The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • I didn’t like the way the turkey looked at me; but, in the Spirit of the Season, I’m now ready to forgive

    ‘Tis the season of love and forgiveness, so I have decided not to seek revenge against PHCN (dead or alive), Okada riders, taxi drivers or GSM providers

    As the year wore on and the yuletide season approached, I found myself doing a mental reconnoitre of some of my relatives’ and friends’ houses, particularly those whom I knew kept a chicken coop or two. Visiting a particular one, I found a coop with chickens old and big enough for the pot, to my mind, but since they were clucking freely around in complete defiance of all logic and knowledge, I refrained from educating them on the approaching season, or of their rights for that matter. So, I simply marked one down for a ‘due date’. Turning, I espied some turkeys quietly observing me. I returned the regard but I saw that they looked at me with something closely resembling malice. I really did not like that look. However, I did not let that stop me from marking one of them for another ‘due date’, look or no look. It’s Christmas after all, the season to love and forgive all.

    Honestly, if it were not for the season, there are many corporate bodies and institutions and manufacturers and people that I had determined not to ever forgive; well, until the critical hour at least. You know that hour, don’t you? Since I like to think that that hour is still a long way off, I was quite prepared to carry my grievances like a cross, was I not? I don’t know about you, but lately, I have found myself going around with a permanent scowl till my brows are literally meeting at the centre of my face. The reason is simple; there are so many problems and annoyances and more annoyances that accost me daily in this country till I feel I am either targeted or I am the only one really alive and the rest of you are just figments of my imagination. Just listen to my list and see if you can sympathise enough to offer me your own yuletide chicken.

    Let’s look at our GSM providers and the way they have been relating with me lately. I have found that anytime I reload my phone with what I regard as a whopping lot of cash and I do not quickly sign up for one or other of their infernal ‘packages’, I quickly lose all of my money. Honestly, I never knew it was possible to get robbed via one’s phone until I joined the group. Seriously, I am holding the phone, looking at it and I am getting robbed! And the world expects me to be placidly forgiving? No sir, someone’s got to pay `cause I didn’t even want to own a phone in the first place! Actually, the story of how I came to own a phone is for another day.

    And have you noticed how enticing all new phones look when you are just purchasing them? They all look so beautiful at the point of purchase that it never occurs to you to ask what their faults are. How can anything looking so fine have any fault, you think? So no, it never occurs to you, until you start to use them. Then, one after the other, the faults begin to pop out like rabbits from a hat. Your newly purchased beauty is either discharging all its power as soon as you start your conversation or else dying out on you at the most critical point of the conversation when you are about to be told who did it. Don’t ask me what, I don’t know either; the blessed battery has gone dead. Or else, it is erasing names from its storage, or even blanking out all together!

    Then there are the Nigerian institutions. Throughout this year, I can count on my fingers the number of watts or even slivers of light I received from the electricity company. When the company was very busy not giving me light, it decided to blow what few equipment I had in the house. Well done, sirs; but I assure you the elephant has a long memory. Then there is the water corporation that did not give me a drop of water but was kind enough to distribute hefty bills. That kindness will also not be forgotten, even if you are.

    I don’t know what our unnecessarily segmented Nigerian security arms are doing on the roads, but one thing I know, they are not keeping us secure. There are still unaccompanied learner-drivers endangering theirs and everyone else’s lives on the roads; there are still women and men drivers who perpetually and ignorantly place children in the front seats of cars while driving as if they were on the highway to hell; there are still Okada riders who pick up fares consisting of pregnant women with children on their backs and in their arms and you ask what are they holding onto for support… and the list goes on. But what are your road-security outfits doing? They are holding me up to seize my own two-week only expired papers; they are catching me talking on the phone in a stalled traffic and making me part with some money… Right now, I am all fist and fury I assure you.

    Now, I am sure you will agree that your taxi and Okada transport services are anything but services. They are two different institutions against which you cannot win any argument, except in a law court. Sure, occasionally, I find myself in a taxi but that happens when all else has failed. For me to take an Okada ride is right now not on the cards. I took it only once in a city that offered no other type of public transport and I think both the rider and myself came away from the experience vowing never again: he would never take me again, and I would never ride on it again. Perhaps that was why one of them removed the rear guard of my car one night in retaliation. Now, you understand my grievance.

    My list can go on and on, but what’s the use; it only makes me grumpier and grumpier. To lessen the scowl, I resolved sometime last week to liven up my life by purchasing one item or the other. You know that kind of comfort purchase; you don’t really need it but you sort of hope that it would bring that miracle of healing. I know, I know, one could try being kind to others by giving out rather than purchasing an unneeded item. I’m talking about after wards now. As I was saying, there I had packed my car neatly, even if I did say so myself, only to come back from my purchase and find it had been crashed into by a taxi driver. Believe me, if I was sure I would get Jonathan’s amnesty, I might have tried my hands at murder. Since I knew Jonathan had his own hands full dealing with Obj.’s letters to Aso Rock, and my application for amnesty might not reach his eyes before the yuletide, I refrained myself.

    More importantly, ‘tis the season of love and forgiveness, so I have decided not to seek revenge against my tormentors. Instead, I have decided to give them all a general amnesty. This means I quite forgive PHCN (dead or alive), water corporation, road maintenance company, etc. I will also forgive my dog for not barking, Okada riders and taxi drivers for aiming at my bumpers, GSM providers for making off with my money in broad day light, and the turkey for looking at me maliciously. That way, maybe, I can frustrate them into doing some good for others and spreading the cheer around. Have a very cheery and merry Christmas!

  • Is PDP dead or dying?

    Is PDP dead or dying?

    PDP has no redeeming feature

    It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy; one that has long been expected, if the PDP does not come out of its current stupor alive. Without a scintilla of doubt, the party has been many times lucky because in decent societies, any party like it would long have become history. Nothing proves the veracity of its cluelessness more than the combination of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent, self- serving, 18- page letter to the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, and the legislative tsunami which hit the party when 37 of its members in the House of Representatives decamped to the rival All Progressives Congress, effectively putting the government party in opposition in that hallowed chamber. The move, according to the legislators was as a result of the division in the party, consequent upon the formation of the new PDP, the decampment of five governors from the ruling party and, in tandem with the provisions of the constitution. I described Obasanjo’s letter to President Jonathan as self- serving because it is nothing more than the result of frustrations arising from his seeming inability to install a third Nigerian president in the person of the Jigawa state governor, Sule Lamido

    The letter, bristling with rampant denunciations and allegations of, albeit undeniable, massive corruption, ineptitude and crass cronyism against the Jonathan government, could hardly have been improved upon by the opposition the way it hammered both Jonathan, and his government. Obasanjo was so unsparing, he had no qualms in alleging that the country may very soon go back to the murderous days of the goggled one and to bring this poignantly home to Nigerians, a smart Obasanjo posited a causal relationship between it, and the allegedly arranged discharge of Abacha’s former Chief Security Officer in a case of being an accessory to the assassination of Kudirat, wife of Chief M K O Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the historic June 12, 1993 election, adding that Mustapha was escorted back to his native North like a rock star.

    For its un-redeemable woes on Nigeria, PDP’s death, long heralded, will be completely unsung as Nigeria would be much better without that monster, which its members forever deceive themselves describing as the largest party in Africa, clustering our political space. Under the PDP, elections in Nigeria became a ‘do or die’ affair, worse than any in any other part of the world, security of life and property became a chimera as full scale insurgency war erupted in its North-Eastern part, oil thefts increased exponentially in spite of the many sweet heart, multi-billion naira contracts to ex-militants, at least one of who had since established a university in a neighbouring country; ministers became untouchable champions of corruption just as Mr President increasingly became an ethnic jingoist with his rehabilitated Ijaw militants pouring invectives on distinguished Nigerians, at will, and unchecked.

    Jon Campbell, a Senior Research Fellow at the American Council on Foreign Relations and Former Ambassador to Nigeria, wrote recently in his new book Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink that popular alienation and a fragmented establishment have contributed to Nigeria becoming one of the most violent countries in the world. –No thanks to the PDP, and in particular, its first President turned letter writer, Olusegun Obasanjo. PDP had, from the very beginning, been nothing but a curse on the developmental trajectory of the Nigerian state as it governed essentially through indescribable corruption which became highly accentuated by its rentier philosophy of government. For instance, one of its top chieftains, indeed a former Chairman of the party, whose son was fingered in the oil subsidy scam in an agency of government which he chaired, has since been gifted another high ranking appointment thus demonstrating the amoral nature of both party and government.

    Under the PDP, flawed elections in 2003, 2007, and 2011 completely undermined government’s credibility and further aggravated Nigeria’s conflicts: social, political and economic such that today, not just Boko Haram, kidnappers, armed robbers but pirates operating in its territorial waters have all combined to ensure that’ the federal government has failed to provide basic security for its citizens as well as lost its monopoly on violence, two basic attributes of a sovereign state.”

    Thus, a country that ordinarily should have been the lodestar of the African continent, facilitating continent –wide stability, fostering economic cooperation and leading the way in tackling Africa’s key health challenges, has itself become one of the continent’s most urgent challenges as PDP has landed it squarely on the edge of state failure.

    But history teaches us that PDP will not like to die alone. Indeed, its leaders would rather wish that the entire country collapses with it. This is the clear and present danger the dying party presents each and every Nigerian, nay the entire world since the international community, as in other flashpoint areas, may have to pay a steep price for Nigerian state failure, and its consequent humanitarian calamity

    Indeed, a comatose PDP will become lethal, and will do just about anything to rig the elections coming up in Ekiti and Osun states, since the dying party would like to pretend it is alive. This is why Nigerians have to be alive to the antics of not just the federal government, the PDP and its colony of client-parties like Labour, APGA, Accord and SDP, but in particular, the inappropriately named INEC, which recently showed its bloodied hands again in the Anambra governorship election. Even where you could still vouch for Prof Jega’s personal integrity, I have no doubt whatever that he has since been swallowed up by the humongous agency and has thereby lost control of its thousands of mostly temporary staff who could therefore do as they please at elections. This is the more reason why, to forestall the machinations of the PDP, especially in the South West, where it had long been dispatched to political Siberia, we must, with a fine tooth comb, peruse the voters’ register which INEC traditionally helps to sex up, padding it with hundreds of thousands of fictitious names.

    PDP has, since 1999, been the dominant political party in Nigeria. Its failure therefore to emerge outside the cretinism of its respective leaders has had tremendous disadvantages for Nigeria. Since political parties are critical to democratic sustainability, the overall poverty of the PDP, either in its corporate form, or seen from the perspective of its self-seeking leaders, has meant that it has been a great minus for Nigeria. Though it may seem an exaggeration, PDP in my view, has no redeeming feature as everything Nigerians love to admire, adore and celebrate have been completely bastardised.

    I have no doubt that the decampment of about 22 senators from it to the APC; will be the icing on the cake as it will serve as the final nail on the coffin the octopoidal, but effete, PDP.

  • Biological coup for King Lear

    Some fathers do have ‘em indeed. It does appear as if William Shakespeare, the great bard of Stratford on Avon, has decided to spend Christmas in Nigeria. And while we are still on the subject of fathers and their daughters, it is meet to report that there are fathers and there are fathers just as there are daughters and there are daughters. All this tatalosque verbiage can be reduced to a neat mathematical formula of elegant severity: like father like daughter.

    Put in another way, a mamba cannot father a mouse. The genetic prison is the most implacable incarceration camp for humanity. We inherit most of our character traits. Until astute genetic engineering removes unwholesome traits from individuals at source, many will be stuck with the unpalatable manifestations of remote ancestry.

    As Euripides, the great Greek playwright, has noted: call no man lucky until the moment he has taken his luck to the grave. Or as the Yoruba will put it, nothing on earth can make unfair privileges and unearned distinctions survive for long. No matter how long it takes for the Egungun season to end, the children of its chief priest will eventually join other plebeian children in the queue to buy akara.

    There seems to be terminal trouble in the house of old King Lear. Remember the half-crazed Shakespearean king who put his family and entire kingdom in acute jeopardy by his own foolhardiness? Old tricks often boomerang when new kids appear on the block. The current trouble was started by the old king himself. Despite the bullying and blustering, many had long suspected him to be of a politically unsound mind. Drunk with habitual delusion of grandeur, he had made a bold move on the political chessboard to disown and politically castrate his own anointed political son and successor. The gambit worked very well. All hell was let loose. To flee was not an option, but to fight is an equally dangerous proposition since the old king knows where all the bodies are buried and the weaponry too.

    But help came dramatically from an unexpected source. Aided by dangerous proximity, it was at this point that the favourite daughter, obviously bitter and resentful, chose to lob a grenade into the palace. Greater hell has been let loose. The old king was pinned down by massive sniper fire, while the other people search for a final solution. Now, is this pure political coincidence, or some chilling revenge plot that bears all the hallmark of the old devil himself? Like the old past master, and obviously with equally vindictive relish, the younger one seems to have chosen the moment, time and place with the exacting precision of a vengeance-contorted soul. Destiny doesn’t get more genetically determined.

    Out of the dark and sinister plots of private revenge coinciding with public vengeance may yet come the noble seeds of national emancipation. This is one of the brutal paradoxes of human history. It may be too late in the day to save the new king. The Woods of Great Birnam may have already appeared on the barren fringes of Dunsinane. Snooper is not a soothsayer, but peeping into the political horoscope, it seems that this time around, the old king himself may not escape lightly. Whatever its portents for the nation, a classic biological coup appears to be unfolding in the Palace of Pauper Patriots.

  • A season of self-fulfilling prophecies?

    A season of self-fulfilling prophecies?

    For anyone in the presidency or out of it to shout treason because a political party has called for invocation of a provision in the constitution is worrisome

    Robert Merton in his book,Social Theory and Social Structure, defines self-fulfilling prophecy as a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself. Our country has been experiencing in the last few days an avalanche of self-fulfilling prophecies that should worry citizens with sensitivity to anything that is likely to threaten democracy.

    One such negative depiction of a situation with the danger of turning into a reality is the fear expressed this week by the Chairman of INEC that there may be no election in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa in 2015 as a result of the security challenges in the three states. He said to members of the National Assembly that should the emergency still be in place by the time of the 2015 election, which his commission plans for February, his commission will not be able to organize election in the three states.

    Some are likely to see this announcement as a sign of good planning ahead by INEC and an illustration of a good leader anticipating (or even predicting) developments that can help or hinder his programme. In this respect, INEC is trying to ensure that there are no surprises, should this happen. Such announcement is a good warning to the government that does not want to call a sectional election a national to do everything possible to bring the insurgency in the three states to an end before the current emergency regulation expires.Jega’s logic is clear: Should violence continue in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe, it will be foolhardy to call people out to vote or to put electoral workers in harm’s way on account of holding elections to fulfill one part of the electoral act and of the constitution.

    But the implications of not holding election in three of 36 states to choose a president for the 36 states are important enough for legal and constitutional lawyers to start worrying about. Non-lawyers have started asking questions that indicate they are worried about having election in 33 states to choose a president that is to rule 36 states. Citizens have started thinking aloud: What is the implication of choosing a candidate who is unable to win 25% of votes cast in two-thirdsof 36 states? Does this mean that there will be an emergency modification of the electoral act to base two-thirds of 36 states on 33 states? What happens if a few months later INEC feels safe to hold election in the three states and the voting in these states changes the overall result of the election that will have already put a candidate in place as president? Will holding election in the three states after choosing a president on the basis of 33 states not amount to engineering a bandwagon effect to favour the sitting president elected on the basis of 33 states? Will the three states be disenfranchised until 2019 once they are not able to participate in the voting in 2015? Is the partial emergency in states that are still being run by elected officials and that are even preparing for local government elections to hold in 2014 similar to the states being at war and are thus too dangerous for citizens who still go to mosques and churches to be givenmaxium security protection while voting?There are many more questions that have come from regular readers of this column that cannot be included in this piece because of space constraint.

    As simple as these questions are, they are pointing at factors that can bring more political problems to a country and an electoral commission that were not able to organize a credible election in Anambra that is not under any emergency. People who were prevented from voting in Anambra at the right time and parties that felt cheated or rigged out are more likely than not to see serious danger in the proposal that election may not hold in three states in 2015. The good thing about Jega’s discussion with legislators is that it can serve as an indirect call on the federal government to ensure that no section of the country is treated in 2015 as if it is already excised from Nigeria. According to President Jonathan, emergency regulation came into force in the three states because that section had already started feeling and acting as if it was no longer part of Nigeria. Not holding election in the three states is to give the impression that Nigeria can go forward without them. In other words, the challenge for the federal government is to bring the Boko Haram terrorism to an end within the period of the ongoing emergency. Otherwise, we may be running the risk of having a situation in which a negative view of something becomes part of the character of that thing over time, and, in the process, act in a way to suggest that the three states are no longer part of Nigeria.

    Calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it appears to be part of the season’s negative characterizations. Members of the country’s other major party, the APC, are already being accused of treason for calling on members of the National Assembly to commence a process to impeach President Jonathan. Impeachment is in a presidential system similar to calling for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister in a parliamentary system. Both are part of the checking and balancing devices built into democratic system of government to make treasonable acts by any group—military or civilian unnecessary. Impeachment process is to further strengthen the democratic process, by ensuring that those who have reasons to believe that the president or prime minister is not doing the right thing would not have any reason to engage in an illegal action to save the system from such leaders. Those who call for impeachment do not always have to be right; they also do not always get their way. But the right to call for impeachment is unassailable in a proper democracy.

    For example, attempts were made to impeach President Bill Clinton during his presidency but those who called for and initiated the process lost out, because majority of the legislators did not believe that President Clinton had done anything impeachable. However, invoking this principle helped to further reinforce the presidential system as it made those for and against impeachment happy that the system had been allowed to take its course. Those who wanted Clinton impeached had their say while those who believed that Clinton had not committed any impeachable offence had their way during the voting, and Clinton’s rating even soared after that. It was a win-win situation for democracy.

    For anyone in the presidency or out of it to shout treason because a political party has called for invocation of a provision in the constitution is worrisome. It gives the impression that there are people in the country’s post-military democracy that still harbor the imagination of military dictators. Democracy presupposes the existence of ruling and non-ruling or opposition parties. Opposition parties are allowed in all democracies to convince voters that they had made the wrong choice by putting the incumbent in power, when such parties have reasons to so believe. Opposition parties also have the right to invoke any section of the constitution that they believe can be used to improve governance or jolt the ruling party into consciousness. Equating calls for impeachment process with treasonable act is tantamount to calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it. Our democracy is not likely to develop if members of the ruling group do not want other parties in contest for votes and power to do their own job: ensuring that the ruling party does not take citizens for granted in its policies and performance.

  • Is it not too late?

    Is it not too late?

    A letter of appeal to President Jonathan: Before it is too late’. That was the title of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 18-page missive to President Goodluck Jonathan, his adopted political son in whom he was once upon a time well pleased. Things seem so obviously to have fallen apart between the two that the exchange of public brickbats has become characteristic of their relationship.

    You may honour him or hate him. You may venerate him or vilify him. You may seek to canonise or demonise him. Some try to deify him. Others may wish to demystify him. But one thing is certain. You cannot afford to take General Olusegun Mathew Aremu Obasanjo for granted. Anyone conversant with this column will know I am no fan of the Owu turned politician and farmer. But when he is right, intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge it.

    Some people have wondered what gives Obasanjo the temerity and audacity to lecture Jonathan on political morality, corruption or even good governance. They contend that Obasanjo has no moral right to pontificate to anybody given his own sordid record in office as President. Moreover, they argue, was he not the one who virtually imposed an ailing Umaru Yar’Adua and untested Goodluck Jonathan on the country in 2007? Why should he now cry over spilt milk?

    Of course, I can understand these sentiments and they are quite pertinent. However, are there any truths in the grievous allegations made against Jonathan in Obasanjo’s treatise? That for me is the crucial question. I care less about the messenger. What matters is the message. In this case the content of the message is so volatile and inflammable that the presidency cannot afford just to dismiss it casually as if it is of no significance.

    For instance, Obasanjo cites the menace of corruption that has reportedly assumed unprecedented dimensions under President Jonathan’s watch. OBJ stated bluntly that if Jonathan is not ready to “name, shame, prosecute and stoutly fight against corruption, it will be hollow; it will be a laughing matter”. The Owu farmer prayed further “May God grant you the grace for at least one effective correction against corruption, which seems to stink all over you and your government”.

    Specifically, OBJ wanted President Goodluck Jonathan to clear the air on the alleged non-remittance of about $7 billion from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Central Bank of Nigeria as recently detailed in a letter from the CBN to the President. Surprisingly, Obasanjo did not bring up the issue of the Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, who approved the procurement of two bullet proof jeep vehicles for her personal use at an inflated cost of N255 million through the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. With all the facts already in the public arena, thanks to the House of Representatives public probe, the President set up a three member administrative panel to investigate the issue. Weeks after the report was submitted to Jonathan, nothing has been heard of the matter again.

    Perhaps the most damaging allegation in OBJ’s treatise to Jonathan is that 1000 persons have been placed by the incumbent administration on political watch ahead of the 2015 election. If this is true, we can readily see how scarce human and material resources as well as time and money in the crucial security sector, are being dissipated in the wrong direction and for the wrong purposes. And this at a time when the country faces serious security challenges from diverse fronts.

    Nigeria is transiting slowly, imperceptibly but steadily from a pseudo democracy to a full-fledged police state. The number of security agents diverted from their normal duties to safeguard the collective safety of all but are now deployed to protect the lives of a minority of people who made it impossible for the country to have a viable security architecture in the first place is simply mind-boggling.

    Even more dangerously, Obasanjo has alleged that a squad of killers and snipers are being currently trained in preparation for the 2015 election. According to the former President, these killer squads are being trained in the same location where Abacha’s killer gangs were trained. The implication is that the most important and politically influential on the list of 1000 persons, reportedly under political watch, will most likely be the targets of the trained snipers and killer gangs.

    Now, Obasanjo is no saint. Like all great men, he has virtues and vices aplenty. But even his most inveterate critics will tell you that he does not speak frivolously. Obasanjo is a soldier. He still remains venerated in that institution even though he retired decades ago. The same thing goes for General Ibrahim Babangida, General Abdulsaam Abubakar, General T.Y. Danjuma, General Muhamadu Buhari and several others. It is thus not unlikely that these ex-military leaders will continue to receive a stream of intelligence as regards goings on within the security sector.

    It is instructive that Obasanjo’s letter dated 2nd December, 2013, was copied only to General Babangida, General Abdulslam Abubakar, General T.Y. Danjuma and Dr Alex Ekwueme. However, President Jonathan’s unrestrained speech at the memorial service in honour of Nelson Mandela at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock, must have prompted the public release of the letter. On that occasion, Jonathan had berated those he called boastful leaders who seek to intimidate others and behave as if Nigeria is their bedroom.

    The necessity to write this letter to the President and even go ahead to make it public, shows that there is insufficient communication between the incumbent in the country’s highest political office and his predecessors. Yes, Obasanjo has his faults aplenty – one of which is foisting incompetent and unprepared leadership at his departure in 2007. Again, he introduced this whole idea of the President as being leader of the party, an initiative which greatly subordinated the party to the whims and caprices of the president – a system which he decries today.

    But in going public with the alleged misdemeanours of the Jonathan administration, Obasanjo is intelligent enough to know that he would be under intense criticism for supporting a candidate with no outstanding record of sterling performance in public office. His public letter thus suggests to me to be some sort of atonement – a subtle admission that he made a mistake in helping to prop up the career of Jonathan and that he is willing to join other forces to win power and bring about a fundamental change in the country come 2015.

    But then, only the simpleton would eat with OBJ without an extra- long set of cutlery. For he could dine with you tonight and tomorrow be quite at home joining in the electoral victory of your supposedly common opponent.

    Obasanjo says he wrote to Jonathan before it is too late. But is it not too late already? The die is cast. Whatever his current posturing, Jonathan will run. Without a credible record of performance, he will have to rely on primordial sentiments as well as the collusion of INEC and security officials to win. If the electoral outcomes announced by INEC do not reflect the will of the majority, we may well begin to sing the NUNC DIMITIS of Democracy in Nigeria.

  • Which Super Eagles?

    Which Super Eagles?

    Every Nigerian is a football expert. It doesn’t matter if he or she has not kicked the ball before. He is quick to regale you with his exploits while playing the game with bare feet. If you have played it, then you will know that it is a different ball-game kicking the ball barefoot and playing it with boots on. It is even a tougher task running with it, if you are wearing the boots for the first time.

    But don’t blame the pundit; that is the universal nature of the game. The people are passionate about it. For us, it is next to our religion. It unites us in our diversity. Everything stops when Nigeria has a game. It gets worse the next day, if the Nigerian team wins. The analysis is compelling. Everyone is involved in the discussion. When the team is defeated, it is a different ball game. Let me save you the ordeal of going through reactions to defeats.

    The loser is an orphan. This is my message to Super Eagles’ chief coach Stephen Keshi as he ponders over the calibre of players to take to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. We must parade our best, in terms of performance, not loyalty. Keshi must stoop to conquer, if he wants to be the toast of the World Cup in Brazil. He must open his heart to tolerate his players’ idiosyncrasies. He must learn to use the finer qualities of his players to achieve success. He will be alone in Brazil, if (God forbid) the Eagles don’t dazzle the world. He will be shocked to read comments of some of his friends. But that is the Nigerian fan for you (a fair-weather friend).

    For Keshi, these are his most difficult times. I must remind him to guard against any form of fixation in his selection for the World Cup. Those who were in South Africa have been duly rewarded with cash, houses and national honours. Going to Brazil should be done on a clean slate. Merit, not sentiments, should form the basis of picking the players. The team is no cult. It also shouldn’t be a rehabilitation centre or a platform to expose weaklings for mercantile purposes.

    Shutting out those who didn’t participate in the qualifiers is bunkum. Players’ match forms are not static. If anyone isn’t fit enough to give his best in Brazil, he should be dropped, even if he scored all the goals that earned us the ticket. We must not find ourselves in the 1998 setting in which holidaying players were invited to join the Eagles squad for being stars in the 1994 edition. It was our worst outing. Most of the players were either recuperating from injuries or were not fit. They shamelessly refused to decline the invitation, perhaps because participating in the World Cup is any player’s dream.

    The transition of the Eagles squad that clinched the Africa Cup of Nations to the team that secured the 2014 World Cup ticket smacked of malice, which was couched in the garment of discipline. Yet, concerted efforts by the technical crew to render some of the dropped stars otiose have fallen flat on their faces. Some of the positions where these dropped stars excelled in the past are the team’s albatross. They must exploit the window that the World Cup preparations offer to re-invite these players to fight for shirts.

    Club form should be the first parameter for picking those who will play in Brazil. This point presupposes that such players are talented, committed and disciplined. Otherwise, they won’t be in Europe, Asia or even the Americas, pursuing professional careers. The exploits of foreign based players have been this country’s biggest public relations tool to change people’s perception of Nigeria.

    Indeed, our players have been worthy ambassadors of our country. They have conducted themselves remarkably, culminating in the splendid performance with global applause. Rather than tag those players as undisciplined, it would help the coaches if they could hear their grievances and attempt to resolve them for the good of the team.

    Consider Victor Anichebe’s refusal to play for Nigeria again after being dumped to take care of an injury sustained while playing for the country. One was miffed reading the clarion call by Delta State’s executive chairman of the Sports Commission, Pinnick Amaju, admonishing Keshi not to invite Anichebe to the World Cup camp. Perhaps, one needs to ask Amaju if it is right to jettison a player who sustained injury playing for Nigeria. Again, Amaju should tell us if he would act differently, if he was Anichebe? We must learn to treat our players as humans, whose welfare should interest us as much as we monitor their weekly performances before inviting them to play for us.

    Indeed, those who campaigned against Shola Ameobi’s invitation after Newcastle FC of England’s manager stopped from playing for Nigeria at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations on grounds of contractual agreement with the Barclays English Premier League side have eaten their word, with Ameobi’s sterling show against the Italians last month.

    One is sure that Kelvin Boateng would have played for Nigeria, having resigned officially and shunned us when we needed him to stay with the team. Not so for the Ghanaians. They went to Boateng to resolve what his grievances in his European club. Boating played in Black Stars’ second leg game against Egypt and scored the only goal in their 2-1 loss. This is in spite of the fact that Ghana won the first leg game resoundingly 6-1 in Accra. This is what we need now. Again, the story of how the Ghanaians went back to convince Michael Essien and Sully Muntari to return to the Black Stars explains why they are in the train to Brazil. The act of forgiveness is divine. Our coaches must take a cue from the Ghanaian examples.

    The Eagles coach should also return to those players he wanted to convince to play for Nigeria, if their inclusion will strengthen the squad. I’m sure he won’t wait for Bayern Munich’s Nigeria-born left wing back David Alaba to call him to say that he wants to play for Nigeria, if he was still available. Alaba is easily the best left wing back in the world. It is also being said that he is versatile. He can play in any position from the defence to the midfield. We are in dire need of such utility players at the World Cup. Allowing the players to show interest in playing for us before going to them is far-fetched. Most of these players have never been here. Their resentment rests more on what they read and hear about us in the media. There are also the weather, the food and how they would relate to their mates. The Eagles coach, given his pedigree in the game, should sit with them to change this mindset. His players can do this. After all, Emenike reminds us that Joseph Yobo convinced him to play for Nigeria. Anichebe played for Nigeria too because of Yobo’s persuasion while both of them played for Everton.

    Before our fifth sojourn to the World Cup, bookies reckon that we will be the best of the five African qualifiers. But we flop; largely because of the divided house we represent during the competition. The crack in the Eagles starts from the selection of players with those dropped telling tales of the unexpected. Interference in the team’s selection has been the Eagles’ albatross, although we only get to hear of such devious acts after the competition. The coaches must state their problems before the World Cup and not after. No sour grapes. But with a technical crew comprising ex-internationals, can we field an Eagles side devoid of past mistakes? I doubt it, given all that transpired after Nigeria regained the African crown on Februarys 10, 2103 in South Africa. Accusations were thrown across all the segments of the team to such an extent that there was celebration within the rank and file, when Nigeria grabbed a 95th minute equaliser against Kenyan in Calabar.

    Need I recount the coach versus NFF brouhaha over unpaid salaries? Or should one recall the cross of swords between top players and the coach? Let’s not even talk about the resignation announced in a South Africa radio station to the consternation of the sports minister.

    What we have now is an Eagles side lacking in some key positions. It is expected, given the rebuilding. With only one FIFA-free window available to all participating teams, one cannot fathom how Eagles coaches will fill the team’s weak link. It is their job, yet they must readmit some of the sidelined stars, if they can help strengthen the team. Forgiving erring but fit players should, however, not foreclose the search for younger players so that we don’t do a fresh rebuilding after the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

    Having enforced discipline in the team, the coaches should embrace reconciliation, if the out-of-favour players show remorse, especially those who have openly apologised. That Nigeria qualified for the 2014 World Cup tourney without them underscores the fact that no one is indispensible.

    The biggest lesson from the Eagles’ outing at the Confederations Cup in Brazil was the lack of quality players on the bench. Victor Moses, Nnamdi Oduamadi, Oguenyi Onazi, Godfrey Omeruo, Emmanuel Emenike et al were injured. The first answer the list for the 2014 World Cup Eagles’squad should provide finding capable replacements for Moses, Oduamadi, Onazi, Omeruo and Emenike as well as such sure bets as Vincent Enyeama, John Mikel Obi, Godfrey Obaobona, Elderson Echiejile and Ahmed Musa.

    This article is not trying to do the coach’s job. But if our parameters for picking good national teams are akin to what operates in other climes, it goes without saying that some of the issues raised will guide the coach to pick his squad.

    The Eagles can prove the bookmakers wrong in Brazil. But it should all start with fairness in team selection. Sometimes, one wonders what the Eagles ask God for when the team’s selection is flawed by unethical practices. No wonder they earned the sobriquet “Super Chicken.”

  • Money ruins everything (2)

    Money ruins many men. It impairs the moral fibre thus making the average human inhumane but that is because man often fails money. The Nigerian man in particular, fails money and so doing loses his right to lord over it and own it.

    Money, like a wild mongrel needs to be tamed. It requires firmness, chariness, deliberate conservatism and modesty of a full man to tame it, own it and control it. But that is hardly the case; many a man is owned by his money. The Nigerian man, woman and society in particular, are owned by money; that is why contemporary Nigeria worships money.

    Like fire, money becomes a bad master due to our incapacities at taming its flare and controlling it; consequently it consumes us. Money corrupts the brightest amongst us and renders the most promising man and woman worthless; it consumes all who would do anything and everything to acquire it, whatever the consequence.

    Hence the domestication of yesterday’s ‘heroes’ and corruption of the shrewd – men and women by whose citizenship and wisdom we aspired to freedom and progress have being tamed, house-trained, like hunt dogs and pastoral cattle. Eventually, we suffer the transmutation of such established, self-acclaimed defenders of the people’s rights into despicable lapdogs, attack dogs and junkyard dogs of the ruling class.

    Little wonder Sunday of Isabo, Abeokuta, Ogun State, ditched his noble job as foremost columnist and chairman of a national newspaper’s editorial board to become the attack dog and junkyard dog for President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Many of his readers and fans bemoan his ‘betrayal’ but from Sunday’s perspective, it is unarguably selfish of anyone to expect him to cling to the drudgery and emptiness of his former job and scorn a-chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of Nigeria’s high-society, be it as errand boy or disposable ‘bingo.’

    Who would have thought that the unrepentant critic of inept and oppressive ruling class would dump his pen and cape of honour to become an attack dog for the ruling class that erstwhile incited his vitriol? Today, Sunday is speaking from every side of his mouth; he currently patrols Aso Rock corridors as the greyhound would the premises of its master. It must be lucrative being an errand dog.

    In Sunday’s descent subsists the irony of a contrived metaphor; the former columnist’s desertion of his sanctimonious high ground and renunciation of his self-touted activism and crusade for justice, government accountability and morality aptly illustrates contemporary Nigeria’s self-love and enslavement to mammon.

    An inordinate lust for money drives this generation to self-destruct. Having perverted the natural order that places man above money, the animate cowers to the inanimate; Nigeria submits to mammon, and science, technology, power, property and other bastions of materialism own and controls us. The consequences are rampant and discernible for all to see.

    Our lust for money has put paid to that staunch historic adherence to a cultural value system that supposedly distinguishes the Nigerian in the larger comity of nations and universal citizenship. Gone are our touted values; incontestable code of personal and societal ethics that supposedly humanizes the average Nigerian and moulds him into a fuller and better breed of mankind than any other in Africa and across continental divides.

    The current generation, the youth especially, manifests a dissonance with future bliss and progressive leadership anticipated of it. This generation is not only the most knavish but also the most effeminate of all generations; I will not bother over the shortcomings and atrocities we inherited from preceding generations lest I tow the oft beaten path and glamourize our claims to victimhood and base sentimentality. If the Nigeria we inherited is truly shorn of values and promises of a brighter tomorrow, must we aggravate the circumstances that foist upon us such hopelessness?

    One of the most curious kinks of this generation is its sustenance and obeisance to the cult of the ruling class. Take the incumbent administration of President Jonathan for instance; men and women that erstwhile professed to champion the people’s rights have united to defend Jonathan’s honour and justify defiantly, the unceasing ineptitude and mindlessness of his administration.

    They conveniently forget that the incumbent administration’s insensitivity, clumsiness and gluttony have cost Nigeria thousands of lives till date. Evidences of the government’s incompetence and tactlessness abound in its appointment of men and women unfit to run a roast corn kiosk to man the nation’s finance, aviation, health, defense, foreign affairs, education, works and housing ministries to mention a few. Inefficiency of such characters fosters corruption, violence and deaths across the country.

    This anomaly incites harsh criticisms and disillusionment among the citizenry, however, as had always been the case, the leading critics take no part in the pursuit and actualization of majority will beyond lip service; nonetheless they proceed with the most vulgar extravagances courting power and projecting it, irrespective of the nature of men and women that wield it.

    It is incontestable that many of such men, including Mr. President’s media attack dogs, attract to themselves much that lies on the threshold of psychosis and common crime. This minority parading themselves as Mr. President’s apologists riotously cackle like a coven of unbalanced enthusiasts, seeing every illicit and sentimental act of bestiality as cause for political theatrics and hysterical spinning.

    Renowned turncoats like Sunday of Isabo for instance, are very useful to the ruling class; wobbly in intellect and infinitely handicapped by greed, they repeatedly parade themselves as pirates amenable to crimes and accessible to venal enterprise. These purchasable characters eventually shed their pretensions to heroism and honour to unite with the ruling class in its savage war against the citizenry.

    We have fought many wars in Nigeria; wars for Biafra and Niger Delta, the ongoing war for and against the soul of the Northeast currently asphyxiating in the grip of terrorist sect, Boko Haram; these wars are ultimately triggered by our failures with money and its innumerable material vestiges. Yet these wars are never enough; every day, we embroil in fresh wars for self-actualization but the wars of the underdog, Nigeria’s impoverished lot, has a greater significance than all of the others.

    This daily battle for the soul and survival of the struggling working class and barely existent middle class is merely an episode of the universal war that constitutes the true nature of humanity and history of the world—the war of good against evil, ruling class against working class, the haves against the have-nots.

    These wars however, are lost on all fronts even before the masses march on to the battle field every day. This is a consequence of the knavery of men entrusted to serve as our moral sentinels, custodians of culture, value and hope for a brighter tomorrow. These men, contrary to their touted crusades in the interest of the citizenry, unconscionably mutate into more savage destroyers of hope and forms of life than the ruling class they were known to despise. But rather than call them out for the savages and murderers of hope that they have become, the Nigerian masses continually rationalize their betrayal arguing that they were only being smart. Hence perfidy and greed become noble enterprise, in the Nigeria of our dreams.

     

    • To be continued…

  • ‘The beginning of the end’

    ‘The beginning of the end’

    Here is the period of life against which we had been warned through the words of Ubayyi Ibn Ka‘b and those of Abdullah Ibn Mas‘ud. Here is the predicted era in which truth is to be totally rejected while falsehood and rebellion are to be loftily upheld. Should this period linger further without any change, the world might zoom into a stage where the bereaved would rather smile than cry over the demise of a deceased relation and parents would rather cry than rejoice over the birth of a newly born baby”. By an Arab poet

    In retrospect

    The title of today’s article was culled from the late Dr. Tai Solarin’s style of writing. In his heydays as a versatile newspaper columnist, Tai Solarin, a renowned educationist and atheist, had a way of casting the titles of his articles to suit his ideas and thoughts. One of such titles was the one adopted here today. It was the title of an article he wrote in 1974 as a reaction to General Yakubu Gowon’s U-turn on his earlier promise of democratising Nigeria in 1976. (In that year General Gowon suddenly told Nigerians in a nation-wide television broadcast that his promise of returning power to civilians in 1976 was unrealistic after all. He did not mention a new date. That audacious military assault on the populace prompted Tai Solarin to write his famous article entitled ‘The Beginning of the End’.

    And, incidentally, that article was the premonition that culminated in a military coup which swept General Gowon out of power in July 1975 after nine years in office as a military Head of State. The same Tai Solarin wrote another article in 1975 entitled ‘I will bomb Lagos’ which led to the change of Nigeria’s capital city from Lagos to Abuja. In the latter article he did not only condemn Lagos as the most unbefitting capital city to any civilised human being in the world which he said he would have bombed with an intention to rebuild it if he was the Head of State, he also gave a vivid physical, geographical and environmental description of a place called Abuja and recommended it as the country’s new capital. Through that famous article, Solarin could be called the founder of Nigeria’s new capital city and that was why he was appointed as a member of the Aguda panel that worked out the modalities for the establishment of a new federal capital that was Abuja.

    Season of letters

    Today’s article was to be entitled ‘Yuletide Season of Letters’ because of the barrage of tendentious and damning letters flying across the wishes and interests of certain political, economic and religious demagogues who seem to be married to ephemeral politics or courting transient power. First among those letters was from the Governor of the Central Bank, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who, for a patriotic reason wrote a probing letter to the Presidency on September 25, 2013 reporting the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to remit 19 months proceeds of oil sales to the Central Bank as statutorily required by the constitution.

    According to him, the total quantity of Nigerian oil sold between January 2012 and July 2013 was 594.02 million barrels and the unremitted amount accruing from the sale of that figure was $49.8 billion amounting to N8 trillion. He said the total amount of money remitted so far within the mentioned period constituted only 24% of what ought to be remitted while 76% could not be traced by the CBN. Based partly on Sanusi’s revelation and partly on his own observation, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, accused President Goodluck Jonathan of reluctance or unwillingness to fight corruption. Many other well-meaning Nigerians have spoken in like manner.

    Those who dogmatically believe albeit ignorantly that religion and politics are incompatible and should not be lumped together can now see why Islam is rather a total way of life than a mere dogmatic religion. In Islam, the theory of ‘giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s’ holds no water because both Caesar and whatever he portends to own belong to God alone who never slumbers nor dies. Thus, in a situation where public funds are brazenly stolen with impunity in public glare, Muslims cannot and should not keep silent. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once counseled Muslims about this kind of situation through Hadith. He said: “Whoever sees something obnoxious among you should change it (physically) with his hands. If he is incapable, let him change it with his tongue (by condemning it). And if he is still incapable, he should then endeavour to change it with his mind (by praying for its stoppage)”. He however added that “the last option signifies the weakest faith”.

    In a situation like the one currently being witnessed in Nigeria, should religious people, especially the Muslims, keep silent and watch their future being eroded by those who do not care about other people’s lives? It is rather a sin for Muslims to keep silence in the presence of tyranny and oppression. Speaking out is in tandem with the above quoted Hadith. And whoever keeps silent is dead person waiting to be interred.

    The second letter

    The second letter was written to President Goodluck Jonathan by Ex- President, Olusegun Obasanjo, on December 2, 2013. It was a kind of epistle loaded with undisguised missiles of allegations that came frontally to the nation through the media. The main gist of the letter contained allegations of corruption, bad governance and insecurity. It was heavily pregnant with political bile the summary of which can be called tit for tat. The contents of the letter are a bundle of message that conspicuously outweighs the messenger. And reading carefully between its lines, the letter can be compared to a pot trying to paint a kettle black. In a nutshell, the addresser and the addressee can be described as two sides of an un-spendable coin.

    Though the message therein has generated a loud brouhaha across the land, it remains a mere rhetoric with which Nigerians are quite familiar. If anything sounds strange in that letter, it is the allegation of a killer squad allegedly being kept by the Presidency against the list of about 1000 political opponents and other perceived enemies of the government. We hope it is not true for such will only remind us of Germany in the time of Adolf Hitler.

    The only seeming benefit of the letter is the washing of the supposed leaders’ linens in the open which the populace watched with unbridled embarrassment. It gives the impression that the only expected legacy from this crop of leadership is nothing more than despair in spite of the rare opportunities they have in preserving the tranquility of the country. What lesson can the youths learn from such a political rancor engendered by calamitous grid based on selfishness?

    For politicians, political drama can never be strange. But the peculiarity in this case is the tacit mobilisation of the suffering masses as archers deployed to forage on foot while the gladiators remain on horses. Like an accursed nation, Nigeria has the misfortune of engaging misfits in the name of leaders to pilot their affairs, especially in a very cloudy environment. Or how can one classify a situation where two supposed national leaders decide to strip naked for competitive dance in a market place and expect sellers and buyers in that market to clap for the winner. Isn’t that shameful? If these leaders are not ashamed, we are.

    Like in the past, Nigerians have once again found themselves in a hollow ship wandering through an implacable Atlantic Ocean. Its destination remains unknown. Its pilots have lost the compass. An urgent need for a Noah to sail this drifting ship to the Cape of Good Hope should now be a matter of priority if Nigeria will continue to be called and known as Nigeria.

     

    The third letter

    While Nigerians were kept busy tossing around the ball of economic and political trouble surreptitiously kicked into their court by the combatant leaders, as they debate the two letters mentioned above with jabs of verbal pundits, a third letter emerged from a rare corner. It was written by a cluster of Bishops to the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. The letter was written in protest against what the writers perceived as spiritual trespass.

    According to media reports, “it would be recalled that the Bishops and Clerics Forum of Nigeria (BAFCON) from the Niger Delta, under the aegis of Global Peace Relief Initiative, led by its President, Prophet Jones Ode Erue, visited the former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and the Adamawa State Governor, Muritala Nyako seeking to broker a peace deal between the G7 governors and the presidency”. That was in September 2013.

    That visit did not seem to go down well with the President of CAN who reacted by slamming suspension against them in the name of CAN. The CAN President had thought that the concerned Bishops’ action was partisan, especially when the CAN Chairman of the South-South took exception to the mediation visit without consultation. In his immediate reaction to that visit, the regional Chairman reportedly said: “There is nothing wrong with clergymen initiating or brokering peace process between two factions but for some bishops to do so in the name of a body that I head without consulting other executives gives a wrong signal and suggests a dangerous trend in the body of Christ.” Thus, about 11 Bishops were consequently suspended. This provoked the protest letter that has now constituted ripples in the brook of CAN.

    All these are confirming that things are not well with Nigeria. One can understand the turbulent economic and political situations in the country. The expectation is that when those two spheres go turbulent it is only the religious sphere that can pacify them through spirituality. But if the religious sphere too goes turbulent where will tranquility come from?

    The Message hereby appeals to CAN to please close ranks and show the usual example to the other spheres that the hope of Nigerians can once again be kindled. Religion is the last bastion of peace in Nigeria. It cannot afford to go berserk, especially at this crucial time when Nigeria needs it most. God save Nigeria that this may not be ‘The Beginning of the End’ for our dear country.

     

  • Reflections on life

    Life is beautiful. It could also be ugly. Life is exciting. It could also be boring. Life is meaningful. It could also be meaningless. And if nothing else does, this all goes to show that while life is simple, it could also be complicated. In the context of these possible modes of life, I am interested in raising the question “What kind of life?” However, as interesting as these possibilities are, they are not necessarily my focus in what follows.

    I am interested in the question “what kind of life?” for what it means for personal as well as communal existence. Therefore to the extent that the aforementioned possibilities are relevant to my purpose, it must be because they provide some clue to the question of the kind of life that is well suited to personal and communal existence. A good starting point, of course, is a deconstruction of the question in terms of its significance. Why is it a good question to raise and address?

    What kind of life we live as an individual makes us the kind of person we are. It is an identity marker. And while we don’t usually give a serious thought to the question except in the context of our religious observances, and that, only superficially, we practically provide various answers with our daily activities, intentional or otherwise. Those activities –reasonable or unreasonable, egoistic or altruistic, mean-spirited or compassionate, greedy or moderate, hustling or dignified, shameless or respectable—define the character of a person. But there is more. They also define our community: the preponderance of a character-type makes a community of people what it is.

    I should point out that my primary interest here is not politics, though I concede that there is a sense in which everything revolves around the institution of politics as the architecture of communal life. But politics derives its texture from the fabric of communal life which in turn is woven with the thread of individual lives. At best, it is a chicken and egg relationship. The political community in which we live plays a great role in the kind of individuals we are. And since individuals make up the political community, the character of the former defines the nature of the latter. And because communities are cognizant of this connection, they pay a great deal of attention to the upbringing and character development of their members. It is the stuff of civic education, whether in its conservative platonic or liberal Lockean modes.

    In our clime, we are the children of our forebears and we have them to thank for who we are and what we have become. But you may ask: who are we and what have we become? It is hard to engage in a holistic national self-glorification under the circumstance of our depressed socio-political life. But again, this is not my focus today. However, it is my hope that every mother’s son and every father’s daughter has something cheerful about a parentage that God used to bring them to life and make the necessary sacrifice for their upbringing and character development. I know I do; and I am eternally grateful.

    Despite Hobbes, we know that individuals are not atoms in the void; they access this terrestrial ball through preexisting family units. And while parents are only instruments of God’s plan, they are an important causative agent of a meaningful life.

    Let us assume that a life is meaningful when it is successful. We must then go further and define what a successful life is; and this is subject to different interpretations derived from our various worldviews and outlooks. And since our worldviews and outlooks are culture-dependent, the idea of a meaningful life is also culture-dependent, where culture is broadly defined.

    The traditional Yoruba worldview defines a meaningful life, that is, a successful life, as the life of an Omoluabi, literally, an offspring of the chief of character, the logic of which is that, all things being equal, the offspring will take after the parent. Character, then, is the defining mark of a meaningful life. Not beauty; not wealth; not power; not education; not honor; just simply character.

    This approach to life is fascinating to me, not just for what it rules in, but also for what it rules out. Typically, the Yoruba have no respect for power or honour that is not accompanied by good character. But more importantly, religiosity or spirituality without character is also an anathema. Indeed, to underscore this point and the secular import of the Yoruba worldview, the most telling aspect of the story of Iwa is the moral deficiency of Orunmila, the god of wisdom. Orunmila had married Iwa who decided to leave because she was being maltreated by her husband. But Iwa’s departure had an adverse effect on Orunmila’s fortune and he decided to search for her. The lesson here is that, for the Yoruba, Iwa (character) is so important that even the gods have to be judged by how much they measure up to her standard. In their perspective, all there is to religion is character: iwa lesin.

    The community relies on every family with the responsibility for the character education and development of their offspring and traditional families take this responsibility seriously. For, how children behave and relate to others outside of the family circle is understood to be a good evidence of the success or otherwise of their upbringing. Families laboriously and diligently commit to raising their members as responsible members of the larger community. And this is all that can be expected of any family. In the best of circumstances, where the traditional setting provides sufficient buffer, the in-built standard of iwa is a challenge for anyone to meet. In contemporary setting, however, a variety of other negative influences compete for the heart of soul of an average human being. This is where society comes in.

    Just as there are no atomised individuals, so there are no solitary families. When families combine their forces for security and welfare purposes, the society they so form assumes the collective responsibility of educating and socialising its members into its values and ideals, which cannot be at variance with those of its family units. And to do this effectively, society makes rules and regulations which it backs up with the threat of punishment in case of violation. When society fails its members in the discharge of this responsibility, and the family unit has been rendered impotent, there is character deficiency, leading to moral anarchy and brutish modes of life.

    If there are still rational individuals and family units, they would be bothered by the reversal of their moral fortune. They would raise questions about the kind of life they have been transformed into from their various family units. They would know that it is dangerous for their well-being to continue that kind of existence, and they would question the kind of social and political formations that led them there in the first place. In short, they would want to revisit the terms of their social contract. It’s Locke in reverse! As the Psalmist prays, may those who are wise think about these things.

    A self-reflection

    Fifty-six years ago, a special song was brought to my youthful consciousness. It was chosen for my classmates and me as our sixth grade graduation song but it has since become my own family anthem. Here is its second stanza:

    All the way my saviour leads me//Cheers each winding path I tread//Gives me grace for every trial//Feeds me with the living bread//Though my weary steps may falter//And my soul athirst may be/ /Gushing from the Rock before me//Lo! A spring of joy I see// Gushing from the Rock before me/ /Lo! A spring of joy I see.

    Happy Holidays!

  • Mandela: The man of destiny

    Mandela: The man of destiny

    Nelson Mandela, the great freedom fighter and first black president of South Africa, was buried last Sunday at Qunu, his remote birth place, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. His death on December 5, after a long illness, evoked an almost unprecedented global outpouring of grief and sadness. Virtually all the world’s leaders, including leaders of countries that had once denounced him as a dangerous Communist and terrorist, mourned him as a global icon, and paid him homage as one of the most outstanding political figures of the 20th century. Through his exemplary life and epic struggle for freedom he touched so many lives, cutting across race, colour, creed, and nationality. Millions of people, rich and poor, all over the world mourned him and felt a profound sense of personal loss at his demise. Not since the assassination of US President John Kennedy in November, 1963, in Dallas, USA, has there been such an outpouring of grief and sadness at the death of a political leader.

    Nelson Mandela was a man whose entire life was shaped by destiny. In so many ways, he was a man of destiny. Born in a remote part of South Africa, his father was a minor tribal chief. If he had not ventured out of Qunu he would have ended his life unknown as a minor tribal chief. No one could have predicted that he would in future emerge as the leader of the epic and bloody struggle of the South African blacks against apartheid South Africa and eventually emerge as South Africa’s first black president. But throughout out his difficult life and harrowing personal experiences under apartheid South Africa, destiny beckoned him towards greatness. As he wrote in his memoirs, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, not satisfied with the prospect of being a minor court official in Qunu, he fled with his cousin to Johannesburg, the prosperous South African gold city, and the country’s commercial capital, and worked in the mines there. It was a back breaking, poorly paid, and humiliating job, with black workers huddled together in shacks and horrifying conditions. The white mining officials exercised their authority over black workers with unspeakable brutality.

    When it was discovered that he had fled from home to seek employment in the city and was wanted back at home, he was fired. But instead of returning home, he chose to remain in Johannesburg where he suffered terribly. It was in that city that he encountered the horrors and personal racial humiliation suffered by all non-whites in apartheid South Africa. To borrow the famous words of William Gladstone, a 19th century liberal British prime minister, the apartheid racial system was a ‘negation of God erected into a system of government’. Next to Nazi Germany, it was the most vicious and evil system of government ever devised by humanity. The blacks were treated by the Boers in their own country worse than dogs. They had absolutely no political or economic rights. They were segregated and made to carry passes in their own country. Blacks who had university education were denied jobs in the government.

    In Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela went back to school and eventually studied law part time, after which he worked for a while as a clerk in a white law firm. He lived in a one room apartment in Soweto, the fabled shanty town for the blacks. His wages were so low he could barely support himself financially. Even though he was qualified to be an attorney, he and other black lawyers were denied that opportunity by the apartheid system. In the law firm, he continued to encounter the brutal nature of apartheid. The white office assistant employed in the law firm would not serve him tea at lunch break because he was black. Only his white colleagues could be served.

    It was the personal humiliation he suffered in Johannesburg that led him to join the African National Congress (ANC), then agitating for an end to racism in South Africa. He started a law firm with Oliver Tambo, his lifelong comrade in the long struggle against the apartheid system. He married early in 1946, but his first wife, Evelyn, who was the cousin of Walter Sisulu, a veteran of the struggle, left him because she could not share his unyielding commitment to the struggle. She was an adherent of the Jehovah Witness, a religious movement that forbade the participation of its members in politics. She could no longer stand his complete dedication to the struggle which left her lonely with four young children to bring up on her own. She did not understand the import of the great struggle and the long time spent away from home by her husband in pursuit of his political objective.

    The breakup of the marriage had a devastating effect on Nelson Mandela. By his own account, he returned home one day to an empty house, and found that his wife had packed out, taking the four children of the marriage with her. Even the curtains in the house had been removed by his wife. She had asked him to choose between his family and the anti-apartheid struggle. Though painful, as he admitted in his memoires, he chose the latter and continued with the struggle. Most men would have chosen their family. A few years later, he met and married, Winnie, who, unlike Evelyn, shared his commitment to the struggle. But after five years of marriage he was sent to life imprisonment for treason after the famous Rivonia trial in which he said he was prepared to die for his freedom. He could have been given the death sentence, but was spared by the strong international reaction to the 1963 Sharpeville massacre of unarmed and fleeing 67 blacks, shot in the back by the South African police for carrying out a peaceful demonstration. It was while he was in prison that he became the acknowledged leader of the black struggle in racist South Africa. He refused to compromise the struggle despite blandishments of possible reprieve by the racist regime if he abandoned the struggle. When his first son by Evelyn died, he was in prison and was not allowed to bury him.

    After 27 years in prison he was finally released by the apartheid regime. So much had changed in South Africa during his incarceration. The struggle for freedom had become bloodier and international support for the black struggle for freedom had increased. Economic sanctions against the regime had begun to bite. Fearing a total collapse of the South African economy, the white business community in South Africa, led by Oppenheimer, openly called for negotiations with the ANC. This paved the way for Mandela’s subsequent release and a review of the racist South African Constitution. In the ensuing elections, the ANC won and Nelson Mandela emerged as the first black president of South Africa. He served only one term as president. His job was done and he retired into private life, pleading that his successors should not call him. Jointly with F.W. de Klerk, his white predecessor in office, he received the Nobel Peace award. As president, he reconciled all the races of South Africa and laid the foundation for a rainbow country. He unified a once bitterly divided nation. He was the only leader who could have kept the country together and end racial bitterness and violence in the country. He made enormous personal sacrifice for the nation. He gave everything up for his country’s freedom, including his marriage to his second wife, Winnie, and his children and grandchildren. He never had a normal family life. Soon after his release from prison, he separated from Winnie. The long period of his incarceration had, regrettably, destroyed the marriage irreparably. As he said when announcing his separation from Winnie, it was the destiny and lot of freedom fighters not to enjoy a normal family life.

    Africa has produced other outstanding political leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Abdul Nasser of Egypt, and Nwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. But they all pale in political and global significance to Nelson Mandela, a truly global phenomenon, who, defying all odds fought courageously for his country’s freedom. As President Obama observed rightly, we may never see the likes of him again. The values for which he fought so bravely in South Africa are eternal and enduring. The anomalous situation in South Africa produced this great man of destiny, a truly global icon, now laid to rest in his home town, Qunu.