his seat as others  would do, the man in charge of discipline displayed a stunning lack of decorum. While the matter was still under discussion, he rose and walked out.  I think the man is souring over Akpabio’s victory as senate president. Ndume actually was one of the persons Akpabio reached out to  after he won the polls to that exalted chair. He even gave him what they call a juicy committee. Apart from being chief whip, he is vice chair of appropriations committee.

    Read Also: Ndume: Why I walked out of Senate Chamber after Akpabio ruled me out of order

    But some people do have a sense of searing irony. He said he went to pray. I hope he remembered to beg God for forgiveness as he kneeled and muttered his words. The same feet with which he walked away should be true and his lips with which he defied authorities should not lie at the mosque. Or else, Ndume will have to return to the mosque to do penance.