The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • Ambode’s “Cascade.”

    Ambode’s “Cascade.”

    Twice he wanted to make it not about himself. Twice it inevitably became his show. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s birthday of June 14 was billed as an onslaught on cancer. But it became the effort of a governor. He brought captains of industry and men of charity to buy mobile cancer centres for Lagos. His compassion secured at least four mobile centres. All attempts to make his role beneath the radar failed as he had to walk from table to table to shake the money out of the money bags.

    Last week, it was supposed to be about information commissioner Steve Ayorinde, who presented his book of columns. But all attention went to the governor and his first year in office. Reporter-in-chief Aremo Segun Osoba, who chaired the event serenaded Ambode not only as a doer but as an exemplar of humility. He extolled the virtue of continuity in Lagos. He also praised Ambode’s work in Lekki and roads across the state. Referring to his accessibility, he recounted how he drove to the governor’s office over a complaint and the chief executive wondered why he had to come over to him. He had only to call. The man walked Aremo to his car that was parked far away, opening office door for him as they walked out the building. “I wo na a da rugbo,” he prayed. (You too will grow old.)

    My former oga, Dr. Doyin Abiola said he was prepared for the job. Speaking with verve, she said she had never met him, but his works speak for him. She also commended the governor’s lack of airs, and drew applause when she said some people became unreachable once they became governors. She said there is nothing excellent in such people when they are called “Your Excellency.”

    Professor Pat Utomi asked the audience to close their eyes and imagine the fourth Mainland Bridge, Eko Atlantic, Smart City Lagos, Light Up Lagos. He added that the first few days of unease shows there is time to think, plan and act.

    When he stood, Ambode said the event was not about him. When Ayorinde wrapped up the event, he said it was about the governor. Enough said.

  • Governor of infinite jest

    Governor of infinite jest

    Before Ayo Fayose became governor, few Nigerians had heard of the term “stomach infrastructure.” But our politicians chewed the phrase like gum. They knew it and bandied it about sometimes as an act of infinite jest, sometimes to boost their negotiations, to show their relevance, or desperation for contracts or “dividends of democracy.” At the worst, they deployed it to blackmail office holders, like ministers, governors, commissioners, local government chairmen, even presidents.

    But the governor of infinite jest, Ayo Fayose, “chickened” it into common speech. It lost its cultic power and esoteric significance among politicians. He did it when he campaigned for governor of Ekiti State.  As governor, he said he wanted to evince the common touch. He stopped by the road side to buy roasted plantain, or boli, or roasted corn. He cast himself as a master of vernacular conversations. He spoke the people’s lingo. He was a parody of Chinua Achebe’s Chief Nanga in A Man of The People. Ironically, Nanga is a parody of a man of the people. That makes Fayose a parody of a parody. A dark comedian, like a character out of Mark Twain’s novel.

    He demonstrated it at a year’s end and distributed fowls and rice to the people. Never mind that he did not test the birds with any health specialist. The people hurtled to the gifts, in spite of the scrawny necks, dull and balding plumes and thinning thighs. Never mind it was a foul gift. The people were hungry and poor. They had a helluva yuletide.  It is like the cynicism of giving a kwashiorkor fowl as gift to kwashiorkor people, although the Ekiti people were not that poor. But the spirit of the giver was.

    At that time, it seemed Fayose had come to represent the model to govern. Forget roads, schools, hospitals. They belonged to dreamers. Give the people food, splash the cash to them on the streets. That amounted to the common touch.

    So, we did not need philosophers. No need  for London here. We were satisfied with poor teachers. Don’t mess with them. Don’t ask for standards, don’t test them. Let our kid go to school to learn to be a fool. Let the drugs disappear from schools. Healing will descend from prayer schools. Don’t fish out the Methuselahs in civil service who would not retire because, from the prayer schools, their age can never reach the retirement bar. To tamper with that is to touch the forbidden thing.

    No time to dream, but to eat. Send down rice bags and chicken wings. Fayose became the beach head a new “nanny state.” The nanny does not make money. Does not provide, has no imagination for productivity, no sense of managerial adventure. The nanny waits for the provider and provides what she gets to the children. The child falls in love with nanny because, when the father or mother, are not around, it is the nanny that plays the role. So it is possible to love the nanny and hate the daddy.

    So, Fayose played nanny. When the child grows up, he or she will know the nanny’s status. Last week, Ekiti people knew. The veil fell. They no longer called for stomach infrastructure. They had developed cramps. They had stomach upset. The nanny could no longer provide for the children. Rebellion shook the house. So stomach upset made a show in the open as crowds of discontents filled the streets, bearing signs, calling for the probe of their nanny. This is the end of a love story. They are calling for the man to resign.

    It is a pity that democracy can sometimes make a mistake to correct itself. The people of Ekiti State just realised they entered “one chance.” How do they value Fayose now: “as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt my air,” apology to Shakespeare in Coriolanus, a play of protest.

    The majority has been known to be wrong. Ekitis will not be the last. The United States knows that they created ISIS and today’s recession by voting George W. Bush, who took America pell-mell into Iraq. We are witnessing BREXIT remorse already in England. Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill called the majority foolish.

    What happened last week is what to expect when a Fayose seduces a people, and democracy caves in to delinquency. He cannot pay salary. He takes his comic show to the streets by playing a protester. Now he says Zenith Bank gave him the N4.7 billion. EFCC should probe that allegation. We know bank chiefs have been complicit in some high-level crimes. Is the governor of infinite jest ratting or clowning again? Let’s listen. Good thing that Magu says his agency will soon barrel into the bank vaults. I also think that the EFCC should have sought court permission to freeze his account. The argument that investigation and proceedings are different is still subjective. Let the court give its verdict so it does not appear as witch hunt.

    Fayose is a reason some call for the removal of immunity from governors. But we know that Nigeria is not yet ripe for that. Remove immunity and we shall have a chaos of impunity in court cases distracting governors. The law wants legislatures to check them. But the governors have checked the lawmakers with stomach infrastructure.

    The governor of infinite jest has tarred Buhari as a false charioteer of change. Now he is the physician-comedian who must first heal himself. But it is no laughing matter.

  • Like Ali

    Like Ali

    What is the link between Muhammad Ali and the new call to restructure Nigeria? Not Ali’s rope-a-dope, not the flourish of his poesy, or the beastly beauty of his stalking and punching, or the balletic finesse of his footwork.

    But his tribalism, especially when he boxed into limelight. Ali was a tribalist as black racist, as an anti-establishment, when he tarred fellow black Joe Frazier as Uncle Tom, when he renounced Cassius Clay, when he embraced Elijah Mohammed in pious defiance, when he threw his Olympic gold medal in the river, in his famous “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”

    But that was early Ali. That perhaps is where we are in the fight for restructuring. Today, it has become a familiar hymn. But it is not new. If we were a nation of intellectual fidelity, if our political elite were sincere in their soul, we would have resolved the matter decades ago, especially after the hurly burly of the civil war. I am for restructuring. The federal system sits a centre like a leviathan in shallow waters, ponderous, stuck and “swimless,” and at the mercy of the nibbling rapacity of a swarm of small fishes.

    We cannot sustain a system where the centre owns over half of our money, our power, our morality, our constitution. It is a garishly decorated monarchy, a throwback to our monarchical and feudal loyalties with a despotic shadow of our military past.

    It has suffocated the states, and made them beggar units. They clasp bowl in their hands every month to the counterfeit mercies of the centre. The APC highlighted this in the course of the campaign. For all its tendentious politics, the conference in the twilight of the Jonathan era afforded a platform for more robust dialogue. It was therefore a historic error that Buhari tossed it into the archives.  That big, dark vault of nothingness called archives. The time will come when we shall build a museum of suggestions, paradigms and solutions ignored generation after generation. All the ceremonies, tea breaks, lunches, deliberations, perorations, communiqués and tomes of recommendations turn into ashes in a bonfire of time.

    It is waste of scarce resources, and contempt for ideas. It impugns the nobility of the project, even if we impute cynical motives to the projects. Out of rottenness, shows the good book, comes out sweetness. That is why in spite of the opportunism of Atiku Abubakar in making the call for restructuring, we pick the idea and ignore the man. After all, he did not broach the idea. He it was who walked on Buhari’s coattails in his early days as president and even extolled him as the father of the nation. But he lost traction and favour with him, so he executed a pirouette.  He wants to fish in the fertile storm in the opposition as their redemption. He decided on his habitual mobile harlotry. He also lost his bid to be chairman of the board of trustees because the APC disavowed that position as antipodal to the presidential system.

    Rahab, the first famous prostitute, will go to paradise because she did good to angels. So, I hope Atiku’s leadership in this matter should bolster his career.

    If Buhari ignores the call to restructure Nigeria, it will haunt him as he tackles our lopsided being. I expect the call to increase in its stridency in the coming months. The National Assembly lacks the courage or even the depth to push it. This new restructuring fever might be another fight in futility. The cries may make our country a catacomb of echoes, room after room relaying the same calls. But the audiences are dead, with worse than ear infections. They have no ears.

    But some of the calls may not emanate from a love for Nigeria, but a love outside it. It is early Ali incarnated, a  retreat  to what philosopher Francis Bacon designated as the “idol of the tribe.” But there is also an echo of the “idol of the theatre.” This issues out of Plato’s “allegory of the cave” where prisoners mistake shadows for reality and mock the person who sees the real thing. It is the grand illusion of the age. We see things through insular, tribal lenses.

    We can see this in the uproar over Biafra, the Bombing hysteria of the Niger Delta Avengers and the rustic barbarism of the herdsmen.

    This is part of a global phenomenon. This week, Britain seems likely to endorse BREXIT and yield to the nativist fear about immigrants in Europe. In the United States, Donald Trump has revved up racial phobia in the model of all democracies and stirring up a crowd difficult to ignore. All over Europe from Germany to France to Belgium, parties that hate other people are rising in standing. Even in the UK, UKIP has soared beyond expectations. About two decades ago, the world hailed the birth of globalisation, but the implication for the intercourse of cultures has led to discomfort and distemper. People are at war with reality and embrace lies of comfort. Hell, as Jean Paul Sartre noted, is other people. Men love shadows rather than light.

    Sentiment becomes key to appealing to crowds. Oscar Wilde says humans are not rational beings. Humans are sentimental. We rally facts to suit sentiment. That’s the difference between humans and animal. Leaders of such groups deploy both demagoguery and what, for lack of a better word, sociologists call charisma. Pol Pot, Hitler, Bin Laden came from the same pot. They flatter the secret hopes of the followers. In his epoch-making work, Crowds and Power, Nobel laureate Elias Canetti shows, in seductive style, how rulers exploit the paranoia of the mass. But a key to the working of the mass must be found in Eric Hoffer’s classic, The true Believer, and how he has shown that all fanatical followers, whether Christian, Muslim, Labour, Marxist or ideological, fulfill the same pattern in adherence and practice.

    This book ought to be read these days to understand what is fueling the rage to be caged either as a herdsman, an Avenger or Biafran in Nigerian society. We may say that these people see themselves as narrow-minded. Quite the opposite. They feel they want to be free. That point was made long ago by philosopher Isaiah Berlin. The terrorist wants to be free to be a terrorist, just like the Biafran or the herdsman.

    Many, like me, who want restructuring want it for clear administrative ease. I fear that some want it for nativist satisfaction. We often forget that in any of us is a universal seed. When we walk, we move about with something of the other. Some psychologists have said the racist is often closer to racial harmony than the so-called liberal. Hence Martin Luther thought that the south would be the first to embrace harmony. That theory does not always work. Trump is a New Yorker.

    Ali died an evolved man, an apostle of peace and accommodation. He outlasted his bigotry. So, while we want true federalism, we hope those who want state police would not use it to kill enemies. While we want to control resources, we hope it is not a portal to greater corruption. It may even be a gateway to get away from the country.

    Are we fighting for true federalism, or some of those rhetoric cloak desire to dismantle this country? Nothing wrong with that, but let us put the facts on the table. So we understand the nature of the dialogue. We either legitimise the herdsmen, the Avengers and IPOBs of the nation, or articulate, in clear language, what we want. We shall know whether we have evolved like Ali, or are still feverish with nativist dreams. We cannot do that without a sincere sovereign conference.

  • Go forth and give

    Go forth and give

    Three men have shown us the different shades of love. One shows it genuinely, the other as a show man and the third in dubious colour.

    I am referring to Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man; Mohammed Ndinmi, Africa’s 39th richest person; and Ali Modu Sheriff, the most prominent African politician whose image conjures the blood and ogre of Boko Haram.

    Borno State, where the ravages of Boko Haram left a human trail of tears, beckoned for charity. The internally displaced persons lost not just home, they lost family. Especially, they lost the soul of their lives. Their past is a story told. The past of halcyon moonlights and storytelling, of home jokes and cosy whispers, of family landmarks and quiescent worship, of pictures, of farms and heath, of intimate hugs and family moments and mementoes. They are histories without artifacts. The same family members became corpses without names.

    It is time to gather their limbs together after the so-called goons of God roared into their towns and villages with blood in their eyes.

    Dangote hit headlines with a donation of N2 billion to the IDPs in Borno State, and he did not do it in the abstract. He visited Maiduguri, especially the Dalori and Bakassi camps. His flesh and blood was present among the bloodied and bowed. “It’s not the first time I am coming here,” he said as though it was news.

    His words were confirmed by his amiable host and Borno Governor Kashim Shettima, who acknowledged that he had been coming around and had earlier donated N400 million to the same IDPs. Dangote has not restricted himself to Borno State, It is on record that he had given N1.2 billion to IDPs in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

    The Dangote generosity is also significant in the light of the labour minister, Chris Ngige’s recent “order” that banks should discontinue their firing canon. Dangote is exemplifying the modern view of corporation as civil partners. They are not in society only to make profit but also to profit society.

    They are enterprises and conceived for self-enrichment. But that is the province of pristine capitalism. With increasing call around the world social engagement, big companies are being held to account. I may not go as far as compelling individual companies not to fire their workers. I, however, believe that the conversation ought to begin as to the moral imperatives that must factor into such decisions. A bank with billions in its vaults should have a better reason to consign workers into the streets. That is one of the reasons that Bernie Sanders has stirred great passion in the United States election year. Inequality in today’s world is returning to the Industrial Revolution levels, as aptly documented by the French economist Thomas Picketty in his epochal work, Capital in the Twenty First Century.

    Dangote’s activities with his foundation reflect this sensitivity. But the Nigerian rich, ever sick of self love, thinks little of the little guy. One of such is Mohammed Indinmi. He is a well-known billionaire and gained notoriety over his donation to a U.S. university while boy victims of Boko Haram are squeaking from malnutrition in a Borno State IDP camp.

    He debunked a rumour that he contributed $14 million to a U.S. university but a mere $900, 000. He  probably expected us to embrace him and slobber him with kisses because he contributed an equivalent of about N300 million to a university in a country where its income per capita is probably more than half of the Borno State IDPs put together.

    We have not seen from him an equivalent  show of love to his own people suffering in the aftermath of the pious hoodlums. The school is Lynn University and it set up a Mohammed Ndinmi International Business Center with state-of-the-art features like a venture lab, internship centre, 11 classrooms, etc.

    Some see him as a show man, more willing to please his rich school than his abject neighborhood. He has inferiority complex, and seeks the gratitude of the American rather than the joy of his own habitués. That suits his ego. He acted in tandem with the words of writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon: “Presents are made for the pleasure of those who give them, not the merits of who receives them.” It’s the same Ndinmi, who sent his six children to the same school and his son buzzed ignominiously on the social media when he flashed his account balance of $100 million. He is not a Nigerian leader, even if he is IBB’s in-law. He is not an American leader either. He is a giver who is a counter to the Biblical line, “charity never fails.” His charity failed in Borno, so did his money.

    The other player is Ali Modu Sheriff. The former Borno State governor, in all his moral weightlessness, is embroiled in leadership slugfest in a befuddled PDP. But the man has been the flipside of a Borno statesman. He is an example of a giver as cynic. The man cancelled bursary awards to his state students when he was governor. He boasted that media reports could not hurt him since his indigenes could not read. The same was associated with Boko Haram and has done little to swim out of that poisoned stream. The same man said he donated N150 million to Boko Haram. Many in the state said it was cynical. Even at that, the state said they never received the money. The Borno State Resettlement Committee said they did not get the man’s money but two truckloads of rice. Sheriff has not denied the denial. The genuine N150 million donation to IDPs came from faraway: Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Sheriff could learn a thing or two about actualising pledges.

    The indigenes are probably echoing the lines of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson: “Let me go: take back thy gift.” It is like the Greeks whose horse the Trojans looked in the face. The Sheriff donation was a nothing about much ado. Shakespeare in his play, Much Ado About Nothing, had a character say, “My charity is outrage.” It was a whited sepulcher.

    The IDPs are a charity case. So are Sheriff and Ndinmi. A man’s life consists not in the abundance of things he possess, said Jesus. But in the abundance of love shown. They should borrow a page from Dangote. Shakespeare’s words for the rich: “no legacy is so rich as honesty.”

     

    MTN at rest

    At last after the rough-and-tumble crisis, a settlement has been reached. The network mogul MTN will pay N330 billion to the Federal Government. It is relief to the company, a costly one at that. It was important that MTN followed the law in this matter. But the law is not designed to kill. A company cannot learn a lesson in the grave. So, MTN was punished enough to feel the pain but also enough to rouse itself to a more circumspect way of doing business.

    MTN has huge investment in Nigeria and many employees. All that also came into the picture in the settlement. The company can now go back to business without the weight of a fine, or after the weight of the fine.

     

  • One year on

    One year on

    Lagos has always been a place of small beginnings. A small port town, a puny army, a humble royalty, a seeming patch of land, straggles of settlers. During the Yoruba Wars, it snorted under the shadows of valiant horsemen and kabooms of gunfire exchanges.

    But it has not taken its smallness with humility. It is as though it is haunted by Prophet Isaiah: “A little shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation.”

    In the past century and a half, Lagos has dwarfed everyone. It has moved from a tiny port town to a towering harbinger of commerce. It hosts the banks and money, the entrepreneur, soldiers of destiny and the great bards. The nationalist twitted the imperialist, from Macaulay to Azikiwe to Awolowo.

    Its heroes have always followed a trajectory from the unknown. I.K. Dairo, Fajemirokun, Gani Fawehinmi, Awolowo, et al. It is the place where Nigerians have patented their geniuses. One of such narratives is in the offing.

    The story of Akinwunmi Ambode had such a heady start from when he became his party candidate. The PDP had its Jimi Agbaje, and he was in the flush of PDP largesse. His supporters said he was the one. Some young and some professionals and some ethnic stalwarts coalesced. They said Agbaje was the winning formula. They said he had the gift of the garb, a winsome look, a charisma that did not go beyond a nifty suit and rakish fila, or Yoruba cap. He spoke about grandiose topics like “ocean economy” and a murky agenda for the youth.

    Agbaje wore the false garb gladly. He pivoted towards the idol of the tribe, and he raked up tribal hate among Lagosians. He said he was going to elevate the Igbo as a kingdom, at least fiefdoms, in Lagos by ranking their chief on an equal pedestal with the Oba of Lagos. President Jonathan rolled into Lagos to back his separatist and Balkanising agenda. In the heat of the campaign, they had decided to give phantom contracts and offices.

    In fact, a crop of ethnic lawyers amassed money to throw a victory party a week to the polls to celebrate the “takeover of Lagos” as though it was some form of military encounter. Lagosians thought differently and voted for commonsense over clannishness, continuity over brashness, competence over showmanship.

    But as governor, he did not slide into a party. A few stumbles happened early on. Crime smeared the city, and here and there we witnessed fear and trembling. A mere anarchy of hoodlums took over streets and some major arteries. Compounded by a heady traffic snarl, Lagos cast back to military-era melee. PDP critics leapt into the fray and thought that the Lagos voters erred. A temporary Agbaje nostalgia rent the political space. As Mahatma Ghandi noted, “we shall stumble and fall and rise again…”

    So, Governor Ambode never expressed public alarm or rhetorical opprobrium. All he assured Nigerians was that he was working, and he soon would turn everything to rights. A few months later, he fazed the city with an unprecedented supply of security cars, motorcycles, helicopters, walkie-talkies and other gizmos. A new regime of safety suddenly burst into town. The crime lords retreated. Also in a short while, the traffic snarl was contained.

    As he turns one as the helmsman of Lagos, few remember their grumbles. Even the critics have become grudging adulators. Following a tradition of Asiwaju Tinubu and Fashola, he has stamped his signature early. His appetite for development is big. I told a few critics who read this column that they should wait and they would be convinced. I said I had met him a few times before the election and knew he bounced with great zeal, ideas and competence. His resume, I said, was one of the best for governance we ever had in this country. Having worked in all parts of Lagos, he knew where the city hurt and healed.

    Some of them wrote to flay him in the early going, and I counseled patience. Once he settled in, some of them drew my attention to some things he had done even before I knew.

    Some of his early kudos have been in the area of rural Lagos. His infrastructure work, building roads with dual carriage patterns and opening some of the rustic part of the city have impressed citizens. I drove through the Third Mainland Bridge one night, and my car stopped when the security gadget tripped. I had no fear because the bridge was almost like daylight. The long, serpentine stretch of the bridge over the lagoon revealed every detail of lanes and automobile zipping by. No hoodlum could have menaced me without consequences, especially with police also at the ready. A friend once told me that right from work to home at night, all the streets are lighted.

    One of his virtues is his knowledge of the economy. With the economy in bad straits, it now looks like serendipity that an Ambode should hold the state. And he has proved the man to do it. With deft management of the infrastructure of collection, Lagos is perhaps the only prosperous state in the federation today. In the United States, California and New York are regarded separately as world economies, just like Ontario in Canada. Lagos can stand today as an economy in Africa, besting most countries. In the first quarter of this year, the state curled in N101 billion as revenue. This is why Lagos can also boldly pursue grand projects. For instance, Ambode just signed an MOU for the fourth mainland bridge, which could be completed before his first term is over, all things being equal. He also has started what might be the medical mecca of West Africa in Ikoyi.

    He has turned a whole community into a habitat of light, in Ibeju-Lekki where the government is paying the light bill until they get their metres.

    He is doing all these and more without what some thought was his inability to give soaring oratory. Ambode is a man of policy, not a figure of speech. He acts and allows his work, not words, to tell his story. The narrative, so far, is turning him into the alpha governor of today.

     

    Goodbye, Ali

    It was in 1979 at the Tafawa Balewa Square, and I was a student trying to board a bus home. Suddenly, a crowd surged outside the façade of the stadium, and I looked. To my astonishment, the man at the centre was a light-skinned fellow of buxom build faking boxing exchanges with little boys who were ecstatic to return their own fake jabs. The man, with handsome look and dainty footwork, was Muhammed Ali. He was visiting Nigeria to campaign over some humanitarian issue.

    That was my only sighting of Ali. The Greatest died, and I join others to mourn this great black man. He lived a life that is lacking today. A world where religion can be a platform for humane causes. A world where tribe and cant have replaced a multicultural bliss. We have BREXIT, Trump, ISIS, Boko Haram. He was a pugilist for justice. He fought against racism as a conscientious objector when others allowed themselves to die in an America that treated them as sub-human.

  • When bell rings twice

    When bell rings twice

    Not many thought the first year of Muhammadu Buhari would look like this. The price of pump price at 145, the naira at 350 to a dollar, not a single road tarred, the 2016 Budget in baby steps, no minister has received a tranche for work, salary backlogs now a routine, herdsmen as killer squads, Biafra on the rampage, Niger Delta brigands reborn,  a labour strike, the President has only visited one state on official trip, his plane has landed on four continents, the change mantra muted.

    Yet, if you go to the streets, there is no rage or less rage or impotent rage, but a sense of paralysis. The average Nigerian, including those who did not vote for Buhari, are not willing to pelt indignation. They feel poor, even poorer. Power that spewed out radiance in the first few months of his administration has returned to its habitual epilepsy. Jobs? Where are they? The welfare scheme and food for students? Not on the cards today. Many cannot pay rents, many squeeze out meals, wards cannot face their principals for lack of fees. Patience is tested everywhere. Those who are asking for it are also being asked for it. Yet, Buhari is Teflon, rising somewhat above popular anger.

    Much of it, ironically, can be attributed to Buhari himself. The people at the hem are not yet angry with the man at the helm. For two reasons, mainly. One, his biography has proved compelling, even in office. No one thinks him a thief. No one thinks him contemplating thieving. Added to that, he turned the EFCC into a vault of revelations. This man stole that, that smaller man stole that bigger sum. The newspapers became headlines of statistical horror of billions of naira and dollar. All the peacock men in the Jonathan era, who suffused us with righteous rhetoric, of brokered ethnicity and marketed shoelessness, have become the fingers of impunity or retreated into priestly or pastoral silences.

    Perhaps for the first time since independence, we have an elected president whose finger is not suspected of pecuniary mischief. He might have flown to Asia, Europe and the United States, and slept in the luxury of jet and high-flown hotels. He is not in any suggestion of a narrative of stealing.

    We also know that integrity is good, but no matter how good, it will not put food on the table. There lies the moral dilemma of the Buhari era so far. We pine for holiness; we want the sort of character that John Milton painted of the Christ in Paradise Lost. But Christ can be boring if he does not change water to wine or give us fishes that defeat the appetite. The alternative is to call for Satan, and the sins multiply. Hence, Satan was a more colorful and majestic character in Milton’s epic than the beautiful blandness of his Christ. We had a lot of Satan of greed in the last dispensation. That accounts for the Buhari appeal.

    This is perhaps the first time that the war on corruption is fought with palpable sincerity. Paradoxically, it is also the first time it is pursued with epic naivety. The battle seems more about the optics so far, about the stunning figures, about the pruned dignity of the culprit in court, of the stories of vomiting and chewed statements, of court orders ignored and obeyed, of a puffing Eleyinmi as Senate President and a bragging Fani-Kayode clutching the air of the moral superior. Of course, a stooping former soldier is almost numbed over charges that he played charity with government money. Money to save lives in battle was diverted to save the office of the shoeless maestro.

    But then, Buhari wanted to roll back Boko Haram, and he has. Once the pious upstarts planted righteous flags and choked cities and towns and its shadow threatened Kashim Shettima’s position as Borno State governor. Shettima told us more than anyone was ready to say about the ragtag army of bigots, that they were better armed and motivated. Now, Boko Haram is a puny blood fest, harassing only intermittently with suicides. It is a mark it cannot hold out for too long.

    So, Buhari governed gravely, and he changed the moral tone of government. He also nipped the greatest existential threat to our nationhood in the past three decades. For one year, we can say he did well and, some may say, even very well.

    But very well does not put food on the table. It does not seem now that many know well what the blueprint is for the economy. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo articulated this at The Nation newspaper’s First National Conference on the Economy.  Since then though, he has made references to it in snippets.  But, it will not resonate until we start seeing steps.

    No matter the high moral tone of the economy, and a sense of tranquility, if the economy is not handled with deliberate urgency, the austere image of the president will get a beating from the hungry and disaffected. This may be the flipside of the election that brought George W. Bush to office. Bill Clinton was credited with the biggest economic expansion in U.S. history with many jobs available. But his party’s nominee Al Gore, who was his vice, lost out because of Clinton’s moral baggage. The people chose character over prosperity. Of course, when they lost prosperity under Bush, they gave a black man, Barack Obama, the task to carry both the moral and economic burdens. Just like Larry Mamutry’s novel, Lonesome Dove, where the black man serves as the moral restraint for the white man, Obama becomes what sociologists have called the “magical negro.” He takes the fall for the Caucasian predatory excesses. Buhari should learn not to be a fall guy of his own integrity.

    As noted last week, he can take advantage of bellwether minister Babatunde Fashola (SAN), whose ministry can galvanise activity with works and housing and power projects. That was how FD Roosevelt jolted America with the New Deal, which some critics called the “raw deal” then. Other ministers, too, can follow suit at various levels.

    His first year is noted for some notorious silences. The Agatu-Fulani herdsmen saga, Ese Oruru, labour strike, pump price hike. He has visited many places, but only Cross River State in Nigeria for business. His voice roared over Biafra agitation, Niger Delta Avengers and the Shiite group up north. No problem with that if the same decibel of rhetoric flogged the herdsmen. He has clutched endlessly for reasons. A leader is empty without empathy. He needs to connect on an emotional level, especially at a time when many are hurting. Life and death, says David, are in the power of the tongue.

    The second year often is time to settle down to substantial work. As John Donne wrote, ask not for whom the bell tolls, Mr. President, it tolls for thee. A year from now, the bell would have rung twice, where will his tenure be?

  • Away from crisis

    Away from crisis

    We should not dwell heavily on the cause of our woes. We should not bellyache over the corrupt doings of the Jonathan years overmuch. We should not carp on the wasted opportunities with the Naira and our foreign reserves. The Naira, now fallen, preened on sunnier days and our foreign reserves rolled in buxom times.

    But we cannot escape it when we say that elections have consequences. That Jonathan mattered and now matters. When we vote, we do it on sentiments. Sentiments, as Oscar Wilde says, propel us more than reason. But we voted a man for his so-called humble looks and his backwaters roots. We are now in the backwaters of inflation, joblessness, hunger and desperation.

    Democracy is not always about wise decisions. It can be foolish. The Algerians and, recently, Egyptians voted in a set of brooding fanatics into power and had to fret until they were ousted. Novelist Mark Twain once said that “if voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” We are now suffering the maelstrom of electoral delirium.

    Today, the price of fuel is N145 because we erred. We can blame Jonathan all we want. But we must be careful not to wash ourselves clean.

    Now that we have to face the task of bringing our economy to a softer place, we must also keep vigil. We have to watch out for profiteers and cynics. But more importantly, we must understand where we are and how we ought to move from here.

    As the fuel price was raised, a few issues hit the nation’s jugular. One, it came as a surprise. Fuel stations had become limp lines of vehicular frustrations. Some were buying fuel at whatever price when they could afford it. They just wanted fuel. Whether at N180 or N120 per litre, they gulped the rare fluid. Others had no choice. They borrowed Job’s virtue and lingered on fuel stations for interminable hours. Some of them were not rewarded when the fuel stations dried up and they had to try their lucks elsewhere.

    The announcement of the fuel price hike was greeted with revulsion, and then many discovered that they no longer had to queue. They had relief, not joy. Relief can be more potent than happiness. To escape a doom may soothe the soul more than enjoying a boon. Many of us could not fill our tanks, but we had enough fuel to move around and hustle until we could afford another time at the fuel station.

    Nigerians understood the desperation, hence the call for strike had no emotional following. But the other snag was that the fuel was suddenly available. What does that tell us of the fuel marketers? They won. They browbeat the government to raise the price of fuel.

    Or shall we say they had to browbeat the federal government to do what they had to do. The federal government was spending over 70 percent of its foreign exchange to import fuel. It had about $800 million a month of forex, but spent about $600 million to import fuel. What was left for other urgent matters of state? Mere pittance.

    So, the marketers did not win, but they were crooked. I think the Buhari administration should have taken this decision long ago, very early in its administration. But something critical was lacking: communication skills.  The President lamented very early on that the Jonathan administration wrecked our purse and we had nothing. I wrote in this column that it was not his job to lament but to take action. We would have gotten over this matter of fuel adjustment long ago.

    The other issue is that the fuel price hike came with disconnects on a number of levels. There was little communication between the government and the people, between the government and labour and between labour and the Nigerian workers. This slew of disconnects reflected in the past week. Some asserted that the palliatives already existed in the budget, so was the hike premeditated? Why did the administration not dare into the fray rather than do it sneakily?

    The problem, I think, is that the government should not have used the term palliatives. Minister Lai Mohammed struggled to convey the logic in his rounds in the media because some coordination did not take place. He did not use the word palliatives and he, in fact, noted that it was not about palliatives but a decision the government was compelled to take in the light of a battered foreign reserve.

    The government already had a welfare plan in its budget, and it could have easily argued that the welfare package was in itself prescient because the administration anticipated the hurly-burly of the economy. The administration should have buoyed the fuel hike news with figures of how much it had saved and how the money saved would be ploughed into the economy. That is the definition of a psychological palliative. It’s like having a baby and losing one on the same day. It is expected, however, that President Buhari will unveil he figures in his May 29 broadcast.

    One of the headaches of the past year has been the budget delay and absence of implementation of government projects.

    Buhari should have deployed the administration’s bellwether Babatunde Fashola (SAN) into the fray. His ministry holds a critical key. It will do the works. That’s how economies come back to life. With projects unleashed, lots of money flow into the system, and many get jobs because many contracts are awarded. Franklyn Roosevelt did it in the Great Depression on the inspiration of the genius of economist John Maynard Keynes. Big works pull demands and fill them. It can happen here. Fashola has spent some of the past year articulating his plans on power and infrastructure, but absence of money has allowed a sort of ennui to creep into the Buhari mainstream. Other ministers, like Rotimi Amaechi, whose rail projects will open dams of money could have helped.

    Times of economic woes are not about actions alone, but also about inspired rhetoric. Roosevelt said during America’s worst economic times: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It injected a tonic into the American psychological bloodstream. That is what we expect at this time. The Jonathan damage cannot be cured overnight. We voted him, so, we voted for our woes. We should be ready for the consequences. But, the Buhari administration must learn to embrace us and soothe us with not only steps of concrete action but also words that inspire. Good words are like medicine, says David in the Proverbs.

    John F. Kennedy did this in his time. He said: “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger—but recognise the opportunity.” Words like these brought America from crisis to catharsis. We need them now.

  • Wanted: A readers’ commune

    If we don’t create, we die. If we don’t recreate, our species die. Those were my thoughts when I sat on a panel last week to discuss the fate of writing in Nigeria. The discourse was organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors.

    Others on the panel, including the ebullient Kole Omotoso, projected a pessimistic tone. The Nigerian writer was a lost cause. In his well-manicured, hoary beard and confident diction, Omotoso noted that Nigerian writers, including novelists, playwrights and poets, did not pay attention to details, including punctuation, and could never compete. Hence those who made waves were the same Nigerians who were discovered or lived in the western world.

    Others moaned over piracy, bookshops that fleeced writers and publishers that leeched their writers. I thought that this was no time to weep. They all said the truth, I said, including novelist Omotoso and author of Just Before dawn. But only a version of the truth.

    “I am not here to bury the writer,” I intoned, “but to wake him up and out of his slumber.” I noted that we needed a historical perspective on the creative life of a nation. The first generation of Nigerians, including Soyinka, Achebe, Clark and Okigbo, thrived on a colonial boon. They worked on the infrastructure the white installed for everything else, including roads, power, education, health care. We became independent in the afterglow of British help.

    So, the writers were discovered and projected by the white man. It was easy to write and get an airing. I alluded to a recent interview on BBC’s Hard Talk with writer Ben Okri. The host referred to the view advanced by novelist Tricia Nwaubani that the prominent African writers soared on western endorsement alone. Good luck to you, no matter your quality of output, if the west did not see it, you will shine in self-congratulation in your unlighted, suffocated cocoon. Okri denied it and said Achebe, Soyinka and others did not thrive on western accolade. He also said it was not the west that made him and he was doing well as a writer in Nigeria.

    I have never heard anything more fraudulent about Nigerian literature. Okri, who has made himself a pariah of Nigerian letters by voting himself more as a Briton, manifested such damnable disingenuousness that it is necessary to expose him. He should tell us why he never comes to Nigeria to engage. He should describe the infrastructure of writing, discovery of writers and marketing in the 1950’s and 1960’s and tell us whether it was mastered by the British and other western poachers, including Uli Beier. They decided what was great art and what was not in their own lights.

    Later we had the African Writers Series (AWS) that Achebe edited. It was a forum created by the white man to stir African letters. Omotoso told me that before he finished his PhD, he had published two works. He said also that, in the age of the Internet, it was easy to access information. I replied that the AWS was an easy platform for the western poachers to know what was happening in African writing. Once you were in, you could savour a fair play.

    I noted at the conference that we no longer had such an easy infrastructure. Hence we have the ennui of today. For most writers who want to be read, the task is hard. Even critics and professors of literature have to enjoy a sort of western bear hug to be regarded as top flight in the ivory tower.

    What does that mean? It shows that the west has to decide what is important not only in style and content, but what issues we should take seriously. In the Hard talk interview, Okri caviled at what he thought was the tendency of African literature to journalism because of its political overtone. This is sheer hypocrisy. This is the author of Famished Road who confessed to family anxiety during the 1960s pogrom when his half-Igbo mother had to be hidden from the menace of marauding bigots. He is an alien to his African soul. If someone writes to capture such malady, he would say it is not great art. He wrote a piece saying that African writers are afflicted with the “tyranny of subject,” and that we should look away from such subjects as slavery, colonialism, poverty and war. We should shy away from writing about heavy subjects like suffering. I know Dickens, Austen, Balzac, Tolstoy, etc. They all focused on heavy subjects of suffering.

    I think Okri has been too colonised. I don’t think Okri is an African writer. He is a writer from Nigeria toadying up to his western masters. He is no longer our writer, but theirs. Some have argued that we use the white man’s language and they know what is good and bad. That is surrender. We have appropriated the language and good Nigerian English should not be dictated by the English.

    I agree, as Omotoso noted, that our writings published here have imperfections. But this is a world in which the writer is on his own. I suggested that we should establish the readers’ commune in Nigeria. I suggested to ANA to work with corporate Nigeria, local governments, state governments and the federal government to set up readers’ clubs in each local government. Young Nigerians and some of the old will be encouraged to meet once a month with a selection of a Nigerian writer. Each cell can organise itself idiosyncratically, as a debating club, recitation competition, political group, etc. But everything can surround a prescribed text for the month.

    I salute the efforts of the NLNG, Etisalat, GLO, Nigerian Breweries, etc for their investments in a literary Nigeria. But they encourage writers to win prizes. We need a more grassroots approach to literature, especially from the reader’s perspective. During his lecture on Biodun Jeyifo’s 70th birthday, Professor Dan Izevbaye noted that some of the new writings are hard to get, including playwright Sam Ukala’s Iredi War that won the NLNG drama prize.

    While the corporate sponsors have done well by way of nudging writers out of silence, we need to create an infrastructure to evangelise them among our people. Or else our letters will be fodder for the west only.

    If we have readers’ cells everywhere, we can encourage publishing in bigger scale because we will be “forced” to read them, and an industry will emerge. Our imperfections can be gradually removed through competition and reward. If no one takes local output seriously, we should make our industry compelling. The world may be forced to pay attention. After all, novelist Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize even though he was unknown outside France.

    We cannot allow others to tell us how to articulate our own experience. This happens in other arts. Fela and Sunny Ade often adapted their rhythms and beats to western sensibilities when they performed in Europe and North America. Recently I attended the Asha show in Lagos. The greatest artiste of this generation lives in France and her song has changed somewhat. She is still great but she lacks that power of utterance that resonates like the chant of an African goddess.

    The arts are not alone. We struggle with political system. Presidential or Westminster? Even in currency, we are trying to change masters from the American dollar to the Chinese Yuan. Globalisation should not obviate identity. The BREXIT debate in Britain is about that among other things.

    If we cannot be bold enough in other spheres, the literary world can be a start.

  • Ambode goes global

    Ambode goes global

    Barely a month of launching his Lagos Global, the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has earned what is at once an accolade and a job. He has been appointed vice president of Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CEIC).

    This is a move that affirms the status of Lagos in the line of investment and in a globalising world. As the helmsman of the alpha state in the country, the governor has staked out an opportunity to lift Lagos by selling its virtues.

    One of such virtues is security, a thing that he has built a sure template for. Governor Ambode has not only provided vehicles and gadgets but also illuminated the city. The infrastructure work around the state, especially in rural areas to connect the mainstay of the city will also sell Lagos as a hub of opportunity. The rail project is ongoing as well as plans to make Lekki the top deep-sea pot.

    This elevation was announced just as the governor inked a public private deal with a United States firm, Medpark International Consortium, to build a massive medical park to be located at Ikoyi. It will accomplish at least two goals. One, it will stanch what has become Nigeria’s medical tourism. Two, it will provide jobs and help flower an economy. It is intended to be completed in 2018.

    His new position as VP of the CEIC will only enhance his Lagos work.

  • An opportunity

    An opportunity

    In response to last week’s In Touch, the scribe of the herdsmen sent me a text message. Sale Bayari wrote in a conciliating tone. He also had a request. He wanted me to contact the Edo State government so that the herdsmen could secure 25 hectares of land for ranches. He thought I hailed from Edo State. I am Itsekiri from Delta State.

    My first reaction was that he has abandoned his esoteric thesis about Nigerian cattle being not suited to sedentary life. Two, we can now start a conversation about how to get the herdsmen into the 21st century. I had a phone conversation with him and a civil one. In spite of the rhetoric that has inflamed conversation about this matter, I thought this is an opportunity for leadership.

    The next day, the amiable governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, travelled to the Southeast with an olive branch. With the off-the-cuff orator and Imo State Governor Owelle Rochas Okorocha with him, Governor Shettima interacted with stakeholders in the Southeast. He is the head of the Northern Governors Forum. He helped distinguish the Fulani herdsmen and interlopers. He met with the Southeast leaders in the aftermath of the butchery of citizens of Enugu State. According to reports, it was a warm meeting, with affecting speeches and sense of harmony.

    Less than a week later, some elders of the South issued a statement rejecting a grazing bill. The meeting signposted men like Alex Ekwueme and Edwin Clark who abraded the dialogue. They came to fight. In my television show on TVC on Saturday morning, a caller who lives outside the country waded in and ruled out the possibility of giving “our lands” to strangers.

    I understand the rage and the imperative of vengeance. I saw the gore and pain in searing pictures. The herdsmen of slaughter, or whoever they were, were barbarians. No one should wish anyone their company, and it is not possible to wean them from jail if they are caught. And they should be caught, if our law enforcement agencies rise up to this epic challenge.

    Yet, it is a great time to translate the anger to opportunity. The fact that the herdsmen are now at peace with the concept of ranches should stir our spirits. It can promote not only peace but also understanding. It will bring not only harmony but also prosperity. It may be our modern-day model for unity, potentially the best in our history. It is where commerce meets community.

    Some have raised the question of land sovereignty in the call for ranches. Some have said no one should give their lands to Fulani herdsmen. It is the land of their fathers. It is the epaulette of personal and family pride. They would rather leave it in its primeval lushness than violate it with the paw and groan of a foreign cow. It is the place where the community finds solace. It bristles with history, its decades or ages of struggles, sacrifice and raconteurs of glory. In the land, they worshipped, they conquered; families were born and raised in prosperity and joy. To give the land away is to hand the soul of the family over to the enemy.

    Such sentiments are important. Oscar Wilde noted that humans are not rational beings, but sentimental. But a lofty sentiment beckons: the sentiment of coexistence. I don’t think the Fulani herdsmen want the lands for free. No one should ask anyone to handover lands of such great family heritage to prosper others.

    The impression that has helped to fire resentment is the feeling that state governments will take away lands from the right owners and give them to the herdsmen. That is against the very principle of sovereignty, justice and fairness. If you want my land, you must first ask my consent. No government has brandished ideas of land seizure.

    First, we must understand the advantages. The lands that will be handed over after consent of the owners will do one great thing: stop the herdsmen as wanderers. They become ranchers. It will be a great cultural shift.

    Two, it will mean that whoever owns the ranch will be known to the law. It is like any business. It will be registered. The staff will be known not only to the neighbours but also the law. Three, the farms and locals will be immune to the encroachment of strange men and their animals. They can no longer hop on locals with arms or clubs, rape women and kill those who resist.

    This will ensure security, which is the first quality of coexistence. But with this removal of unease, prosperity can follow. Just as it happens in the developed societies, parking plants can be established. That is an opportunity for a new and flourishing time. A parking plant will encourage employment of a variety of skills. Such personnel as transporters who ferry the meat, veterinarians who ensure the health of the meat, health workers of different sorts, examining the water, the environment, the quality of feed, etc. There will be engineers, technicians, salesmen, suppliers of parts and animal needs, etc.

    The parking plant will employ also many hands, from slaughtering to cleaning to packaging to transporting. This will encourage other businesses because the staff will have to establish families, worship, shop and have health care. A wild and barren expanse of land can grow as we have seen in the United States into a ranch town. The police will have to expand and have stations there and the government presences that a growing and potentially vibrant community attracts.

    The larger advantage is that it will be a great experiment of coexistence. Whether in the rural parts of Oyo, or in the rural retreats of Delta or somewhere outside Enugu, it will force us to learn to understand one another.

    The problem is not so much that we want beef. It is at what cost? We cannot continue in this atmosphere of adversity. We have to confront the issue about being neighbours. There is too much misunderstanding in this country.

    As Mahatma Ghandi once said, the enemy is not hate. It is fear. We are afraid to live with one another. Once we rise above fear, we break barriers. I am not envisaging El-dorado. I am only proposing a template for better understanding. Cyprian Ekwensi wrote in his Burning Grass, a tale about Mai Sunsaye, a Fulani herdsman and how a foreign girl tore the family apart. It was a story of romance and he wandered about in search of the love of family and the peace that eluded jealous brothers. They eventually find peace and union. It is a tale of compassion and harmony.

    We can make that true. We need only to try.