The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Beware, Eastern Brother!

    The title of this piece is a pun of Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother, the late novelist’s collection of poetry, written basically during Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970).

    The symbolism of the pun is clear: victims of past tragedies should be less gung-ho about future ones.

    Yet from the emotions over the Lagos-Anambra 14 “deportation” or “resettlement” saga (depending on which side of the divide you stand), that lesson does not appear to have sunk.

    As The Nation editorial on the unfortunate incident held, the Lagos government should have been more circumspect. But those at the receiving end too ought to have been more sensitive to the burden Lagos carries, without any extra help from Nigeria’s skewed federation. The matter can be amicably resolved with mutual sensitivity and understanding.

    Still, the intemperate reactions on the matter, for and against, forebode some future but avoidable tragedy; without clear ground rules guiding Nigeria’s so-called federalism, particularly on citizenship and native rights.

    Just check out the Babel of reactions: Anambra Governor, Peter Obi’s canonisation of President Goodluck Jonathan as some overarching prefect that must impose a diktat on inter-state disputes; Orji Uzor Kalu’s rather incendiary goading; Femi Fani-Kayode’s three-serial riposte, which started with fine points of history but dipped into some ribaldry about past trysts with Igbo girls just to prove he is a lover of truth but no hater of Igbo; C. Don Adinuba’s fine piece urging caution and strategic thinking on the part of the Igbo in Lagos; Joe Igbokwe’s bad tempered response that opened him up to vicious charges of a house Negro in the Lagos establishment; Senator Chris Ngige’s intervention that could well set him up for political blackmail; Andy Uba’s urbane protest-advertorial to Governor Fashola, and one Akubueze’s lunatic yak that Igbo are 46 per cent of Lagos population!

    But after all the excitement, something is clear: Nigeria is no settler community, like the United States or Australia. It is an indigenous corps of cultural entities, which had existed long before colonialism and Frederick Lugard’s yoking of 1914.

    So, those who do plastic legal analysis, without factoring in the objective and peculiar condition on ground miss the point. It is nothing but legal grandstanding.

    Every part of Nigeria is indigenous to some people, no matter the fortune or misfortune of the place. No matter how the Yoruba swarm Enugu, for instance, claiming ownership of the place or bragging about their teeming numbers there, is courting needless disaster. The same should be for Igbo in Lagos, no matter what rights they figure they have as citizens; and whatever rationalisations about Lagos being a former federal capital.

    That again leads to the Akubueze yak: “The Igbo are key stakeholders in the affairs of the state. We constitute over 46 per cent of the population of the state … It is the Igbo that are making Lagos tick; it is the Igbo that made Lagos what it is and without them, Lagos will go to sleep. In short, without Igbos, there will be no Lagos.” (as quoted by Daily Sun of August 6). Akubueze claims to be an Igbo leader.

    This clearly is a voice from the lunatic fringe. But it betrays a condition, which thanks to Prof. Achebe and his classic, Things Fall Apart, you could call the Okonkwo syndrome: that tragic self-goading to disaster, simply because action gallops, in false triumph, miles ahead of thinking.

    But if Okonkwo self-martyred to protect the integrity of his land and culture, on what basis is Akubueze baiting disaster as virtual owner of Lagos?

    Indeed, Akubueze-speak is a worrisome streak, which the Igbo themselves must ponder and decry. Triumphalism-induced host community provocation preceded the northern pogroms. Same provocation rebranded the Nzeogwu coup as “Ibo coup”, with tragic consequences.

    That brings the discourse to the Orji Uzor Kalu -Femi Fani-Kayode face-off. Mr. Kalu disregarded his high position as former governor with his incendiary comments. Mr Fani-Kayode too did his former position as minister no honour by embarrassing Igbo ladies (now married) he had once dated. Both behaviours are to be decried.

    Still, in Mr. Fani-Kayode’s intervention were some bitter truths which the Ndigbo must ponder, in their relationship with other ethnic groups: Charles Onyeama’s 1945 statement that “Igbo domination of Nigeria is only a matter of time” and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s 1949 quip that the god of Africa had created the Igbo nation to lead all.

    Of course, these statements, especially Zik’s, could have been made in the context of cultural pride, not unusual in a pluralistic and competitive setting, necessitating federalism, which Nigeria claims to run. But they could also have been made to push cultural irredentism, the sense Mr. Fani-Kayode quotes them.

    Question is: which is which? Now, back to Things Fall Apart, the pristine Igbo society that Achebe painted did not betray any streak of others’ domination. But is there something in the psyche of the contemporary Igbo that craves domination of others – but after embarking on such escapades, end up scalding themselves?

    Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Unification Decree 34 of 1966 was the panic button, after the 15 January 1966 coup, that triggered the pogrom. The fear? Igbo domination. Then, post-Civil War seizure of Igbo property in Port Harcourt, fraudulently dubbed “abandoned property”. The fear again? Igbo domination!

    Even in Lagos, there are allegations of Igbo crushing non-Igbo out of legitimate trade. The Nation columnist, Sanya Oni, told a sad tale of how he was crushed out of business when he once traded in spare parts at Ladipo Market, Mushin, Lagos. Utuk Motors and Inyang Ette, transport companies in Eastern routes, also have sad tales alleging Igbo sharp trade practices.

    Also, the Igbo must ask themselves: Nigerians of every stock live all over the country. Why is it that it is mostly the Igbo that witness tension with their host communities?

    Well, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former Anambra governor, claims it is Igbo envy. Even Achebe, in his There was a Country, hinted as much. Other Igbo flatly claim wherever they settle is their home as Nigerian citizens, and they could well do as they pleased. But how many Nigerians could claim such brazen rights in Igboland – or are they less Nigerian? Or is it just protecting yours but encroaching on others’?

    The Igbo deserve to give themselves frank answers to these questions. Otherwise, their past tragedies would be no learning dam against future ones.

    Irredentism and the penchant to dominate is no monopoly of any ethnic group. Indeed, that is the crux of Nigeria’s crisis of nationhood.

    Still, the Yoruba are famous for their twin ethos of Afenifere (live and let live) and Omoluabi (good breeding). That cultural liberality would explain why Igbo investment literally melted from Port Harcourt after the “abandoned property” swindle, but continues to thrive in post-Civil War Lagos.

    The Yoruba have no cause to ogle Igbo property or envy Igbo success. But the Igbo in Lagos must not give the impression of ogling Lagos territory or any other part of Yoruba land.

    Such crass and cavalier insensitivity is courting sure disaster.

     

  • Reconciling the irreconcilable

    It would appear our political actors are currently in a season of reconciliation. Both the opposition and the ruling party have one way or the other been enmeshed in activities to reconcile differences either within the party or among seemingly ideologically different and independent parties. The latter crystallized into the merger of three political parties that have now been registered as the All Progressives Congress, APC. No doubt, it required enormous efforts at balancing and reconciliation for seemingly ideologically different parties to fuse into one political party.

    Whereas the promoters of the APC were concerned with the political engineering of the system towards a strong and an alternative political platform by bringing registered parties into a common fold, the ruling party the PDP, is having a hectic time pacifying aggrieved members. Not only is the party highly factionalized by the ambitions of its key leaders, there are also issues with its leadership.

    In its latest move to reconcile estranged members, the PDP seems to be drawing strength from religious injunctions that strongly recommend forgiveness and reconciliation as a way of bringing harmony, peace and order in our society. If the latest peace moves initiated by the PDP amounts to a genuine restitution for its sins, then it is a good omen for our politically volatile society. But, all restitutions go with the proviso that the offender will sin no more. Is it possible for the PDP to part with its ruinous past as the flurry of moves at reconciliation would seem to suggest?

    If its past is anything to go by, it will be a grave risk to nurse the feeling that the PDP has serious interest in changing its ways. Before the latest effort, we have had several attempts by that party to patch its torn umbrella especially as elections approached. But as soon as the objective of the patch work is achieved, the party relapses into its old and decadent ways.

    It has again instituted a national reconciliation committee and a national disciplinary committee which in the words of its chairman, Bamanga Tukur represents a carrot and stick approach to the matter. At another level, former President Olusegun Obasanjo is busy brokering peace for the party’s governors who have been torn to shreds by the crisis generated by the speculated second term ambition of President Jonathan. The schism in the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, which Obasanjo has set out to resolve is a reflection of the sharp divide in opinions on the matter. Even as these peace moves have swung into action, indications are that some of the issues in contention are still being played up by those parroting reconciliation among aggrieved members. This has raised fears regarding the sincerity and commitment of the parties to reconciliation efforts.

    One of such gross acts of indiscretion was the ill-advised hosting of a meeting of the NGF by factional chairman, Jonah Jang of Plateau State who lost out to Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers state at the last election of the forum’s chairman .The boycott of that meeting resulting in poor attendance is enough evidence that rather than abate, the ill-feelings among members have further been reinforced. And the party is deceiving itself parroting reconciliation.

    It is not surprising that Obasanjo’s efforts to resolve the leadership crisis among the two groups has hit the rocks. Reports from the reconciliation venue speak of the two groups rigidly sticking to their positions without compromise. This should be expected. But how on earth did Obasanjo expect he could resolve the NGF crisis which is just a symptom of the endemic crisis within the party?

    There is more to the NGF crisis than the issue of leadership. He may have dabbled into the matter out of pressure and perhaps just to be seen to have made some effort. Obasanjo knows that the leadership crisis in the NGF is just a manifestation of the larger disagreement in the party regarding Jonathan’s ambition. The northern governors opposed to the president are his well known loyalists. It is therefore curious that he set out on that mission without taking along its root cause. It is not surprising that effort came to naught.

    My reading of the situation is that the PDP is neither serious in its latest reconciliation moves nor is it capable of resolving some of the fundamental issues that currently confront the party. Before the latest move, we have seen committee qua committee reports that are rusting in the party’s shelves without addressing the issues. That is why key founders of the PDP have since left for other parties. So when spokesmen of the presidency recently chided the APC for parading former PDP members, they were only drawing attention to the contradiction that has become the PDP. Rather than constitute a minus for the APC or any other party where such members have now taken refuge, it is a sufficient indictment on the PDP. It shows there are endemic contradictions within the party that must at some point, shunt out its keys members.

    Ironically, these contradictions are again at play. That party acquired this notoriety during the regime of Obasanjo. His intolerance and overbearing influence were such that key founders who refused his bidding were shown the way out. We cannot forget in a hurry how some of the party’s chairmen were unceremoniously sent packing and how he manipulated the system to achieve his desires. His anti democratic tendencies were as scandalous as they were infectious. Jonathan is taking a cue from these. Obasanjo is the least qualified person to redress issues arising from the bad example he set. The truth of the matter is that there is only one issue that is at the root of the problem in the ruling party. And at the centre of it all also, is only one man. It has nothing to do either with the tepidity of the Jonathan administration or the manifest crisis in the NGF leadership. It has little to do with the style of leadership or even alleged incompetence of Tukur.

    There is only one man in that party who can resolve the crisis. And only one issue is generating the bad blood.

    That man is Jonathan and the issue is his ambition come 2015. The direction of the so-called efforts at reconciliation will depend on what Jonathan makes of his ambition. This is not in doubt. Those who are fighting him know this. Obasanjo knows this after all, he had similar opposition when the toyed with his ill-fated third term gambit.

    If Jonathan insists on running and there is every indication to that effect, the crisis will fester and even become more complex. That is the foreboding scenario we must inevitably face.

    Perhaps, the reconciliation the PDP should concern itself more with is that which engages Jonathan on his desire to run for a second term which has drawn very strong opposition from the North. That ambition has also pitted the North against the South-south with each threatening dire repercussions should the matter be resolved against them. The battle line is already drawn with only two legitimate options to its resolution. One is for the North to allow Jonathan go for another term. The other is for Jonathan to drop his ambition. These are the issues to reconcile. In their absence, any talk of a truce will amount to an exercise in wishful thinking.

  • Our boy wonders up North

    Our boy wonders up North

    These days, it sounds almost like a false irony to tether the word youth to peace in one sentence while referring to the North. Especially the Northeast, where youth conjures the images of the finality of blood and death, of daggers slitting throats, of AK47 brightening the nights with its staccato releases to helpless citizens, of whole families descending into sudden oblivion, and school children whose dawns are cut short in the midnight hour. In an ambience where massacre is routine, laughter only belongs to the tormentor like the predatory glee on the hyena’s face.

    I refer to the Civilian JTF, a group of young men who have charted a new path against the rapine and slaughter of the Boko Haram. They represent perhaps the greatest news of youth activism in this country in a decade. They are Nigeria’s unsung heroes. Even the media, famished for celebration, has been coy about draping these boys in sonorous lines.

    We have read in recent weeks, especially in the aftermath of the declaration of emergency rule in three northern states, of Boko Haram retreat. The extent of the Federal Government victory is still unclear, but, at least, in Yobe and the main city of Maiduguri, the activities of the group have suffered. The JTF has gone after the sectarian hoodlums with a measure of success. Because of the scanty media presence, we cannot ascertain JTF propaganda from fact.

    We are, however, certain that much emergency has pruned the reach of BH. Even the JTF high command knows that its work has been relatively made light by a group of young men who decided to take peace in their hands. They are volunteers for peace. They are saying that they want to live with peace, not the peace of guns and fear, but the peace that comes with civil coercion.

    In the peak of violence that triggered the declaration of emergency, the JTF made little headway. Analysts, including this column, pointed out the deficiency of the security agency, and the failure of the security agencies to provide fruitful intelligence. Not even the zeal of international cooperation from the United States and the European Union has breathed a respite.

    President Goodluck Jonathan fired the late Owoye Azazi and replaced him with the present national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki. The credentials of a former soldier and blueblood became the presidential explanation for the pick. I quickly responded on this page that it was a miscalculation to think that a blueblood could cow the insurgents when the emirs recoiled with fear at the sound of the BH. Palaces and top royals have fallen at the fatal hands of the group. It was, I argued, the case of the prince and the pauper, and it was futile to presume a prince could understand the working of the pauper community.

    On many occasions, the locals had caviled at the JTF and charged that the soldiers killed too many innocents. The actual perpetrators survived, and the soldiers alienated the communities who should be their allies. The soldiers shot blindly and relied on guess work. Consequently, many innocents fell.

    The young who tried to run and who did not do anything horrendous saw themselves under siege on both ends. The Boko Haram harassed them and the protectors, the JTF, unleashed their firepower. So for the locals, even when they ran from death on one side they met it on another. It was like the words of the poet Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for death, it kindly stopped for me.”

    The young men decided to come together and volunteer their help for the efforts of the JTF. The initiatives began in a local community called Gonge, a suburb of Maiduguri. The body does not have the congratulatory vanity of many of our young groups, especially in the South, who band together for ostensibly humanitarian objectives. That is why some have recast the meaning of the acronym NGOs – non-government organisations – as ‘nothing going on.’ They brandish grandeur goals like democracy and human rights and AIDS activism, and draw juicy contributions from donor bodies in the western world, and either con or strike dubious partnerships with Nigerian governments.

    What the civilian JTF boys do is provide intelligence for the JTF. They go about with sticks, machetes and knives. They don’t possess firearms. They are clever lads. They are not held together by faith, so they are not necessarily Muslims, or necessarily educated. They are held together by love of land and protection of the innocents.

    They are clearly putting their lives on the line. They do not operate under the shadows. They mount roadblocks, and search the environment for infiltrations. They pass information to the authorities. A source said that the BH people frightened locals from snitching on BH partisans to the authorities because the BH often knew and came back to slaughter the informant. Now, the group goes to the authorities and report as a group and mask the identity of the real informant.

    They also understand some of the strategies of the group. Sometimes when they want to know their “enemies,” they could storm, say, a market and allow one of the BH guys to be identified and those who say bad things about him are identified by the others who blend like chameleons with the crowd. The enemies are identified for subsequent onslaughts.

    This is what the civilian BH boys are up against. We have had youth groups upset the tranquility of their regions. In the North, we are witnessing the ravages of BH. In the Niger Delta, we have had militancy. In the East, the swarm of kidnappers reined in the peace. In the Southwest, the OPC boys rumbled. Not in one of these regions did any youth group with the heroic sleight of hand and gallantry of the civilian JTF emerge. What we have had is opportunism.

    Not many would have thought that, in guts and righteous glory, the North would show the light. We cannot overplay the work of the boys from the North. They know that “the glory of the young man is his strength,” according to the psalmist in the Bible. They are using their strengths for extraordinary exploits. Philosopher Plato said “youth is the time for any extraordinary toil,” in The Republic.

    They made headlines when they identified women in purdah masquerading their involvement with the deadly group. They have not asked for funding, and no names have flaunted their activities to elicit filthy lucre. Governor Kashim Shettima expressed open support for them recently.

    This is a fresh departure from activist youths who prefer to campaign and kill for politicians. Some Boko Haram boys drew their firepower originally from working in campaign organisations in the North, ditto to Niger Delta militants. Bunu Sheriff Musa, a peddler of ignorance, once exulted over the illiteracy of his subjects as governor. He is an APC partisan, just like the pedophile Yerima. The new party should be careful not to sully their party with such subversions of role models.

    The civilian JTFs are an example of how to be young and fruitful.

     

    Kindergarten father

    OBJ blamed the younger generation for Nigeria’s woe. Pray, who is OBJ to speak up on who ruined Nigeria? No need to cherry pick names for why things have gone wrong. But focus on generations instead. Whose generation brought us the civil war, destroyed democracy with coups, plundered the Naira, sought third term, destroyed our preeminence in cocoa, groundnut and palm produce? Whose generation initiated the Andrews seeking pastures abroad? Who gave us grand armed robbers like Oyenusi, or do-or-die politics? Or graduate unemployment? Was OBJ not head of state when a newspaper cartooned his generous paunch with belt across when he introduced the first belt-tightening in the economy? Who lied about war heroics? Whose generation started opportunism, sowing when he did not sow, becoming a leader when they killed his boss Murtala Muhammed while he hid with his friend? Secondly when they killed his kinsman Abiola even when he opposed his mandate? Why is he with Jonathan again after the man ignored him? Now the father is going to the son Jonathan with whom he was not pleased before who was described as kindergarten by Akande. Now, from OBJ’s words, he taught his son the kindergarten Joe. So he is the kindergarten father.

  • Just see how this country is stealing the youth of its Youths

    Sometime ago, I had the privilege to take a young man, no older than eighteen, to task on some of his country’s political policies which bordered on the treatment of a minority group in that country. As best, if not as testily, as he could, the young man defended the country with the excuse that the group refuses to budge from its old, tradition-soaked seats. I know many people who won’t budge from their tradition-soaked seats either, and no one dares ignore them. Yes, yes, I am talking about our great grandpas and grandmas in the parties.

    As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by myself, my interviewee had emigrated, temporarily, from his country just to meet and know someone in another, that’s all. He was on a mission to satisfy his curiosity regarding the individual and had then set out. He met the person, stayed a while doing odd jobs for survival before going back home. He was on a kind of pilgrimage to satisfy a longing in his soul.

    Now, no one can completely take care of all the longings on his/her soul, I grant, but sadly, it would appear that many Nigerians, particularly at the top, either do not have or have lost their souls. You know what they are, don’t you, souls I mean? They are those little things men and women carry around with them in the pockets of their shadows. Say what, shadows don’t have pockets?! You could have fooled me.

    Anyway, let me tell you what happens when we lose our souls. No; contrary to popular belief, we do not gain the whole world; it would just appear so for a while. Believe me, the feeling soon palls, particularly when you get the bill. I can give you so many examples of people who got the bill of losing their souls in exchange for the whole world and soon realised they did not want the whole world, just their souls. There was Dr. Falstaff, the figure that looms in English literature as a classical example of the soulless man and his deep, deep regrets; then there was Fraser’s Bedazzled and his deeper and deeper regrets; then there are Nigerians…

    Nigerians sure constitute one classical group of the soulless. It’s only in Nigeria you can find someone prefer to pack the nation’s billions into his account like one crazy winner at a poker game, not to do anything in particular with it, but for the sheer pleasure of seeing it there. It’s only in Nigeria you can get old, tottering politicians insisting on staying in power to continue to wreak havoc on a hapless nation. It’s only in Nigeria you can get an ineffective government but tall on excuses insisting on remaining in power so it can continue to make the people miserable. And it’s only in Nigeria you can get youths so beleaguered they have no youth to speak of.

    Nigeria is guilty of a lot of things, but the most heinous to me is still the fact that it has stolen the innocence of its youths. First, it forgets to draw up a programme of development for this group so that each one can find his/her solid identity as a Nigerian whichever part of the country he/she may come from. Guilty. Next, the country builds a large nest, for its own youths to copy, of the worst kinds of examples anyone can possibly lay down for his/her children: lack of patriotism, murderous politics, selfish soldiery, gingham-like patterns of reckless unaccountability and irresponsibility, unabashed national selfishness, and other things for which names have not been invented. Guilty. Then, it steals the future of its own children. Imagine that. Because of the irresponsibility of the adult group, Nigerian youths now have anxiety syndromes over what may become of them in the country. How does it manifest? It manifests in the rabid dream of every Nigerian child to run to the United States of Heaven… sorry, America. How do I know this?

    Nigerian youths have no dreams regarding the country. They do not lie awake thinking of that age-old question: ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. They cannot dream for the country because they have not been handed any tools to work with: no housing system, no credible transportation system, and no food that can satisfy the average greedy person. So, the youths do not dream for this country, they dream about leaving this country. This should make each of us stand trembling before the mirror, look ourselves in the eyes and ask the mirror: how did I contribute to killing the ability of the Nigerian youth to dream?

    There is worse yet. Many youths there are whose only goal in life is to make money, at any and at all costs and too many adults there are ready to teach them. Oooooooh, this troubles me so. The baffling thing is that many of them have no idea why they want to make money except that they have noticed that their papas and mamas worship at the foothill of money every day. They have seen too many adults in their environment listen to what the rich man says (that’s why they say money talks); consult the rich people in their lives (money is powerful); or obey what the rich man commands in the family (money can do anything). They have seen that to bury any family member, people wait for the rich; chieftaincy titles go only to the rich; obaship succession chains change only for the rich; to take someone to the hospital, grown men wait for the rich in the family; and sometimes to eat, people go cap in hand to … Yes sir, the youths have seen the fear in the eyes of their hapless parents and have found a solution: get rich quick.

    Nigerian youths have been shown by the adults that it is no use having any youth if you do not have cash backing. So, they have taken to either running out of the country if they want to keep their souls or staying in the country and pursuing money into the hole by hook or crook (quick, cross yourself for those who pursued it to the last hole) or by turning their family members into money. Somewhere in the east, a young man was said to have killed his mother as part of making money rituals, and somewhere in the west, a young man killed his mother for reportedly being ‘behind’ the fact that he was not ‘progressing’ in life. Those who are not killing are either militants (north, south) or in one religious vanguard or the other. Oh yeah, they are also killing.

    Nigeria has turned the youths in its charge into ravenous wolves, hungry to consume all the money they can find in their paths. In effect, the poor youths have lost the sanctity of their youths: the zest for knowledge, the beautiful experiences that define life in its purest form, or searching for the kind of associations that show the true meaning of existence. They have not been taught that real enjoyment does not lie in holding a gun to a helpless person’s head, or in spraying walls or people with bullets, or in some mindless pursuit of bawdiness.

    Nigeria must teach its youths to pursue happiness, love, beauty, and self fulfilment in ways that are in complete harmony with nature. The country must teach its youths how to reach deep within them and bring out their tucked-away talents to help the society. It is not too late. If it is never done, that is when it will be too late.

  • Okonjo-Iweala on the ASUU strike: please speak truth, not technocratic sophistry to the nation!

    Okonjo-Iweala on the ASUU strike: please speak truth, not technocratic sophistry to the nation!

    Sophistry: 1. A subtle, tricky, superficially plausible but generally fallacious method of reasoning. 2. A false argument; sophism.
    Dictionary.com (Online)

    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.

    Dr. (Mrs.) Okonjo-Iweala, Address to the National Council on Finance and Economic Development, Minna.

    In March 2012 shortly after the nationwide strike against the oil subsidy removal by the Jonathan administration in which she is a key cabinet member, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made a revelation in an article that was published in the March 3, 2012 issue of that iconic newsmagazine of British and global finance capitalism, The Economist. The revelation considerably startled the writer of the article. It certainly startled me, so much so that I have never forgotten it. What was this revelation? It was a bluntly stated assertion that corruption and waste were so endemic to Nigerian politics and governance that she, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, would be satisfied if by the end of her current tenure in 2015 as the nation’s Finance Minister she would have cleaned up as much – or as little – as 4% of the waste, mismanagement and corruption in the affairs of the Nigerian government. 4%? Yes, 4%.

    When I came across this figure of the pace in which our Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minster for the economy thought corruption and mismanagement could realistically be cleaned from Nigerian governance, I read and re-read the article, thinking that, surely, there was an irony, a hidden meaning or perhaps a playful signification on the usually inflated claims of the statistical sciences intended in that 4% target. But there was no irony, no sarcasm and no ludic intent of any kind in the bar Dr. Okonjo-Iweala had set herself. This is because, as totally absurd as it may seem to ordinary folks like you and me, in the reified calculus of the technocratic gurus that run the nations and business conglomerates of the world, 4% of trillions upon trillions of naira – especially in the context of the monumental swampland of Nigerian corruption – is very consequential. You and I might think that the 96% that remains after 4% might have been reduced means that so much has been taken out of our national coffers that could have considerably made life easier for millions of Nigerians now and in the years head. But the technocratic mind – or more precisely the kind of technocratic mind embodied by our Minister of Finance – does not see things the way we see it. You may call it a form of cynicism that expresses itself as a professional ethos, but to the kind of technocratic rationality we encounter here, 4% recovered in five years is good enough.

    This, I suggest, goes to the heart of Okonjo-Iweala’s presuppositions in her strident attack on the ASUU strike earlier this week. In the justifiable rush to condemn the Finance Minister for her intervention the ASUU-Government negotiations, I suggest that it is in our best interest to pay attention to where Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is coming from, specifically to the kind of technocratic sophistry that underpins her reasoning and conclusions. But before getting to this point, a full disclosure of the sources and nature my interest in the matter is necessary, for I am far from being an intellectually detached observer or a dispassionate commentator on the case.

    As perhaps some of the readers of this column know, I was the National President of ASUU some 30 years ago, precisely between 1980 and 1982. And when I was succeeded by the late Mahmud Modibbo Tukur, I served as ASUU’s Immediate Past President (IPP) between 1982 and 1986. Moreover, between 1984 and 1987, I served as ASUU’s representative on the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). I mention all of this background not only to show and declare my strong connections and solidarity with ASUU but also to indicate that in the course of my work in ASUU, I came across many bureaucrats and technocrats, in government, among employers of labour, in the universities and other tertiary institutions themselves – and even within the rank and file of ASUU membership!

    I mention this last point deliberately because I think it would be a mistake not to recognise that the likes of Dr. Okonjo-Iweala do not constitute an aberration but are, rather, a part of the corps of elite bureaucrats in charge of the management and administration of the affairs of this world. The word “technocrat” is indeed an appropriate indication of the elite status of this corps of bureaucrats. Dear reader, look at the suffix “crat” in the following terms: democrat; plutocrat; aristocrat. In all of these cases, that suffix lends a seal of respectable identity and pedigree to each term. In the particular case of technocrats, they are – and are regarded as – the cream of the bureaucrats that run the nations, business empires and international organisations of the planet. And we must recognise this: within this demographically tiny elite group in our world, Okonjo-Iweala is among the most celebrated, the most sought after, a fact that she never lets anyone, her fellow cabinet members included, forget. What Okonjo-Iweala does not recognise, what in fact we must not let her and technocrats like her ever forget, is the fact that technocrats and technocracy often get things horribly wrong in our world at the cost of a lot of needless hardship and suffering of hundreds of millions of ordinary folks.

    To speak to this last claim, think of the following fact that has almost entirely been missed in the justifiable outrage that the Finance Minister’s intervention in the ASUU strike has caused: the very day before Okonjo-Iweala made her statement about the federal government’s impossibility of meeting ASUU’s demands, she held a press briefing at Abuja in which she informed the world and the nation of the efforts – the technocratic efforts, I might add – that her Ministry had been making to reduce corruption, waste and mismanagement in those arms of government and parastatals known as the MDAs (Ministries, Departments and Agencies). In that press briefing, she was very sanguine about the successes that her Ministry was beginning to make, against all the odds. She mentioned that she had set up two bodies that henceforth would ensure the full rationalisation of the operations of all the MDAs, all the personnel of these government units, together with their activities. Here are the names of these two bodies, both reeking with a maximum of technocratic smarminess: IPPIS – which stands for Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Systems; and GIFMIS – which in turn stands for Government Integrated Financial Management Information Systems. [Watch out all you government employees! IPPIS and GIFMIS are watching you!]

    In the press briefing, Okonjo-Iweala also said that the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) had hired 53 consultants that would verify the accuracy and probity of revenue generating MDAs like the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) in their collection of revenues and remittances of parts thereof due to the government. To cap it all, Okonjo-Iweala at this press briefing last Monday announced that so far, 46000 ghost workers had been discovered and the sum of N53 billion naira had been saved through the work of all these technocratic instruments she had put in place. Hallelujah!

    Quite apart from the fact that at this press briefing Okonjo-Iweala did not mention the name of a single public official or MDA that had been responsible for misdeeds and/or incompetence, the figure of N53 billion naira “saved” is worse than a joke; it is the expression of a kind of intellectual fraud and professional complacency that technocrats routinely perpetrate around the world, especially in the poor countries of the global South. Last year alone, an Ad Hoc Committee of the Senate on the oil subsidy scandal of 2011 found that the colossal sum of N2.58 trillion had been siphoned from the national treasury. As I observed in this column a few weeks ago, that sum represented more than half of the national budget for the entire country that year. The oil marketers that were illegally paid this humungous sum are not “ghost workers”; they are known, their names were published, together with how much each real or fake marketer was paid. And yet to date, not a single kobo has been paid back by these looters and not one of them has been arrested, let alone sent to jail. As far as I am aware, Okonjo-Iweala has said and done nothing to recover any of that N2.58 trillion naira. Neither has she nor her Ministry gone after the huge pension funds scams that rocked the country last year and earlier this year. N53 billion saved; meanwhile the N2.58 trillions looted in the oil subsidy scam stand unrecovered and are perhaps are unrecoverable in the scheme of things.

    In her defence, it could of course be argued that Okonjo-Iweala had told us exactly what to expect from her. She had told us that by 2015 to expect no more than 4% reduction of the monumental waste and corruption plaguing the land. To argue the case for this “defence” it could be said that technocrats are not police detectives; they are not enforcers of the law; and they are not moral crusaders. Their work is to make the machinery of governance work smoothly and efficiently, every cog in the wheel of management and administration moving along its apportioned groove. Pressing the case for this “defence” further, we could accept the fact that in the modern world, we cannot do without technocrats; and Nigeria in particular needs able and conscientious technocrats to counter the deadweight of entrenched mediocrity and incompetence in the corridors of power and the halls of governance in our country. But the great flaw in the worldview of the Okonjo-Iwealas of this country and this earth is the idea, the belief that to be a good technocrat you must be “realistic”, you must content yourself with the 4% that you can reduce, leaving the moralisers, the idealists, the romantics and the would-be messiahs to worry about the 96% that remains. This in effect means keeping quiet about and acting as if unconcerned with that lion’s share of 96% that the looters get away with.

    In conclusion, we need to anchor these generalised reflections in the specific case of Okonjo-Iweala’s extremely unconscionable intervention in ASUU’s negotiations with the federal government over the ongoing strike. Here, once we see clearly that the Finance Minister is basing herself on the assumption that only 4% of what is looted, wasted and mismanaged is recoverable, then we can perceive the fact that her assertion that “the resources are not there” is completely bogus and untenable. For only by a very sophistical reasoning in which ASUU’s demands are reduced to the purely technocratic formulation of “recurrent expenditure” can Okonjo-Iweala assert that the resources are not there. In this case, the gap between sophistry and truth is bridged by the fact that her brand of technocracy is perfectly compatible with all the scams, all the looting going on in the administration of which is a major player in an alliance of technocrats with kleptocrats.

    This alliance of Harvard and MIT – or Cambridge and LSE – educated technocrats with thieving, mediocre and unpatriotic politicians is, by the way, not unusual in the developing countries of the world. Since 1999 when our current failing experiment in democratic governance began, it has indeed been part of the justificatory myth of the ruling party at the center that notwithstanding all the unending crises we have gone through and are still going through, the “experts” have been recruited and will guide us to our destiny as one of the biggest economies in the world by the year 2020. This is of course a fantasy. To make it a probability, we need to adequately fund our universities and their teaching and research staff. How ironic then that the one member of the present administration that embodies this justificatory myth more than any of her colleagues should be the one to whom the task is delegated to say, quite untruthfully, that the “resources are not there” to resuscitate our universities!

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Egypt: From flame to fire

    Egypt: From flame to fire

    •Revolts are rarely won by those who start them

    THE land of the Nile has become a pool of blood. As things stand, only a miracle will prevent Egypt from descending to the very portal of civil insurrection and war.

    The tragedy now gripping Egypt is of immense portion. Two years ago, Egyptians of all stripes protested to rid themselves of a haughty, arrogant dictator who sought to turn his evil fortune into a perpetual family dynasty.

    Yet, a terrible omission was committed. Now, the county pays the dear costs of this error. In ridding themselves of the dictator, the people thought they were also ridding themselves of the dictatorship and the political culture upon which it was founded. They mistakenly thought the man was the institution. He might have personified the system but he was not the system. They tossed him and began to celebrate. The work was but half done. The dictator had been removed but the system upon which his arbitrary tenure was built remained intact.

    For all of their novel, internet-savvy political activism and old-fashioned street protests, the agents of civil society were either naïve about the intricacy of their political system or were exhausted from the exertion already made. They relaxed after merely achieving the removal of one man from office. To their current lament, they left unharmed his political structure and the aura of power that structure had acquired.

    In beginning this revolt, the secular political activists gave Egypt hope. In not being disciplined, visionary and sufficiently organized to bring the revolt to conclusion, they unwittingly placed the people in a harsh vise that now taxes and tolls them. Payment is being demand and is being demanded in lives and blood.

    It is a terrible disgrace not to combat injustice. Yet, it is almost as hapless to fight it incompletely. As such, Egypt serves as a fine lesson how to start a modern protest as well as a terse manual on how not to finish one. What began as a political awakening has quickly transformed into a national wake, a mournful dirge heard in all corners of the ancient nation.

    The architects of the Egyptian dawn are mostly invisible now. The manner in which they constructed a diffuse, loosely organized protest movement made it difficult for the authorities to contain the protests. But it also made it impossible for the organizers to transform this amorphous group into a political movement with positive, soundly-defined objectives. Because of this fault, the political ground was ceded to people and groups who had something other than democracy at heart.

    Put another way, there were three main groups in Egypt on the day of Mubarak’s exit from power. There was this inventive but disorganized assemblage of civil society and secular organizations. Then there was the military, the most organized and powerful governmental institution. The people erred, thinking Mubarak had made the military when it was the military that had made the strongman. Without the military, Mubarak was an infirmed old man. The military without Mubarak remained its powerful self. Third, there was the Muslim Brotherhood and its large universe of supporters.

    By virtue of its lack of political organization and funding, secular civil society disqualified itself from seriously competing for national leadership. Civil society proved adept at causing disruption such that Mubarak was troubled out of office. United about whom it did not want, civil society was incapable of forming a solid coalition around what and whom it wanted to fill the political vacuum civil society had authored.

    Battle for control of the nation boiled down to a contest between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. The present crisis is a turf war between these two politically unimaginative, power-oriented rival groups that care little for the condition of the general population. Both groups seek for national power. Neither cares for democracy.

    From the beginning of the crisis, the military saw itself as the only truly national institution. Its generals also had too many significant political and economic interests to cede national leadership to any group uninitiated in their ways and inimical to their interests. Given its very nature, the military, in its most charitable disposition, was inherently hostile to democracy. However, after Mubarak’s ouster, the group decided to play coy, like a venomous snake pretending to slumber. Yet, at the right moment, it would strike.

    The dominant wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, symbolized by ousted President Morse, also cared too little for democracy. A conservative, pragmatic lot, they played the game of ballot and vote, understanding their established organizational spread and power gave them a distinct advantage in the early elections that had been scheduled. They exploited the advantage and won. Although rising to power through democracy, they were too willing to clip the very democracy that had just taken them to the place of power.

    Last November, President Morsi decreed a usurpation of legislative and judicial power. If taken literally, the decree made him a 21st century pharaoh. What further undid him was his conservative economics. If a leader is to quickly curtail the people’s newly-acquired freedom, at least give them cheap bread. To remove both is to call forth disaster. Morsi did this by imposing a dire economic austerity on the pained nation. Morsi ran into trouble not because of Islam or of brotherhood. His trouble was that his mindset led him to classical economic policies when progressive, at least Keynesian, policies were the only logical escape from calamity. As such, he became more the brother of conservative western economists than of the average Egyptian. Again, there was no innate problem with the Brotherhood as a political force. Islam, as a religion, does not detest democracy or progressive economics. The tragedy is that the particular leaders of the Egyptian franchise of the Brotherhood proved too undemocratic and economically conservative for the exigencies they faced. Had the Muslim Brotherhood selected more progressive economic and political policies, their man might still be in power and the streets moving more toward tranquility than anomie.

    Ironically, the conservatism of the Muslim Brotherhood is a by-product of the very state it has been fighting the past eight decades. Although it has been the main organized opponent of the military government, the Brotherhood also has been allowed to exist, even if sometimes on the fringes of legality, because its leadership is not so unlike the military’s. This has made it part of the nation’s institutional establishment, meaning it has been inculcated into the governing system more than it would admit. As such, the Brotherhood leadership, in many ways, is the un-uniformed mirror image of the military’s general class. Save for one thing.

     

    The military’s leadership is politically more adroit. In comparison to the Brotherhood’s leaders, one group looks like a gang of experienced, cynical men while the other appears to be a cackle of adolescents. After Mubarak’s departure, the military’s objective was to regain power. Their strategy would be that of driving a wedge between the Brotherhood and secular society. The Brotherhood won the election. Begrudgingly, civil society accepted the results and decided to give Morsi a chance. However, this was not the making of an alliance or even a gentlemen’s agreement. In effect, civil society had placed Morsi on probation.

    Not wanting to push civil society and Morsi together, the military kept its powder dry at the time. As Morsi gained power, the military entered agreements with him protecting their base but also tacitly encouraging him to nip the frail democracy by arrogating power to himself. Exploiting Morsi’s clumsiness, the wedge was driven between him and secular society.

    Encouraged by the military, civil society took to the streets. What was done to Mubarak, the groups now did to Morsi. The military deceived the civilians that their coup would be a temporary corrective, saving democracy from the paddle-handed Morsi. The civilians swallowed the bait because they never liked Morsi and because they entertained the fantasy of gaining the upper hand in new elections if the Brotherhood were duly disgraced if not completely shackled.

    The civilians gave the military their blessing. Nobel Prize winner Mohammed el-Baradei allowed ambition to get the better of him by agreeing to join the caretaker government the military established. This lent civilian color and legitimacy to what was a military coup against an immensely unpopular Morsi.

    Had the civilians been wiser, they would not have accepted the military’s gift. They should have realized the military is not in the business of giving more than it takes. Had they not accepted this easy route, enough people might have been amassed to force Morsi’s exit or his change of ways.

    In a series of adroit if immoral maneuvers, the military exploited the differences between civic society and the Brotherhood to grab power.

    Recognizing the importance of strong institutions, the military is not satisfied with clipping Morsi. They seek to decimate the Brotherhood. In this way, the military believes it will not face another organized rival for decades. Within the space of two years, the military has serially duped the civil society and the Brotherhood, getting what it wanted as a result: It controls the levers of national government. However, this comes at high price that continues to increase. Hundreds die by the day and night.

    The military’s strategy has proven successful. They have civil society in their hip pocket and now dragoon the Muslim Brotherhood. Their goal is to drive the Brotherhood toward violence. The more violent the Brotherhood’s reply to the government’s muscle, the more the military shall crackdown, claiming the Brotherhood is terror inspired. This dynamic will lessen the already slim chance of a rapprochement between the Brotherhood and civil society. The Brotherhood would deem civil society responsible for the suppression in the first instance. Moreover, secular groups now fear the Brotherhood might become more radicalized due to the violence. Secular groups will fear a more vengeful Brotherhood’s inclusion and participation in politics and governance.

    The military has succeeded in reshaping the political landscape to fit its narrow interests. Politically, the nation is fragmented and the military is the only coherent institution to be found. Secular society is reeling, not yet fully understanding how massively it has been hoodwinked by the men in uniform whom they thought were bumbling fools. The Brotherhood is fragmented between those who want to fight and those who futilely believe an armistice with the military is possible. The pacifists hope against reality. The fighting is not because something has gone awry. This is all part of the grand design of the military’s return to power.

    By violently polarizing the situation, the military seeks to limit the options of the international community, especially the Western powers, to two. Either stand with the known entity, the military, or walk the unfamiliar path with the unknown entity, the Brotherhood. America had already tacitly endorsed Morsi’s ouster when its top diplomat proclaimed the military was trying to “restore democracy.” President Obama issued a recent statement deploring the military crackdown. But all the American did was cancel a nonessential joint military exercise. He did not and likely will not suspend military assistance in any significant degree.

    Clearly, America frets more about the Brotherhood and its ilk than about the military. American love for democracy in the Middle East ends when a purported “Islamicist” wins a national election. At that point, the hidden caveats and conditions for American support for democracy surface. Do not be taken by public statements by Obama Administration officials and Republican Party leaders such as Senators McCain and Graham. In public, they condemn the military’s street war. In private, they likely signal their acquiescence to the dirty campaign.

    America has not fought dreaded Islamicists in far away, isolated Afghanistan to watch them gain a foothold in the most strategic nation in the Arab world. The Suez Canal, that vital international military and commercial shipping route and dual gateway into the Mediterranean and toward the Persian Gulf, is an Egyptian artery. This is one of the most important channels of water in the world. America would rather it held by those to whom it gives billions of dollars of military aid than by a more radical version of Morsi. Without a cooperative Egypt, Israel’s geopolitical exposure increases exponentially. This cautious American president will do nothing that will be construed by conservative critics as impairing Israel.

    Moreover, America has seen what a mess they made of Libya by executing an established strongman. Thus, although the Egyptian military is killing people at a much faster clip than Gaddafi did, the cries that the military is “killing their own people’ are predictably absent. If the choice is between a possible more radicalized, vengeful Brotherhood and the military, the West will dance and wed the military. General el-Sisi knows this. He shepherds the situation toward this result that suits his personal and organizational interests. In other words, Egypt might have gone through these last two years of protests, crashed hopes, rising frustrations and now crimson tragedy just so an old dictator can be replaced by a more acrobatic and strategically clever one.

    In this, sober lessons abound.

    Incomplete reform quickly leads to complete regression. There will always be a backlash against reform. Ironically, the less vigorous the reform in altering the power equation between rival national institutions, the more potent shall be the conservative backlash.

    While anger may stir the people to protest, they must be careful. Quick resort to violence never serves the people. It serves those who wield the instruments of destruction. Last, a political or social movement must have a positive final goal. In Egypt, the movement only had a negative initial goal: the removal of Mubarak. After that, the people’s movement dissipated. Establishment operatives were allowed to seize the reins; they guided things back to the way they were. In the next weeks and months, violence will likely be the way of Egypt. The nation moves from the possible dawn of a new day into the darkness of nights already long passed. The violence and death are sad. Sadder still is the likelihood that these losses come only to install a dictator perhaps more agile and dangerous than the one first deposed. Getting rid of the strongman is but a half remedy. A viable democratic alternative must be the final, purposeful objective. In the absence of such a destination, the people run into the danger that the strongman they bind may be replaced by one they cannot bind.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • The sermon, by Saint Obasanjo

    The sermon, by Saint Obasanjo

    The former president mounts the pulpit on leadership crisis!

    There must be a mix-up somewhere. In 1984, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka dismissed his generation as a ‘wasted generation’. Soyinka, in a scathing essay in The Punch entitled ‘The Wasted Generation’ examined Nigeria’s historical travails and concluded, in a damning sentence: “After a quarter of a century of witnessing and occasionally participating in varied aspects of social struggle in all their shifting tempi, dimensions, pragmatic and sometimes even ideologically oriented goals, I feel at this moment that I can only describe my generation as the wasted generation, frustrated by forces which are readily recognisable, which can be understood and analysed but which nevertheless have succeeded in defying whatever weapons such ‘understanding’ has been able to muster towards their defeat.”

    Another eminent Nigerian, Prof Chinua Achebe, had said Nigeria’s problem was basically leadership. Achebe declared, in The Trouble with Nigeria, published in 1983, that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a problem of leadership” and of the inability or unwillingness of leaders to rise to “the challenge of personal example.”

    Both Achebe and Soyinka had refused national honours in protest against the decadence in the country and the caricature of a nation that Nigeria had become under various despotic regimes. These are the hallmarks of great men. In Nigeria, all kinds of characters usually end up on the national honours lists. So, many men of honour and proven integrity must be weary of wearing the same emblems as the unworthy characters who sometimes populate the lists.

    However, more than 30 years after Achebe and Soyinka had narrowed down the country’s problem to a dearth of leadership, former President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with his idea of the younger generation as the cause of the country’s leadership crisis. The former president spoke at the 4th Annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit organised by the Centre for Sustainable Development (CESDEV), University of Ibadan (UI), in collaboration with African Sustainable Development Network (ASUDNET).

    Obasanjo listed former Bayelsa State governor, Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha; former Edo State Governor Lucky Igbinedion, former Delta State Governor James Ibori; his counterpart in Abia State during the last dispensation, Orji Uzor Kalu, former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as some of the young leaders who have failed the nation.

    “It is sad that after 53 years of independence, we have no leader that we can commend. The problem in Africa is that when one person takes over, he would not see any good thing that his predecessor did. Let us condemn but with caution,” the former president was quoted as saying by the online news medium, Premium Times.

    Trust the former president; he also seized the opportunity to sing his usual song of self-glorification: “In 1979, we had 20 new ships specially built for Nigeria. When I came back 20 years after, the national shipping line had liquidated”. He was talking about his first time as military head of state and 1999 when he returned as civilian president. Has he forgotten too that the government he handed over to in 1979 was as inept and corrupt as it could be and in less than four years, that government had done sufficient damage to the economy and other sectors of the economy. That begot the dictatorship of General Muhammadu Buhari, then Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha before General Abdulsalami Abubakar came and organised elections that threw up the Obasanjo government in May, 1999. So, what did Obasanjo expect the scenario to look like in the circumstance?

    Characteristically, the former president was economical with the truth when he said he did not want to hand over to his former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar because he (Atiku) was a betrayer. “I wanted someone who would succeed me, so I took Atiku. Within a year, I started seeing the type of man Atiku is. And you want me to get him there?” Does Chief Obasanjo think we have forgotten that Abubakar was content with being governor in his Adamawa State when Obasanjo approached him to be his deputy? Has Obasanjo forgotten too how he reportedly cringed before this same Abubakar to get his party nomination for second term? Worse still, if Obasanjo, despite his experience in government (at least he had been head of state in the ’70s) could have a faulty sense of judgement in choosing his deputy, what right has he to lampoon the so-called younger generation for incompetence in leadership positions?

    But can we really blame Chief Obasanjo for giving us these homilies? I do not think so; rather, it is his colleagues and others who have been running Africa aground that are still honouring him with invitations to deliver lectures, oversee elections and stuff like that who are still giving him a false sense of importance. Even at the summit on leadership failure in Africa in question where the former President gave the keynote address, he was the least competent to speak on the issue. We remember the many illegalities that were committed during his regime. We saw how governors were impeached without quorum; a thing his political godson experimented in Rivers State with the speaker of the state house of assembly; we saw how he (Obasanjo) used the anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to haunt his enemies. There are too many buts about his administration that we can’t go on counting. Yet, his colleagues keep calling him to deliver lectures and monitor elections, a question of birds of the same feather flocking together?

    If there is any leadership lacuna in Nigeria, it is to Obasanjo’s wasted generation that we should turn for explanation. If Nigeria is jinxed with leadership crisis, then that must have been due to the activities of the Obasanjos in leadership positions. It is not even sweet in the former president’s mouth to say the country is jinxed. The country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo was head of state from 1976 to 1979; the country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo made himself available for the presidency in 1999 and was president for eight years. The country is jinxed, yet Obasanjo wanted a third term, a thing alien to our constitution and Jagunlabi would have gladly become a sit-tight president but for Nigerians’ resistance to the satanic plot.

    But it is one slave that makes one abuse many other slaves. The truth is that there is no correlation between age and leadership. Obasanjo, at least officially, was born on March 5, 1937. He is therefore 76 years old. Achebe was born November 16, 1930. He died March 21, aged 82. Soyinka on his part was born July 13, 1934, which means he is 79 this year. Officially, therefore, Obasanjo is the youngest of the trio. Much as we can say that Obasanjo cannot be said to have given Nigerians good leadership, both Soyinka and Achebe are renowned worldwide. How it is only the wrong people that get into leadership positions in Nigeria is what one cannot fathom.

    Chief Obasanjo should not be deceived that because he owns a leadership forum, then he is eminently qualified to mount the pulpit to pontificate on leadership, whether in Nigeria, worse still, in Africa. It is just one of the many contradictions of the man, Olusegun Obasanjo. In better run societies, no one would touch his forum, not even with a long spoon. His sermons can only make sense if he tells us to do as he says and not necessarily as he does- born again only above, but steep in the world down below! Another contradiction?

  • Kindergarten insult in humourless Aso Villa

    Kindergarten insult in humourless Aso Villa

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s media adviser, Reuben Abati, is not sure whether to categorise the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman’s memorable putdown of the president’s leadership style as libellous and defamatory or as indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations. Whatever it is, the APC chairman, Bisi Akande, obviously ruffled the feathers of the presidency when he dismissed Dr Jonathan’s style, perhaps even the president himself, as kindergarten in grappling with national issues and problems. Dr Abati’s fiery and florid rebuke of Chief Akande, for reasons only the press can explain, received even wider publicity than the original attack, now famously dubbed the ‘kindergarten insult.’

    It is not known whether Dr Abati initiated the reply to Chief Akande on his own or whether he was prompted by the president. If the former, it is a depressing indication that the normally urbane and cultured media adviser has become infected with the melancholy permeating the humourless Nigerian presidency since the unsmiling and sensual Gen Sani Abacha took the reins of power, after an annoying hiatus, from the deceptively friendly Gen Ibrahim Babangida’s military presidency. But if the latter, it is a mere confirmation that redeeming Aso Villa’s deeply ingrained humourlessness may be an impossible mission. A smart president would have punned kindergarten and deployed it against Chief Akande.

    The APC chairman had two Saturdays ago described the Jonathan presidency in the following words: “I have my reasons not to admire President Goodluck Jonathan. I have not found him to be a serious-minded leader. Jonathan is Nigeria’s problem today. He is not a thinking leader. I have had two meetings with him since 2011. I have had a long telephone conversation with him. I have written him twice discussing the serious challenges facing the country, but he has not found the courtesy to reply. He has reduced governance to kindergarten level. He is not serious-minded.” It takes exceptional literary skills to turn this fairly harmless, albeit wounding, but descriptively accurate statement into a denigration of the Jonathan presidency. And the accomplished Dr Abati, as everyone knows, has more than a passing knowledge of literary facilities.

    Hear Dr Abati: “We urge Chief Akande and his fellow travellers to remember that there are laws against libel and defamation of character in this country even if there are no legal impediments to indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations. It is certainly rude, ill-mannered, uncharitable and hypocritical for Chief Akande to falsely and cavalierly allege that a President, who toils tirelessly every day of the week, evolving and implementing workable solutions to Nigeria’s problems, is handling national issues with levity. Also, nothing else but gross ignorance and lack of consideration could have led Chief Akande to refer to a President who, having served as deputy governor, governor, vice-president and president, has far more experience of governance at the highest level than him and his preferred “candidates”, as a kindergarten leader.”

    Dr Abati was not only a respected columnist, he was a leader writer and, if I am not mistaken, at one time a teacher of literature. He knows very well that describing a president’s style as kindergarten, while it may injure his pride and the collective pride of those paid to advise him, is certainly not unpatriotic, let alone amount to denigration. I could prove over a few paragraphs that Dr Jonathan’s style has truly reduced governance to kindergarten level, but why do I want to repeat Chief Akande or expose myself unnecessarily to allegations of defending the APC? I think it is sufficient to merely restate the indisputable fact that the Jonathan presidency has not offered a cerebral approach to Nigeria’s problems, just as Chief Akande poignantly concluded.

    Dr Jonathan is perhaps hard-working, as his media adviser said, and may even be toiling day and night to look after the welfare of Nigerians. The problem, however, is that his exertions, like Olusegun Obasnjo’s before him, have been altogether futile when not misplaced, and vainglorious when it manages a modicum of relevance. I recognise that in the face of the predatory invasion of his turf by the less scrupulous and more voluble Dr Doyin Okupe, a presidential assistant, Dr Abati has an increasing need to justify his relevance, if not his pay. But as a former columnist, and a brilliant one I dare say, Dr Abati ought to have his eye on history. He has the greater burden of sustaining the character of a fine writer and analyst, and the morality of one who has tried over the years as a leader writer to build himself into an agent of social change. Already, however, he has flip-flopped so precariously on account of his responsibility as a presidential adviser that neither he nor our long-suffering selves can recognise where he once stood, or understand where he now stands. He has purged himself of virtually every conviction in the service of a vacillating and equally unconvincing president that he would be lucky to recognise his own face in the mirror after he leaves the president’s employ.

    To the critical question of whether Chief Akande’s remarks constituted an insult or, as Dr Abati unabashedly and exaggeratedly put it, amounted to a denigration of the presidency, surely he has read wide enough to know that comparing the Jonathan style to kindergarten is tame in the extreme. It is obvious that in these parts, many unlettered and untraveled people regard the presidency as a sacred institution, and fawn over it with the impressionable boyishness of a primary school pupil. What if Chief Akande had described the Jonathan presidency as inept, a remark that would have been both appropriate and accurate? Dr Abati cites the president’s anti-insurgency efforts as remarkable and gutsy. Absolute nonsense. What was the president looking at as the insurgents raised their flags from one local government to another until they got to 10?

    But much more crucially, and in spite of our cultural sensibilities, I think that not only was Chief Akande mature and restrained in his ‘kindergarten insult’, Nigerians have indeed been extremely tolerant of their leaders’ indolence and ineffectiveness. This column is of course an exception. Palladium may not describe Dr Jonathan as kindergarten, or denounce him as inept, but he has used enough words and left no one in doubt, idiom by idiom and word for word, that Dr Jonathan’s puny talents are completely unsuited to a modern government, and that he himself is evidently anachronistic. Would Dr Abati consider me uncouth? What would he say then of the Chicago Times which deprecated Abraham Lincoln’s now oft-quoted Gettysburg address in the following terms?: “We did not conceive it possible that even Mr Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself. He has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it, mediocrity is superb.”

    What umbrage would Dr Abati take if he had been media adviser to former United States president Warren Harding when journalist H.L. Mencken described him unflatteringly as follows?: “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and tumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”

    Or what would he say to e.e. cummings’ description of the same president as “…the only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.” With what exuberant phrases would Dr Abati denounce Benjamin Disraeli’s notable putdown of former British prime minister Robert Peel as someone whose smile is like the silver fittings on a coffin? What of Winston Churchill’s description of Lloyd George as “The Happy Warrior of Squandermania”; Clement Atlee as “A modest little man with much to be modest about”; and Aneurin Bevan as “someone who will be as a great curse to this country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war”?

    Contrary to what Dr Abati thinks, I observe that we have been exceedingly charitable to our leaders. While it is true that there are many ways to skin a cat, politicians and writers have a responsibility, in spite of the gruffness and menaces of the Okupes and Abatis, not to so inoculate their phrases as to become ineffective in accurately portraying the indolence, incompetence and chicaneries of poorly endowed leaders.

    But here is a question for the APC chairman: if Dr Jonathan now runs a melancholic kindergarten, and Chief Obasanjo ran a medieval monarchy of Ottoman proportions, and Gen Abacha ran, well, a gigantic brothel and bazaar complete with paedophile rings, what kind of leaders should we expect from Nigeria’s leadership nursery in the coming years?

     

  • The Lagos deportation saga and 2015 politics

    Given the irresponsible and remorseless exploitation by Bode George and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of the controversy that arose from the ‘deportation’ of some Anambrarians from Lagos recently, it is guaranteed that the matter will linger well into the 2015 general elections. Even if we ignore the fact that the so-called deportation, or resettlement as Lagos described it, has been going on in some states for a while, the problem is sufficiently serious enough to alert the country’s leadership and all patriotic Nigerians to the potentially explosive problem of how to define an indigene of a state, and what his rights and obligations are. The problem has been left dangerously unattended to for far too long.

    I think the Lagos State government was not sensitive enough to the implications of resettling those it described as destitute. It must find ways of making amends, whether it meant well in taking the action or not, or whether others had done it before or not. But Anambra and all those prattling about the rights of the destitute must also understand the security concerns of Lagos, the limited resources at the disposal of the state, the fact that the federal government has irresponsibly not made any special allocation to assist Lagos in tackling its worsening social and economic pressures, and the fact that there is a limit to how Lagos can cater for the jobless and the dispossessed within its borders. In any case it is hard to see how resettling a little over a dozen people constitutes a deliberate and wide-ranging policy of discrimination against anyone or state, let alone an ethnic group.

    It is indeed a reflection of the unresolved national question, an issue that is worsening as the years go by, that the Igbo somehow inexplicably and hysterically rose up nearly in unison to attack Lagos for discriminatory practices. Very incendiary remarks have been made, and there are threats of political backlash against the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015. There has also been incredibly silly and inaccurate talk of Lagos being a no man’s land, especially by its nature as a former federal capital. In the past one decade or more, and as Lagos began to rebuild its collapsed infrastructure, it has become a magnet for millions of Nigeria, thus further putting pressure on its limited resources. The challenge before the state is how to cope with these pressures; and its dilemma is how to define the Lagosian within the ambit of the constitution.

    Lagos State is undisputedly the navel of the former Western Region. There is no conceivable ethnographic argument that will make it less so. Indeed, in the light of the crisis in Plateau State, it is irresponsible that any group could hint directly that it would introduce and even actively nurture ethnic politics in the 2015 elections in Lagos. This indicates that the controversy over definition of a state indigene in Nigeria is too urgent to be postponed or left to resolve itself. Time will not resolve it.

    In my numerous contributions on the Plateau crisis, I had suggested it was unrealistic, as the National Assembly has unwisely tried to do, to define a state indigene as the Americans do. Nigerian ethnic groups have an unbreakable and fanatical attachment to their lands and languages. It is pointless to make it otherwise. Unlike the Americans and Australians who shoved aside indigenous populations and virtually rewrote their histories afresh, Nigerians are unlikely to ever admit to that kind of novelty. I go as far as to suggest that linguistic affinity should be the basis of Nigeria’s federal arrangement if we really want to settle the national question and achieve peace.

    I sympathise with Lagos and appreciate the dilemma it faces in trying to provide the good life for its indigenes and all taxpaying Nigerians resident and working in the state. It should patiently and cautiously approach the problem and do its best to resolve all lingering issues and disagreements within the framework of a united country. It must learn to ignore peddlers of hate ideology as it strives to build a multicultural megacity and work out ways to resist and defeat those who try to exploit ethnic differences. The problem is, however, not Lagos alone, or first, to resolve. The initiative must come from the centre, and the problem must be tackled holistically. Sadly, the Jonathan government and the unconscionable leaders of the PDP in the state, as the last political campaigns showed, are more eager to fan ethnic hatred for political gains than provide the leadership these dangerous times need.

  • Posers for Oguntunase

    “IN 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”

    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.