The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • Eating our own flesh

    While youths rage here and in South Africa, we should remember that our own juvenile boil has been targeted at fellow citizens. Their grouse is not because of so-called xenophobia but because they belong to the same country and community. Fellow Nigerians suffocate them. They hate them because they want them to be outcasts in their country. They also want to cast them out of the earth. So, no use for moral superiority here. We also did it against Ghana in the Shagari era.

    In the aftermath of the herders imbroglio that consumed citizens in rural areas, Governor Simon Lalong secured funds on the platform of AfriJapan as part of the drive to rebuild the broken lives like the citizens of Nghar village of the cleric who saved Christians in a mosque from the jaws of marauders. They made bonfires of their homes and properties and they became IDP habitués.

    Rather than focus on violence, we can look to more peaceful ways to engage countries and our young, and some of our leaders do that. One of them was the AfriJapan arrangement that Governor Lalong secured $300 million to improve livelihoods in rural areas

  • The Irish wizard

    So, we think that the problem was that South Africa’s loathes Nigerians. But it is. A failure of temperament and collapse of decorum. Yet it masks an angst lodged in both countries: Elite and government failure. The hatred launched itself with a subterfuge. It crept into our soul with a new word but “xenophobia” reflected how language can detract from the very malaise of the times.

    The states of both countries were trading diplomatic tackles while quietly congratulating themselves. The reason? The angry mobs were not a vote of no confidence on the state. It was a vote of no confidence of the poor in one country against the poor of another. In both countries, mass unemployment abound. One idle class the poor, and the other idle class the rich cherished a solidarity of indolence. They lashed out at the hardworking poor. For the elite though, diplomacy was a sport, a ceremony of violence minus the blood. The savage sport was down the ladder: blood, gore and eyesore belonged far away in the pit and squalor of hoi poloi.

    So this essay will peer, without reverence, at one episode that reflects why the state makes the poor impolite. It is the story of a company known as Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) that wants to milk Nigeria of $9.6 billion because of Nigeria’s tissue infection: corruption.

    That money was secured against the Nigerian state by a roadside mechanic who became a showbiz hustler. He knew everyone that was anybody in the Nigeria’s vortex of power. He knew Obasanjo, the late President Yar’Adua, the vocal, self-righteous Danjuma. Having failed to make it as a big name in showbiz in his native Ireland, he turned Nigeria into a showbiz for himself.

    His name was Michael Quinn. Though a big name among the Nigerian elite, he was of no value to the economy except to ruin it. A name without integrity, yet he was trusted by those who worked him and with him. He embodied the honour among thieves. He fit into how the Revelations described a false grandeur: “Thou hath a name that thou livest, but thou art dead.”

    He did not have a university education, set up companies that no one could trace their origins or staff, but he succeeded in turning this country into a cesspit and a laboratory of his experiments in lies, deception, and connivance. He was a laundromat of corrupt officials, a sick lever to review contracts over and over, a conman for decoys from the eyes of investigators. He was everything to everyone. He was a golfer to the athletic, an engineer to the scientist, a medical expert to the doctor, an oil baron to the oil industry, a gun runner to the miscreant, an accountant to the fiddler of figures, a spy to the diplomat, a fashionista, a military expert, a foodie who loved fish and chips, a socialite, a father and husband.

    He was a complete man in a wrong definition of manhood. He was the reverse of the universal man of the renaissance. My history professor Femi Omosini described Leonardo Dan Vinci as “a universal man of the Renaissance, a veritable jack of all trade and master of many.” Quinn was a master of the wrong trades and mastered them all. He was involved in oil bids, oil and gas deals, HIV projects. He had a prime finger in the construction era boom of the 1970’s. Remember  the Cement Armada, a scandal that ate up the career of Benjamin Adekunle, the “Black Scorpion? Quinn was an unseen spirit working the miracles.

    He was the chameleon who sparkled with the right colour for the environment. This mechanic was also a fop, dressed in his suits, a debonair look, moustachioed. So ruddy and smooth were his whiskers that he was compared to the goat species called mohair.  He was not good at businesses in Europe where things followed a civilised standard. He tried though with a fellow showbiz man, Albert Reynolds, when that fellow became prime minister of Ireland. Typical “men of grace” like him never get caught. The European Union flung its cobweb at him, but the roach crept out into the dark.

    He set up quite a few businesses, including one to make video cassettes, but they went belly up like a roach. In Nigeria, his businesses did not have to succeed. They only needed to be set up. In fact, his businesses were setups, entrapments for Nigeria in collaborations with Nigerians. Unlike in a scandal in Europe where his name and company were apparently traced including transactions, he was squeaky clean here. In the Mahon Tribunal scandal in Europe, they found his signature and company accounts in regard to some unkempt transactions. He denied. In Nigeria, he never had to deny and was free. In the Mahon Scandal, the weight of evidence dropped like a log but he ducked. No one knows why.

    He had a sense of religious irony. The company that built a factory with government money to make equipment to treat HIV patients was called Trinity, but it never took off. The company whose first name is Sheda was shed. Another irony.  He was also a military contractor who raked in millions of dollars for repairing and procuring parts of military tanks in Bauchi that never happened. The contracts were endlessly reviewed.

    The company that secured a $9.6 billion fine is like Quinn. It has no website, no staff, no known offices, no pedigree of successes.  General Theophilus Danjuma, who kept mum while the matter was raging until Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed him, said he knew the man and he had invested $40 million in the business and the man ran away with the investment. We need more explanation from the general. Even if Bill Gate’s $10 million were taken away by such a conman the world would know. He would be pursued to the ends of the earth.

    The general is quick to aerate about the murderous herdsmen and failures of coups and governance.  He could not find his voice until western reporters barrelled into his space and forced the words out of his commander lips.

    It is obvious Quinn did the business with Nigerian connivance. The story is also the failure of due process, unfruitful dalliance of our bureaucracy, the incompetence of our attorneys-general, including Malami who had an opportunity to clear it away when they offered $850 million dollars in settlement, including the rapacious naivety of our lawyers. The only Nigerian witness who appeared in court did not know anything about the case. Yet the interest mounts $1 million a day. The money amounts to seven years of education budget, or a quarter of our annual budget. It is about oil and gas but the fine could end gas flaring forever.

    It is a story of colonial mentality and inferiority complex. We assume the superior mentality of the western partner. We still have stories today like Siemens, about how the white man comes here to collude with our Nigerian official to fleece us. It is also a narrative of the military and their footloose morality and how they gave contracts and looted. Our civilians took over from where they left.

    Quinn was like the character in Kosinski’s novel Being There, of a man who cannot read but, by the happenstance of capitalism, rises and is being touted to become the United States president.

    Quinn was also like Jay Gatsby in the novel The Great Gatsby, who came from nothing, grew rich from questionable sources, and threw parties frequently to gain the attention of his childhood sweetheart who never materialised. He was a man without a community, except himself.

    No wonder, just like Gatsby at his funeral, Quinn was alone. At his funeral the music, the Lonesome Boatman, was his swansong. He was a serpent, and died like one – alone.

    Just as it is light out for Quinn, it’s still lights out for Nigerians for whom the P&ID contract was supposed to provide electricity. Cynically, the Irish wizard and his cohorts clinched the deal when, on sick bed, Yar’Adua as president was going “gentle into that good night,” apologies to Dylan Thomas. A necromantic affair.

  • Borno’s worries

    There are many Nigerians who never believe that we are at war as a nation. Boko Haram, for all its savage flares, rings abstract to them because they don’t know the victims: a dead relative, a maimed neighbour, an embattled home, a razed village, a limp athlete. They hear but do not fear because no gun rattles the next street, nor does a pregnant woman, blood on her face, run half-blind across their terrace.

    But for those who live in Konduga, where buildings lit up recently like a Christmas bonfire with body bags as harvest, war is real. Ditto to Bama where farmers only thrived when they put fear and flight ahead of planting a grain of wheat.

    It reminds one of a history course at the university called The History of the Far East. I asked myself, would those who woke up, fished and died in Cambodia or Japan regard their homes as far? In political science, they regard some wars as low intensity conflict and others as high intensity conflict. If you lose your only home in a hamlet after a scuffle, it cannot make headlines. But it is your own world war three.

    I wonder if, somehow, the war in Borno State is not sliding into a low intensity war in the eyes of those who should win it. As one who has been in that part of the country quite a few times, it gives one cause to worry. Barely four years ago, Lai Mohammed thumped his chest that the war was over and the Buhari administration had turned a national disaster into a fest.

    Today it is a different story, and it has been so for a while. The greatest tragedy is that the nightmare is becoming a routine. The goons attack a village, people die. We mourn. We move on.  Our soldier rolls back a horde of attackers; we celebrate as though the war is over. We move on. Meanwhile, the nightmare aches.

    The information minister shies away from the topic. Even the chief of army staff goofed about the army’s morale as though it was the fault of his soldiers’ faintness of heart.  We cannot underestimate what this does to governance. No one understands this more than the man who is now in charge of running the state. Governor Babagana Zulum was, as commissioner, in charge of reconstructing the state when the army seemed to have retained a grip on the territories. I called him the Marshall Plan commissioner after the United States general who rebuilt Europe from its world war ruins.

    Under the former governor, Kashim Shettima, we saw quite a few episodes of conflict between the centre and state. The governor at that time cried that the Nigerian army was inferior to the insurgents. They were better armed, better organised, and better motivated. At a point, as many will recall, the ragtag mullahs had taken over most of the state. And they loomed within a few miles of the state house. We were on the verge of a first in this country, where a military coup would involve men defiling the Koran, men overthrowing the name of patriotism, and men who did not love their neighbours or pretended to care. Jonathan had no answers and we called him clueless.

    The governor enjoyed a breath of peaceful breadth when the insurgent retreated into a silence. And with Zulum, he embarked a tremendous infrastructure work, with education, agriculture and a slew of many accomplishments.

    But even towards the last embers of Shettima’s reign, the insurgents devised a strategy. They came first with “innocuous” girls blowing themselves up in markets and mosques, and they started to regroup and recruit and excavate resources from shadowy places. Suddenly they built redoubts of terror in bushes and across the borders.

    Enter Zulum, and the war has taken up notches. It must be frustrating to him that he has toured the 27 local governments, and has embarked on an avalanche of activities since May 29. Yet for Zulum, how did it feel that in a feisty place like Konduga where he has constructed a school, distributed food items in IDP camps, built healthcare  and housing units and turned the dry lands into watery boreholes. Then the people had to kneel under the fires of insurgents who laid waste some of the gains. In Bama, he has rehabilitated the technical college, rebuilt its bridges and excavated the Banki town. Yet we know that the goons made forays into the land.

    Whether it is a prominent place like Gwoza, Chibok  and Biu or relatively little known places like Ngala, Dikwa, Mafa  and Bayo, the professor governor’s fingers are at play. But so is the threat of the Boko Haram army. Primary schools, hospitals, water, IDPs, et al, are getting facelifts, but the air of fear ripples in the ear.

    War and development are antipodal, and it is high time that the federal government realised that the first condition to improve the welfare of the people is peace. Yet Governor Zulum, just like his predecessor, has provided funds and equipment and welfare to the army. But who is even accounting for this.

    A source tells this essayist that many people in Borno believe that Borno State may be retreating to the turbulence of 2013 when the state government had to “channel energy to rebuilding more than 30,000 houses, hospitals, shopping malls, local government secretariats, police stations, palaces of traditional rulers. It seems the insurgents are trying to take us back to that era.”

    Such a scenario does not only destroy, it discourages. That is the state of affairs in the first few months of Zulum’s stewardship. President Buhari, who has devoted so much treasure into this battle, should ask for the account books and audit the soldiers. So this war does not become what Obasanjo, with gleeful mischief, prophesies will last many more years. We don’t want the fulfilment of what George Orwell quipped in his novel, 1984, where it states roguishly that “War is peace.” To those who profiteer, isn’t  this a war of peace, while most families faint and fail.

    We don’t want this war. Neither do the soldiers. As Plato noted, “Only the dead have seen the end of a war.” We want our soldiers to see the end of this one.

    Ly(i)on of the tribe

    In Bayelsa, we are seeing the beginning of a temper. But for now, it is within the opposition APC, where Heineken Lokpobiri, who once was a son of the party has turned rogue with the party hierarchs. He was a minister nominated by the same group he is now warring. Biting the finger that fed him? Now Heineken will now have to battle a sober lion, growling ominously for a battle.

    His name David Lyon, a name perceived as a double threat with Biblical implications. Lyon often interpreted as the maned beast, the lion, also is the name of one Europe’s cultural and historical cities, dating back to the warrior age of the Roman Empire. Today it sometimes competes with Paris in France. So, Lyon wants to turn Bayelsa into the city of David as the lion of the tribe.

    Lokpobiri will have to do more than going to court to contest open primaries whose virtues were first sold to the nation in this column by this essayist. The next few days will determine whether Heineken can fight a ly(i)on.

  • Raring to go

    In his swaggering white agbada and sometimes supernova smile, the BOS of Lagos set his cabinet in motion. Many had waited for that moment. In a solemn, sometimes vivacious air, the roll call of the commissioners and special advisers turned the morning ceremony into a foretaste of the years to come.

    The governor called his cabinet “unique in diversity.”  From the experience of Tunji Bello, to the youthful promise of Olatunbosun Alake to  the new voice of a Joe Igbokwe, and my colleague, Gbenga Omotoso, we anticipate a new edge. There are also the women. So, from east to west, the BOS of Lagos is now raring to go. He inspired the team, at once praising and challenging them.

    His speech-making is growing from its initial tentative pace to a relaxed, rhythmic control, his pauses holding that power to tease… For instance, when announcing the portfolios, he brought an air of playful mischief when he announced Bello’s portfolio. Knowing the audience expected Environment, he reversed it and said, “water resources,” and the audience resounded through the hall with “ha!!” He smiled and completed it by saying “and environment.” It is the quality of an orator’s stagecraft.  He has so far run his affairs with stately poise and dignity without airs.

    So, Lagos is unlike some other states in the rear. Governor Sanwo-Olu promises to be on a tear. So much to do, from traffic to environment to the expansion and restoration of infrastructure and education. He knows he cannot be in the rear, but rare. That is the goal he has set and that is the glare he will get.

  • A modest applause

    It is not often that a writer can see his words travel from the page onto the stage of action. Not the playwright’s stage, which is often in the province of fiction; but when a piece of suggestion or observation translates into government action.

    This essayist has enjoyed this rare gift within one month. Not long ago, in the essay, Eye in the Sky, I suggested that the drone as a stealth strategy could radicalise the war on bandits. Barely 10 days later, President Muhammadu Buhari weaponised it as a major policy. Drone in the air, death on earth to goons.

    Barely two weeks afterwards, I suggested that the lanky Timipre Sylva be made the minister of state for Petroleum, and in a short, compelling sway, this column homed in on the former governor’s hefty credentials and competence. Again, Buhari’s ears opened and he picked Sylva to assist him in that ministry of ministries.

    Even the minister of Interior, the ebullient Rauf Aregbesola launched his service with a policy thrust on how to gather intelligence. As if under the spell of In Touch, he said the National Security and Civil Defence Corps would focus on intelligence gathering to complement government agencies, especially the military. In Eye In the Sky, this essayist also called on the government to domesticate intelligence agencies that could help as Nigeria’s private eye, stalkers and whispers in the fashion of Kashim Shettima’s Civilian JTF.  Aregbesola was also borrowing a leaf from himself as governor.  His Osun State stewardship refined the idea of youth mobilisation on many fronts, from agriculture to security. He is bringing that chorus to the centre.

    It is kudos to the President and Aregbesola that In Touch cruises into policy. It detracts from the view of some cynics, who see this essayist only in the light of a bulldozer. In Touch is a two-edged sword. This writer has, for polemical and patriotic standpoints, stirred some bubbles in the polity. And no apologies. In contrast, some can point to a tranquil record of official engagement as well, which has happened unadvertised several times over the years. I am not puffing and huffing like Norman Mailer who wrote, An Advertisement for My Style. As Yorubas say, Mi o sako. Warri people say, I no do yanga. Just stating the facts.

    On grander scales, writers have fuelled rebellions, revolutions, wars. William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper fomented the Spanish-American war. The writer of Uncle Tom’s cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, met American president Lincoln. And the 16th U.S president quipped: “So, you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this war.”

    Just as I predicted Sylva, permutations perfumed the air. Intrigues flared beneath the public glare. Some names were thrown into speculative maelstrom and some writers positioned them as inevitable. Jeddy Agba was seen in some quarters as the minister of oil. But they may have overexposed the man. They did not have In Touch’s prose and polemics but the Agba narrative revealed a basic skein of the ministerial intrigues. Names on the burner became targets of incineration. That may have given Sylva the upper hand since the argument of technocracy and politics favoured the former Bayelsa governor.

    Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) was another factor of speculation. Part of it was the Ambode factor. How could Fashola, the pre-eminent minister, lose his slot to Ambode, a new arm? Many asked. Ambode, according to reports, had lobbied laboriously. Some even said Buhari would pick him to spite the Lagos bigwigs and repay him for going into the doldrums after only one term as governor. Here again, the man was overexposed.  Buhari did not only reappoint Fashola, he also picked another Lagos man and party loyalist, Olorunnimbe Mamora.

    Fashola has two ministries. When he was given three ministries in the first term, he was a cynosure of envy and praise. I designated him three-in-one minister which gained traction more than the bellwether nomenclature. Now, he is given two, some have argued why not one? His typifies the contradiction in the debate over whether we should reduce the cost of governance. With one minister in three, he saved cost. One cost has been added. But power is a unique ministry. The fundamental problem of how the DISCOs and GENCOs emerged has to be tackled. The minister, as Fashola pounded into our ears, has no powers other than policy. Most of it has not been ironed out in the deals with the GENCOs and DISCOs. In the words of Prophet Ezekiel, we have to overturn and overturn and overturn until who deserves to run the shows of the agencies and the rules of engagement. Other than that, nothing can happen in power. We will generate and not distribute.

    Fashola as the Trojan of Works has opportunity to work without let. Eleyinmi and co did not give him money to work for political reasons. The minister, too, would not yield to blandishments and coercion from the lawmakers who wanted him to veer from his constitutional mandate. I hope the new assembly knows what is at stake.

    I am curious about the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management. It is curious. Is it going to take over some of the Vice President’s work, especially the social security part? Or is it bringing in more imagination to welfare?

    Many predicted Godswill Akpabio as Niger Delta minister and Festus Keyamo – Government College Ughelli old boy. In spite of Keyamo’s law acumen, few expected him to be attorney general. Malami had it wrapped up for all his failures. So too for Lai Mohammed for Information and Amaechi for Transportation. Amaechi’s job is pruned, but his hands are full with the rail project, though.

    Sunday Dare was expected to go to Communications, having served as the poster face of the NCC for the past few years. But he takes on Sports, a virile assignment that he has grabbed with gusto. Thinking legacy, he is talking up the revival of the Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja.

    In all, the argument that it is a cabinet of politicians, not of technocrats is either ignorant or mischievous. To ignore those who worked for your victory is ingratitude. Yet we forget that many of the so-called politicians came into the fray as technocrats. Is it Amaechi, or Fashola, or Sylva, or Mamora? Or Keyamo or Akpabio? Technocrats became politicians and we forget because political flourish tends to overwhelm the life of a professional.

    Well, it’s time to work. Legacy beckons and there is no excuse.

  • Original sin

    It is easy to say Ibraheem El Zakzaky played a fast one on the Buhari administration.  With both legal and medical feints, the man wove out of detention, flew first-class to India, asked for a first-class hotel, evaded a pre-test with a pretext, roped both the Nigerian and Indian government in a conspiracy charge, decided the whole sojourn was a dud, and returned to Nigeria.

    As he touched down on his home soil, he was back where he began his travail: in jail. The rigmarole could have been funny, except that on both sides, we have witnessed a theatre snap the ribs with laughter. But so absurd was the drama that anyone who laughs should be laughed at. It is what Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett designated as Risus purus, a laugh laughing at itself.

    But at the bottom of it all is the concept of the original sin. The federal government thinks El Zakzaky ate the forbidden fruit first. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria thinks Buhari’s men, especially the army, played Adam and Eve. Some observers may think the sins coeval. The forbidden fruit is the breaking of the Edenic purity of the rule of law.

    Buhari’s men time the sins differently. They say the group has been an outlaw forever. They have been predators predating Buhari’s ascent to power. In its flashback, The IMN dates it to a scene in the early days of the Buhari administration when soldiers rammed into their rampart in bursts of gunshots that snuffed out quite a few. It was a revenge action at an earlier act of bravado. The IMN fomented a standoff when its men defied the chief of army staff and his convoy and would not allow them a right of way on a major national artery.

    The IMN thought in the language of Prophet Isaiah. They saw the road as not only a highway but their way of holiness. The army was unclean and should not pass over it. But it belonged to them, El Zakzaky and his faithful, though regarded as fools by those who err.

    The original sin, in other quarters, is more recent. It tracks from the decision of the federal government not to release the IMN leader when the court gave the order. The order has hung over the Buhari administration like Banquo’s ghost. They charged the man to court. They refused to obey court order. It is, in the eyes of many, the original sin that cancels other sins.

    So when El Zakzaky acted defiant in India he was acting under the cover of absolution from his own original sin. He probably believes his sins have been forgiven, and the federal government’s sins have washed away his. After all, without the washing of blood, there is no remission of sin. The soldiers have shed some of their blood. He may even believe he has not committed any sins at all.

    If the law court says to unlock him, then when he went to India, he acted as the law’s free man. When he sought his own doctors, he did it as a free man. He exercised that liberty when he demanded the luxury of a five-star hotel. It’s because that is what an IMN leader deserves when he is receiving treatment. He sees himself as a sort of national leader like the president of Nigeria. So, if Buhari could receive five-star treatment when crippled by an ailment, then EL Zakzaky feels entitled to the same honour and languor of comfort. He was acting in defiance of the administration but in obedience of the court. He has capsized the tale: the jailbird has made an outlaw of the jailer. Like Asa’s immortal song Jailer, in which she says of the jailer, “you are a victim, too.” The Sheikh was saying in earnest, if the DSS would not obey the court order, he (El Zakzaky) would. He felt a triumph at it. He felt he had made his statement. He returned satisfied he had titillated the DSS into a tizzy.

    The DSS did not know the mind of the reticent mystic. They probably thought him naïve. A man who reigns over the minds of men and women? For him they would make an abattoir of themselves, overthrow the system, wrack the National Assembly, pelt stones at the president, throw fear in the hearts of governors and dread in the populace. Such a mystic is cunning, a craft master of the mind. He conned the government and coddled his followers. He slighted the DSS with his sleight of hand. It is a case of counter-intelligence.

    Reports confirm that the man is, in fact, ill. The diagnoses unveiled a raft of afflictions. But the political one was that pellets of bullets had not dissolved in his mystical blood. That is an accusation that the soldiers indeed shot at him and his wife. His followers must believe he is a living miracle. That inspires their hatred and invigorates their rage.

    So if the man took his illness seriously, why did he not forget the politics and accept to be treated? Obviously, the mystic wanted to grandstand more than he wanted to live. He did not want any treatment. He is a mournful comedian, playing a game in which laughter is possible but not permitted, a theatre where he fires his followers with his sense of martyrdom and sways the neutral public his way. The government, too, should have obliged him the doctors he sought under close observation.

    Even if the Sheikh was clever, it was the DSS who made him so. His aura has provoked a lack of cheer in most of the north. He had been a rogue presence on northern highways, a big, irritant gadfly, a cenacle of unrelieved devotees, and an omen around law and order. The law was going to eventually catch up with the fellow. But the DSS lionised him, just as they did the phony revolutionary. He has looked more blessed than he is. He has turned the moral raft upside down. He now looks like the prophet wronged by a profane system.

    He has committed the original sin of culture and faith. He has prosecuted his belief with the reckless conviction of a zealot and subvert. The Sheikh and his group also offended against the law in its original sin with the episodes of brigandage and street disruptions. But on his matter, the federal government has executed a protracted fest of flying in the face of the law by being the law giver in a democracy.

    An original sin is an inlet into other sins. Since this standoff wears on with both sides priming its arsenal and soldiers, we cannot guarantee how this will end. For now, El Zakzaky claims a moral victory with his sect members while the federal government wears the badge of a taskmaster. To Nigerians, the best each side can claim is what the Roman general said after a victory that seemed like a defeat. Pyrrhus said glumly: “Another victory and we are done for.” We seek no further victories, just justice.

    Golden at 75

    Turning 75 is not about being three scores and 15 but about what you scored in those years. Senator Anthony Adefuye has just marked that landmark age.

    While his party beamed with celebrities from political and social circuits with the ageless Sunny Ade singing luminously, few can forget that this Senator has been one of Nigeria’s most consistent progressives, especially in the quicksand politics of the Southwest.

    For the ages, he will count as one of the Trojans who stopped IBB from making this country a hunting ground for dictators. Still spry, agile and engaged, he still has a few more muscles to flex for his fatherland. Congratulations

     

     

     

  • Revolution When?

    The story of a revolution can be strange. Sometimes it can start because of pepper like the Yoruba Wars that changed the face of the tribe, even some say Nigeria, forever. Bread can provoke it as in the rumble of the French Revolution that capsized the history of Europe and even civilisation.

    Or the killing of a mere duke as in the Sarajevo potentate. It sparked the First World War that altered the course of the 20th century. Or even because of the svelte vanity of a belle known in myth as Helen of Troy. For her puff of passion, men growled in randy waves and set off a revolutionary conflict. The Poet Homer memorialised it into an epic of the Greek world in The Illiad.

    Nor is the meaning of revolution so easy to understand. When a mere coup happens, or when a king dies, some say it is enough to pass that definitional muster.  Yet on fewer occasions in history do actors in a revolution know they are fermenting a fundamental change. They tend, as historian David Thomson noted, to pursue a narrow goal, maybe to bring down the price of bread as in the French turbulence. But they end up winning the big prize, which is a change of system.

    When they start, the players expect to attain a goal, in their lifetime they achieve a second, but history proves they have accomplished a third. Such is the facile virtue of human life. So when Omoyele Sowore blustered about a revolution, did he really know what he meant? Did the DSS really go to school and studied the ages of revolution? It is one of the clichés of the world. But we know it when we see it.

    The Sowore case was a comedy before the DSS made it a farce. It was like Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in which a servant permitted himself the grandiose self-belief that he could marry the countess. In her case, the countess locked up Malvolio for delusion of grandeur, not a threat to her chambers. In our case, the DSS locked up Sowore, making the Shakespeare’s play to cry for a sequel. Sowore had a mere 33,000 votes compared to Buhari’s millions. So, how come the mighty is afraid of the scanty? It is one of the ironies.

    Another irony is that the DSS is supposed to know if Sowore had the capacity to foment a revolution. Was he armed? Where is the evidence? They arrested him first, and then sought evidence to justify it. We can recall the case of Aikhomu when IBB arrested a certain business mogul. The then IBB deputy announced that the government was going to jail Umana. His press aide Nduka Irabor pointed out he had to be prosecuted first. Aikhomu, acting as though he had acquired new wisdom, quipped: “Yes, we will try him and then jail him.” He did not know he had become at once the prosecutor and judge. In a military era, what did we expect? But in a democracy, that chapter is haunting our DSS.

    Read Also: Sowore urges court to vacate detention order

    Did it occur to them that a man who could not pull an ant’s percentage of Buhari’s voters could not stir the country, a man who is even in crisis in his own party over how he spent election funds? A man who was also suspended by his party for playing monkey with its money? He may be innocent, but the charge hangs over him. So he could not mobilise the party that gave him that small following. When threatens to overthrow a leviathan on a video announcement?

    Again, what was special about Sowore’s? Yes, he uttered reckless words, but they were empty. In democracies, we are stronger when we allow free speech than when we muzzle it. Free speech, especially of the reckless sort, tends to amount to nothing because of the greater resilience of democracy. He has his say, but we all go our ways.

    Did we not witness a few years ago the world-wide Occupy movement, triggered in the United States. Did they occupy anywhere other than the geographic spaces of their protests? Did we not have it here? Did we not see Oby Ezekwesili in her protests? Did she threaten the system? Did Buhari himself not lead protests in his quests to be president? Did he not utter the blood and baboon rhetoric? Did it overthrow the system?

    The DSS cast a vote of no confidence in itself by arresting and lionising the online publisher. It showed that it had no facts to work on. The sort of lack of intelligence has been exhibited in the Boko Haram, in the surge of banditry, in the kidnaps, et al. Rather than focus on where it has failed mightily, it is working up itself and the nation into a meaningless frenzy over a fringe revolutionary. Even when the protests were to happen, it became the news of police impunity rather than the protesters who were probably too few to raise any dust.

    Revolution Now slogan was sweet but impotent. It has made Sowore into a sort of counterfeit Che, with the sense of messianic impatience. He is tapping into a malaise in the land, with hunger, fear and despair tearing apart many homes today. He seems to be making himself into the urgency that John F. Kennedy uttered: “If not us, who? If not now, when.” Hence his “Now.” But revolutions are not a matter of logic. It does not happen because the people are in deep distress, or because it seems ripe. As Lenin noted we can have a revolutionary situation without a revolution. Marx thought his revolution would happen in England or Germany, but Russia held the torch. Nigeria has been ripe for revolution since I was a school boy. It seems riper now, but it guarantees nothing. Revolutionaries must address our joint pains and know how to bring us jointly to treat them.

    The irony is that revolutions tend to happen when the people see that things are getting better. In our case, they are getting worse. As Tocqueville explained, “in a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.”

    It can be in the people’s minds, but it may just be a wish. John Adams said the American Revolution was “in the minds and hearts of the people.” They were fortunate. We are not yet.  When Lenin was in Switzerland,   he had many self-doubts and enemies within the revolutionary circuit. Nobel laureate Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, no friend of Marxists, novelised Lenin’s lonely moments in his book, Lenin in Zurich. Some of the men Lenin did not like he described as revolutionary cretins.

    We may have a lot of cretinism today in the civil rights and revolutionary society in Nigeria. A few of course are genuine. We should not treat them by locking up, but by addressing the concerns of democracy. And just as Fred Hampton wrote, “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution.” Ask Mandela in his grave.

     

  • Daring nominee

    One of the ministers of Buhari’s second term is Sunday Dare, and it is cheering that he has made it.

    He performed well at the screening, answering questions with ease and intelligence about his performance as commissioner in the NCC.

    He is also a journalist of long standing who played a role for The News magazine in the rough-and-tumble NADECO days.

    A polyglot, he speaks Hausa like a native. We expect him to do well as an ambassador of journalism, to show that journalists are “write na do” and talk na do.”

  • B.O. turns 80

    Prof Benjamin Olatunji Oloruntimehin, FNAL, former president of Historical Society of Nigeria and former President of The Nigerian Academy of Letters, the historian of excellence and writer of engaging prose, just turn 80. He was also one of the best teachers I had in my life.

    He taught me West African History at Ife, and our classmates were often enraptured by his power of recall and original insights. He had a sense of humour without a smile.

    A certain classmate from the East wore a chief’s cap to the class, and he asked why he wore such a cap in Ife, and wondered if he could wear it at home. He also remarked about the reigning Pope, and commended him wryly, saying if we had a few more vocal men like that, the world would be in trouble.

    That was before an attempt on his life. He often asked students to digest the subject before writing, likening them to medieval monks who did nothing but copy notes. “Grab the taproot first,” he cautioned.

    Our classmates, including now deputy police commissioner Austin Odion and Osagiator Ojo, often recall his insights into the term indirect rule.

    The language, he explained, was intended to mitigate the colonialist’s guilt by saying they ruled through local agencies, whereas they gave all the instructions.

    Some of us called him Segu Tukulor Empire, a reference to one of his masterpieces.

    Congratulations sir.

     

  • Above the fray

    Sometimes the campaign season foretells the reign. But not often. Those who seek office must don the charm of a hypocrite, adorn their speeches with chocolatey rhetoric, wear a smile at once grand and cherubic. They wax into an uncle and a child in one body, a confluence of innocence and nobility.

    The result is often a choreographing of the chameleon on the hustings. But when they win, they become like the leaf of autumn: the true colour coils, with reptilian feints, out of their skin. To reconcile the wooer and the person in office becomes a leap of faith.

    For the BOS of Lagos, we saw a tranquil fight for the office, if ever there was one. If, that is, we discount his beehive routine. For those who followed his trail, he was everywhere and everything, visiting groups, working the crowds, at dinners, at sports fiestas, at parties, at symposiums, at work places. His demeanour was mated to his words. Not controversial, but engaging.

    This is sort of a paradox. His candidacy rose out of dust storm. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s predecessor was not only in office but inhabited the same party. Akinwunmi Ambode was even his boss. Never once did the candidate cross swords, not even as much as gloating after he prevailed at the primaries. He maintained his lane, as the Nigerian youth would say. Even when a series of accusations were pelted at him, he did not rise with rage. He did not even speak immediately. He articulated his position through a proxy, and invoked the solemn words of Michelle Obama: when they go low, we go high.

    The party roiled with protests and tempers. They called the candidate sanwo eko, inflated his ego, boosted his profile, tempted his vanity, goaded him on the waves of the heir-apparent. His victory was a technicality. They were not looking at Sanwo-Olu the candidate, but the man on the cusp of destiny.  Shakespeare said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.” Candidate Sanwo-Olu did not seem to contemplate any of these options. And never once did the slim, soft-spoken fellow with a sometimes beatific visage utter any suggestion of hubris.

    That tiff over, he was all about going about his business. And there were issues to address, urgent as a hippopotamus on the lap. The environment has slid to the 1999 mire, according to a former environment commissioner, Muiz Banire. Many inner roads had become more of craters as though cranes alone motored about the city. The indiscipline of the LASTMA multiplied the cases of traffic logjams.  A lot needed to be addressed. Yet, he spoke without contempt for the man who occupied the seat.

    The election became, perhaps, if not in turnout but in percentage one of the most emphatic victories. Even perennial challenger and gadfly Jimi Agbaje is always ready to nudge his nemesis to a duel. In that battle, he dropped his gear and found no words but concession for the victory of the BOS of Lagos.

    When he was sworn in, some might have expected some of the usual fixtures of the new incumbent. Not like Chime of Enugu State who did not even wait for the inauguration day before yelling about the fetishism of his anointer and benefactor Chimaroke Nnamani, who had done the same to his own godfather. He even said he wanted to spiritually disinfect the state house before using it. The BOS did not want drama. He just took over and did his job.

    History always credits such personages. Like Gerald Ford, who calmed the office after the WaterGate turbulence of the Nixon years, or the quiet grace of Conrad Adenauer, who took over the German Republic after the stormy prejudice of the Nazi era. Winston Churchill led the British, and sometimes the world, to beat the Nazi. He was voted out as a warmonger. Clement Attlee succeeded him without sullying perhaps the greatest orator of the modern world. Lyndon Johnson’s era became beautiful because of the genius of John F. Kennedy.

    Sanwo-Olu knows that the work is serious. The roads are getting back gradually, as much work beckons. His predecessor focused disproportionately on the big projects while the simple ones suffered. Big flyovers, bad inner roads. It was like dressing a maid with flamboyant lace while the sores advertised themselves on the limbs. Gov Sanwo-Olu soothed the civil servants with transportation. He has started to address with the federal government the Apapa gridlock, though not an overnight case. He has allowed to continue the projects of his predecessor, some of them abandoned in the latter days.

    He has not raised the spectre of the EFCC, nor growled over the state of the finances, in spite of stories of latter day profligacies. He has not turned inspection tours into political arena, flailing and flaying the man who was there.

    He is just minding his own business. The BOS of Lagos, in his unobtrusive way, has shown how to succeed a person and, perhaps, succeed in a time of challenges. It is by rising above the fray.

    His second pledge

    In his blue buba and sokoto, he was announced on the stage. This was not a political arena, and his rhetoric abounded with the gratitude of a worshipper. Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun came on stage to tell his story. He gave a testimony that sounded like a page out of Abraham Lincoln’s life. He had been at his political battle for a while, losing is quest for senator, and even his attempt at governor seemed a lost cause. He was not going to contest. Eventually he prevailed. His testimony was at the podium of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles last weekend. He said he was a member.

    His testimony drew my mind back to a few days after he won the polls and was visiting the then outgoing governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi. Gov Ajimobi recalled with regret that Abiodun’s son was not around to see his father’s triumph. His son, a beloved entertainer known as DJ Olu, who passed away, was the champion of his father’s ambition. I thought Gov. Abiodun would tell that story to his MFM audience. But on reflection, I understand why he didn’t. When Ajimobi touched that subject in his residence in Ibadan, Abiodun’s face fell into tears and a handkerchief came to his rescue.

    The most potent part of his MFM testimony was when he said he would run a transparent government in participatory style in accordance with the rule of law. He said it without prompting and soulfully. He might have said that at inauguration day. That was a political pledge. On the church podium, it was a spiritual pledge. It is his second pledge, but in effect, it was the first and superior pledge. The spiritual is above the natural, as Apostle Paul explains in the Bible. We wait to see this play out as his stewardship unfolds.

    Once he was done, he walked back to his seat beside the BOS of Lagos. It was not only the handshake that joined them together, but an iconography of colour and wardrobe symmetry. Both governors were dressed in light blue buba and sokoto, as though they had a chat about it before hitting their wardrobes.

    Buhari In Touch

    It’s a good thing to note that sometimes you don’t write in vain. I had that feeling when I read the headline that President Buhari has responded to In Touch by deciding to deploy drones over the forests to tackle the problem of bandits. At least, the government has shown that it can bend to a wise nudge from a humble columnist. A clap for the president!!!