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  • So long a letter

    So long a letter

    The Senegalese, Mariama Ba (1929-1981), wrote So Long A Letter, a semi-autobiographical novella, that chronicled the plight of the African woman, under the combined pressure of African and Islamic cultures.

    The male chauvinists that dominate both worlds would scoff at the late Madame Ba’s “ranting” against the marital status quo, so violently skewed against the woman in both cultures. But her 1980 classic has provided gender rights activists, determined to right these age-old wrongs, an evocative literary tool.

    On December 12, former President Olusegun Obasanjo made public his own long letter, not for any overriding public good, but a litany of woes against his estranged protégé, President Goodluck Jonathan. Obasanjo played his usual grandstand as some self-appointed overseer of Nigeria; and postured without end as the all-consuming patriot.

    Yet, it was nothing but another unabashed glorification of the Obasanjo self — that ever intrusive persona that, on the balance of fair evidence, can’t even pass the muster of the model citizen.

    Like most of Obasanjo’s hyper-reported public interventions, it was another grand show of a show-actor craving a stage and cheap applause — cynical applause at the expense of some political foe. The former military head of state (1976-1979), two-term elected president (1999-2007) and fundament of the Nigerian problem is crying wolf!

    Yes, there is indeed some “wolf”. But Obasanjo himself was its author and finisher: Goodluck Jonathan, after all, was Obasanjo’s political creation. But the creator would rather Jonathan was some tabula rasa — on which he could write and erase at will — which the protégé has resisted.

    Godson cannot, therefore, hear the godfather. Things have fallen apart, so mere anarchy, to paraphrase the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, is loosed upon their once cosy world! But how is that a problem of Nigeria and Nigerians as Obasanjo now trumpets?

    Indeed, Yeats in his poem, “The Second Coming”, somewhat echoes the loud but empty Obasanjo interventions: “The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity!”

    That brings the discourse to Obasanjo’s “permission” to share the Jonathan letter with the quad of Generals Theophilus Danjuma, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar and 2nd Republic Vice President, Alex Ekwueme — to earn some high profile sympathy? Ah!

    But which of these, aside from Abubakar, has not tasted Obasanjo’s rather crude tongue, in his endless playing to the gallery?

    Is it Danjuma who, not long ago in a fit of media anger, dismissed Obasanjo as “Aremu of Ota”?

    Or Babangida, who earlier as self-proclaimed “military president”, endured the Jonathan treatment, the same grand hypocrisy the grim Sani Abacha could not stand and, before the infernal theatrics started, despatched the grand dramatist to gaol on phantom coup charges?

    Or is it Ekwueme that Obasanjo muscled into silence while, as president, he started destroying the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the logical conclusion of which he now, ironically, accuses and ridicules the luckless Jonathan, though his name be Goodluck?

    If Jonathan has his Bamanga Tukur, didn’t Obasanjo have his own Garrison Commander, Ahmadu Ali, both relentless presidential puppets that smashed the ruling party so a bully president could stand tall, like some Gulliver in Lilliput?

    Yet, no tears for President Jonathan. He plunged his knife into a dead hippo, fallen by the pool; and he richly deserves his running diarrhoea. There is always a stiff price for crass opportunism!

    Besides, despite being the first Nigerian president to bear the academic prefix of PhD, Jonathan’s actions have no rigour, no grace, no gravitas, just plain humdrum! Indeed, by his actions and inactions he has, perhaps more than any other, afflicted his presidency with a rare pull him down (PHD) complex.

    His is a grand study in wilful conspiracy against self; and the resultant harsh wages of promotion beyond competence. His presidency is therefore a grand let-down, right from the beginning — and there appears no redeeming factor.

    Indeed, as one contemplates the Jonathan Presidency, with its welter of terrible constitutional infractions and heinous allegations, and the man at the vortex of it all feigning none the wiser, the disturbing image of the Biblical wolf in sheep’s skin floods the mind.

    But even as the president sweats under the crushing weight of his elephantine troubles, his feet, in fatal distraction, appear still foraging for needless troubles with ants.

    The induced Rivers crisis is an abiding case in point, with the Police not even hiding their hideous partisanship; and rogue legislators, backed by rogue “federal might”, threatening to plunge that state into anarchy.

    Then there are opposition allegations of Jonathan turning the Ecological Fund into some crony gravy — allegedly rewarding friends, punishing foes.

    Of course, there is also the abiding allegation, supported by CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is undercutting the country and the president doesn’t appear to have a clue about it all.

    That these allegations are made at all show the near-hopeless depth the Nigerian presidency has plumbed under Jonathan. That is unfortunate. But even more grievous is Obasanjo’s allegation that Jonathan is arming snipers to despatch political foes.

    Though the now crusading Obasanjo had more than a fair share of unresolved politically motivated killings during his presidency, this is one allegation Jonathan must deal with, if only to clear his presidency’s sagging reputation.

    But aside from this alleged killer squad, most of Obasanjo’s charges, in his long epistle of lamentation, were pure gas. There was nothing Obasanjo accused Jonathan of that he himself did not do during his best-forgotten presidency.

    NNPC is opaque. But how open was it during Obasanjo’s term, even when he was his own oil minister?

    On corruption — what has Obasanjo to teach, after his Obasanjo Presidential Library’s bared-faced extortion? If Jonathan responded with a contractor building his village a marvel of a church, it is evidence that Jonathan is master of his political father’s rotten tactics, corruption be damned!

    Jonathan wants to run for second term — and so what? Didn’t Obasanjo do two legal terms and was plotting an illegal third? Fortunately, Jonathan is doing more than enough to be guillotined at the polls. So, let the people decide his fate.

    Therefore, to now grandstand at some ogre, hinting at some non-democratic change, under some pseudo-messianic complex, is not only cheap but outright subversive. But it is another cynical drama, for Obasanjo knows that he too would vanish without trace, should Jonathan meet his electoral waterloo. So, would his and Jonathan’s credo of power without responsibility; and lollies without service.

    Obasanjo and Jonathan are an inglorious past and ignoble present that must be electorally swept away, from polluting the future. The Ebora Owu’s long letter of tumbling adjectives, and buzz words like honour and credibility that, from Obasanjo’s own conduct in office hardly meant anything, is his way of buying time and shopping for new puppets.

    He fails — except, of course, with the gullible and the excitable!

  • Obasanjo, Jonathan and PDP crisis

    Obasanjo, Jonathan and PDP crisis

    Those who nurse the feeling that recent defection of five governors of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP to the All Progressives Congress APC is a fait accompli may have to tarry a while. Emerging signals from the political turf do not seem to give comfort that all is well with the much dramatized movement.

    The way things stand, it does appear we are yet to hear the last on which side of the political divide some of the defecting governors really stand. The impression one increasingly gets is that of a people waiting for some concessions from their erstwhile party before dashing back to base.

    President Jonathan gave an indication of this seeming confusion and ambivalence on the part of some of the governors in an interview in Paris, France. He had stated very emphatically that he is sure of two of the defectors whose hearts and souls are irredeemably in the APC while the other three are yet undecided.

    He further said even in the case of those who have made up their minds, some of the deputy governors do not share their ideas and are unlikely to move along with them.

    But these are the views of Jonathan whose party is entangled in the current pass. There is the temptation to regard these claims as some of those usual antics of politicians to shore up confidence when confronted with daunting challenges. There is therefore the lure to dismiss the claims as a desperate attempt by the PDP to save its face given the unmitigated embarrassment the defections have become.

    As this was not enough cause for worry, the letter written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Jonathan in which he accused him of sundry misdeeds also gave clear indications that the PDP is not comfortable with the defections and many of its key promoters are bent on doing all within their powers not only to return its defecting members to the fold, but also maintain the leading role of the party in the country. Though Obasanjo touched on a number of allegations some of them very sweeping and intemperate, the main thesis of his presentation is on the current crisis in the PDP leading to disaffection and defection of five governors among others. Obasanjo is miffed by this development which he sees as not only capable of destroying the party but the entire country. He equates the PDP to Nigeria arguing that an inability to manage the crisis in the party would spell doom for the entire country. Obasanjo’s diatribe and smear campaign is rooted in the speculated ambition of Jonathan to run for the presidency in 2015 and its touted prospects of destroying the PDP. For him, that ambition has placed the country on the precipice and unless Jonathan retraces his steps, the country is heading for the rocks.

    These views do not seem to ascribe any value to the opposition APC since without PDP the country is finished. And to drive this point home, Obasanjo still believes that these disagreements could still be ‘turned to an opportunity for unity, mutual understanding and respect with the party emerging with enhanced strength and victory’. He then appealed to ‘defected, dissatisfied disgruntled and displeased PDP governors, legislators, party officials and party members to respond positively if the President seriously takes the initiative to find mutually agreeable solutions to the c u r r e n t problems’.

    What these underscore is the indubitable fact that the true intentions of the defecting governors and their party members are yet to be clear. At best, they are still sitting on the fence waiting for whatever concessions that could come from the president. This is more so with the reported attendance of the PDP governors’ meeting summoned by Jonathan at the villa by the duo of Rabiu Kwankwanso and Wammako of Kano and Sokoto states respectively.

    Before this article is published, Jonathan might have acceded to the demands of the governors to relieve Tukur of his position to make way for eventual reconciliation. This is a clear possibility. If this happens, he would have met a very key demand of the defectors as it would have taken care of mounting complaints of lack of internal democracy and high-handedness on the part of Tukur. The other demand of reigning in officials of the anti-graft agencies from harassing them and restoring party structures would have cued in appropriately. They will only be left with Jonathan’s second term ambition which Obasanjo has now confirmed there was no written agreement between Jonathan and anybody that he (Jonathan) will not run in 2015 but a statement of intent. Obasanjo claimed Jonathan confirmed to him in 2011 that if he adds the two years he inherited from Yar’Adua to another four years, he would have been done. He would therefore want him to keep to this promise to avoid the burden of moral overhang. But can we say in all sincerity that Jonathan has been allowed to concentrate on governance given the current distractions by the likes of Obasanjo and the challenge of Boko Haram insurgency which we have been told has its roots in opposition to his presidency? These are the issues to ponder when we consider the moral propriety of Jonathan going for another constitutional term. But then, what is all this hue and cry about Jonathan’s ambition destroying the country? Why must the inability of a section of the country to corner the presidency in 2015 culminate in its destruction? There is an indecent haste in the way and manner Jonathan is being intimidated to chicken out of the presidential race. There is also everything wrong with the impression Obasanjo sought to convey that unless power reverts to the north in 2015, hell will let loose. That has been the position coming from a section of the north. Many other states in the north are firmly behind Jonathan. Curiously Obasanjo has bought into that position and it is really very unfortunate. Given this, it is inherently ridiculous and insincere of him to accuse Jonathan of dividing the country along ethnic and religious lines. Nothing can be farther from the truth than this. Is it Jonathan that created Boko Haram that has not only expelled southerners from the north but also threatened to annihilate Christians in the north as if there are no northern Christians? What of the years of festering religious riots in that part of the country?

    Those fanning embers of discord are the people who promised to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan and have since made good their threat through all manner of contrived subterfuge.

    Obasanjo is guilty of falsifying extant realities and to that extent his recent letter is meant to get even having lost grip of power in the PDP. Is there anything the north kept in Aso Rock that if they do not enter there in 2015 that part of the country will no longer survive? Or put differently, are they seeking power for the north or the entire country? And if they seek power for the good of the entire country, six years thereon may not make much difference in the history of this nation to warrant the unnecessary heating up of the polity.

    Even then, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Jonathan may eventually not run. But if the gang up is to intimidate him to chicken out, instead of going through due process, it may boomerang. Its outcome may end up swelling public sympathy in his favor. If eventually he opts out of the race, there is everything to suggest that the defected governors and party members may hurry back to the PDP in droves. Then, everything would have been perfect with the party. What a huge contradiction!

    This will only go to reinforce the view that these defections are neither based on parity in ideological leaning nor shared values on how best to conduct the affairs of governance.

    It is therefore, a political risk for the APC to trust the defectors given their current posturing. They could be moles in the new arrangement.

  • Obasanjo’s belated blast

    Obasanjo’s belated blast

    Although former president Olusegun Obasanjo stated 10 grounds for his publicised 18-page letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, the decisive justification remains highly speculative. What was the final straw that broke the camel’s back? Whatever it was, Obasanjo’s staggering decision to publicly embarrass Jonathan by his extensive communication not only raised serious concern about the apparent deterioration of their rapport; more disturbing, it also delivered a dreadful signal about the country’s dire circumstances.

    Interestingly, Obasanjo’s epistle had elements of political science, history, sociology, psychology, economics, and even theology. It was a revealing roller coaster, exposing Jonathan’s dark underbelly as well as Obasanjo’s self-righteousness. It would appear that the essential objective of Obasanjo’s correspondence was to nail the coffin of Jonathan’s possible desire for a second four-year term in office. After taking self-flattering credit for the actualisation of the Jonathan presidency, Obasanjo accused him of “deceit and deception” concerning his denial of interest in a second term and indicated that there was an understanding that Jonathan, who became president in 2011, would govern for only one term and shun the 2015 presidential election.

    Even if such a deal was sealed, which Jonathan has consistently contradicted, it is perceptible that the conditions are different now and a review is on the cards. As Obasanjo rightly pointed out, “the signs and measures on the ground” do not support Jonathan’s alleged disinterest. However, his recommendation that Jonathan should “pursue a more credible and more honourable path,” suggested that Obasanjo might be living in a fool’s paradise. His counsel was evidently incongruous, given the litany of complaints signifying an irredeemable rot and the possibility that Jonathan is already at the proverbial point of no return.

    Not surprisingly, Obasanjo located the responsibility for the probable implosion of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) within Jonathan’s realm, a weighty denunciation coming from an overwhelmingly influential voice in the party. However, it is a measure of Obasanjo’s delusions that he expressed the obviously objectionable belief that his party, known for its abject vacuity and lack of vision, is good for the country. His words: “I believe strongly that a united and strong PDP at all costs is in the best interest of Nigeria.” What a misguided sentiment!

    Prominent among the centrifugal forces, according to Obasanjo, are Jonathan’s control tactics, ethnicity-driven insularity and politics of exclusion to the disadvantage of “most of the rest of Nigerians.” In the country’s pluralistic space, there is no doubt that the extreme promotion of Ijaw identity on account of Jonathan’s leadership has exacerbated the national question, quite apart from worsening power relations within PDP.

    It is intriguing and tragic that Obasanjo tried to establish a parallelism between the Jonathan presidency and perhaps the country’s most murderous administration symbolised by the late Gen Sani Abacha who ruled with an iron fist from 1993 to 1998. Obasanjo’s allegation about an existing killer squad designed by Jonathan for “political purposes” and the surveillance of presumed opponents is so brutally unsettling and sadly cements the suspicion that the 2015 elections hold a promise of bloodshed. It is most unlikely that Obasanjo would flippantly make claims of such malevolent magnitude without a shred of evidence because that would be reprehensibly irresponsible.

    It was predictable that Obasanjo would mention the unconscionable heights of official corruption, and he didn’t disappoint, specifically highlighting the sleaze associated with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). It is a mighty wonder that this particular organisation, which operates at the heart of the country’s oil-based economy, has been the butt of scandalous publicity over the years; yet successive administrations have failed to carry out any thorough cleaning of the Augean stable, which makes a penetrating statement about the hypocrisy of the powerful.

    Shockingly, Obasanjo displayed double standards in his offensive against Jonathan, seeming to conveniently overlook his own role in originally backing an individual who, in his reviewed estimation, has turned out to be inappropriate for the presidency after all. His misjudgement, if that was indeed the case, is loudly damning, particularly on account of the fact that his support controversially defied an alleged party zoning formula which excluded Jonathan. It is revealing of his sense of personal infallibility that there was no hint of shame in Obasanjo’s blame game. The logical truth is that if Obasanjo enjoys the image of kingmaker, he should also appreciate the idea of vicarious blameworthiness. He crowed in his letter, “Mr. President, you have on a number of occasions acknowledged the role God enabled me to play in your ascension to power. You put me third after God and your parents among those that have impacted most in your life.”

    However, with the benefit of hindsight and the picture of the critical path not taken, it is apt to contemplate the country’s trajectory had PDP in 2011 been faithful to its said informal arrangement in determining who should be its presidential candidate. The negative consequences of that great betrayal of decency are regrettably evident in the party, and by extension, in the polity.

    Two apocalyptic images deserve particular attention in Obasanjo’s missive. His reference to a possible military intervention based on opportunism amounted to a subtle sowing of seeds of subversion, which is highly condemnable. Then he pronounced magisterially and with unbecoming posturing, “May it not be the wish of majority of Nigerians that Goodluck Jonathan, by his acts of omission and commission, would be the first and last Nigerian President ever to come from Ijaw tribe.”

    In reacting to Obasanjo’s blast, it certainly won’t be enough to argue ad hominem, that is, just attacking his character rather than responding strictly to the contentions. Such an unproductive approach would be too easy, for there are clearly multiple charges that Obasanjo is open to, perhaps even weightier than the ones he has tried to pin on Jonathan.

    It is food for thought that Jonathan reportedly directed his spokesmen to keep mute while he prepares to “at the appropriate time, offer a full personal response,” according to his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, who nevertheless described the letter as “highly provocative.”

    Although the title of Obasanjo’s letter, Before it is too late, carries some optimism, it is ironically a sad reminder that Jonathan has advanced far in the course of unravelling. Indeed, it would appear belated, and only the miraculous can mediate.

  • Epistle according to St. Matthew

    Epistle according to St. Matthew

    For former President Olusegun Obasanjo, letters are not only a therapy. They serve as a locus of power. He is not a great letter writer, but he writes with great zeal, pouring out the constructions of his emotions through his longwinded sentences.

    With his stumbles, he is not an example of how to write a sentence. This is not the age of the letter, but of the text message and email, and they call for laconic entries. Obasanjo wrote an 18-page letter. But it was originally longer. Interventions of close friends and associates compelled him to prune it and defrock it of its libel and vaporous excesses. In spite of the editing and lawyerly emendation, the letter was irredeemable.

    Great political letter writers of the past, like Lincoln, Churchill, even Zik and Awo, did not go into meaningless streams of consciousness and interior monologues. Rather they provided insights into their times and roles. Novelist and Nobel laureate Saul Bellow turned his character Herzog into a neurotic letter writer, who wrote to virtually every great mind dead or alive and contended with them on the issues of the day and their days.

    Obasanjo has written to virtually every leader since he left power in 1979. Each letter lionised himself and valorised his time in office while mocking the doings of the man in power. Shagari, Buhari, Babangida suffered the most from his irreverent barbs. The only real leader he did not undermine with his epistolary bombs was himself. If he had some humour he might have written himself and titled it, Dear me, in the fashion of the autobiography of writer, filmmaker and comedian Peter Ustinov, who addressed the book to himself. If Obasanjo wrote a Dear Me letter, it might have been to tell the world how dear he was as a great leader, and would have lacked Ustinov’s laugh at himself.

    Yet if you read the letter he wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan, you are bound to be in two minds. He lined up a series of weaknesses of the Jonathan presidency but he did not say anything new, except the charge that President Jonathan was arming assassins and had a list of enemies numbering over 1000.

    The fundamental question arising from his letter is, who gave Obasanjo the moral authority to say what he said in the letter. He is guilty of virtually everything he said in the letter. He accused Jonathan of running an undemocratic party. He was guilty of that and it led to a move by governors to oust him. He accused Jonathan of supporting elements of other parties against his party as if he did he not do so. He even sponsored the formation of other parties. He said Jonathan imposed Tukur and could not bring peace to the party. Did he not do that in the time of Audu Ogbeh, and he had to subvert his reign?

    He charged that Jonathan promised to govern for one term, but did he not seek a third term? He upturned an otherwise brilliant constitutional effort because he did not get his dream for presidential longevity. He had the effrontery to report at Mandela’s death that he asked Mandela to stay for a second term. Mandela had a superior sense of history and statesmanship.

    He accused Jonathan of being insincere about his proposed confab, yet he mobilised state resources and men to organise a conference only to botch it over the third term fiasco. On corruption, he set up the EFCC and ICPC to hound his enemies. Now, he is accusing the president of presiding over a worrisomely corrupt regime.

    On the issue of killers, Obasanjo’s time in office witnessed the killings of star politicians, and none of the culprits was earnestly investigated or convicted. Bola Ige was one of them.

    But I say to myself, why did Obasanjo not start the letter by apologising to Nigerians since the letter was more to himself than to the president. He should have demonstrated remorse that he precipitated the problem of leadership in the past decade and half. His term in office never set a foundation with his bumbling in the area of leadership by example, fighting corruption, power sector, infrastructure and health. The naira plummeted significantly in his era and more people were out of job when he left office than when he mounted the throne. He also imposed on us two leaders. One was Yar’Adua whose physical debility was well known to him. This incapacitated him, the presidency and the nation with the gory tales of constitutional stasis that threatened the democracy. Two, he gave him a deputy he knew was inept and lacked the intellectual rigour for that exalted position. Nothing in his Bayelsa stewardship recommended him.

    We suffer the consequences today as he has delineated in his letter. He did not have the humble virtue to accept his role in this tragedy. Rather, he wrote with divine delusion, asserting that God used him as an instrument to install Jonathan as leader.

    It is clear Obasanjo wrote the letter not so much out of patriotism but because the son has murdered his father on the throne. It is the political equivalent of an oedipal clash. The godfather has lost grip of the godson. The father’s ghost is now bewailing the parricide in public. He admitted that he had written to him in the past, but Jonathan had ignored him routinely. He wrote that Jonathan had told him that next to God and his parents, Obasanjo was the most important in his life. Obasanjo is therefore jealous of the Clarks, Anenihs, etc, whose voices find the president’s ears rather than his.

    So Obasanjo’s letter was not about Nigeria. It is like his previous letters. He wanted to draw attention to himself. It is like the lines in W.H. Auden’s famous poem, September 1st, 1939. The poem lamented those who crave what they cannot have, and that is “not universal love/ but to be loved alone.”

    Yet, we have to admit that nobody could have made impact with that sort of letter in Nigeria like Obasanjo. It is a testament to the failure of our political class to throw up a personage of Mandela’s mystique that only a person like Obasanjo with all his moral baggage can write such a letter with credibility. I will say I am glad he wrote the letter. I am glad that he said all the things that his party apparatchik would not say, or what his opponents will say with less potency.

    Yet, I am sad that I am glad he said them. I am sad that I am glad because he alone could have said them. Yet we need Obasanjo to provide evidence for the allegation of a killer squad, and the list of the over 1000 targets.

    President Jonathan will do well to address the nation on all the issues raised. They are grave and several, some of them have been raised in the media and by his opponents. He should not dismiss them merely as a catharsis of a frustrated godfather. They have implications for this democracy’s survival, and his legacy if he cares.

  • Mandela, leadership and Nigeria

    Mandela, leadership and Nigeria

    When Winston Churchill died in 1965, some 112 world leaders or their representatives from around the globe attended his funeral. When Charles de Gaulle died in 1969, and in spite of leaving instruction his burial should be a private ceremony, some 63 leaders brushed aside his request to honour him. By universal acclaim, Nelson Mandela was one of the world’s greatest leaders. About 100 world leaders were at his memorial service last Tuesday. The announcements of their deaths were as equally prosaic and memorable as the great number of dignitaries that attended their burials. Queen Elizabeth II described Sir Winston in the following words: “The whole world is the poorer by the loss of his many-sided genius while the survival of this country and the sister nations of the Commonwealth, in the face of the greatest danger that has ever threatened them, will be a perpetual memorial to his leadership, his vision, and his indomitable courage.” The then prime minister, Harold Wilson, was even more vigorous: “Sir Winston will be mourned all over the world by all who owe so much to him. He is now at peace after a life in which he created history and which will be remembered as long as history is read.”

    But nothing exceeds French President Georges Pompidou’s description of De Gaulle’s death in succinctness and brevity. “General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow.” And while President Jacob Zuma was also apt on Mandela, saying, “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father,” perhaps the most memorable would be the US President Barack Obama’s pithy though hardly original tribute to Mandela. “He belongs to the ages,” said the US president. Both in the offer of tributes and the delivery of tributes at the memorial service itself, few could have matched Mr Obama, who by his mere appearance, which the crowd at the stadium looked forward to, and his oratory, simply shone like a gem.

    By universal acclaim, Mr Mandela was one of the world’s greatest leaders. As gleaned from the tributes to the great icon, he showed the way to peace, unity, forgiveness and reconciliation in a world riven by wars and hatred. In the words of Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, “Nelson Mandela was more than one of the greatest leaders of our time. He was one of our greatest teachers. He taught by example, he sacrificed so much, and was willing to give up everything for freedom, equality and justice. His compassion stands out most.” Mr Obama ended his tribute to Mandela last Tuesday asserting that “We will never see his likes again.”

    Most commentators agree on the qualities that made Mr Mandela to number among the greatest world leaders. They are not wrong. Having stayed in prison for 27 years and refused to compromise on the ideals he lived for and was prepared to die for, as he said during the 1964 Rivonia Trial, and having saved his country from disintegration and reconciled them and moulded them into one of the world’s leading multicultural societies, his greatness appeared complete and unquestionable. While I think his greatness indeed encompassed these facts and many more, as declared by many world leaders, I believe there are other more pertinent reasons for his greatness.

    The most elementary proof that shows that Mr Mandela numbers among the world’s greatest leaders is provided, not by the tributes of world leaders, but by former President Richard Nixon’s observations in his book, Leaders. According to him, “When the curtain goes down on a play, members of the audience file out of the theatre and go home to resume their normal lives. When the curtain comes down on a leader’s career, the very lives of the audience have been changed, and the course of history may have been profoundly altered.” No one doubts that because of Mr Mandela, the lives of his people have been changed and South African history has been altered perhaps for ever. Indeed, every analyst and historian agrees on this. However, I want to focus on three unusual and overlooked factors that explain Mr Mandela’s greatness, for all the fine things said about him merely indicate other deeper, more profound things lying within him.

    First, Mr Mandela, like any other great leader, was specifically equipped for leadership by forces beyond himself, and with a healthy measure of attributes that conduce to great leadership which neither he nor anyone else could fully explain. Thabo Mbeki, Mr Mandela’s successor, is firm, brilliant and blessed with administrative acumen, but he lacks Mandela’s judgement, instinctive love for people bordering on populism, and what some writers have described as the intuitive iconoclasm a liberator needs to challenge the authorities of his day irrespective of the threat to his own life, future and well-being. Mandela had it in abundance, and so did Martin Luther, George Washington, and several others. We can identify these unusual qualities when great leaders exhibit them; but we are unable to account for why one leader has it and another does not. To suggest these attributes are simply idiosyncratic is to beg the question.

    The lofty principles displayed by Mr Mandela, his strength of character, his almost unerring judgement, his implacable will, and his supreme inner confidence are evident. But how did he get to that point? I once suggested in this place that the books a great leader reads might trigger some of these attributes, but even this explanation does not fully account for the presence of leadership attributes in a person. Nor is Shakespeare of any help in Twelfth Night when he said that “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” In fact, for a leader to be listed among great leaders, he must not only be born with it, he must work (achieve) for it, and then circumstances must conspire to make (thrust upon) him great.

    One of Mr Mandela’s daughters recently made an oblique reference to the second factor accounting for a leader’s greatness. A leader must either cultivate aloofness or be naturally detached from people and circumstances around him, even seeming to be cruel. Makaziwe Mandela, the icon’s oldest surviving child once told the press she was not sure that their father loved them, a feeling she said was shared by the children. According to Dr Makiziwe, politics had fully taken their father’s time, and his letters to them, even while he was in prison, were cold and distant. Even the considerably uxorious letters to Winnie appeared in retrospect to be a means of escape from the harshness and drudgery of prison life.

    De Gaulle was not a romantic, but he showed emotions for his handicapped daughter, Anne who had Down syndrome. Churchill put politics first before his wife, Clementine, but was fond of his children only as a reaction to his own father’s indifference to him. Suleiman the Magnificent thought nothing of the wholesale murder of most of his children to pave way for his successor, Selim II, in 1556, and Stalin, apart from his well-known cruelty to millions of Russians, virtually exterminated his relatives, not to talk of the harsh treatment he meted out to his wives and children. Napoleon virtually abjured the tender things of life, notwithstanding his clumsy on and off relationship with the unfaithful Josephine, his long-term wife and mistress, and Julius Caesar was almost cursory in the way he threw out his wife Pompeia for her indiscrete, not adulterous, relationship with a young patrician, Publius Clodius Pulcher, gifting us the expression “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” Space will not permit mention of Lincoln whom many parents accused of being insensitive to the slaughter of thousands of their children who served as soldiers during the American civil war. Or of Alexander the Great (356 BC – 323 BC) and Genghis Khan (1162-1227) who pushed their armies to the limit in their quest for glory and amid unexampled human slaughter. Or of Peter the Great (1672-1725) who, as I once indicated here, tortured his son, Alexis, to death for plotting his overthrow.

    But whether detachment or aloofness, these great world leaders brought the two attributes to the service of either empire building or statecraft, or both. Mr Mandela sometimes reflected on his own aloofness, wondering guiltily whether he was not to blame for the troubles and deprivations his wife and children endured. But it was clear his family life was sacrificed for the higher good of liberating South Africa from apartheid. His sacrifices came full circle when he surrendered completely to the struggle, when he declared his preparedness to die, when he gave up his family and attendant pleasures, when he gave up power in 1999 after judging it was the right thing to do, and when he even gave up his own black people in their unstated quest for either some form of revenge or at least some form of reckoning, preferring instead, reconciliation and the establishment of a multicultural society.

    The third reason for Mandela’s greatness must be the historical conjuncture President Nixon wrote about in one of his books. No matter how brilliant and equipped a leader is, the time and place must be right to propel him to great heights. In short, history must conspire in his favour by producing the local and international circumstances to make the liberator or agitator a great man. What if Mr Mandela had been killed a few years into his incarceration? What if his white jailors had behaved with the lack of humaneness Nigerian jailors are accustomed to? Not only would Mr Mandela be dead and stone dead, South Africa itself might probably never have the chance to enjoy the peace and reconciliation only a Mandela could have nurtured after the collapse of apartheid. A leader must meet his moment; not too soon, lest he falter and even fail, or too late, lest he succumb to discouragement or even die unfulfilled. Circumstances met Mr Mandela, and they kept him alive until he fulfilled his destiny. According to President Nixon, there was hardly a great leader he knew who did not have that inscrutable expectation which they called by various names. Some called it luck, others called it hope, and yet others called it destiny. Whatever name it is called, it plays a crucial role in both the emergence of a leader and his promotion into the pantheon of greats.

    It was perhaps the acute awareness of this fact that made President Obama, who by much study understands the essential elements of greatness and power, to conclude that we would never see the likes of Mandela again. Mr Obama knows there is little a leader can do to furnish the conditions under which his greatness would manifest. Lincoln did not create the conditions necessary for the American civil war. But he met it with character, courage and great principles, and anchored all three on a deep and unyielding philosophical conviction about human dignity. Imagine for a moment that Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup of Eighteenth Brumaire in 1799 had failed; imagine if General Hindenburg had had Adolf Hitler shot after the latter’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 failed; imagine if Churchill had been killed when he was being captured in 1899 during the Boer War. And would the world have had an Augustus Caesar had his great-uncle Julius Caesar not been assassinated in 44 BC, or, since he was sickly, had he succumbed to the illness that plagued him as a youth before he wormed his way into power?

    If President Goodluck Jonathan understood some of these things, he would not have spoken the way he did during last Sunday’s memorial service organised in honour of Mr Mandela, nor would he rule with the spectacular incompetence former President Olusegun Obasanjo has alleged against him. Gen Ibrahim Babangida could of course not be a Mandela, but he stood on the threshold of honour and history in 1993, and failed the test. The sanctimonious Chief Obasanjo had the best opportunity next to Mandela to be an African legend, but he was unfortunately too unknowing to understand what history was telling him in a still small voice during his boisterous eight years as president. See, also, what great chance Gen Yakubu Gowon fluffed in 1973 when he abandoned his transition to civil rule programme. We must acknowledge that once a leader does not have the qualities of greatness in him, in full or half measure, he cannot even begin to climb to the mountaintop, let alone see the Promised Land, or imagine how to get there.

    It is futile to preach to Dr Jonathan the principles and practice of leadership. He does not have it in him; for these things are innate in a leader. More, they are sublime and indefinable values that grate on the nerves and senses of a leader irritated by his own constant misapprehensions. There was nothing anybody could do to discipline or caution Chief Obasanjo as he frittered away the great chance history threw upon his undeserving laps; and there was nothing anyone could have done to make Generals Gowon and Babangida see the future beyond their fateful actions of 1973 and 1993 respectively.

    Once a great leader comes along in Nigeria, Nigerians will know. And they will see in the stars and in the signs of the age indisputable proof. When that happens, they will not fear he would misfire and make irredeemable mistakes, for though he is human, he would have the intellect, intuition and judgement to do what is right at grave moments. When he comes, he will beat the swords of our ethnic and sectarian disagreements into ploughshares of development, and the spears of political mediocrity into pruning hooks of democracy, peace and good governance. He will also cause the arithmetical madness in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to cease, and the constitutional folly exemplified by the police in Rivers State to come to end. And from Abuja shall come forth the law to govern the people and make crooked places straight.

  • Mandela: And the world stood still

    Mandela: And the world stood still

    Mandela was the leveller as we all became one huge humanity, under God

    ‘Born during World War I, far from the corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by elders of his Thembu tribe – Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20th century. Like Gandhi, he would lead a resistance movement – a movement that at its start held little prospect of success. Like King, he would give potent voice to the claims of the oppressed, and the moral necessity of racial justice. He would endure a brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War. Emerging from prison, without force of arms, he would – like Lincoln – hold his country together when it threatened to break apart. Like America’s founding fathers, he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations – a commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power.’ That was President Barak Obama, who, himself made history as America’s first-ever black President, about another man of history; indeed, unarguably one of the greatest men of history, the inimitable Nelson Mandela.

    But President Obama did not stop there in his kaleidoscopic description of Mandela. Going further, he said: ‘It was precisely because he could admit to imperfection – because he could be so full of good humour, even mischief, despite the heavy burdens he carried – that we loved him so. He was not a bust made of marble; he was a man of flesh and blood – a son and husband, a father and a friend. That is why we learned so much from him; that is why we can learn from him still. For nothing he achieved was inevitable. In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness; persistence and faith. He tells us what’s possible not just in the pages of dusty history books, but in our own lives as well.’

    How one hopes the world, especially its leaders, political, who rule the world, and the economic, either those in control of the stupendously rich North or those minding the beggarly South in its death throes, would truly learn from this quintessential human being that ‘we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us.’

    If only they will know, that, in the end, deprivations, even wars, will settle nothing.

    While he laid there comatose in hospital those countless months, and members of his family quarrelled, even publicly, the world almost forgot. But here, indeed, was a man who had already become a saint while here on earth, one whose very passing, even the heavens will acknowledge as it opened up during those final hours; a sign that one truly great, passed through the African portals.

    And has the world been literally on a positive binge?

    From all corners of the earth, a hundred serving and former Heads of State, and still counting, it has been elegies, eulogies and testaments galore. The world rose up in one like never before; totally unmindful of statuses. Mandela was the leveller as we all became one huge humanity, under God.

    When shall the world see the like again?

    Mandela’s entire history, from his minor royalty background, to his education and activism, his imprisonment and stay in power as his country’s president, not to forget ‘the Mandela Option’ many a Head of state would rather instigate a civil war than emulate; Mandela’s total persona is a continuing study in how best to live life in the service of another. But he did not teach lessons only by his actions; he left behind words and worries, enough to torment Africa, especially Nigeria, for a whole century after his translation. In this respect, none of his admonitions would ever rank higher than his following message to Nigerians, excerpted from a 2007 interview granted Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed as recently published by saharareporters:

    “YOU know I am not very happy with Nigeria. I have made that very clear on many occasions. Yes, Nigeria stood by us more than any nation, but you let yourselves down, and Africa and the black race very badly. Your leaders have no respect for their people. They believe that their personal interests are the interests of the people. They take people’s resources and turn it into personal wealth. There is a level of poverty in Nigeria that should be unacceptable. I cannot understand why Nigerians are not more angry than they are.

    “What do young Nigerians think about your leaders and their country and Africa? Do you teach them history? Do you have lessons on how your past leaders stood by us and gave us large amounts of money? You know I hear from Angolans and Mozambicans and Zimbabweans how your people opened their hearts and their homes to them. I was in prison then, but we know how your leaders punished western companies who supported Apartheid.

    “What about the corruption and the crimes? Your elections are like wars. Now we hear that you cannot be president in Nigeria unless you are Muslim or Christian. Some people tell me your country may break up. Please don’t let it happen.

    “Let me tell you what I think you need to do. You should encourage leaders to emerge who will not confuse public office with sources of making personal wealth. Corrupt people do not make good leaders. Then you have to spend a lot of your resources for education.

    “Educate children of the poor, so that they can get out of poverty. Poverty does not breed confidence. Only confident people can bring changes. Poor, uneducated people can also bring change, but it will be hijacked by the educated and the wealthy…give young Nigerians good education. Teach them the value of hard work and sacrifice, and discourage them from crimes which are destroying your image as a good people.”

    There can hardly be a better way of concluding this article than with the following tribute to Mandela by Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti State: ‘The passing of Nelson Mandela after his prolonged hospitalisation should not be a cause for sadness on any account. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family and offer our prayers for them and for the people of South Africa. But we also recognise that his passing at the ripe old age of 95 is a fitting crown to the rich full life that Madiba lived, playing a starring role in what is surely the 20th century’s most compelling odyssey of human freedom from tyranny. Rather than mourning, Mandela’s transition into glory should be an occasion for celebration and reflection. Firstly, we celebrate the final consummation of a life well spent. The phrase “a life well spent” which is commonly used in obituaries has become an overworked cliché but in the case of Madiba it is not. Rather, it is more than worthily applied to describe a man who expended his energies in the service of humanity, risking everything, his life inclusive, to actualise the ideal of freedom. It is this exemplary life that we have much cause to celebrate.’

    Even, as we revel in the honour and blessing of having lived to witness the life and times of one of history’s most iconic political figures, we must also ponder his luminous legacy. His death closes an epic story of the triumph of the human spirit over injustice and tyranny.

  • Here are some reactions to last week’s ‘the widow’s millions’…

    This week, dear reader, we are going to ignore OBJ’s epistle to GEJ and pretend the two of them do not exist. I have closely examined the two of them and the only difference I can see is that one is a politician with lines; the other is a politician with a hat. On that point, I am tempted to call them black pot and black kettle but don’t let me be too hastily dismissive. I’m sure there’ll be others to dismiss them in the media. Today, we will be doing something else – reminiscing.

    I really pity our action governor, Mr. Adams Oshiomole, because I believe nearly everything he has been doing has been for the good of his state. Yet here he is drawing so much flak because of a well-misplaced good intention. I want to state here categorically that my sympathies are with the governor, because I believe he is one of the few governors who are actually working in this country, but he must own that his reaction to his first action towards the widow has caused a lot of confusion and perplexity, and in some quarters, ire.

    The unexpected volume of reactions to last week’s write-up on the subject cannot be ignored. While some got the spirit of the essay and agreed with me, some got it and disagreed, and some did not even get it at all. Indeed, I can actually say they did not care for my style, but you know me; I’m nothing if not objective. So, I thank you all. I am here presenting some of the reactions, though I must warn you that you will require parental guidance: some contain scenes and strong language that are not very pleasant. I have taken the liberty to remove the unsavoury limitations placed on writings by the text message genre and straightened many abbreviations, but have left the words and sentences all alone.

    Re: The Widow’s Millions’. Thanks a million for not being a gender hypocrite in this matter. Like lies once told require bigger lies to cover up. Oshiomole’s first blunder of thoughtless outburst (“Go and die”) demands another blunder (“million apologies”). 07018889236.

    Thanks for articulating my thoughts in ‘The Widow’s Millions’. We need a follow-up on the other ‘angle’. In other climes, the Gov would be gone. Where are the ‘Women’s Groups’, etc. After the Money, let’s analyse the Baloney… E., Bayelsa State. 08037059145.

    Your today’s write-up: “the widow’s millions’ represents a bestseller. I hope the governor concerned and others like him will draw some useful lessons from it but ironically, do our leaders know what is called drawing lessons? This is where I pity our writers. They send good messages with their write-ups but do those who the messages are directed care? 08058382530.

    Please be reminded that we are being ruled by people who have equated themselves with the State. Adams did not know that he had endangered millions just to “apologise” to a widow who was prepared to die (or, has a woman who advertised her wares beside the road not prepared herself for death?) You only know a leader when the chips are down and there’s a need to take a decision that is not based on emotions. Alas, widow Joy Ifije has exposed Gov. Oshiomole’s feet of clay. S. O. Ogbomoso. 08101298511.

    You said it all, my dear. Wonders will never end in Nigeria! “Crime pays in millions” in Nigeria. Gov. Oshiomole should be prepared to make more TWO MILLION NAIRA APOLOGIES, but this time he should pay from his personal pocket. C. 08037468194.

    I may be wrong but Oshiomole didn’t say the money was from government coffers or from his pocket. So, what you should be asking is, where did the money come from first. 08070796551.

    Madam, as Gov Oshiomole lost you, you won me on a platter for your piece on widow’s millions. The truth is that Nigerians approach every situation with sentiments & emotion (rather) than reason and logic. I guess Oshiomole felt guilty about his gutter language. To make up he did the unthinkable. Nigerian leaders for you. M. K. 08020526339.

    …Thanks for letting Nigerians not to replace the constitution with religiosity. I’m one man who’s yet to know why Adams was uneconomical with apology. Hence, ‘Oshiomole, go and die’. Madam, you wrote my mind, although I had written an article with the title, “Oshiomole’s ‘woman, go and die’ & religionists narrow-mindedness”. Cheers. O. O. 08032552855.

    Re-The widow’s millions! Thank you for your write-up of today. You spoke the minds of many of us in Edo State. B. O. 08067949427.

    Well I dispute your claim that it is the dregs of the earth that commit infraction of our laws. The assertion has no basis in facts. Indeed our laws are honoured more in breach than in observance by the elites so called. I also think you should address the system that has impoverished a large chunk of her population. This pervading disorder is ordered from the top. Its street manifestation should not cause you to write so much. 08036054742.

    What informed you that the money Oshiomole gave the widow is from the state’s coffer? Please learn to know what you write. 08180585619.

    I agree with you that the people’s money should be used to build the country. The problem is that the regime does not know that what the poor need is social justice. That is a humane order that will accommodate all Nigerians. A. E. Kaduna. 08039727512.

    Your piece in THE NATION’s Sunday paper was pathetic. You tried to pass a message but failed pathetically. Your thoughts and writings were all jumbled up, confusing and uninteresting. A freshman in journalism would have done much better. What the hell? Really poor writing. 08039465504.

    Surprised, right, that so many people can read so many different things to a text while some cannot read anything at all? Mm! Anyway, nearly all of us are really saying the same thing to our leaders. Stop reducing every issue to the matter of money because there is a lot more to governance than the problem of money. Well, with the way Nigerians carry on about money, it is not too difficult to understand where the leaders are getting their ideas from. Someday, we will talk money, I promise you.

    It must be stressed though that in no way did that article point out that we the members of the lower classes are responsible for more breaches in the law than the other classes. I think this column has dealt most extensively on the culpability of Nigerian leaders in the social disintegration going on right now with their inordinate greed and unchecked grab. Most of us in the lower classes simply take our examples from them, and the widow has just been used to exemplify what fuels that group’s behaviour: anger.

    On the whole, I believe even the good governor himself has understood what the country is saying. If not, I will recap. People are saying that just as rich criminals should not be rewarded; poor ones should also not be rewarded for breaking the law. Apologising to anyone in monetary terms not awarded by the law courts is a debasement of the money and an insult to the personhood of the receiver. Actually, I’m surprised the woman took the money rather than cry out: ‘is it because I’m poor that you’re offering me money?!’

  • In what direction goes black leadership?

    In what direction goes black leadership?

    Finding a great leader is less difficult than replacing one

    The world stood still last week to say farewell to one of its greatest sons. For Nelson Mandela, it was plaudits well deserved. Yet, in a few brief days, this globally reflective moment will fade as if belonging to the distant past or never having occurred at all.

    Mandela is the heroic figure of our age. His stature eclipsed that of another world leader. This spoke much about the man’s greatness. It revealed much more about the tepidity of other leaders. Because of the distance that separated Mandela from others, we verge on a mistake that will do Mandela and us significant injustice. We have been tempted by his departure to elevate his evident superiority into an impression of completeness or of infallibility.

    This would be a mistake. To acclaim a hero is our civic duty and moral obligation; it is symbolic recompense for deeds and sacrifices that can never be repaid. However, to lavish blind adulation without an objective assessment is tantamount to a lie. It distorts the legacy of the subject of the adulation and cripples the historic perspective and future actions of those committing the overreach.

    Black people should always pause when the mass media celebrates a Black hero and liberator. The metamorphosis of Western thought about Madiba parallels the evolution of American thought about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. As he entered into leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, the established proclaimed king was obsessed with thrusting the nation into the jowls of a race war. The charge was libelous yet represented the conventional wisdom and the operational truth of the American government and much of the political establishment. Similarly, Western nations branded Mandela a communist-influenced terrorist intent on massacring Whites.

    After King was assassinated, White America’s perspective of him mellowed. The dead cleric could not threaten what remained their strong hold on power. When he became the first Black president of his nation, Mandela transfigured into the Black leader the White world loved to love. On the surface, this appears to be a wonderful story of bygone hatreds and present compassion. Sadly, the truth is not this ersatz morality play now presented. Cold self-interest is more the author of this tale than is brotherly love.

    Clearly, those who once casted King and Mandela as foul embodiments now lionize them. They do so from their high perch not from their humbled hearts. Henry Kissinger, the archangel of Machiavellian international relations, attended Madiba’s memorial service. One had to wonder if the amoral Kissinger actually knew where he was. Perhaps he had nothing else to do that day and was the beneficiary of a free plane ride to picturesque South Africa. More likely, he was there to assure himself that Madiba was dead and inwardly gloat that he had survived this Black African who was his moral superior yet mortal enemy when both men actively occupied the arena of world events. A brilliant man, Kissinger is nonetheless a warehouse of banal prejudices that lends him a penchant for evil. That this bulwark against Black progress at home and abroad attended the ceremony signals something that warrants closer scrutiny.

    The elite propaganda machine disseminates the tale Mandela’s show of unmatched compassion won them over, even the reptilian Kissinger. For the most idealistic among them, this may be true. However, idealism runs in short supply among the deeply affluent and powerful. For most of the elite, the story has the opposite plot. Mandela did not win them with the power of his compassion. Instead, they forced Mandela to channel his compassion and restrain his drive for justice in ways that safeguarded their pecuniary interests. They did not come over to Mandela’s side. By the sheer force of their ever hovering, destructive military and clandestine abilities and obvious economic power, they forced Mandela over to theirs.

    His harsh critics, and there are many among South African leftists, say Mandela capitulated. His former wife Winnie purportedly criticized the deal with the apartheid establishment as a deep wound to the Black community. She and others anguished that Blacks obtained the ballot but Whites kept the bank.

    True, South African Blacks won political equality only to retain apartheid’s economic fetters.

    This tracks the fate of Black America when the Civil Rights Movement ended. Blacks were legally free to go anywhere and do anything. However, most lacked money to see to the new opportunities. The liberty they sought might as well have dwelled on the far side of the moon. The bulk of Black American poor stayed in the modest tenements of their disintegrating urban communities or in their shacks on dirt-scratch farms along the rural back roads of rich, vast and powerful America. Likewise, most Black South Africans remained in their shanties in townships that look no better now than under the harsh hand of racist governance two decades ago.

    What changed in America and South Africa was the birth of a small, unprincipled Black elite that attached itself as a weak, dependant appendage to the conservative White establishment. The hard nut had been found but is yet to be cracked. What happened is a tragic lack of foresight to understand the vast distance to be crossed to complete the trek to justice and liberty. In America and South Africa, Blacks mistook victory in an important campaign for winning the entire war. We walked off the battlefield before the day was done.

    Because of this, we have produced an ambivalent Black leadership with no objective greater than its self perpetuation. It knows nothing other than how to manage and profit from things as they are. This elite does not know whether its raison d’être is to represent Black interests to the White power bloc or to explain the imperatives of White power to the Black masses. On a daily basis, they tend to follow the money by turning the shoulder of indifference to their people. More at home being the junior partners in an elite enterprise, the distance between the Black elite and Black masses grows.

    What also grows is Black relative poverty in both nations. In a general sense, a large portion of the scant prosperity that was once more evenly shared among the Black populace has been cornered by the new elite. This unregenerate process has become infectious, afflicting Black leadership on a global basis. Whether in minority enclaves in Western nations or as heads of nominally independent African states, Black leaders have fallen to this siren’s beckoning. They lavish in the emoluments of political independence but yoke the people to deep penury because they dare not challenge the unfair political economy that provided their soft seat at the high table. That their benefactor is unjust causes them no grief just as long as they its beneficiaries.

    Critics blame Mandela for this shortfall in South Africa. I can no more blame Mandela in South Africa than blame King for Black America’s current afflictions. Both men did all they could; but this can never be construed that they did all that was needed. Some challenges had to be left for those who followed them. Sadly, those who followed them temporally failed to do so in spirit.

    On the arduous approach to obtaining power, Mandela wrestled with a decision freighted with historic magnitude. Should he insist on the ANC platform of radical economic restructuring or be content with gaining political independence now and hope for economic justice later? The fate of previous Black leaders who dared press for both must have shaped his fateful answer.

    An idealistic Patrice Lumumba actually believed the Congo had gained independence from its sadistic Belgian masters. When he began acting like an independent leader, little did he understand he had issued his own death sentence. His bones are yet to be found and his nation yet to recover five decades after his exit. Malcolm X and Dr. King were killed when they began to focus on economic justice. Nkrumah was hounded from office because of his socialism. For seeking an independent economic base, Sekou Toure’s Guinea was punished with draconian French sanctions that have mired the nation ever since. The mourning Dr. Kissinger once intrigued against Allende’s Chile until Allende was no longer and his dream of a more just nation was buried with him and the thousands of martyrs who believed as he did.

    From further back in history comes the benighted example of Haiti, the tiny speck of an island that became the first Black republic by overthrowing a violently oppressive White planter society. For their desperate lunge at freedom, Haitians were rewarded with harsh trade sanctions by the great powers and the infliction of a massive war indemnity by France. The indemnity was so steep, cutting a large chunk of the infant nation’s GDP, that there could be no other destiny for the tiny country than perpetual debt peonage and the poverty and political instability spawned by such abysmal economic conditions.

    Mandela did not want to follow these examples. His contemporary Robert Mugabe took a different approach. For that he has become an international pariah. Mugabe is a despot and his politics should be excoriated as such. Yet, the story of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse s not the straightforward calamity the media portrays. Western propagandists would have us believe Mugabe’s policy of economic affirmative action for Blacks broke the economic spine of his nation. Surely, his clumsy, often cynical, implementation of this policy caused hardship. However, the hardship his policies caused was probably no greater than the hardship emitted by Ian Smith’s supremacist policies when the nation was Rhodesia. However, the West did not complain about Smith’s errant tutelage.

    The bulk of the hyperinflation that deracinated the economy was not from Mugabe’s hand alone. Reacting to Mugabe’s recalcitrant independence in forging ahead with land redistribution despite Western opprobrium, the international financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) refused to rollover over Zimbabwe’s loans as was established custom. To repay these dollar loans, Zimbabwe was forced to print enormous amounts of its currency in a pitiful attempt to buy dollars to repay the financial houses. This was the strong engine of the nation’s horrendous inflation. Mugabe has committed enough wrongs to fill a book. Yet, in this important instance, he was more victim than perpetrator.

    Now we hear little about him because he has been whipped into economic submission. Having forfeited currency sovereignty, the South African rand and America dollar are legal tender in his nation. This means Zimbabwean monetary policy is determined more by Pretoria and Washington than in Harare. The dictator is being dictated to.

    For all of our long history of struggle, the bitter truth is no Black community or nation has yet won both full political and practical economic independence from its former masters. This harsh fact had to influence Mandela into accepting a couple of slices of bread instead of gambling on snatching and being able to keep half the loaf.

    Had he gambled, the weight of Western economic and political power would have descended on him like a ton of bricks dropped from high altitude. His government would have been ambushed and its failure would have been recorded under the familiar theme of Black inability to rule a complex nation. Thus, Madiba accepted the smaller victory, hoping it would forestall a larger defeat.

    It would be left to those who came after to initiate the economic reform he could not do. Sadly, it is easier to find a great leader than to replace one. What was necessary strategic restraint for Madiba became a blind way of life for his successors. They moved not a muscle to alleviate the burden on the people. Instead, they turned from the people. Thus, many socio-economic indicators for Black South Africans today are worse than under apartheid. How can that be?

    All one needs to do is look at the mummified performance of Jacob Zuma at the Mandela memorial service. The man appeared to have overdosed on depressants. It is hard to determine which man least belonged on stage: Zuma or the fake deaf/sign interpreter. lt was not that Zuma was overcome by grief. He was overwhelmed by his own inadequacy. In a sense, Zuma had died before Mandela. Thus, the people bristled at watching a talking corpse eulogize their lost father. They booed Zuma. The breach of protocol was justified.

    Today, Madiba is to be buried. Buried with him shall not go our best hopes. He did enough to bequeath them to us, frail but alive and intact. Lamentably, the leaders who have followed him throughout the Black world have not advanced from where he left off; they have backtracked. He faced down one challenge that they may face down another. Instead, they return to where he trod, claiming they seek to defeat that which he already conquered.

    The Western world and its media machine extol this practice because it keeps us in stagnant place. They want us to believe the battle Mandela waged was the last one for Black people to fight. The end has been achieved. The telegenic Obama’s ascendance to the American White House is proof of this, they say. They want us to believe that Mandela’s transitional compromise decision represents the zenith of race relations and the final answer regarding racial reconciliation. They want you to believe this because it neither hurts their ample pocketbook nor fills your empty purse.

    Mandela epitomized greatness. Yet he was as mortal as the rest of us. The time for his leadership has come and gone. There are issues left undone. In the spirit of his greatness, let us dedicate ourselves to doing them.

    Those who consider themselves Black leaders must now grapple with the fundamental challenge of our period. They must devise prudent yet bold strategies to achieve genuine economic independence and fairness but do so in a manner that does not attract punishing blows from the heavy hand of the major economic powers. Neither reckless stridency nor sheepish compromise has a place here. We need smart leaders courageous enough to take the steps required but astute enough not to attract destructive backlash. Those who fail to tackle this challenge have done just that – they have failed us.

    When a selfish leader peers into a mirror, he sees nothing he dislikes. As the mirror peers back, it views things it would rather not see. With the passing of Madiba, it is time that we all take a long look into the mirror that looks back.

     

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  • Deus ex Mandela

    Deus ex Mandela

    In the beginning they took Mandela away from his family. In the end, we are taking him away from his country, his continent, his people and his race. The former rebel leader and South African terrorist has become a global icon. There are not many of these special people in human history. They can be counted. It is a moment to be cherished and savoured. Mandela’s origins will not be denied in future, but he has moved from being an African hero to a world-historic personage.

    No matter what mortal remnant of Nelson Mandela is buried tonight, he has already achieved immortality. For a man who wanted to be no more than a competent stick fighter back in his backwater village, it is a starry ascent. For a prince of a minor royalty—and an African one at that— it is a dizzying ascension to the global pantheon of royalty. Before our very eyes, Nelson Mandela has become a king among kings and a god among human deities. It doesn’t get more celestial.

    It is going to be a long farewell to Nelson Mandela. In a thousand years, they will still be talking about this man who was neither a military hero nor a religious avatar but who might have effected a paradigm shift in global leadership without being either. There will still be tyrants and sadistic buffoons in power, but it is a teachable moment for global leaders, particularly their African variants; a lesson in Leadership 101.

    A paradigm shift occurs when a man or woman of exceptional vision and genius discovers a fundamental aspect of the nature and principles of a particular problem thus altering its perception and possibilities forever. Gaston Bachelard, the great French mathematician, philosopher and critic, calls it coupure epistemologique or a disruption in the normal order of things. It is not just a triumph for one extraordinary individual but a triumph for humanity as a whole, a potential catalyst for irreversible change.

    This is probably why the public outpouring of grief has been unprecedented. Every corner of the human globe has been mourning its favourite son. The public adulation of this saintly man has been without any parallel in recent history with the crowd of dignitaries at his funeral trumping the epic departure of Winston Churchill almost fifty years earlier. Churchill was a hero to many. But he was not a universally acclaimed hero. Even at his funeral, there were murmurs of disapprobation from die-hard adversaries. This is the ultimate plight of the political hero. Unlike Churchill and other great politicians, Mandela was a sovereign of the moral universe.

    So right before us, we are witnessing the first tentative steps towards the political canonisation of this extraordinary man. Mandela is on his way to becoming a secular saint. Something good has come out of Africa. The first continent which became the last has come first again. Something new always comes out of Africa, but this time it is not political oddities and balls; or self-declared cannibals such as Idi Amin, Marcos Nguema, Samuel Doe and Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa.

    To be sure, the contradictions which drive a paradigm shift are not exhausted by the shift itself. They are often supplanted or displaced to another realm of human agency. In other circumstances, revolutionists will stay bray for the blood of oppressors. And it will be foolish and futile to ever imagine that Nelson Mandela has solved all or even most of the problems of South Africa, particularly the problems of racial and economic marginalisation.

    But without political equality, economic equality is a mirage; and without authentic national liberation you cannot even begin to contemplate economic liberation. A population that has been enslaved for centuries cannot become an economic powerhouse by itself overnight. Without the production of modern knowledge and the requisite technological know-how, it will be difficult to leverage political liberation to achieve economic freedom.

    Mandela was a pragmatic visionary. He knew the potential strengths of his South African people as well as their practical weaknesses. He did not suffer mystical delusions. Slaves do not become masters overnight except in a situation of anarchy and protracted chaos. To have insisted on pure justice and outright victory leavened by vengeance was to invite the apocalyptic nightmare that is Haiti to be enacted on African soil. Several centuries before South Africa, runaway African slaves won the military bet but lost the political and economic wager, or waivers if you like.

    It is alright to talk about tolerance, forgiveness and magnanimity, particularly when the shoe is on the other foot and we know from whom compassion is required. But it is also important to remember that there are people who do not forgive or forget. The plight of Haiti is a sad reminder. South Africa was lucky to have a Mandela at the precise historic conjuncture somebody like him was most needed.

    With his avuncular simplicity, his exceptional clarity of mind and purpose, his nobility of soul and above all the overwhelming authority of personal suffering, he was able to rein in and steady the most impatient and starry-eyed idealists among his colleagues and associates who combined the two most outstanding qualities of the revolutionary actor: a passion for justice and equality and a passion for vengeance. He had given everything to the struggle, including his prime and prime happiness. He could not be accused of selling out.

    A man who was born to be a king, Mandela was at once a conservative radical and a radically conservative humanist in the best traditions of those terms. For him, humanity was all one. He was genuinely curious about people and had an uncommon communion with the human soul. His inner essence glowed with affection and warmth for people, irrespective of race, nationality or creed.

    This was why he must have been particularly perplexed by the ideological monstrosity behind the apartheid creed. It was also why he decided to fight the ungodly system with the last drop of his blood. For him, apartheid was not a racial aberration but the concoctions of a few deformed souls who imposed the dogma on an embattled people. It was borne of fear of the other masquerading as the fact of human existence. Those who will subdue the unworthy dogma are not those who have collaborated with it but those who have stoutly and proudly resisted its tyranny.

    All of this does not exhaust the Mandela magic. There are times when actual life imitates art and we may have to borrow a term from dramatic literature in order to plumb the depths of the vastly intriguing and immensely magnetic personality behind the façade of Olympian calm and fortitude. Mandela is the living equivalent of a Deus ex machina or god out of the machine.

    In ancient Greek Drama, a Deus ex machina is a divine contraption lowered on stage when the internal process and inner dynamics of a play could no longer provide a way out or a neat resolution of the conflicts and contradictions arising from the drama. The creative artist seems to surrender his authorial rights to the ultimate creator in a wild and improbable gambit which could only be a testimony to the wondrous ways of God. For some, it is a manifestation of sheer artistic incompetence, while for others it is the ultimate paradox and parable of creation.

    “At any rate”, Leon Trotsky famously thundered, “we shall no longer accept tragedy in which God gives orders and human beings meekly submit”. Yet as in Greek plays which require a Deus ex machina, so also is it the case in the affairs of real men and women. There are times in human affairs that things get so messy as to warrant the introduction of a God-like character.

    The apartheid system had deadlocked into a nasty and bloody stalemate with the potential to infect the whole world. The victims could not militarily prevail and the victors could not politically survive. It required the introduction of a person of extraordinary compassion, tolerance and the superhuman capacity to forgive and forget. This was Nelson Mandela, and by his example he has left the world a better and nobler place than he met it.

    Two moments of Mandela’s magic will be etched forever in human consciousness. First was when he stepped out after 27 years in captivity for the whole world to behold. He was frail but proud and erect ; his head bloodied but unbowed and he was beaming a dignified but inscrutable smile. For many, a coiled mamba was about to be unfurled on South Africa with the possibility of permanent civil war and a millennial bloodbath.

    The second was when the great man stepped out donning the jersey of the South African Rugby Team, the very symbol of apartheid macho. Earlier, Mandela had prevailed on his more impatient colleagues not to replace the logo and emblem of the team. The white populace must be given a sense of belonging in the new South Africa. This was the moment Mandela, by the power of personal example, finally brought down the iron curtain of racial segregation. Many white South Africans openly sobbed.

    Snooper bids a fond farewell to this illustrious son of Africa and scion of the old African kingship system at its most stellar. The tears are not for Mandela but for ourselves and why it often takes wars and strife to find out that irrespective of race, creed, religion and civilisation there is a common humanity that binds all of us together. It is wondrously ironic that it has taken Africa to teach the world that elementary lesson.

  • Beyond ASUU’s strike

    Last week, I broke my promise to keep writing every week on the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) until it is called off.

    My article was on the anti-apartheid leader and former South African President, Nelson Mandela, who died on December 5. I guess the urge to add my tribute to the worldwide torrents was such that, for once, I forgot about the over five-month-old strike which has paralysed academic activities in federal and state government-owned universities.

    Based on the Memorandum of Understanding on the contending issues signed with the federal government, ASUU President, Nassir Fagge, announced that the strike would be called off this week after the National Executive Council meeting of the union.

    I am glad that the crisis has finally been resolved and the unfortunate development will be put behind us. Hopefully, the federal government will this time around keep to the terms of the agreement and not give the lecturers any reason to call out its members again.

    The reason the strike lasted this long, according to the union, is to ensure that it is the last strike by university lecturers over the contending issues.

    It was nice to hear the Acting Education Minister, Nyesom Wike, acknowledge “ASUU’s patriotic role and commitment towards ensuring that our universities are well-funded, resourced and run like their counterpart in other parts of the world.”

    He should have known this before and should not have been making some of the outrageous statements about the motive of the lecturers credited to him while the strike lasted.

    The situation in the universities in the country leaves much to be desired and urgent steps should be taken to address the issues raised by ASUU instead of calling them names or issuing directives in vain.

    Wike, after the signing of the MOU, said the federal government is serious about revitalising all universities and will continue to fund them as a matter of priority. Time will tell if the government will keep the above promise and provide necessary resources to make our universities live up to their names instead of being glorified secondary schools which many of them are now.

    It is a shame that our universities are not among the top ones on the continent and Nigerian students are forced to seek admission outside the country in all manner of universities.

    Now that the crisis has been resolved, lecturers should return to class with a renewed vigour to make up for the lost time. While they have a good case about lack of necessary facilities and funding, many lecturers can do better in their assignments.

    There are cases of lecturers who abandon their lectures or don’t give students the necessary supervision.  Some take on many part-time lectures in other institutions, especially private universities, at the expense of students in government universities.

    Lecturers must be passionate about the courses they teach and update their knowledge to inspire their students.

    University education in the country should be more thorough to enable the graduates effectively contribute to national development.