The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Nigeria’s unity: praying plus planning

    Nigeria’s unity: praying plus planning

    What is absent in General Gowon’s much needed homily is the need to plan, in addition to praying


    There is no doubt that America’s prediction that Nigeria is likely to get ruptured from inside by 2015 is already making Nigerian patriots tremble. From pronouncements in the print media in the last few weeks, it is clear that it is not only media pundits that are worried about the dwindling capacity of the country to survive all the problems militating against it by and beyond 2015. In particular, former military leaders who should know the importance of intelligence reports appear worried to the point that they have to assure ordinary Nigerians that they are not worried by America’s prediction that the country that they had lived to keep together in the last forty-seven years on their own terms may assume a character that is radically different from the unity-at-all-costs mentality and unity-is-the-only-issue mantra that Nigerians have been fed on since the Nigeria-Biafra War.

    General Obasanjo in his own case has affirmed that Nigeria is not going to break regardless of how American sign readers of other nations feel, adding that the threat to the country’s peace and progress has been occasioned by the lack of discipline of the political class that succeeded his own generation. One of Obasanjo’s military successors, General Ibrahim Babangida, has also assured Nigerians that there is nothing to worry about regarding any prediction from the planet about the fragility of Nigeria by or beyond 2015. Most recently, the country’s second military dictator, General Yakubu Gowon, added his voice to the rhetoric of or verbiage of peace in the face of threats to peace that have engulfed the country for a few years.

    If there is any military dictator whose voice is likely to be palatable to Nigerians, General Gowon must be one of such leaders. He was the military leader who supervised the war to keep Nigeria one between 1967 and 1970. He was a military leader who tried to restructure the country without puncturing or rupturing its cultural diversity. He created the foundation for the six geopolitical zones that many of the leaders who came after him have been afraid to accept as a possible model for managing the country’s diversity. Dividing Nigeria into twelve states in Gowon’s time brought about the seed of what Nigerians clamouring for true federalism today refer to as Southwest, Southsouth, Southeast, Northcentral, Northeast and Northwest regions or zones. Though he did not fire a shot himself, General Gowon spent his most productive years as a soldier dealing with threats to Nigeria’s territorial unity.

    Nobody should then be surprised that it is General Gowon’s assurance about the need for Nigeria to turn all negative predictions about its future as one united country into ashes that appears most passionate and religious about Nigeria’s unity in the face of threatening adversity: “Every Nigerian should stand against the claims. If every one of us believes that it will not happen, then it will not. I believe God will not allow such to happen. Nigeria Prays (Gowon’s NGO of intervention in the country’s problems for the past few years) is really praying against such; that’s the reason this group came into existence.” General Gowon added with conviction: “Nigerians at home and abroad are very concerned about the crisis that is rocking this nation. We believe that only prayers can solve it. If you love Nigeria the way I love Nigeria, and if I love Nigeria the way you do and we have faith, then we shall overcome.”

    What is absent in General Gowon’s much needed homily is the need to plan, in addition to praying. Praying is not as important as finding methods to make Nigeria achieve its goal of unity, peace, and progress. We need to revive some measure of humanism that was applied to the threat to Nigeria’s unity after he became the country’s military head of state. At that time, the country’s citizens were enjoined by his administration to pray to God to keep Nigeria one while those in the position of leadership under Gowon went on the drawing board to work out plans to make the job easier for God to do. We bought arms from other countries, sent emissaries to other countries to appeal to them to assist Nigeria, sent soldiers to fight in what was Biafra, and also created 12 states out of the four regions in existence at that time, to give a region to the Igbos while also giving a cultural space to the so-called minorities in the old Eastern Region, today’s South-south, the region or zone that produced the current president.

    To just ask Nigerians to leave everything in God’s hands in a country that is overtly divided by Boko Haram and zoning of the presidency to the North and the South-south is to move away from the injunction of giving unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. All the threats to the existence of Nigeria today are attributable to human action or choice of action or inaction, rather than to temptation by God. Militants in the Niger Delta asking for more money or inducing amnesty are not doing this on God’s account.

    Similarly, Boko Haram enthusiasts calling for Sharianisation of a multi-religious state-nation are not doing this on Allah’s behalf. Even those who say that the turn of minorities from the South-south to rule in 2015 or of the section which Prof. Ango Abdullahi called the country’s majority from the North must not be blocked are not acting because God wants anything of such. Even incurable federalists calling for regional autonomy or devolution of power to states or the regions are not necessarily working for God. All of these groupings are working for their own interests in a country with competing or conflicting interests. There is a sense in calling on God to touch the souls of each member of the various groups and equip each of them with the spirit of compromise, a pre-requisite for peace and development in a multinational society and a democratic polity.

    The challenge of the moment is for former military dictators, most of whom designed the Nigeria of our time, and the civilians that are jostling to rule or control the status-quo to also listen to citizens and hear them well on workable templates to peace and progress in a country blessed with diverse cultures and values. This is the time for Nigeria’s leaders-military and civilian– to recognise human capacity to affect the human condition without necessarily forsaking the importance of God’s ultimate power to bless the choice made by human beings. This is a good lesson of the enlightenment that must not be forgotten by any nation seeking peace and progress in the era of modernity.

  • March on washington: One foot still in the air

    March on washington: One foot still in the air

    August 28 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington where a 34 year old Black preacher stood before the Lincoln Memorial to deliver the most evocative address ever given in the capital of the world’s most powerful nation. On that day, Dr. Martin Luther King proclaimed his dream of a race-blind society. The excellent speech woke the conscience of those segments of the nation with consciences that could be awakened.

    Those five decades ago, many people dared to believe the audacious dream might come true. The truth is that it still inhabits the land of dreams. Reality is a vigilant sentinel of its dominion. Rarely does it allow the delicate or kind to enter. If Dr. King were alive today, he would encounter both the benefit and pain of hindsight. The great man might lay himself down to sleep that he might dream a bit more or he might propose to knock Reality’s door with more vigour such that the hard door would open a bit more widely to the dream he gave us.

    While King touched those who believed in freedom and dignity for all, there were also segments of the population that profited from the old, unjust way. These people defined freedom as their right to place others underfoot. For them, his speech stirred nothing but dyspepsia and revulsion.

    Prejudice does not yield easily. It neither vanishes nor retires upon encountering its solution, as we would hope. It fights back, reasserting its claim on society with a vigour renewed by the challenge to its dominant position. To fight prejudice is to arouse it anew and cause it to adapt afresh.

    The unfolding march of events since that late August day 50 years ago prove that injustice and prejudice don’t disappear. Unless buried, they simply reinvent themselves. They never tire of plotting their own continuance. In some ways, America has advanced since that day. A Black man lives in the White House. Yet, for all this development symbolises, the progressive political and economic ideas that inform the Black American experience remain foreign to mainstream discourse. The Black man in the White House attained his position by convincing enough Whites that he would safeguard the vested interests that produce the systemic inequality suffered by poor Black, Brown and even White people.

    Today, income inequality climbs to its highest level in a century as do poverty levels. The comparison of the household wealth between Black and White Americans is less favorable now than decades ago. America has the biggest prison population in world history. Most inmates are Black and Latino men booked on minor, nonviolent drug offenses. While most inmates are Black, Whites perpetrate most crimes. There is but one answer to the riddle of this discrepancy between the rates of crimes committed and those of incarceration: Racism.

    Black men get incarcerated in droves, effectively becoming a vast army of the disenfranchised. Once enveloped by the prison system, these men and boys become ineligible for government programs in education and housing. Meaningful employment is denied them. Most states prohibit them from voting. While America has a Black man in the White House, a prime objective of the political economy is literally to funnel millions of other Black men into the big house known as the penitentiary. Taking a strategic view of things is to conclude that a Black man has been selected to preside over the gross incarceration of the highest number of Black men placed in physical servitude since the age of slavery.

    For those Blacks fortunate enough to evade the shadow of prison, life presents other challenges. Black unemployment doubles the rate of White America’s. Worse, those Blacks with jobs are herded into positions that pay far less and offer less employment security and benefits. Living in the Black community is costlier although the quality of what is purchased is inferior. Blacks pay more for basics such as food. Stores hike their prices knowing full well that the people in Black communities are poorer than the national average. Home mortgages, transportation costs and insurance policies are dearer to the resident of a traditionally Black community. In other words, the system is engineered to isolate then impoverished those who have become its victims. The little they have shall be taken from them.

    When the multitudes gather on Wednesday to commemorate the March on Washington, they should do so with the somber countenance of people who have too longed supped a bittersweet diet. Since the first March, the nation has changed much but the reality of its racial disparity has changed little. Racism has adapted to the new developments in the political economy and racism has adapted faster than the quest to end racism much as a bacillus mutates faster than the medicine used to kill it.

    At the most profound level, 50 years have vanished but not a day has passed. Every year of advance has been matched by one of regression. The dream of Dr. King has neither been fulfilled nor extinguished. It floats in abeyance. The 1963 event made history; but the dream itself remains both history in the making and in the unmaking.

    The March on Washington came for two purposes. The quest for Black American civil rights has been the reason the entire world came to see as the sole rationale for the gathering. However, there was another, perhaps more important impetus: the quest for economic justice. Too many people of all stripes and colors struggled in poverty in the land of plenty. Although America had achieved a globally unprecedented level of economic activity and material accumulation, many of her citizens languished in all-too-familiar squalor. Economic growth did not beget economic justice. Left to itself, economic growth promotes inequality and greater injustice.

    Dr. King was acutely aware of this principle of economic advantage compounding itself until mutating into an unfairness that stifles a nation by impairing the welfare of its most vulnerable. That is why he shifted focus to dedicate himself to the quest for economic justice once the desired civil rights legislation was had. He recognised civil rights for the poor were an empty gesture if joined by nothing more practical; it is a large plate bearing no food. To have the right to do something but always lack the means to accomplish is to be effectively deprived of said right. It is an insult cloaked in the garment of imaginary favor.

    Dr. King was dissatisfied with American political economic power as exercised at home and abroad. While he talked in the tone of reform, he was a revolutionary in pursuit of radical goals. He sought to restructure American foreign and domestic policy from its roots. This made him the most dangerous man in America. For his pursuit of economic justice, he was killed. While limiting himself to the confines of civil rights, he was safe although reviled by many. When he came to critique the entire structure of power and its disbursement was when he met the assassin’s bullet. He hoped to cleanse this great edifice of power by moral force. Those who held guard over the mean edifice met his moral force with a hot-fired piece of lead.

    Dr. King realised the peril he walked. Not only did he get threats on a quotidian basis, the death of another man he once met served as a warning. A few years before King’s death, Malcolm X had executed a decisive pivot. Having shorn himself of the idiosyncratic worldview of the Black Muslims (Nation of Islam), Malcolm transformed himself from conservative Black nationalist into progressive humanitarian. This turn quickly cost him his life because it also made him a dangerous man.

    As long as he beat the lone drum of racism, the system tolerated him, in fact, it found him entertaining. He was like a one-armed man trying to accomplish a task that could only be done with two. As soon as he started the simultaneous sounding of racial injustice/harmony and economic justice, the authorities found him less amusing. In what many suspect to have been a joint operation between a clandestine arm of the federal government and the Black Muslim leadership, Malcolm was executed in broad day.

    While Martin and Malcolm were executed for embracing an economic progressivism transcending racial politics, Black conservative firebrand Louis Farrakhan has been left to enjoy a prosperous, tidy life. Despite all of his histrionics, he is merely an entertaining beverage when taken in moderation. He is not a helpful tonic much less the cure of our woes. He preaches a brand of economic separatism that allows him to prosper on the backs of an ever impoverishing Black mass. As such, he is as much invested in the racist political economic structure as the Ku Klux Klan leader in South Carolina or the Wall Street banker who believes Black people are poor because they are naturally indolent. Farrakhan shouts at the racists but his shouts do not threaten them for they know he is one of them. He is but their exaggerated image in blackface. Sadly, he is not alone.

    A vast majority of the popular Black television preachers play the same role, in subtler cast. Only a weekly basis, they tell millions of poor Blacks that their economic prosperity is but a personal miracle away. They just have to wait for God to touch their shoulder. With this in mind and heart, there is no need to organise as a movement.

    The God they preach is a fraction of the God I know. God did not pluck the Hebrews out of captivity one by one. He freed them by the multitude. God speaks in terms of the individual but also of peoples and nations. Black America has been suppressed for a period rivaling the Hebrew captivity. Instead of the people coming together in greater unity and cohesion to raise their collective voice to God for collective deliverance, too many now merely ask Him to show them the exit of individual escape.

    When Wednesday comes, the keynote speaker at the commemorative event will be President Obama. This selection is inevitable as he is the first Black president. Superficially, his electoral ascendance symbolises fulfillment of King’s dream. Superficially! Yet, the reality of his climb is of more ambivalent consequence. The President will utter words that float on air. Yet, the bulk of his policies are leaden weights falling on the necks of already struggling Americans. Symbolically, he is the only reasonable choice to give the address. If we are to weigh the substance of his governance, he should not be invited to the event, let alone speak there. He should sit in the White House as did all those elitist presidents before him.

    The event is organised by the King Center, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), all venerable civil rights organizations. King was the president of the SCLC. That organization is as synonymous with him as is the King Center eponymous with him. The sad part of this is that time has passed by these organisations. Once at the forefront of history, these groups failed to evolve as Dr. King wanted. They now exist on the fumes of their pasts; this makes them barely relevant to the future. Once progressive, these groups are barely reformist and are mostly conservative. They see Wednesday’s gathering as a public invitation to an open-air museum. Because there is nothing radical or moving in these groups anymore, they do not see the event as a call to radical action or to resurrect a people’s movement in order to fulfill King’s dream.

    This is why they leap at identifying President Obama as the keynote speaker yet dare not also invite a speaker who will strongly critique government for the daily wrongs it heaps on the people.

    If King were alive, he would have asked the President Obama to participate. However, he also would be possessed of sufficient courage to tell the president that most of his policies bear a disturbing resemblance to those of his predecessor.

    A strident critic of the Vietnam War, King would oppose the killer drone campaign America has launched across the Middle East and parts of Africa. 9/11 would not have turned him into a reflexive warmonger. Himself a victim of government surveillance and dirty tricks, he would abhor the vast machinery government has erected to eavesdrop on all citizens, all the time. He would recognise it for what it is: not as an effective tool against terror but as a long, terrible step toward turning America into national security state where citizens become reticent to criticise their government out of fear of official backlash. Freedom and justice, not suppression, are the best weapons against terrorism.

    On the domestic front, he would abhor the massive bailout of Wall Street particularly as it was not matched with proportionate relief to the middle and working classes. He would campaign against presidential attempts to rupture the social safety net by clipping social security and other benefits.

    Here we come to decisive fork in the road. Black America was more united prior to the victory of the Civil Rights movement than before it. This is due to the class structure of Black America. The Black elite had basically imbibed the conservative economic ethos of the American political economy. This elite formed the leadership of the Civil Rights movement. Once civil rights were granted, their narrow personal interests were basically satisfied. They had the economic wherewithal to make use of the new rights. While still alive, Dr. King pushed them to be their better selves and seek the good of the entire community.

    As the years passed after his death, his voice faded from memory and this group fell back into their lesser selves. They left the rest of the Black community to its own impoverished devices. The elite only raise a hue and cry to stir the community when they fear overt racism might revive itself to the extent that their positions are threatened. However, they basically had stopped working to help the poor and downcast. They had become junior partners of the established order.

    I write this article not so much to inform readers about the intricacies of American racism but to expose you to the universality of racism’s reach. The very political and economic forces shaping American society and leading to Black America’s predicament are global in nature. What afflicts Black America also attacks Black Africa in similar fashion. Poverty, ignorance, unemployment abound. Disregard for the lives and quality of life of the Black African is as low as it is for the Black American. Too much of the African elite has made the same fateful, narrow-minded decision as their Black American counterparts. Instead of caring about the rest of the people, elites have jettisoned the masses. Being granted inferior status in the club of the global elite is sufficient for them. In exchange for this lesser membership in the elite, they have become the servitors of the conservative order. They seek not to change the order to benefit their people. They now seek to change their people to benefit the order.

    Dr. King wanted to see Black people in positions of leadership. He believed our unique experience with injustice could be used to make the world more just. He did not want to see Black leaders simply mimic the Whites who might have preceded them. Yet, this is what has happened. Sadly, the bulk of Black Americans and Black Africans have been left behind. Sadder still, each depressed community believes the negative myths the white world spreads about the other. You are related by blood and common experiences of repression. Yet you are ignorant of each other and estranged. You are alike yet are suspicious of each other. You despise the very person with whom you have mutual interests in helping each other.

    Until Black people begin to realise the immense depth, height and width of the barriers erected against them, we shall forever march in place. This is not Dr. King’s dream nor should it be our reality.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • We’ll miss Ngige/Soludo showdown

    In spite of the regrettable back and forth over the selection of the APC candidate for November’s Anambra governorship poll, I had hoped for the sake of Anambra State and the good of Nigerian politics that we would see a showdown between the cerebral Charles Soludo, former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, and the charismatic Chris Ngige, a senator and former governor of the state. From all indications, Dr Ngige, who seems increasingly built for the state house than for the senate, will still emerge as the APC candidate, notwithstanding the party’s indiscretion in announcing his candidacy without the conduct of primaries. Unfortunately, it is hard to see how Professor Soludo could emerge the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). The party not only unnecessarily embarked on a barren screening exercise, it has left the sanctimonious Governor Peter Obi in a position where many are insinuating he is secretly directing choices from behind closed doors.

    My pain is that we would now not see a classical showdown between brains and charm, a sorry miss for Anambra, and a terrible distress for Nigeria. I do not, of course, imply that Dr Ngige has no brains. He certainly does. But Professor Soludo is not only an academician, he is fevered by his enthusiasm to conceive and enunciate policies, even as he seems to have excess of that endowment. Dr Ngige clearly outdoes most governors in Nigeria today in the charms department with his stately good looks, which for a short man is quite remarkable, with his suave performance on the soapbox, with his administrative acumen, with his intrepidity, and with his instinctive grasp of issues.

    The choice between Dr Ngige and Professor Soludo would have represented the age-old dilemma man faces in choosing his spouse: would he go for a brainy or beautiful lady? Sociologists would have been pleased to get an answer from the pace-setting Anambra electorate as an indication of how men think. After all, it is already settled that women do not set great store by how well a man looks, but by the content of his… Ah, why do I want to provoke a war?

  • When 4% confronts 1.8%: further questions for the finance minister

    When 4% confronts 1.8%: further questions for the finance minister

    In this column last week, I stated how startled I was when in March 2012, I read an article in the British newsmagazine, The Economist, in which Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made an assertion that she would be quite satisfied if by the end of her current term as the nation’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy she would have managed to reduce the scale of corruption, waste and mismanagement of government finances in our country by 4%. Well, this week, I wish to draw attention to another statistic that was even more abysmal and more depressing than our Finance Minister’s extremely low aspiration of 4% success rate. This is none other than the 1.8% of those who passed the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE) conducted by the Nigerian Examination Council (NECO) in November-December 2009. 1.8% passed which means that a whopping 98.2% failed. Failure in this case means passing with credit in less than five subjects including English and Mathematics. As stated concretely in NECO’s official breakdown of this calamitous failure rate, while 234,682 sat for the exam, only 4,223 passed.

    After my initial shock and panic upon coming across this terrible failure rate, I deliberately calmed down and began to ask myself some questions: Was there something in the breast milk or infant formulas that a new generation of mothers in our country was feeding their infants that was producing “oridota” children that were alright in every other respect but were congenitally moronic and uneducable? Was this failure rate an aberration or was it a regular occurrence? Are there any other countries in Africa and the world in which such a failure rate has been recorded? Why was there not the slightest expression of outrage and concern by the Federal Minister of Education in particular and every public officeholder in the land? And what of the generality of Nigerians, especially the parents, guardians and custodians of our children – why were they not up in arms demanding that the government and the whole nation pay attention to, and do something about this scandal?

    For the records, let me report that since 2009, I have searched widely on the internet and have not found any other place in the world and in modern history and experience where and when 98.2% failed a public, national school leaving examination. I am still searching and if I find a “better” record than that, I promise to share it with the readers of this column. And I should state here that it did not take long reflection on my part to come to the conclusion that the very unspeakably low figure of 98.2% failure did not indicate that our children are the products of a mutation in breast milk production that was making them moronically uneducable; rather, it was the system that was failing our children and robbing them of their birthright to education. Let me also report that since that lowest of the low in 2009, the passing rate in NECO exams has improved beyond that 1.8%. However, I regret to report that the improvement is really nothing to write home about, as the saying goes. Here are some figures from NECO’s recent published statements on this “improvement”: in English, 4.7% passed in 2010; 10% in 2011; 33% in 2012. In Mathematics, 19% passed in 2010; 44% in 2011; 54.8% in 2012. And overall, the total passing rate has not gone above 35%.

    Need I state that in most countries of the world, including some countries on the African continent, the concern in national educational planning in a very competitive world is not to bring up abysmal failure rates but to improve even more on passing rates that are normatively higher than the range of the 80 percentiles? This means in effect that because we are located at such a very mediocre passing rate, we face the double jeopardy of, first, being ahead of nearly all others in the race to the bottom and, secondly, being so far behind, so distant in the race to the top.

    I should of course add that I have been to countries like China and Japan in which I have been moved to great pity for the high levels of psychological damage done to their secondary school pupils in the cutthroat struggle to pass well in their national school leaving exams. For this reason, I am not unmindful of the dangers involved in fetishizing high passing rates in the contemporary world. But to say this is not to ignore for one moment that every child, every girl and boy, deserves quality education in our country, our continent and our world. For education remains not only a means of socio-economic self-improvement, but it has also become perhaps the most highly prized human social capital in 21st century global capitalism. Moreover, those of us who have been privileged to receive quality education – often at public expense – have an obligation to do everything we can to make others less privileged than ourselves to receive relevant quality education. We can and must do far better than 35% passing rate for the young people graduating from our secondary schools. And we must do this quickly and thoroughly.

    This will require many things of which the primary thing is the recognition – the declaration, in fact – of a profound state of crisis in our secondary education system. We must invest more and wisely in the education of our children: better trained teachers, with the incentives for them to be dedicated to their profession; better physical infrastructures and learning environments; and a thoroughgoing rethinking of how best to use education to prepare our young people in informed local, national and global citizenship in a multi-ethnic and multicultural society and in the world of the 21st century. Moreover, this great crisis in our secondary education system extends deep into our tertiary educational system, so much so that one is inextricable from the other. Unfortunately, this is hardly recognized by the powers that be in our country. This observation leads me to the present stalled negotiations between ASUU and the Federal Government, especially with regard to the very unhelpful intervention of the Finance Minister in the negotiations that was the topic of this column last week.

    Here, I must state something that I suspect will come as a surprise to many people reading this, including possibly many members of ASUU itself, and it is this: Because there is little appreciation for the fact that our universities are burdened, indeed overburdened, with the many effects and ramifications of the profound crisis in our secondary education system, most thinking, literate adults in this country have little or no intimation of the extremely daunting tasks that our universities face in educating the general order or quality of pupils that come to them from our secondary schools. For the simple fact is that most universities in the world – and throughout the history of the modern, research-intensive university – are not founded and structured on the presupposition that they would have to do the kind of considerable remediation that must be done with the order of students that come to our universities. Consequently little or no remediation is done in our universities: the intakes are for the most part simply moved along, but with the great majority of our university dons doing the best that they can under the prevailing circumstances. Meanwhile, our universities have fallen considerably in prestige and respect, at home and abroad. Most of our elites send their children abroad to foreign countries for their university education. “Foreign countries” here often includes countries in Africa like Ghana and South Africa! Let us not mince our words here: in about the last two decades, the attitudes of most of the federal and state administrations of this country toward our universities and our university teachers show very clearly that they have little regard, little respect for our universities and our university dons. Who can miss the great disrespect in the following words from the Finance Minister that I chose to be one of the two epigraphs to my column last week: “At present, ASUU wants the Federal Government to pay N92bn in extra allowances, when the resources are not there, and when we are working to integrate past increases in pensions. We need to make choices in this country as we are getting to the stage where recurrent expenditures take the bulk of our resources and people get paid, but can do no work.”? By what reasoning, by what logic but that of a haughty, supercilious disdain can one talk of our university teachers as similar or comparable to redundant, idle government workers who “get paid but can do no work”?

    This disregard, this disdain of the Finance Minister for our universities and university teachers extends, I would argue, to the country’s politicians in particular and the populace in general. To say that in five years only about 4% of the corruption, waste and mismanagement in Nigeria and its government could realistically be expected to be reduced is to have an extremely low opinion of the country, its government and its people. If any technocrat from the World Bank or the IMF from another country in the world had made that statement, especially if he or she was a white person from the Western countries, the whole country would have been in an uproar and justifiably so. But all the same, such a show of national outrage would have entirely missed the point that among the elite technocrats of the world, it fundamentally does not matter from which country or which part of the world you come from. The technocratic mandarins of the IMF and the World Bank do exactly the same things anywhere in the world they serve and this norm includes what they do in their own countries. Thus, in the case of our own Finance Minister what we have is a symbolic confrontation between her 4% success projections and the 1.8% passing rate of the NECO exam results of 2009. As a matter of fact, 1.8% is a much greater figure than the percentage we can extrapolate from what Okonjo-Iweala herself has claimed to have “saved” the country since 2011 (N53 billion naira)! And please, don’t forget that since 2009, NECO passing rates have moved from 1.8% to around 35%.

    To break out of the present impasse between ASUU and the Federal Government, every effort must be made to do away completely with the abysmally low expectations (and low performance) of the honourable Finance Minister. Very few national, publicly financed university systems in the world face the kind of burden that our universities face in the task of educating the order, the quality of students who come into them from our secondary schools. In the given circumstances, our universities are doing a creditable job and would do even far better if given the wherewithal to do so.

    The time has come to at last face this huge crisis squarely and responsibly. I give personal testimony here that when I was ASUU National President more than thirty years ago, we faced a very different set of circumstances than now. But some things about the Union remain constant: now as at then in the early 1980s, ASUU was/is always ready to work with the government in the interest of our universities and the nation. The first step in that direction is that the government must demonstrate that it recognizes the enormity of the burdens that our universities face and is prepared to work with the Union and all other interested parties to resuscitate our universities. This won’t be easy, this task of resuscitating our universities. What is easy, what any thinking Nigerian can see is the fact that this present government and any government in the future will always confront the stark reality of this profound crisis; it will not simply go away if it is not confronted or is confronted with the technocratically manufactured low expectations of an Okonjo-Iweala in which, even as NECO’s 1.8% rises to 35% – which is not good enough – her 4% dips below, far below 1.8%

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • APC and 2015: PDP is truly exhausted

    APC and 2015: PDP is truly exhausted

    As the months grind on towards the 2015 general elections, the true nature and character of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will begin to unfold. I expect the party to endure, of course, and if democracy is to be preserved, we must hope the party will find ingenious ways to sustain itself and even flourish as a great political party. In other words, I do not wish the party bad, nor do I yearn for its collapse. But there is simply no way it can retain its present character, for its present character is neither progressive, as we understand the term, nor conservative, as its members, leaders and well-wishers dare hope. In reality, and unknown to the many so-called progressives within its ranks, such as the highly adaptable Ebenezer Babatope, the party is unequivocally reactionary.

    There is a way reactionary politics tends to mask ideological differentiation. Radicals, it is well known, can also be reactionary, just as conservatives sometimes do not quite appreciate when they slip from ordinary conservatism to extreme conservatism. What is clear about the PDP today – and we do not need to hate them for their choices or unusual taste – is that its leaders are rigidly opposed to any serious or major shift in the political and economic structures of Nigeria. They want the police to remain as they are, education to limp along ponderously, health and aviation to involve nothing more than cosmetic renovation of buildings, and economy to be simply a case of prudent management of resources in line with World Bank standards.

    Though the presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was not inspiring at all, and its policies showed little imagination and coherence, the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan has proved to be even much worse. Chief Obasanjo’s policies have not only been sustained, its negative tendencies have been exacerbated by the dithering of Dr Jonathan. Chief Obasanjo ripped the party’s innards apart when he imposed imperial rule on the country and party; Dr Jonathan has allowed the injuries to become gangrenous, with horrifying consequences for the ruling party and the country’s laws and constitution. We remember how besotted Chief Obasanjo was to his brain trust and how inexpertly he sometimes redacted their poorly digested and contradictory policies; but Dr Jonathan’s languidness has laid the country prostrate beneath the hurtful policies of his predecessor and opened her up the more to the fiddling of his own even more insular brain trust.

    As we hurtle towards 2015, the country will, therefore, be torn between taking a chance on the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC) and its eight-point agenda for the country, and resigning itself to the jaded policies and politics of the PDP. To be sure, the APC is not exactly the immaculate progressives of our theoretical fascination. The party comprises clearly discernible elements of both progressivism and conservatism. But if party leaders can find the right chemistry to bond them together, they may not be as immiscible as sceptics fear. The country must remind itself that the last time progressives won an election (in 1993) under the aegis of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), they were certainly not as ideologically coherent as their label misleadingly gave the impression. But they were doubtless the more committed to change, however change is defined, and closer to progressivism on the ideological spectrum than its opponent, the National Republican Convention (NRC).

    Today, the fault lines in Nigerian politics are becoming even more pronounced. The country faces its most trying times ever, and in many ways exhibits a frightening tentativeness in governance as well as in policymaking. By the admission of government, the country loses nearly as much revenue through oil theft as it makes through lawful sales. As a result of the natural lethargy of the Jonathan presidency and its many misguided and contradictory policies in combating crimes, the country is being laid waste by kidnappers and other criminals who would love the roof to collapse on everybody. And in spite of the strong-arm and sometimes vacillating tactics against the ongoing sectarian and socio-economic revolt in the Northeast, we are no nearer peace than when the fight broke out in 2009. In short, there are clearly no major initiatives from the PDP government to tackle these alarming problems other than tinkering at best and helpless indifference at worst. The party is exhausted, its ideas jaded, and its leading lights obviously war-weary and punch-drunk. If it gets another endorsement in 2015, there will still be no initiatives, major or minor, and the party’s leaders will suffer predictable paralysis.

    To win, the PDP will rely on the frustratingly bizarre dynamics of Nigerian politics, which involves a crazy mix of exploitation of ethnicity, religion, age-long prejudices, and fraud. Given the proclivities of the old warhorses being assembled by Dr Jonathan for the battle ahead, the PDP may find itself inexorably drawn to underhand tactics. As it is, the party is itself not idiosyncratically averse to unorthodox tactics in winning elections. The party will also attempt to tar some of the leaders of the APC with the brush of religious fanaticism and political dogmatism. More crucially, the PDP will eagerly exploit the political ambivalence of the Southeast, a region that has perched on the horns of ideological dilemma for so long. Under the Dr Jonathan government, the Southeast has enjoyed a golden age like never before. It is hard to see the region turning its back on Dr Jonathan in 2015. This is more so because when the country faced a choice between a broadly conservative party and a sketchily progressive party in the 1993 presidential election, the Southeast narrowly opted for conservatism, excepting Anambra which the SDP won with over 57 percent of the votes cast.

    The PDP will steer discussions and politics away from issues in the 2015 polls for the simple reason that it fares very badly in that department. It has no concrete ideas to project, and when ideas are nevertheless thrust under its nose, it has neither the patience to grasp them nor the industry to steal and adapt them, nor yet the assiduity to logically take them apart through careful and diligent denigration. Apart from avoiding issues, the PDP will also talk less about its records. Instead, it will dwell more on extenuating reasons for either nonperformance or tardy performance. Dr Jonathan’s aides have denied his government ever attempted to exploit ethnic or religious differences. Not only has it remorselessly done so, its desperation in the coming months will see it embrace the politics of prejudice, perhaps even more shamelessly.

    And here precisely is where the APC stands a good chance. In place of the stultifying policies and administrative paralysis of the PDP, the new party, which is more accurately an amalgam of old parties, has already boldly offered a major and radical shift in the kind of thinking needed to heal, restore and renew the country. I am fascinated by its embrace of the decentralisation of the police – an idea that should have come more than two decades ago – devolution of power to states, independence of anti-corruption and electoral agencies, among a number of other serious policies and issues. I think its determination to create one million jobs annually is far-fetched, and its preparedness to remove qualified executive immunity nugatory. On the whole, the party is at least offering sensible steps and policies to remake the country. Even if Nigerians love punishment and are inured to the policy sterility of the PDP, and mistrust the policy initiatives of the APC, it is still necessary to make a change at the highest level of government in order to strengthen democracy and underscore the power of the electorate to change government at will, whether thoughtfully or whimsically.

    By 2015, the PDP will have been in power for 16 years. Sadly, those 16 years have worsened the plight of the common man, virtually destroyed education, impoverished and alienated the youths, predisposed the country to unremitting instability and criminality, exacerbated corruption, opened the country to insidious foreign military influences and creeping intervention, and shown the world how mediocre Nigeria has become in nearly all areas of life. The truth is that if the country does not change direction in 2015, the chances of its survival, not to talk of its growth and development, will be made much harder, if not clearly impossible. The rot is too much and the stakes too high to ignore how urgently we need to embrace change in the coming elections.

  • Why do we need law makers when we do not even have law keepers?

    Nigerians are genetically growing greedy at an alarming rate by the year such that no amount is too large for their illegal appetites

    I don’t know about you, but I have lately formed this habit of talking to myself. So, one day, I stopped to actually listen to the contents of my monologues. That was how I knew I said things like ‘what do ghosts look like; where do snakes come from in the evolutionary tree; why does earth and heaven seem to be merged in my bowl of ice cream; why do we have law makers in Nigeria…’ No, I have not got answers to them all, cause till now, I still do not know what ghosts look like (consider your offer politely turned down; thanks all the same for offering to show me). Also, I can never understand snakes and their place on the tree. But law makers are a different kettle of fish altogether. The more I monologize on the subject matter, the more I conclude that they must have come down from the moon; this is why they do not seem to understand their own place here either. Aliens, get?

    Isn’t this country one lovely land of paradoxes? Here we are, with prisons filled with the piously innocent while those who should really be in them are not only free but are ruling us, embezzling going on in the face of the law, people driving along our roads without any regard for any written codes of the road. There is a code? I don’t believe you. Just this morning, I saw that a woman had parked her car with the windows all rolled up while she went into a building not too far from the road, and a child was standing up in the front seat waving to all passers-by. Report to what police? Don’t traffic policemen regularly pass on unaccompanied learners in traffic, drivers with unstrapped children in their passenger seat, government vehicles’ drivers who drive against traffic, policemen who stand by and watch people being lynched, etc? Well, don’t they? So law keepers, we do not have. Why then do we need law makers?

    Abuja, we have a problem. What exactly are our law makers doing to earn the pay they are reputed to earn? God forbid that this should be true, but I heard that the Senate leader, David Mark, earns more than a hundred million Naira a month. When I heard it, I did the most natural thing. I rejected it immediately (IJN) and snapped my fingers over my head, like, as in, you know, God forbid! How can I be here, in dire need of just one miserable million Naira and someone is earning a hundred million of it at the end of every month? Whatever for, I ask you?

    I tell you, this land is full of paradoxes, and if we are not careful, those blasted things will swallow us all up, paradoxes, I mean. Just think about this. Have you noticed that the religiousness level of the citizens of this country is in direct proportion to our wickedness? Indeed, it has got so when someone tells you he/she is a faithful, you are best advised to run. Nasty, blasted things they sure are, aren’t they? Listen, let me give you the greatest of them paradoxes. Have you noticed that it is the so called poor beggars supporting the wealthy able-bodied? Let me explain.

    Lately, I have seen beggars from the northern part of this country working in serious, perhaps unregistered corporations of two in my city: a disabled person who is pushed around on a wheelchair by a strong, able-bodied person. Talk of ‘Beggars: Incorporated’, eh? Anyway, the arrangement seems to be that the disabled does the begging while the able one pushes the wheelchair and occasionally also lends a hand in the begging. At the close of the working day, the proceeds are shared on a previously agreed basis. Normally, these corporations also experience the same problems that all corporations are prone to: misunderstandings, fights, greed, sacking, dissolving, bankruptcy, etc. However, this strange arrangement hones home two points.

    The first is that this nation has an army of youths that it does not seem inclined to consider worthy of any consolidated developmental programme, but we have said that before. The second is that the weak can support the strong. In our ‘Beggars: Incorporated’ arrangement, the disabled, no matter how young, is the source of livelihood for the able one, no matter how old. So, on a wheelchair, a disabled feeds an able one who is strong of limbs and presumably, head. The argument thus holds that if a disabled person can be the source of livelihood for an able-bodied person, a poverty-laden person can the pillar of the livelihood of a wealthy one. Yep, I am thinking of our law makers and their jumbo pay.

    According to reports, each of Nigeria’s law makers earns $189, 500 (roughly N30 m) in a month for a job they hardly stay at. Furthermore, we are told that the earnings of these law makers amount to a quarter of the nation’s annual budget. Honestly, if I was not so envious, I would be downright appalled. No wonder people climb over the earth, fall into the black hole, get roughened up in space, kill and maim irreverently just to get to that position. Now, who on earth fixed that kind of pay – tooth fairies? And these are quite apart from other sundry expenses such as travel, contracts, contracts, travel, con… which they seem to pursue endlessly. Now, my question is this: how many laws have cost us these whopping sums since 1999 when this experiment started, and how much per law? What law is worth that colossal sum? Quick, somebody, bring out the calculator and the weighing machine. We need both.

    That the law makers alone have cost this country trillions of Naira is a gross understatement, and for what? To think that their costly highnesses have not got around to legislate a credible system of transportation, potable water, twenty-four-hour electricity supply, etc., for my house is shameful. It makes me want to cover my eyes. Worse, to think that sixty per cent of the so-called ‘people’ they are representing have no knowledge of what exactly the law makers are doing is also bewildering.

    Clearly, this pay is not in tune with the reality of Nigeria’s present and future. It bespeaks either or both of two things. It could be that people have really given up on the future of this country and any access to government coffers is used as an opportunity to forage out whatever amount one can to keep in a safe country for when this house should fall. It could also be, and this is more likely, that Nigerians are genetically growing greedy at an alarming rate as the years go by such that no amount is too large now for their illegal appetites. Now, that will be serious.

    So, the question is this: going by the level of illiteracy at these chambers among those who should know better, can Nigeria afford this kind of democracy? No, I do not believe Nigeria can afford it; people are just pretending it can. If it could, it should not go cap in hands for external loans, neither should it even need foreign aids. Both of these show that something is really fishy in that kettle after all.

    In reality, the job of a law maker is no more arduous than that of a policeman or a kindergarten teacher or medical doctor or any other Nigerian worker. What then entitles your law maker to such out-of-this-world pay is quite beyond me. But then I am no politician. I think we should seek out the one nearest to us and ask. I am prepared to be surprised.

  • Nigerians as praying mantis

    Nigerians as praying mantis

    Gen Gowon wants us to pray over our leadership deficit.
    But can prayer alone do the magic?

    We see all kinds of machetes when an elephant dies. In same vein, we hear all kinds of suggestions when a blessed nation is troubled the way ours is. Just last week on this page, I commented on former President Olusegun Obasanjo who mounted the pulpit in Ibadan, Oyo State, to sermonise on leadership. Expectedly, he did not do a good job of the sermon as many people could not connect the message with the messenger.

    About a week later, another former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, spoke on the same subject in the same city, Ibadan. It couldn’t have been fortuitous that Ibadan is the place where all these is happening because that was the city from where the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo set a good leadership template, with his many firsts that remain reference points till today. Gowon spoke during an official visit to Gethsemane Prayer Ministries Cathedral, Eleyele, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, presided over by the National Coordinator, Nigeria Prays, Rev. Moses Aransiola. Nigeria Prays is a non-denominational religious group formed by Gowon in the 1990s.

    Of course other eminent Nigerians have spoken on the country’s leadership deficit and recommended prayer as panacea. Even President Jonathan did! But the fact that two of the country’s former heads of state found it topical to speak on, within a week interval, is enough evidence that things are not the way they should be. This may not be sweet music in the ears of many members of the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The way some of them talk, they give the impression that the Goodluck Jonathan presidency is about one of the best things ever in this country in recent times. That much could be seen also in the way they romanticise the administration. They are entitled to their opinion, just as the rest of us who still keep wondering whether this is the best we can get from our government are perfectly in order to so do.

    Although Chief Obasanjo and General Gowon are both former heads of state, it should be noted that they are not in the same category. The dirtiest leader in Gowon’s days was by far cleaner than the saints in the Obasanjo years. Perhaps we might have been able to put them in the same category if Chief Obasanjo had not returned as civilian president in 1999; that, return was perhaps his undoing as it gave us a better insight into who the man, Olusegun Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Obasanjo, is.

    But I am more concerned about what Gowon said in Ibadan. He recommended prayers as the way out of the country’s challenges. Hear him: “We had a series of crises in the past and if Nigerians can pray well, sooner or later this country will be free from its challenges. God has heard our cries and will surely answer…” As a Christian, I believe in the efficacy of prayers. I am also familiar with the song: ‘Jesus started with prayer and ended with prayer’ and what have you. But it is not in all circumstances that prayer alone is the answer. Sometimes, we need to take steps to support the prayer. The average Christian knows that faith without work is useless. By extension, prayer without action could sometimes amount to naught.

    An adage in Yoruba land says if only one knows his or her day of breakthrough, the person will simply go to bed and wake up on the appointed date. I beg to say, and with due respect to our elders, that the person would have passed out before that day if all he or she does is sleep, eat and wake in anticipation of the El Dorado. It is better for the person to be doing something to keep body and soul together, pending that appointed day. I know General Gowon loves prayers; his pet project reveals that much. I do too. As a matter of fact, the day a Christian relegates prayer to the background, that Christian should start a search for another god. If only for this reason, I will refuse to be tempted to say that Nigeria’s problems transcend prayer. Nothing does.

    But what I support is prayer with action. Hence my support for a colleague who suggested in one of his write-ups on Boko Haram that Christians should carry the Bible on one hand and the bazooka on the other. That wouldn’t be a bad idea to counterbalance the terror of the religious fundamentalists. If they know that they are likely to be repelled force for force by worshippers, they will think twice before going into worship houses to slaughter people who are there to offer supplications (prayers) to God.

    Gen. Gowon’s recommendation could work in places where the leaders are humane and considerate; where their Christian conscience will never fail them and where even if they must steal, they do so with human face. Not in a country like ours where leadership positions have become avenues to get rich quick and many leaders have simply lost their soul and would do anything to get their positions and retain them; anything, not giving any thought about the consequence of their actions to their fellow Nigerians. As a friend has always said, prayers will do, maybe in more civilised countries where they have only powers to contend with. But here, what we are contending with are not just powers but powers raised to power and principalities.

    Ours is a country where prayers have been prostituted and bastardised, hence you find people who rig elections in broad daylight go for thanksgiving in the church with supposed men of God extolling the ‘virtues’ of such bandits, and, to crown it all, praying for them. Our churches are filled with such pollutions that will make it easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for the prayer to climb beyond a few metres before returning to sender. Mind you, this is not the Prince of Persia at work; it is the handiwork of some of our pastors. In these circumstances, even if we all become praying mantis, we still have to help our prayer with some definitive actions.

    For instance, could prayer alone have stopped the Jonathan government from removing the so-called fuel subsidy last year? This was despite the fact that those who wanted to force the ‘subsidy’ withdrawal down our throats knew too well that what they were about doing was ask Nigerians to subsidise some people’s pockets.

    Obviously, from Gowon’s statements, he too is aware that there are some of our so-called leaders who must give way for things to take shape. “God will uproot all the leaders who have evil intentions against this country”, he said. I join in saying ‘Amen’ to that. But we have to do more than pray. We have to fast, do vigil and all that. In addition, we have to protest where we must; sit in when we must. The only thing I won’t suggest is that we go on hunger strike because that would be prayer answered for those who in the first place see us as irritants and pollutants whose existence is disturbing their peace.

    Above all, I want to see General Gowon talk like a general. As an elder, he should eat kola nut ‘gbwa gbwa’. He should not shield bad leaders the way he did in Ibadan. If he is bold enough to admit that they exist, and if he is bold enough to ask God to “uproot” them, then, he should be bold enough to mention their names. What I wouldn’t want him do is do that frivolously. The intervention of people like him at critical junctures in our nation could make a whole world of difference. For sure, it was not prayer alone that built all the fantastic infrastructure that the Gowon regime bequeathed to us. Rather, prayer and hard work did.

  • APC Vs PDP

    APC Vs PDP

     The common saying that wars are won in the map room cuts no ice with the PDP

    One major difference Nigerians would soon come to see between the All Progressives Congress and the ossifying Peoples Democratic Party is the amount of intellectual rigour the APC will put into the formulation of its policies, programmes and governance, as against the sheer vacuity we have come to know with the PDP in the past 14 years; a situation so reminiscent of the NPN when Awo observed then that while he was busy working at solutions to the country’s problems those in that party were carousing around women of easy virtue. So languid has PDP become that, under Chairman Tukur, its National Executive Committee hardly meets , as and when due, but yet, as if in a payback for a Second Republic favour done him, he went all the way to exhume the octogenarian Umaru Dikko to head the party’s disciplinary committee. It doesn’t get more surreal. Nor can you ever hear of a think tank in connection with the PDP. Rather, what it has in quantum is a rash of reconciliation committees: first, the Tukur Reconciliation Committee; then the Anenih and, now the Seriake Dickson Committee which was launched a while ago with the usual PDP bravura, mirroring uncannily, the presidential flag off of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project on which nothing else, other than a crippling traffic snafu that takes you four hours to reach Lagos from the Redeemed church camp, has happened since. Nor will the Dickson Committee be the last as jockeying for the presidential and gubernatorial tickets in the party is about to commence in full. We should therefore expect to still see the mother of all Reconciliation Committees. The common saying that wars are won in the map room cuts no ice with the PDP. Otherwise, why would they mess up a whole former President, yank off members of his group even from elective positions only to come back, running helter skelter, seeking rapprochement and asking him to reconcile their warring governors?

    On the contrary, APC leaders, in these few weeks, but much longer in states where they are in charge of governments, have showcased their awareness that governance is no tea party nor is it about ‘family dinners’. The grim faces of the party’s leading lights -Akande, Buhari, Masari and others, as appeared on the front pages of many newspapers on Thursday, 22 August, 2013, at the launch of its manifesto, says it all. The entire week before that, party leaders and the party’s intellectual wing have been holed up in Abuja, working at the details of how to take Nigeria out of what the party calls Nigeria’s ‘ paralysis of 14 years’. Through some hard-headed interrogation, the party was able to flesh up its 8-point Agenda of: (1) War against corruption (2) Food security (3) Accelerated power supply (4) Integrated transport network (5) Free education (6) Devolution of power (7) Accelerated economic growth and, (8) Affordable health care,into what has been publicly announced to Nigerians as its Manifesto.

    Nigerians are well aware of the score card of the PDP on each of the issues contained in that Agenda. Therefore, none needs be reminded about how the EFCC has all along been shackled in the performance of its duties under the supervision of an Attorney-General who must give prior approval to any case it intends to bring against those it has investigated and who, in most cases, have links to the ruling party. We have also seen how anti-corruption agencies, especially the EFCC, have again regressed into tools against the political opposition as is currently the case with the EFCC in Rivers State where like attack dogs, it is going ferociously after state officials in the wake of Wike’s promise to make life unbearable for the state governor. Corruption, under the PDP, has manifested in every aspect of our national life: in pension scams which ensure that some of our senior citizens die on queues waiting for their pension payments, in oil and gas, the mainstay of the nation’s economy where massive scams and oil thefts are the order of the day in spite of huge oil security contracts to sons of the soil; in the federation account being deliberately, massively shortchanged, in a single minister allegedly running up multi billion naira air travel bill, with no higher official of state able to rein her in; in diminishing power generation and distribution in spite of lies of hoping to become one of the world’s topmost 20 economies in year 2020; in increasing poverty and an unemployment rate that has certainty become a time bomb since majority of the victims, being university graduates, actually need no further lessons in how to make Molotov cocktails to make life more horrible for all of us.

    Indeed, the PDP is too consumed with its own internal headache to think of solutions to these multifarious problems facing the country. Granted that it belatedly declared emergency in some states where Boko Haram had already established over lordship in certain areas and flew its flag, it was no doubt the equivalent of bolting the door too late. Such is the state of our insecurity today that poor Oyo State traders have twice been slaughtered in the north. You will not but wonder what constitutes the PDP’s manifesto which, of course, must have been written on the most expensive paper and published in glossy fashion since ‘it is the largest party in Africa’. You would almost think size is the issue, the way they bandy that about.

    Operating from the background that Nigeria is already “trapped in a vicious cycle of political crises, social upheavals and economic under-development, and has, in fact, become, not only one of the most unstable countries in the world, but regrettably, one of the poorest despite its huge human and material resource endowments, the APC, after some serious brainstorming, has come up with a party manifesto. In the words of the Interim National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, the following are the issues the APC would eagerly devote its all to as a way of getting Nigeria out of its ‘near permanent trauma’:

    It shall vigorously pursue the expansion of electricity generation and distribution of up to 40,000 megawatts in 4-8 years as power is the centre-point of the development process which, if inefficient, impacts negatively on any economy. Concerning corruption, the party says it will fight it by granting independence to the anti corruption agencies and repeal all laws inhibiting their performance. It promises to embark on public sensitisation campaigns against corruption and to encourage whistle blowers in the anti-graft vanguard. Special anti-corruption courts will be established and remove immunity from prosecution for elected officers in criminal cases just as it will prevent abuse of executive, legislative and public offices through greater accountability, transparency and strict enforcement of anti-corruption laws.

    On the much needed restructuring of the country, an APC Federal Government will initiate action to amend the constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal Spirit. Regarding national security and defence, the party says it will decentralise the police and expand its local content to include community policing.

    It promises to urgently address capacity building of law enforcement agents in terms of quantity and quality and to establish a well-trained, adequately funded and fully equipped, serious crime squad, to combat terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy, ethno-religious and communal clashes nationwide. It will also push for more support in the security and economic stability of the sub-region (ECOWAS) and AU as a whole and maintain a strong, close and frank relationship with the international community. It will also secure our borders, which are currently too porous for effective control. For this purpose, it will establish a National Coast Guard to protect Nigeria’s coastal waters.”

    On the economy, it promises to ensure that the Nigerian economy is one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world. It will embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial, and skills acquisition schemes for graduates along with the creation of small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 1million new jobs every year, for the foreseeable future.

    It will create additional middle-class of at least 1 million new home owners in its first year in government and one million annually thereafter, by enacting a national mortgage system that will lend at single digit interest rates for purchase of owner occupier houses.”

    The above, and much more, is what the APC has in store for Nigerians and I urge all Nigerians, including those currently trapped in the clueless party, to come over into the APC and take possession. It is ours and we must rise up and make it a mass movement because it means well for all.

  • Just free for all!

    ON his weekly column in Daily Sun entitled ‘Mind Your

    Language’, Mr. Bayo Oguntunase said on page 36, February 17, 2005, that the use of the word ‘upliftment’ as a NOUN was inappropriate, a stance shared by me, Wordsworth columnist Ebere Wabara, Mr. Stanley Nduagu and others. For Mr. Oguntunase to now say ‘upliftment’ is an elongation for ‘uplift’ which, according to him, is a shorthand form baffles me. Does shorthand exist in formal writing? Why this about-turn?

    “Also in the same column, he wrote that ‘impact’ should be used only as a noun, but its use as a verb has gained global acceptance. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (New Edition) for Advanced Learners states on page 79 that ‘impact’ as a verb is ‘to have an important or noticeable effect on….’

    “Similarly, Mr. Oguntunase said in his March 3, 2004 column, page 36, that ‘to author (write) a book’ was wrong. However, the Longman dictionary on page 97 defines ‘author’ (VERB) as ‘to be the writer of a book, report etc.’

    “Much as ‘look something up’ is a correct phrasal verb, ‘check’ (page 274 of the same dictionary) is also appropriate, as it means ‘to look at something carefully and thoroughly in order to make sure it is correct’.

    “On the word ‘about’, it is an adverb which means ‘a little more or

    less than, a little before or after’. It denotes approximation,

    estimation, or aggregation and not specificity, exactitude, exactness or preciseness. Why would someone approximate figure 12 when he could conveniently count the items, unless he is unsure? Besides, the Word Economy rule comes into play here.

    “Most of us were taught to recognize ‘beehive of activity’ as

    appropriate, but in the contemporary world, a ‘hive of activity’ (the same Longman dictionary, page 834) is correct and is shorter than the former. ‘Hive’ and ‘beehive’ are synonymous, though.

    “Lastly, I maintain my stance on the incorrect use of ‘witch-hunt’. It

    is NEVER a verb (page 2014 of the Longman dictionary and page 1370 of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary refer) For Gov. Rotimi Amaechi to claim that ‘the PDP is witch-hunting me’ is wrong because ‘witch-hunting’ is used here as a verb.

    “I am not a dilettante, intellectual thug or an illiterate as suggested by Mr. Oguntunase (vide Wordsworth of August 4). I am neither a guttersnipe who uses foul language. With two years into my post-service retirement, I have not relapsed into senility and do not suffer from academic arrogance, mental void, intellectual somersault or virtuous inanity. Thanks.” (From Kola Danisa/07068074257)

    “‘IT is howlers galore’ is incorrect. We say or write: ‘There are howlers galore’!” (Input: Baba Bayo Oguntunase/08029442508)

    Wrong: A small accident; right: a minor accident; Wrong: A good advantage; right: a big or real advantage

    “The Commissioner of (for) Education, but Minister of Education”

    THE GUARDIAN METRO of August 20 fumbled: “Pix (Pic) shows the bride’s father escorting (accompanying) his daughter to the altar.” The man could not have been escorting his daughter to the altar! ‘Pix’ is plural.

    DAILY SUN of August 14 fumbled copiously: “Encomiums as dead journalist was laid to rest in Ibadan” Two things: would it have been a living journalist? And this: replace ‘was’ with ‘is’! So, a rewrite: Encomiums as journalist is laid to rest in Ibadan

    “The bill has already being (been) introduced in (to) the Senate.”

    “Ex-lawmaker canvasses more (another) state for S’East”

    Wrong: bossom; always spell-check: bosom

    “FG loses N80bn to tax evading firms” Business TODAY: tax-evading firms

    “Welcome our patriotic and progressive governors to the maiden governors (governors’) forum meeting in Nasarawa State…Congratulation (Congratulations) for (on/upon) being part of Nigeria’s political history” (Full-page advertisement signed by Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, Governor, Nasarawa State)

    THE GUARDIAN World Report of August 13 launched the publication in the hall of infamy: “…declaring only that the decision was intended ‘to breathe a new dynamic (dynamism) into the cabinet.”

    “Court declares New York police’s ‘stop and frisk’ (stop-and-frisk) tactics illegal”

    “Pupils of Achievers (sic) School during their end of session (end-of-session) party in Lagos.”

    Now The Guardian Editorial: “…just as a one-time Senate president had also been charged for (with) corruption.”

    “NEITI assures of credibility of audit report” Who did the initiative assure? ‘Assure’, by the rules of lexis and structure, compulsorily takes an object.

    “University of Abuja, Abuja, 2012/2013 Post UTME Screening Exercise” A rewrite: …Post-UTME Screening (take note of the hyphenation and the removal of ‘exercise’—which is otiose!)

    “Presidency faults AfDB’s assessment of poverty reduction (poverty-reduction) efforts”

    “MTN Foundation invests N7 billion on (in) projects”

    “Only courts can restore sanity in (to) Rivers’ Assembly”

    Lastly from THE GUARDIAN under review: “The recent political upheaval in Rivers State, which led to a free-for-all fight in the State House of Assembly has continued to attract reactions from various stakeholders.” Law: yank off ‘fight’ which is encompassed in ‘free for all’! (Et tu erstwhile flagship of Nigerian journalism?)

    THE NATION ON SUNDAY of August 11 goofed right from its front page banner to inside pages: “Governors (Governors’) Forum: Jang, Amaechi resume battle” The two governors had never sheathed their swords—so, technically, resumption of battle does not arise as it had always raged!

    “Okorocha…has become one of the most talked about (most-talked-about) politician (politicians) in Nigeria.”

    “…an agency he helped nurtured (nurture) from birth to maturity….”

    “In a summon (summons) sent to all the governors….” (THISDAY, THE SATURDAY NEWSPAPER, August 10) Singular: summons; plural: summonses

    DAILY SUN of August 7 rounds off this edition: “Don’t bite the fingers that fed you…” This way: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

  • The deductive death of Boko Haram’s Shekau

    The deductive death of Boko Haram’s Shekau

    Just before it yielded command to a new army division expected to take over its functions in the Northeast, the Joint Task Force (JTF), which has been combating terrorism in the region, announced to a bemused country that Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, might have died from gunshot injuries sustained in a firefight with security forces sometime in June. They offered no proof except circumstantial evidence from unstated and probably untested sources. They themselves were careful not to sound definitive. So, why did they feel the urgency to make the announcement, given the importance of the topic? They didn’t say, and they offered no clue. However, it is possible that the JTF simply wishes to depart in a blaze of glory. I was one of the worst critics of JTF operations in the Northeast, but even I must acknowledge that they had cleaned up their acts and fought a much cleaner war after the controversial Baga revenge killings. Even without evidence of Mallam Shekau’s death, the JTF still deserves plenty of accolades.

    Both the presidency and the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) are chary of being drawn into the controversy. They needn’t feel queasy. In Nigeria, when government’s lies are exposed, no one is punished, and apparently even the voters do not exact revenge on their deceivers in subsequent polls. So, the government and its agencies can safely lie without fear of retribution. And, as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has discovered, no one flinches when the government unabashedly and routinely dishonours its word.

    In the matter of Mallam Shekau, deceased, living or injured, I think the JTF merely allowed itself the luxury of deductive reasoning. Apart from other sources which told of Mallam Shekau’s death, the most potent, to me, appears to be the last YouTube video released by the sect. In it, Shekau stated he could never be captured. Now, not even Osama bin Laden, the late Al-Qaeda leader, ever made such a boast, not even as a confidence building tactics. I therefore deduced from Mallam Shekau’s supremely confident assertion that since he is/was not a ghost, he could not say so confidently he was above capture, if he was not already dead.

    If another YouTube video does not surface in the next few weeks showing clear proof that the Boko Haram leader is alive, we may have no choice but to respect the JTF’s deductive reasoning and come to the same unproven conclusions as they hastily did last week. Nonetheless, the departing JTF, the incoming army division, the presidency and anyone who has analysed the Boko Haram phenomenon surely understand that killing the leader of a terrorist group does not amount to extirpating the menace. It is often no more than a morale booster, especially when not accompanied by a mass arrest or interdiction of its other leaders.