The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • How flammable is Nigeria?

    How flammable is Nigeria?

    Nobody wants to leave Nigeria for as long as the oil continues to flow, regardless of predictions from prophets inside and scientists outside the country.

    In the last two days, leading politicians in our country have been reacting to predictions that Nigeria stands the chance of internal combustion. In 2013 (a few weeks ago), the United States’ Army College suggested that nothing in recent times has changed the prediction in 2003 by the US Intelligence community that Nigeria might break by 2015. Local geopolitical forecasters have also been worrying that Boko Haram also has the capacity to accelerate Nigeria’s disintegration. But in response to the end of Ramadan celebration (Eid-el Fitr), President Jonathan and one of the founding leaders of All Progressives Congress (APC), have taken their time to reassure Nigerians that there is no cause for alarm, despite the country’s appearance of flammability.

    In his own message to the country’s Muslims, President Jonathan reassures citizens of the country’s stability and ‘unbreakability’: “We are not even exploiting our diversity because of the myopic views about situations. Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters and we must live together. Those who are predicting that this country will separate based on our fault-lines as at the time of amalgamation by 2015, they will know that these predictions will not be true.” Correspondingly, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu called for prayers to ensure that “the predictions of doom, hardship, political instability and religious intolerance will not come to fruition,” adding: “Nigeria is not a broken case. It is redeemable and only the people can make this change happen by voting right and wisely.” Nigerians must feel encouraged that two of the country’s leading politicians are not cowed by predictions about the country’s break-up.

    A recent book by John-Andrew McNeish and Owen Logan, titled Flammable Societies: Studies on the socio-economics of Oil and Gas includes an essay by Femi Folorunso: “A country without a State?: Governmentality, Knowledge and Labour in Nigeria.” Flammable is used in the book to refer to the socio-economics of oil and gas. But Folorunso in his own essay uses flammable in two senses: metonymic and metaphoric. He addresses the metonymic dimension by underscoring the impact of exploitation of oil and gas on the life of the average Nigerian. He also uses ‘flammable’ connotatively when he addresses the theme of a country without a state, a political space that appears bound to failure because of bad governance.

    Predictions cannot break a country. It is the action or inaction of those charged to govern a country that can cause its disintegration. Nigerians have no reason to be afraid of predictions coming from home or abroad about the future of the country. Several soothsayers and prophets in Nigeria have predicted doom for too long, without any of their predictions coming to pass, particularly predictions by religious prophets who are wont to laying claims to prescience and clairvoyance. Nigerians have gotten used to local Cassandras whose forecasts of doom for politicians and the polity have generally come to naught.

    What Nigerians have not gotten used to are predictions from outside the country by professional analysts who attempt to bring the predictive power of science on their forecasts. The prediction in 2003 from the U.S. Intelligence community and the latest one from the U.S. Army College must have gotten the attention of Nigeria’s leaders. When the 2003 prediction first came out, General Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed it as nothing for anyone to worry about. Again, the recent one from the U.S. Army College seems to have gotten to our leaders. This explains why two of the country’s most important politicians, Jonathan and Tinubu, have chosen to use this year’s end of Ramadan festivities to reassure citizens not to panic and to remain as optimistic about the territorial integrity of their country as they have always been since 1960.

    Citizens ought to know by now that Nigeria cannot disintegrate, despite the recurrence of political, social, and economic storms the country experiences intermittently. The reasons are not far to fathom. oil and gas, natural causes of combustion, serve as lubricants to oil and grease the creaky joints of the Nigerian State-nation. There are two sides to the coin of greasing of the engine of the Nigerian State. On the one hand, members of the ruling class derive too much benefit from oil and proceeds of oil for them to want to push the country into the sea. Those from various parts of the country who own oil blocks and have acquired property in prime lands in different parts of the country from oil and gas know better than they show when they threaten fire and brimstone. The saying that Nigeria knows how to avoid disaster and disintegration is not an exaggeration. Most of the country’s political and cultural leaders know where their bread is buttered. Many of them will even be afraid to want to rule a Nigeria without petroleum.

    On the other hand, the average Nigerian is able to live on just one dollar per day, not because of efforts by the government, but as a result of the existence of oil and gas in the country! Without oil and with the kind of government the country has been saddled with since the 1970s, it would not have been possible for any Nigerian to eat on a daily basis a loaf of bread or a plate of rice without any form of protein. The little that trickles down from the class that perceives itself as the owner of Nigeria is another thing that has prevented disintegration. It is not surprising when scholars raise the issue of Resource Curse in relation to Nigeria’s petroleum and mismanagement of the country that both leaders and followers retort with: “Thank God there is oil.” Nobody wants to leave Nigeria for as long as the oil continues to flow, regardless of predictions from prophets inside and scientists outside the country. And no matter how hard the polity is heated or security is challenged by Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, and even the country’s Kidnappers Incorporated, nothing untoward is likely to happen to our republic of petroleum. Nigerians have reasons to believe their president when he says there is no cause for alarm. They should know that it is a waste of intellectual and emotional energy to think or write that Nigeria is on the brink, on account of its many crises of bad governance and under-development.

    The country’s political rulers and their cultural counterparts know that it does not matter what they do or not do, the country has come to stay, for as long as oil flows from the wombs of the land and its adjoining sea. Our leaders know that they do not need to respond to what Femi Folorunso characterises as the impact of governance on sovereignty, citizenship, and development in a country troubled by resource curse. Even citizens themselves have been numbed or dumbed down by the manna from petroleum and gas. It appears that nobody needs to worry about anything, for as long as Nigeria is able to sell enough oil to lubricate the engine of its continuity as a state-nation. The country’s (taken for granted) territorial integrity will be further guaranteed by free and fair election in 2015, if only to give citizens unfettered choice to choose those to govern them.

  • Revisiting the economic battle (ahead)

    Revisiting the economic battle (ahead)

    Economic Policy is made by the rich and done to the poor

    I write this from the United States. My brief visit here has been instructive. Despite those who say American power now swoons, Washington remains the world’s most influential capital. The mindset controlling Washington eventually colours other nations. The world has become a discordant rush partly because an increasingly plutocratic America remains the closest thing the dismal orchestra has to a conductor. Yet, a conductor who insists all things must be done to place him in maximum fettle, is one incapable of directing us toward music of greater harmony and equity.

    American society moves with a foul mood. Claims that the economy is improving seem to be merely that: Claims. People stew in uncertainty. This alleged land of plenty is the abode of plenty of new poverty. Income inequality has reached a peak last witnessed before the Great Depression nine decades ago. High numbers of people remain unemployed. Most new jobs are described by low wages and abbreviated hours.

    Black people are doubly compressed by the hard times. A young Black man has as much of a chance to be on the streets jobless or incarcerated for petty crime as he has to be employed or enrolled in higher education. Detroit, the once proud capital of the American car industry and of soul music, no longer hums with the sound of machinery of car manufacturing. This once fine city had been a symbol of Black progress; it now does nothing but sing the blues. The city is bankrupt and at the prey of creditors seeking public assets on the cheap. The Black population in Detroit is shell-shocked like an ill-equipped platoon finding itself suddenly on a battlefield. Once robust neighbourhoods are blighted by vacant and ramshackle houses. The scene evokes the feeling that a plague has swept the place, consuming people as well as savaging brick, mortar, building and even the spirit of those who remain behind in the desolate town.

    Against this backdrop, President Obama toured several cities touting his plans to revive the American economy by protecting the endangered middle class. Although not a great admirer of the President, I hoped this signaled he would hew a different course.

    His tour produced high-sounding speeches before enthusiastic, often cheering crowds. The purportedly liberal corporate media lauded his every word. For my part, I dropped my head, wept dry tears and cried a silent cry.

    First, the President pulled from the mothballs his threadbare plan for 50 billion dollars on infrastructural improvements. To the average person, the amount seems so vast as to impress. To those more knowledgeable, the amount is so paltry as to insult. America’s ruling crowd has become so selfish that it channels the bulk of the national wealth down its collective gullet. Because of lack of investment, the world’s greatest national infrastructural grid 40 years ago is now the worst among developed nations.

    Obama’s 50 billion dollar scheme is a complete feign. It is akin to adorning a Chihuahua with a horse’s saddle then insisting the ill-fitted combination is primed to compete in a thoroughbred race. It is all farce but one the public’s ignorance and media’s connivance have given a hero’s welcome. The leading organisation of America’s civil engineers estimated the nation must spend over one trillion dollars to place its vital infrastructure in respectable order.

    The White House knows this. Its policy statement was empty theatre, the slick tossing of saccharine but hollow words at a populace too ignorant to realise the speaker ridicules rather than respects them. The fund President Obama seeks will minimally improve the overall state of the nation’s infrastructure. It will be like giving a pedicure to a tuberculin patient. However, it presents a golden opportunity for a few large construction firms to make a real fortune based on expenditures giving the public false hope. Welcome to the feast where only the fat can eat their fill. It gets worse.

    President Obama also unveiled a mortgage reform policy. Again, he declared the reform had the middle class in mind. If that were the case, he then has the mind of a prowler. His plan abolishes the two government-sponsored agencies responsible for broadening the mortgage market so middle and working-class people could own homes over the past several decades. With a broad smile, shut the door to future home ownership for many average people. He claimed this was required to allow the private sector and free market to work their magic. Someone forgot to tell the man the agencies were established because the unfettered, unregulated mortgage market had ill-served the nation’s needs even when working class wages were rising and the overall economy was robust. If such agencies were needed when the economy brimmed with vitality, they are of vital utility during the current period of economic flaccidity.

    The two corporations are to be replaced by a curious scheme. Private firms engaged in melding individual mortgages together to form bundles of financial instruments secured by the real estate underlying the mortgages can now buy a government guarantee of repayment of these financial instruments. What he has taken from the common man, the president gives to the financial speculator in multiple portion. Valuation of these financial instruments is so subjective as to be more conjecture than precision. Enacting this policy will grant investors the open door to pay a nominal fee guaranteeing these instruments then claim outrageous values for the assets. If the market works, the investor gets paid via the market. If the market falters, he collects on the guarantee. Either way, he gets paid, meaning his reward comes not for taking a risk but simply because he had money in the first instance. The common man must fight life’s vicissitudes to earn his quotidian bread and keep. Meanwhile, the rich are protected on all sides; their bounty is promised and secured by the sweat of the poor.

    In all of this, President Obama either is devoid of an economic bone in his body or he is as cynical as a man can be. I cannot believe he is so naïve as not to apprehend the ramifications of what he advocates. Thus, I am left to conclude he remains the loyal steward of deeply-pocketed interests who have little interest in the average person.

    We approach the crux of this tale. We must be careful about the leaven we eat. The yeast of understanding is in a sparse plate on a small table. On the other side is the feast of fools. It is served in large, open halls upon wide, ample tables. The latest Obama escapades are instructive in that they reveal what is to come to much of the rest of the world. Just as there seems to be a dictator’s manual that authoritarians religiously apply to thwart democracy, there is a financialist handbook the economic elite applies to keep people poor.

    Given the imperfection of our social arrangements, some poverty is unavoidable. However, due again to the flaws of the human character, the larger portion of human misery is the unnecessary byproduct of man’s greed. We live in an age of rank elite conservatism as virulent as any time in the past four centuries. Today’s elite believe they are entitled to life in the fullest; this entails owning and possessing as much as possible, including people. For this to occur, they need people to grow poorer so they can purchase more of them, more cheaply.

    Knowing we know little economics, they hire honey-throated mouthpieces like Obama to tell us all is being done for our welfare. In fact, what they have in mind will harm us. However, we believe them and thus keeping playing the roles set for us, little realising the hard work we do will gain us little more than a victim’s status. We become dumb accomplices in setting our lifetime trap of penury, struggle and debt.

    They tell us to look at economics as a collaborative venture where all parties cooperate to maximise output and production. They demand we believe what they know to be a lie. He who believes that this is the nature of economics is a charter citizen in a fool’s paradise balances on the edge of calamity. They need us to think this way so that we blind ourselves from seeing who they truly are and how they actually think.

    They see economics as competition. If too many average people have all they need, the rich are afraid that the people will no longer work extra hard and will drive up wages. If masses don’t place their nose to the grindstone, there will be insufficient surplus and too much wealth among the common people to give the elite the lavish wealth upon which they have come to rely. They must keep you poor, grasping and so afraid that you willingly work your fingers to the bare bone in order for them to luxuriate at their desired level. In the current system, the average person works to indebt himself to an elite whom his work has already profanely enriched.

    This is how capitalism was born. In 18th century England, architects of economic thought and policy lamented how the rural farmer and peasant were too happy for their own good. Because these people had small plots of land and recourse to common land to graze small herds, they were mostly self-sufficient in their bucolic simplicity. The aggressive captains of industry bristled at this waste of human fodder. They needed people to work their factories. To fuel their new way of life, they instituted legislation that would bar the theretofore self sufficient, life of the peasant. They willfully killed an entire social structure and imposed misery on the unwitting farmer and bumpkin just so their capitalist elite could reap the benefits of the forced labor.

    Laws were enacted dispossessing small farmers of their meager holdings. Common pasture land was abolished. Effectively chased from the land and their means of livelihood, the peasant drifted to the city. They formed a pool of surplus labor competing against each other for the meager wages of nonstop work amidst a dreary, wretched urban poverty as has ever existed.

    This is how capitalism was born. Clearly, the global economy has expanded and evolved. It is more sophisticated and nuanced but its basic nature remains unchanged. The cardinal principle upon which this edifice is built remains that the vast majority of the people must run the ceaseless treadmill so they have little time to question things or fight to change them.

    In initial years of capitalism, people were dispossessed of their lands. Today, the people can now own land their ancestors once freely walked. However, they must now pay a high price. Given their low wages, paying such a price consigns them to a lifetime of debt. By nature of the obligation hovering over him, a debtor is willing to work for a wage below what he is due. In this perverted system, to strive to own a home is to acquire a debt that forces you to accept unjust wages which makes it more difficult to redeem the debt.

    In the formative stage of capitalism, only landed wealthy men held the political franchise. Now, everyone can vote but voting matters little. Today, big money decides the candidates of the major parties. The average person votes but his franchise is of no avail. Money Power presents its choice of candidates from which he must select. Usually, all this does is present to the people a choice between bad and worse.

    Africa, you have suffered greatly because of this. Led by America, Western nations suppress the bulk of their populations in order to meet elite demands. If Western nations willingly turn their own people into modern indentured servants, they have no compulsion about keeping African states and their peoples in a place of economic weakness. A vital instrument abetting this unfairness is the nature of many of the continent’s governmental structures. Too many nations have kept the warped values and ways that characterised the colonial political economy. In a profound way, Africa suffers under the weight of excessive capitalist practice shorn even of the false regard the Western elite must feign for its citizens. As such, colonialism bequeathed to Africa a political economy described as rawest form of exploitative capitalism accentuated by racism.

    More than the populations of Western nations, the people of Africa have their work cut out for them. Most of today’s African leaders belong to the same elitist club as President Obama. They talk sweetly but act sourly toward the people’s interests. Instead of being genuine leaders of the people, many leaders are emissaries of the global elite to the people. Thus, instead of demanding from the global elite what Africa needs, these leaders are more apt to instruct the people about what the world says they should sacrifice or forfeit to maintain a good credit rating.

    Breaking this age-old bondage falls on the people themselves. First, we must earnestly begin to learn more about economics and finance. The more you know is the less you can be fooled. The most important point to remember is that economic policy is rarely a completely collaborative venture. Few policies are class neutral. Policy is a subjective determination of who benefits and who losses in relative and absolute measure. Policy is the balancing of competing interests. You must know enough about your interests and those of other economic classes within your nation and of other nations so that you protect and promote what is vital to you.

    Most importantly, we must envision a world free from the exploitation inherent to classical and now modern capitalism. There is a better road available. Adhering to this new path first starts with asking ourselves do we strive for a more just, equitable society for all or do we labor to win the individual lottery – that slim, desperate chance to escape the terse, bare confines of average existence so that we may join the lush elite. If we strive for the former, there is a chance. If all we do is individually labour for the latter, then our children and their children shall be the hand servants of a global system that seeks their harm.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • The omoluabi professor as a revolutionary democrat: Ropo Sekoni (aka RS) @ 70

    The omoluabi professor as a revolutionary democrat: Ropo Sekoni (aka RS) @ 70

    If we are not careful, another struggle is going to come. This is because the contradictions will blow up the country again, maybe before 2015 or by 2015. We have not addressed the fundamentals of our politics. As I said earlier, breaking of Nigeria is not going to pay anybody. As a Yoruba man who loves his people, I am clear in my mind that a good Nigeria will be good for the Yoruba.

    Ropo Sekoni, Premium Times (Online), August 7, 2013

    There is no place on earth that I would have loved to be earlier this week on Wednesday, August 7, than in Lagos when the family, relatives, friends and colleagues of RS gathered to mark his 70th birthday with a festivity that I am told, was as intellectually stimulating as it was also a rousing social function. RS, as he is universally known, is of course none other than Ropo Sekoni. Unfortunately, I could not be present as I am far away in China. To make things worse, because right now I am traveling in that vast country, I could not even carry out a promise I had made to some co-conspirators that I would record and send an audiovisual message that was to have been played at the gathering. Given this background, in writing this tribute in my column this week, I am turning an opportunity missed to a rare chance to say in this forum some things that need to be said about one of our country’s most prominent and progressive public intellectuals.

    In Yoruba culture and language, there is probably no higher form of social approbation that could be paid to an adult person than to say that he or she is an omoluabi. I personally cannot think of a single word in the English language that could serve as a satisfactory translation of this Yoruba term. In essence, it encapsulates the social identity of a person that is both self-respecting and highly respected in the community, a person in whom one can repose the complete confidence that she or he can be expected to always do that which is considerate, just and honourable.

    Now the really wonderful thing about this omoluabi appellation is that, as far as class and social status are concerned, it is completely neutral. Though it does not preclude women and men of wealth and power, one does not have to be rich, highly educated or famous to be deemed an omoluabi. This is because it is manifested in your character, in how people not only perceive but also experience you. Thus, an omoluabis are neither more nor less in number among our university teachers than you will find in any other occupational group in our society, including farmers, tradesmen, market women and artisans like mechanics and welders. In other words, it is a great boon to find an omoluabi in any social or occupational group; for me, it is even more gratifying to find one among professors and progressive activists. Among friends and colleagues with whom I have ever worked professionally as an academic and politically as an intellectual activist, RS is among the few who is not only generally regarded as a first rate omoluabi but is also eminently deserving of the honorific connotations of the term.

    At this point, I would like to ask the reader to please note that I have not said that an omoluabi cannot also be a person with an irreverent sense of humor or a very keen sense of the absurdities and inanities of social existence. Indeed, among progressive academics, RS is almost in a class by himself in the ways in which he never takes either himself or others so seriously that he moves beyond the pale of reasonableness to the excesses of haughty self-righteousness. When we were together at OAU, Ife, the only person who had a more wicked but good-natured sense of humor and a more infectious, ringing laughter than RS was the late Professor Oyin Ogunba. And about the only person who could recount anecdotes and tell ribald jokes more exquisitely than RS was Professor Akin Isola, aka “Honestman”. Thus, the last thing I would want the reader to take away from my application of this term, omoluabi, to RS is the suggestion that he is a sentimentalist, a person whose natural inclination to do that which is just and decent prevents from him perceiving and responding with energy to the horrific social wrongs and evils that make life so miserable for the great majority of our peoples at the present point in time. In other words, RS is no sentimentalist, no stargazer hedging his bets on the probability of positive and progressive transformation in Nigeria on a naïve hope that an innate predilection for fairness and decency is all that is needed to bring more equitable and humane conditions to a multi-ethnic, multicultural society that is as deeply divided and misgoverned as our country is at the present time.

    It is remarkable that I not only remember but cannot recall exactly how RS and I became close personal friends and intellectual and political comrades. With all my other close, intimate friends I can recall precisely when and how we became friends: Yemi Ogunbiyi, Femi Osofisan, Eddie Madunagu, John Ohiorhenuan, Niyi Osundare, Chima Anyadike, Yomi Durotoye, Olu Ademulegun, and Kole Omotoso. With RS, there is in my mind and recollection no signal moment of a beginning, almost as if we have always been friends. Of course, certain milestones of extraordinary intellectual and political collaboration do stand out in my mind, especially after he left the University of Ilorin in 1982 to join us at OAU, Ife. I will never forget the work we put in together, with some input by G.G. Darah, to draft the first advanced courses in postgraduate literary and cultural studies in any Nigerian and African university. Before this momentous step, no postgraduate courses were offered in Nigerian and African universities for M.A. and Ph D. candidates; following the Oxbridge British tradition, graduate students took any courses beyond the ones they had taken during their undergraduate years; all they did was read as much and as widely as they could under the guidance of one supervisor who completely controlled the fate of the student.

    The collaboration and comradeship in political activism is too numerous, too eventful to enumerate: ASUU; the Socialist Forum at OAU; the work done with workers and their trade unions; the epic struggles against the Abacha dictatorship as part of the external opposition to that regime. In a deliberately very restrictive use of the term, much of this work of collaborative political activism is “classified” and cannot be told now, although inevitably, all will be told some day. But I can reveal here that as much as anyone in the movement, RS always tried to make his personal, professional and political lives and activities connected with one another and also consistent with his deepest political and ideological beliefs. I do not know if he will agree with this characterisation, but I would note here that he tended to stay a step away from the extreme left, without however blurring his philosophical beliefs and practical engagements with centrist positions as a sort of left-of-centre rather than centre-left. But I am sure that he will not mind my saying here that I can think of only one or two of all the comrades and collaborators I have ever worked closely with who are the equal of RS in the practice of gender equality in his relations with his wife, Banke. All of this composite profile is what I have tried to communicate in that part of the title of this piece containing the phrase “the omoluabi professor as a revolutionary democrat”. Let me attempt to clarify what this entails by a brief discussion of RS’s area of scholarly research and publication, semiotics.

    It so happens that RS was the first major scholar of semiotics that Nigeria produced. [A case could be made for the late Sunday Anozie as the first, but his emphasis was more on a highly idiosyncratic form of structuralist aesthetics and poetics than on semiotics proper] Add to this the fact that in his active professional life before his retirement in 2009, RS made the intricacies and ambiguities of Yoruba and African oral traditions his main areas of sustained scholarly attention. In this, he focused on two particular arrears of semiotic study that tell us much about his brand of political and intellectual activism. These are, respectively, the gnostic-animist tradition of Ifa poetic chants and traditions of West African trickster tales with their emphasis on moral ambiguity and epistemological indeterminacy.

    What semiotics entails can be both relatively easily described and incredibly tough to understand. On the “easy” side, semiotics is the study of the signs by or through which a culture can be “read” and understood, first by the owners or bearers of the culture themselves and secondly, by outsiders. On this account, anyone and everyone that speaks a language and achieves functional adulthood in the culture of the language is a “semiotician” since their fluency in the given language and culture implies that they are able to competently read the signs of the culture.

    The “tough” side consists of the fact that you need rigorous and exacting study to grasp the tools or the “code” by which the signs of the constitutive elements of a culture can be read or “decoded”. To get at this code, you must stand outside the culture and critically study it; and you must be a comparatist and a universalist of sorts, with a deep interest in how signs and their codes work within and between the diversity of human languages and cultures. It is the possession or deep awareness of this code that separates the naïve or lay “semiotician” from the professional and rigorous expert in semiotics. On the basis of this distinction, we can get at the fundamental theoretical and methodological assumption of semiotics which is that it is one thing to live in and be immersed in a language and culture; it is another thing entirely to study it rigorously and unceasingly in order to have ever deeper understanding of it. The two are not mutually exclusive, but to cross from one to the other, or to move productively back and forth from one to the other, you must be aware of this distinction.

    RS is one of a handful of Yoruba scholars of Yoruba culture and traditions who are not only aware of this distinction but actually embody and live it, knowing only too well that the survival of Yoruba language and culture, of indeed any Nigerian and African language and culture, depends on making and living this distinction. Like these other scholars and writers, RS is an unabashed defender of the Yoruba language and culture, especially with regard to threats posed from without by the zealotry of the Abrahamic religions and from within by those who, seeing no credible or usable cultural resources with which to successfully engage the powerful currents of modernity and its products and promises, blame their language and culture for lagging behind the richer and more technologically advanced nations and regions of the world. On this account, what is peculiar in RS is the fact that, perhaps more than any other scholar-activist, he has made this distinction between being totally immersed in your language and culture and standing athwart it in the wider context of other languages and cultures with whom your language and culture must not only coexist but also necessarily and inevitably commingle the basis of his political activism. It is now our common experience that any time that ethnicity or the so-called national question comes up in Nigerian political discourse, images and thoughts of reactionary irredentism and tribal chauvinism are conjured in our minds. This is not unjustified. But I would like to suggest that there are scholars and activists like RS in whom ethnicity or the national question is completely coextensive with revolutionary democracy. Listen to the man himself in the epigraph to this tribute: “If we are not careful, another struggle is going to come. This is because the contradictions will blow up the country again, maybe before 2015 or by 2015. We have not addressed the fundamentals of our politics. As I said earlier, breaking of Nigeria is not going to pay anybody. As a Yoruba man who loves his people, I am clear in my mind that a good Nigeria will be good for the Yoruba.”

    Congrats on making it this far, RS. “Iwo ati Banke maa lo’ra yin dale ni o’!

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Mbu’s style symptomatic of deeper national malaise

    Mbu’s style symptomatic of deeper national malaise

    It had been expected that given the demonstrable lack of professional detachment by Police Commissioner Mbu Joseph Mbu in the Rivers State political crisis, the police authorities in Abuja would be embarrassed into redeploying him as soon as the chance presented itself. Instead, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) has unabashedly attested to Mr Mbu’s professionalism and earnestly underscored the police commissioner’s aloofness from politics. Mr Mbu may be aloof alright, but it seems more accurately that he is aloof from the constitution of the Federal Republic rather than from Rivers State politics. What is clear now is that the police will stand pat on the Mbu affair, and the anomalies evident in the Rivers crisis, no matter how galling and humiliating, will endure for much longer than our patience can bear.

    Mr Mbu himself has been giddy with excitement over the Rivers crisis in which the bullish Governor Rotimi Amaechi has locked horns with an Abuja cabal led by the portly Nyesom Wike, a minister of state, his surrogates from Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, and increasingly unruly rented militant crowds. The cabal is in turn beholden to the presidency, and is indeed indirectly propagating and executing an agenda not at all disagreeable to President Goodluck Jonathan. The police commissioner has not only walked gingerly around the Abuja emissaries and their excitable and mostly violent proxies, as if on thin ice, he has also either waffled when it comes to tackling their malfeasances or become strangely tongue-tied when it comes to denouncing their lawlessness and provocations.

    The IGP’s endorsement of Mr Mbu is, however, not unexpected, though deplorable. While the crisis lasts, Mr Mbu will continue to prattle endlessly and, if need be, meet the defiance of the governor inch by inch, grammar for grammar, and eyeball to eyeball. This is because he is smart enough to know which way the cats are jumping in Abuja. He knows that while the president and his aides struggle to distance the presidency from the Rivers crisis, the truth is much more sobering. His long years in the Force, not to say his boastful baccalaureate from the University of Lagos, and his own innate predilection for loud and excited talk, have armed him to second-guess his superiors and fawn all over them. If the presidency says it is uninterested in and unconnected with the crisis in Rivers, his skilful use of quantitative methods teaches him to turn the statement into a null hypothesis and test it. Every such test he has made has repeatedly confirmed that Abuja would rather gladly bring the house down on everyone than tolerate Mr Amaechi for one day longer, irrespective of what the constitution says.

    And if Mr Mbu is foxy enough to indulge Abuja and wink and embrace its mischief, the more accomplished and experienced IGP could not be any less artful and indulgent. The IGP may protest that his assessment of Mr Mbu is honest, sincere and practical, and not coloured by any consideration of the whims of the presidency; however, it must be recognised that no one gets to the top of the police profession by being moralistic, principled and dogmatic. Both the IGP and Mr Mbu will continue to accommodate the presidency as long as it is required, and pussyfoot on lawlessness when it is safe to do so, whether orders come to them directly, indirectly or in whispers.

    Both the IGP and Mr Mbu rely on constitutional provisions to defend what they term as necessary aloofness and depoliticisation of the Force. The provisions, they argue, insulate the police from politics, and no one would be allowed to drag them into politics’ murky waters. In other words, they insinuate into the spirit of the constitution such loftiness and grandeur that neither the letter nor commonsensical interpretation of the constitution ever pretended to grant. The police ordinarily ought to be above politics, neither beholden to the money power nor to the lumpen. And this should be in spite of whether constitutional provisions put the police in the power of governors or the president. If this were so, it would indeed be a very lofty pedestal to occupy, and the police would be able to earn respect and the awe they crave.

    The reality is, however, different. First, no one, certainly not a visionless and fearful presidency, nor yet an unimaginative and backward-looking legislature, has been able to appreciate the need for state police or squirm at the contradictions of a federal constitution providing for a unitary police system. The proponents of unitary police argue that if police powers were conferred on states, they could be abused. This is of course nonsense. Do we not have the common sense to know that if you manufacture a car, you must put brakes in it? Second, every black man must feel humiliated that Nigerians have become so immobilised by fear of the unknown that they are unable to grasp how to make a decentralised police system work. Surely, we are not so lacking in gumption or so self-deprecating that we think only developed countries can run a decentralised police system.

    The police of course do not blame themselves for both the shortcomings in the 1999 constitution and its clear inadequacy in providing for the safety of Nigerians and their properties. However, it is beguiling but nonetheless futile that both the IGP and Mr Mbu, irrespective of the limitations in the letter of the constitution, are ascribing a nobility of spirit to a constitution whose shackled and defective spirit can simply not soar above the letter.

    Even if we find a solution to the Rivers impasse, it will doubtless be tentative, as everything is tentative in and about Nigeria. But now no such solution is near, for the Mbu conundrum – in which an appointed police officer looms larger than an elected governor – is symptomatic of the malaise undermining the peace, development and unity of the country. However, Mr Mbu, I think, is not the problem: he is simply exploiting the lacunae in the system to hold tightly to his position, and may in fact be privately galled by his own compelled volubility and indiscrete and ludicrous posturing. The IGP, who strikes many of us as urbane and thoughtful, is also not the problem. Against his better judgement, he may have found it inescapable to defend and endorse his police commissioner. As I once said in this place, his success as IGP, sadly, would not depend on his brilliance or wisdom, but on the vision, intelligence, detachment and patriotism of the president. If the president lacked these attributes, the IGP would be hamstrung, I had concluded.

    This, therefore, is the crux of the matter. It is unhelpful to lampoon Mr Mbu, even if he sometimes gave impression (some say proof) of his eager duplicity. It is unhelpful to castigate the IGP for feigning ignorance of his subordinate chiselling away at the democratic basis of governance in Rivers. And it is easy to blame the National Assembly for being so trusting of the presidency, so retrogressive in lawmaking and so protective of the powers of the centre, when in fact they have apparently never contemplated a country in the mould of the Nordic countries, and may never envision anything better for Nigeria than its dismal position in Africa. Who then is to blame?

    Let us pose the problem in a different way. Even if the presidency was not behind both the excesses of the police in Rivers and the lawlessness of Mr Wike, and in addition knew nothing of the madness that convulsed the House of Assembly recently with the predetermined aim of unnerving the president’s opponents, what lofty statements has the president made on the long-running crisis, and what noble deeds has he undertaken to cure Rivers and the system in general of the disgraceful and childish resort to undemocratic practices? Absolutely none. The president was not just silent on Rivers; he self-effacingly lunched into a declamation on democracy and the rule of law in his usual engaging but nugatory style. But it is not declamations the country needs. Even though we exaggerated his leadership qualities, it was hoped he would at inauguration avail us a fairly deep and logical insight into the content of his vision for Nigeria and, perhaps too, Africa.

    In the end, he proved as spectacularly distracted and specious as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Worse, he finds it difficult to appreciate the import of many of his actions, not to say his statements. Leadership is not simply about firmness or setting upon a line of action flowing from the advice of cabinet members and aides. It is about something deeper and variegated; something rich, luscious and instinctive; something great, coherent and noble – all going into the leader’s mind like dross, but coming out purged and processed into something much richer and more enduring, something festooned with crystal clear ideas of what to do and when, and something that transforms into pure and almost infallible judgement that emphasises the long view, and that creates and forges a great and incomparable society far better than any. However, ability must match ambition in order for a leader to be worth the title. Alas, as the Rivers crisis and many other challenging issues of the times have shown, and as the chasm between sense and nonsense denoted by the Mbu indiscretion shows, there is no indication whatsoever that we have a leader with a grasp of the moral imperatives of these times, let alone one suited for the complexities and hard choices of this age.

  • Ethnicity, class and democracy

    Ethnicity, class and democracy

    The venue was the Agip Recital Hall of the Muson Centre in Lagos. The day was Wednesday, 7th August, 2013. The event was the 70th birthday lecture and book launch of Professor Ropo Sekoni, renowned scholar of comparative literature and cultural studies, originalpolitical thinker, prodigious researcher, prolific newspaper columnist, relentless fighter for democracy and justice, proud Yoruba indigene, patriotic Nigerian citizen and above all, a most unassuming and remarkable human being.

    In spite of the hiccups and debilitating paralysis associated with presidential movements in Lagos on that day, the hall was filled to capacity. The audience was not necessarily distinguished by the size of their bank accounts, the length of their convoys or their elaborate sartorial outfits. After all, the celebrator had no contracts to award, no patronages to dispense, no oil blocs to distribute and no lucrative political appointments to offer.

    Yet, from far and near they came, men and women of high accomplishment and character, to accord honour to a man most deserving of being celebrated. Surely, only the deep can call to the deep and so on hand to identify with Professor Sekoni on the memorable occasion were eminent Nigerians with progressive credentials including General Alani Akinrinade, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, Mr. Jimi Agbaje, Mr. Muyiwa Ige, who represented Ogbeni Raufu Aregbesola, Dr. Amos Akingba, Professor Akin Oyebode, Chief Bode Akindele, Dr Femi Orebe and, of course, former Lagos State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Dele Alake, who represented Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Chief Presenter of the book.

    Aside from scores of his colleagues from the academia and the media, several of Professor Sekoni’s students over the years were also on hand to demonstrate their gratitude to a man who contributed in no small measure in moulding their intellects, values and lives. Among them were Mr. Dapo Olorunyomi, the witty Master of Ceremonies, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, the award winning columnist, Sam Omatseye, Senator Femi Ojudu and, of course, the guest lecturer, Dr. Femi Folorunso, who gave a commanding performance that elicited a prolonged standing ovation.

    Yours truly was never privileged to be Professor Sekoni’s student since I was never at Ife but was groomed at the nation’s premier and incomparable citadel of learning, which the reader surely only knows too well! However, it has been such a great privilege and honour, such a tremendous learning experience to brainstorm every week with such keen intellects and wise minds as Professor Sekoni, the mysterious Tatalo Alamu, Professor Jide Osuntokun and Ambassador Dapo Fafowora on the Editorial Board of this newspaper.

    As I said earlier, Dr. Babafemi Folorunso’s lecture titled ‘Make or Break: The Imperative For Cultural Democracy in Nigeria’ was a most fitting tribute not only to his deep learning, the quality mentoring of the Professor Sekonis of this world but also the depth and ingenuity of the Nigerian mind. Traversing diverse fields of learning – semiotics, pedagogy, philosophy, economics, history, psychology, political science etc- Dr. Folorunso clinically dissected the Nigerian condition and offered far reaching prescriptions for the redemption and transformation of a country that will, next year, spend billions of Naira in a year-long, wasteful celebration of the centenary of its amalgamation even as she gallops full throttle towards deeper underdevelopment and possible implosion. Only urgent and fundamental structural change encompassing the decentralisation and overhauling of the education system, re-configuration of the country’s public finances and the re-definition of her power relations can, in his view, salvage Nigeria.

    The major highlight of the day was the launching of Professor Sekoni’s slim but powerful new book- ‘Federalism and the Yoruba Character: Essays on Democracy of Nationalities in Nigeria’. His central contention is that democracy in Nigeria will remain an illusory objective except if situated within the context of a genuine federal constitution that is reflective of the country’s ethno-cultural pluralism.

    For him, the country’s cultural diversity is a veritable strength, a critical resource that should be tapped for our collective benefit. The way to do this is not to pretend that these significant cultural differences do not exist or to try to suppress and dissolve them into a mythical Nigerian nationhood. Rather free reign and institutional expression must be given to the diverse cultures, values, beliefs, ideals, mores and norms of the component peoples of Nigeria so that the maximum realization of the potentials of each part becomes the collective strength of the whole.

    Drawing ingeniously from Yoruba myths of creation and the harmonious yet distinctive co-existence of scores of Yoruba sub-nationalities – Egba, Ijebu, Ondo, Ijesha, Oyo, Ibadan, Okun, Ekiti etc – he argues that the Yoruba constitute a naturally plural and federal community. Professor Sekoni predicates his thesis of ‘cultural democracy’ mediated through a federal constitution on Chief Awolowo’s time tested axioms that “If a country is bi-lingual or multi-lingual, the constitution must be Federal, and the constituent states must be organised on the basis of language and geographical separateness” and that “Any experiment with a unitary constitution in a bi-lingual or multi-lingual or multi-national country must fail, in the long run”. These axioms formulated over four decades ago have been amply validated in diverse countries particularly the defunct Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

    It is Professor Sekoni’s view that in a multi-cultural, plural polity like Nigeria, guaranteeing the sanctity of the individual’s vote in free and fair elections is as critical and imperative as ensuring the autonomy and integrity of the various cultural groups that co-habit in the federation. It is this departure from the tenets of federalism under the Unitarian influence of military despotism- a suffocating centralism that persists till date- that is largely responsible for the persistence of political instability, social anomie and economic underperformance in contemporary Nigeria. His arguments thus readily support Chief Awolowo’s contention in 1947 that “Under a true federal constitution each group, however small, is entitled to the same treatment as any other group, however large”.

    It would, of course, appear to me that there is some tension between the majoritarian democracy predicated on one man one vote and the federalist ‘cultural democracy’ advocated by Professor Sekoni, which has ethno-cultural autonomy as its basis. If an emphasis on regional autonomy solidifies primordial particularistic consciousness, will that not weaken the broader pan-national consciousness that is imperative for liberal democratic sustainability? Will smaller ethnic groups not be at the mercy of larger ones if ethnic solidarity becomes the fulcrum of electoral support?

    More importantly, what constitutes the most fundamental division and source of conflict among Nigerians today? Is it ethnic, religious, cultural or regional? This on the surface may appear so. In my view, however, the reactionary segment of the Yoruba political and business class is as parasitic, corrupt, rapacious, oppressive and incompetent as their counterparts in other ethnic groups across the country.

    In other words, the pension fund looters, fuel subsidy scammers, fake emergency contractors, fraudulent oil bloc beneficiaries and sundry criminals among Nigeria’s ruling class transcend all ethnic, regional and religious segmentations. They have absolutely nothing in common with the wretched of the Nigerian earth even when they belong to the same ethnic group or religious faith. There is thus no alternative to a pan-Nigerian progressive front that will forge an alliance across primordial fault lines and lead the country in a new direction that will liberate the vast majority of our people from poverty whatever may be their ethnic group or religious faith.

    But despite this fundamental disagreement with Professor Sekoni’s thesis, this column commends his patriotic and selfless striving at great personal cost for a new Nigeria. We thank him for stimulating our thoughts and reposing great faith in the Nigerian enterprise against all odds. I rejoice with the distinguished professor’s wonderful family and wish him a very happy birthday and many more years of service to humanity.

  • Give it to Mikel

    Give it to Mikel

    I start with a clarification. The Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) should not feel blackmailed by my submission here. Neither is this a campaign; it is a statement of fact – John Mikel Obi deserves to be crowned the best African player for the 2012/2013 football season.

    I would not have bothered to restate why Mikel should be Africa’s best on January 9, 2014. But I’m condemned to do so, given CAF’s penchant for shocking soccer enthusiasts anytime the Africa Footballer of the Year is announced.

    The urge to warn CAF has become expedient now that the draws and ceremony for the award would be done in Nigeria. I almost celebrated as if to say that a Nigerian will be crowned. But my instinct called me to order. I felt there was the need to highlight why Mikel must be the choice.

    I’m not an alarmist. But I know that in the event that Mikel doesn’t play regularly for Chelsea this season, I won’t be shocked if he doesn’t win the award. I must warn here that the award for the January 9, 2014 is for African players’ performance in the 2012/2013 season. So, let no one in CAF come up with the crap that coaches and players didn’t pick Mikel. I’m yet to see a better player for club and country in the season in focus. Three Man-of-the-Match awards and one Most Valuable Player award tell the story of Mikel’s immense contributions to Nigeria’s glorious outing in South Africa.

    Equally disturbing is the fact that there are no set rules guiding how winners emerge. The factors for picking winners are ambiguous and continue to change, depending on the issues raised with every controversial choice.

    Bizarre results have brought forth winners that made CAF and its voters the laughing stock in the soccer world. The most laughable of such verdicts was the pronouncement of Senegal’s El-Hadj Diouf as the Africa Footballer of the year in 2001 as a Rennes FC of France player, at a time when Austin Okocha was the toast of the 2000 Africa Cup of Nations, which Nigeria and Ghana co-hosted.

    It is true that Patrick Mboma was voted the 2000 edition’s Africa Footballer of the Year, which he richly deserved, with his sterling outing for the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon.

    But CAF’s choice of El-Hadji Diouf as the best player in Africa in 2002, when the guy was starring for Liverpool FC of England, was a great disservice to the beautiful game. I dare say that Okocha was Africa’s best player in the world.

    Twice Okocha was voted the Footballer of the Year by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for Africans plying their trade in Europe, yet CAF crowned Diouf with lesser credentials, stating mundane criteria that stood truth on its head.

    For some other past winners, insinuations suggest Francophone conspiracy, as if soccer recognises language or creed. Indeed, the numerical advantage of voters from Francophone countries has been discounted as the major reason for some of the ridiculous choices. This is not to say that CAF has not produced winners that are in tandem with what people expect. They have, except that they have been far as far and wide apart as the dentition of a 100 years old person.

    It is for these reasons that one would be shocked, if Mikel doesn’t nick the 2013 edition. It could also be insinuated that most winners were goal scorers. This doesn’t rule out the fact that non-scoring midfielders cannot be selected.

    Isn’t Frenchman Franck Ribery of Bayern Munich, a midifielder like Mikel, listed among the top three players for the UEFA Footballer of the Year award alongside renowned goal-scorers such as Lionel Messi and Cristano Ronaldo? The African continent does not have such players with awesome goal-scoring records as Messi and Ronaldo, except for another Nigerian, Emmanuel Emenike, who interestingly has just returned to the pitch. He has played top class football since the Africa Cup of Nations. He wasn’t part of the Super Eagles contingent to the 2013 Confederations Cup held in Brazil. Emenike’s loss was Mikel’s gain as he seized the opportunity of the absence the team’s predatory strikers to remind everyone that he was a goal-scorer in his early days.

    Many pundits still discuss Mikel’s goal against the Uruguayans. He has been a regular with the Eagles since after the Africa Cup of Nations. The tale of francophone countries’ numerical advantage will fall flat because Mikel was an integral part of Chelsea’s squad that lifted the Europa Cup – Europe’s second best inter-club competition.

    Nigeria may not have lived up to its billing at the Confederations Cup, no thanks to injuries to key players of the squad, but Mikel distinguished himself, seizing the midfield against Tahiti, Uruguay and Spain, despite its galaxy of world stars and acclaimed midfield generals. Mikel was Nigeria’s best player at the competition.

    I hope that Mikel gets to play in the Super Cup game involving Chelsea and Bayern Munich. If he does, he would have played in all the big competitions in the world for the season under review. What else do the voters want that Mikel hasn’t achieved? But with CAF, you never can tell? Which African player has played in more competitions and lifted trophies than Mikel? I need to know.

    No doubt, there are a few African players who did well in the concluded season, such as Cisse, who plays for Newcastle and his Senegalese counterpart, Demba Ba, who stars for Chelsea FC in England. But the distinguishing line between the duo and Mikel is that the Nigerian is an African champion and European champion, winning the Africa Cup of Nations and the Europa Cup in the same season.

    Mikel towered over the incumbent Yaya Toure of Manchester City, at the AFCON quarter-finals game when Nigeria beat Cote d’ Ivoire 2-1. Indeed, the flashpoint of the Eagles’ soaring victory over the Elephants occurred when Mikel systematically removed the ball off the feet of Salmou Kalou, who had raised his right leg to stab it into a yawning net. What more can I say?

    Clap for Oboabona

    Godfrey Oboabona has taken the path of honour by publicly denouncing the statement credited to him, where he lampooned Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger.

    That is the way forward, young man. Now you have opened the doors that you unwittingly shut with those uncouth words that you used against Wenger.

    My advice to you is to ignore those Sunshine FC chieftains who want to dictate your next European club. No European club’s scout will come to Africa for a defender. They would rather shop for midfielders where they cannot find prolific strikers.

    The World Cup is next year; so Oboabona needs to accept any good offer from teams that are in the European competitions. He needs to whisper to the big boys in the Super Eagles to drop his name with European club coaches.

    Oboabona needs renowned European managers who are scouts for clubs to process his exit from the domestic game. This manager can introduce him to clubs where he can star for their reserve teams, who anyway play leagues like the senior teams.

    His exploits from such reserve games can open a new vista for him. His reserve club may not like his game. But one of their opponents may recruit Oboabona to even their senior team. You never can tell. This is better than wasting time playing in the domestic league that is riddled with unpaid salaries and allowances.

    Since Sunday, my phones have been ringing. The callers would like seeking to know what advice I would offer Oboabona after urging him last week in this column to debunk the abusive words he uttered against Wenger. I have listed some of them. I hope that Oboabona acts accordingly. He surely would not improve on his game playing in the domestic league. He needs to broaden his horizon. Europe should be his next bus stop. Oboabona should not go to Turkey or countries where the game is a novelty.

    Thank you very much Oboabona for heeding the advice. And good luck.

  • Global security, diplomacy and politics

    The  news   this week   of the  bomb   killing of 11  Pakistani youths  while  playing football as   their parents

    were shopping for the end of Ramadan  in the city of Karachi,  Pakistan,  was as gruesome as that of the bombing of the Sabon Gari area  of Kano  in Nigeria in which Boko Haram  killed  even more people. This  obviously  prompted Nigeria’s  Inspector General  of Police   Mohammed Abubakar to issue  a statement this week assuring Nigerians as they celebrated   the end of Ramadan,  that the Police was up to the task of performing its constitutional duty of protecting them  at  places of worship.But    the pragmatic IG warned  grimly that  Nigerians too should be security conscious and report strange happenings and people to the authorities   immediately. Vigilance therefore  is a key and foremost prerequisite to guarantee security any where especially on the streets of the world’s  sprawling cities like  Karachi, Kano, Lagos, New  York  or indeed any part of the world.

    In  addition however those who manage security at national and international levels need information to  prevent the sort of mayhem that happened in Karachi  and Kano; or the bombings   by Boko Haram  at  Christmas,  of churches  in the North, and during October 1 Independence anniversaries  in Nigeria,   at  least in the last two years in Nigeria. It  is such  information, often called intelligence that form  the basis of security strategies to  confront, prevent or kill plans by terrorists  and anarchists to foment trouble and kill and maim innocent people just  to show society that they have a cause, or  are important and are to be taken seriously. But  then, those who detonate bombs and those who voluntarily become human bombs in the name of suicide bombing are foot soldiers for those who formulate the ideas and belief  that   make human beings turn to monsters when they kill  innocent  people  at recreation spots, places  of worship and at street corners for,  no just cause whatever.

    The  recent decision  of US  President Barak Obama to cancel a meeting in Russia  after the G20  meeting scheduled for that nation  in September this  year is a good example of information and intelligence   management  leading to complications in global diplomacy  and security subsequently. The  immediate cause was the granting of asylum to  Edward Snowden,  the American security worker who leaked intelligence about  the US,  its  foreign  and diplomatic workings, policies and relations on the internet and bolted to Russia via Hong Kong and has been holed up at a Russian Airport  for some time   now  till the Russians   finally   granted him  asylum  very  recently.  Similar  intelligence  and information   use  or abuse have complicated the Syrian Crisis  which has opened old Cold War squabbles between the US and Russia similar to the one between Nikita   Khruschev, leader of the former Soviet Union and late US President John Kennedy during the Russia Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

    Also  in North Africa where the Arab Spring   and its  street   demonstrations  in Tunis, Cairo, and  Benghazi  unseated despots in 2011  and brought in elected  democratic governments, the current of public opinion and information is against those elected into office,  at least in Tunisia and Egypt, if not in Libya where secular leadership has prevailed against all odds in the elections and management of the high risk security situation in that nation.

    In  all  the examples I have highlighted above information and intelligence management skills have been at play and it is their quality or lack of it that have created  the  attendant security and diplomatic spats we are analyzing today. In Karachi, Pakistan, the bombers were waiting for a local Minister or politician expected to give prizes  at  a nearby football competition . Instead of the Minister they killed innocent teenagers playing a game of soccer. In the Russo- American Snowden saga  a tit–for-tat,   eye-for-an-eye diplomacy  was put  in place   by Russia, to cover a very serious intelligence breach by an American this time around. This  is because under normal circumstances,   Russians  are   the ones well known to be ruthless over such intelligence breaches  as they showed when some Russian spies were poisoned in London hotels some years back. Anyway, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin has enough  malice against the Obama  Administration, like someone  once  said famously,  to make himself and Russia    merry with the US embarrassment   over the Snowden Affair. Indeed, Putin is settling scores with the US  for the demonstrations that trailed his election in 2012 as  Russia’s new president elected that year. Of  course the US was miffed that Putin got elected as president of Russia after having been president of Russia from 2001 to 2008, the same two terms that Obama’s predecessor   George Bush,  the 43rd US  president  spent in office. Putin of course snuffed out the  American orchestrated  Street  demonstrations   in Russia and went on to become   in 2012, Russia’s new president. This  feat meant that Putin has taken  on  or consumed  for dinner or lunch as it were, two,   two-  term US presidents, to the indignation, and befuddlement of Obama  and his inexperienced team, who have now behaved like a baby whose toy has been taken away,  in cancelling a scheduled meeting over the Snowden affair.

    Aside  from the Snowden Affair, and other disputes over defence missiles and nuclear arsenal reduction, I think the disputes between  the two nations and their leaders  is boiling down to one of personality clash   boiling   down  to mutual contempt for each other. On  the cancellation of the September meeting,  the Russians had a cheeky but fast retort. Which was that the invitation is still there awaiting a change of American mind as the meeting will be in Russia anyway. On  Russia’s new law on gay rights which bans even speaking of it in public not to talk of recognizing it, the US  President Barak Obama  told  a TV audience in the US  that he has no patience with nations that do not recognize gay rights. And  he was saying this on the eve of the World Athletics Competition which started  in   Moscow, Russia this week end and in which gay US athletes have expressed  concern about their safety. Obviously as on Syria both leaders are moving in opposite direction on cultural  and religious matters. The  anti gay rights law in Russia is popular in that nation just as the ban on homosexuality in Nigeria. Of recent President Putin was shown on Russian TV giving a high profile audience to the Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Which means that under Putin, former KGB  agent in Communist and atheist Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church  has come in from the cold and is happy with Putin on the handling of the gay rights issue in Russia. Whereas in Obama’s US the Catholic Church is suing the Obama Administration for interfering in education management while it is the opposition Republican Party which is mounting a campaign to reverse the passing of the gay rights law under the Obama Administration. Really, if a poll is taken  today  on the popularity of Obama and Putin over the gay issue in the Middle East  in Pakistan or Afghanistan where the US is funding democracy,  Obama  will be a distant second. Even in Saudi Arabia where the US is most welcome,  the gay rights issue will see Putin beating Obama flat out in a popularity contest. Of  course I need not mention the entire ECOWAS states or even the entire African continent with the exception of S  Africa  which recognizes gay rights like Obama’s US.

    What  I  am saying in effect is that when world leaders and diplomats glare down at each other at negotiations and meetings on thorny issues  such as the Snowden Affair,  other perceptions and conceptions are at work in easing or complicating   present issues and discussions. This  again explains why the Interim government put in place  by the army in Egypt announced that discussions have  broken down between it and the Muslim Brotherhood whose members have refused to leave the  streets in some Egyptian cities till deposed President Muhammed Morsi is reinstated as the elected president of Egypt after   the tyrant Housni Mubarak . It  also explains why in Tunis  the capital of Tunisia,  the mood is in opposite direction to that of Egypt even though the momentum that galvanized the street revolution in Tahrir Square  in Cairo    which  got Morsi elected as president of Egypt, started in Tunis. In Tunis this week thousands marched calling for the removal of the equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, the  Ennahda,   the ruling Islamist  party they elected after driving away their despotic President Ben Ali in 2011. In  effect then,  Tunisians are trying to do to their elected government what the army has already done to Morsi in Egypt. It looks like an impossible task but then in the stormy politics of the Arab world in recent times, anything is possible for those who know how and when to fight for their rights. I  wish them the best of luck with all my heart and wish them God speed as I  fervently    also,  for their security and safety in achieving their legitimate and democratic objectives.

  • Ethnicising politics

    Ethnicising politics

    “The president is right. Nigerian leaders should stop playing ethnic politics. Yes, we started as a nation of nations. But we accepted even if reluctantly the imposition of one-nation status and we have lived together as such for almost a hundred years. Damn it, we are celebrating our centennial next year. So what’s wrong with our people? When will they stop speaking in tongues and embrace WAZOBIA?”

    “Welcome, Mr. WAZOBIA and Mr. President’s comrade-in-arms. But I have two questions for you. First, are you aware of the philosophical jargon “Ought implies can?” You must, since you are a philosopher. Second, and this is for you as a surrogate of the president in this matter: Did Mr. President look in the mirror?”

    Opalaba will never stop shocking me. Even when I was certain that I knew my good friend and would vouch for him, he had always surprised me. This time, I had simply presented a case for President Jonathan’s latest insight thinking that it was something Opalaba shared in view of his claim to a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

    “Ought implies can? Yes, of course; but what has it got to do with this matter? I asked my friend. To suggest that I ought to do something implies or presupposes or assumes that I can do it. So you may not insist on an ethical obligation for me to jump over a 12ft fence because I simply cannot. How is that related to the presidential injunction to fellow Nigerians to stop playing ethnic politics? Do you imply that Nigerians cannot but play ethnic politics?”

    “Yes, and I stand by that claim, obviously to your disappointment because you and Mr. President are idealists. But I don’t trust you. Indeed, I see a tongue-in-cheek scenario when anyone makes that kind of claim, knowing fully well in my mind that behind every such claim there is an agenda.Surely, the President and his aides have always come up with his image as father of the nation. And a father has to bring all of his children together. But the same aides don’t shy away from throwing jingoistic bombshell when it suits them. Hence my second question: Does the President look in the mirror? Does he realize that the pest that assails the vegetable of unity is inside?” Opalaba concludes.

    “Prove it!” I challenged my friend.

    “Of course, you would feign ignorance as if you don’t follow the news. When Ijaw militants vowed to end Nigeria as we know it unless Mr. President is allowed a second term, where were you? When elder statesman Edwin Clark claimed Goodluck as his son and challenged the North, where were you? And for the sake of everything that is decent and honorable, where was the Presidency? Did you hear a rebuke?

    “Sure, I followed those exchanges,” I answered Opalaba.” But as you also know, there is no smoke without fire. And Ijaw militants or elder statesmen didn’t start the raucous atmosphere that ensued. They were reacting to the demeaning nature of contemporary Nigerian politics, one that appears to favor majority. And you are also aware that as it is in national politics, so it is in state and local politics. Minorities feel marginalized. In the case of the south-south, they are asserting their right to have one of their own at the center in recognition of their status as stakeholders in the Nigerian project. Is there something wrong with that? I asked my friend.

    “Nothing is wrong. Indeed, you just made my point because as I would go on to show, it is also natural.

    “There are two important elements of ethnic identity, especially in the context of post-colonial African states. First is the natural tendency for language, especially mother tongue, to unite and divide. We had an opportunity at the dawn of independence to use our mother tongues to unite through the auspices of a language policy that would have ensured that from elementary to secondary school, Nigerian languages were compulsory. We chose not to. We not only embraced English as our national language, we also encourage the study of other foreign languages. Yet mother tongues remain the only mode of communication in our local communities and states, uniting speakers and separating them from non-speakers. We cannot avoid ethnic politics as long as we embrace linguistic diversity.

    “Second, while we embraced the so-called world religions and abandoned traditional religions for good, we have also managed in our own ways to ethnicize Islam and Christianity. So we speak falsely of Christian South and Islamic North and this is what has entered our political attitude. A national candidate from the North is expected to be a Muslim while his or her counterpart from the South is expected to be a Christian. This stereotypical attitude to politics has been with us for as long as the beginning of the republic and we deem it natural. Where then is the urge to jettison ethnic politics?”

    Opalaba went on.

    “What is particularly troubling to me in the case of President Jonathan is how he failed to exploit the national goodwill that he enjoyed at the beginning of his term. First, it was the will of the nation that he assumed office as Acting President. Those that are now vilified as ethnic jingoists were the fighters that rallied on his behalf. They were nationalists at that time. There was a national outrage when it appeared that he was not going to get the nomination of his party on account of a zoning formula. And when he finally got the ticket, he appeared to have a nationwide mandate, though rigging took place in a number of states. What this showed was that in spite of the tendency to ethnicize, Nigerians were willing to look, not at the sound of the tongue, but at the content of the character. And the question is, how has that victory been managed?

    “When the same voters complained of leadership vacuum in the matter of dealing with insecurity and unemployment, what has been the response? Now that there is palpable dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, our people are accused of playing ethnic politics. And you want me to go along with that judgment?”

    “Minority parties in the National Assembly showed tremendous courage and sound judgment when they voted for House Officers on the basis, not of their ethnic origin, but of their conscience prompted by their judgment about who can better do the job. The Nigerian Governors’ Forum voted to reelect their Chairman on the basis of their judgment of his performance and the fact that they did not appreciate external influence on the affairs of the forum. Where was ethnic politics in that event? It would appear that those external forces that expected the Northern Governors to vote as a block deserved the accusation of ethnic politics, and there were good indications that they were acting on behalf of the Presidency. So can the kettle really justifiably demean the blackness of the pot?”

    “I would go further,” Opalaba continued. I am tired of being preached to about national unity. Politics is about interests. John Locke got it right better than your favorite political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We come to the political table with our various interests. Those interests don’t get left behind as we enter the doors of the state or national assembly. Otherwise, we would not be treated to rancorous debates about “what my people deserve.” Birds of the same political feather flock together in pursuit of their interests. Against our idealistic tendency to castigate and criminalize ethnicity, we must be aware of its behind-the-scene appeal as it colors deliberations which are supposedly in the national interest. Ethnic politics is not the enemy; deceptive embrace of national politics is.”

    Thus Opalaba ended his unsolicited lecture. And as God Old Cicero would say: Oro pesi je.”

  • To sound like a broken chord…

    There is a patience of the wild that holds motionless for endless hours, the police constable at an illicit checkpoint, the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the public officer on his perch – this patience belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey.

    Today however, a terrifying thing has happened; of the ubiquitous prey, a more frightening ogre has evolved: the contemporary Nigerian youth. And by his emergence, we suffer a throwback to the most terrifying of humanity’s savage past. His emergence portends a physical and mental conundrum of sort; the consequence is seen and felt all about us.

    Oftentimes, it manifests in uncontrollable spasms that have seen us bury our best and elevate our worst in abject negation of the cycle of the universe and morality. But who needs morals in a nation where fair is foul and foul is fair?

    Today, the Nigerian youth live through each day hardly contemplating or criticizing their living conditions. They find themselves born into dehumanizing squalor or somewhat indecent circumstances and they accept such sordidness as their fate – thus they exhibit no conscious effort to better their lot.

    Almost as impulsively as the beasts of the wild, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought that by sufficient endeavour, they just might improve their living conditions.

    However, a certain percentage of the nation’s youth guided by personal ambition; consciously strive in thought and will, to attain more privileged status that remains the exclusive preserve of more fortunate members of the society. But these very few hardly worry to secure for all, the advantages which they seek for themselves. This explains the number of self-seeking and treacherous ‘human rights activists,’ ‘women’s rights activists,’ journalists and columnists parading our streets.

    Very few men are indeed capable of that kind of love that drives martyrs to persistently rebel against glaring social evils in the interest of less fortunate members of the society. But there exists a few however, that are truly bothered by the impoverishment of their fellow citizens regardless of any jeopardy it might attract to them personally.

    These few, driven by compassion tirelessly seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape; some new system of society by which life may become richer and devoid of escapable evils that mars the present. But surprisingly, such men oftentimes fail to win the support of the very victims of the injustices they wish to fight.

    More unfortunate sections of the Nigerian youth are hopelessly ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and disillusionment, apprehensive through the imminent danger of chastisement by the holders of power, and morally defective owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation. To excite among such youth any conscious quest to improve the status quo proves basically a hopeless task, as antecedents of such efforts have proven.

    Hence despite our claims to modernity, higher education, sophistication and relative rise in the standard of comfort among the youth and wage-earners in the country, the Nigerian society or youth to be precise, have failed woefully to achieve better living conditions and a better society even in the throes of rising demand for more radical intervention and reconstruction of the social order.

    It is no surprise however that the nation’s youth has persistently proved a dismal failure. And the reasons are hardly far-fetched: the Nigerian youth has a problem with differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate political behaviour.  That is why the nation’s democratic experiment like any other system of governance practicable by us was doomed from the start.

    What exactly has democracy offered? A 4-1-9 progressive plan that booms circumspectly like it had been doctored as part of a cold-war era propagandist scheme? But despite our self-righteousness and persistent cynicism with the current order, we really cannot explore a more worthy alternative than what we have now. The average Nigerian can’t bear to be led by a truly honest, visionary and accountable leadership. That explains why we opted for the incumbent leadership.

    It’s the way we are programmed to live. I’d say we possess an overwhelming and oft-convincing inclination to self-destruct, thus our lack of a coherent and defensible political ideology essential to the evolution of a progressive leadership and state.

    The average Nigerian is no more electable than the leadership he endures yet he loves to speak truth to power even as he functions simultaneously to smother his own voice in the riotous gabble of his exultation of the same ruling class whose eradication he claims to pursue. No matter who is elected, the demographic and economic realities of Nigeria will persist, and there is a very limited range of politically-viable solutions for dealing with them.

    No man; be he a distinguished columnist, lawyer, soldier, or public officer in any office can command the tides of history. The few that appear to have done so–the Napoleon’s, Caesar’s, Hitler’s–were really nothing more than the most capable at making it appear that they command the tides, when in fact they were simply skimming along with them.

    There is an urgent need for the Nigerian youth to consciously evolve in thought and will, in pursuit of a more balanced social order. Such conscious evolution can only be achieved by a re-orientation in scholarship and purification of thought and action.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be clinically reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of work and wages, families and homes, of morals and the true value of life. These problems must be resolvable by an average youth by reason of his constitution and exposure. This informs a greater need for study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of past and current mistakes in the journey towards the avoidance and reduction to the barest minimum of future foibles.

    The answer to Nigeria’s widening income and social gap – which has so far manifested in preventable crises and persistent state of insecurity – is to found an educational process geared to steer successfully, the commonplace trains of thought away from the dilettante and the fool stereotype.

    It’s about time poor, struggling members of the nation’s working class learned to scorn the maxim that holds that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains; the paths to stable peace and security winds between honest toil and dignified manhood. That proverbial better society that we seek calls for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the low income earners and ambitious middle class emancipated by training and culture.

    Such human elements would no doubt be conscious of the fact that not even the sustenance of oil subsidy, higher wages and a fairer economic system could protect its members from the usual handicaps and monstrosity constituted by the incumbent and predatory ruling class.

    Hence they would be able to understand that such social enterprise and gesture towards change must be mooted and achieved by the youth themselves in further substantiation of their capacities to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to posterity.

    • To be continued…

  • In the Glo of an original Nigerian

    In the Glo of an original Nigerian

    There is always a special up-welling of patriotic zeal each time one encounters the hallowed deep green logo of the Glo brand. It is especially so across the borders say in Cotonu or Accra. One often lapses into the reverie of what might not have been had the Glo dream been extirpated. As this authentic and pioneering Nigerian brand rounds off a decade of GSM telephony in Nigeria and on the West Coast of Africa, one cannot help but be lured into a tribute to what has come to epitomize the typical Nigerian dream.

    Thereabouts August 29, 2003, Globacom Limited, an offshoot of the Mike Adenuga Group rolled out the Glo brand of mobile services. One still remembers the bold and almost inimitable launch show held at the freshly wrought Golden Gate Restaurant in Ikoyi, Lagos. The show featured Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka (WS) and juju music king, Sunny Ade. It was a sublime evening to be remembered for the delicate expression of culture, (Yoruba culture especially), intellectualism and a digital new horizon. One framed an especial image of WS seated on stage, behind a microphone with a pyrotechnic of lightning effects in the background. One also still remembers Sunny Ade cashing in on one of his old classic tunes, ‘365 is my number’, which he adapted to the moment to become ‘0805 is my number’. It was a product launch that became a cause célèbre in itself.

    If that memorable Glo launch sent a chill down the spine of competition, it also must have revealed to all interested parties, a fresh new insight into the persona of Adenuga, the one his friends and associates call the bull. It indeed requires the grit, the derring-do and the blood-thirstiness of a raging bull to have to first snatch the GSM licence and second, to sustain the new business for a decade in a peculiar Nigerian environment. The shenanigan over acquiring the licence is too detailed and complicated to recount here but suffice to say that Globacom was perhaps the only indigenous firm that bade in 2001 but the gormless government of the day denied it the licence preferring two foreign firms. Two years lapsed; two years of pleading, cajoling and perhaps horse-trading before there was a change of mind by the gods of that era. Two years of huge grounds lost to competition, of missed opportunities, of haemorrhaging through cost of funds, of dreams dangerously deferred and psychological aggravations.

    It is a tribute to Adenuga’s tenacity and vision that his flame was not quenched by the Nigerian factor which was obviously at play at that time. Obviously driven by forces unknown to the rest of us, he eventually got hold of the licence and launched his Glo brand of gsm service into a Nigerian market that had been assailed for two years by two South African brands – MTN and Econet; multinationals that had played the global system of mobile telephone service field for years in countries across Africa. Adenuga was undaunted, he took the multinationals on head long unsettling the market by crashing prices and unleashing new initiatives. In only a short while, Globacom made aggressive in-roads into Nigeria’s hinterland and soon, Glo became the network of choice for Nigerians.

    Today, glo has become an international brand hoisting Nigeria’s flag in Benin Republic, Ghana and perhaps Cote D’Ivoire. Today, Glo is a multinational in its own right; today it is a great Nigerian story, it is a metaphor for the immense untapped potentialities and capabilities of Nigeria and Nigerians. Glo is a testimony that from the ashes of a-once-upon-a-time NITEL can yet emerge a multinational global telecommunications empire that is purely Nigerian. But for Globacom, there may never have been an authentic Nigerian gsm firm operating in the virgin and highly lucrative Nigerian market. More important, Glo may well be the first original global brand of true Nigerian origin. Along with Dangote, Zenith, GTBank, Access and Transcorp, Nigerian businessmen have in the last decade shown their mettle to the world.

    On its 10th anniversary, every Nigerian must take pride in and salute Mike Adenuga and the Globacom family. Now that the national telecoms backbone (NITEL) is moribund, the entire telecoms data of Nigerians would have been solely in the hands of foreign firms if we hadn’t Glo; how foreboding. We urge the Glo team to continue to strive to build an institution that will conquer the world (yeah, rule your world) and last till eternity – that must be their binding credo.

    Ben Nwabueze’s book of life

    It is actually the book of his life; a life a little over four scores. Professor Benjamin Obiefuna Nwabueze (SAN) can be said to be peerless in Nigeria today as far as intellectual endeavor and output go. He has just released a combo of a biography – a two-volume 719-page story of his life. The book, titled: “Ben Nwabueze: His Life, Works and Times – An Autobiography” was released in Lagos recently. It is indeed the story of the rich life of a man who is not only prodigious in learning and knowledge but also in putting all these into a wonderful legacy of books. If you sought a truly learned man, Professor Nwanbueze is in a class apart and if you do not own any of his bulky collection of about 30 books, then you are probably not learned. Especially so if you are a lawyer and you have not read his land and constitutional law books then you must have studied in South Sandwich Trench, wherever that may be.

    He is among the last of Nigeria’s grandee generation – extremely sound of mind, deep in learning and culture. His life is a book that is worth reading having been everywhere, seen everything and perhaps done most things. He is a lawyer, a university teacher, businessman, boardroom player, public administrator, patriot and author. Much sought after in his hay days, he had done scholastic and legalistic duties in over a dozen countries of the world and helped in drafting constitution in another half a dozen countries. About 30 years ago, he was an honoree of the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNOM).

    Only one person is fit to tell the story of this grand old man from Atani, Ogbaru LGA of Anambra State and that is him. His autobiography may fittingly be described as a book of life.