The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • When will ASUU strike end?

    When will ASUU strike end?

    Worried by the continuing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU)that is now in its fourth month, I decided last week to devote my column to the issue until it is resolved.

    Having written about my own position on the matter recently, my decision is that I will publish divergent views by other concerned Nigerians.

    It’s the least I can do to keep this issue in focus considering the deadlock in negotiations between the federal government and the union leaders.

    Just when it seems that the issue will be resolved to save the country from the embarrassment of having its public universities shut for months, there is no indication of any resolution in sight.

    Unlike those who can afford to send their children to private universities in the country or abroad, three of my children are caught in the web of the crisis.

    One is in the final year and would have graduated by now but for the strike. Another is waiting to resume the second year, while the third is also waiting to be admitted into the same public university.

    They have become very restless waiting endlessly to return to the campus and my wife has had to insist that we include the resolution of the strike in our prayer list.

    We have been praying like I trust many others are doing in the hope that reasons will prevail soon and we will put this unfortunate development behind us.

    Last week, I published a view by one Temisan Jackson titled Much Ado about agreement with ASUU which many readers understandably because of the logo of my column thought was mine.

    The thrust of Jackson’s controversial piece which earned me some angry text messages are captured in the three paragraphs below:

    “As it is, the government claimed to have met almost all the provisions in the 2009 agreement, but ASUU has a different narrative. However, in the midst of this chaos, we need to consider the students. The longer ASUU strikes, the more our economy suffers, and the greater the spell of idleness of our youths; and we know what that means…

    “Does it make any sense to shut everything down and destroy the very system

    ASUU is claiming to want to fix? Must industrial action always be the bargaining tool for ASUU? Isn’t it a betrayal of depth that our so-called intellectuals only use the force of brawn to drive home their point? Can’t negotiation be ongoing without destabilising the education system and sending the children packing out of school?

    “For the sake of our children idling away at home, let each of the warring parties shift ground. Let’s not politicise the strike any further. ASUU should go back to the classroom and government should release the money it has promised to give.”

    One of the texts I got said: “It’s strange that a man of your status is writing in this manner. Have you lost your conscience?”

    Another reader, who, however, noted the attribution of the article to Temisan in the last paragraph, wrote: “Temisan’s article started very well with a historical background but ended woefully just trying not to pass blame on government. How is ASUU to blame for government’s irresponsibility?

    “Call a spade a spade. It is a question of implementation and not negotiation. Let the government implement and pay the arrears, ASUU will then call off the strike.”

    We don’t all have to agree on who is wrong and who is right on this issue.

    What is not in doubt is that the nation’s educational sector has been messed up and the government has to wake up to its responsibility before it is too late.

    For those who think the lecturers have their share of the blame in the university education rot, that is an issue that can be addressed later when the government does the “needful,” apologies to Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah.

  • Salami: Injustice carved in stone

    Salami: Injustice carved in stone

    On October 15, Justice Isa Ayo Salami retired from the Appeal Court as its fifth president, thus finally bringing to a close what many describe as the most infamous case of injustice perpetrated by the government and the society against a judicial officer. During a valedictory court session held in his honour last Thursday, the Justice recounted the torment he underwent in the hands of a scheming government and a conniving National Judicial Council (NJC) for refusing to compromise justice in the Sokoto Election Tribunal.

    He didn’t need to say a word, though it was good he reminded us once again how the NJC turned coward and the Goodluck Jonathan presidency enacted what could easily pass as the most enduring wickedness ever in Nigeria’s judicial history. The injustice against Justice Salami is now etched in stone, not with hand, but by iconoclastic posterity which is certain to remember him for his judicial valour, and the Jonathan presidency and the NJC for their judicial infamy.

  • In Search of… good health

    When heads come together in a well-meaning, genuine, round-table knocking, I believe that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

    As I am writing this, there are many people in this country who are right now traversing Nigerian roads to attend the burial ceremony of one close relative or another, most of whom have died prematurely. Whenever I have heard that someone who had died and have asked what killed the fellow, I have often been told ‘Death’. How is it, I ask, that death can kill so… so… so… irrevocably when it has no hands? Turn left or right and you see your fellow Nigerians of all ages dropping off like… like… flies from all kinds of diseases! Just the other day, someone mentioned how she had been to an office one day in search of a contract and had chatted with everyone at each desk only to have gone back the week after and been told that one of them had died. Talk of a surprise.

    No, I am not talking about life expectancy today; I am talking about how Nigerians are allowed to eat and die in ignorance with very little intervention from the body that should be needling them into long life. It’s often been said that ignorance is bliss, but no one has ever tried to sit down to calculate whether the level of bliss is commensurate with the ignorance that spurns it or even calculate the very high cost of blissful ignorance. When someone eats him/herself to death in ignorance, the costs are borne by the survivors who have to carry on in his/her absence. Sadly, some of them never recover.

    Ultimately, everyone holds his health in his hands, with complete responsibility devolving on him or his family. However, when an individual takes decisions from a vantage point of blissful ignorance, then we are dealing with weighty matters indeed. Worse, he may even find himself not taking any decision because he cannot. So, leaving all issues concerning health in our hands is downright dangerous I say.

    Look, there are two matters compounding this problem. The first is that what we know as the Nigerian diet is seriously in need of divine intervention. It is a given that the larger part of the nation’s population is rural based with little or no education; therefore, the likelihood is high that they would mostly be the victims of the diet situation. Now, you and I agree that what constitutes our diet on this hemmed-in island is mostly what you would call the sugars with little relief. What I mean by relief is this. In this here parts, when a child is given his dish, his face breaks out in grins larger than that of the Cheshire cat at the sight of what he believes will fill his stomach. That is the main concern; what will fill his stomach. So he, least of all, notices that the contents of his dish are designed to satisfy only one aspect of his ravenous hunger. He hardly notices that there are other parts of his body also badly in need of satiation; those parts in need of protein, vitamins and minerals. Too often, these are absent. On a steady stream of that starchy diet therefore, your young Nigerian child grows into an adult who is more developed in physical terms than in mental ones. Either way, officer, we are being cheated by our consummations. Now, I wonder indeed if I know what I’m talking about.

    Anyway, one notable result from this skewed consumption pattern is the rise in diseases. Now, doctors tell us that diabetes and hypertension are almost in epidemic proportions. Nearly every one of two people you meet in the city is swallowing something to fight something else. On the other hand, nearly every rustic you meet in the hinterlands does not even know he/she has anything to fight until that something comes to punch them in the face, belly, arm, leg, blood, head or any other susceptible part. That is when the doctor’s questions or admonitions concerning the badness of the culinary habits handed down from ancestors without end really sound like Greek. Then you don’t know who to pity more: the poor man who is obviously sick and does not understand why it is not his neighbour ‘doing him’, or the doctor who is vainly trying to marry two incompatible people – modern medicine and traditional man. Me, I stay in their middle: firmly on the fence.

    The second matter is that there are just too many folk beliefs firmly ranged as arsenals against the doctor’s doctrines. Our rural folks do not believe that taking things like milk and eggs, etc., is morally good. One, they spoil the teeth and they encourage children to steal. Two, those things spoil children rotten. I have visited a number of villages having large, lush lands for growing things to take to the market while their children have skins that look like crocodile’s scales. The villagers just do not believe in feeding milk and eggs and chicken meat to their children. Come to think of it, neither do many chicken farmers. After raising their chickens, do they not cart the whole lot off to the economic market to sell, leaving the neighbours with only the scented whiffs of chicken droppings?

    Interestingly, even many parents living in the city are not much different. Their credos revolve around preserving the children’s honour rather than their lives. Then people find that in the face of ill-health, honour is not as valuable a premium as good eating sense. Oh wait, there is this health insurance scheme that is as incomprehensible to me as I think it appears to many. The reason is that there are still many questions not yet answered. Many civil servants do not know the limit that can be spent on their health; many of us do not know what happens when big illnesses strike; who takes care of the rural folks who succumb to these big illnesses; etc. Right now, health insurance or not, most people are bearing their health expenses out of their pockets and the health care providers are smiling to the bank.

    Doctors have sounded some warning bells on the rising phenomena called cancer, diabetes and hypertension, which, together are killing people off silently. Sadly, most people put such deaths down to ‘spiritual attacks’ or ‘wicked home people’. I am not here to argue with them though because everyone is entitled to a second opinion, so I am consulting my own crystal glass again. Yep, it tells me such people are suffering from severe cases of ‘deep, debilitating ignorance’.

    Honestly, this country can help itself preserve the lives of its citizens. Even in advanced countries, the government still sponsors advertisements which advise citizens on the proper diet to follow, the consequences of wrong diets, as well as admonitions on taking the right stuff such as milk, eggs and greens. This country can borrow a leaf from that. There must be a way of letting us the uninformed people know why we should keep a wary eye on the calorie contents of our steaming, mouth-watering plates of well-rounded eba, amala, pounded yam and rice, and why we should also keep the other eye on the meat to be sure it does not walk off the plate in indignation about its tiny size.

    How about we try radio jingles? They are catchy, cheap to produce and are definitely more far-reaching. Yeah, I know, in many cases it’s not the knowledge that is lacking, it’s the financial will. Even with that, there must be a way. All that this country – government, corporate world, people, etc. – needs is for heads to come together in a well-meaning, genuine round-table knocking. That is where we will find that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

  • Rage of the rapists

    Rage of the rapists

    Nigerians have largely been silent of something very sinister unfolding all around the country. No thanks to the never-ending twists in the reality show that the N225 million armoured car purchase scandal has become.

    It is the rage of the libidinous. Nothing and nobody is too young or old to be penetrated against their will. The near total absence of outrage over the daily reports of appalling sexual crimes is indicative of how brutalised and unfeeling we have become. We are now so desensitised that the things that ought to shock us we now take in our stride.

    Senators gave a nodding acknowledgment the other day that something terrible was going on that needs to be addressed. They were hopping mad over reports of the rape last week of a two year old girl, Chinwendu Onwudiwe, by a police corporal in Mararaba, Nasarawa State, near Abuja.

    Leading the chorus of outrage was Senator Helen Esuene (Akwa Ibom South) who pointed out sundry ways in which cruelty was being visited on babies. They were being kidnapped, abused and sold as commodities she said.

    The other day a 50-year old ‘pastor’ – and I used the word advisedly as these days all sorts of characters parade themselves as ‘pastors’ – was arraigned for allegedly raping three school pupils at Mpape, Abuja.

    The suspected rapist who is now standing trial before a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court is supposedly the overseer of a church and proprietor of school where the victims were students. The prosecutor told the court that this was not a case of a man succumbing to a moment of weakness, rather the accused violated the two seven-year-olds and the nine-year-old pupil at different times when they supposedly in the school learning.

    If what the Abuja clergyman did is shocking, what transpired between two minors in Lagos is downright disturbing. A 14-year old boy has just been arrested for raping a nine-year-old girl to death! The deceased was said to have been assaulted over five times by her sex-crazed assailant in the Ikorodu area of the state.

    Sometime last year Enugu State Governor, Sullivan Chime, was forced to address the press following shocking reports of young men in the Opi community of the state gang-raping women whose ages ranged from 60 to 80.

    In the last few months litanies of cases of sexual violence have inundated the media. It’s as if a dam burst and suddenly all these outrages were coming out. We should be especially troubled because many rape cases go unreported as victims want to suffer in silence and avoid the stigma. This implies that the problem is deeper than we can imagine.

    No type of rape is excusable – whether it involves a minor or two adults. But I am particularly troubled when I read of grown men forcing themselves on two-year olds. What on earth could be responsible for this? How on earth did we come to this point?

    All around us the most despicable things are happening. People are kidnapping their fellow human beings and receiving a ransom before setting them free. In some cases they kill the hapless victims even after getting paid.

    People are killing their fellows with a view to using them in money-making rituals. We live in the age of the internet and digital television and yet in so many ways our people are still being seduced by superstitious illogic.

    Something is badly broken in this society and until we fix it nothing will work in Nigeria. We can call a thousand national conferences they will come to nothing if we don’t sort out the basic things.

    At the root of what is unfolding now is the fact that we no longer hold anything dear. Nothing is sacred, trust has disappeared. We no longer have a concept of what is right or wrong. You see it every day on the streets. The man who sits patiently in his car waiting for the light to turn soon begins to question his sanity when he sees everyone else jumping the light, or driving against traffic.

    We have lost every sense of the shameful and dishonourable. That is why two people in high office can shake hands on deal only for one party to repudiate it without batting an eyelid.

    In a society where parents actively fund the participation of their children in examination malpractices, it is no surprise that 40-year olds are sating themselves on babies.

    In some other society it could be argued that these sordid sexual crimes are the direct result of an absence of moral teaching. That cannot be said about this country. The nation is virtually sagging under the weight of churches and mosques. The airwaves are saturated with religious noise but very little spirituality. There is so much spouting of that which is Godly, while clearly the fear of God has taken flight in their lives of those generating the cacophony.

    We cannot deny that exposure to the internet and modern technology exposes a society to all sorts of influences like pornography that brings out the worst in both young and old. Still, the insidious influence of technology does not tell the whole story. It is a cocktail of things that have done us in.

    If ever there was a candidate for shock therapy it is Nigeria. We need to be jolted back to our senses. Psychologists and sociologists can study the unfolding phenomenon and provide more scientific and coherent explanations as to what rape is on the increase. But we don’t need anyone to tell us that when adults are running around violating babies, that society’s moral sickness has plumbed new depths.

    What is to be done? The change we hanker after is not going to come from outer space. Special breeds of pure aliens are not going to descend on Abuja to rescue us from the dissolute crew presently in charge. We must still look to the few who retain some modicum of sanity among the elite to lead that rebirth.

    A good place to start is by making people understand that when they go off the rail, they will pay a steep price. A major difference between Nigeria and some other countries is their willingness to enforce their laws. Their citizens are human just like us – subject to the same passions and weaknesses. But the vast majority of them know that there are certain lines that cannot be crossed. Here, all those lines have become blurred.

  • Akpabio’s prayers

    Akpabio’s prayers

    Fresh from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and still overwhelmed by what he saw in the Holy Land, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State has called for a day to be set aside as the National Day of Prayer. He probably means this in the symbolic sense. But whether a day or week of prayer, it is hard not to support such a call, for in a country so engrossed in religiosity, everyone truly needs prayers. Chief Akpabio’s effusive religiosity is, however, difficult to place in view of the scriptures he is very familiar with.

    First is the fact that any prayer not preceded by deep contrition is completely sterile. And second is the plain fact that God would rather have obedience than sacrifice. The reason prayer in Nigeria remains sterile, and the country is in such a huge mess, is simply because leaders have either managed to draw a thick line between their wicked actions and God’s laws or inoculated their faith against propriety. What prayer, for instance, could a governor who rejected and subverted a small election among fellow governors offer to God without repentance?

    Europe hardly prays, and many churches are empty, but their countries are so well run that life expectancy keeps rising. Let Nigeria’s pilgrims and praying governors take a cue from Europe rather than present us the atheistic dilemma of choosing between faith and works. Indeed, it is hard to understand why the enthusiastic profession of religiosity by governors and other elected officials has never for once lured them into the decency and propriety that many who do not fear God or man have long had the common sense and judiciousness to embrace.

  • This is no scare mongering

    This is no scare mongering

    Nigerians know from history that PDP has no two means of winning elections other than by rigging.

    In his electoral Beatitude in Jerusalem, President Jonathan promised a better electoral system saying, with glee, that ‘though we have challenges in our electoral system, at least, it is better than what it was yesterday.’  With due respect, Mr. President, I beg to disagree. A pattern of election rigging ahead of 2015 is emerging as any keen observer of recent elections in the country would readily affirm. And it is certainly not by happenstance; rather, it is a well choreographed test run of what will be put into play in the 2014 elections in both Ekiti and Osun, as well as, at least, the presidential election, come 2015. Of course, they will attempt to deploy the ‘Ondo template’ in Anambra where they will do everything to assist the president’s friend, Governor Peter Obi, to engineer the APGA candidate’s ‘victory’. Other candidates in that election, especially APC’s Senator Ngige, should, therefore, learn from Ondo and properly scutinise the voter’s register into which may have been imported hundreds of thousands of spurious names. They must insist on a public verification of the voters’ list which INEC tries its utmost to avoid whenever it is up to some dubious game. Examples of these recently compromised elections will further elucidate the point being made.

    Commenting on the Delta Central Senatorial bye election which held recently as a result of the unfortunate death of Senator Pius Ewherido, Ede Dafinone , the  DPP candidate in the election, has the following  to say of the electoral  process : ‘there was no election, as defined by our laws. The scale of impunity, assault, molestations and violence by the PDP, thugs/cultists and the supposed security agents was just unimaginable. The lopsided and partisan involvement of state security apparatuses in supporting the PDP and the brazen use of thugs to unleash violence and mayhem on our party members and the electorate is unprecedented. Thus there is now very serious concern for the progress of our nascent democracy and a diminishing hope for peace, unity and good governance in Nigeria, both now and in the immediate future’. The APC interim Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, corroborated this and named specific areas where  all these were most pronounced, citing reports from APC agents on the field, who he said indicated that armed soldiers and policemen were deployed strategically to intimidate voters, while trailers and tankers were used to block the roads leading to opposition strongholds. A particularly dangerous dimension to PDP’s rigging methods was to suborn Youth Corps members to refrain from doing their legitimate electoral duties on the day, a fact which, in future, could expose these young persons to extreme danger or why would they take that particular day to protest non-payment of their allowances if they were not being instigated by those who have the most to lose?

    On the heels of that and within two weeks of each other, a whole state governor, Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, also known to be the President’s friend , at least up until the last gubernatorial election in the state, had this to say of a local government election that was being held, unsuccessfully,  for the third time simply because the PDP’s ‘Ogas at the top’ thought they could, as of old, rail road victory, in spite of the huge development the local government has enjoyed under the incumbent governor unlike when they were in charge: ‘As a Nigerian, I am embarrassed that the police are involved in carrying electoral materials, arresting EDSIEC returning officers and coercing them into a police station and converting it into a collation centre supervised by policemen imported from Abuja and Lagos in order to subvert the will of the people of Esan North East. As a civilised man, I felt ashamed that men in uniform at rather very senior levels supervised this criminal act of the police in yesterday’s (Tuesday) election. A federal minister and other federal functionaries, including Assembly men used their exalted positions, taking unfair advantage of the police assigned to protect them and deployed them for election purposes, detaining returning officers and treating them as if they were prisoners of war and, under duress, compelling them to sign fake results and police becoming Returning Officers writing result sheets.’

    A comparison of the above quotes copiously corroborates the latest devilish devices of the PDP. But the question Nigerians must ask is this: if all these are happening in a state or local government election, what will they not do at the presidential? And that is not to forget the icing of the cake, the ‘Offa abracadabra’, where, in broad day light, the APC was robbed of its chairmanship victory even where everybody knows that the PDP could never have won.

    Nothing worries me more than the fact that even if INEC, the electoral umpire, was not complicit, ab initio; it is completely acquiescent of the illegalities. The Delta Resident Electoral Commissioner, a woman who nearly reminds one of the Ekiti experience, could therefore say, without a hint of shame, that “there can never be 100 per cent perfection in any election conducted anywhere in the world’. Does that remind you of plane crashes as an act of God? Wonders, they say, will never cease.  This was followed in the well-rehearsed choreography by the state Commissioner of Police, Ikechukwu Aduba, who said the bye-election was peaceful because his men were at all the voting centres to maintain law and order; the same policemen that stories abound were guarding ballot box snatchers.

    Nigerians know from history that PDP has no two means of winning elections other than by rigging. They rig even those elections they should ordinarily have won.  It is also well known that the much celebrated 2011 presidential election was massively rigged in the North as well as in the South-East where jumbo figures tumbled in.

    In Ekiti where the first of the 2014 elections will hold, not a whimper has been heard from the colony of about 16 wannabe PDP candidates since they, minus former Governor Ayo Fayose, met on or about 30 July, 2013, to jointly sign a communiqué supporting a consensus candidate. It would appear the party has now located its consensus candidate and what remains to be done is find the ‘official’ PDP candidate, the caricature candidate, that is, who will be utterly dumped by the party as happened to Sola Oke in Ondo State. As in the Ondo case, Abuja would spare nothing; not money, tonnes of it, not the entire Nigerian security apparati, for the Labour candidate while, like Oke, their own caricature candidate, will be left hard and dry. The poor gentleman, Sola Oke, in case you had forgotten, even had to carry his own can at the tribunal as PDP treated him like a wet rag. That is what they are perfecting for Ekiti, and it will not matter whoever that candidate is, even if it is Oga’s former boss. But somebody should tell them they are mistaken. In the first place, they will have more than 70 percent of Ekiti people to contend with whatever their nearby South-West Coordinator-General may be telling them in Abuja. They should be told too, in case they cannot see, the tremendous developmental achievements the incumbent governor will, on campaign carnivals, take to the Ekiti people who are already very appreciative of his accomplishments, even in just three years. They should know that while the PDP has no record of achievement in the state, except you reckon that six governors in seven years is one, their real candidate on the Labour Party platform would have a hell of a time explaining off moral turpitude; at least, that of biting the fingers that fed him so generously and the very party that gave him an unmerited political leverage, even gifting him a House of Representatives’ ticket he never contested for, not to talk of winning, as well as explain why he thinks Iyin-Ekiti, the beautiful town of decent people,  rich history and culture  where he comes from, deserves to produce three governors for Ekiti State, having produced our revered father and the Omoluabi first Executive  Governor of the state, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, even when an entire senatorial district in the state is yet to produce a single one and is crying marginalisation to high heavens. He will now officially be invited by us, his constituents, to personally identify those phantom constituency projects he has so elegantly claimed in publications but which the most due diligent search has not succeeded in locating; not bore holes, nor internet cafes, nothing. We, in Ekiti Central are certainly waiting for that 8th wonder of the world.

  • Power, business and politics

    The  influential  and well known Forbes  Magazine has released  its annual list of the rich and mighty  of the world  and as a Nigerian I am proud  that Nigeria’s Business  mogul,  Alhaji  Dangote at No 41 on the list,  is the most powerful  man in Africa . I  am sure that  the self – effacing  Nigerian business man who  made Dangote Sugar and Dangote Cement household  consumer  products in Nigeria  will be very amused by the categorization  which puts his assets at $16.1  bn .This   really should have made him the richest man in Africa and not the most, as even in Nigeria he himself will  be the first to admit that  he is not the most powerful, not to talk  of Africa.

    The list  has the first four most powerful persons  in the world as Russia’s President Vladmir Putin who  displaced US President Barak Obama to second place, with China’s President Xi Ping in third and Pope Francis, leader  of the Catholic Church,  as fourth. It  is my contention today that Forbes  erred in categorizing our Dangote as the most powerful man in Africa and should have categorized him as the richest and most socially responsible African,  given his public spirited philantrophy which  marks him out as a rare fish  in the murky waters of African politics and business; not to talk  of the corrupt cesspool in Nigeria from where somehow and some what, Dangote  has been successful to raise his head and those of  his many businesses above water  and  shine  globally like a million stars. I go  on to tell the publishers of Forbes Magazine that in Nigeria the most powerful man is the occupant of Aso Rock,  our presidential palace  and  it does not matter whether  he comes from Sokoto or Kano or from the creeks of the Niger Delta  or even Abeokuta or Minna  the two  towns  to have produced two former heads of state in this nation to date. The  incumbent at Aso Rock wields enormous power in Nigeria and that is what the 2015 elections is about to confirm and that does not mean the situation is right or wrong . It is plain reality  and political pragmatism which the highly influential Forbes magazine has ignored  to put  extravagant search light  instead  on a hard working Nigerian providing jobs and opportunites  for millions  of Nigerians regardless of their race, tribe or religion  by  assessing him on the wrong criterion of political power.

    Today  however  I comment on the first four most  powerful men in the world  and show why and how they deserve such honor, and my reservations, if any, on the categorization. I then sneak in some observations on the announcement by the President  Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya that he has opened a web site for Kenyans to  send information directly to him on corruption and corrupt officials in Kenya. Of course I  will  attempt a comparison with Nigeria in the light of Oduah gate  and the  Nigerian government’s approach  to the fight against corruption.

    On  the honor of being the most powerful man in the world,  let me first of  all congratulate the Russian president, especially for displacing the American president from the No1 slot. I say  this with all seriousness because no one has worked harder than the judo black belt Russian to hold on to power by all and any means and restore Soviet pride now ably replaced by Russian diplomatic power and now acknowledged globally by this Forbes Magazine recognition. In similar vein, no one  has been more assiduous than  the current US president and administration in ensuring that the US loses its premiere position or that of its president as the most powerful man in the world and the reasons are there to see even though they appear  lost in plain sight in Washington. To  me the Syrian  crisis and Obama’s handling of it after blowing hot and cold, torpedoed the US president from  the most powerful man in the world and ceded it to Russia, the nation that held the US by the balls and backed the butcher of Damascus to the hilt in spite of the use of chemical weapons which the US said several times it had evidence of its use, but could not muster  the will  topunish the culprit nation-Syria. Instead,  Russia under Putin put its feet down behind Syria and outsmarted US  foreign policy by floating a bait of  chemical weapons destruction which the US swallowed  blindly and forgot its pursuit of limited strike for the use of  chemical weapons on its own people by  the Assad Regime holed up in Damascus.

    The US diplomatic blunder in Syria has given a global boost  of recognition  to President Putin which can only magnify his hold on power and boost his popularity  at home, while making life more difficult for opposition Russian leaders who  have been encouraged to challenge Putin’s leadership in the last parliamentary and presidential elections  at US instigation and  offer to provide local support and international monitoring of violations of human rights by the Putin  regime. This categorization of Putin  as the most powerful man in the world makes his position in Russia unassailable as  this  has boosted the ego,  pride and patriotism of Russians that  now  has returned to its  pre eminent position as a rival to the US as in the Cold War  era  of the Soviet Union. Certainly  the US loss  of prestige in this Forbes categorization is Russia  and Putin’s gain indeed.

    With regard  to China’s President occupying the position of the third most powerful man in the world  I  see that as a very temporary situation indeed. In  a couple of years I see the Chinese leader occupying the No 1  slot as the most powerful  man in the world. I see him overtaking the US  president  who in a year’s time would have become a lame duck president and who right now is battling with even his allies to explain why the US National Security Authority has been bugging the leaders of friendly sovereign states –  especially Germany as revealed by the Snowden files being published at random by the European press. Again, as  if adding salt to injury the US

    Treasury Department in its latest report  this week queried the manner  and  direction of  economic growth of Germany based on exports and said that it is not good for EU growth which really was in bad taste at least in terms of timing.  On its own, in terms of global diplomacy China has been a consistent ally of Russia in foiling US attempts to act on Syria  and  is  also  the largest buyer of US treasuries. Given new Snowden files revelation that the US  asked Japan  to help it spy on China and Japan refused,  there is no limit to how low US prestige will plummet over the Snowden spy revelations especially with China. For  now China is busy making new friends with low interest infrastructure loans in Africa  especially Nigeria at a time when developing nations are shying away from IMF  loans and its never ending repayment arrangements and    socially destructive conditionalities. Yet  China  is a communist nation de facto and de jure,  with one million Communist Party of China card carrying members, lording it over a billion Chinese people. For now China holds five year party conferences to review party and government programs and changes its leaders once in 10 years  and that creates stability according to Chinese leaders. Which really is contentious but it depends on the type of democracy you want or hanker after  and its objectives and values.

    With regard to the fourth most powerful man in the world, Pope Francis, there is not much to say other than that he is certainly very different from his predecessor Pope Benedict xvi  the first Pope in 600  years  to abdicate. Benedict  XVI  fought cultural wars against gays and lesbians, abortion and insisted that the Catholic church must resist such’ fashions of the times‘ and remain  loyal  to its dogmas. But  the church  under him was plagued with the stigma of charges of child abuse  by priests and massive compensation  by the church  to avert embarrassing  trials. Pope  Francis has come in to highlight the plight of the poor and the care of prisoners like

    Francis of Assisi before him. In  addition Pope  Francis  seems to be asking for reprieve for gays and a need for married priests which may roughen some nerves in Africa  on cultural grounds. Yet  the Pope commands a lot of respect and love as his first act on being  made pope was to ask  the multitude to pray  for him. I have no doubt that he has the intellectual fibre to carry  the  millions  of the world’s Catholics with him but he certainly needs prayers  on gay rights and same sex marriage in Africa where the Catholic Church is growing fastest,  globally.

    Lastly  President Uhuru Kenyatta’s web site on corruption is a step in the right direction but Kenya should learn to respect cctv footage first to combat crime, terrorism  and corruption. This week two security operatives were  sacked  and jailed for looting during the West gate Mall nightmare in Nairobi. But  instead of Kenyan authorities acting swiftly on the clear cctv footage, they first asked the press  how it got the information and ominously  on  the use of unauthorized information. That certainly will deter people from visiting the Kenyan president’s web site to give information on corruption as no one wants to enter a  powerful security booby trap.

    It  is similar to the situation on our own Oduahgate when government‘s  first reaction was to find out  who  the whistle blower  was instead  of swooping  on the  NCAA  with security operatives. In the interim in spite of the daily revelations the Minister travelled to Israel to meet the president on pilgrimage and to sign an aviation treaty. Meanwhile  the National Assembly Committee on the matter was quarelling that the Minster had refused to meet it as requested for over 10  times which really is a grave charge if true. On  my part I

    think the Minister  should be given her day in the National Assembly when she returns from her Israeli  trip. Who  knows what spiritual transformation she could have undergone to make her explain  the reasons for the armored car purchases. Certainly if Saul  could be transformed on the way to Damascus a similar thing could happen to our besieged Minister as Israel is not far from Syria. The danger however is that modern Damascus  is under fire and going to Abuja may seem the same  to this Minister. Which  really, under the circumstances is a  great  pity indeed.

  • To school or not to school

    It should be of grave concern that the strike action embarked on by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has entered its fifth month. This means that for nearly half a year, the growth foundation of this nation has been out of business. It means that the institutions where the nation’s youth are groomed in the arts and sciences for the advancement of their country have been closed. This should be scary. Are we interested, really interested, in schooling, or are we not?

    But who is scared? The sun still rises and sets. The poor still cry and the rich still chuckle. Our leaders still carry on with the presumed business of the day. Some still fly out and in at will. Some still consider their personal safety so highly that they must acquire anti-bullet cars no matter their prohibitive costs. It is a fitting narrative for a movie, but movie producers are hard-nosed business folk, not fools. They know full well that the narrative is old, repetitive and dull. Who will buy such a film?

    How many phrases are more jaded than ‘ASUU strike’ or ‘the Nigerian education system’? Who still reckons with the system, if not those who cannot afford to send their kids elsewhere? Why is Ghana more appealing to Nigerians who cannot afford UK or American education for their children? Who still believes in the Nigerian lecturer teaching in Nigeria? Very few, especially in government circles.

    Government, for reasons one cannot to see, tends to consider ASUU members a bunch of good-for-nothing agitators who excel in making impossible, if not unpatriotic, demands. That was why the strike of 1992 lasted six months in the Babangida era. The picture seems clear in the minds of government officials and their advisers that almost everything is required to whip the uncooperative academics into line. Where cunning is required, government will use it. Where force is needed, government will be happy to apply it. In fact, almost anything can be brought into the fight. Abacha tried his best to bully the teachers into submission. Proscription of their association was a veritable tool. The Abdulsalami administration wrestled with the teachers. Obasanjo fought with them. Jonathan has been slugging it out with them, too.

    While the battle lasted, its effect has been far-reaching. For instance, for half a year, university students were locked out of their lecture halls in 1992, leaving you with worries. In a country where a state in some cases has more than one university, you can imagine how many youths were forced to stay at home. You can stretch your imagination to picture how many of them stayed faithful to the creed of decency and lawful living. How many lost their patience, and sometimes their minds, and hired a gun to rob? How many girls fled their family religious backgrounds and headed for the red light districts? How many turned to fraud and have remained fraudsters? How many did everything imaginable and unimaginable to flee their country, if only to wash dishes or corpses in faraway lands? How many teachers or doctors took their services beyond their country, giving rise to what we call brain-drain?

    The present face-off is, like in most other face-offs, about cash, but the teachers say that it is quite as much about their personal welfare as about the strength and quality of the Nigerian universities and the education sector. They say they want about N500b to upgrade infrastructure in the universities, and perhaps a little more cash for the teachers’ ‘earned allowances’. The government has grudgingly come up with N100b, urging the teachers to please manage, as we say in our country. But the lecturers say it is better to pay everything than to provide the funds in bits, likening it to postponing the evil day.

    The lecturers’ position makes sense to me. Shortly before I went into the university, a student had a hostel room to himself, with a full chicken in his meal and a pair of electric shaving clippers for his sprouting beards. In my time, the chicken had disappeared, and with it the clippers, leaving only the sockets for evidence. These days, you can only imagine how many cannot be accommodated on campus, or if they are accommodated, have to be stuffed into one room. What can you say of recreational facilities on campus these days? What can be said of learning facilities, the libraries, lecture halls, teaching and learning aids?

    True, the standards of education in Nigeria has crashed but you cannot correct that by ignoring the teachers or sidestepping their needs. Nor can you solve the problem simply by sending your kids abroad just because you can. Some teachers may not be up to scratch, but not all of them, but even so, the question must be resolved as to how the incompetent or unqualified lecturers got into the system. The answer is not in dismissing the entire school system but in plugging the loopholes and correcting the deficits.

    True, the problem of the Nigerian education system started before the Jonathan administration but, if he is willing, the president can succeed where his predecessors failed. But that is if he will not reason the way they reasoned or see things the way they saw them. Jonathan must decide whether he wants Nigerian youths to go to school or not.

  • National Conference: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    National Conference: Let a thousand flowers bloom

    In a speech delivered in Peking in February 1957, the Chinese revolutionary communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, made the famous and much quoted assertion that “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land”. The slogan of allowing the free expression of a diversity of views and ideas was utilised to mobilise the Chinese intellectual community to openly critique the country’s socio-political and economic system and offer alternatives under communist rule.

    Unfortunately, Chairman Mao and the communist party did not live up to the promise of creating a fertile environment for the free expression of contending ideas especially those not supportive of the status quo. Thus, many members of the intelligentsia who took the state at its word and openly expressed non-conformist views were persecuted and several even executed. Indeed, the suppression of alternative ideas and the imposition of a single purported and sacrosanct truth on society bred the political insularity, bureaucratic lethargy, administrative complacency and economic stagnation responsible for the gradual decline and ultimate fall of authoritarian communist regimes across the globe.

    On the other hand, liberal democratic political systems have proven more successful in promoting virile civil societies, thriving, even if still largely inequitable economies and dynamic innovations in science, technology and entrepreneurship that ensure the continuous progress and collective well- being of society. The context for this liberal democratic success is the protection of the rights of free thought, expression and association, the sanctity of the rule of law and respect for the dignity of the human person irrespective of class, faith or tongue. Thus, the individual is free to think the unthinkable within the limits of the law. The minority is able to have its say with the understanding that the majority view prevails. This liberal political culture allows individual creativity to flourish and enrich the communal fund of ideas for the collective good.

    In fragile societies like ours characterised by ethnic tensions, communal strife, sectarian intolerance and the unsavoury consequences of persistent socio-economic underperformance, there is the tendency to be suspicious of the unfettered expression of ideas as a threat to national cohesion and stability. It is this fear that had hitherto fuelled the opposition over the years to persistent demands in some quarters for a Sovereign National Conference. In this regard, President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-think of his position on the issue and endorsement of the desirability of a national dialogue, after several years of being averse to the idea, is a remarkable watershed. To the best of my knowledge, there is no fundamental disagreement as to the necessity of a national dialogue but a divergence of opinions as regards its timing and the suspect motives of the ruling party in the context of the country’s extant political configuration.

    Of course, we can understand the President’s dilemma in arriving at a firm decision on whether we should have a national dialogue, conference or conversation as well as the status – sovereign or otherwise – of any such deliberation. Can you have a sovereign conference when there are already in existence representative assemblies and governmental authorities at all levels elected through the exercise of the sovereign will of the people as expressed at the polls? Can you have a genuine sovereign national conference with the incumbent president, governors, local government chairmen as well as federal and state legislatures and their political parties holding firmly on to power? Will that allow for fairness and a level playing ground for contending socio-political forces? Will those who wield governmental authority at all levels in the country today willingly abdicate their offices to allow the emergence of ‘neutral’ umpires that can superintend a credible conference to usher in a new political dispensation?

    Even if the outcome of the national conference is subjected to the decision of a referendum as widely suggested, will the population to participate in such a plebiscite be imported from another planet? Will the structures and processes that will guide such a referendum not be the same as the ones that supervised past flawed elections that critics claim are not truly representative of the popular will? Will the outcome of the referendum not reflect the spatial population distribution and geo-political fissures as well as proclivities that presently subsist in the country?

    It would appear to me that we are faced with two options. The first is to have an outright revolution that sweeps away the current political order and offers us a tabula rasa to build a brand new constitutional structure. The second is to seek to deepen prevailing institutional structures and processes and utilize them to bring about desired constitutional and political changes in a gradual and incremental manner. Even though it will be slower and more exacting, the latter is clearly the more realistic and practicable option.

    As the experience of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue in Edo State on Monday shows, Nigerians hold very strong, passionate and divergent views on the state of the polity and the way forward. It is unlikely for any group or tendency to be able to successfully impose its viewpoint on the rest of the country. The only way forward is to ensure mutual respect for contending ideas and opinions – allowing a thousand flowers to bloom. Those who are opposed to the conference must be as free to voice their view as those who fervently support it. This is with the understanding that the majority will always have its way in accordance with democratic tenets and the minority its say once the processes are credible and transparent.

    The two main actors in the Edo drama – Governor Adams Oshiomhole and Colonel Tony Nyiam (Rtd.) – represent critical tendencies in the on-going debate on the country’s political future. Colonel Nyiam was a central participant in the Major Gideon Orkar-led abortive coup against the Babangida regime in 1990. He is one of the lucky few that survived the failed coup attempt unlike others who paid the ultimate price. The architects of the Orkar coup had announced the excision from the country of the far northern states in what was clearly an ill-thought out, superficial and rash response to the complexities of the country’s national question.

    To be fair to Nyiam, he has since then given far more careful consideration to the national question and its resolution. His book, ‘True Federal Democracy Or Awaiting Implosion?’, published in 2012 is a very thoughtful and useful contribution to the quest for a new just and more equitable constitutional order in Nigeria. Those who perceive the national question from the prism of ethnic relations will no doubt identify firmly with Nyiam’s world view. If he can restrain his temper and be more accommodating of other views, Nyiam can make invaluable input to the quest for a viable constitutional framework for Nigeria.

    On his part, Oshiomhole’s viewpoint is informed by his background as a labour activist and trade unionist. Labour ideologues place greater premium on the social question – the relationship between social classes – rather than inter- ethnic relations. The exploited workers and peasants are united by their common experiential reality of impoverishment or inequality irrespective of their faith or ethno-regional origin. In the same vein, membership of the tiny minority of exploiting classes cuts across divergent nationality groups.

    Even then there are points of convergence between Nyiam and Oshiomhole. The former in his book laments that “Our political leaders are more interested in sharing rather than baking of the national cake”. The latter in his comments at the Edo Town Hall meeting decried the emphasis on the politics of sharing rather than wealth creation. With a little more mutual respect, tolerance and accommodation, we can converse in a cultured and matured manner without avoidable acrimony. Allowing a thousand flowers of thought to blossom is the key to a sustainable democratic order.

  • Wanted: Enduring football culture

    We have cultivated the habit of celebrating fleeting victories when it comes to football. We pay less emphasis to details, especially when our teams are winning matches. We only remember to evaluate our performances when such teams crash. Sadly, we don’t have the patience to correct the lapses.

    We are in a hurry to paper the cracks. We have perfected the act of short cuts to success. It doesn’t matter if such illegal route translates to development or not. The here and now is what matters, hence the lethargy towards doing things properly.

    competitions even when they fall within such brackets.

    Others who grow through the ranks, such as Neymar of Brazil, don’t drop back to the junior level because the country wants to win trophies. Rather, they are graduated into the senior level and they blend because the system has been programmed to produce players who can play based on the country’s football philosophy and culture.

    It shouldn’t surprise us that Brazil has in Neymar a reincarnate of the legendary Pele, football wise, not forgetting other top players that the Samba country has offered football. Need I waste space to list them? Little wonder it is easy to replace ageing stars in such climes.

    Growth in the game is anchored on soccer academies whose identity can be traced to the locals in such areas. Hence, talents, such as Stephen Gerrard, Rooney, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Frank Lampard, have been traced to thriving academies in Merseyside, Liverpool, Manchester United and West Ham, as it concerns Lampard. But in Nigeria, talents appear like thieves at night and melt away like ice-cream under the scorching sun.

    Today, the world holds Arsene Wenger in awe because of his capacity to produce rookies who play scintillating soccer. There is no dull moment watching Arsenal, even in defeat and no matter the kind of players they field. Arsenal’s style of play bewitches the fans who yearn for more. With the Gunners, football is an entertaining sport.

    It is for the aforementioned reasons that the soccer in England, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France etc attracts adequate financial remunerations. The way the game is played compels the blue-chip firms and deep pockets to splash cash on it.

    Spain’s economy is in tatters, yet the biggest sales in European seasons yearly come from transfers in Barcelona and Real Madrid. Spain is an economic disaster while its football podium is the benchmark for measuring transfer successes.

    So, why is Nigeria’s case different, despite our prowess in Africa lately? Like in 1994 and 1996 when Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations and the Atlanta’s 96 Olympic Games gold medal, it seems to me that our feat in South Africa on February 10 2013 is more of a curse than a blessing.

    Prior to winning the African Cup of Nations trophy, our football was in a crisis. Our problems stared us in the face, especially the legion of court cases that threatened to kill the game.

    But a masterstroke from Sports Minister Bolaji Abdullahi, hinged mostly on the need for all to embrace peace, for Nigeria’s sake, provided the fillip for what we achieved in South Africa.

    Ordinarily, we ought to have returned to resolve the contending issues. We didn’t. We celebrated the feat as if it was our first. Bystanders took the centre stage to make promises not matched with action.

    For the actors in the game, it was impossible to suggest, let alone do anything that would give the game the new impetus to thrive. As far as they were concerned, what we had was good enough; if for anything else, it gave Nigeria her third Africa Nations Cup diadem after 19 years.

    The Eagles’ feat in South Africa cannot be measured by the quality of our domestic league; 90 per cent of the Eagles stars ply their trade in Europe. This lopsidedness is chiefly responsible for the dearth of sponsors from the private sector. And that includes ownership of the clubs, which is the plank on which the bigger football countries in Europe run the game.

    The domestic league is still in its comatose stage. The efforts of the League Management Committee to revamp the game have been

    rendered otiose by those who profited from its hitherto disorganised state.

    Club owners want to run the league. It pays them to do so. They are unperturbed about the win-at-home syndrome. They don’t care about the quality of pitches. For them, any square perimeter area can hold a game, provided such teams can construct goalposts at each end.

    These club owners hire thugs (of course, they are no ghosts) who intimidate away teams. Attempts to arrest them have been unsuccessful. These urchins beat up referees, just as the club owners see nothing wrong in owing players and coaches for three years.

    League venues are still battle fields. Club owners prevent television coverage during matches to hide their devious acts. They instigate others into revolts to scuttle attempts at achieving results from the LMC’s reforms.

    But who are these club owners? Lackeys of governors and influence peddlers, most of who earn salaries from the clubs. They are so powerful that they organise thugs to beat up uncooperative sports commissioners.

    Twenty- three years after the Nigerian league became a professional outfit, no club is being run as a limited liability company. This should not come as a surprise because 18 clubs are sponsored by government through such mindless club owners.

    Clubs which should set structures that would make the task of producing young players through nurseries compromise referees to do their biddings. Scandalous results have been recorded, with no officials made to face the wrath of the law.

    Coaches are not graded. Anyone who can purchase a tracksuit is a coach. Any player who cannot play the game again is a coach. Even those who served in other spheres with teams suddenly become coaches. No standards and it affects the quality of football that the players exhibit.

    The equivalent of our National Institute for Sports (NIS), Lagos, in other countries train and retrain coaches who go to the field to fish out raw talents at the grassroots. Our own NIS is only as good as the seeming desolate National Stadium (once upon a time Sports City).

    This is the setting at the national team level. Our players have taken their talents to Europe to compete with the best. It is about time our coaches did the same, periodically updating themselves in the rudiments of the game. If we pay lip service to such standards others don’t.

    The Ballon D’Or is not the podium to celebrate mediocrity. It is the platform to reward excellence in specialised fields of the game. It is certainly not an all-comers’ stage. Winning a continental trophy doesn’t translate to being a good coach if you are at the kindergarten level in coaching.

    Talking about the Ballon D’Or Awards, my heart sank when I saw Cote d’Ivoire’s Yaya Toure listed. It could just be a signal to who the next Africa Footballer of the Year would be.

    One isn’t being a spoilsport here. Most times, the only African on each year’s Ballon D’Or Awards becomes the next Africa footballer of the Year. And it would be very sad, given John Mikel Obi’s exploits in Europe against Toure’s.

    A checklist on both Mikel and Yaya Toure would reveal starkly that while Mikel’s exploits with Chelsea saw him win the Europa Cup, Africa Cup of Nations and, appearance at the Confederations Cup, the same cannot be said of Toure whose club, Manchester City did not even win a woodenware much more a silverware. So, what parameters got Toure on the shortlist of Ball on D’Or?

    It would be a travesty of the worst kind if Yaya Toure is crowned African Footballer of the Year ahead of Mikel or Victor Moses. Could this be another Francophone conspiracy? We can only wait and see.

    If Mikel misses out on the award this year, it would take a long while for us to have the right calibre of players who can excel at the top level. Mark my words.