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  • Fifth anniversary of the global economic meltdown of 2008: counterintuitive anti-capitalist reflections (1)

    Fifth anniversary of the global economic meltdown of 2008: counterintuitive anti-capitalist reflections (1)

    Greed is good.

    Gordon Gekko, the protagonist of the 1987 film, Wall Street.

    This week five years ago, the world was stunned by an economic meltdown that was worse than any previous worldwide downturn since the crash of 1929 that led to the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s. And indeed, comparisons with that crash of 1929 were made in September 2008, though these did not come immediately; they came gradually and fitfully as analysts and pundits slowly realized the scope of the crash. This slow pace in coming to a full comprehension of the humungous scale of the collapse was not unusual since capitalism routinely goes through the so-called “boom and bust” cycles. Rather like the biblical “seven fat years and seven lean years” of the dream of Moses, this cycle implies periods of relative growth and wealth that are typically followed by periods of hardship and scarcity. Because of this cycle, it takes a while to perceive whether a particular meltdown is a mere cyclical recession or a full-blown depression.

    By December 2008, it was clear to most analysts that the unfolding economic crisis was far worse than a mere recession. Not just individual banks and financial institutions like hedge funds but the whole financial services sector, the driving engine of 21st century capitalism, came crashing down. Within the space of a few weeks, millions of workers and pensioners lost their entire life savings. As if that was not bad enough, workers began to be sacked in their millions as massive retrenchments in both the public and private sectors descended on the workforces of the rich countries of the world. The housing industries of European and North American countries, together with their central location in the available or disposable loans and credit in the global capital pool, came unstuck. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners not only lost their homes, but they were also sucked into loan portfolios whose value sometimes quadrupled the amount they had initially borrowed as principal.

    As a consequence of these and many other extremely frightening crises, a specter descended on capitalism in all its formations, national, regional and global. But that specter was not socialism or communism. Rather, it was the fear of something not outside it but within capitalism itself, something like a cancerous growth, a corrosive toxicity, a suppurating rottenness. This spectral, profoundly destabilizing element within capitalism itself is the subject of this “commemorative” essay on the fifth anniversary of that meltdown of 2008. However, before I come to it, permit me to make a few remarks on the personal and social location from which I observed that meltdown five years ago. These initial remarks hinge on the supposition that the privilege – or, conversely, lack of privilege – with which one surveys the globality of economic and other relations in our world ought not to be taken for granted but should be woven into the fabric of our analyses and reflections.

    The first direct personal encounter that I had with that global economic collapse of 2008 came from the shock waves that it sent throughout the ranks of administrators and faculty of Harvard University, the richest university in the world, my employer and the community of teaching and research in which my professional life is based. As if in one fell swoop, Harvard lost about a third of its endowment. As a result, a regime of very stringent austerity measures were put in place drastically downsizing the budgets of departments, schools, colleges and institutes of the university. Development projects that were designed to place Harvard at the forefront of 21st century transformations in academia were put on hold indefinitely. In all this, the great fear was that no one knew where it was going to end, together with the great worry that the university’s endowment could shrink further and may even disappear completely and with it all that Harvard thinks of itself and all that the world thinks of Harvard with regard to the upper stratospheres of meritocracy.

    But in spite of the seismic scale of this worry, Harvard actually continued to be a place of great privilege and opportunity for its faculty and students. As a matter of fact, the third of its endowment that the university lost through the meltdown still left it with financial resources far in excess of what most of the other universities and even nation states of the world could count on in the lean months and years ahead. In this respect, the “view from Harvard”, if one can call it that, is only one view among many others from which one can take stock of the globality of affairs in our world. Another way of expressing this idea is to say “globality” does not imply and can never yield a single, overarching vantage point from which everything can be seen in totality. There is no neutral or God-like viewpoint available to any of us. The 2008 economic crash proved that beyond any shadow of doubt.

    Ironically, it was actually within the portals of Harvard itself that I first directly and without any mediation encountered this dimension of the specter unleashed by the crash of 2008. In my classes, and from my advisees, I began to hear expressions of deep anxieties and uncertainties about the future. The jobs were vanishing quickly while student debts were mounting. Where they had been eagerly looking forward to leaving their parents’ homes as soon as they finished their college education and striking out on their own as did most of the members of nearly all previous generations of college-educated youths, my students could only look forward to living with their parents as grownup dependants well into their late twenties or early thirties. Caught between, on the one hand, the shrinking ranks of the very rich and, on the other hand, the expanding masses of the working poor and the permanently unemployed and “unemployable” underclass of the inner cities, many of my students at Harvard felt powerfully drawn to the “occupy movements” even in cases where they did not actually join them. It is no small matter for a whole generation to suddenly come to the realization that everything it had been told, every promise that the society had made to it either had no solid foundations or was based on deceit, cheating and greed. Let me make an elaboration on this observation carefully.

    It took little or no time after September 2008 for it to com to full public knowledge all over the world that the crisis had largely been caused by legal but extremely cynical corrupt practices in the financial services industry. The technical term, the special jargon for this was something known as the “securitization of debts”. In layman’s terms, this means bunching together millions of individual and group debts and using these as not only an article of trade but the prime article of trade in the whole economy. For once you have “securitized” and thereafter own a bundle of debts, you can speculate endlessly with it: buy out your competitors; buy or sell ailing factories at a profit without having really rescued them; declare huge profits without having ever produced anything of value; buy or sell insurance to the tune of billions of dollars (credit default swaps) without having the means to redeem the premiums should the need to do so arise; and resist or even defy the efforts of regulators to rein in your activities. It is no accident, no misnomer that these “securitized” debts became known as “toxic assets” when the bubble bust. But true revelation came only when the managers and chief executive officers of the banks and financial services enterprises that caused the meltdown continued to pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses even after they had been rescued by bailouts from the governments of the rich countries of North America and Western Europe; even after hundreds of millions of people whose lifetime savings they had wiped out were reeling from the shock. As Gordon Gekko, the unscrupulous protagonist of Oliver Stone’s 1987 Hollywood film, Wall Street, declares at the climax of the film, “Greed is good”!

    To or for whom is greed good? To or for whom are the toxic assets of securitized, over-leveraged debts good? The economic crash of 2008 provided an unambiguous answer to that question. Greed is “good” when it is either completely unregulated or only minimally regulated. But this unregulated or minimally regulated greed is good for only a tiny fraction of humanity in every nation, every part of the world; it is calamitous for the vast majority of the denizens of the planet, seen as the homo economicus of a greatly interdependent but vastly unequal world order. Unregulated, rampaging greed, this is the Achilles heel of contemporary global capitalism as revealed to us in the weeks and months following September 2008. If meaningful change for most of humankind is to come on the heels of the current economic downturn in the world, this is one of the catalysts that will cause such change.

    Historically speaking, it is a great departure from the received wisdom of progressive politics and revolutionary anti-capitalist consciousness to assert that the specter that haunts contemporary, 21st century capitalism is neither socialism nor communism but a malaise, a rot within itself. The only remaining officially “communist” states in the world are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba and the People’s Republic of China. Not a singe one of them poses any real challenge or threat to capitalism. As a matter of fact, China and Cuba have both made significant compromises with capitalism; in the case of China, the compromises are very big and very far-reaching. The DPRK is a caricature, a grotesque deformation of the communist states of the first half of the 20th century. Socialism remains on the horizon of historic possibilities but it is presently locked into seemingly inevitable or compulsory compromises with capitalism. We must think carefully through the complex, tangled webs of these negotiations between socialism and capitalism in their diverse expressions and incarnations, paying special attention to the concrete effects on actual human lives beyond the abstract, reified formulations that we give to either capitalism or socialism.

    Five years after the crash of 2008, the struggle over who or what structures shall regulate the operations of capitalism and to what extent continues to dominate the political and economic affairs of almost every nation in the world. The market or the state? If one or the other, to what degree? Remarkably, after an initial retreat, the apostles and warriors of an unregulated market have risen up again and are indeed on the offensive in many countries of the rich nations of the global north, especially in North America and Western Europe. In Nigeria, free and completely unregulated capitalism is enjoying its most successful ideological and political successes at the present time, especially since the institution of the Fourth Republic in 1999. Is this because the market has proved superior to the state? Or because the state has generally been so lackluster, so comatose that the market has made the most of the opportunities open to it by default? What of the tremendous strength and resilience of the almost completely unregulated parallel market in which millions of Nigerians make their living? These and other issues will be our point of departure in next week’s concluding essay in the series.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The king’s goats

    The king’s goats

    President Jonathan on Wednesday sacked nine ministers. Good news? Bad news? Mixed bag? 

    King’s goat. That was an expression I heard, probably for the first time when I was a student of Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, Ijebu-Ode, in present day Ogun State, sometimes in the early ‘70s. Then, one of our students, Lekan Fenuyi, a table tennis star of global acclaim did the school proud in one of his outings and the principal declared him a ‘King’s goat’. The implication was that the young Lekan was to, henceforth; enjoy certain privileges that should accrue only to ‘kings’ goats’. King’s goats are untouchables. Many of us wished we could be like him. That has ever since been my idea of what should qualify anyone for that appellation.

    But, as it is with many things Nigerian, especially these days when we no longer have standards, we have turned many things upside down. Even when we lack the capacity to manufacture things, we specifically ask the manufacturers to produce less potent ones for fellow Nigerians. It is almost in this cynical context that I use the concept ‘king’s goat’ to refer to the sack of nine ministers by President Goodluck Jonathan on September 11. The ministers are  Prof.  Ruqayyatu Rufai (Education);   Okon Ewa-Bassey (Science and Techology);  Olugbenga Ashiru (Foreign Affairs);   Hadiza Mailafia (Environment);  Shamsudeen Usman, (National Planning); and  Ama  Pepple (Housing, Lands and Urban Development). The Minister of State for Defence, Olusola Obada, and her counterparts in the Agriculture Ministry, Alhaji Bukar Tijani and Power,  Zainab Kuchi, were also affected.

    There is no questioning whether the president has the right to re-jig or change his cabinet whenever he so chooses. Indeed, just as business enterprises or other bodies, presidents also rejuvenate their cabinets when the ministers are not pulling their weight or some of the aides have soiled their hands, or their actions or utterances are no longer in tandem with those of the government they are serving. The idea is to inject fresh blood into the system and make the impact of government felt better. On this score therefore, one would welcome the president’s decision to give the nine ministers the boot. Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that this was the main reason the ministers were sacked, notwithstanding the Presidency’s reasons as to why the nine had to go . Nigerians should therefore not celebrate too soon because they were the least in the calculations of the ministers’ sack.

    No doubt, some of the ministers deserve the boot; but the irony is that there are even some ministers that have been retained who ought to have been fired a long time ago. I am not sure many Nigerians are going to lose sleep because Prof Rufa’i, for instance, has been relieved of her appointment, considering the way and manner she handled the education sector, particularly the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Again, one might argue that all she did was to articulate the government’s position on the ASUU demands; the lesson in it is that her successor as well as other ministers ought to know how to be their own in dealing with matters such as this. I do not believe whatever Prof Rufa’i did as minister, including her position on the ASUU strike, was her personal decision.

    The import of what I am saying is that if she did not agree with the government’s position, she had a right to quit, citing irreconcilable differences, or even simply quitting without giving any reasons. But here, people don’t quit; they rather wait until they are sacked. Prof Rufa’i has been sacked now and may become the fall guy in the crisis. Meanwhile, she has, according to some report, indicated she would return to her job as Professor of Curriculum Studies at the Bayero University, Kano. Will she now join the strike by her (former) kith and kin, ASUU? I cannot wait to see how she would fare in her new position and whether she would get a heroine’s welcome from ASUU.

    Quite ironically again, as she is leaving, her minister-of-state, Nyesom Wike, the one that has been spearheading the crisis in Rivers State on behalf of the powers-that-be has been promoted. Wike is now to oversee the education ministry. Could that be the reward for his ‘meritorious service’ in Rivers State, because it cannot be a reward for his stellar performance in the ministry? Even Labaran Maku, the information minister, is now to oversee the defence portfolio. President Jonathan apparently has been pleased with the way the two have carried out their respective assignments. Pity Nigerians who had hitherto thought that Wike has not delivered when they did not know the brief he got from his principal. Now that his principal has promoted him, it should be clear to all that the man has done so well in the eye of he that sent him, which is the most important thing.

    It is for the same reason that we should not wonder far as to why super ministers like Diezani Alison-Madueke (petroleum), Stella Oduah (aviation), and finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a woman many Nigerians know more as an apostle of the West rather than their minister of finance, are still waxing strong in the government despite public perceptions of them.

    What this tells us is that Nigerians are least in the calculation concerning the ministers’ exit. The reasons are clear; yes, some may have to do with corruption, but I have a feeling many of those sacked got the boot because of the ongoing crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). President Jonathan is easily predictable. Without saying it, he acts as if vengeance is his and he would almost always revenge, never mind his seemingly harmless looks. Like former President Obasanjo, he appears poised to take his pound of flesh from those behind his travails. Just on Thursday, Governor Rotimi Amaechi ‘heard’ from him again, when he was stopped from passing through a particular route to the Government House in Port Harcourt. I am sure someone from the Presidency would soon issue a release to the effect that the president knew nothing about this!

    But, wait a minute! Could there be something that the generals in the PDP are seeing that the president is not seeing? When army generals, including those who received bullets with their chests and those who received them on their buttocks begin to scamper in search of solutions to a particular problem, particularly one that they are very much involved in, couldn’t it be that there is something that they know that the rest of us do not know? As I have always argued, it is only those who know what wicked things people do with spittle that quickly rub their feet on theirs whenever they spit. Are our generals being guided by that great teacher: experience? That could be food for thought!

    Without doubt, the question as to whether the ministers’ sack should not have been all-encompassing, given that the entire government itself appears colourless, is not misplaced. But, since the president has both the yam and the knife, he decides who to call to ‘come and chop’. Those who have not yet known those who may contest the presidential race in 2015 by now will forever remain in their blissful ignorance. What we may not know, for now, perhaps, are those who may not.

    But some things are already crystal clear: One, ‘We, the people’ are clearly out of the calculations. Second, the era of ‘super perm secs’ may be over but we are now in the era of ‘super ministers’ or ministers with nine lives, if you like, so super that whatever they do cannot be with blemish. The king’s goats!

  • APC and the PDP refugees

    APC and the PDP refugees

    Therever there is war, you’ll find a steady stream of refugees fleeing the conflict zone. No surprise then that the infighting within the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) threatens to unleash a flood of displaced politicians seeking refuge with whatever resembles a credible alternative platform.

    In the real world playing host to refugees can be nightmarish for whoever is at the receiving end. Sometimes communities and countries fearful that the newly homeless could overwhelm them have been known to slam the door in the faces of the desperate rabble. But no such misery awaits Nigeria’s burgeoning breed of political flotsam.

    Unlike the wretched of the earth to be found in war zones from Syria to Afghanistan, those on the verge of walking out of, or being kicked out of the PDP, can look forward to a warm embrace from a string of opposition parties.

    A few days ago the All Progressives Congress (APC) announced that not only was it willing to accommodate the disaffected PDP members, it mandated its own governors to woo their colleagues.

    The newly-registered Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) was ecstatic in hailing the rebellion on the very day it played out on Eagle Square, Abuja. It, too, would gladly welcome the G7 in its ranks.

    That the disgruntled PDP governors have so many suitors is understandable. The ability of incumbents to swing political fortunes in whatever direction they decide is far more assured at state level than at national level.

    Indeed, it is the recognition of that gubernatorial influence which triggered the desperate, but ultimately shambolic attempt to install a pliant person who will dance to the presidency’s tune as head of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).

    As members of the New PDP have pointed out to their adversaries on National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur’s side, President Goodluck Jonathan, cannot win the 2015 elections without them. Operating as a united team, the ruling party – its diabolical performance in office notwithstanding – still has a chance of clinging to power courtesy of Nigerian-style “free and fair” elections.

    If the rebellion turns out to be irreversible and the New PDP joins forces with the likes of APC and others, that coalition stands a good chance of seizing power. That stark reality is not lost on analysts within the ruling party. It is also the greatest incentive for Jonathan and his people to quickly cut a deal with the troublemakers and keep the unraveling ‘largest party in Africa’ in what approximates one piece.

    Forget the posturing, rumours and finger-pointing: just look at the speed with which Jonathan has rallied to prevent the Abubakar Kawu Baraje faction from slipping through his fingers. From the day of the disastrous convention till now, an unending string of meetings have been holding.

    Even more significant is the fact that the band of rebels for whom a traffic jam of suitors has formed, have been attending the negotiations faithfully. That is not the sort of conduct you would expect from people who have blown up the bridge behind them.

    Everything that has been coming out of those meetings indicates that the president and his people will capitulate and give in to the demands of the rebels. But…

    The sticking point remains whether Jonathan should run in 2015 or not. On the basis of constitutionality it is impossible to bar the president from putting himself forward. But much has been made of some 2011 agreement in which the incumbent purportedly committed himself to serving just one term in exchange for getting northern support to breach existing zoning arrangements.

    All pointers now are that even if such an agreement exists in written form with thumbprints, signatures and legal seal, they will be repudiated by Jonathan. There’s been a lot of huffing and puffing on the part of northern figures over the breaching of that accord.

    We will soon know if such talk is just a negotiating stance or whether it has become a point of principle and deal breaker. Still, we must remind ourselves of the words of one-time German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck who defined politics as the art of the possible.

    It is easy to envisage Jonathan throwing Tukur under the bus, restoring control of party structures to governors in states which have been deliberately factionalised as part of the politics of 2015. The heat and dust generated so far notwithstanding, it will be no big thing to lift the suspension placed on Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi.

    But then negotiations are give and take. Jonathan can’t be doing all the giving. What does he get in return? Stranger things have happened before in politics; but I will not be shocked if after all the noise, those on the northern flank who have been resisting, surrender to Jonathan’s desire to run for a second term. What will be left will be selling the bitter pill to the party’s supporters in the region.

    Caution! Despite its very public mud fight, the ruling party is not dead. It still holds the presidency and all the advantages of incumbency. It controls security agencies and has shown that it will not shy away from dragging the Nigeria Police into its partisan battles. More importantly, its leading lights will do whatever is necessary to hang onto power – including swallowing healthy helpings of humble pie.

    I am amazed therefore at the naiveté of commentators who take it for granted that reconciliation between the rebels and the Tukur-controlled party leadership is foreclosed, and that the PDP as we knew it is dead and buried. It reminds me of that quote by the famous American writer, Mark Twain: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

    It would be disastrous for any party or groups of parties to base their short or long term plans for capturing power at the center on the help of PDP decampees. The question such strategists should ask themselves is what if the expected split never materialises?

    Even if the break with the Baraje faction is irrevocable, depend on it that the rump of the party that is left will not go down without a fight. That desperation to survive will make the 2015 polls potentially the most bloody and contentious Nigeria will witness since independence.

    After 14 years most Nigerians have a good idea of what PDP has to offer and given a chance they will deliver a damning verdict at the polls.

    That is why instead of wasting time gloating over the travails of the ruling party, or dreaming that the behemoth will crumble in such a fashion that it will no longer be a credible vehicle for capturing federal power, all serious opposition parties should be defining the alternative they offer in ways that will excite voters, and ensure apathy does not hand the ruling party victory against the run of play.

    We also know that in large parts of this country, ballots count for nothing. In many inaccessible areas votes are simply written – producing voting day numbers that would have embarrassed the likes of Saddam Hussein. The opposition should focus on developing ideas to checkmate the rigging we all know happens, but can do nothing about.

    Unless the opposition plans to defeat a full-strength PDP, it could be disappointed again as the monster recovers from its self-inflicted injuries to entrench itself for its self-proclaimed 60-year hegemony.

  • Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    A mistake timely made can often be more profitable than a perfect answer tardily had.

    Syria remains at the point of war and thus continues at the tip of global attention. There are important lessons embedded in this crisis that transcend the art of war and touch on how we come to know what we think we know. We should use this crisis to examine how we fashion opinions on public matters. I raise this issue because of comments received from among this column’s readers.

    Many readers oppose the position I have staked on Syria. That does not trouble me. My weekly expositions are not draft that you might agree with them. Their greater utility is in offering an alternative, progressive viewpoint. This column’s perspective differs from mainstream media but is equally valid. I like the back-and-forth of keen discourse. Sharp debate adds more than it ever subtracts. The disquieting thing is that almost all opposing comments were emotive outbursts. Disagree; yes by all means, but have reasons that reason can articulate.

    Most comments favoring American intervention were of this variety: “If your family was being gassed you would bomb Assad!” or the slightly less ad hominem “How can you stand to watch people be gassed to such a grisly death?”

    These are expressions of emotion not of reason. As a race, we must do better in how we make decisions. If not, we will not recover lost ground in our race for political and economic development. For instance, in a government worth its salt comprised of leaders worth theirs, an officeholder would recuse himself from the matter if his family were place in unique danger different than that of the rest of the nation. Otherwise, he would be acting under duress. Nations are not to be governed in such an unstable fashion. To do so would be to exalt frailty and rashness over caution and wisdom.

    Here, I assume these comments roughly parallel overall opinion. If my assumption is true, good percentage of us do not sufficiently scrutinize the information transmitted to us by global corporate media. For a race and people who have been subjected to an encyclopedia of negative stereotypes and half truths, it is startling how easily we imbibe the message of the very same global informational condominium that has libeled us. This informational architecture historically has been erected against our interests yet we so easily believe rather than question it. Thus, my fear is not that we disagree over Syria. My fear is that if this same machine that can so easily persuade so many o f us to become emotional over Syria it may be able to accomplish the same feat on matters more germane to our political and economic fortunes as Black people.

    I have assiduously watched mainstream media coverage of Syria for weeks. Not once have I heard any news reporters or the hirelings paraded as neutral experts question whether Assad’s government actually committed the attack. It is treated as incontrovertible as a mathematic proof that Assad’s is the guilty hand.

    Western governments and the vested economic interests they serve have wanted to topple Assad for years. They certainly want to prevent his imminent victory over the weakening rebels. These same economic interests own the news networks. The media houses work not to disseminate truth, advance honest debate or promote objective analysis. Their task is to promulgate the opinions of those who fund their payrolls. Such is how the world currently turns.

    The media houses are the butlers and stevedores of the powerful and mighty who seek to perpetuate their control of the world by controlling a good portion of our mind and opinions.

    At this moment, I am skeptical about the claim against Assad for particular act. He has done enough to consign himself to a terrible afterlife. There is no need to attribute to him the wrongs of others for he has enough of his own. The evidence adduced against him is not wholly convincing. There is also a quantum of evidence leading to a different conclusion but that information has been embargoed by corporate media.

    In the end, I could be wrong. However, I might be right. The bigger point is that we should allow reason and facts to guide us and forbid propaganda-fueled emotions from turning us into the instruments of other people’s designs. As much as possible, I came to my position based on the facts as I know them.

    That Assad would plot such an attack is illogical. He was winning the war and decisively so. Also the opinion the rebels had not capacity for this atrocity is unfounded. The UN already concluded rebels used sarin gas months ago to lethal effect. Neutral military analysts also believe rebel arsenals possess rockets with gas-filled warheads.

    America claims over 1400 people were killed in the incident. However, the France-based medical NGO, whose doctors were on the ground, estimates fatalities at 350. The discrepancy is too large to ignore.

    American political leaders have stood before the world claiming the evidence against Assad is “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Yet, the American intelligence community is divided because there are many shadows and even more doubts. Some believe Assad is the culprit. Yet, some analysts working in the American government believe their own clandestine agency, in league with the rebels and other dark operatives, concocted the incident to pull America into the conflict. Yet, corporate media has boycotted this jarring news because it does not fit their thematic narrative and the rush to war against Syria.

    Last week, a group of retired intelligence officers, Veteran Intelligence Officers for Sanity (VIPS) sent President Obama a disquieting memorandum. The missive’s dozen signatories warned the President not to embark on war based on dubious conclusions founded on incomplete evidence. VIPS members claimed contact with intelligence analysts still in government employ. These analysts have informed VIPS that the preponderant evidence points to a conclusion contrary to the one dominating the airwaves. The memo mentions a subtle but important point the laymen would overlook. The non-classified document the American government published to defend its push for military action was released by the White House and not an intelligence agency. This is not standard procedure. The deviation is because the American intelligence community is strongly divided on the matter. Thus, the White House made a political decision against Assad but that decision might not accord with the true facts.

    The memo also reveals a secret meeting in Turkey on August 13-14, the week before the fateful incident. The meeting was attended by American, Israeli, Saudi and Turkish clandestine officers as well as by rebel leaders. Allegedly, the rebels were told they would soon benefit from a massive influx of weapons and war materiel. There was talk of a mysterious event that would soon occur in Syria, bringing America actively into the war.

    If this report is true, the intelligence agents at the meeting apparently are as gifted in prophecy as they are in dark operations. The simpler explanation is that they could forecast this peculiar future event because they were its authors.

    The VIPS memo is not to be summarily dismissed. VIPS wrote a similar memo to President Bush cautioning against the dash to war in Iraq based on dissimulation. Bush ignored the advice. He was wrong. VIPS was right. Ten years later, Iraqi is mess. Perhaps the most strategic military blunder of the last fifty years, the primary result of the war has been to turn Iraq into a client of Iran. Rarely has a nation so unnecessarily and unwisely expended so much just to benefit a mortal foe.

    If media houses were objective, they would report the VIPS memo. They would investigate the claimed divergence within the intelligence community and the secret meeting in Turkey where intelligence agents demonstrated a remarkable clairvoyance. However, corporate media has buried these and other reports that don’t mesh with the yarn they want to spin. As such, they act not as objective news outlets but as instruments of government. They are the private sector equivalent of a ministry of information.

    In the end, Assad may have committed this atrocity. However, the evidence is not as convincing as portrayed. There is substantial evidence pointing in the other direction. Yet, global corporate media has no stomach to show us things that may lead to independent thought and weighing of complex facts. Instead, they show us videos that may be staged in whole or part. Then point and keep pointing an accusatory finger at the sinister figure we all love to abhor. This rouses emotions yet dulls the mind. They manipulate our decency and humanity to make us feel Assad must be punished in the worse way. We have been manipulated into a subtle trap where our emotions work against our mind.

    Another important lesson is that we must adjust our perspectives of America. It is a great nation but one with a government handicapped by narrow-minded, often banal politicians. The current crop of leaders is so much less than the nation they lead. Statesmen are few; political journeymen abound. Ambition is more abundant than wisdom. We are used to looking at a nation’s leaders as a symbolizing the nation’s greatness. This is no longer the case in America. Collectively, the nation’s leaders are the most ineffectual group since the Vietnam War. They do not represent greatness’s continuity. They prove greatness is not guaranteed even to the high and mighty. It is a rarity to be nurtured and cultivated, not a commodity to be purchased at auction by the highest bidder.

    America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. However, this week’s events affirm that those controlling the American helm are not the wisest of statesmen. Thus far, only one American looks wise, almost prescient, in this matter: Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State had the presence of mind to refuse a second term as the nation’s top diplomat. She jumped ship before it ran aground amid a storm much of its captain’s own making. She did not foresee the approaching squall. In fact, her diplomacy or lack of it contributed to the desultory course the American ship has meandered. However, the consummate political survivor if not an astute diplomat, Clinton exited office unscathed if not free of culpability. At times, it is better to be the recipient of good fortune than it is to be skilled.

    Her successor John Kerry will not be as lucky. His name forever shall be tarnished by his bombast and inconsistency during this complex international crisis. A diplomat’s inherent responsibility is to tongue and measure his words. Kerry evidently misread that section of the diplomat’s handbook. Here is a man who measures his word by how far he can sling them, not by how closely he holds them to his chest or limit them to their precise meaning. America has selected as its head statesman a person who splashes words about like an avant-garde artist does paint. In the average man, the consequence of this condition is his alone to bear. In a diplomat, the condition portends trouble for his nation. In the primary American diplomat, such a condition causes the world to shudder for it could bring us all close to the lips of steep crisis that need not be.

    Thus, we had the spectacle of Kerry attempting to be two men at once. Responding to questions about the efficacy of America’s intended strike, Kerry said the attack would be sufficient enough to degrade Assad’s capabilities and deter future chemical weapons use. Responding to those wary of America entering headlong yet into another war, Kerry promised the threatened strike would be “incredibly small.” The statements reveal a man who responds to the moment not a person with an intimate relationship with veracity. Both statements can be false but both can’t be true.

    This is the rustling of an awkward but powerful man trying to thread the delicate needle. However, he is abjectly ignorant the needle can only be coursed by wise, truthful policy. Instead of navigating the narrow channel with truth, he has tried to thread the needle with two plumb lies. The man was making a grand mess of this affair.

    Fate sometimes smiles on those who don’t deserve its benevolence. It has come to Kerry’s rescue in the nick of time. During a press conference, Kerry blurted Assad could avert the military strike if he relinquished the chemical weapons. Kerry meant the statement as a lark. The Russians seized his unguarded utterance as a basis for a new policy, thus corralling the American war machine by the words of its very own public embassy.

    As I write, American military action has been forestalled by the Russian initiative that Syria quit its chemical arsenal. The outline of an agreement between Russia and America has been reached. Syria will hand over its chemical weapons and America will sheathe its sword. If the deal works, Syria will still be at war with itself but the world will be safer. The possibility of the conflict growing will be forestalled for the moment.

    The reluctant warmonger, President Obama, will get a fortunate reprieve from lunging into war as did his predecessor. John Kerry can return to re-reading the diplomat’s handbook or a work on the finer points of circumlocution. Meanwhile, a formal KGB agent and hatchet man will emerge as the man who out maneuvered America’s best and brightest. While Russian President Putin acted in his national interests and not for any utilitarian motive, he has been the peacemaker. On the other hand, America claims a humanitarian motive for its incessant talk of war. On this occasion, American leaders slipped on their own arrogant inconsistency and the Russians took advantage this clumsiness to outwit them with their own words, thus averting a broadening tempest. Putin is far from an angel; he is the quintessential anti-hero but what he has done is to counterbalance the American government’s militarism.

    In the end, the cold-blooded Russian prevented the American Nobel Peace Prize winner from attacking a nation that posed no threat to his. This is the elemental truth of the matter. This is true news because it shows a steady reshaping of the global configuration and roles of nations. America has been too quick to pounce on nations it considers its enemies. Wisdom dictates one should not war with all those whom you dislike. It makes for a rather dangerous neighborhood and an unsettled world. Hopefully, America has learned this lesson. Sadly, the lesson the American government will likely glean is not this pacific one. The American war machine bristles at being stalled. The next time it will leap faster to the attack. The world may have dodged great danger this time but danger shall return and the warmongers will be poised to take quicker advantage of it. And that is the real news!

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • Thank you Emenike

    Thank you Emenike

    Emmanuel Emenike showed that he is a true professional by insisting on collecting the $5,000 match -winning bonus for beating Malawi in Calabar last Saturday.

    Emenike hinged his decision on the fact that it was a privilege to play for Nigeria, with a population of close to 190 million people. He felt honoured to wear our colours and looked forward to subsequent appearances for the country, unlike John Mikel Obi, Vincent Enyeama and Austin Ejide, who were up in arms to fight for $10,000.

    Emenike’s decision quenched the fire in the troika, who were said to have had the coaches’ support. No one would say that Emenike is NFF’s lickspittle, not after his harsh words to the federation’s chiefs for failing to show concern about his welfare when he was injured playing for Nigeria.

    Emenike drew a parallel with his club by stating that he was satisfied with what he earned and would rather see playing for Nigeria as payback. This is not the first time that Emenike has shown love for a dear country, irrespective of what we say about NFF chiefs. He dumped playing for South Africa and a few other countries. Indeed, he pestered Joseph Yobo to convince Eagles coaches to invite him to prove his mettle. Little wonder Emenike doesn’t spare any moment to pour encomiums on Yobo.

    Interestingly, one former Eagles coach told me that the reason why our players insist on getting such ridiculous figures is because they are bench warmers in their European clubs. One is tempted to believe this coach, given Emenike’s, the late Rashidi Yekini’s and the late Samuel Sochukwuma Okwaraji’s commitment to Nigeria’s matches.

    It is absolutely ridiculous that some players could contemplate another bonus row on a day when they shared N25 million given to them by Cross River State Governor Liyel Imoke. Do the Eagles think that the money they received was the governor’s personal cash? Do the players not know that the N25 million came from taxpayers?

    I really cannot understand why Mikel keeps spearheading revolts in the Eagles. He plays for one of the biggest clubs in Europe and should know how requests for changes are made. What Mikel and his ilk don’t understand is that they would have been languishing in one of these novelty football-playing nations but for the opportunities they got to play for Nigeria. I would have been excited to hear that Mikel, Enyeama and Ejide rejected theirs when the matter was resolved.

    That they took the $5,000 tells a lot about their character and it is rather unfortunate since they are our ambassadors in Europe. Wait a minute: Didn’t Mikel get Tom Tom’s Man of the Match award of $5,000? So, what does he really want? Or is playing for Nigeria another casino?

    Except for Victor Moses and, indeed, Shola Ameobi, every other person in the Eagles got to Europe playing for one of our national teams. It behoves on them, therefore, to play for Nigeria on grounds of loyalty and show understanding when there is cash crunch.

    Sadly, we don’t have the right leadership in the team to call Mikel’s, Enyeama’s and Ejide’s bluff, largely because they also benefit from the increased largesse if their protests succeed. We are the laughing stock anytime issues such as bonuses, are discussed in the media. The big questions are – how do others do theirs without rancour? Is there no instrument in place to punish offenders? Will the trio say they are unaware of what has been said about the bonuses even after the show-of-shame in Namibia?

    Could this be the reason why Mikel feigned injury and headed straight to London, when his mates were busy playing for their countries in the European Group World Cup qualifiers?

    Mikel needs to exhibit the traits of a role model and desist from this despicable act whether or not he is being propelled by bigger forces in the squad. At this rate, it would be suicidal to make Mikel Eagles’ captain in sync with what is happening in other countries, such as Argentina where Lionel Messi is the captain.

    Mikel stands in good stead to become 2012/2013 Africa’s Footballer of the Year and he needs to be worthy in character, based on his stay in Europe where he ought to have acculturised to the European ethos. As for Enyeama, it is about time he stayed off the team. When Samson Siasia wielded the big stick on Enyeama after a mutinous act in the Eagles, we cried foul and begged Siasia in vain. We can now appreciate what Siasia saw then when he tagged Enyeama as a very bad influence. Let me tender my apologies to Siasia for hitting him so hard for refusing to accept pleas from Nigerians to return Enyeama to the fold. I really don’t know where to start in explaining Ejide’s conduct. A good goalkeeper, no doubt, but I didn’t know him to be a disobedient player. His calm mien disarms you. But his recent role of spearheading protests is shocking. Enyeama, Ejide and Mikel are our potential captains. It says something about their protests. Read my lips. Don’t ask me how. Let me urge Maigari and his NFF men not to succumb to any threat on this bonus issue. We cannot pay players match bonuses for all the games, yet they will also insist on having a share of Nigeria’s share of the gate-takings accruing from matches played by the Eagles at the World Cup. It amounts to eating their cake and having it. In other climes, revenues from appearing at the World Cup are ploughed back towards developing the facilities in their countries. But in Nigeria, our players share it. This dastardly act must stop. If the players want the revenue from our World Cup participation, they should forget about match bonuses. Thumbs up Jonathan President Goodluck Jonathan scored the bull’s eye in Abuja on Wednesday, when he decorated Africa’s speedster Blessing Okagbare with a national honour and gave her N3 million. It may be less than what the footballers got but the thought of rewarding her is commendable. Jonathan’s tall order to the sports administrators and athletes to win gold medals at the Brazil 2016 Olympic Games is good, except that the President ought to have told us how much his administration is pumping into the challenge. The President should also tell us when the cash will be released for the athletes because the task of winning any gold medals at the Olympics is a four-year project anchored on proper planning. As I have canvassed in this column in the past, the President needs to direct that a presidential dinner with Okagbare and the business community should be organised for our Olympic Games plans as envisioned by Jonathan be laid bare before these technocrats. Jonathan needs to ask what happened to the sports lottery projects in the past. Another sports lottery with a different organogram is required to lift our sports. The President must be commended for retaining Bolaji Abdullahi as the sports minister. The fillip in our sports owes its course to Abdullahi’s transparent handling of issues bogging the industry. Adbullahi has plugged all the loopholes in our sports with his enduring policies. His unbiased approach to issues that have bedeviled the industry underlines the relative peace in the federations. This has indeed restored confidence in the athletes, knowing that their efforts would be recognised with every feat achieved. Take a bow Abdullahi, for wonderful job. Jonathan should challenge Abdullahi to fix the rot in our sports lottery scheme, if we hope to attain the heights befitting of our athletes’ stature. We should have a deliberate policy to support the athletes and safeguard their future. This must have a presidential backing for the blue-chip companies to identify with. Our administrators must learn how to account for the cash given to them. No company will want to tag its goods or services to any form of scam arising from the misappropriation of cash given to sports federations to organise competitions. Corruption has been the bane of sponsorship of sports. Okagbare as a Nigerian brand with any company will signpost the way forward for sports and the athletes. It could also resolve the problem of securing their future since most of them would be funded by these companies to combine sports and the acquisition of quality education.

  • Pdp: Two sides of a coin

    Pdp: Two sides of a coin

    Are there any fundamental ideological differences between the two feuding factions of the People’s Democratic Party? I do not think so. What is currently going on within the self-proclaimed largest party in Africa is a bitter family quarrel for supremacy with 2015 in view. The feud is not about ideology. It is not about principle. It is not about the people. The fundamental issue at stake are the 2015 elections particularly the presidential poll.

    There is a sitting President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who is obviously bent on securing a second term in office. There are also those within the party who are determined to thwart his ambition. Those forces have now crystalized in the Kawu Baraje faction of the party.

    Interestingly, this faction is not confronting Jonathan on the basis of his performance in office. This implies that they must be satisfied with or utterly indifferent to the question of the current standard of governance in the country. All the PDP want is internal democracy in the party and a level playing field to enhance their chances of assuming power come 2015 so as to continue to milk the Nigerian cow to their heart’s content.

    No matter how much anyone loathes the PDP, the party’s implosion will not be in the best interest of the development both of the country’s party system and democracy as a whole. The emergence of the All Peoples Congress (APC) raised high hopes that with a viable opposition and a more balanced party system, the prospects for democratic sustainability in the country had been enhanced.

    The implosion of the PDP will once again lead us in the direction of a one party dominant system particularly if the opposition remains cohesive and gets its act right.

    There is no doubt that PDP deserves to lose the next election at the centre. But this must be on the basis of its monumental failure in governance over the last 14 years and not because it has splintered into factions. It is only when parties begin to lose elections on the basis of non-performance that democracy will become a hand maiden for development in the country.

    How can we understand the raging crisis within the PDP? The party was conceived in 1998 as a pro-establishment party to help preserve both the status quo and the country’s unity. Seeing that the party was not committed to the fundamental structural changes needed in the country, the progressives pulled out of the nascent party and formed the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD).

    Since the PDP was so obviously the party of the establishment bent on maintaining the status quo, the most prominent and influential politicians from across the country flocked to the party. The party had a broad pan-Nigerian outlook. Its structure was centralized and reflected the unhealthy centralization of the country itself.

    Most unfortunately for the party, President Olusegun Obasanjo assumed leadership of the party even when its constitution provides for the office of National Chairman. Obasanjo ran the party like a military garrison removing and imposing party Chairmen and other officials as he pleased. The party could no longer hold its government to check. Under Obasanjo, the PDP could not be distinguished from a military organization.

    Ironically, it was his stranglehold on the party that enabled Obasanjo to foist the late President Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan respectively as the party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates for the horrendously rigged 2007 polls. Now, Jonathan is showing that he is a most faithful disciple and student of his godfather and benefactor. President Jonathan has now effectively taken charge of the PDP and is ruthlessly and brazenly manipulating his way towards 2015. Like OBJ he is running the party like his private fiefdom.

    With the obvious support of Jonathan, the National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has been running the party like a tyrant. Executive committees in states are dissolved arbitrarily; governors are suspended while threats are made to declare seats of members of the National Assembly vacant. There is no doubt that Tukur has become a huge liability to Jonathan if the President really wants a second term.

    Like I said earlier, there are really no fundamental ideological differences between the Tukur and Baraje factions of the PDP. Both groups believe in Nigeria as she is currently structured. They both believe in the retention of the country’s current obsolete security architecture. They do not see a national conference to re-define the terms of our continued co-habitation as a multi ethnic entity as imperative. In any case, neither has told us that.

    Beyond that, there is no reason to doubt that even if the arrow head of the nPDP, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, had the opportunity of wielding presidential power, he would not use it as ruthlessly and mindlessly as Jonathan and Obasanjo before him. However it must be admitted that Atiku is a far more accomplished and astute political actor than either.

    The only source of grievance for both parties is the fierce and bitter struggle to control the levers of the party towards the 2015 election. It is so sad that this intra-party struggle and the attendant crisis have completely grounded governance in many PDP states whose governors are almost always in Abuja holding endless meetings. I once said here that President Jonathan is distracted by his obsession for a second term in office. Now, it is the entire PDP that is hopelessly distracted. Is it a farewell to the transformation agenda?

    The possibility of a healing of the wounds afflicting the PDP appears very remote although it is not impossible. However, any resolution of the crisis can only be superficial, hypocritical and unsustainable. This is because Jonathan is as bent on serving a second term in office as the North is determined that power should return to the region. Thus, even if daggers are sheathed now, be assured, they will be drawn again sooner or later.

    The crisis within the PDP further boosts the electoral chances of the APC if the latter get its act right. Of course, the party will be eager to work with the aggrieved faction of the PDP if the latter do not go back to their party. While this might be politically pragmatic, the party will also have to decide how much of its core values it wants to trade-off for electoral success. If on the other hand, the nPDP decides to align with the newly registered PDM, the race for 2015 will become more complex and interesting.

  • Before Bianca, Fani-Kayode turn their feud into roforofo

    Before Bianca, Fani-Kayode turn their feud into roforofo

    As a primary school pupil, some of my best moments were the periods set aside for Bible Studies. I looked forward to them because of the interesting stories we were regaled with and because the handlers of the subject were not the regular teachers, but clergymen deployed from some of the surrounding churches. We were sure that even if we provoked them, the Bible Studies teachers would not deploy the cane like the other teachers did. The worst they would do was to tell us that we should not act like Satan’s offspring so that we would not go into hell fire. It was a tension-free atmosphere we cherished and wished that the other teachers would emulate.

    My love for Bible Studies continued into my early years in secondary school, but I had a problem with the teacher after the first few classes in my first year. I had enjoyed the stories about creation and the activities of Adam and Eve in Eden up until the time they sinned and lost favour with God. But I became apprehensive the day the teacher told us that Adam knew Eve and Eve conceived and gave birth to Cain. In pristine innocence, I asked the teacher why it took Adam so long to know Eve when the two had lived together for years as husband and wife. And by what magic did a man and a woman simply knowing each other translate into conception and the birth of a baby?

    The teacher ignored the clarifications I sought, but I continued to chew on the issue until I realised that the word “know” in the context it was used meant more than the dictionary could explain. That probably informs the furore that was generated in the camp of former beauty queen and Nigerian Ambassador to Spain, Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, when former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, declared on his facebook account that he intimately knew Bianca, the widow of Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, former Biafran leader and Ikemba Nnewi, in her prime. For a woman that is quite familiar with the biblical story of Adam and Eve, it is discomforting enough that a man would claim to have known her, not to talk of doing so intimately.

    Fani-Kayode’s seemingly innocuous claim, now labelled an outburst by Bianca and her supporters, had been made in the most innocent and fortuitous manner. Defending himself against some critics who had labelled him a tribalist and hater of the Igbo race, Fani-Kayode felt the need to highlight some past deeds he thought would hold him up as a shining example of a detribalised Nigerian. The deeds, according to the former Aviation Minister, include the long list of Igbo women he had dated and could have taken as wives if circumstances had permitted.

    In the piece titled ‘A Word for Those Who Call Me a Tribalist,’ Fani-Kayode wrote: “I was not a tribalist when I had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Bianca Onoh, an Igbo lady who later married Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of Biafra and who is now our Ambassador in Spain. I was not a tribalist when I had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Chioma Anasoh, another Igbo lady who I almost married. I was not a tribalist when I had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Adaobi Uchegbu, another Igbo lady who was exceptionally close to me and who is now a leading figure at the National Headquarters of the ruling PDP.”

    For understandable reasons, this portion of the piece has generated the most interest, particularly from Fani-Kayode’s traducers who are not impressed with his definition of nationalism. They cannot understand why the virile ex-minister would glory in his exploits with women, while his contemporaries elsewhere are building castles in Mars. The more fastidious ones are even demanding the age at which he began to cast his nuptial net as to have caught such a long list of Igbo chicks. They are also eager to know how many Yoruba, Hausa, Ijaw, Efik, Idoma, Tiv, Ibibio, Kanuri, Fulani or Jukun women have profited from his patriotic and nationalistic zeal.

    Bianca, certainly, is not enjoying any of these. And in spite of the testimonies of Kemi, the controversial daughter of former civilian governor of Oyo State, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, that she was an eye witness to Bianca and Fani-Kayode’s intimate relationship as students in the UK, Bianca insists that Fani-Kayode is as strange as unicorn. She insists that she has never met him much less maintain a relationship, no matter how casual. And to strengthen her stance, she has threatened a legal action against Fani-Kayode unless he publishes a retraction in some national newspapers and tender unreserved apology for maligning her and defaming her character.

    But there is an impasse as Fani-Kayode stands by his words and threatens to also drag Bianca to court for presenting him as a liar in the public eye. “We will also be instigating (not just instituting) our own legal proceedings against her in due course for her barefaced and malicious lies and her consistent claims that she has not met Chief Fani-Kayode, all in an attempt to libel, defame, diminish and discredit him before the entire world,” Fani-Kayode’s media assistant said in a statement. The statement maintained that Fani-Kayode did not only have an intimate relationship with Bianca, he “knew her far better than she cares to publicly admit.” In a veiled threat, the statement added: “The precise nature of that relationship will be explored and exposed in open court!”

    Considering that Bianca is still smarting from the death of her husband and the battles she is faced with on the home front over her late husband’s will, a legal battle with Fani-Kayode over a relationship he claims is in the past is the least distraction the Nigerian Ambassador to Spain needs at this time. This is besides the blow that such a battle could deal on her image as an ambassador, a former beauty queen and widow of a highly respected Igbo leader. A Yoruba adage says that when a blind man threatens to throw a stone, it is either he has one in his hand or there is one under his foot. What if Fani-Kayode’s threats are thought to be empty, but he comes up with disarming exhibits that would alarm even the presiding judge?

    It is also in the nation’s interest that the dispute does not progress beyond the current level of grandstanding, considering the status of the two parties involved. Otherwise, the nation could be in for one of its most embarrassing moments as two national figures wash their dirty linens in the public. Our statesmen and other well-meaning Nigerians should prevail on the warring parties to sue for peace, particularly Bianca who definitely has more to lose if the feud degenerates into roforofo.

  • Politics, impunity  and deterrence

    The  International  Criminal Court – ICC – trial  of  Kenya’s Vice President William Ruto   over  crime against human

    ity in the post election  violence that marked Kenya’s 2007  elections  began at the Hague  this  week.  Just  as the US  secretary  of State John Kerry  also  met   Russia’s Foreign Minster  Sergei  Lavrov  in Geneva to sort out  plans on  how Syria will submit its nuclear arsenal to an international custody to avert Barak Obama’ s  now   sterile  threat  of the  use of a limited attack to punish Syria over the use  of chemical weapons against its people. These  went on against a background  of violent protests in Chile over the 40th  anniversary of the coup that brought in former President  Augusto Pinochet into power  when he ousted President  Salvadore  Allende violently  in 1973  and held on to power brutally for 17 years during which thousands of people disappeared in unmarked graves;  and for which the Chilean Judiciary offered an unreserved apology to the Chilean people for its complicity in the Pinochet era,  just last week.

    If  you lace these  events with the home based political skirmishes between  New  PDP Secretary former Governor  Olagunsoye  Oyinlola  and   embattled PDP Chairman  Bamanga Tukur  and their  utterances  over the split in Nigeria’s ruling party; as well  as the verbal  gymnastics between former EFCC  boss   Farida  Waziri  and the charge  by  former  President  Olusegun  Obasanjo  that she was recommended to her   high profile  anti- corruption job by a former governor  of Delta  State  James  Ibori  now   jailed for corruption overseas, then you know that we have  very juicy cocktail for consumption and analysis   on global politics  and diplomacy today.

    First  let me caution that we have grave issues  to  discuss  today on which  l  have strong opinions which may  rankle  some bones but then that is the essence  of political  analysis  and public discourse. I  fire the first salvos by making some initial comments on the issues highlighted before going on to clarify extensively  on these issues . On  Kenya I  agree with former UN Secretary General  Kofi  Annan who said that the trials of the two Kenyan leaders must go on even  though some have charged the ICC  of prosecuting only Africans, a charge that does not jell at all with me.  On  the meeting between John  Kerry  and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, I think  it is a poor substitute   for the deterrence an attack would   have created  over Syria. This has  in turn  unwittingly and diplomatically   given great leverage to Russia in world affairs such that a dictator like Russia’s Vladmir Putin can,   in an   appeal to the American people  in article in New York Times    now write that the US  is  noted for  ‘brute force’  globally in interfering in other nations internal   affairs,  and  not democracy . Such  a statement coming from a man with  Putin’s  repressive leadership credentials is just  nauseating . But then that is the result of a drifting and rudderless US  policy on Syria for now.

    It  is with the likes of leaders like Vladmir  Putin in mind that I sympathise with  those who foment trouble in Chile when they  see the beneficiaries of Augusto   Pinochet’s  dictatorship taking to the streets  in Santiago  to celebrate his 17 years of dictatorship which started in 1973  and ended in1990. Relatively Chile had political stability but the  democratically elected Marxist leader that had mass appeal was slaughtered by Chile’s military to install their boss as president in that nation and the supporters  of Allende still have painful memories of their political loss  and the psychological trauma  of living in fear under military rule. It  was  an era  with arbitrary rules,  insecurity,  detention and torture aided  by a judiciary  that was too willing at the time to use the law to back and strengthen the   rotten government of the day

    In  Nigeria the mudslinging between the New  and Original PDP  and that  between Waziri  and a former Nigerian dictator threw up  some interesting vocabulary   like ‘senility‘, dictator’, ’exposure’  and ‘respect‘  which I  am  sure make very interesting reading. Especially  when  we analyse  their context, relevance and appropriateness  by  both the sender  as well as the receivers of the verbal exchanges.

    Let  us now go back to the trial  of William Ruto Vice President of Kenya which has begun although the Kenyan Parliament has voted that Kenya should pull out of the ICC  which has said the trial will continue any way. That  the Kenyan VP is attending shows that in spite of Kenya’s pull out of the ICC that nation has respect for the rule of law  and the international community. Again  Kofi  Annan who played a part in the investigations has affirmed that such trials are necessary  to affirm the rule of law and show that no one is above the law any where in the modern world .President Uhuru Kenyatta’s trial is to start in November and he has said he would attend as long as both himself and his VP  are not  away on trial at  the same time, a fact that the ICC has promised to respect. So  impunity is on trial at the Hague in Kenya while politics  and the threat of deterrence  take a back seat and that is good for global democracy in my book.

    Again let us  talk about the floundering  US  foreign   policy  on Syria which has subsituted   deterrence with diplomacy  . This   was  in the hope that threat of force will  galvanise the use  of diplomacy  to achieve   the objective  of making the Assad regime pay for  its use of chemical weapons , of which the US president said he had proof  and  with which the  Russians said they  disagreed. Now, speaking at home,  the US president pleaded  with Americans to give him permission to strike and he alerted his armed forces to prepare to strike any time and the law makers  to give him a vote to strike. At the end these   muscle  flexing and diversionary  press  ups  however,  the US president did nothing because right from the outset he had no stomach for this or any fight   whatsoever;  and that is the grim truth that the international community must face during the remaining part of the presidency of Barak Obama. When even the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon could exclaim and denounce what he called the ‘paralysing inaction‘  over the    Syrian  matter, then  one can see how far the US president has led both admirers  and critics down a blind alley over the deterrence  option in calling the blood thirsty regime in Damascus to order, over the use of   chemical weapons against children  and innocent victims in Syria.

    Undoubtedly,  the US president has been boxed into a corner by the strong  anti war lobby in Europe  and the US that heralded  his assumption of office. They even gave him a Nobel  Prize  just  because they hated those who carried out the invasion of Iraq on a false premise of availability of weapons of mass  destruction. Now Obama’s albatross is in living up to his electoral promises  as well as pleasing his admirers  while forgetting those whose hope for freedom he ignited in the Arab world with his Cairo Speech and the support he gave to the Arab Spring   street  revolution together with  France  and Britain leading to the overthrow  of dictators in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and Libya.  In  those heady days, David Cameron and France’s former President Nikola Sarkozy even visited the demonstrators in Cairo to offer support before using the No Fly Zone to scuttle the  Muammar Gaddafi regime.

    Now,   Britain  has jumped ship in liberating the Arabs as Parliament has handcuffed David Cameron on the matter and he can only bark and not bite but could  shout   only on humanitarian aid on Syria’s use of chemical weapons. I  am sure Winston Churchill is turning in his grave  at the impotence of his present  replacement  and his beloved Britain  over  the use of chemical weapons on thousands of innocent Syrians by their government.  Only  France’s  new president is trying to do what he can to get the Americans who have developed political incontinence over Syria to do something at least similar to that which France did so well in driving the Tuaregs away from Mali so recently.

    One  thing is clear. The American leader has allowed domestic politics to befuddle international diplomacy and he will pay a steep price for that eventually before the end of his presidency as history will attest. This  was  what Richard Nixon noted in his memoirs  and he in spite of Watergate opened up US relations with China. Now the Americans have a man in charge who revels in gay rights and same sex marriages  at  home, and sells  human freedom  and liberty  abroad.  Yet,  when it comes to the crunch when he should  show a red card to  a blood thirsty  tyrant in Damascus,  he chose  to hobnob  with the residue of the Red Army in the Kremlin and to sermonize his armed forces and legislators to a miserable state of inertia  and   hand wringing over the  violation of their  core ethical  and cultural values,  right before their eyes  and  with them in full control of their senses. Really ,   I do not know whether to cry or laugh at the impotence of US foreign policy over Syria  and  its    consequences  for global democracy, freedom  and liberty in all ramifications.

    On  the PDP  spat  and Farida’s tussle with Obasanjo,  some things are clear. First it was wrong for Tukur and Oyinlola to be trading tackles while the elders have been called in  to mediate  in the crisis rocking the party. Secondly  it was right of Tukur to see dictatorial  tendencies in Oyinlola who  served as a military governor of Lagos state before. But  Oyinlola is now a lawyer and Tukur should beware. Just as it was  in order    for  Oyinlola to use the word ‘senile’  on Tukur who has been  in the public gaze  for so long since his days   as boss of the NPA that one was wondering if Oyinlola was not talking of another Tukur. Tenacity or longevity of office can more often than not induce unexpected senility  sooner than later. That  too can be a great  political risk or hurdle for anybody or any political party.

    Similarly  it was  highly uncalled for for Obasanjo  to mention the Ibori connection with Farida  and to question Farida’s credentials the way Obasanjo  has done in EFCC house magazine interview. Undoubtedly  Farida  has impeccable credentials  for her job in spite of Obasanjo’s unexpected spite and hatred. In  addition she operated under very difficult conditions and she could not have moved mountains alone in her anti corruption crusade. It  was nice to hear that her successor Lamorde at a function asked the media  to exercise restraint in reporting cases involving the EFCC  to avoid media trial of suspects. That was rampant during Farida’s  time and that could not have  been her fault alone especially in a high tension democracy like Nigeria.

  • Under their siege

    Under their siege

    Those who devour usury will not stand except like a person whom Satan has driven to madness by his touch….” Q. 2: 275

     It is no longer news that Nigerians are being placed under a very stringent siege by two vicious uniformed government agencies. One of them is the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC). The other is Nigerian Police Force (NPF). These two agencies are in a fierce competition to tear the poor Nigerian masses into shreds in a bid to satisfy their common employer which is the federal government. The consequence of their actions on the populace and the implications of such consequence on the security of the country do not seem to be their concern. What matters to them in this case is the revenue they are eager to generate for the federal government and the likely peripheral opportunity that may accrue to their officials individually from the exercise.

     Axiomatic quotes

     Sages are the pillars of history. Their words of wisdom are like the tonic of all eras that keeps generations of man going. Such sages can be compared to plants of benefit which grow in all lands and are found useful at all times. They are axiomatically quotable across generations. The greatest of them all is Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who, in a famous Hadith, once said that: “When an issue of (great) significance is entrusted to un-trustable hands expect the end of time”.

    And in a tacit corroboration of the above axiom, a popular English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), once observed a situation in his time which was similar to that of today’s Nigeria and concluded as follows in his treatise on Civil Government: “…freedom of men under a government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone in that society…and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man”.

    Judging Locke’s observation and juxtaposing it with the prophetic admonition quoted above, one may tend to believe that true history is not what is chronicled on the pages of any book by the cronies of a tyrant. Rather, it is what the masses endure, how they resist tyranny and how they struggle for survival that forms the body of true history. And since history is a combination of body and heart, it is the attainment of genuine human liberty through such process of struggle that forms the heart of history.

    Colours of terrorism

    Terrorism, especially in Nigeria, is grossly misconceived to mean only the killing of innocent people by some aggrieved and disgruntled elements in a society. No! Far beyond that level, terrorism is like a constant hue with many colours and shapes. It can come from the sphere of politics or economy or ethnicity or religion or marital life or social service or environment or even sports. There is no aspect of human life without tendency for terrorism depending on the administrative competence and experience of the person who occupies the topmost helm of affairs and his or her disposition to the well being of the citizenry.

    One typical example of terrorism in Nigeria today is the imposition of a new vehicle number plate by the officials of Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in connivance with the Federal Government for the purpose of generating revenue. That insensitively obnoxious policy will soon be heartlessly enforced in the country even to the detriment of the same economy which the conniving duo is pretending to safeguard.

    The trouble ahead

    In about two weeks time, over 90% of Nigerian vehicles, except those of the governments, will be forcefully grounded. This, according to the warning now being repeatedly issued, through the mass media, is going to commence precisely on October 1, 2013, when the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), will start impounding those vehicles for plying the roads without wearing the new imposed number plates.

    While talking to some journalists recently about the ‘project’, the boss of the FRSC, Corps Marshal Osita Chidoka, said the cost of the new driver’s licence is N6,000 while that of motorcycle operators is N3,000. The Standard Motor Vehicle number plate, according to him, costs N15,000; Articulated Vehicles is N20,000; Out of Series vehicle is N40,000; Fancy is N15000; and Dealer is N30,000. However, licensing officials of the FRSC and the VIO, according to some applicants, are charging far above the quoted official rate. For instance, the new number plate which officially costs N15,000 is said to be issued at N35,000 unofficially while replacement which is supposed to be N10,000 is being allegedly issued at N25,000 through the backdoor. And since the plates are not available, the only alternative for any vehicle owner is to park his or her vehicle until a time when the plates will be made available at the official rate. That is Nigeria for you. Head or tail, the masses who will eventually bear the brunt of all these are the final losers.

    The current number plates in use which is now being changed was introduced some years ago by the same FRSC. But rather than admit its own error and embark on a gradual enforcement of the new one, this agency, banking on the solid support of the Federal Government, has decided to force the poor masses to pay the cost of its own mistake. What a country, what a government! Is democracy for enslavement?

    In any civilised country, old number plates are allowed to wither away with old vehicles if there is any cause for redesigning them at all while new ones are subjected to new law with human face and human heart. And the cost is surely made affordable for motorists. This is not the case in Nigeria where only money is the issue and government agencies become hard-working only when the job will bring unofficial personal largess. Here is a country where the policemen, the traffic wardens and the road marshals are absent at their duty posts when it is raining and at night except where and when personal largess is accruable to them.

    Added agony

    And, now, in the competition for such largess, a game of wit is taking the front burner. To beat the FRSC in that game, the Nigerian Police have come up with a sudden new devise that can give them an upper hand in the competition. Just last Monday, an announcement was made through the media stating that all vehicle owners must henceforth obtain a permit for biometric number plate (whatever that means) and the fee for obtaining such permission is N3, 500 per vehicle. And that order takes ‘immediate effect (and automatic alacrity) from Monday, September 16, 2013. In other words, every vehicle owner will now have to shuttle between the offices of the FRSC where he can always be told to come back tomorrow and that of the Police where, as usual, no one will be available to attend to him. Hmmm! Nigerians are in bondage.

    It is, therefore, not enough to purchase a N10,000 worth of number plate for N25,000 through the backdoor, you must also top it up with at least N3, 500 in the name of biometric permit. That is if the N3, 500 biometric permit, too, does not acquire a backdoor through which you can obtain it to avoid delay.

    In this period of unbearable hardship, when working class men and women can hardly afford N1,000 to fuel their vehicles once in a week, and parents are running up helter-skelter to find a means of paying the school fees of their wards, people are being compelled to pay about N28, 500 just to change their old number plates with special permit to use such numbers or park their vehicles.

    Between FRSC and VIO

    What is most amazing in all these is the cat and mouse game going on between the FRSC and the Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) in the issuance of the relevant documents. While the FRSC that introduced and is now imposing the new number plate is said to be responsible for its production, the VIO is charged with the task of distribution. And the Police Force, on the other hand, corners the responsibility of authenticating the number plate through the so-called biometric permit. Thus, Nigerians are wholly entangled in a conspiratorial web of official oppression. What else is called slavery? And if you ask for the opinions of the officials of these agencies, they will be quick in rationalizing the exercise through the alibi of national security and even accuse Nigerian press of bias and incitement. It will not be a surprise if they tag this type of writing a crime for which the writer should be prosecuted. They have forgotten that the same pen with which new births are announced is used in announcing the obituaries of new deaths.

    In the colonial days

    In the terrible old days of the struggle for independence in Nigeria when the British colonialists still held sway , a foremost nationalist and versatile journalist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who later became the country’s first President, once publicly observed (in 1934) as follows: “….I have always maintained that no social reform is possible without taking the masses into consideration……The verdict of history supports the thesis that no revolution, be it social, economic, religious or political, could crystallise without the support of the masses. (In a democratic setting) the people hold the mandate of man’s existence as a social animal and no person can successfully claim to be a patriot who overlooks this important factor. Those intellectuals who think that they, alone, are gifted to change the destinies of their fellow men and women, are living in a fool’s paradise, like Louise xiv (of France) and others who thought of the people as mere tools of the elite. History shows that they lived to sign their own death warrants”.

    Almost 80 years after that thoughtful and electrifying speech by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria doesn’t seem to have moved ahead positively by one inch. The colonial heritage in this country is like a recurrent decimal incessantly reminding us of our seeming perpetual bondage clandestinely weaved into the vestiges of our colonial past. Thus, the theoretical independence of 1960 is just a matter of nomenclature which does not necessarily confer any practical freedom on Nigerians. What we ignorantly call independence in this country is a substitution of white man’s enslavement for that of the black man. And that is a technical return to the pre-colonial slave trade of the yore.

    Personal experience

    By the way, if we may ask, where is the new driver’s license introduced and imposed on the people in 2011? Is it available today? Yours sincerely paid for one in February this year but has not been issued any till date. Instead, I was issued a bale of papers with a promise to produce the real licence later while I was asked to keep coming for it three times in a week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday) as if I had no job other than going for driver’s licence. Eventually, I had to stop reporting at the Jericho office of the Road Corps in Ibadan after four months when it became clear that the exercise was an apparent rip-off. Today, eight months after paying, I am still going about with that bale of papers in case of any Police check. Given this dubiously messy situation, the relevant question now is this: why did we change the old paper licence that we were carrying about in the 1970s into a plastic one?

    Genesis of FRSC

    When the idea of a new agency to be called ‘Federal Road Safety Corps’ (FRSC) was first muted in 1988, the entire Nigerian populace heaved a great sigh of relief. The general thought then was that a better option was being introduced to the traffic system in Nigeria especially when those first recruited for the new outfit were University graduates. By that time most Nigerians were already tired of the ‘wetin you carry’ syndrome of Nigerian Police. And, in fairness to the pioneer recruits of the FRSC, an element of civility was displayed to the great delight of the citizenry.

    Yours sincerely was one of the front-line Nigerian journalists who fought vehemently for the independence of the FRSC when the Police wanted to emasculate that agency by all means in the 1990s. The likes of one Mr. Abayomi Omiyale an official of FRSC, in Lagos State, at that time, created such a marvellous impression on the populace by their patriotic activities that some of us in the pen profession stood firmly for the independence of FRSC from the claw of Nigerian Police Force. But today, see what that same agency has become. The endemic virus called ‘Nigerian factor’ has held it by the jugular and the wheat has now become an admixture of the chaff. The only exception in the stable of that agency now is the crop of highly responsible gentlemen and women who volunteer to serve without remuneration and are designated Special Marshals.

    Besides, there is no distinction between the Police and the FRSC today in terms of the cited Nigerian factor above. And, as a matter of fact, the latter seems to be by far worse than the former given its supposed educational background. If anything, the behaviour of most FRSC officials on Nigerian roads is not only a disappointment but also a confirmation that what is called education in Nigeria today has nothing tangible to contribute to the development of the country. In a nutshell, this country is hopeless.

  • Big Brother’s guinea fowls (1)

    Where is nothing to distinguish the Big Brother Africa (BBA) house from a henhouse except that the inmates seem human and at once endowed with the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the guinea fowl – if I may insult the poor animal by comparing it with them.

    However, despite the guinea fowl’s predilection to brutishness, it is not so completely enslaved and brazen like the BBA house ‘inmate.’ Big brother, while showing them up as disposable lab rats, treats BBA contestants as ‘housemates’ but reality instructs that every participant in the Big Brother ‘experiment’ is captive to inordinate greed, poverty of the intellect and soul, lust for unearned riches and acclaim, and the ever domineering, voyeuristic and faceless “big brother.”

    Participants in the BBA show like their counterparts world over, elevate narcissism and absurdity to unimaginable degrees. Inmates take their bath naked knowing videos and images of their bath are being broadcasted to the world via digital satellite television. They indulge in unprotected and presumably consequence-free sex, disgraceful bickering, rivalry, and frittering away of precious time.

    This further emphasizes the kindred spirit they share with the guinea fowl although the latter seem surprisingly elevated in character than the average BBA inmate. Guinea fowls hardly bicker because they are known to evolve and adhere religiously to a pecking order. The guinea fowl is a proud creature; unlike the BBA inmate, it rarely mates in the open. You will seldom, if ever, see it breed. When it does, it’s super-quick and can be easily mistaken for a swift little scuffle.

    Wonder what the guinea fowl would think of BBA inmates. Take Beverly Osu for instance, the character who claimed to have done Nigeria proud at the recently concluded BBA’s “The Chase” sloth-fest; Beverly in a recent interview claims thus: “I made Nigeria proud.”

    Beverly generated buzz by her actions in the BBA house. In 91 days, she managed to treat the world to her best kept secrets, and of course, a steamy and controversial sexual encounter she had with Angelo Collins, a South African inmate. Steamy pictures and videos of the two smooching in a bathtub are still been viewed and downloaded on the world wide web as you read.

    Although she claims she never had sex with the South African, Beverly maintains that she has no regrets for her conduct in the house. She quips, “All of us take our baths naked. So I shouldn’t be different because I went for a reality show. I shouldn’t be different from every other person, because I didn’t bring out my videos, Big Brother did so I should not be judged, and I represented Nigeria well.”

    You could be forgiven for thinking the argument was made by an obtuse person, for the digestion and understanding of equally dim-witted folk. Beverly’s argument reveals among other things, how the mind and intellect of many a contemporary youth works. The contemporary Nigerian youth represents an abnegation of late Italian poet, Dante Alighieri’s caution: “Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

    True, only brutes (animals) enjoy the exclusive preserve of ignorance and shamelessness in matters pertaining to sexual instincts, violence and other base impulses that relegate the brute to the bottom of nature and creation’s pecking order. However, current realities reveal an increasing permissiveness and blurring of lines between the human and the animal, the virtuous and debauched.

    While it’s disconcerting that her mother sees nothing wrong with her conduct, it would be amusing to know how Beverly would justify the morality and benefits of going nude and engaging in a sexual act before the camera and millions of viewers across the world, to her children and grand children, when eventually they get to see the video.

    Notoriety is the tool that Beverly, like her predecessors from Nigeria, sought to exploit in a desperate bid to win the much coveted $300, 000 BBA winner-takes-all prize. Notoriety is the resource by which she sought to attain wealth and acclaim. And even though she failed, Beverly predictably emerges from the show as a celebrity of sort.

    No sooner than she was booted out than Nigerian newspapers swooped on her, splashing syndicated interviews of the BBA evictee across one or two pages, each story struggling to garner for her, unquestionable acclaim and soft-landing. She reportedly hopes to exploit the situation to her advantage: “Before I left, I had a show called ‘Beverly Says’ and I’m back to push it. If you guys watched Big Brother, you would be very sure that I can act, so I’d go into movies, but then, I have to finish school because I’m in my 200 level,” she was quoted in a recent interview.

    Beverly’s statement, particularly her reference to her acting ability, no doubt reveals that BBA, contrary to its claims of being a social experiment that thrives on truth and mirroring reality, is actually a scripted TV show in which every participant puts up an act before the camera, as conditioned by the contest provisions and their frenzied lust for the outrageous prize money.

    Beverly like many contemporary celebrity hopefuls seeks to float upon “hype,” which is really the ubiquitous journalist turned publicist’s gas – and which is maniacally deployed oftentimes, to set afloat an image and personality that doesn’t quite exist. Hype, like Epstein aptly notes, is what gives us a new class or hierarchical categorization of celebrities.

    Beverly, despite the widespread condemnations trailing her conduct in the BBA house, helps perpetuate the myth that accidental celebrity or fame junkies are glaring indicators that there are always acceptable shortcuts to riches and the fulfillment of our wildest fantasies. And this relative reality is propelled by the public’s morbid fascination with celebrity worship. Where the object of interest excites inadequate controversies and passion for adulation, the public has learnt to recreate the object of their fascination into the ideal celebrity icon or superstar of their dreams.

    This no doubt substantiates Dostoevsky’ s wisdom: “So long as man remains free,” Dostoyevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship.”

    Is a character like Beverly really worthy of the good and bad press she currently enjoys? Is she even worthy of being the subject of discourse on this page? If so, this is bad news.

    The camera has created a culture of celebrity and the internet is establishing a culture of connectivity. The convergence of both technologies perpetuates contemporary man’s insatiable lusts for unearned acclaim and affluence. These facilities are effectively deployed by Endemol, the brain behind the BB concept, in desensitizing millions of viewers and participants towards perverse sex in its social re-conditioning and re-validation exercise.

    Big brother blurs the line that distinguishes the average human from an animal. Thus we become real to ourselves by obsessing about and wishing on the unreal. The great social abnormality and terror today, is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right; if the property that grounded the self in romanticism was sincerity, and in modernism was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility. But what manner of visibility would drive a Nigerian youth like Beverly to the brink of impropriety?