The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • Awo’s Bu(r)st

    Awo’s Bu(r)st

    During the week, a statue startled. When alpha governor Akinwunmi Ambode unveiled it to the delight of some Awo faithful and family, he probably did not expect such firestorm from the critics. Some loved it as a tribute to an artist’s sense of the avatar. Others embraced his cap, his rimmed glasses, his stately pose.

    Others cavilled at the face. They railed at its lack of statesmanlike poise. They said its neck was too thin, his girth to fat, his shoes a fashion faux pas: Awo did not wear lace-up beneath his buba and sokoto.

    Suddenly, Awo was back again from the grave, just like when he was here in flesh and blood. Some were awestruck, some struck him. While he was god to some, he was Mephistopheles to others. Critics forget, as is often the case with every work of art, that an artist can give a new twist to reality. It can be charmingly bland if you look at it from the familiar. But the artist can defamiliarise to refocus attention on the familiar. The critics had a field day, but remember the words of Finnish violinist, Jean Sibelius: “Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honour of a critic.”

    This is not the first statue to rake up dust. They said the Martin Luther King Junior one made him arrogant, the monument to Princess Diana caused an accident, the Peru Jesus made the Lord too flamboyant, many saw the Peter The Great statue in Moscow as bizarre and nothing like the iconic Russian leader. Today, confederate statues are generating raw passion on both sides in the U.S. when Awo’s bust was removed in Ibadan under Alao-Akala, it led his lovers to the genius’s burst of ideas.

    Everyone cherishes their own Awo. Those who want him ugly will condone no Adonis Awo. The one who wants him a god will preserve his shrine. Those want him buried and forgotten will preserve his ashes. The person who turns him into a bigot will violate any other kind of purity. So Awo is handsome, detestable, divine, dystopic, visionary, shepherd, shelter, depending on the court where you declaimed your verdict. All want to breathe their own life into a still Awo. For the sage who tenanted his genius in the west while the rest envied, this is a Pygmalion moment.

    Everyone is entitled to their own view of Awo as a still image as they are of his life. But the flurry of verbal rage only shows how Awo has remained the significant personage in Nigerian history. By unveiling the statue at this time, the Lagos State Governor only unwittingly restored Awo’s stature  on the front burner of the Nigerian debate. Some want to burn him, others want to burnish him. But no one can banish him. In either case, he is aflame in glory. He is the dead, whom Senegalese poet Leopold Senghor wrote, “have always refused to die.”

    Nothing shows this more than the current jaw-jaw over our future. The key word is restructuring. Why is everyone speaking about it? It is because Awo made a pearl of his region. If the West failed in the first trial, few will have any cause to cast back our course. Memory has become refuge because Awo is that memorial. He set the West as a city on the hill. He lit it with free education, lifted its infrastructure, made cocoa into wealth and built a monument, the Cocoa House, as Nigeria’s first such edifice, built an envy of a civil service, instilled a work ethic we crave wistfully, installed a politics that looked inward and shone to the world.

    Hence the recent meeting in Ibadan. Among other things, they called for regionalism. They wanted Awo’s rebirth in the West. They were endorsed by the East and South-south. The East under Zik also aped Awo’s doing with good success, if not up to Awo’s stellar colours. The Midwest was part of the West and, when it came to its own, it still bore the image of its forbears.

    Yet, as Awo’s still figure in Alausa sparks different views, the Ibadan meeting forgot that the Awo that bloomed in the Westminster system believed Nigeria should do away with it. The Ibadan meeting wanted us to go back to the parliamentary system. But Awo hailed the presidential. This point was amply explained by columnist Segun Ayobolu in his analysis of the sage’s book, Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution. We take what we want from our heroes. Awo knew that the parliamentary system was effective before it became effete.

    But it is a system that courts alienation of the people, according to him. Once the parliament is formed, government becomes a collusion of prime minister and his law makers. Awo also witnessed the presidential system, and he lamented it when the NPN routed his UPN and acted like a monarchy and manipulated the courts. His last interventions showed that he did not expect that generation of Nigerians to witness good governance. In Babangida’s time, he said we were involved in a “fruitless search.”

    Awo’s despair about Westminster made him call for the presidential, which also torpedoed our hopes. Our present return to presidential politics has exposed something that many are not willing to address. It is not about the system. It is about us. “No constitution, no document can govern a people if the people are not ready to govern ourselves,” noted former Ghanaian leader Hilla Liman.

    That is the crux. We can call for restructuring. Some Southeast elements can call for Biaxit. But what is at stake is not restructuring, however desirable it might be. It is a sense of values. If we still do not believe in a template of justice, where everyone acts by a moral code and the rule of law, we can restructure the country to the finite detail, but we shall never be content with ourselves.

    It is because we distrust ourselves that we argue over restructuring. One person’s restructuring is another person’s disfiguring. That is the case with Awo. Hence his image will continue to become a source of tweaking. Some see Westminster and forget he had outlived it. Others see his love for economic development. Some forget that if Awo were a creature of the 21st century, he wold not be obsessed with television as with the new frontiers of Apple, Facebook, etc.

    Societies often wake up past heroes to redefine contemporary challenges. Reagan governed in the 1980’s but we still have Reagan Republicans and Reagan Democrats, each defining him their own way. Charles de Gaulle still haunts French politics today. Although the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, it is doubtful if the man who stopped slavery will hug a Donald Trump. President Andrew Jackson, a self-confessed racist who tormented Indians with a trail of tears, is Trump’s hero today. Last week, German polls gave Hitler’s descendants significant seats in parliament and Chancellor Merkel is forced to dialogue with them. When people look back they see different. On addressing the Renaissance and Reformation, historians said “Erasmus laid the egg, and Martin Luther hatched it, but Erasmus said the colour of the feathers was different from the one he intended.” So, is Awo going to accept what the Awoists are saying today?

    Awo was dynamic in life. We expect him not to be static in death. As we seek a new nation, the greatest Nigerian ever tugs us out of our ideological complacency, out of our doctrinaire closets. We could search for him with the optimism of poet Edmund Spenser: “For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.” In doing so, we should find us in him and he in us. Awo is a guide, not a doctrine.

  • The Ambassadors

    The Ambassadors

    A few months ago, some denizens of the Rivers State government characterised NIMASA boss, Dakuku Peterside, as a failure. They did not know what was coming. He proved them wrong without a word. He slammed them with his success story. As the finance minister announced, NIMASA turned billions of naira to the Federation Account, topping in multiple percentage what his predecessors did.

    In millions of dollars, he replied Governor Wike and his men. This doing is also evident in the work of Professor Ishaq Oloyede of JAMB, who turned out a profit of eight billion Naira when his predecessor trickled with three million Naira.

    This is kudos to the two men, but also to President Buhari’s ability to ensure that he ran a country shorn of corruption. The NCC also unveiled a huge sum. We cannot however shout hurrah until we see the full story. For instance, what is NECO’s record?

    The Dakuku and Oloyede deserve the plaudits as ambassadors of accountability.

  • Three wise men

    Three wise men

    The fate of ethnic entrepreneur Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB calls to mind the Greek myth of Icarus, the son of master craftsman Daedalus. Icarus thrilled to his father’s new invention. He gave Icarus a set of feathers and wax to make wings. The prospect of flying amused him, and provided him an escape opportunity from a place of oppression called Crete. It flattered his ambition.

    Icarus was, however, warned. Daedalus his father asked him against what he called hubris, which referred to an over-bloated ego and self-confidence. Icarus saw that the contraption worked. He soared out of the earth and savoured the dizzy heights. He was above his fellow humans, glided with birds and even levitated above them. He forgot himself and started to see himself as a god. He thought, in the words of Shakespeare, that “the world is my oyster.” He was more than a dove or eagle. He was abandoning time and conquering space. If God asked Abraham to claim the earth as long as his eyes could see, Icarus was plumbing space to infinity.

    Hubris became his undoing. He forgot his father’s warning. He flew high towards the sun. The mighty ball of heat melted the wax and the feathers came away from his arms. Icarus tumbled down in a giddy fall and plunged into the sea.

    Kanu should have read about ambitions. He should have read, from his Jewish texts, that Jehovah punished hubris. He should have learned from the failings of the father of Biafra, Emeka Ojukwu. But he would not stop. He would not stop violating bail terms, stop piling invectives and lies, stop ratcheting up venom against other ethnic groups. He mounted a guard of honour, set up uniformed army, called Igbo worshippers fools for submitting to their preferred non-Igbo pastors. As an ethnic entrepreneur, he did not ask Igbo traders to stop doing business with non-Igbos.

    He developed a delusion of grandeur, saw himself as His Excellency, pooh-poohed legitimate southeast governors, threatened boycott of Anambra State polls, mocked the Buhari who returned from illness as an impostor, called everyone not Igbo as zoo animals, called for arms. Like Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he overstated his power. He had become a sort of political icon of glamour, a signature stride, a sash over his shoulder, his glasses, his measured smile. Like Jesus, a fanatic got healed by touching him. He endowed his followers with catharsis. They kissed his feet, worshiped his halo, danced for him.

    His followers began to believe the impossible. Foolishness overcame them and they started to search for northerners in vehicles. It showed they had no sense of history. They forgot the Igbos doing business in peace In Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto. They forgot the pogrom of the 1960’s and slaughter of many a kinsman.

    From new revelations, Kanu was feeding fat. It was not for nothing I tagged him ethnic entrepreneur. He was gorging on his kinsmen. The army thought he had had enough. Yoruba would say, O ti jeun kanu (He was well fed). It was time for him to plunge like Icarus. Burned by the yellow sun, Kanu splashed head-on into the bight – shall I say bite – of Biafra. Now, in quiet, he would console himself like Satan in Paradise Lost, “solitude sometimes is best society.”

    We have a tranquil country today, and the consequences of Kanu are not combustion and butchery because some men handled the matter with intricacy of wisdom. They are the three wise men of the moment. They are the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar 111, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State and Governor Okezie V. Ikpeazu of Abia State.

    When the state seemed on the boil, Governor Ikpeazu walked a delicate line when he declared curfew. Rash leaders could have bungled it and seen the state descend into chaos. By declaring curfew, he nipped violence. He was, as it were, the host governor of Kanu, and yet he maintained a poise of control that neither portrayed him as supporter of the scoundrel nor as accommodating the excesses of the army’s presence. This is the sort of leadership of balance that is bringing attention to the Abia governor. His signature project about indigenising our taste through enterprise is now known as Made in Aba, a vision the rest of the country will do well to ape. He is Nigeria’s apostle of local content.

    As the chairman of Northern Governors Forum, Gov. Shettima hit on the great idea that northern governors should head east to reassure northern folks living there. Backed by southeast governors like Ikpeazu, Shettima and a few other governors, including Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, embarked on the trip of the olive branch.

    Shettima has shown great presence as leader of northern governors. His trait has taken centre stage since the fiery day of Boko Haram. He was not rattled by the militants, and he stood with his folks in the furnace of war when over half of his state fell to the brigands. Other than that, he has run his state with cooperative elan, letting Christians and Muslims to embrace in an ambience of mutual respect and benefits. He has also shown great sensitivity to southern tribes and given them positions in his government. It must be noted, too, that Governor Tambuwal has also shown great initiative with the Ohaneze Indigbo in Sokoto and pursued a project of mutual understanding.

    The Sultan’s role has been pivotal. He knew that Friday is fire in the north. Prayer can burn. So, he sent word around the north, reinforced by the emirs, including the Emir of kano, that the messages should emphasise peace, which is the hallmark of Islam. His words percolated the prayer grounds across the north. It made the difference between love and conflict, and averted blood and thunder.

    All three, Shettima, Ikpeazu and the Sultan made the triumph of the triumvirate. The three gave us peace by keeping us in one piece. This is the sort of cooperation that this country is capable of. If we took this serenity of approach to other issues, including the tempestuous bickering over restructuring, we will find that it pays us to live in unity through dialogue and understanding. This quiet did not need a senior advocate or political wheel horse, or the rancour of a debate. It was informal and heartfelt.  The three show that triumvirates are not always bad. In Rome, Caesar ruptured the informal triumvirate with Pompey magnus and Crassus. The second triumvirate fell to Antony’s heart beat for Cleopatra.

    Yet many have been successful, whether in China, India or even in the Bible. The transfiguration had three men. The trinity is three in one, just as in Buddhism. Many will agree that Trump, Ivanka and her husband Kushner form the White House triple pillar. Gov. Ipkeazu, Gov Shettima and the Sultan were each a third of the country, to paraphrase Shakespeare in his play Antony and Cleopatra. They just crafted a model of coexistence for us as a nation.

  • Lawmakers vs Lagos: A law against the law

    The lawmakers in Abuja seem eager to stir trouble. Professor Itse Sagay has put their feet to the fire over their emperor’s salaries. They are still wining over it. Chidi Odinkalu has exposed a tyrant’s law they are cooking over NGOs. This page will address that soon. Now, amidst calls for restructuring, they are trying to interfere with settled law over tourism, and they are duelling Nigeria’s iconic state, Lagos.

    It’s impunity at work when lawmakers want to upturn what the Supreme Court has ruled upon. It has upheld the 2003 and 2009 hotels licensing laws passed by the Lagos State House of Assembly. There are many things wrong with what is going on in the centre. One, the federal agency is trying to eat where it did not sow. Lagos has made money with ingenious tax policy, which is helping to fuel the work alpha Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is doing.

    Two, the licensing law of tourism affects hotels and associated businesses, and it is within the purview of the state to reap what it flowers and protects. Three, the federal tourism agency sued Lagos over this matter, and the Supreme Court ruled in Lagos’ favour. Four, the lawmakers want to torpedo the constitution by making a law against the law. That would be a fakery of a tour de force for tourism. They had seen the real tour de force Lagos has pulled off with its revenue.

    Five, the Supreme Court ruled for federalism, hence Lagos passed the law. The centre is acting against the grain. Six, the constitution distinguishes between exclusive and concurrent lists. Exclusive belongs to Federal. Licensing hotels is concurrent.

    This is illiteracy of impunity and impunity of legalism. It cannot stand.

  • Desecration

    Desecration

    When a Nigerian army calls its operation Python Dance, it may make sense anywhere else in the country but the Southeast. In Igboland, it makes abomination. The army reflected either a disgraceful lack of cultural education or an impunity of desecration.

    The python is a sacred animal in Igboland. To launch an offensive against crime or subversion, the army could have found other metaphors. The long, fat, sly and slithering beast is called Eke believed to be a messenger and agent of the earth goddess, Ala. It is therefore a totem in the east.

    If its army’s python was about soldiers in uniforms starched for combat, tanks poised to roll and the air awaiting orders, then it mocks not IPOB alone but the cultural integrity of the land. It is like pissing on a holy ground, what T.S. Elliot symbolically fleshed out in his play, Murder in the Cathedral. By myth, the Igbo python swallows frogs, not humans. The Nigerian army python has no tailless amphibian in his feral sights. Its nozzles and tanks target Igbos not of the spirit but of the mammalian world. You cannot slaughter a cow in India and make a feast of beef in an open market.

    The military missed the point on the symbolic level. By flexing their superior arms, the soldiers only show a wrong-headed operation. The deployment of the army was one more stumble in handling ethnic entrepreneur Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB. All it achieved was to further mythicise an opportunist.

    The army and Buhari ought to know that Kanu is no hero in the mould that history shows. He is no Nelson Mandela, who conceived and duelled for free blacks in South Africa. He is no Castro camped in bushes and who saw death before he gave his country life. He is no Patrick Henry of the American Revolution who cried, “give me liberty or give me death.” No Amilcar Cabral. No Che. No John Brown of the anti-slavery headiness who torched Harpers Ferry, launched the Pottawatomie Massacre and was hanged for his cause. Some historians credit Brown as the emotional flame thrower that burned the anti-slavery fervour till all slaves breathed freedom.

    Kanu was a mere London vagrant who caught an opportunity for a happy ‘loot’ at the expense of his people. So, Buhari only is making the man bigger than he is and should be. Mere mortals can turn into heroes by the accident of other people’s folly. It is like the character in Jerzy Kosinski Novel Being There where a nobody who knows nothing has by association risen in wisdom that is not his and suddenly is being projected to run for the U.S. president.

    It is such foolishness that has made the government rush to tag IPOB a terrorist group when they have not even accept the herdsmen as such.

    Kanu was first locked up unnecessarily. The government organised a court action to release him on impossible bail terms that the man accepted before challenging. The man broke the rules. So, the government started court proceedings to get him back behind bars. They know the court dilates. So, the less than smart attorney general Malami and his boss Buhari lack political finesse.

    Rather than wait on end for the court to rule on the bail violations, they could have picked up Kanu on fresh violations. The man committed treason my mounting a guard of honour with so-called Biafran soldiers. On that score, he should not only have been picked up but also a special court could start an expedited trial.

    That way, the so-called Operation Python Dance would have had no rhythm in the east. Again, Abia State Governor and the apostle of local content, Okezie Ikpeazu, would have focussed more on galvanising the state over indigenising our taste through enterprise. The state would not have roiled and no curfew declared. By allowing Kanu linger for so long in the east, Buhari attracted turbulence. He deposited Kanu as unrefined honey that attracted the wave of bees in the form of pedestrian devotees flocking in different parts of the Southeast.

    They allowed the man’s ego to soar because the lower class adored him. The elite courted him not out of love or approval but out of sympathy and yearning for order. The crowd of fawning lower-class followers make people think that IPOB is unstoppable. It is a lie. The Biafra sentiment heaves in every Igbo breast. But Biafra does not always mean separatism in Igboland. It is a metaphor for ethnic pride, no more, no less. The Biafra of IPOB fantasy is a corpse. The followers are only copulating the still and decomposing cadaver.

    So the sentiment is strong, even revolutionary. Here is what a master revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, says: “A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.” Lenin and his folks expected the Marxist revolution to happen first in Germany. Every such revolution requires a revolutionary elite. Kanu and his IPOB don’t have any such credentials.

    Again, the conditions that helped Ojukwu’s Biafra are non-existent today. The business, intellectual, political and bureaucratic classes are out of sync with him. Hence it was naïve that Buhari should give that group the sort of gravitas that belongs elsewhere.

    The Buhari administration created the Kanu hobgoblin. He now has a task to stop it from moving from irritation to a big rash. That is another desecration of the body politic.

  • Anambra APC: No Private Eyes

    Anambra APC: No Private Eyes

    The APC should be careful not to make itself a laughing stock of the electorate. We witnessed what happened in the Governors’ Form during the Jonathan era when state chief executives dramatised how the elite turned democracy into a system for jesters.

    We are hearing rumblings of that sort in Anambra State. The APC conducted a primary before the eyes and ears of all present. The Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima presided, and all 12 candidates submitted to the process. When the tally finally came, the clear winner was Tony Nwoye with over 2000 votes while contender Andy Uba tallied less than a thousand votes.

    Now, Uba is challenging it, and the Oyegun-led party should understand that we are all watching. We want to see how a process everyone present saw and followed can be turned into a dark circus.

    Andy Uba lost, and how hard is that to accept. Losses are not so easy but the majesty of democracy compels losers to accept and wait another day. This is not military rule where candidates come by fiat, especially when the ballots have been counted.

    There are all kinds of reporting about influence peddling, using all kinds of inducements. Some with so-called democratic credentials are in on this infamy. If Uba and his men want to win an election, do the work before polling day and secure your voters. If you fail, don’t hold the system responsible.

    When Governor Shettima presided, the evidence was unimpeachable. Everyone saw the votes, but are they trying to wipe out the evidence of the eyes? Everyone heard the votes counted and announced, so are they trying to condemn the evidence of the ears? Those who counted, felt the ballot, but are they trying to impugn the evidence of touch.

    The relevant senses were present and vigorous. Perhaps the most potent was the evidence of the eyes. But Uba and cohorts want us to deny the evidence of our senses, especially the eyes. Psychologists have said that sometimes we hear only what we want to hear. Our eyes select what to see. In his novel Blindness, Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago noted that “blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she is born.”

    Well, the election was not done by private eyes, and what the majority of the eyes saw was announced. The eyes were public. Even in eyes, majority wins. So in democracy. So in Anambra APC primary.

  • Deathwatch

    Deathwatch

    There is more to the dress rehearsal of Mama Taraba, as some call Aisha Alhassan, when she uttered what others thought was blasphemy. She had just set in motion what may become routine in the 2019 political sweepstakes. She said she would poohpooh Buhari and pitch her tent with her mentor, Atiku Abubakar, in the next election cycle.

    Not longer after, Atiku threw his own salvo straight at the heart of the Buhari presidency. Some may call it whining, some may call it wise, but what a way to use alienation to launch a political campaign. He let it be known that Buhari threw him out the window. He was defenestrated.

    Up to the time of writing, the presidency has ignored the wealthy man from Adamawa State. They probably know he said the truth and are happy the man is sulking. After all, Atiku never rejoiced over the Buhari victory, and he deployed his resources and machine to fluff his momentum. The “change” engine was, in spite of Atiku, revving gloriously to Aso Rock.

    Yet, the nation saw Atiku with him a few times after he won the polls. He once called Buhari “the father of the nation.”  Winston Churchill’s close friend, Lord Beaverbrook, made the immortal lines: “any man with a will to power can’t make friends.” President Truman was asked about loyalty in Washington and he said, “if you want a friend, buy a dog.”

    This is no time to shed tears for Atiku. Neither is it time to caution Buhari on his capacity to betray those who toiled for him. What Atiku and his hireling just did was to show a trend that few writers or even politicians are prepared to touch. The political class is now in a vanguard I want to call The Deathwatch. It is morbid vigil that began when his health began to flag.

    The physical side of this vigil seems to have disappointed quite a few who expected the Yar’adua experience. They knew if the man passed on, they would immediately begin manoeuvring for 2019. But it sets the stage for a different kind of deathwatch: for the end of the Buhari presidency.

    This means they want him not to run in 2019. And if he runs, they want to explore the possibilities of scuttling him. If he says he would run, many would raise questions about his health. Are Nigerians ready to abide a president whose health status is nebulous? He spent more time in 2017 under health watch and in hospital than he did working the perennial maladies of this land: poverty, illiteracy, infrastructure deficit, corruption, power, etc. It was a case of a sick man being asked to cure the sick. The physician had to heal himself first. But no one is sure of the state of the physician. Or how far he can go. Will he be able to run a campaign, make whistle stops in Taraba Monday, and fly a turbulent chopper into Ile-Ife on Tuesday?

    The APC as a party kids itself that it exists. It is a warren of caves and tunnels without exits and entrances. A chaos. Buhari is the last person anyone should give a party to chair. There are as many factions as many can guess. Buhari, often selfish and aloof, left the party from the very beginning to careen out of his control. He is unflappable in chaos. He sees it as an ascetic virtue, beloved of the Almighty, so long as his position is secure. Hence, he never succeeded to hold a party together in the past, including the CPP he took away from its parent ANPP. It was supposed to help his ego and ambition to be president.

    APC grew into a hodgepodge that worked to the extent it put him in power. He amassed bright and successful men on his cabinet and left them at the mercy of a legislature riddled by men and women more interested in their fairy-tale earnings than the good of the land. So, he has performed without grit, vision or cunning, and Saraki and Company has turned the National Assembly into a powerhouse of resistance within the party.

    That is why there is a deathwatch within the APC for his presidency. It is no cheering news if he wants to quit in 2019. The damage is done. The party is damned if he runs, and also damned if he does not.

    There are two types of watchers in the party. We have sycophants who want to be annointed by him, in case he decides to retire to his quiescent Daura home. Prominent here is the diminutive governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai. He calls himself and others like him Buharists.  They see the president’s world view as Buharism. I am waiting for someone to define it. Buharism means nothing other than personality cult. If, as some say, he embodies a fight against corruption alone. It would have made sense if he had a method other than insist on Magu and watch while his closest aides battle to the death under his indifferent eye. If it is handling the economy, he has no vision. On compassion, he has failed as the herdsman saga demonstrate. If it means he has a cult of lower class faithful who think he can walk on water, then he is entitled to his fanatics. Let us not forget that he could not walk on water when he trekked some showy distance in Daura to his come and enjoyed mouthfuls of ram during sallah break. He did not only cancel another FEC meeting, he did not “walk on water” in Benue where huge swaths of land drowned under a heavenly squall, snuffing lives and destroying livelihoods.

    Another septuagerian like him, Donald Trump of the United States, visited Houston twice. His vice presidents also did hard labour. So, the non-Buharists, like Atiku, already want to serve notice that they will run in 2019 elections.

    If Buhari runs, will men like Atiku pull out of the party and reduce APC to the shell that Buhari made of the ANPP and CPC? This is no good news for the nation when APC carpet baggers will return “home” to stir an already broiling pot.

    We are heading for a political season that will titillate and frighten. It is a quicksand; the sort history always provides when a big man quits without a system. It is one of the trapdoors of charisma. A charismatic personality, or one that generates such excitement, sees himself as the purpose of all things. He equates himself with the society.

    The issue with Buhari is that he is living in illusion. He has ruined his party and the consequence will become clear before long. Meanwhile, those who are on deathwatch will have to undertake a long vigil. The man may be enjoying the glories of office so much that he may want a second term. After all, El Rufai, who may not be sincere about it, says he wants him to run again.

    Buhari may be feeling like a character in Joseph Conrad’s novel Nostromo. A big bird circles over him when he is sleeping, hoping the man is a potential carcass. Getting up and stretching his body, he tells the bird in sardonic triumph, “I am not yet dead.”

  • Lawmakers: “You be thief”

    Lawmakers: “You be thief”

    Professor Itse Sagay must be giving our lawmakers nightmare on their luxurious beds. He unveiled their pay package. Rather than rebut it with their own “factual” counterpunch, they asked Buhari to call him to order. They had wanted to browbeat the former law teacher and Senior Advocate of Nigeria by summoning him to the senate. The SAN was not fazed. He would and did not attend.

    If the lawmakers don’t have anything to do, of course they don’t, they should at least keep quiet. How can they explain receiving N29million a month as salary. In hardship allowance of N1.2 million, when they already have furniture allowance, utilities allowance, cars, air-conditioners, etc. They take about N1.2 million on newspapers a month. I am sure they read all the newspapers in the world from Bombay Times to New Orleans Picayune times everyday, hence they have no time to do proper law making. Or maybe with wardrobe allowance of about N700,000, they have Taylor time and Gucci or Luis Vuitton shoe time. After getting new cars, they will spend about N1.8 million a month asking the mechanic why a mud stain lingered on the left tyre. That is in spite of earning about N10 million a month to buy a car. Remember the House buys vehicles for them from a different budget. They can visit dealerships every month, and change cars every month. Well maybe, N10 million cannot buy their choice cars, so they wait for three months to buy the great SUV. In four years, if they want to buy the great SUV, they will buy 16 SUVs per term.

    If Fela were alive, he would chant, “you be robber! You be thief!”

  • The word, not the swords

    n the beginning was the word. It came by agency of a threat. Young men, bigotry in their eyes, swords in the shadows. They said the Igbos should leave. Tension rose. The date was afar off, but that meant enough time for the goons of blood and death to prepare their weaponry of finality. Swords, guns, machetes, daggers. A war loomed. The rabble said nothing. No one knows who the rabble is until the streets cram with the human instruments of terror, charging, raking up dust, dangling weapons, tongues alive with primal screams, faces tattooed with hate.

    •Shettima

    For all that menace, impotence crimped the corridor of power. The presidency fumed. The police chief roared. But the threat remained, boiling in patience to the crescendo of October 1.

    Few understand what we might have escaped when the Shettima Yerima-led Arewa youths withdrew their quit notice. So, not a few may underestimate Governor Kashim Shettima’s stroke for peace.

    Peace making is no birthday party. Behind closed doors, face to face. Smile to scowl. Prodding against stonewall. Persuasions against intransigence. A little browbeating here, a little coaxing here. Good cop. Bad cop. Eventually, it was the triumph of the human spirit, togetherness over the lone wolf, interethnic harmony over hegemony, the sheep outran the cheetah. Words won over the sword.

    We can now heave a sigh. But those who know history can recall that most of the times the peace brokered that prevented a conflict is more enduring than when we shoot our way to quiet. In the 1960’s, the pogrom did not enjoy the privilege of a threat.

    In the aftermath of the coup and the decree 34 promulgated by Ironsi, the north erupted in hate. If you saw the pictures, or read the narratives, we shall understand what Governor Shettima achieved.  We must commend the Northern Governors Forum for not associating with the irate youths.

    We have witnessed how peace moves failed, and led the world to flames. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went several times to Hitler and secured a worthless paper of commitment from the brute. Gleeful and naïve, he landed Heathrow Airport proclaiming peace “in our lifetime,” when Hitler’s army rolled into Poland that it called the Sudetenland, and Austria.

    Tragically, more times peace tends to answer to force. Harry Truman decided to use the atomic bomb of Hiroshima after the suicide bombers, otherwise known as Kamikaze, destroyed American ships after ships. Even though Einstein noted that “peace cannot be kept by force,” Japan’s case has proven relative. MacArthur, the great general, who loved war more than peace, presided over the restoration of the warrior nation to silence. The man who was fired because he almost led the world to a Third World War in the Korean Peninsula, said in his sober moments, “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” He was a contrast to another general, George Marshall, in whose name the biggest war recovery plan was couched. He was a man of war often respected as a lover of peace. Winston Churchill described him as “the noblest Roman.”

    In the 1960’s, the northern establishment looked the other way while fellow humans, not only Igbos, but also many from the Niger Delta, fell. Heads lopped off, expectant wombs cut open, fear and trembling turned the streets of the north to a slaughter slab.

    It was obvious that the threat was growing like a mass of worms beneath the surface. A song with lyrics of malice was circulated, making the Igbos into sub humans, demonising them with stereotypes, distorting our history as a nation, levitating the north as a hegemon. It also drew condemnation all around, including in the north.

    No one knows the author of that subversion. Neither has our secret service announced it was after the author or authors. Mere condemnation will not do. A song is no small way to mobilise. It catches the soul of a people, flatters their secret hopes, warms their blood, promises a nirvana. All the great hate groups have songs.

    As Borno State Governor, Shettima knows a thing or two about war and peace. He is the noblest Borno man at the moment. In the heat of Boko Haram, he raised the alarm over the army’s ineptitude and the shameless corruption stopping the Jonathan era from a sincere fight against the ethnic militants. Boko Haram was only a few miles away from the state house in Maiduguri. He did not faze or whimper.

    With Boko Haram less potent now – although it seems to have had some new and intermittent life – Shettima is presiding over a time of relative peace. With its own mini Marshall plan, he is rebuilding the lives of his people, schools, roads, healthcare programmes, etc. The CAN leader once eulogised him, a Muslim, as a great balancer of the faiths, giving the Christian greater leverage than any past governor in the state.

    His profile makes him ideal to broker peace with the incendiary young men. The man met the moment. He was like the metaphor of the Bohemian-Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: “Like a fluttering candle into a stormlamp, I place myself there inside him. A glow becomes peaceful.”

    No one wants to see a rabble. We have been rattled by quite a few. It is unthinking, savage, murderous. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann shows, in his great novel Buddenbrooks, an upper-class man suffers his first intimations of death just by the sound of them outside the council building. He kept muttering the word ‘rabble’ until his death when he was disembarking from his vehicle.  Shettima has fulfilled Churchill’s famous line that “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

    Ajimobi: A royal economy

    The country has watched with fascination the row and celebration over the inauguration of new Obas in Ibadan. Former Governor Rashidi Ladoja and Olubadan have regretted the boost while a string of Obas are awash with glee. GovernorAbiola  Ajimobi knows he has pulled off a masterstroke, both politically and economically.

    While the Olubadan thinks his position has shrunken, others are thrilling to their new status as kings. Those formerly known as chiefs can now be addressed as kabiyesi. What elation. But that is not all. With the now about two dozen Obas, we will expect a new royal economy. We shall see contracts out for the building of new palaces. Those who want to become chiefs or heavyweights in their new kingdoms can now start unleashing cash for projects.

    We might even have competition. Some Obas may start saying, my palace is bigger than yours. Labourers will get jobs, architects will design, tailors will loom, painters will boom, interior decorators will invent, Dangote or his competitors can start loading cements around Ibadan. Even “mama put” will entrench herself around the construction sites. We need the Federal Office of Statistics to crunch the numbers, so Oyo State can also eye some IGR boost.

    •Ajimobi

    Those hankering for chieftaincy titles can easily get it. It is a boom for egos. Every palace will also have its own chiefs. I anticipate palace intrigues. Who will be senior chiefs or subordinate ones?

    Ibadan began as a republican enclave, a fierce tribe of warriors. The town of Balogun Latosisa was broken into war divisions or garrisons around town as it duelled its foes to the death. Like the Roman General Cincinnatus, who turned from soldier to statesman, the warriors changed to kings. Washington followed his role model Cincinnatus’ path.

    The Obas will now become instruments of political mobilisation. The chiefs, palace, their followers will, from now on, become part of the party machine. It does not have to be APC or PDP. While Ladoja may have been naïve here, Ajimobi may have rebuilt not only a feudal fortress, he just rejigged a modern political machine.

  • How not to write

    How not to write

    In his after-sickness speech, President Muhammadu Buhari seemed to embody the main character in Wole Soyinka’s play, King Baabu. The man morphs from a soldier to a king of democracy. He tries, as Buhari did in his speech, to foist the contradiction on us. A monarch hectors, orders, clads himself in the regalia of the superior.

    But by using the phrase “dear citizens,” he unveiled, in a Freudian moment, the basic cartoon of king cohabiting with democrat. Citizens connote equality. “Dear” invokes affection. But when “dear prefaces citizens,” the word “dear” bears the haloes of affectionate fellowship. “My” however decapitates everything. It connotes ownership.

    No one is anyone else’s citizen. If he said “dear citizens,” then he threw a hand of fellowship. “My dear citizens” means he owns the citizens, even if it is dear to him. That was where the Freudian moment carried feudal arrogance. That is paternalism, where the leader sees his fellow citizens as beneath him. The French colonies treated its subjects that way in the 20th century, and so bad was it that West African citizens played children in joining Charles de Gaulle to form an army. They became colonial subjects helping their masters to stop another force from becoming masters of their masters.

    I would have dismissed this as the speech writer’s and the president’s lack of linguistic finesse and naivety. But the presidency has not recalibrated this expression. So, I take it that they mean what I analysed. Or maybe out of sheer cussedness or arrogance, no one wants to own up to a grammatical perversion.

    Yet that was not what irked me more in that speech of laconic fuming. It was the wrong use of symbolism in reference to the Ikemba. He said Biafran leader Emeka Ojukwu spent a whole weekend with him in Katsina, and they resolved that Nigeria’s unity was non-negotiable. Ojukwu never said in public that Nigeria’s future was non-negotiable. He pledged allegiance after he returned from exile and until his death to the unity of Nigeria. It is not the same thing as saying that Nigerian unity was non-negotiable.

    Ojukwu always re-echoed, until he died, that he would fight again for Biafra, if circumstances recurred. The president was wrong to invoke a voice without a witness. No one was there when they backslapped in his Daura home, when they slurped fura or their throats flushed with lumps of tuwo. That atmosphere of bonhomie did not mean they did not hold different views.

    Leaders in history who held diametrically opposed positions can still sweat affably on golf courses. President Richard Nixon pivoted his foreign policy on weaving personal relationships with leaders of adversarial nations. Nixon tried to defreeze the Cold War by paying visits to Mao Tse-tung in China and Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union.

    In his memoirs, Nixon writes plenteously about how they broke the ice, sharing meals, yarns, the picturesque ambience of his vacation home, etc. This was in spite of Nixon’s natural aloofness. When Brezhnev died, Time essayist Roger Rosenblatt wrote about their relationship: “How he must have relished pawing Nixon who hated to be touched.” He also described the Soviet leader as “genial, brutal, boring.” Yet the world cruised into a phase of peace as against his boorish predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev.  His main envoy Henry Kissinger had many memorable moments with Mao. So familiar were their conversations that Mao once waxed philosophical about his maker coming to take him soon. Kissinger railed gleefully: “A dialectician of materialism invokes deity.”

    It did not make Nixon or Kissinger less of capitalists, nor Brezhnev or Mao less of communists. So, having a weekend did not make Ojukwu a lover of Nigeria without preconditions. Unless both did not have deep and intellectual interactions and decided to paper over the cracks.

    Winston Churchill did not like Charles de Gaulle much. But in the omen of Blitzkrieg into France, Churchill flew into Paris and flew the French man back to London. But the French, aloof in spite of being a refugee guest, did not want Churchill to tell him what to do with his Free French campaign. Yet Churchill and De Gaulle managed to get along.

    When leaders meet, they don’t always get along. De Gaulle’s France was being saved by American military might, but de Gaulle shunned a meeting with American President Franklin Roosevelt. He met with him another time, and even if they did not like each other, they left the meeting with a look of meretricious good feeling.

    So, who knows if Ojukwu merely wanted to coat that meeting with polite rhetoric! We never have tapes of such meetings and we will do well not to distort what happened, especially when they run counter to popular information.

    Hence, I believe it was wrong for the president to use Ojukwu to make the case against restructuring. Ojukwu has never disavowed Biafra. His army was defeated, not his heart. This writer has often supported the philosophy of Biafra, not the way and manner it was executed by the Ikemba, whom I thought was opportunist. The same way I oppose IPOB, whose leader, ethnic entrepreneur and rabble rouser, is taking advantage of a people seeking a meaning in a country of poor leaders.

    The president cannot wish away the call to restructure Nigeria merely by hectoring in his angry speech. If he thinks all is well with Nigeria, he must be living in a different country. Just like the Roman leader Caligula, who thought he was such a hero because he was adored in the early days of his reign. He started to replace the statues of great Roman leaders with his.

    Buhari’s followers swoon and carp and drink water from unsanitary ground in homage to him. Those same people cannot pay their bills in hospitals and secure good education. We have to make the distinction between hero worship and human woes. In the same speech, he equated the herdsman and farmers, yet the herdsmen rapine farmers and their goods. They invade, kill, maim and rape farmers. Farmers are not the hostile ones. To speak of farmers- herdsman clash is rhetorically wrong. It connotes moral equivalency just like Trump equates white supremacists with antifascist protesters. The attackers are the offenders.

    I expected an update on his health, and we had nothing. We paid the bill, and we need to see the accounts. That speech is an example of how not to write a presidential speech.