The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Jonathan’s SNC: a gathering of the elites, by the elites and for the elites? (2)

    Jonathan’s SNC: a gathering of the elites, by the elites and for the elites? (2)

    readily admit it: it is no easy task to link the urgent need to redefine relations between the centre and the geopolitical zones and states of the Nigerian federation toward equitable administrative and fiscal federalism with the equally urgent need to redistribute the wealth and resources of the country equitably between the few haves with the vast multitudes of the have-nots across the length and breadth of the country. Part of the difficulty lies in precisely the fact that, with few exceptions, the majority of the proponents of the SNC in Nigeria in the past few decades have not given much thought to the need to link the two.

    But there is another reason for this difficulty and it is this: everywhere in the world, it is always a daunting task to simultaneously fight for just and equitable distribution of wealth and resources between, on the one hand, the various parts of a nation and, on the other hand, between the few rich and the teeming masses of the poor and the dispossessed. And on this point, one of the great ironies – or perhaps tragedies – of the politics of just and equitable distribution of wealth and resources in the nation-states of the world is the fact that far too often, the poor and the disenfranchised themselves are successfully co-opted into service as foot soldiers of the struggles of political elites for equality and parity between the constituent or federating parts of nations. The post-independence history of Africa and other parts of the developing world is rife with the terrible consequences of this great misplacement of priorities and allegiances in which the poor and the dispossessed wage wars against one another at the behest of political elites whose one and only goal is to carve out ethnic or geopolitical fiefdoms for themselves. How does this general pattern apply to Nigeria and, more concretely, what is its relevance to the SNC?

    Even with its vast oil wealth, Nigeria is still a poor country and the struggle for sharing the nation’s resources equally between the geopolitical zones and ethnic groups of the country occupies a commanding space in the political imagination of our elites and their supporters, leaving little or no space for attention to the struggles of the poor and socially and politically marginalised across the length and breadth of the land. We know only too well the slogans, catchphrases and demands through which this fixation on sharing the nation’s wealth only among our elites are manipulatively framed by reference to the nation’s constituent parts. But just for the records, here are some of them: Whose turn is it to produce the next president? Why are appointments to key posts in the federal cabinet and directorships of major, lucrative parastatals so skewed in favour of particular zones and ethnic groups? Which zones of the country get the lion’s share of federal contracts? Ambassadors, heads of the different units of the armed services, the large entourage of favored elites that typically accompany the President on his countless foreign trips, cronies who get generous grants to make government-sponsored pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem, Pro-Chancellors and Heads of Council of our universities – how well do they reflect the federal character of the nation? Why must responsibility for many public services and amenities like policing, education, health, licensing of companies, registering of patents, youth development, and sports and recreation be located at Abuja when they could be much better organized and dispensed at the state or local level? And again, let us state the most weighty and portentous of then all: Whose geopolitical and ethno-national turn is it to produce the next president? And when he is elected – so far, it has always been a “he” – will he use the vast concentration of power and authority in his office to the benefit of all parts of the country rather than just his own “people”, his own region?

    If the reader of this piece has noticed or suspected a note of sarcasm in my profile of these elements of the politics of ethnic and geopolitical manipulation among our elites, I readily admit that, yes, I am being somewhat sarcastic here. This is because I look around me and I observe that the only people who have really benefitted from the struggles for fair sharing of resources among all the parts of the country have been our elites, pure and simple. But having made this admission, I will be the first to also admit that no matter how much sarcasm one may make about how elites from different parts of the country manipulate struggles over the sharing of the nation’s wealth and resources between the constituent parts of the nation to their own benefit, this kind of politics will always be with us. I repeat: just as no nation in the world has transcended the politics of revenue sharing among all the demographic and geopolitical units of any given nation, so will we in our country always have to contend with this politics of equitable balance of forces between the parts within the whole.

    But then there arises the absolutely crucial question of the other side of the equation in the sharing of the wealth and resources of nations between the rulers and the ruled, the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. The happy nations and societies of the world combine these two levels and forms of political struggles over the sharing of resources; the unhappy nations and societies keep them apart simply by substituting one for the other. In other words, in the more progressive and egalitarian nations of the world, simultaneously as every effort is made to cement equitable distribution of resources between different parts of a nation, strenuous efforts are also made to prevent wide gaps between the rich and the poor of all parts of the nation. Our own country is such a tragically unhappy and unstable land at the present time precisely because with regard to this principle that operates among all the nations of the world, we have for the most part kept rigidly apart the distribution of resources between the different parts of the country and the distribution of resources between the tiny minority that have too much and the vast majority that have far too little.

    If Jonathan’s SNC does in fact take place look, compatriot, for the conference to be dominated in composition and agenda by political elites whose primary, if not exclusive interest will be to redefine or redraw the lines of power and sovereignty between the centre and the states of the federation and between the different geopolitical zones and ethno-national communities of the country. Look for great attentiveness of the confreres to fiscal and administrative federalism. Look for talk of resource control and the principle of derivation. Look even for much talk around the idea of a rotational or collegiate presidency. There is nothing inherently wrong in having these themes or ideas robustly engaged at the coming SNC. Only let us not fool ourselves into believing that Jonathan’s SNC can have any iota of credibility or legitimacy if the terrible social and economic conditions of the great majority of Nigerians at the present time are excluded from the deliberations or are deferred to another day, another SNC of the future. There is no shortage of very knowledgeable, wise, just and patriotic individuals and civil society groups in our country that can ably represent these interests at the SNC. And also: workers, tradesmen and women, professional associations, youth organizations, pensioners representatives, all have able leaders and spokespersons aplenty that can present the experience and aspirations of the masses of ordinary Nigerians at the SNC. Their inclusion in the SNC of Jonathan would be about the only indicator, the only guarantee we have that the President is not thinking of convening a gathering of political elites, by the elites and for the elites.

    Like many others who have commented on this subject, I too wonder why Jonathan, who has steadfastly refused to consider, let alone talk of the necessity of the SNC for many years now, all of a sudden decided to spring this surprise on us all at precisely the moment of great weakness and total loss of sense of direction in his presidency. But I suggest that this is no reason to boycott the SNC, given a readiness to get out of the proceedings at the very first signs that Jonathan has his own agenda, his own secret reasons for convening the conference. Almost without exception, the Jonathan presidency has botched just about every opportunity that has come its way to rid the land of insecurity, mounting levels of poverty and immiseration, disunity, statist and non-statist violence and anxiety and fear around the coming elections of 2015. Perhaps, but only perhaps, this coming SNC may be his and our last chance to arrest the nation’s drift toward chaos, anarchy or worse.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Trivial women protesters of Abuja

    Trivial women protesters of Abuja

    Last Monday, hundreds of market women under the aegis of the Market Women Association of Nigeria staged a protest to the National Assembly and Ministry of Education to put pressure on striking university teachers. The reason given by the women for the protest is, however, difficult to rationalise. According to them: “We are here to tell you (the person who received the protesters) we have done our investigation and seen that we can no longer keep our children in the house. What ASUU is looking for is for us to cut our heads and give them. You cannot compare federal and state universities… We trade to send our children to school. It took America 350 years to get there; hence we need to do things gradually. Let us repair our country. Our children have not been in school for the past four months. If the lecturers don’t do what is expected of them, we will go and close their schools…We took to the streets because ASUU has refused to have the face of humans. We are stakeholders because we are mothers. They should resolve this thing between them and government so that our children can go back to school.”

    Had the women discussed with their husbands and children before taking to the streets, it is unlikely their protests would be directed at ASUU, for ASUU is as much a victim as the idle students and longsuffering parents. The problem, notwithstanding the hysteria of paid and misguided students’ union leaders, is plainly the refusal of the government to honour agreements. What kind of character and principles are market women teaching their children when they sanction the breaking of agreements and contracts?

    The problem of education is of course much more complex than ASUU strike can resolve; but first, pressure should be applied in the right place in order not to leave us beaming like fools, and our mothers preening like drunken peacocks.

  • What quick way to abort a National Conference!

    What quick way to abort a National Conference!

    That the definition of the political reality of Nigeria by the North is starkly different from that of the South indicates that the division in the country is very deep.

    President Jonathan’s most recent statement on the national conference he proposed about two weeks ago has almost thrown the idea back in the ocean of doubt that had characterised the efforts of those who tried the idea before him. More importantly, the president has himself applauded Senator Bola Tinubu as an infallible analyst of Nigerian party politics and as the prophet whose assessment of Jonathan’s presidency must not be missed. The worrisome part of Jonathan’s assurances to his visitors on the occasion of the just concluded Muslim festival is his taking back with the left hand what he offered with the right hand just two weeks ago.

    While several commentators on the announcement of a committee to work out modalities for a national conference “to provide a platform that will reinforce the ties that bind the country’s many ethnic nationalities and ensure that Nigeria’s immense diversity continues to be a source of strength and greatness,” have, despite their awareness of the problems with governance of the country in the last four years, been pleading that the message be separated from the messenger, President Jonathan himself assured Nigerians on the last day of this year’s Eid-El-Kabir that it is more appropriate to conflate the message and the messenger. What an easy way for a ruling president to confirm the prescience of his opposition leader!

    But the emphasis today is not on President Jonathan’s attempt to pre-empt a committee he set up only fifteen days ago nor to castigate him for quickly confirming Senator Tinubu’s fears. He will not be the first president in recent times to make nonsense of his advisers. President Olusegun Obasanjo said when he was swearing in his Special Advisers a few years ago that he did not appoint them because he wanted to take their advice and that they should always remember that he was under no obligation to take their advice. The advisers still accepted to be sworn in, even when the person who appointed them told them upfront that the game was over. President Jonathan does not have the brusqueness of Obasanjo, but by announcing his intention to send the outcomes of the conference to the national assembly as part of items for amendment, he too has shown that he is ready to do the job of the committee whenever he chooses to do so. The purpose of today’s piece is to let the president and his advisers know that opting to send the outcomes of the national conference to the legislators that have been talking about amending the 1999 Constitution for over two years is a quick way to abort the conference before its due date.

    It is necessary to discuss the implications of following President Jonathan’s new route to “providing a platform to reinforce the ties that bind the country’s many ethnic nationalities and ensure that Nigeria’s immense diversity continues to be a source of strength and greatness.” To believe that the national assembly, as presently structured, can transform conference outcomes to amendments during the life of the current assembly is unrealistic. The assembly has not been able to agree on items that grew up within its chambers in over two years; it is not likely to be able to digest new constitutional provisions arrived at by a conference that may not include members of the national assembly.

    In addition, the national assembly itself is part of the problem that a national conference is to address, particularly the lop-sided nature of the House of Representatives in favour of the North, the site of the longest and loudest opposition to calls for sovereign national conference or a constitutional conference to craft a people’s constitution. This approach is, as I said in a recent book: Federalism and the Yoruba Character, similar to attempting to cure drunkenness with more drunkenness. Nigerians have since its inception challenged the accurateness of the census upon which the proportional representation that created the current national assembly was made. Leaving the outcomes of the conference to the national assembly to ratify is making the conference to be dead on arrival, as people say in popular language.

    Given the vitriolic nature of opposition from the North to calls for sovereign national conference or constitutional conference, expecting the current national assembly to ratify any recommendations from Jonathan’s national conference is over-sanguine. For example, some northern governors have been reported to refuse to send people from his state to any conference. Some leaders from the North have started singing war songs, to counter calls for national conference.Pundits from the North have argued that our constitution is not the problem and that it is the people that use the constitution that need to be upgraded. Just as President Jonathan was assuring his visitors that the final destination of the conference outcomes is the national assembly, the spokesman for the most authoritative socio-cultural organisation from the North Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) said unapologetically: “The ACF does not believe that the problem with Nigeria is the structure of the country or the pattern of governance….For now, we do not have any position to present to them [the Advisory Committee] because we did not ask for a conference in the first place.”

    On the contrary, Ohaeneze Ndigbo has agreed to meet on Saturday to produce a position for the Committee’s visit to the former Eastern Region while Chief Reuben Fasoranti’sAfenifere and the Afenifere-Renewal Group have completed position papers to take to the Committee’s first meeting in the former Western Region in Akure. That Nigeria is a divided country does not need the expertise of rocket scientists to decipher. Two of the three regions that agreed to go into one Nigeria at independence in 1960 are ready to send delegates to attend the preliminary fact-finding meeting of the Committee set up by President Jonathan with spokespersons for federating units, the unity of which the proposed conference is designed to reinforce while the third region has already announced a boycott.

    Offering to send the outcomes of the conference to the national assembly on the same day that ACF indicated its intention not to be bothered by any zonal meeting in Jos or Minna, can possibly be interpreted to mean an attempt to assure the North that there is nothing to worry about. Everybody in the country knows that without any cooperation from northern members in the national assembly, there can be no two-thirds to alter one sentence in the current constitution, even after years of conference deliberations. That the definition of the political reality of Nigeria by the North is starkly different from that of the South indicates that the division in the country is very deep. And this situation should worry anyone that cares about Nigeria. The claim that President Jonathan has not suggested any No-Go areas is countered by his most recent decision to use the national assembly, a body that has, like the country’s 774 local governments, grown out of decades of political re-designing of Nigeria by military dictators. Given the new confusion created by the president’s latest decision, it is advisable for president Jonathan to let his advisory committee members give him some advice on how to proceed. Pre-empting the committee in any way is likely to dampen the spirit of the millions of Nigerians who want a platform to provide ideas that can reinforce the ties that bind Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities together over the years and ensure that the country’s immense diversity becomes a source of strength and greatness for the parts and the whole of the ‘Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

  • A peep into Fayemi’s second term

    A peep into Fayemi’s second term

    Kayode Fayemi’s second term, built solely on  the grace of God, and  excellent performance is already assured 

    When I indicated last week that this Sunday’s article will be a peep into Fayemi’s 2nd term, some people must have wondered whether I am a Nostradamus or simply playing god. I answer no, to both charges as all I am going to do, like the typical student of society, is to critically interrogate events and trends and from them, draw justifiably valid conclusions. Writing in The Nation of Monday, October 14, 2013, Sam Omatseye, the paper’s Editorial Board Chairman, observed as follows : ‘When on 16, October 2010, governor Fayemi was sworn in, I wrote in this column about the high road ahead of him, and wondered how he was going to tackle a state so idealistic, yet so forlorn. Within a year and half, I drove through the streets of Ado-Ekiti, and witnessed a transformation at variance with what obtained while I left the city on the day of his swearing in: the streets narrow, unlit and dust-laden, the houses discoloured, the brow of its inhabitants shorn of optimism, Ekiti did not seem, even with its new chaperon’s good intentions, capable of the lift you see in its streets today’.

    Also writing on the same subject, 23 December, 2012, my brother, Tunde Fagbenle, said: ‘over the years, even those little graces -earlier itemised – had wilted and become virtually the stuff of distant memories. Ekiti land, with all its vaunted brains, had proved not immune to the malaise of a country gone to the dogs; the fate that befell her had befallen virtually the entire old West. Successive (PDP) governments had been preoccupied with the glamour and self-opportunities of office. Lacking in depth, vision and commitment, governance was essentially cosmetic and nothing beyond how to share the monthly dole from Abuja between individual pockets and token gestures of attention to desolate infrastructure within the governor’s very limited horizon’. What they failed to mention with every justified specificity is that from whichever direction you are entering Ekiti today, the minute you hit a smoothly paved road, and could sleep seamlessly if you are chauffeur-driven, you can be sure you are in Ekiti. Such is the amazing network of roads the administration has delivered in three years that you would not but marvel.

    To the chagrin of not a few, I have myself written so copiously about these achievements that many are beside themselves with rage but what do I care since these are self-evident things. I have written, ad nauseam too, that a scintilla of apology, I have not, on that score since the Holy Writ admonishes us to adore and seek the good of our little Jerusalem. Indeed, anyone in doubt about my adulation of an administration wholly in the service of Ekiti people should do what the journalist in Tunde Fagbenle did – visit: to see that of a truth: FAYEMI IS TESTED AND TRUSTED, as was boldly captured on one of the signposts at the mammoth 3rd Anniversary Rally in Ado-Ekiti on Wednesday, 16, October, 2013 which, not even the very busy, highly regarded Ekiti icon, Aare Afe Babalola, a lover of good things, could afford to miss.

    Omatseye and Fagbenle’s words above vividly capture the Ekiti experience until the inauguration of the Fayemi administration and, as the immortal Awo says, since the raison d’etre of government is to work for the good and happiness of the greater majority of its citizenry, there is not the faintest hope, that the good people of Ekiti will ever again elect to go back to those days of rudderlessness and outright profanity, of six governors in seven years – indeed, one was for a day. And because the Ekiti people have twice demonstrated, at elections, that they would see those Egyptians no more, it follows syllogically and realistically, that Fayemi’s second term is, by the grace of God, already assured.

    But didn’t I recently write on this page that power is not served ala carte, especially in Nigeria with the PDP’s ever inventive rigging machine permanently at work? Without a doubt, that party, with its many lackeys and quislings, its Labour Party shadowy ally, and all, it will stop at nothing in its attempt to hang on to its induced minor irritation within the APC in the state , to attempt to rig the 2014 election in the manner of the Offa broad day robbery and the more recent macabre dance in the Edo Bye election where it was alleged security men fragrantly protected ballot box snatchers. Add to this, the story going the rounds in the entire Southwest today, that President Jonathan intends to make the Ekiti and Osun elections a staging post for his 2015 ambition and you know there can be no putting anything beyond a party that has been so thoroughly savaged in the Southwest. But they will need to think again. We have asked those of them who still bother to read to go read, or re-read, Dare Babarinsa’s ‘House of War’ and to remember that Ekiti was an integral part of those historic days in Ondo state. Happily, they can boast of some key dramatis personae of that era among their leaders. It was also in circumstances such as this, that I told, then President Yar’ Adua, when our own Yoruba men of power advised him to inundate Ekiti with soldiers ahead the rerun election that, to ever successfully rig again in Ekiti, he would have to come accompanied with coffins since he would have to literally kill Ekitis to the last man.

    And that, incidentally, was at a time Ekiti people did not know Fayemi beyond his democracy activism and, therefore, a time when good governance, security of life and property, multi-sectoral development and care for the needy and the elderly among us, were mere dreams. That was also a time when, to savour a good road, you would have to take a trip to Fashola’s Lagos state. But Fayemi we now know, in words and work, in commitment and focus, very much beyond description.

    We are well aware that the PDP is no lover of good things. To dispute this, they should point us to their worthwhile legacies, over an 8-year period, across the Southwest whose education they ran aground and left with a depleted and decaying infrastructure. Even with President Obasanjo in office, the Ibadan-Benin Road, which traverses major Southwest cities, was broken into two at Igbara-Oke and you were lucky if your car survived a journey. Week in, week out, at the end of his every Federal Executive Committee meeting, multi-billion naira contracts were announced for various irrigation projects in the North with none ever coming to the Southwest. So appalling was it that at AGBAJO YORUBA, a nascent Pan-Yoruba Socio-Cultural organisation under the interim leadership of Lt. General Akinrinade, a rapid response team, headed by respected Professor Jide Osuntokun, was set up to decry the complete marginalisation of the Southwest. I laughed the other day when I saw them now head to Abuja, their tails behind their backs, to confront the president with allegations of Southwest marginalisation. It is funny, a people who know nothing beyond self, as exemplified by their poster boys, Chief Bode George and Kashamu permanently being at each other’s throat, think they can deceive Yoruba people again.

    Like their compatriots in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti people have seen the light and can no longer be deceived. Visit any of these states today and try to mentally picture what it was like a mere five years ago (minus Lagos). In Oyo all you remember is a skin-toning governor superintending over the dirtiest city in Africa. Visit today and see the Ajimobi wonder; the very reason some lazy bones are wimping over a bridge all, but a few, commend. Think of Ogun and what readily comes to mind is the Wale Adedayo’s alleged experience. Osun was under a soldier who is today having his comeuppance, while in Ekiti it was one day one trouble.

    Every PDP wannabe governorship candidate in Ekiti or Osun should come back home and point to what he/she did for his community after so many years of Abuja derived opulence. Happily too, Baba has gone, and there can be no more ‘fehingbepon’ – impunity – or a rehash of any mama losing her Christian conscience. Ekiti will be too vigilant for them this time around as we, historically, do not fight unless you went out of your way to want to play us. It is then you see the lion in these genial people of honour. Those among them who would be tempted to play lackeys for the sake of ‘oyele’ (oil) money or appointments, should therefore think twice; as by the special grace of God, Kayode Fayemi’s second term, built solely on the grace of God, and excellent performance, is already assured.

  • Gradually, the fog over national conference is clearing

    Gradually, the fog over national conference is clearing

    A  few days ago, it all but became clear that the national conference advocated by President Goodluck Jonathan would, in spite of the best optimism of most Nigerians, miscarry badly. First was Dr Jonathan’s final decision to quit prevaricating over what to call the conference. When he needed the conference to be accepted, he had hesitated between calling it a national conference and describing it as a national dialogue. He never tried to call it sovereign conference, for he was not as starry-eyed as the incurable optimists who have embraced it. In his October 1 address, he vacillated between dialogue and conference. Since then, every speech he has given, whether prepared or extempore, he has called it dialogue. National conference apparently rankles him. Words or manner of speech of a person often gives an insight into the workings of the mind, and the obscurantist Dr Jonathan at bottom loathes the idea of a national conference. However, he would go with anything that buys him time and fascinates his detractors.

    Second was what to do with the reports of a conference/dialogue when or if it is finally held. In his previous speeches, the president had been silent on the national dialogue report’s destination. In fact, he seemed to leave it open-ended, and it pleased the eager proponents of the exercise, especially the advisory committee who imbued it with a destination of their own imagination and choosing. However, late last week, the president finally showed his hand. While receiving members of the Muslim Ummah during the Eid-el-Kabir, he revealed that the report of the national dialogue would be sent to the National Assembly for their ratification. Though the advisory committee has sought to keep the matter of the report’s destination open by saying that that issue was yet to be determined, the fight is all but lost even before the battle is joined.

    Dr Jonathan has, however, tried to be clever by half. He suggests that the electorate could put pressure on the National Assembly to do what is proper with the dialogue report, but he has not indicated that the report would go to the legislature unedited. In my view, not only will the report be doctored, assuming it holds and is not aborted, even the legislature will also do substantial editing of the report, for they themselves are engaged in some delicate form of constitution review, and have definite views on what the outcome should look and sound like. As a matter of fact, everyone who has spoken on the dialogue, whether the president or the National Assembly, not to say the advisory committee which is already feeling the weight of higher responsibility and has begun to talk and act with the infuriating tentativeness of officialdom, has vowed that the dialogue would reinforce Nigerian unity. How can they tell?

    It seems obvious that before the advisory committee is through with its assignment, the president will have shown his hand much more clearly. First, national conference became definitively national dialogue; then the destination of the report was revealed as the National Assembly; and finally, unity became the lodestar of the exercise. Soon, the amazing magician will deal us his most devastating hand, assured as he has always been that Nigerians are an incredible, impressionable lot.

  • In search of food sufficiency

    It does not make sense to first kill the people in order to feed them sufficiently

    There is a simple but strong dictum I believe in and it goes thus, ‘when all else fails, eat.’ Well, there must be an awful lot of failures around me for I suddenly find that my pair of bathroom scales has begun to tell lies again. (Sigh!) That’s p-u-speak for saying that I seem to be gaining weight. But, you really cannot believe everything these scales tell you. It’s a little like that joke about a grandmother who told her grandchild that when people die they turn to dust. Well, what does the child do but to look under her bed and conclude that people are dying there because it is full of dust? So, I now wonder, what failures can be causing me to take refuge in the traditional comfort that food provides? Actually, there is a long list. First, there’s government’s failure, then there’s government’s failure, and then there’s more government’s failure.

    Seriously, any average newspaper reader would have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of government bashing in the press. True, but there is a reason for that; ya see, every blessed thing in this country is woven around the pleasures of the government. Ya want to breathe, beg the government; ya want to eat, tention. What was the government doing about food insufficiency? I learnt the answer in a village. Not too long ago, a complaint came from a village that some people had come asking, nay, telling the people that the government had asked them to take over their entire land to use for planting crops. Were they government officials? No, they were not. Well, we thought it was better to make sure, like; since the government is so powerful here. Well, if they were not officials of the government, what were they?

    As it turned out, they were from the government and they were not from the government. I suppose that makes me sound as dubious as the government. Apparently, in its drive for food sufficiency, the government had desired and secured the involvement of private entrepreneurs willing to invest in farming. This to me is a most excellent idea which I welcome with every breath I’ve got. I still believe that the best way to feed this country with its teeming population is to grow the food within, not bring it from without. For someone as related to the soil as I have been (in more ways than one, obviously), I know it is not only possible, it is fairly easy to do. I also know that the best farmers in this world are not governments; they are individuals willing to bend their backs.

    But that is as good as it goes. It is not a good policy to ask private individuals looking for investment opportunities to go out and help themselves to people’s lands in order to make profit for themselves. If that is what is really on ground, then it stinks for many reasons. Well, there is the fact that villagers are unschooled and unsuspecting people who rely entirely on the government to give them direction and also protect them. Here, however, is the government throwing them to the wolves that are not only devouring the lands but even the people. Now, how fair is that?

    It is possible though that the government did not ask the enterprising individuals to go around seizing people’s lands. It might have asked them to negotiate. However, knowing how sensitive the matters of land can be, and how also very costly lands have become, your enterprising individuals may have found it easier to use federal muscle and might to ease their ways across the land. If indeed this is the case, then the government needs to be wise to the antics of its messengers. It does not make sense to first kill the people in order to feed them sufficiently.

    Let’s face it, the only insurance any helpless group of villagers has is the land. It is God-given, people protected and a sign of independence. This is why entire villages are ever so willing to go to war, fight to the last man or lose all. It is the only thing they have to hand over to their future generations; well, never mind if that future generation does not come. Now, should that generation eventually come, it too must be willing to protect the land in order to hand it over to the next… Honestly, I failed to understand it all before but I think with advancing age, I am getting a glimpse of the reason behind this protective custody that lands enjoy. It is a little like saving for the rainy day.

    True, most pieces of land just seem to sit out their days lazing under the rains, unused, untapped, unspoiled, and uncultivated; but consider, now that they are falling into private hands, whose progenies will they be handed over to: the private developer’s or the villagers’? Then, where does this policy leave the professional, soil-grown, rural farmer who owns much of the land even if he cannot cultivate or farm it? Should he watch on as his land, handed down from many fathers along the line, goes into the hands of his government’s private partners? Seriously?

    Honestly, I think this is a good policy. I have always thought and said that the backbone to any technological drive is agriculture. It not only provides much of the raw materials, it provides the impetus, challenges and adrenalin to invent stuff. However, the policy needs to have been thought through before being implemented. There are just too many questions that need to be answered. I mean, are the village’s lands leased, bought or acquired for this public-private partnership farming? At what point do they cease to be called the village’s properties? More importantly, the immediate challenge of growing so much food at once is where to store the surplus. Does the country possess enough storage facilities that will not malfunction mid-season while holding all our food?

    Now, how did I get to this point? Oh yes, I came out in search of the government’s solution to obesity but I guess I need to comb through the gazettes to find that. Perhaps, I should just stop doubting the official’s insincerity and accept that obesity is not a problem in this country; that fatness, along with the land, has been handed down from our forefathers.

  • America and its debt showdown: Mad dash into lunacy

    The course of recent events has again reveals that racism persists as a staple in the American political diet. The notion that the Obama presidency ushered in a post-racial harmony where skin color is irrelevant lies crumpled in brittle failure after having dashed headlong into the fortifications of mean reality.

    For over two weeks, Republicans shut down the federal government and threatened to cause America to default on its debt. The ostensible reason was their opposition to the health insurance reform known as Obamacare. The true cause of the obstinacy was something more visceral; it was a thing almost primitive in its dereliction to modernity and etiquette. Republicans hate the eponymous Obamacare with a passion usually reserved for foes in wartime. They detest the measure not so much because of the color of its provisions but because of the color of the man whose name it bears. After all, the bulk of the new law was authored years ago by conservative Republicans. The legislation, effective, is one of their own. Yet, Republicans are the greatest opponents of something they themselves previously had written.

    Their opposition is because of the man who now proposes the law. Once again, Republicans have shown they hate Obama not for what he is doing but because of the color he is. While Obama has been the obedient manservant of elite interests, the Republicans cannot see beyond his skin color. Although he seeks to be their man, they cannot help but see him as a boy who has forgotten his true and inferior place. They see him as they perceive most other Black men – as a crime waiting to happen, a belated slave insurrection in process. Thus, they hate him and everything he does, even when he serves them the very thing they ordered.

    Rarely, do I commend President Obama. I do so now. After five years of bowing and diffident bumbling attempting to gain approval from those who would rather evict him from the White House at the wrong end of a red-hot pitchfork, the President stood his ground. When the Republicans closed the government by refusing to pass a budget unless he agreed to inter his health care plan, he told them to walk the plank. He refused to blink when they also threatened default on the public debt by not raising the government’s artificial debt ceiling. Good for him.

    Overall, President Obama is too conservative politically and too cautious strategically to be a great leader. When the better path is a new or progressive one, he shuns that way. His inclinations would rather tread that road which others have walked before. Yet, the man is intelligent and has a nose the scent of impending disaster. He might not recognize the best worse of action; but, he is certainly aware when the worse approaches his portico. In 2009, he realized the economy was heading toward severe depression. Clearly wanting to avoid such a dank blot on his legacy, the man did just enough to avert disaster yet not enough to save the economy from its own excesses. The American economy did not collapse but it remains shaky and hard-pressed five years thereafter.

    On the present occasion, he realized the game the Republicans crafted was akin to inserting his head in the mouth of a firing cannon. He refused to follow their twisted logic; it would lead to nothing less than the failure of his presidency and a totally avoidable debacle for the American political economy.

    This combative state of affairs came to ferment because, every time they view Obama’s black skin, Republican eyes turn to crimson anger. Reason flees when hatred mounts its frenetic steed. Off the racist conservatives go, galloping toward a tryst with witless disaster. Should they bring the entire country down, they care not. To them, a nation with a Black president is a nation not worth having.

    The battle over health insurance reform was a pretext masking the more intensely personal confrontation. The real targets of the Republican shutdown of government and the threat to default on the debt were Obama and the very idea of liberal government itself. After Obama won reelection, conservative politicians conspired, concocting a noxious plan to divest the President of any meaningful legacy. They vowed to fight tooth and nail against anything he did or proposed. So filled with venom are they, staunch Republicans would likely rebuff Obama even if his counteroffer were the identical mirror image of their initial policy offer.

    In part, they hope to so discredit the Obama presidency that the nation will reject the notion of another Black President for, at least, two generations. When they say they want to work with Obama, they don’t have in mind the normal give-and-take of democratic governance. What they have in mind is more akin to how a vengeful hammer treats a recalcitrant nail. They seek to pound him into the woodwork. They see this as their holy secular mission. In the deepest chambers of their hearts where they speak the truth to themselves, they believe God intended America as a White nation. In effect, they see Providence as a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan. With this in mind, a Black president becomes an act of blasphemy; ousting him takes on the aspect of a religious crusade. Thus, the hard-core Republicans care little if their attempts against Obama appear clumsy or seem to backfire politically. They follow a calling higher than immediate political gain. They seek to return the nation back to its herrenvolk origins.

    Thus, the most racist wing of the Republican party, the Tea party, dared to shut down the government although the majority of Americans thought the act mean, if not insane. Just in case, they also have taken precautions that insulate them from political backlash. They have engineered and sculpted many congressional districts in a manner that only hard-line Republicans can win elections in these districts. Thus, their conservative radicalism will not drive them from office. Voters in this rapid districts will reward their racism with reelection and another stint in Washington to tear down the walls of liberal government friendly to racial and ethnic minorities and return it to its origin purpose as a bastion for White men.

    Conservative white men are now a minority report in American politics but Republican seek to revisit the day when all that mattered was the voice and vote of that group. America now lives in the second decade of the 21st century. These men would return her to the fifth decade of the 19th century, right before the nation warred against itself regarding that sticky little matter of slavery.

    The other objective of Republican brinksmanship is to dismantle the liberal portions of the American government. They detest the organs of government that provide social services to the old, the destitute, the sick, and the despondent. They seek to disinter the bones of President Franklin Roosevelt, the author of the New Deal programs that established the social safety net for the people at the bottom of the economic totem. The Republicans want to cast Roosevelt and his New Deal into the darkest part of the deepest sea.

    Obama and Roosevelt are the Democratic presidents the Republicans most reviled. They hate Obama for who he is and despise Roosevelt for what he did. If they could torch the legacies of both in one fell swoop, the Republicans would have achieve their historic mission. Thus, they were willing to shun popular will to shut down government and even court debt default. They figured if their racist god is with them, then that skittish Black man standing against them would ultimately buckle and fold.

    Obama did not blink. He could not afford the weakness. He understood his political life and legacy hung in the balance. In the end, the Republicans caved on both points. They agreed to reopen government and to lift the debt ceiling. Obama won a decisive victory. He embarrassed and outflanked his foes or so a reasonable person might conclude.

    Herein, lies the future high jinks. Hardline Republicans are not reasonable. Having been struck to the marrow by the vocation of hatred, they are like lunatics wandering the marketplace, fanatics blind to but one thing. Normal political considerations are no guide to predicting their behavior. They will eagerly risk sinking the ship again if this tack brings them closer to their benighted grail.

    A careful reading of the deal struck with the Republicans shows that Obama won a major battle. But the outcome of the larger war remains cloaked in uncertainty. Under the deal, the budget and debt deadlines were merely pushed forward several months to give the two sides time to negotiate a plan to reduce government spending.

    In other words, this present deal merely brings Obama to the spot he occupied in late 2011m when he failed in negotiating a “grand bargain” with the Republicans. That time, the Republicans left him with egg on his face by rebuffing his overture although it favored their interests greatly. Ironically, Obama was saved by the refusal because there was nothing grand about bargain save its reliance on economic principles that had been discredited by the recent recession. If enacted, the bargain would have helped the moneyed but been an injurious exchange for working class and poor Americans who comprise the bulk of the population. Under this initiative, President Obama proposed significant cuts to social services in pursuit of the counterproductive goal of balancing the federal budget.

    While Obama has gotten the better measure of the Republicans during this recent tempest, they also have his measure regarding how far he will bend on these fiscal matters. In 2011, he exposed a willingness to jettison chunks of the New Deal. In this, he walks in lockstep with the Republicans. Before, their racism blinded them to that fact.

    There is no reason to believe he will not bend again, if doing so will avert the twin disasters of a government shutdown and debt default. A shutdown and default are immediate calamities all will see and feel quickly; the whittling of the social safety architecture is a longer, more understated process impoverishing the people in gradual stages. Obama is susceptible to entering such an exchange for he is more adept at avoiding impending disaster than in navigation the country toward progressive, long-term economic policies and programs.

    I fear President Obama will see his recent victory over the Republicans not as a validation of the principle that he must combat their arch conservatism but as a validation of his gradual brand of the same economic and fiscal ideology. If so, his recent victory will be short-lived for he will quickly tender it in exchange for a longer-term strategic defeat of liberal and progressive principles. He would have won the recent war of nerves only to forfeit the ground won by surrendering to Republicans in the war of thoughts, the war of economic ideas.

    The notion that the federal budget should always be balanced or in surplus is inimical to sustained economic growth for America and the world. It is a simple matter of accounting. For government to enjoy a surplus inevitably means it attracts more revenue than it surrenders. This excess has to come from some place other than government. The surplus comes from the private sector. In other words, a government surplus requires the private sector collectively run a “fiscal deficit.” The private sector must shrink accordingly. Instead of escorting in a period of economic growth and stability, there are few measure more certain to reduce growth or spur recession than this.

    Moreover, the American dollar is the world’s reserve currency. This very status almost always requires America to run trade and fiscal deficits in order to keep the rest of the world supplied with enough dollars to lubricate global commerce. Attempting to run surpluses, yet stand as the reserve currency, is to seek contradictory objectives. It will be somewhat akin to reimposing the gold standard on global commerce. This will tend toward harmful deflation not handsome growth.

    Also the notion of a debt ceiling is a relic. The debt ceiling was created during World War I to curb war profiteering by merchants and industries converted from normal trade to fabricating and selling war materiel. This reason no longer exists as expenditure for war is no longer an extraordinary item. The American military expenditure has graduated from its ad-hoc nature during WW I to becoming one of the most complex, assiduously planned industrial endeavors known to mankind. Defense spending is now integral to the budget. War profiteering is no longer a special case to be held under close scrutiny. It is the norm; such spending is central to the institution of government and core to the American economy. It is no longer scrutinized but exalted.

    Also, the nation functioned under the gold standard at that time. Under the gold standard, deficits had to be resolved by a transfer from the nation’s limited stock of gold to an eager, awaiting creditor. Today, deficits are paid by the currency the government can readily print. To believe the American government can actually exhaust itself of the very currency it alone can print is to be believe in fables and useless canards. Lack of funds is something politicians say to deceive the people that government cannot afford to fund popular programs the politicians themselves dislike.

    American cannot run out of dollars any more than the ocean can be devoid of water. As the issuer of its own sovereign currency and a nation that pays all of its debts in that currency, America cannot go bankrupt unless it chooses to do so. Insolvency is not a problem. The nation can “print” a nearly inexhaustible supply of money. The more genuine problem is how to exercise the wisdom and discipline to know when to stop printing additional money because the marginal increase in money supply produces more inflation than it adds to real economic growth. Inflation, not insolvency, is the real barrier and concern.

    Thus, this crisis should have stoked debate exploring why a government that prints its own currency endures a system whereby it incurs additional debt to borrow the currency it prints. This issue was never raised during the crisis because establishment politicians, the orthodox media and the Money Power than finances the media and politics do not want ordinary people contemplating this question. If they understood the dimensions of the ruse played against them, the people might well demand such a refund as to shake the political economy to its elitist core.

    Government borrows its own money as part of an elaborate scheme to ensure profits to the biggest players in the financial system. These large financial houses hold most of the bonds government issues. These bonds are virtually risk free. Government has the unlimited ability to redeem them because government can issue currency to pay the debt obligation. Through this round-about system where government borrows its own money, government guarantees sure profits to large bondholders. This is a form of corporate welfare dwarfing the welfare the poor and destitute obtain. Politicians dare not question the spendthrift welfare given to Money Power; yet they excoriate, as inflationary and wasteful, the welfare given to those so poor that they still find it hard to survive even with the benefit of this public assistance. Imagine the misery if they were to go it alone without the meager aid now given.

    In the end, the tussles over the government shutdown and debt default were distracting sideshows. A false morality play offering false choices between bad and worse has been presented to the people. All established politicians are co-conspirators in the subterfuge, some wittingly, most unwittingly. The debt default and government shutdown have been cast as villains that could wreck life as we know it. To avoid the villainy, “hard choices” must be made to curtail budget deficits by smiting social services to the working class and poor.

    Having once stared down the Republicans, Obama and establishment Democrats will tell the people that the coming deal is the best that can be had; sadly, the people will believe the lie and acquiesce in their own impoverishment. In so many ways, American democracy has cast mean incantations upon itself. No longer is it democracy of the people. It has regressed to being a democracy of the elite.

    The hard-line elite, the powerful Republicans, seek to blanch everything in sight. They seek a nation that once again resembles itself during a simpler, less complex time when the conservative White man stood supreme and none challenged that supremacy. The other elite, the powerful Democrats, believe in social justice but tempered with an economic doctrine so akin to the Republican’s that the goal of social justice flees at the sight of a hardening economic reality. As such, the American people live a democracy that offers them a choice between bad and worse, sad and mean. The most depressing thing is the people know they have been had yet continue to seek rescue from the very people who have orchestrated the theft against them. Thus, beware of those who say they wish to bring the spirit of today’s American democracy to your shores for that spirit is now a mercenary, venal ghost of its former self.

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • An untainted judge

    An untainted judge

    Justice Salami retires with his head high

    Justice Ayo Salami, former President of the Court of Appeal (PCA) finally retired from service on October 15. His case is one good example to show that the judiciary should not be in the hands of politicians, particularly when you have the kind of power mongers that are ruling the country today. All right-thinking Nigerians know that the discipline of judges starts and ends with the National Judicial Council (NJC). Unfortunately, the NJC at the time of the Salami crisis took the matter to President Goodluck Jonathan, who quickly seized the opportunity to exercise powers he obviously did not have, simply because it suited his partisan interest.

    At the risk of repeating myself, I dare say, without fear or favour, and without fear of contradiction that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not win the elections that it claimed it won in 2007 in the southwest. Those of 2003 were probably understandable; the people in charge of political leadership in the region committed political hara-kiri which made them lose the states, with the exception of Lagos, to the rampaging PDP. The saving grace for Lagos then was the political sagacity of the political leaders there, particularly the then Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who saw through the shenanigans of President Obasanjo and refused to flow with him.

    However, as the leopard can never change its spot, the PDP that took over the south west after the 2003 election soon showed its true colour. To say that it did not know what to do with the power placed on its laps on a platter of gold in the election would be charitable because it knew what to do with it and in fact made a fetish of its misrule. It was not long for the politically sophisticated southwest people to realise that the PDP had no development blueprint for the region that used to be a pace setter in the country. Soon, the region began to witness the decadence for which the ruling party is notorious, a thing that made the Yoruba people swore to sack the PDP from the region. This they did with their feet and their votes in the 2007 election.

    Unfortunately, the PDP chieftains as usual, so enjoyed the government houses that they were not ready to leave the stage even after they had been voted out. That was an era when people who claimed they won governorship election lacked the courage to be sworn in in public, preferring instead, to do it in the confines of the government house. What followed the electoral heist in the region were litigations upon litigations and Justice Salami’s crime was that he was President of the Court of Appeal, the court that had the final say on governorship election petitions, going by the law at that time. Since virtually all the governorship elections in the region were rigged, save, again for Lagos, the PDP governments in the states one after the other, began to ‘capitulate’, with the election rogues in Ondo, Edo, Ekiti and Osun states sacked by the courts and the mandates reverted to the original owners.

    Although the PDP had been seething with rage over these monumental losses of a region it never won in that election, its anger was later to find expression in the crisis between the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Aloysius Katsina-Alu and Justice Salami, over the governorship election petition in far-away Sokoto State, which Justice Salami decided to look into, perhaps not knowing that the matter had deliberately been kept in the cooler by the powers-that-be who wanted it in the cooler, perhaps forever. That was the beginning of his ordeal. It was on this matter that the deep-seated hatred the ruling party had for him began to manifest, with one thing leading to the other until Justice Salami was suspended in 2011 by the NJC under the chairmanship of Justice Katsina-Alu. The man was never recalled; even after the NJC with which he had issues initially on the Sokoto matter had said he should be recalled. Thus, we had a situation whereby the government, for obviously partisan reasons, acted like an outsider that is weeping louder than the bereaved. The haste with which President Jonathan ratified the NJC’s decision to suspend Justice Salami is uncommon with his government and it left many tongues wagging.

    All these, for me, explain why we must ponder the Salami debacle, especially as the man had to retire from this unjust suspension foisted on him and the nation at large, by some infantile minds that would rather truth be put on the shelf for sale to whosoever may be willing to buy. It is a sad commentary on the way we easily allow serious matters to be swept under the carpet. I have always said that this is one of the things that successive governments in the country exploit. When the Salami matter started, many individuals and organisations, including the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) stood with the embattled PCA but the support soon waned, with time.

    This should not be so; unfortunately, it has always been so in Nigeria. It is Justice Salami today; we do not know who is next. It is particularly saddening because this is happening to the judiciary, the last hope of the common man and at this crucial time in the life of our country. If the government, particularly they type we have today, can get away with this, then, this country is in trouble. With the way things are going, the courts will be so busy after the 2015 elections; we can be sure of this given the desperation that is manifesting even when the contest is yet to start. Justice Salami’s experience is going to be at the back of the minds of many judges when electoral petitions involving the ruling party come before them after the elections. Of course, we know the likely consequences when people are denied their electoral choice. We know what to expect when the courts can no longer deliver justice.

    But the point still has to be made though, that those who ensured that Justice Salami never returned to service from his so-called suspension will always come to their own comeuppance; it is only a matter of time. There is a spiritual dimension to some of these things and when the punishment begins, people will be feeling sorry for them. Justice Salami should however, be proud of his service to the nation. He should be proud of the fact that he was able to hold his head high when many others would have lost theirs.

  • Troubled waters

    NATIONAL MIRROR Front Page of October 17 confirmed lack of grammatical memory: “President Goodluck Jonathan has run into trouble water over his comment that….” All the facts, all the sides: troubled waters. Perhaps, the reporter and oversight editorial functionaries were misled by ‘trouble spot’!

    “Endorsement (Endorsements) galore at Fayemi’s third anniversary”

    “ASUU is feeling comfortable because majority of them (a majority of its members) are either teaching in one private university or the other (or another)….”

    “Fed Poly Ado crowns new beauty pageant” Campus News: it is a beauty queen or pageant winner that is crowned—not the pageant, which is the show!

    “U-17 World cup kicks-off in Abu Dhabi” Delete the hyphen because phrasal verbs do not admit hyphenation.

    “IOC’s (IOCs’) divestment not threat to Nigeria—NNPC”

    Finally from NATIONAL MIRROR Back Page of the edition under review: “…politicians of fortunes (fortune) who are seeking public office by hook or crook.” The Prince of Nigeria Paradigm: by hook or by crook.

    The PUNCH of October 14 disseminated advertorial and editorial flaws: “Our self service (self-service) kiosks offer you round the clock (round-the-clock) service, 7 days a week.” (Full-page advertisement by Heritage Bank)

    “…plane crashes in the country have always been marred with (by) controversies….”

    Glo Unlimited chipped in the next two school-boy howlers: “As you move closer to Brazil 2914, we say a big congratulations (a big congratulations?)….” (Full-page advertisement)

    “Glo is the official sponsor of All Nigeria (All-Nigeria) National Football Teams since 2003.”

    THE NATION ON SUNDAY of October 13 circulated a few inaccuracies beginning from its front page: “Sanusi reads riot act against dollarisation” Truth in defence of freedom: the riot act (fixed expression)

    “State of the nation: Our country at crossroads” (Full-page advertisement by The Code Group) Setting new standards in leadership and governance: at a/the crossroads (stock entry)

    “He said the country is (was) not broke.”

    “Members of the Kaduna State House of Assembly impeached their speaker in an apparent controversial circumstances (why?)….”

    Still on THE NATION ON SUNDAY under review: “…occasioned by the endless lecturers’ strike action.” Insight: yank off ‘action’!

    “Lamentation galore, as strike ground campus businesses” A rewrite: Lamentations galore, as strike grounds campus business

    “Lagos assures on improvement of financial system” Who did the state government assure?

    “…on the ground (grounds) that this honourable court lacks jurisdiction to make the order.” I am not rising yet!

    “…respondents concealed materials (material) facts to this honourable court thereby deceived this court into making the interim orders.” (Source: as above)

    “After reading the 24 paragraphs (24-paragraph) affidavit in support of the motion ex-parte deposed to….” A ‘learned’ high court judge, a gentleman with more than 25 years’ postgraduate experience, signed the document where the three preceding errors were extracted from!

    From GTBank (sic) comes the next wrongdoing: “Enjoy round the clock banking!” And this: “Set-up (set up) standing instructions” (Full-page advertisement, THISDAY, October 12) At your service: round-the-clock banking

    THE SATURDAY NEWSPAPER also fumbled in its editorial set-up (noun this time): “As agric bank hands-out (hands out) N20bn in 10yrs (10 years)

    “The Fulani then started stealing the cattles belonging to the Takad people.” ‘Cattle’ is uncountable! This should be for the kindergarten class!

    “I…was always involved in one activities (activity) or the other (another).”

    “Many Nigerian football fans breathe (breathed) a sigh of relief as….”

    “The footballer turned singer shares his story in this chat with….”Showbiz flair: footballer-turned-singer

    “When kids celebrates (how?) the nation’s cultures”

    Still on THISDAY under review: “Only in her 20s, Mimano has treaded (trod) where angels feared (fear) to.”

    “During her recent trip to Nigeria, this enterpreneur (entrepreneur) opened up to….”

    “…their strengths and revealing their potentials.” Destiny catalyst: ‘potential’ is non-count.

    “Also in the archives are pictures of all the colonial Governor Generals….” This way: Governors-General

    “UNDP Sokoto coordinator killed by unknown assailants” How can a reporter or his medium know assailants or gunmen? So, leave out that bit and go straight to the point!

    “His wife, Esther, laid (lay) on a three seater (three-seater) settee in the living room still asking….” The Saturday Newspaper: lie—lay (past tense), lain (past participle), lying (present participle) and lies (third person singular). I do not know where the reporter and his editors got ‘laid’!

    “…we pray the Almighty Allah will grants (what?) you many more years ahead.” Would it have been years past?

    “Nigerians have discovered that these terror groups and kidnappers are birds of the same feather….” Commentary: birds of a feather

    “We pray to almighty God to continue to give you strength, health and wisdom to paddle the ship of the state to the promise land.” Get it right: Promised Land

    “When a foe compliments your progress, you better (you had better) check that your next step is not off the cliff.”

    THE NATION ON SUNDAY of September 15 offered readers two blunders: “OPM commissions (inaugurates/launches) free ICT-based school”

    “Women, kids flee troubled (trouble) spots”

    “…the technologies that are now available wasn’t (weren’t) available fifty years ago….”

    “After the initial grief subsides, the loss is still felt through every passing years (year).”

    Next on our stable is THE NATION of September 14: “Emotions run high as Archbishop Kattey spends the nineth (ninth) day with abductors”

    Finally from the Back Page of THE NATION under review: “Like (As) I said earlier, there are really no fundamental ideological differences between the Tukur and Baraje factions of….”

  • Between 2015 and National Conference

    Between 2015 and National Conference

    You must give it to them. They are grand masters of the political chess game even if you dislike their style. I refer to the veteran old guard of the Afenifere Yoruba socio-political organization, which has suddenly bounced back once again into the political limelight. When you think they are written off, they have ways of resurfacing in the most surprising and unpredictable of ways – even if only temporarily.

    They may be advanced in years. Yet, the leading lights of the old guard Afenifere – Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Olu Falae, among others – are still sprightly in political spirit and clearly not ready to leave the political stage anytime soon. There are at least two major beneficiaries, in the short run, of President Goodluck Jonathan’s latest gambit of planning a National Conference – Sovereign or otherwise.

    The first is President Jonathan himself, the perennially lucky man. In what the ordinarily perceptive Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah rather exuberantly describes as a political and ideological masterstroke, the President’s proposed national ‘conversation’ has largely deflected attention from the crisis tearing his party apart.

    Beyond that, the move has the potential of creating a schism along geo-regional lines within the new All Progressives Congress (APC) if its leaders do not steer their party gingerly and most dexterously through the mine strewn terrain.

    The other major beneficiaries of Jonathan’s surprise ‘joker’ are the Afenifere old guard politicians. Jonathan’s proposed conference amounts to a kiss of life, a veritable resurrection from political death, for a group whose glory and grandeur belongs to the past. It is certainly not for nothing that the National Secretary of Afenifere, Senator Femi Okurounmu, has emerged Chairman of the National Conference Advisory Committee.

    He would most certainly not have accepted such a sensitive assignment without the full support and blessing of the group. What we thus have on our hands is a collaborative venture principally between the Jonathan presidency and Afenifere.

    It was not thus surprising that in his interview published on page 45 of the October 14, 2013, edition of the Vanguard, the redoubtable Chief Ayo Adebanjo had nothing but fulsome praise for President Goodluck Jonathan. In his characteristically down to earth manner, he enthused, “In fact, there is no complain (sic) except that I congratulate the President for being a listening leader…Here is a man who originally opposed the system but who is now yielding to the pressure of responsible citizens.”

    Given his vast political experience, wily intelligence and much vaunted political tutelage under the unceasingly questioning and meticulous Chief Obafemi Awolowo, shouldn’t one expect a lit bit more of circumspection, healthy scepticism and restraint on the part of Chief Adebanjo on this matter? Should the veteran Awoist not be at least a little bit bothered about the nature, timing and possible motive of Jonathan’s curious Pauline conversion? No sir. The venerableAfenifere Chief obviously has sufficient faith to follow Jonathan into battle blindfolded.

    Perhaps Chief Adebanjo has just cause for his unrepentantly pro-Jonathan posture.In his words, “I don’t see any reason for the scepticism. Those of us in NADECO and Afenifere had insisted that there was not going to be election in 1999 unless we had a Sovereign National Conference…We had made a national conference a condition precedent for whatever we were going to do in this country.”

    Presumably believing that President Jonathan is the much awaited Messiah that has come to deliver the desired Sovereign National Conference, Chief Adebanjo affirmed emphatically: “To me, if the 2015 election is to be postponed for us to settle how we are going to live together, it is worth it. What is the point of having an election only for us to start quarrelling immediately after?”

    So, will there ever be a magical national conference at the end of which political quarrels and disagreements would have vanished forever from Nigeria? Well, let us leave that to the undoubted political wizardry of the Chief Adebanjos of this world while we more usefully try to locate Afenifere within the politics of this dispensation before looking more closely at the implications of the chief’s position on the 2015 election.

    In 1999, Afenifere was at the height of its political glory. The group supported the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to win all the six states in the South West. By 2003, the fortunes of the group had plummeted badly largely due to internal fissures and dissensions. Just as it is doing now with Jonathan, Afenifere went into a deal with Obasanjo in 2003, which backfired disastrously when the wily farmer played a fast one on them.

    Led by the late Chief Abraham Adesanya, Afenifere supported the AD governors in Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo and Osun states for the 2003 election but distanced itself from Governor Bola Tinubu in Lagos. The latter’s crime was his adamant refusal to share elective positions in Lagos state on a 60/40 ratio with the top Afenifere chieftain, the late Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu.

    As we all know, the 2003 elections held. All Afenifere favourite sons in the South West were routed by the PDP. It was only Bola Tinubu who remained standing – without the support of Afenifere. What would the Afenifere chieftains do given their much vaunted Awoist credentials? Would they work to recover the region from the grip of the mainstream reactionary PDP ideologues? To our consternation, these highly respected Awoist veterans began an inexplicable political romance with the PDP state governors of the South West.

    Chief Adebanjo and his Afenifere fellow travellers had no compunction whatsoever in giving a PDP South West governor the privilege of delivering the lecture to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the formation of Afenifere. Not once during that inglorious reign of the PDP locusts in the South West did we hear the slightest whimper for true federalism or Sovereign National Conference from Afenifere.

    It took the tenacity, courage, steadfastness and determination of the likes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Aremo Segun Osoba, Alhaji Lam Adesina, Chief Bisi Akande, Otunba Niyi Adebayo and Chief Adebayo Adefarati among others to wrest the South West back into the progressive fold.

    In the run up to the 2007 elections, the Afenifere chieftains floated the Democratic Parties Alliance (DPA) and fielded candidates for elections. I doubt if the DPA won a single House of Assembly seat anywhere in the South West including Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s ward. With the abysmal electoral outing of the DPA, the group tried working with others to form what it called a mega Social Democratic Party for the 2011 elections with Chief Olu Falae as its arrow head.

    As this column predicted at the time, the venture was a mega non-starter. Yet, the ebullient Dr Doyin Okupe claims that these are the ‘authentic’ leaders of the South West. The presidential aide may probably be right. After all, everyone is entitled to his or her delusions.

    When he contends that the proposed National Conference, whose status, composition and operational procedure are yet unknown is more important than the 2015 elections, Chief Ayo Adebanjo has given the game away. The astute politician is not too artful a dodger after all. It is obvious that the highly respected chief is simply calling for the extension of President Jonathan’s tenure beyond 2015.

    Let’s face it. Nature and indeed law abhor a vacuum. There can be no void even as the constitutional conference holds. President Jonathan is firmly in power. He continues avidly to plot towards the realization of his second term in office. He has had a change of heart as regards the necessity for a national conference. But he remains the same old Dr. Jonathan as far as he desire for a second term is concerned. His party gives no indication that it has repented of its determination to hold onto power for the next 60 years as one of its former National Chairmen openly boasted.

    The postponement of the 2015 election in the name of a national conference will thus suit President Jonathan and the PDP quite well. It will also obviously please the Afenifere chieftains. For, the ideological difference between the two has become blurred. Surprisingly, Professor Itse Sagay, the legal icon, also supports this position. Can the good professor please educate us on where President Jonathan and other elected officials will derive their authority from a minute after midnight on May 29, 2015 if elections do not hold? Or is somebody working towards a coup?