The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • America’s blood lust and the bombing of Syria

    In reaction to the American Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertion before the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee that Al Qaeda (in the guise of the Al Nousri Front) is not playing a leading role in the fight against President Bashar Al Assad’s government in Syria, Russia’s President Vladimer Putin said ‘’we assumed that we were dealing with decent people. Kerry lies openly. And he knows that he lies’’. My admiration for Putin has soared.

    I am equally proud of the decision that the British Parliament has taken not to join in the attack on Syria. Prime Minister David Cameron has been badly humiliated and this is a great triumph for Ed Milliband, the Leader of the Opposition. Kudos to my friend, Mr. George Galloway MP, for his brilliant and stirring speech on the floor of the House of Commons on this issue. I must confess that the only speech that has moved me as much as Galloway’s in recent times was the riveting speech delivered by the Irish MP, Mrs.Clare Daly, on the floor of the Irish Parliament when she described President Barack Obama as a ‘’war criminal’’ and a ‘’murderer of children’’.

    The resolution of the British Parliament gives us hope that sanity may eventually prevail in a world that has proved to be increasingly insane. Yet sadly it appears that America is as eager to go to war as ever. As the assault on Syria is about to begin please take note of the following words- the biggest mistake that President Barack Obama will make in his distinguished political career is to strike Syria on the false and contrived premise that Al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people.

    What we are witnessing today is the laying of the foundation and the planting of the seeds for what will eventually be World War 3. I am not suggesting that the military strike on Syria will witness the beginning of World War 3. What I am saying is that it will lay the foundation for it. I believe that the war itself will come at a much later stage and probably long after both Obama and Putin have both left office. However, the military action that America is about to embark on in Syria will be the first step on the road to that terrible final conflict. After they have struck Syria, nothing will be the same again and we shall finally be on that long-awaited conflict-ridden slippery slope to Armageddon. And after that war has been fought and won, historians will have cause to say that the brutal, unjustifiable, indefensible and illegal attack by Obama’s America and her allies on Syria is where and when the die was finally cast. They will say that that is when the Americans finally crossed the line of no return.

    Nothing describes the frightful situation that we are faced with today in the Middle East better than the words of Mr. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, when he said, just a few days ago, that ‘’the west handles the muslim world like a monkey handles a grenade.’’ The events and bloody carnage that we are about to witness being unleashed by America and her allies on Syria, a relatively small country of 22 million people, will be so brazen, so vicious, so chilling and so ruthless that for the first time in world history Russia, Iran and China will come together, finally pick up the gauntlet and muster the courage to say ‘’no more’’ to American lawlessness, manipulation, deceit, double standards and butchery. At that point there will be no going back and, slowly but surely, one thing will lead to another in the Middle East and the conflict will spread until the final conflagration comes.

    Yet many have bought into and wholeheartedly accepted the American propaganda that Al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people. It is in the same way that they bought into the propaganda that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons that he was about to use against his own people and the rest of the world. They bought into that propaganda just as they bought into the propaganda that 911 was carried out by Osama Bin Ladin, just as they bought into the propaganda that Muammar Ghaddafi was a monster that was about to kill all his people, just as they bought into the propaganda that Obama was the Messiah who wanted to spread democracy in the Middle East, just as they bought into the propaganda that Hosni Mubarak had to be removed to bring stability to Egypt, just as they bought into the propaganda that Tunisia would be better off with an islamist President, just as they bought into the propaganda that Iran is evil, just as they bought into the propaganda that the Saudis are angels, just as they bought into the propaganda that Israel can do no wrong, just as they bought into the propaganda that there was no coup in Egypt, just as they bought into the propaganda that Hamas must not be recognised, just as they bought into the propaganda that Hezbollah are terrorists and just as they bought into the propaganda that Lebanon did not deserve to be stable and must be nothing more than a weak and crisis-ridden buffer-state which exists at their pleasure.

    I suggest that those that have bought into all this ridiculous propaganda take the time out to listen to what the distinguished and respected American General Wesley Clark (the man who had the distinct privilegde and honour of leading the NATO forces in Europe during the attack on Slobodan Milosovitch’s forces in Serbia and Belgrade in the 90s) said in 2007 about America’s intentions in the Middle East and about how those plans had been hatched as far back as 2001. He claimed that just two weeks after 911 America had taken the decision to remove the leaders of no less than 7 Middle Eastern countries by any means necessary in order to fully secure the Middle East. He actually listed those countries. Today, and for the last 5 years, we are bearing witness to everything that he said would happen and those things are unfolding before our very eyes.

    Finally, let me make two two points. Firstly, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it was Al Asssad’s forces that actually used the chemical weapons that were unleashed on the civilian population in Syria the other day and it could well have been the rebels that did it. The fact that Assad’s troops were also affected by those weapons tells me a lot. No sane leader poisons his own soldiers with sarin gas. And he certainly does not do so on his own doorstep, on the day that international weapons inspectors arrive in his country and in the middle of a war which he is on the verge of winning. Secondly the fact that America and her allies have decided not to go through the U.N. Security Council on this matter makes whatever action they take against Al Assad and Syria manifestly illegal. It violates every rule of international law and it creates yet another bad precedent. Quite apart from that, South African President Jacob Zuma’s words were instructive when he said ‘’if nations were to attack other nations without going to the UN Security Council to get a mandate there would be many wars in the world’’. Zuma has hit the nail on the head.

    In any case, who appointed America as the policeman of the world? Who annointed her as the spokesman for the international community? The Security Council was established to prevent precisely the type of illegal and arbitary use of power that the U.S. government is about to unleash on Syria. No country should be allowed to play God. The truth is that America has gone beserk and the power it wields today has caused many that are in positions of authority over there to be reckless and delusional. There is an evil agenda that is unfolding before our very eyes, which many people that are not discerning enough to recognise. Many have argued that the rebels could not have launched the chemical attack because they did not have the heavy weapons, the know-how or the capabilities to do so. This is hogwash. The Syrian rebels can do anything and muster or use any kind of heavy weapon as long as their American friends and Saudi allies are ready to help them. That is the bitter truth.

    The fact that the rebels are led by brutal cannibals and Al Qaeda islamists and that the American government is in an unholy alliance with such beasts tells me everything that I need to know. Obama is ready to get into bed with even the devil and do just about anything to get rid of or discredit Al Assad, including turning a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians by those rebels and then blaming it on the Assad regime.

    The assumptions that many have made about what is true and what is not true in Syria are simply wrong. Yes chemical weapons were used and many people were killed but the question is who gave the order and what was the motive for such a heartless act? In the May 6th edition of the Washington Times newspaper it was reported that Mrs.Carla Del Ponte, the former International Court For Criminal Justice prosecutor and a respected member of the United Nations Independant International Commission Of Inquiry On Syria told Swiss TV that ‘’there were strong concrete suspicions that Syrian rebels that were seeking to oust Al Assad had used the nerve agent sarin.” This lady certainly seems to know what is really going on but who is listening to her? Permit me to end this essay with an interesting contribution from Mr. David Icke. He said- ’’these genetic liars are so desperate to bomb the Assad regime into history. This is because the global plan to subvert and conquer the Middle and Near East has had its timetable scuppered by the Syrian Government’s refusal to fall in the wake of a civil war’’.

    As Sir Winston Churchill once said, ’’the truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

  • We must bring basic literacy skills to the doorstep of all citizens, or die trying

    Dear reader, today is World Literacy Day. You know what that means don’t you? It is the day people examine themselves and seek a genuine answer to the question: how would I like to be that man or woman in my village who looks at the letter S on a page and declares ‘my goodness, how like worm it looks! Will it crawl out of the page?’ I know I would cry. If I cannot recognise the letters on a page, how on earth am I going to read the instructions on my favourite cereal pack?

    I have always regarded illiteracy to be a little like that poem by the nineteenth century poet, John Godfrey Saxe entitled ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’ based on a story said to have originated in the Indian subcontinent. As you can guess, the poem is not only famous, but it has been used to illustrate many things, the most famous of which is the fact that truth has many sides and there is a need to respect other perspectives outside of our own. The poem tells us that six blind men examined the elephant and declared it in turn to be a fan, spear, wall, rope, snake and tree. Worse, each of them was sure he was right. Now, the point is not so much the perspectives which were all wrong but the fact that each was so wrong and so sure! That is just one of the things that illiteracy does to one. It makes you blind like the blind men. For instance, I ask myself, were they unable to apprehend the elephant because they were blind or were they blind because they could not apprehend the elephant? Are you confused? Good, so am I. There is nothing like blindness to make people stumble.

    No doubt, literacy has many advantages. For one thing, you must be very literate to persist in reading this column for many readers have told me many times to tone down my English so that they can read what I have to say. But I don’t trust Nigerians; if I were to go lower than this, I fear they are not altruistic enough to say, ‘Come up higher’, you know, like you tell someone who deliberately humbles him/herself so that he/she can be elevated in front of a crowd. Nigerians will just forget me there. So, this is not a very good example. But what about traffic signs? Oh, you would not believe just how many people think that the one who has the right of way at a roundabout is that one who gets there first, such as the donkey, Okada rider, mule, taxi, etc. Believe me, I often cannot tell the difference.

    As I was saying, many advantages attend literacy. Only the literate crowd in Nigeria knows for instance that all governments are insincere with the truth and the economy, and are ignorant to boot. That’s funny, because the government also thinks that the people are insincere with the truth and the economy, and are ignorant. Clearly, people who go into government suddenly develop severe bouts of illiteracy, but who’s to know? That’s why we’ve had all kinds of brain-deprived policies: selling mobile phones instead of tractors to farmers; changing licences and vehicle number plates three times in a year, increasing fuel prices once a year, and other policies not mentally well enough to be mentioned. Forgive me if I exaggerate … I am not exaggerating? You mean, all these happened? Well, who would have believed it?!!! Wait till I tell my dog. ‘Mr. Bones, have you heard …’

    Jokes apart, we have said it again and again. This government would write its name in gold if it began to take the literacy problem in this country more seriously. There are far too many people in the land who cannot read and write. There are far too many people in the land who cannot count, read newspapers or sign their names. But they can read the currency very well. Now, let me tell you something. Failing to read a newspaper in a day, literate or not, is failing to contribute to the development of the country because one would not know what is going on, react appropriately by taking the right steps and generally help to stop the bad guys in their tracks. When I heard the rumour that our president was in the habit of looking down his lucky nose at Nigerian newspapers, I gulped. Had he never heard the expression, keep your friends close but your enemies closer by visiting, playing, eating and dying with them, etc., eh? But I’m glad he has since repented. No? Oh you!; you must be one of those enemies he really needs to keep close.

    On the other hand, illiteracy is not an excuse for the failure to know what is going on in one’s country for where there is a will, there is a way. It was said that the early settlers in America found ways of improving themselves by attending night schools when the day’s work was done. That way, no one could get the better of them financially, socially and most important of all, politically. So, they were often to be found at that time with a hoe in one hand and a pencil in the other, even if only to have something to bite on in the times of stress or depression. On the other hand, Nigerian illiterates are simply content to remain so because they feel no particular pressure to acquire the alphabet or numeracy. They wake up in the morning, bring down yesterday’s agbada down from its hook, sling it on, tuck their hands inside its folds, step outside their huts and just follow their nose to where the nearest aroma of food is wafting in from, which is usually a politician’s compound.

    It has often been said that Nigeria runs a diversified economy. What that means is that the rural folks, who constitute the largest group in the illiterate class, have many sources of income. They get some perks from the village politician representing them in government; they also get ‘something’ from their close relatives who are rich and who are obliged to share or their reputation in the village will not be worth a kobo. Believe me, every family has a ‘rich’ relative. Then, they get a little ‘something’ from their sons and daughters who come ‘home’ from time to time and bring all the riches in the city for them. If you had all these diverse economic sources, would you be inclined to shift from your behind too? I know I would not.

    The government has to move – crane, digger, and all – to make the illiterate know and believe that they need literacy in order to add more meaningfulness to their lives. It must activate the adult literacy unit of its programme to bring people out of the realm of darkness into the marvellous daylight of literacy. The government, and all of us, must aim toward making “Literacies for the 21st century” a reality by bringing basic literacy skills to the doorstep of all citizens, or die trying.

    Everyone has a part to play too. You can regularly read aloud to your children from story books instead of leaving their imagination to what they can get on “Tales by Moonlight”. In your family, you can also do literacy adoption: help bring a child into literacy by reading to him/her regularly. In your neighbourhood, you can adopt an adult to teach the basic literacy skills to. We must somehow ensure that the light of literacy placed in our hands lights up someone else’s lamp.

  • Karma and the PDP meltdown

    Karma and the PDP meltdown

    President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan promised Nigerians transformation: in ways he, his supporters and opponents may never have anticipated, he is delivering.

    The ongoing war of attrition within the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) rather than being a tragic event, could ultimately lead to radical transformation in the way the business of politics is conducted in Nigeria.

    It may also result in reining in the monstrous, rampaging presidency constructed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his eight years in office. This was a presidency more committed to enforcing its will than upholding the rule of law.

    It was a presidency unabashedly given to using state apparatus to undermine constitutional institutions, emasculate elected officials and subvert the commonweal.

    But for a brief window when the late Umaru Yar’Adua was still trying to find his way and Jonathan as Acting President was coming to grips with exercising ultimate power, we have reverted to the Obasanjo years when a president’s wish was law and dissent well-nigh treasonable.

    One can be forgiven for dubbing this administration OBJ-lite. It has copied all the former president methods – especially in dealing with perceived enemies. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is ever ready to be deployed for sudden investigation of all who fall foul of the powers-that-be. Elected officials can be blackmailed with the sudden withdrawal of their security detail. Election outcomes are recognised only when they are favourable. Even throwbacks to the OBJ era are wheeled out of retirement to reprise their erstwhile attack-dog roles. You cannot run down the list without experiencing that strange sense of déjà vu.

    Unfortunately, those we are dealing with are not the sort to split hairs over originality. They are too pre-occupied with the struggle for survival, and for desperate men anything goes – as long as it works.

    The real tragedy for a party that loved to describe itself as the ‘biggest in Africa’ is that it has been so preoccupied with staring at, and admiring its image as mirrored by the water, it didn’t realise the moment it fell into the river! Even in its death throes some who should know better are deluding themselves that the party will emerge from the current trauma stronger.

    The only way that can happen is if there is genuine reconciliation in which the grievances of ‘New PDP’ elements are addressed and the rebels receive amnesty. But that is an unlikely scenario because what is driving the split is a cocktail of burning ambition, betrayal, broken promises and deep-rooted bitterness.

    Jonathan is committed to running again. His embittered foes are bent on holding him to commitments he made when he first sought the presidency under equally contentious circumstances in 2011. The other eruptions like the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) debacle and Rivers PDP crisis are all symptoms traceable to the disagreements over 2015 which are destabilising the party.

    Anyone who has followed the exchanges across the PDP divide in the last one week will not have escaped the old pattern of denial and looking for scapegoats. Rather than embark on some desperately needed introspection, party hacks have descended on the usual suspects. Predictably, some of Jonathan’s supporters now see in Obasanjo the Macchiavelian directing the drama. Never mind that the possibility of the former president and his erstwhile deputy, Atiku Abubakar, sitting together to cook up a conspiracy – given all the issues between them – just beggars belief.

    In reality the spiritual principle that you reap what you sow holds true in the PDP mess. Everything the ruling party and its managers have done in the last 14 years created the impression that with sufficient might you can get away with impunity.

    I have been amused to no end at the recourse by PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur and elements in the presidency to legality as the means of fighting the rebellion. Tukur has been huffing and puffing about how he was properly elected by the special convention. He has even gone as far as threatening to declare the seats of rebels in the National Assembly vacant, and send security agents after them for daring to have a difference of opinion.

    Coming from party leaders who have encouraged this sort of unorthodox conduct in the past, the whole legal posturing is just risible. The PDP has 23 governors, but its national leadership was sacked by Atiku and a mere seven governors! What is wrong with that? Given what has been happening in the polity in the last few months the ruling party should not see this as a strange development.

    It is hypocritical for the president and his supporters to cry foul over ‘New PDP’. Without shame they recognised Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, as NGF chairman after he received just 16 votes in an election in which 35 governors voted. Jonathan used the power of his office to encourage Jang’s dubious claims. So why is he discomfited that a mere seven governors will topple Tukur and replace him with one-time Acting Chairman, Abubakar Baraje?

    It is rib-tickling watching the outrage of the same people who have been addressing the impostor, Evans Bipi, as ‘Speaker’ of the Rivers State House Assembly. This was a fellow who along with five others purportedly toppled the real leader of the 24-member assembly in the now infamous fracas where legislators assaulted each other with dangerous weapons while the police looked on like spectators at a boxing tournament.

    If Bipi and his Gang of Five can seize power in a 24-man assembly, what is wrong in seven governors overthrowing the leadership of the ‘biggest party in Africa’? In the PDP’s universe this should not elicit surprise. Over the last 14 years this party has sown impunity and injustice, now it is reaping a whirlwind harvest.

    This isn’t a beauty contest between Jonathan and Atiku or the governors and the president. This is about the underlying things stoking the crisis. This is about a system that has received too many shocks and now the absorbers have given way. This is purely a case of what has been going round finally coming around. So PDP deal with it!

  • Oladeji Fasuan: The consumate administrator at 82

    Oladeji Fasuan: The consumate administrator at 82

    Chief Fasuan’s working life reads like a history of the economic cum industrial
    development of the old West Region, and later, that of Ondo and Ekiti State

    When I last wrote about Chief Oladeji Fasuan, a man of razor-sharp intellect, he was 77 and that was on 7 September, 2008. He has since added five more glorious years of solid and continuous service to the nation, Nigeria, to Ekiti state and to the Are-Afao community of Ekiti state which I have the divine privilege of sharing with him. A man of many parts and gargantuan capabilities, Chief Fasuan will answer his Maker serving God and humanity. His illustrious contribution to the industrial growth of Western Nigeria in the golden Awolowo days, his service in Ondo state, especially during the administration of Papa Adekunle Ajasin, and his unequalled contribution to the Ekiti state creation, have all become folklore just as his sterling, and continuing service to our Alma Mata, Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, will remain indelible. Without a doubt, the word ‘service’ can, with considerable justification, double as his middle name.

    I always consider it a privilege whenever I have the opportunity of paying deserved tribute to those of our icons who have, in their life time, left their names on the sands of time. I have done so for many which include, but are not limited to: Chief Alex Olu Ajayi, Chief Fola Alade, Chief Dele Falegan, Prince Juli Adelusi Faluyi, Professors Banji Akintoye, O.O Akinkugbe, Bolaji Akinyemi and Jide Osuntokun, Chief (Dr) JGO Adegbite and my inimitable Primary School teacher, Chief Fajana; men whose names command instant recognition from the services they have rendered to humanity in their various callings. These writings have been motivated , never by any sense of patronage, but by the Yoruba saying: yin ni yin ni, ko le se mi – meaning that where you show appreciation, you do not only encourage that person to do more but you are, indeed, asking others to emulate these good deeds towards God and humanity. Without a scintilla of doubt, Chief Oladeji Fasuan deserves this decent mention in this highest circulating newspaper in the country -The Nation.

    Chief Fasuan eagerly, indeed with a sense of pride, admits his humble beginnings. It is for this reason that his forthcoming autobiography is titled: The Back wood Boy -Scaling through Accidents of Life -An Autobiography. It has therefore been through God’s grace and by dint of hard work that he rose to become what he is today. Born to the family of Samson and Alice Fasuan of Afao-Ekiti on September 6, 1931, he attended St Andrew’s Primary School, Are-Ekiti, between 1939-45 and sixty eight years later today, he still carries with him his first school leaving certificate, eloquently attesting to his incredible care about things that matter. He proceeded from there to Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, ’46 -51 and for his higher education , he attended the University College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he was between 1955-59, graduating with a B.A ( Econs) degree. He later attended, at various times in his chequered professional career, some short but specialized courses like that at the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank in ’72 and earlier at the Universities of Ife, Ibadan and Pittsburg, United States of America.

    As I wrote in my 2008 article, Chief Fasuan’s working life reads like a history of the economic cum industrial development of the old Western Region, and later, that of Ondo and Ekiti States , all rolled into one. The result is that apart from the executive positions he held in such institutions as the Western Region Investment and Credit Corporation (IICC), where he served as General Manager, same as he would later hold at the Ondo state Investment Corporation , he was Permanent Secretary in such key ministries as Economic Planning and Statistics, Chieftaincy Review Commission, Agric Credit Commission and, later, General Manager, Ondo State Water Corporation . He also served on the boards of the O’dua Investment co ltd, West African Portland Cement, Nigerian Breweries, Dunlop among many others and was chairman , Odua Textile Mills, Ado-Ekiti and Owena Motels Ltd. At the federal level, he served between ’99 -2004, as Commissioner on the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Abuja. His various communities have also tasted of his public spiritedness. A three time Chairman of the Christ’s School Board of Governors, he was member, later chairman of the Ekiti government Advisory council between 2003-2006, member, Ekiti state joint account committee, 2004-2006, the same time he was chairman, Ekiti Elders Committee and Baba Ijo, St David’s Anglican Church, Afao -Ekiti, from 2002 to date.

    Important as all these are to Chief Fasuan, nothing compares to his Chairmanship of the committee for the creation of Ekiti (1991-1996) which he regards as the climax of his public service and the fruition of the Ekiti struggle for self determination which had started way back 1876 with the Kiriji wars which pitched the Ekiti Confederate Army against Ibadan. Chief Fasuan’s incomparable exertions towards that historic achievement have been severally commended. Among those who have done this is His Royal Majesty, Oba Rufus Adejugbe, the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti who wrote about Chief Fasuan as follows:’ In the cause of our interactions, I discovered that chief Fasuan is a very pleasant individual, an upright man who does not only want people to work with him openly without any secret agenda, but also that people should place their cards on the table face upwards. It is on record that his tireless and heroic efforts contributed immensely to the creation of Ekiti state. I see Chief Deji Fasuan in the likes of Sir Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. These are people who gave up the comfort and pleasures of the world in order to build up others and make them comfortable in life. Such people are Christ-like. They are men who aimed at higher values and pursued them relentlessly, not minding the sacrifices until such values are attained. Such people are heroes and sources of inspiration for all times’.

    At 82, Chief Fasuan does not suffer fools gladly. A highly informed commentator on public affairs, his latest contribution to public discuss was the one on the raging controversy over whether or not Local Governments should be granted autonomy; a thoroughly harebrained idea of the National Assembly which is apparently indulging in an unnecessary fishing expedition because its members simply do not know how best to serve the Nigerian nation. In chief Fasuan’s views, not only should the federal government have nothing to do with Local Governments, that tier of government should, indeed, be scrapped as only the state and the federal are the federating units. It is his belief that local governments add no value, but rather, that they are centres of corruption. It is the view of this columnist that all monies going to states should, in fact, go to the states and that it should be left to states to create the number of Local Government areas it desires and administer them without the slightest intrusion by any other arm of government. Indeed, for maximum effectiveness, Local Governments should be structured as extensions of the State government with the primary duty of helping it deepen good governance and development but certainly not as centres of opposition. Their creation should therefore be an executive action since there are instances where the ruling party does not have a majority in the state House of Assembly. This obvious truism, which we demonise and run away from, is the lone reason state governments do everything to win elections in ALL LGA’s, including the latest exemplar in Kwara State where the PDP candidate was declared winner in the re rerun election in the Offa LG in spite of the fact that the opposition, APC candidate won in 11 out of 12 wards. As long as anything other than what is being suggested here is in place, Nigeria will continue to have problems with regards to that tier of government. Autonomy being canvassed by the National Assembly is in total contradiction to the constitution which grants states the right to create Local Governments. Or what type of autonomy from the mother is the National Assembly canvassing for the child?

    – Chief Deji Fasuan is the Jagunmolu of Ado-Ekiti and the Agbaakin of Omuaran, Kwara state.

    Here is wishing him long life in glorious health.

  • El-Rufai redux? – The message, the messenger and the skeptical, unbelieving audience

    El-Rufai redux? – The message, the messenger and the skeptical, unbelieving audience

    Redux: (adj) brought back; resurgent. The Victorian era redux.
    Dictionary.com (online)

    I was totally unprepared for it, the deluge of comments that I received by email on the article that was published in this column last week on Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai. By a very long shot, this was the largest body of comments that I had ever received on any single or particular week’s column since I began writing the series nearly seven years ago, first in The Guardian (under a slightly different title) and then in The Nation since March this year. As much as the sheer volume of the comments that people sent to me, I was also surprised by the fact from their names, one could see that the writers of the comments come from all parts of the country. And as if that was not enough, there was the additional fact that almost without any exception, all the comments expressed very negative sentiments and opinions about El-Rufai, many of them with scathing and unforgiving anger. Indeed, it is instructive to go over the contents of some of these comments.

    The most common themes in the comments concerned what their authors deemed El-Rufai’s penchant for hypocrisy and opportunism. As an illustration of this allegation, those who leveled the accusation against El-Rufai stated that now that having decamped from the PDP and is in the APC, he has started to praise or even hero-worship General Muhammadu Buhari, whereas when El-Rufai was still in office and in the PDP, he had said of the retired general that on the basis of his performance when he was in office as military head of state, Buhari was “permanently unelectable”. Others talked of venality and self-seeking. One comment that came from a prominent civil rights advocate was sanguine in reminding me that as of this very moment, El-Rufai is in the courts of the land being prosecuted for corruption, having earlier been indicted by both chambers of the National Assembly for corruptly enriching himself while in office. Others talked of thoughtless and wasteful highhandedness while he was in office, especially as the FCT Minster. They talked of how the monetisation policy of the Obasanjo administration was used by El-Rufai to sell housing units constructed specifically as permanent residences for members of the National Assembly while they were members of parliament, with the result that subsequent members of the National Assembly had to be accommodated at exorbitant costs at government expense. And so it went on and on, the mountain of outrage and anger at El-Rufai in and out of office.

    As I pored over these comments, it was not difficult for me to come to the conclusion that El-Rufai is most definitely one person that many people love to hate, in the words of that well-known and overused phrase. Moreover, from what I have read, both from and about him on the internet, it appears that El-Rufai himself not only seems to invite violent negative feelings toward himself but he actually delights in doing so! In this respect, El-Rufai seems to me to be the obverse of the Honourable Patrick Obahiagbon who greatly delights in drawing condescending, mocking laughter toward himself while one may say that El-Rufai likes to attract vituperative and condemnatory anger toward his person.

    Like Obahiagbon, it seems that hardly any attention is paid to the actual contents of El-Rufai’s articles, speeches and blogs. Definitely, not a single one among the dozens of comments on last week’s article in this column on El-Rufai that came to me via email said anything at all on the actual contents and the claims made in “Stunted Potentials Hobble Our Nation”, the article that I extensively discussed last week. In other words, it seems that the “messenger” being so objectionable to so many people, there is little or no regard for the “message”. As I happen to believe that there is much to ponder carefully in El-Rufai’s recent articles and lectures, I think this is unfortunate. In other words, it is my contention that the question of the gap, the disjuncture between the “message” and the “messenger” in El-Rufai’s writings should lead us not to the conclusion that what we confront in him is an embodiment of the all too common phenomenon of the public figure that everybody loves to hate but, rather, the reality of a monumental credibility problem. This is a credibility gap, a trustworthiness problem that in this particular instance attaches to the public persona of El-Rufai but that, on another level, he shares with most members of our political class. This is what I wish to discuss briefly in what follows.

    On any account, the public lecture that El-Rufai gave in May this year to the Ikeja Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association is masterful in its detailed identification and concise analysis of many of the problems and crises that we face as a nation and a continent at the present time. Given as this year’s contribution to the annual Alao Aka-Bashorun Memorial Lecture and titled, “Impunity, Injustice and Insecurity: What Is the Role of the Law?” the lecture graphically explored the scope and depth of such issues as unprecedented levels of poverty in Nigeria at the present time; the chasm of social inequality that separates the few rich from the rest of the society; youth unemployment, its grandiose scale and equally grandiose frightening ramifications; and the deep divisions that are deliberately and opportunistically manufactured by our political elites. What was even more moving about the lecture was that it traced these issues beyond their abstraction as “problems” and “crises” to their effects on our individual and collective humanity as a people. And quite remarkably, the anger of El-Rufai in this lecture toward members of the political class is so stark, so overwhelming that, but for the fact that one knows that all this is coming from El-Rufai, one would have thought that these were the words of a radical activist, a revolutionary who had completely broken, not just with the PDP but the entirety of the Nigerian political class. As a matter of fact, several times during the lecture, El-Rufai invoked the names of both Alao Aka-Bashorun and Gani Fawehinmi as the departed avatars from whom he had obtained a mandate to speak truth to power in our country.

    In a similar vein, though on a more limited scope, this is the same order of discourse, the same universe of deeply humanistic and egalitarian values that we confront in such other recent articles of El-Rufai as the one discussed in this column last week, “Stunted Potentials Hobble Our Nation” and “Fiscal Responsibility Commission – The Sleeping Watchdog”. In both of these articles, El-Rufai takes on the voice, the persona of the Nemesis of all that is monstrously corrupt, wasteful and comatose in governance in our country, especially as this negatively impacts the lives of the majority of our peoples. And as I remarked in last week’s column, it is particularly noteworthy that El-Rufai in these articles is magnificently impatient with our leaders; he is insistent on the fact that we are in a race with time and with all the better organized and more humane nations and societies of the world. Several times as I read these articles I asked myself the following questions: Where is all this coming from? Why did El-Rufai not say these things and act upon them when he was in government? What does he expect all those who are very familiar with all the things he did and did not do in office, in government, what does he expect them to think of the born-again moral reformer and social revolutionary that we confront in these recent articles? Famously and with an extraordinary emblematic power, on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus, who had vigorously persecuted the Christians, experienced an epiphany that was to transform him into Paul, the Apostle on whom the future of Christianity, that then much despised religion of the poor, ultimately depended. On the road to 2015, will El-Rufai act according to the classic schema of this Pauline script? Will he truly, truly cast his lot with the poor and the marginalised, the millions of unemployed youths of our country and our continent? Or is he merely appropriating the critiques and the vision of all those in our country who, over the decades, have consistently and unwaveringly stood by the side of the majority of our peoples?

    Perhaps these questions redundant, precisely because sadly, tragically, our peoples are not famous for holding their politicians to their word, their promises. And I must admit that I am the very first to concede that the questions may indeed be completely redundant in the Nigeria that we all know only too well and are living through. I confess also that at a certain level, I am as infected as any compatriot reading this piece with the virus of the deep, unbelieving skepticism of the mass of ordinary Nigerians toward nearly everything coming from their social and intellectual elites, most especially the election-cycle promises and visions of our politicians.

    This means that in the end, these questions do not constitute the last word on this issue of El-Rufai’s credibility problem. If there is a last word, look for it in both the run-up to and the aftermath of 2015. El-Rufai is at the moment out of office and is rather beleaguered. Let us wait to see if the rhetoric, the born-again visions will outlast this current phase in his career. More importantly, let us wait to see how many in the ranks of the APC he can and will carry with him in the rough roads ahead if, against all the odds, he decides to stick to the Pauline script of genuine and profoundly life-changing epiphany. I confess that I am not holding my breath.

    1.8% Bested by 0%

    A few weeks ago, I remarked playfully in this column that if in the future I ever came across any results in national secondary school certificate examinations around the world that were worse than the 1.8% passing rate in the NECO exams of 2009, I would bring such finding to the notice of the readers of this column. I was sure that everyone recognised that I made that remark playfully because I thought that it was impossible to get anything “better”, as I ironically put it, than a passing rate of 1.8%. In other words, I was sure that I would never need to fulfill that promise.

    Well, I regret, deeply regret, to inform the reader that we now have something that has surpassed that record. And it is not 1.2% or even 0.8%; it is 0%. This took place in Liberia three weeks ago in the national entrance exams taken by secondary school students for entrance into the University of Liberia. Reportedly, of the nearly twenty-five thousand students that took the exam, not a single one passed. Passing in this case was measured in exactly the same terms as in NECO: at least five subjects including English and Mathematics.

    If it offers the reader any consolation, let me also report that, unlike the near total indifference with which the NECO debacle of 2009 was met in Nigeria, a national outcry of anguish greeted the Liberian catastrophe three weeks ago. This, I hope, shows that if we send Patrick Obahiagbon to commiserate with the Liberians on the terrible failure rate of their students in English, he will not find a welcoming party at the airport.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Education and democracy: training the future generation 1

    Education and democracy: training the future generation 1

    A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to Farce or Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power of knowledge.- James Madison
    There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and this is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.—Benjamin Rush
    It is only when the minds of men have been properly and rigorously cultivated and garnished, that they can be safely entrusted with public affairs with a certainty and assuredness that they will make the best of their unique opportunity and assignment.-Obafemi Awolowo

    Today’s piece is the first of a series on an issue that should be of serious concern to lovers of a united and progressive Nigeria: educating and training those who are to keep Nigeria going. The three quotations overleaf by two of United States of America’s founding fathers and one of Nigeria’s founding fathers capture the themes that circumscribe the articles on education and democracy in this column for the next few weeks.

    Given the arguments— pros and cons— that attended to the recent strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), it should not require a great measure of brilliance on the part of the average Nigerian that the country is not giving enough attention to the most important ingredient that can sustain its unity and predispose it to sustainable democracy and development. When government spokespersons rest their argument against provision of credible higher education on lack of funds, the average citizen needs to get worried about what awaits his or her children in a country that is a part of a modern world driven by knowledge. The articles planned for the next few weeks are designed to express concerns about the way to provide proper education that can keep our country together as a democratic federation in a global political and economic ethos that is driven by freedom and innovation.

    Some of the questions once asked by Bertrand Russell and John Dewey will be repeated in the series, with the hope of stimulating discussion on what true patriots of our country need to worry about as they prepare their younger ones for life beyond them in a country that appears to have been at the crossroads for too long with respect to how best to educate the citizenry in a highly competitive global environment. Put simply, the issue that education has a role in making democracy a workable system and that democracy has a role in making education profitable to the individual and the community in which he or she lives will be repeated in the discussion in the next few weeks on what the government and the citizen need to do to save the country’s democracy and federation.

    Nigeria is not without its own thinkers and doers in the area of systematic promotion of the symbiosis between education and democracy. Chief ObafemiAwolowo and Chief AdekunleAjasin in particular had given deep thought to the role of education in nation building and in the making of a modern and progressive nation and citizenry. The initiation and funding of free primary public education in Western Nigeria in 1955 demonstrated and still demonstrates Chief Awolowo’s conviction that democracy might be a mirage if citizens (voters) are not educated. Using proceeds from taxes, initially paid grudgingly by citizens, as well as from proceeds from lottery in the 1950s to fund primary public education at a time when there was no trace of petroleum certainly underscores a rare commitment to education as a means of sustaining democracy and a way to prepare citizens for a meaningful life in the era of modernity.

    Most of the citizens from the Western part of Nigeria in the generation of this writer are largely products of Awolowo’s free primary education provided by a combination of properly coordinated public and private or sectarian schools in the 1950s. In the assessment of nationals and foreigners in the field of higher education, there were few, if at all, complaints about the quality of education in Nigeria until the late 1970s or early 1980s. Education started to decline in Nigeria under military autocracy between 1983 and 1999. It should not surprise anyone if military dictators had no use for education for citizens, on account of the fact, that a highly educated citizenry could become too critical of authoritarianism. But there is no reason why an elected government should be afraid of giving proper education to citizens during a period of democratic rule. However, the quality of education in the last fourteen years of post-military rule has not improved considerably for citizens to believe that Nigerian military dictators are more averse to educated citizenry than elected civilians that succeeded them in 1999.

    The parlous state of education in the country at present recalls the Yoruba proverb: Oro sunukunojusunukun la fi n wo o. This translates roughly in English to a desperate problem requires a desperate solution. Providing the right type of education to sustain Nigeria’s democracy, development, and federation certainly calls for creative thinking on the part of all stakeholders: parents, students, federal, state, and local governments, and most especially the legislative branch of government at all levels. Attempting to amend a constitution that is riddled with confusion in respect of creating an educational culture and system in the country without paying any attention to how to re-design education in the country is similar to looking away from dealing with how to create a realistic and efficient security system in the country.

    Like the issue of law enforcement, educating and training the Nigerian child to the point that he or she can feel safe, self-confident, emboldened to express his or her opinions and live by the wish of the majority in a competitive global environment requires more than expressions of commitment to the promotion of a knowledge society in the country. It calls for fresh and deep thinking on how to create an educational system or systems that can support aspirations of Nigerians to thrive in the modern global market. Consigning education to the realm of buck passing and bashing the professoriate may not solve the problems that have contributed in large parts to Nigeria being 145th on the Global Competitive Index and being 146th on account of poor primary education in the country. It is the legislature at all levels and the civil society across state borders that must lead a new discussion on the way forward, while lovers of inclusive political and economic institutions in the country pay attention to the need for a new strategy on how to educate Nigeria’s citizens.

  • The case against fake auto parts and tyres

    Last Thursday, I was invited as a speaker at the Auto Tyre Day organised by Automobiles and Road Safety Initiative. The topic I was asked to speak on was the effect of fake auto parts and tyres on the economy.

    My first reaction to the invitation was to ask to be excused since I didn’t consider myself a road safety expert. I, however, accepted the invitation when it occurred to me that as a motorist or driver virtually everyone is a stakeholder on motoring issues.

    The celebration of the day, though not as popular as other well known ones, is necessary considering that safety on our roads should be paramount to all of us.

    Road accidents in Nigeria, which has led to the death of many innocent people, are on the increase and there is an urgent need to halt the alarming development.

    The theme of this day: Be Tyre Smart, Play your part is very instructive. It is a clarion call on all of us not to be smart in the negative way but to comply with necessary regulations on the use of tyres.

    It requires that we should use the right tyres all times and take necessary precautions.

    The value of the Nigerian auto industry as at 2011 was put at N12.5billion as against N750m in 2001, according to some auto industry stakeholders.

    However, an average of more than N500 million is said to be lost to fake parts annually. To be sure, fake parts business is a global problem and not just peculiar to Nigeria. After all a majority of the fake parts are imported sometimes by unscrupulous businessmen who reportedly tell their foreign partners to manufacture sub standard parts.

    Dr Oscar Odiboh an auto consultant vividly captures the challenge posed by the menace of the fake products when he said in a paper he presented at an occasion like this: “A car is made up of an average of 14,000 parts and each can be faked,” adding that “ for each car part, there is an average six versions in Nigeria.”

    A visit to Ladipo will confirm this assertion with the open sale of fake parts and tyres while mechanics and touts encourage vehicle owners to buy fake parts with all kinds of spurious claims about second hand parts and tyres being better than new ones. My question is usually which new ones are they talking about, fake or genuine?

    Undoubtedly, the reign of fake parts has stunted the growth of auto dealership in the country and encouraged indiscriminate sales of second hand motors.

    In many ways, fake parts have a lot negative impacts on a growing economy like ours where regulations are not effective and can easily be sidetracked by corrupt government officials at the ports and unpatriotic business men who are more concerned about the money they can make than the dangers to the lives of vehicle owners and other motorists.

    The obvious challenge is that safety on our roads is compromised as the rate of accidents will keep increasing when the lives of the people could have been saved if more vehicle owners shun the patronage of fake parts.

    With fake parts and tyres, there is a huge loss of revenue by both government and sellers of genuine parts. Those who import the fake products are sure not to pay taxes expected of them which should be paid to the government. For sellers of genuine parts they will experience low patronage and will not easily recover their investments.

    There may be need for waivers for importers of genuine parts to reduce the high cost of genuine products in the local market due to the present multiple taxes and charges which force the dealers to sell at generally unaffordable prices.

    Whatever the case, like the Yoruba will say, Ohun ti o da o da (What is not good is not good); fake auto parts and tyres are not good and can kill not only motorists but the economy.

  • PDP crisis: No room for neutrality

    PDP crisis: No room for neutrality

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has not yet imploded; but it could do so in the coming months if the cracks in the party are further widened by insensitivity and mismanagement. As a few of its leading lights have warned, the crisis in the party could lead to its disintegration. It is not yet known whether those alleged by President Goodluck Jonathan camp to be behind the crisis anticipate the severity of the cracks and the turbulent course it is taking; what is, however, evident at the moment is that the disquiet felt by party leaders when the drama began is gradually yielding to panic as the disagreement worsens and spreads further afield than they initially foresaw. The president is thoroughly miffed by the crisis and is getting increasingly desperate; chairman of the party, Bamanga Tukur, who had long acted as a medieval tyrant, but is now talking like a modern autocrat, has become even more censorious; and other party elders have either seemed to snicker behind closed doors or chafe hypocritically to convey impression of concern.

    It is hard to determine right now whether the PDP will survive this turbulence, the worst since its formation, or since the party and its leadership were hijacked by the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and his scheming and fawning aides. What is apparent, however, is that even if it survives, the party is unlikely to retain the ferocious determination that has seen it talk and act recklessly against the constitution and public interest. A few of its leaders suggest the party will emerge from the present crisis stronger and more united. But already, its confidence has been shaken, and party bosses, like autocrats everywhere, have spoken temptingly of using the security forces against the breakaway factional leaders whom they describe as traitors and common felons. Given the points on which the two camps disagree, and the violent rhetoric deployed by them in digging in their heels, a rapprochement would almost certainly involve a loss of face on either side, if not political suicide.

    The war in the PDP may still be at its infancy, and may not yet manifest definite frontlines, but the demands of the two camps are at least candidly self-centred enough to enable a fair assessment of what the problem is and where the crisis seems headed. The breakaway faction led by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Kawu Baraje demands the ousting of the party chairman, Alhaji Tukur, the resolution of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) in favour of the Governor Rotimi Amaechi faction, cessation of EFCC harassment, and the exclusion of Dr Jonathan from the 2015 presidential race. The Jonathan/Tukur faction disdainfully declines to negotiate Dr Jonathan’s right to contest in 2015, and more peremptorily demands the dissolution of the Atiku/Baraje faction and subjection of the faction to PDP rules and conflict resolution mechanisms.

    On the surface, it would seem these mutually antagonistic positions are the bane of the current PDP crisis, or civil war, as some have colourfully put it. After many interventions by top party officials and former presidents, and perhaps some cynically disinterested discussions between the warring camps, the stalemate has remained unbroken. No one had the right to insist Dr Jonathan could not exercise his constitutional right to run for the presidency in 2015, the president’s aides and supporters said forcefully. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) could not be prevailed upon not to perform its lawful functions, others said in response to the demands of the Atiku/Baraje camp. Alhaji Tukur could not be sacked without recourse to due party process, his camp said triumphantly. As hardline as these positions are, they are, in my view, neither the cause nor the trigger of the current PDP crisis, nor yet the reasons for the trenchancy of the disagreements and the irreconcilability of the two positions. They are merely symptoms of a deeper, underlying morass that has eroded the foundation of the party and corroded the fabric that previously knit its members together.

    The party has not only split temporarily, and its top leaders shown little interest in reconciliation, it is also reported, subject to final corroboration, that seven governors, about 20 senators and 57 members of the Lower House have also indicated they were breaking ranks with the Jonathan/Tukur camp. This may be unsettling and irritating to the Jonathan rerun agenda. But even if reconciliation were to be secured in the coming weeks in spite of the undeniable acerbity of the two camps, it would still not solve the structural and leadership anomalies eating up the party and making it dysfunctional. Sooner or later the party was bound to implode. That that implosion seems to be coming earlier than expected merely underscores the gravity of the contradictions within the party, contradictions that were conceived, enacted and reinforced during the Obasanjo years. Three fundamental reasons account for the severity of the PDP crisis, and may explain why the crisis may be intractable at best or insoluble at worst.

    The first is that once Chief Obasanjo and his aides supplanted the moral minority that formed the core of the party, and vitiated the principles and practices that were designed to ennoble the party and make it formidable, the party began to list dangerously. Some of the party’s early chairmen were not perfect, and in fact a few of them lent themselves to be used to validate Chief Obasanjo’s unprincipled and dishonest grab for absolute power. But they at least exuded a breath of fresh air and embraced the general principles of democracy. Even in the giddy early years of the PDP, it was hard, for instance, to imagine a Solomon Lar or an Audu Ogbeh act like a proponent of electoral chicanery of the first rank similar to the flip-flopping Vincent Ogbulafor or the ingratiating Ahmadu Ali. Within Chief Obasanjo’s two undistinguished terms in office, the party transformed from a gentle and grasping conservative group, gingerly upholding its own moral and ideological principles, to an aggressive, remorseless and fanatical reactionary animated by, and even proud of, electoral fraud and all the base emotions and practices humans are capable of.

    Second is the simple fact that the anomalies and distortions first grafted into the country’s political system by Chief Obasanjo have been underscored, for 16 years, by varying degrees of political and especially electoral malfeasances which his successors perpetrated, from the wearied but now deceased Umaru Yar’Adua, to the distracted but disguisedly ruthless Dr Jonathan. By any stretch of imagination, it is hard to remedy 16 years of unbroken filth and falsehood. Indeed, as fate would have it, since 1999, Nigeria has been gifted three gentlemen who dedicated themselves, or were dedicated by their aides, to adding to the country’s misery. The present PDP crisis is, therefore, a culmination of 16 years of misery in the party, not just a haggle over 2015 presidential poll. I do not exaggerate.

    Third and most important factor exacerbating the PDP crisis is the unqualifiedly misshapen Jonathan government, which seems more adroit in worsening bad things than in bettering good things, whether they are principles, values or honour. Like Chief Obasanjo before him, he has done nothing spectacular about roads worth anyone ascribing the label of a legacy, but of course his argument will always be that he was not the architect of the decay. He has not offered the country a specific vision of what education should be, nor has he bettered what he met. Instead, he has met the decline in education with his idiosyncratic lack of honour, refusing to uphold the agreement his predecessor and himself entered into with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in 2009 and 2010. It would ground the country, his Information minister said apocalyptically. Dr Jonathan has done much worse, of course. Not only is he himself uninspired, he has not inspired anyone, and has had little interaction with artists, poets, scientists, social scientists, and other noteworthy intellectuals, local and international.

    It is this unremitting dullness of his government that has instigated revolt against him and the party, especially when patriots recoil in horror as they contemplate another four years of the Jonathan nightmare. Alhaji Tukur, I emphasise, is a mere cipher in the disagreement. I believe that if the Jonathan government had been spectacular in many respects and charismatic in more ways than one, few brave hearts would have had the courage to rise against him: indeed, it would have been suicidal. For then we would have had brilliant and unprecedented use of men and material, the forging of a stirring national identity that transcends tribe, religion and class, and the enactment of great policies driven by far-reaching visions of democracy, federalism, rule of law and public probity. Sadly for Dr Jonathan, any revolt against him now invariably acquires the distinct aura of patriotism, and rebel leaders, whether they fail or succeed, are likely to be canonised in the consciousness of the people. Rather than be chastened by the massiveness of the revolt against both his government and his person, Dr Jonathan and his doting aides appear set to go for broke by wielding state power against his opponents in absolute disregard of the constitution and elementary restraint and common sense.

    But even if he were to overwhelm his opponents and the dissenters within his party, there is nothing he can do— partly because he is not capable of it – to mollify the rage against himself and his government. Worse, because the modest amount of principles and values that made the PDP to cohere in its early days have been denuded by years of incompetent rule, it is unlikely that victory over his enemies will be sufficient to snatch the party from the jaws of confusion and disintegration. I had hoped that for the sake of democracy we were on our way to a two-party system, especially with the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC). And though I concluded two weeks ago that the PDP was exhausted, I had nonetheless hoped that the muted patriots within its ranks could somehow rise up to retrieve the party from the hands of its charlatans. Now, I fear greatly that my hopes were misplaced, and that perhaps we would need to seek another party to duel with the APC, if the PDP and its leading lights cannot shake off the suicidal instinct to which their incompetence and sycophantic relationships seem to be leading them.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Atiku’s pound of flesh after his longest night

    Atiku’s pound of flesh after his longest night

    The implosion in the Peoples Democratic Party, predicted by political analysts, occurred at the special convention of the party in Abuja last Saturday. The prediction had been premised on the analysts’ belief that the party is an amalgamation of strange bed fellows whose guiding principle has no philosophical base other than to hold on to power at all costs and help themselves with the nation’s exchequer even to the detriment of the larger society. New or aspiring members must shelve their thinking, orientation or philosophy and submit themselves to the party’s directive principle: share the money.

    In spite of repeated claims by Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, a former national chairman of PDP, and Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State that the party, touted as the biggest in Africa, will rule for a minimum of 50 years, not many who had followed the party’s way of life would be shocked at the turn of events. Now the signs are getting clear that some members of the party are getting sick of the unholy wedlock and are now set for divorce.

    The development would constitute a huge relief for millions of well-meaning Nigerians and their foreign sympathisers who are deeply concerned about the nation’s steady descent into anomie. These would include some respondents to a piece in this column sometime last year wherein I suggested that Jonathan should not seek another term in the interest of his party and the nation. They responded to my counsel with indignation, warning me to stop counselling Jonathan against seeking the presidential ticket of the PDP in 2015, as that would be the easiest way to get rid of his docile government and the looting party.

    All the credit for the imminent funeral of the the party must go to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who led the rebellion at the Eagles Square last Saturday. Given the crises that had engulfed the party, particularly the election that produced two chairmen for the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and the failure of the leaders of the party to resolve the impasse, not many keen watchers of political events expected the convention to end on any other note than rancour. Hence, it was not a shock to many when the news filtered in that Atiku had led seven PDP governors and some other heavyweights in the party to another venue for a parallel convention.

    Seeing the straight face he maintained as he departed the Eagles Square venue of the party’ presidential primaries where Jonathan roundly defeated him with open support from Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo in January 2011, I needed no soothsayer to know that President Jonathan had not heard the last from Atiku. Many people had expected Atiku to give Jonathan a good fight in the primary election with the prospect of a bloc vote from northern delegates to the convention after he was adopted by northern elders and leaders. But the election night turned out the longest for Atiku. The confidence his face radiated at the start of business gave way to anxiety and despair as the counting of votes began.

    The pattern of voting ended up a one-way traffic. Jonathan routed the Turaki of Adamawa even in his (Atiku’s) home state According to Professor Tunde Adeniran, the returning officer, 3542 votes were cast during the primaries, out of which President Jonathan polled 2736. He was trailed by Atiku with 805 votes while Mrs. Sarah Jubril got one vote, apparently the one she cast for herself. If Atiku suspected that he was manipulated into defeat, he had no way of protesting at the election venue. He walked away quietly and bided time to get even.

    If Atiku’s swing from one party to another is a sign of desperation as now perceived by many, the desperation has less to do with his presidential ambition than the chance to take his own pound of flesh after the humiliation he suffered at Eagle Square. Atiku is on a vengeance mission. A vengeance mission devoid of desperation only has a remote chance to succeed, for desperation is the highway that leads to the city called vengeance. Fortunately for him, the President played into his hands with unguarded use of power and the tactless way he and his men handled the crisis that was foisted on the party by its chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.

    The governors, in sympathy with Governor Murtala Nyako, whose political structures in Adamawa State were demolished by Tukur and replaced with his as soon as he became the party’s chairman, had demanded his immediate removal. But President Jonathan would not have any of that. And rather than pacify the governors or stoop to conquer like Obasanjo did when he had a similar experience with governors at the presidential primaries of the PDP in 2003, he opted for brute force, seeking to weep them into line.

    The result has been continued escalation and diversification of the crisis, which culminated in Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s defeat of Jonathan’s candidate, Governor Jonah Jang, at the recent chairmanship election of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. Rather than accept defeat, Jonathan and the governors in his camp decided to recognise Jang as a factional chairman of the forum. Lost on Jonathan and his men was the bad precedent that was being set with the recognition of an illegal chairman of the governors’ forum. The precedent produced its first offspring with the emergence of two factions of the PDP last Saturday. Concerned Nigerians can now only pray that the trend does not continue into the 2015 elections.

  • Eagles must whip Malawi silly

    Eagles must whip Malawi silly

    Ordinarily, the game between Nigeria and Malawi in Calabar ought to be the lead discussion in this column today. Not so. Malawi are minnows in global football. And if Nigeria wants to be counted as a soccer nation, matches against countries such as Malawi should be a piece of cake, irrespective of the squad (Europe-based or home-based) that we parade.

    It is on this premise that I want to assume that Nigeria will whip Malawi silly, given the pedigree of our players in Europe and the Diaspora. Super Eagles players should bash the Malawians groggy with goals, if they must assert themselves as African champions.

    The Eagles must stop the Malawians from the blast of the referee’s whistle. An avalanche of goals will suffice to warn any country wishing to be our next foes in the last stage of the 2014 World Cup qualifiers to surrender as soon as the draws are made next week.

    A convincing victory will silence their loquacious coach. Tom Saintfiet has stirred the hornet’s nest with his mind games. Saintfiet’s antics have captured a casualty in Stephen Keshi, who must prepare soon his defence for Zurich, Switzerland at FIFA’s headquarters.

    But I’m sure that Keshi won’t need to visit FIFA’s headquarters, if the Eagles beat the Malawians silly today. If that happens, we can seize the friendly atmosphere at the post-match conference to get Keshi to apologise to Saintfiet.

    After Keshi’s post-match apology, we should get Saintfiet to assure the international media that he won’t press for further sanctions against Keshi, in the interest of peace.

    If I were a photographer, my first shot would be Saintfiet’s reaction, when he meets with Keshi inside the UJ Esuene Stadium in Calabar. I urge Keshi to swallow his pride and walk up to the Belgian to apologise. No one should sacrifice Keshi on the altar of neutrality. Keshi is our best and must reap the fruits of his labour by directing the Eagles’ affairs from the sidelines, if we eventually qualify for the 2014 World Cup slated to hold in Brazil.

    The Big Boss shouldn’t listen to those who think that there is nothing FIFA can do. I’m not interested in what FIFA can do or not. My concern is for the good of the Nigerian game since our young boys need the national teams to blossom under a coach, which is what Keshi has shown us with his feats since November 2012 when he was employed.

    I’m sure Keshi would have been told by his employers NFF that they have received FIFA’s letter on the issue. Saintfiet is a gentleman. His grouse with Nigeria rests with the uncanny manner in which he lost the country’s technical director job. But he knows that cannot be the end for him with Nigeria.

    In the event that Keshi sticks to his gun, the NFF must seize the platform of the post-match dinner that the Cross River state governor is to organise to get Saintfiet and Keshi to talk the brouhaha over. That post-match party could also be used to compel Keshi to mend fences with Saintfiet in conjunction with the Malawi FA chiefs.

    Keshi must lead us to the 2014 World Cup. We need to keep Keshi busy through refresher courses or allow him to understudy any foreign coach whose style of play he wants to adopt for the Eagles.

    There will always be a lacuna in our preparations for the next stage of the qualifiers. I won’t be surprised if Keshi tells us after the game that he wants to head for California for a deserved rest. He would be granted but when he goes, there won’t be a plan until we draw a big country such as Cameroon as our next foes.

    A calculated plan must be instituted to get Keshi fully prepared for the 2014 World Cup. Our players have shown capacity to compete and excel over other nationals. What we should do is to make sure that our coach enjoys this advantage by ensuring he is not idle at any point leading to the World Cup matches in Brazil. Good luck Keshi, good luck Super Eagles. Up Nigeria!

    No Gaiya no!

    House of Representatives Chairman on Sports Godfrey Gaiya wants the industry to grow, albeit through improving the welfare of the athletes.

    He has lofty ideas for the industry but what he lacks is the will power to push through these ideas such that cash to implement his thoughts are released to athletes. Gaiya has this tendency of playing to the gallery. There is nothing wrong with that, if he can back his claims with facts.

    Gaiya wants to rock the boat again by stating that the NFF must pay the players $10,000 to beat Malawi. I hope he knows that the Malawians would be paid $500 if they beat Nigeria. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t cost the Malawians to promise their players $10,000, knowing that such a feat won’t happen. The Malawians haven’t done that because they don’t have the cash to back such outlandish promises.

    This is the point that Gaiya must understand, beyond playing the nice guy that he wants the players to perceive him. NFF is cash strapped. I don’t know of any legislation by Gaiya and his co-travellers in the National Assembly to encourage the government to provide waivers for firms that support sports.

    Even if there is, Gaiya needs to focus his attention on ensuring that such novel ideas are implemented. In other climes, efforts would have been made by the Gaiya-led body to visit firms to support sports.

    Visits by such policy making unit will instill confidence in the corporate world to identify with sports. I would have been excited if Gaiya had told us that his committee has gotten a firm to pay more than $10,000 per player without recourse to government cash.

    Gaiya must learn to be a team player. Smacking the NFF or deriding our sports administrators raises the question of the role of his committee in prospecting for sports at the National Assembly.

    Good riddance!

    Change produces new ideas. But when changes don’t bring some freshness, the smart way forward is to discard such innovations.

    The biggest news from the National Sports Commission (NSC) is the scrapping of an ill-informed concessioning of some sports. I deliberately retained the headline – “concession my foot” because the last time I wrote on this issue with the headline, I was called names. Rather than look at my suggestions, I was maligned by those who introduced it.

    The truth is for any sport to be considered for the concession plan, it has to be popular and have a large followership. No sponsor will splash cash on a sport that has few followers. Any attempt to bankroll a sport with empty stands amounts to winking in the dark.

    One thing about the Bolaji Abdullahi-led NSC is that it doesn’t shirk from taking key decisions. He could also find a way round the concession theory. Perhaps, the NSC needs to shop for technocrats with the pedigree of revamping moribund companies to run some of the designated sports.

    In asking for those sports to be concessioned, what the eggheads at the National Sports Commission (NSC) ought to have done was to visit those firms that bankrolled those games to return. They should have guaranteed those firms some tax waivers. They should also have allowed the firms’ nominees to run the show themselves since the general reason why they pulled out was because there wasn’t proper accountability of the cash pumped into such federations.

    Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas has singlehandedly bankrolled a table tennis competition for over 43 years. Sponsors fell over one another in the golden era of the game.

    The mood in the sports hall was always electrifying, with the spectators cheering ceaselessly, as players exhibited their skills. No sponsor would stop exploiting such platforms especially, if their goods are the consumables. The feel good setting that comes with watching the fans sip from sponsors’ products on television is unquantifiable.

    It must be stated here too that our sports didn’t lack sponsorship in the past. The administrators of yore were honest. They spent the cash on what it was earmarked for. They organised competitions that compelled sponsors to advertise their products. They accounted for the cash spent and introduced innovations that made the events exciting.

    Adequate funding will come when federations’ boards are made up of credible people. The presence of men and women of integrity in these boards will restore confidence on those who want to commit cash to such sports.

    Good leadership is infectious. It propels all other components of the sport to always produce their best. It elicits discipline within the rank and file of such federations. It reduces suspicion among members, athletes and coaches because they trust their leaders.