The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Osun: Erecting a mansion from bubbles

    There is an atmosphere of dreams hanging over the city of Osogbo, the capital of the State of Osun. They are good dreams, romantic dreams perhaps-some sort of high-wattage excitement with that too-good-to-be-true feel. Osun environment is the type that has all excuses for failure but one which has stubbornly refused to be ruled by its natural limitations under Ogbeni Aregbesola.

    If you had visited a couple of years back when experts in excuses held sway there, limitations were held high by the rulers of the time and the eloquent parroting of them was the distinguished insignia of statecraft. The state and the citizens were offered no option than to “understand”.

    Well the government at the time rose up and did something, and it was something that shook up the place, at least. They went to a bank nearby and got themselves a loan of N18 billion naira; only. The usury was around N600 million every month – never mind – but the actors in this state with a paltry Internally Generated Revenue of N250 – N300 million assumed they could cope. In any case, with the loan they intended to build, of all things, six stadia spread across the state. After they had conducted six sod turning rituals, several of the indicators turned south. Works halted on the six sites and the builders went home.

    After this loan, the state under PDP administration went into margin loan to play stock market. One wonders how a sleepy state with decrepitated hospitals abandoned its social service for commercial selfish individual interests. The Central Bank decided that Osun State has had it. They placed the state under AMCON, the nation’s official undertaker for banks and individuals in financial ruins, and in this case, since a state cannot be put on receivership in the real sense, AMCON became its Intensive Care Unit.

    And out there, since the drains were mostly blocked, floods came in and washed away people, depositing their corpses far downstream as it flattened homes and severed roads and swept businesses away along with rubbish. The local economy naturally folded and new investments were rare. Even the blind could see that the end was near: the very air pulsated with the feel.

    On November 27, 2010, the end came, and thankfully, it was a saving end. The government was sacked by a brave court of law and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola was installed governor of the state. It has been some 30 months since that day and it makes sense to stand at a vantage position and compare the ‘then’ and ‘now’ pictures.

    The Punch of July 25, bore the headline: Osun Tops Primary School Enrolment. When I saw that header, my first thought was the strategic move of the governor to institute a free lunch programme for the elementary school children pupils. He also established a clothing factory floated in partnership with a private concern to make uniforms for free distribution to the 750,000 students in the state of about 3.8million citizens. That factory is the nation’s largest of its type today, employing reasonable labour and paying off dividends in the jump in school attendance.

    The government of Aregbesola somewhere along the line announced the commencement of rehabilitation of 10 roads per each of the 30 local government areas in the state. The job specification called for strictly the use of reinforced concrete in construction of drainages – and that gives an idea of what will go into the road proper. Many of those roads have been completed and commissioned while the rest are all in various advanced stages of completion.

    The chapter on road construction in the Aregbesola administration is a long one and the scope has no precedent in the history of the state or in fact, the history of the South-west region since the time of Obafemi Awolowo. Ongoing is the Osogbo East Bypass road, an 18-kilometre axial system that loops traffic round the outer half of the invigorated city. Then there is this ambitious motorway in the works too that links the city with Ikirun and then proceed 45 miles northwards to the gates of Kwara State. The next major roads effort is the dualisation of the all-important link road between the state capital and Lagos-Abuja expressway with the interception at Gbongan. The 30 kilometre road is under construction and will latch onto the aforementioned expressway with a clean, trumpet exchange flyover opening an ultra-wide gateway into the state capital. All over the state, in cities great or small, construction firms are busy digging, grading, levelling and laying asphalt, either cutting out new roads or fixing existing ones. The Rural Access Mobility Programme, RAMP is belching smoke in the countryside too, paving roads, building small bridges and culverts to open up rural communities to rapid development and provide a conduit for agricultural products to get into markets in the cities.

    Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme was started early by the administration to fire hope and provide some part time employment for young people. Beneficiaries sign on for two years for a stipend and offer services to their communities in form of landscape beautification, traffic control or provision of paramedic services and environment sanitation. The first tranche of 20,000 youths taken on the programme have exited and the current batch of the same number are still in service. In view of the series of the achievement recorded through the programme, the World Bank has recommended it to the federal government to emulate, that is, by putting its money where its mouth is by supporting its nationwide implementation with a 400-million dollars grant.

    In health the landscape is changing the chill of the winter of dilapidation and decay being gradually replaced by the bloom of the renewal of spring. The state government in renovating all the nine state hospitals in one fell swoop in a N1.7 billion naira effort. Take the one at Ila for example. It was built in 1972 and was only renovated once until now. All the 15 buildings in the hospital have been re-roofed and being fitted with new windows. The transformation there is second only to what is going on at the State Hospital, Ikirun where the repairs had to start a hundred yards away, the very road leading to the hospital having been severed when flood washed away the culvert. An entire block of about 20 wards is almost being rebuilt. The roof, doors, windows and floor are being replaced. The kitchen and the laundry are being revamped all the buildings in the big health complex is being worked on, the first time since the hospital was built in 1982.

    Farmers in the state of Osun are getting much more than new rural roads. Up to N2 billion has been spent on different farming support initiatives in the production of rice, chicken, catfish, cocoyam and to boost efforts in cocoa farming. Over a thousand hectares of land was cleared for farmers free of charges, saving them cumulatively nothing less than 100 million naira.  A robust response is underway in cassava production in view of its newfound relevance as composite baking flour in the country. Such is the upbeat in agriculture that the state is gradually becoming a centre of hope for agricultural revolution for the country. If you want to see the rare sight of banks of greenhouses turning out tomatoes in Nigeria, go to Ilesa in the state of Osun.

    We return to matters of education, where the government has enshrined as the engine room of its long haul development strategy. The conditions in many of those schools were deemed to have gone too far down the bend that things just had to be remade, not renovated. This called for brushing off the existing buildings before the come crashing down and killing children. Some of the newly completed modern school buildings are standing out there this moment, tall palaces of learning; eloquent testimony of renewal, rejuvenation and hope for a better tomorrow in the state. School enrolment and raw academic performance has picked up with the state jumping in WAEC results from 34th to the 8th position within the first 18 months of the administration. But the big masquerade that wraps up the festival is the Opon Imo, the one-per-student free tablet computer programme for all senior level public schools in the state. The tablets come pre-loaded with 56 textbooks and a total of 20 years of past question papers from JAMB and WAEC complete with   solutions helps. It has hours of video lessons and audio classes. The Opon Imo idea is first of its kind not only in Nigeria or Africa, but anywhere in the world and will probably go down as the Opus Magnum of educational initiative of the Nigerian Fourth Republic. The enthusiasm alone that this has generated among students is electric. Parents are plucking their wards from private schools to install them in public schools, a very unusual trend in Nigeria since the 1980s.

    • Bolorunduro, PhD is Honourable Commissioner for Finance Economic Planning and Budget, State of Osun

     

  • ‘The spirit of Zaria’

    ‘The spirit of Zaria’

    General TY Danjuma, former Chief of Army Staff, former Minister of Defence, and most recently chair of Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s Presidential Advisory Council, lived up to his reputation for blunt talk this past June when he was turbaned Jarmai Zazzau, in Zaria.

    In Hausa, the title, conferred by the Emir, Alhaji Shehu Idris, translates into “The Brave One”.

    For Danjuma, it was a second homecoming.

    Several months earlier, he had his first homecoming when he was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Ahmadu Bello University, the successor institution to the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria, where he had studied for his ‘A’ levels before opting to join the army instead of pursuing a degree in history.

    On that occasion, he donated N2 billion to the university’s Endowment Fund, probably the largest single donation ever made by a Nigerian to an academic institution in Nigeria.

    Almost every person of consequence in the North was in attendance at the second homecoming, the installation, which was to have culminated in a durbar. But Danjuma had demurred, citing the prevailing security concerns and the misery he saw all around him.

    Instead, he parlayed the occasion into a platform for one of the most forthright speeches in recent times on the state of the nation. The bluntness was vintage Danjuma.

    Nigerian society and economy were in tatters, due among other factors to leadership failure, he said. The masses of the people, he went on, were “chained down in dehumanising and grinding poverty” while the nation continued to maintain “a few islands of false prosperity in a turbulent ocean of penury and squalor.”

    Peace and harmony were unattainable in such a setting, he warned.

    He told his fellow Northern elders that they were talking too much and doing too little. They needed to think more, pray more, plan more, work harder, relate better, and talk less, because battles were better fought and won through wisdom and strategy than through “inflammable pronouncements and political tantrums.”

    More poignantly, he warned that, by failing to adequately educate their young men and women, they were handicapping them in the competition for opportunities in a globalised world where knowledge itself had become the prime resource.

    General Danjuma told them they had failed to rise to that level of patriotic statesmanship where they could deploy their wisdom and experience to give the country a clear sense of purpose and direction. “When elders become decadent, the youth are bound to become delinquent.”

    I personally cannot recall an occasion during which such an assemblage of persons of great consequence were treated to such blunt, forthright talk.

    Yet, what ran through the speech was not self-righteousness nor condemnation, nor yet resignation, but a challenge, a summons to collective action to help pull a failing nation back from the brink.

    “I still believe that Nigeria can be reawakened and rebuilt to achieve greatness,” he said. “If we renew our minds and reconcile with one another, if we coordinate our determined efforts, we can make northern Nigeria self-reliant and self-sufficient, while enhancing the unity and prosperity of all Nigeria, but first we must be at peace.”

    The part that moved me most was where Danjuma called on his fellow Northerners and Nigerians in general to try to recapture “the spirit of Zaria.”

    I know something of that spirit.

    I had had my secondary school education in St Paul’s Secondary School (now Kufena College), in Wusasa, Zaria from 1958 through 1962. Some four decades before then, Wusasa had been the center of the Anglican Church’s missionary activity in the far North. It was home to St Bartholomew’s School, of which General Yakubu Gowon, the late Professor Ishaya Audu, Danjuma himself and a host of distinguished Northerners were products.

    St Bartholomew’s Church, where General Yakubu Gowon’s father, Pa Yohanna, served as a catechist, is reputed to be the oldest church in that part of Nigeria, dates back to 1929.The first ordained priest in Northern Nigeria, the Rev Henry Miller, father of the ace musician, Bala Miller, came from Zaria and lived in the walled city.

    By the way, it was from the younger Miller, lanky and lithe, visiting from swinging Lagos, that I first saw a demonstration of how to do the Twist, in Zaria, in 1962, in the home of Daniel Gowon, an official at St Luke’s Hospital, Wusasa, reputedly the first missionary hospital north of the Niger.

    St Paul’ s roll included students from all parts of Nigeria, with surnames like Abdulkadir, Abui, Adagba, Adebayo, Achimugu, Ahmed, Akaas, Akeju, Aken’Ova, Alausa, Alheri, Anyaegbu, Babatunde, Bature, Beckley, Carew, Coker, Dandaura, Dauji, Donli, Efobi, Egunyomi, Ekong, Fajana, Fakai, Gana, George, Gbadero, Gowon, Hassan, Halim, Ibitoye, Ibrahim, Ikwue, Igweonu, Jebak, Jiya, Kitchener, Kyari, Kogbe, Legbo, Mabadeje, Mbaeru, Mayuku, Mosugu, Nwakalo, Nnaji, Nunu, Odiwo, Okoye, Oloruntoba, Olusegun, Ohiomokhare, Obakponovwe, Olumodeji, Runsewe, Shiawoya, Soyebi, Spencer, Sule, Taidi, Uchegbu, Thomas, Udoh, Vincent, Wey, Yisa, Yusuf, and Zakari.

    Muslim students were excused from Christian worship.

    Some two miles or so away, between Wusasa and Tudun Wada, lay the famous Government (now Barewa) College. Right within the city walls lay the Provincial Secondary School. Zaria was also home to the Nigerian Military School.

    All four institutions competed in athletics, soccer, hockey and cricket with keen rivalry and good sportsmanship.

    Further down the road from Barewa was the School of Pharmacy. Farther still, in Kongo, across from Tudun Wada, was the Institute of Administration, where civil servants of all cadres were groomed.

    On the other side of St Paul’s, across from Kufena Rock, in Samaru, lay the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, later Ahmadu Bello University, that awarded University of London degrees in engineering and diplomas of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

    Also in Samaru was the School of Agriculture, with a pan-Nigerian student body, and St Peter’s College, for the training of primary school teachers, later relocated to Kaduna. St Enda’s College, a teacher-training school set up by the Catholic Church, Advanced Teachers College, and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Training Centre would come later.

    Tudun Wada was the home of the North Regional Literature Agency (NORLA), which promoted literacy in English and indigenous languages and nurtured it with supporting reading material. It was also home to Gaskiya Corporation, publishers of The Nigerian Citizen, now defunct, and Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo, probably the oldest indigenous-language in newspaper in Nigeria in continuous publication, and by far the most influential.

    Gakiya Corporation was in turn home to Abubakar Imam, the legendary editor and literary scholar, the subject of Haroun Adamu’s fascinating doctoral thesis for Ahmadu Bello University, and home also to the famous columnist and political journalist Bisi Onabanjo (Aiyekooto) during a stint as editor of The Citizen.

    Down south, in what used to be called southern Zaria, missionary activity was just as strong, and as unconstrained. The Sudan Interior Mission, the Sudan United Mission, the Catholic Church and Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) ran schools that received grant-in-aid from the Regional Government in Kaduna for the education and training of young men and women.

    I must not forget the only manufacturing plant in town, the cigarettes factory of the Nigerian Tobacco Company which provided direct and indirect employment to a host of residents, and the bustling railway station, a staging post for passenger and freight transportation

    Expatriates in the educational and the commercial establishments commingled with residents from all over Nigeria – persons of many tongues and creeds — lived together in peace and harmony and mutual acceptance, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and shared ideals.

    That conflation was what Danjuma, with a touch of poetry, called “the spirit of Zaria.”

    Most if not all of those institutions and establishments that made Zaria a beacon are still there in one form or another, but the spirit that once animated them is long gone.

    To recapture that spirit, as Danjuma enjoined his Northern brethren and Nigerians in general, is going to be a formidable task. But therein lies the path to true nationhood.

     

  • As APC comes on board

    Those truly committed to the survival of democracy in this country must have heaved a heavy sigh of relief at the registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Announcing the registration of the new party which is a coalition of three registered political parties, INEC anchored its decision on the fact that they complied with all the statutory requirements for the merger. It therefore approved the withdrawal of the registration certificates of the three parties and will in turn issue them with a single one for the APC

    Expectedly, many well-meaning Nigerians have been showering encomiums on both the INEC and the merging parties for what is largely seen as the opening up of the political space for the electorate. This is more so given the dominance of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party PDP and fears of a slide to a one party state. The current acrimony and tension in that party resulting from the ambition of contending interests is largely because of its dominance in the political affairs of the country in the absence of a strong alternative party that could pull a serious challenge at the national level.

    On account of this, internal democracy and sovereignty of the electorate have been relegated to backdoor. Though there are many registered parties, some cannot even field candidates during elections and where they manage to do so, the impact is almost zero. The very relatively strong ones have their strengths largely confined to their zones. Thus, we had been left with the PDP as the only party with the strength to prosecute national elections; deploying the power of incumbency to advantage. The matter was not helped by the continuous registration of all manner of parties seen in some quarters as a deliberate ploy to weaken the emergence of a formidable opposition to confront the ruling PDP. But all that has been substantially altered with the registration of the APC. This should be something to cheer for all those who have had their ambitions shattered by lack of accommodation in the ruling party in the absence of a viable and broad based alternative platform. There is also the higher danger posed to democracy through the dominance of the political horizon by a single party. Apart from denying the electorate the right to choice both in terms of candidates and programs, a one party state stifles new ideas and innovation. In fact, it is another name for dictatorship. And we have seen these features play out since our return to democracy. That was why the PDP had the temerity to dare Nigerians with the trash that it will rule the country for as long as it pleases them. Such a statement given the performance profile of that party must be a serious insult to the sensibilities of the electorate. But the PDP had its reasons for so doing. Then was the time when some of the parties had no visible structures in many parts of the country. And at elections, the PDP had a field day doing whatever pleases it given the absence of representatives of some parties at the polling booths. This has become a thing of the past.

    Given the way APC emerged and the political figures driving it, there is no doubt that we are in for a serious competition between the two parties.

    In the days ahead, we expect to see the PDP making frantic efforts to mend its tattered umbrella. At present, the party is deeply embroiled in serious crises with many futile efforts to resolve them. Even the most recent effort at reconciliation, has again run into serious hitch because the issues at stake are largely irreconcilable.

    Thus, the APC enjoys a lot of goodwill which must be put to advantage. The sacrifice all its promoters made to see the new party to fruition must be commended even by the most incurable antagonist.

    As heart-warming as the development is, there is a lot of work awaiting the new party. Happily, the merger arose as a protest against the undemocratic tendencies of the PDP and the desire to give the electorate an alternative platform for political action and choice.

    Every effort must be made to live up to this bidding. There have been predictions by the opposition that the new party will soon rupture on account of disputations when sharing offices. This must not be allowed to happen. Like in every human organization, there are bound to be those posturing to take advantage of the new party without due regard to all the interests in the coalition. There are some others waiting in the wings to capture its structures for their selfish interests. These must not be allowed to happen as the new party cannot afford to commence this journey with disenchantment and schism in some of its chapters. Political recruitment must be broad based and all inclusive.

    There are also critical issues of our national being that the new party must as a matter of deliberate policy balance. There is the need to reassure the various geo-political zones that their interests and sensibilities will be accommodated and protected in the new arrangement. This is pertinent in view of the raging crisis in the ruling party on which of the geo-political zones will produce the president come 2015. The APC must come out clearly on the way power has to rotate among the contending blocks in this country.

    As at now, that of the PDP has run into mud waters and stuck. The APC must reassure Nigerians that the presidency is not the exclusive preserve of any body or any part of the country as all Nigerians and sections have inalienable right to that office. It must ensure that the sensibilities and interests of all sections are placed on the table and accommodated at this initial stage of its coming into being and learn from the mistakes of the PDP. It must be seen from its actions and programs as the real alternative to the ruling party. Some of the issues that are increasingly playing up in this country and which may shape the unfolding competition are the twin issues of religion and geo-politics.

    They must be handled very carefully so as not to injure the feelings of any group or section. Happily, we are in a secular state. That secularity must not only be upheld but must be seen to be so. These are the issues the people will be looking out for and the way they are piloted in the days ahead will make the difference.

    It is therefore good a thing that the APC has come on stream despite the efforts of some phony groups to lay claim to its acronym. Those promoting all manner of groups, inventing acronyms that are similar to that of the APC were obviously at mischief. The target was to frustrate this bold and high-minded effort by three registered parties to coalesce into a single political party. The merger strikes as a landmark event in the annals of this country.

    Those who sought to frustrate it were people benefiting from the subsisting but decadent order. They must hide their faces in shame. Why the interest in the acronym APC? If they are that serious, let them pursue their vaulting ambition for national recognition through another name. After all, it is not the acronym that will win election when the time comes. All said, the registration of the APC is a thing whose time has come.

  • Peter Obi’s opera

    Peter Obi’s opera

    A few days earlier in Dakar, the humble capital of Senegal, on the seaside tranquility of one of its tony hotels, I contemplated Camara Laye, the under-song author of Africa’s most realised novel, Radiance of King. The book is a localised rendition of Kafka’s mad work of genius, The Castle. There the German Jew tackles the epic emptiness of search.

    I had not resettled here in Nigeria on my return when I picked up the rumble between Lagos State and Anambra State, and I could not but take another journey – mental this time – to Senegal. I recalled another author, Aminata Sow Fall, who wrote an African classic titled, The Beggar’s Strike.

    Governor Peter Obi, the feminine-voiced matador of Anambra State, should read that book, if he has not. If he has, he should read it again. It is the story of the revenge of beggars against the patriarchal art of oppression in Africa. In 2011, Gov. Obi did not show much empathy for the mendicant profession. The beggars came from Akwa Ibom State, and Obi did not like them. He ordered, according to the reports, about 29 of them out of the streets of Awka and Onitsha.

    Unknown to him, the wraiths and spirits of the beggars would haunt him, just as the beggars stalked the government bullies in Sow Fall’s novella. The alternative title Fall gave her book is Dregs of Society.

    Fast forward to 2013. The Lagos State Government of the governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, ordered the repatriation of 14 destitute persons to Anambra State, and Obi is crying foul. The beggars have come home to roost!

    No hoopla attended the Akwa Ibom incident from Godswill Akpabio, the ebullient governor of the state. This author does not know if Obi wrote Akpabio and handed the beggars to a government person. The Anambra State Government has not, as Lagos has shown, demonstrated in public any exchange of correspondence with the other government before the repatriation order.

    But as documents have evinced, the Lagos State government rescued the Anambra State citizens from the streets. They were not just lunatics but destitute. They were not child beggars as in the case of Anambra State, but adults. Unlike in Anambra State, the destitute received humane treatment. They enjoyed relocation from the severity of the streets to the serenity and comfort of shelter, food and medical treatment. The Lagos State Government also wrote the Anambra State liaison office to inform them that they had the persons under their care and wanted to relocate them. The State replied asking for details of the persons, and Lagos provided the facts. According to the state, the care was costing the state. So a plan was put in place with the knowledge of the state to repatriate the persons.

    Officials of the Anambra State Government were, according to the arrangement, to wait on the Anambra end of the Niger Bridge. But when the Lagos State bearers of the destitute persons arrived, the Anambra State Government representatives did not show up. The persons were then handed to a government office nearby. This negates the claim by Obi and some of the mischief makers that the persons were dumped at the bridge. I would concede that the Lagos State officials should have consulted Lagos and should have returned the fellows to Lagos.

    But this does not mean that the Lagos officials erred. Any government office ought to have taken custody of them and reported to the appropriate authority. What this shows is that Obi was probably not duly informed of the proceedings up to that point by his officers in Lagos and Awka, or the whispering, solemn-faced governor was doing havoc with the situation.

    The issuance of letters from Fashola’s government to Obi’s liaison office reflected earnestness and respect not only for the government of Anambra State but also for the persons involved.

    That explains why some Nigerians have expressed dismay at Obi’s irritability and emotive recklessness in his letter to the President as though Fashola had declared war on the people of Anambra State. It shows that Obi and his government do not operate on Fashola’s due process style. A letter from a government to another is sacrosanct, and a governor should not shout hoarse, and Obi cannot shout if he tried. But the virus of accusation has been read in many quarters as opportunistic and defensive.

    In the atmosphere of the registration of All Progressives Congress, Obi should be wary not to conflate an innocuous matter into an ethnic virus. This is dangerous and reckless. The Igbo form a significant population in Lagos, and the record shows that the Igbo have enjoyed warm reception in the state. They do business without let, and have earned rights in the state like any other group. It can be argued that other than Yoruba, the Igbo are the most favoured. They also play roles in government that Obi has not given any outsider in Anambra.

    In these days of ethnic rage, we do not expect a man like Obi to be what the Bible calls, “the accuser of our brethren.” In spite of evidence of letters, Obi lied that Lagos State did not communicate with the authorities of Anambra State.

    As Fashola has noted, why did Obi not call Fashola before escalating the matter into a potential Igbo versus Yoruba matter. Obi’s eyes are also set on the battle for Anambra State governor polls scheduled for November 16. He wants to pour venom into the relationship between former governor Ngige and his people by tagging him with the brush of the friend of the enemy, or the friend of the Yoruba.

    Akwa Ibom recently sent two destitute persons to Lagos, and Lagos did not raise any hubbub over it. The letters between both states also tell the decorum between both states. The use of the word deportation is not only wrong but tendentious. This is a federation, and the relationship between Lagos and Anambra is not between nations but parts of a nation.

    It is wrong and wrong-headed to exploit the destitute. The destitute is the worst any human can get materially. If Obi reads the Russian classic Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyvsky, he would accompany the old drunk who distinguished the destitute from the poor. The poor may have a little, and survive. The destitute person is like an empty well.

    But Obi should be careful not to fall into what is worse than material destitution. That is moral destitution. That wreaks of dishonor, and that was what I saw in a play titled, Three Penny Opera written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It is the story of a leader of a beggar’s colony who wants to take advantage of them for profit. He lost the pride of his daughter to the bargain.

    Obi should not prostitute the pride of Anambra State on the platform of political and ethnic opportunism.

  • APC and new energy for democratic culture

    APC and new energy for democratic culture

    What is new about APC is that it is a group of politicians from different corners
    of the country who have sworn to commit to political progressivism

    The registration of the merger of four political parties into APC must be welcome news to lovers of democracy. The coming of APC has not brought to an end the existence of mushroom political parties in the county. But it has substantially reduced the number of parties that are in serious contest for the opportunity to govern the country. After the merger, apart from APC and PDP, there will still be some political parties masquerading as contenders for federal or state power, but such possibility does not diminish the fact that Nigeria is, with the arrival of APC on the political landscape, a polity with two main political parties. We congratulate politicians who have submerged individual egos and ambitions to merge into a party that is capable of serving as an alternative to the ruling party.

    What is new about APC is not the fact that politicians from various parties and regions are making efforts to work together for the sake of Nigeria. In the first republic, the northern ruling party, NPC, worked in an alliance to rule the country with the NCNC. It was an alliance of two out of three regions. The alliance left the dominant party in the Western region in loyal opposition. It was good for the country then that there was a party known for principle and ideology to serve as loyal opposition. Our democracy would have thrived if there had been no attempts by the ruling party then to turn the country into a one-party state, and the rest is history.

    The second republic also witnessed an alliance for the sake of sharing political offices between the dominant party in the North, NPN, and its counterpart in the East, the NPP. Again, UPN, the dominant party in the West chose to serve as opposition party. Again, the democracy of the second republic did not collapse because the opposition failed in its own role. Collapse came because the ruling party was incapable of governing the country effectively. It, after ruling in an effete manner for four years, still felt that it needed to rig the election to return to power in 1983. After returning to power, it was incapable of solving most of the problems facing the country, just as it could not in its first four years, and the rest is history.

    Babangida’s military autocracy brought a new political culture to the country. Whatever was the motivation, Babangida decreed into being two political parties, best known as a-little-to-the-right and a-little-to-the-left political constructions: NRC and SDP. The existence for the first time in the country’s history of a two-party system made options easier for voters who had had to choose at least from three region-driven political parties. It may not be clear why the 1993 national election was the freest and fairest in the history of the country, but it is not too far-fetched to assume that the clear-cut ideological positions of the two parties: one besotted to nurturing the status-quo and the other committed to transformation, must have helped voters to make their choices.The country’s opportunity to move away from its troubling political past was destroyed, not by the fact of two clear choices, but by Babangida’s decision to neutralize the advantage of the two-party structure that he brought into being. It is not surprising that Babangida is visibly happy with the registration of APC. It must remind him of the opportunity that was allowed to be lost in 1993.

    To say that APC is the first experiment of its kind in the country is to indulge deliberately in hyperboles. The PDP was formed as a trans-regional political group of individuals besotted to sustaining a political culture that had not moved Nigeria forward, from the time of NPC to NPN. What is new about APC is that it is a group of politicians from different corners of the country who have sworn to commit to political progressivism. In other words,unlike the self-acclaimed national party before it, which is interested in business as usual, APC appears to be poised to engage the spirit of change, and to do it with men and women from across traditional ethnic and religious lines. The merger that creates APC means that there are two broad groups of politicians in the country: those who believe that Nigeria is okay as it is and those who believe the country needs change on many fronts.

    Progressive politics is not about the opposite of what a non-performing political party does. A new governance model requires that there are new paradigms to be created and used to change the country for the better for its citizens. Commitment to social justice and equal opportunities is fundamental to any genuine transformative agenda. Such commitment is needed to drag Nigeria from its pre-modern state to modernity. There must be some stick-in-the muds that are likely to insist that all that is needed is for the country to get a new party with men and women who are ready to work for (and not against the interests of) the masses in terms of building physical infrastructure and creating jobs. The problem that has made it impossible for Nigeria to transcend the stasis of the last five decades concerns the distribution of power in the country. More specifically, it pertains to the need to interrogate existing distribution of power in our multicultural and multi-religious ‘state-nations.’ To attempt to do this is to make effort to solve the main problem facing the country: ensuring economic, social, political, and cultural justice.

    Confronting the largest party in Africa (a political grouping that perceives itself as born-to-rule at least for sixty years!) requires the sizable energy that APC certainly possesses and appears ready to deploy. As the APC continues to mobilize and galvanize citizens around the message of change, it must continue to urge its Think-Tank to think out of the box of Nigeria’s ‘nothing-is-wrong with our constitution or the structure of governance and that all that is required is to get supermen and women among us to be president and governors.’ APC must not ignore the call for true federalism, more so if it wants to achieve a noticeable measure of economic, social, political, and cultural justice in a country constituted by many nationalities.

    The enthusiastic welcome of the news of INEC’s registration of APC, demonstrated in several cities a few hours ago, indicates the intensity of the hunger of citizens for change, not only of content but also of form. Nigeria has for too long been structured and designed as a funnel that leaks from the top or the head. Over concentration of power and resources on the central government has turned states into mendicants carrying bowls to the central government for most of the funds used to keep most of the States alive. The age of bottomless revenue from petroleum may be coming to an end sooner than we are ready to apprehend. Diversifying (without appropriate infrastructure) the economy to withstand the shock from the fact that some of the biggest buyers of our oil are now becoming some of the biggest sellers of the product that sustains us is likely to take much longer than one or two post-PDP administrations.

    A unitary model of governance that is sustained by donations to states from the central government will continue to undermine efforts to move the country forward. This appears to be the era for not only a strong central government but also for strong state governments. In other words, one of the challenges facing APC, which PDP has ignored, is readiness to pluck the courage to re-design the template of governance, to return a truly federal system to Nigeria.

  • North’s unnecessary fears may create a federal monster

    North’s unnecessary fears may create a federal monster

    It is not yet too late for these representatives to put on their thinking caps before they bring more disaster upon the country.

    Without a scintilla of doubt, only northern fears, not national interest, especially concerning its ability, or not, to survive despite its untapped huge natural resources, could have led the National Assembly to so completely undermine the states whilst creating a centre with limitless powers in its constitutional amendment conundrum. So all-encompassing is the autocracy they are currently constructing that one cannot successfully be accused of exaggeration if he claims that Abuja is being imperceptibly turned to a monstrous incubus. All these, unfortunately, on the basis of a British -fabricated, but actually non-existent, higher northern population which would otherwise thump all known demographic principles. If they dispute this, let them publish the results of the one-day interaction with Nigerians on geo-political basis and see if the so-called massive ‘yes’ votes would not confirm an over reliance on results from one region out of three. It is no wonder, therefore, that of all the Local Government Chairmen’s Forum in the country, it is only the northern chapter, through its chairman, Mohammed Ali, that’s mounting pressure on the Senate to rescind its decision on local government autonomy.

    Waxing lyrical during the past week, Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha, gleefully announced to Nigerians that: ‘the House voted overwhelmingly to give full financial, administrative, executive and legislative autonomy to local government councils in Nigeria; making them a tier of government with a uniform four years tenure, regimenting their mode of exercising legislative power and abolishing Joint State Local Government Account which they replaced with the “Local Government Council Allocation Account.’ Like an over-exuberant birthday boy, he went on to say that henceforth, the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, would conduct elections for local government areas. Apparently, they forgot to abolish the office of the state governor. If only these self-serving legislators knew the meaning of a true federal system! And would they be kind enough to tell Nigerians where else on earth these monstrosities obtain.

    Let me, in the small space remaining, open their eyes and minds to the views, edited for space, of Chief Bola Ige, SAN, one of the few real democrats that ever graced the face of Nigeria, on local government. In an article he captioned ‘Man -Made Avoidable Local Government Troubles’ and which appeared in his column in The Sunday Tribune of 27 April, 1996, the legal luminary wrote as follows: “Anyone who has sound knowledge of the local government system, its history, theory and practice, not only in Nigeria, but also in civilised countries of the world, cannot be surprised at what is happening in various parts of the country since the Federal Military Government announced the “creation “of new local government areas. I personally have been shocked and pained by the violence that has since been unleashed.

    “But what we should admit is that the fundamentals of local government system, particularly in a federal set-up, have not been adhered to. One could even say that they have been violated.

    “There are modalities that govern local government systems all over the civilised world. The first is that a local government must truly be government at local level. In other words, the people of a given area must be allowed to come together, of their own accord, and in a spirit of agreeing to some sort of social contract, to run their local affairs. The community must of course be easily identifiable – usually they must be people of the same stock, or citizens who inhabit a given geographical area’.

    ‘That was what existed during the colonial times and during the era of the regions. That was also what happened when I was governor of the old Oyo State. In the north, local government system was based on emirates where they existed or administrative units where there were no emirates; in the west, it was based on the combination of the Oba-ship system and innate democratic inclinations of the peoples of Western Nigeria; in the east where the people were largely republican, the local government system was based on the clan. In all parts of Nigeria, the English and after them, the founding fathers of Nigeria – Awo Sardauna and Zik – never arbitrarily created local government councils and, in any case, being reasonable and knowledgeable politicians, they would never have done that.

    ‘The ideal thing is for any community that wants a local government to have it, as long as certain basic criteria concerning ability to be economically viable and rudiments of government are met. I always gave examples of local government councils in Europe and the USA to attest to this.

    “Unfortunately, the Murtala-Obasanjo federal military government began the nonsense that has remained with us. In fairness to Gowon’s regime, that government did not poke its nose into local government business. I guess that with the presence of seasoned politicians, led by Awo, in that government, such foolish mistake would not be allowed to happen.

    “On the pretext that better administration should be found for local government throughout the country, a Commission headed by Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki was set up. In my opinion, the recommendations of that commission were the worst disaster to happen to local government system in Nigeria. For instance, it was from there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced. I confess that I suspected a hidden agenda in the recommendations: in order to strengthen the administrative stranglehold of the emirates, all of Nigeria was advised to base its local government system on defined populations and elaborate administrative system. Fortunately, it never worked. And it will never work.

    “But I also had the suspicion that the military wanted to have a way of pulling more strings through manipulating the local government system. Dasuki Commission brought about the plague that is still afflicting Nigeria.

    Which leads me to the next point: In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local government. Nigeria is the only federation in the whole world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilised countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government.

    “The solutions are simple, but I doubt whether the Federal Military Government will take any suggestions. First, let the Federal Military Government hands off local government affairs, and allow the people to decide how many local government areas they want, their administrative set-up and their boundaries. State government must allow the people in a given area to determine their local government destinies.

    “Secondly, state governments should formulate guidelines for the setting up of new local government councils. They must be of universal application and not tinkered with. Once any community satisfies the criteria in those guidelines, they should have their own council.”

    Chief Ige’s fears are as potent today as they were when he penned them in 1996, and, watching this National Assembly create a looming disaster of an ultra strong centre, I have this nagging feeling that the PDP truly believes the hogwash that it will rule for 60 years as was first propounded by its now embattled, one-time chairman, Ogbuluafor. Otherwise, nobody in his proper frame of mind will suggest that INEC should conduct local government elections in the states which we know is intended to enhance their stranglehold through their now well-known ‘do and die’ rigging methods. At a time when the cancellation of a humongous WAEC and NECO with full staff compliement has been suggested, it is totally ludicrous that the National Assembly could approve that INEC, with mostly ad hoc staff, take up elections into all local government councils even if it were not already encumbered by constant allegations of bribe-taking like we saw in Ekiti State during the rerun election in 2009.

    It is not yet too late for these representatives to put on their thinking caps before they bring more disaster upon the country. After all, this is a legislature whose members earn the equivalent of $189,000 annually as against their counterparts in the U.K and France who earn $105, 400 and $85,900 respectively.

  • Palladium on vacation? If wishes were horses

    Palladium owes his readers a little apology. For some five weeks, the back page column of this newspaper bore a postscript announcing that Palladium was on vacation. He was not. He was in fact ill, and could hardly think about national issues, not even the presidency’s egregious constitutional affronts and meddlesomeness, let alone sit down to write. Though he is on the mend, he has struggled to write today’s pieces in order not to appear like he has permanently abandoned the battlefield and taken his loyal and even enemy readers for granted. Really, what would his enemy readers do without their weekly dose of provocation? However, I wish I had really gone on vacation.

    While Palladium was away, Dr Jonathan behaved imperially, forgetting the oath he swore to, and the need to sustain and nurture the leprous democracy handed over to him by former president Olusegun Obasanjo. (The late Umaru Yar’Adua presidency was an interregnum). It is in fact significant and fitting that the president recently described Chief Obasanjo as his father. Dr Jonathan of course meant his sonship in the metaphorical sense, but if only he knew how accurate he was even in the biological sense as well. Chief Obasanjo undermined democracy and the constitution, and rode roughshod over the states, persons, and political parties. Dr Jonathan, not to talk of his wife, has also ridden roughshod over the states, persons (be they governors or eminences grises), the constitution and parties. Chief Obasanjo will not flinch at betraying the constitution; neither will Dr Jonathan balk.

    Obasanjo could neither differentiate between democracy and monarchy nor draw a line between law and lawlessness. Dr Jonathan talks effusively about democracy and acts aggressively like a monarch. Palladium of course does not hate monarchy, for as he has argued in this place many times, democracy is seldom as competent as monarchy in filtering bad leaders from the number one seat in any country. After all, it took democracy to inflict Obasanjo and Jonathan on the country.

    While Palladium was away, the courts absolved Major Hamza al-Mustapha of complicity in the murder of Kudirat Abiola. This judicial thunder did not, however, peal as loudly as it exposed the buffoonery of the founder of the Odua People’s Congress (OPC), Frederick Fasehun. Dr Fasehun thought nothing of the anomaly of escorting the freed al-Mustapha to Kano; he also ascribed to his action a nobility of purpose and a grander task of representing and saving from retribution the entire Yoruba people. Politics can sometimes be comical, and any man can suffer from delusions of grandeur. But to degrade politics to the level of burlesque seems only reserved for those like Dr Fasehun who have become chimerical. To hear him declaim against his sidekick in the OPC and fellow federal contract seeker, Gani Adams, indicates the ugly and risible depths ‘revolutionary warfare’ has sunk, not only in the Southwest, but elsewhere, as the Rivers State House of Assembly disgracefully exemplified recently.

     

  • Finally, two-party system underway

    Finally, two-party system underway

    As the political careers of Lincoln, Churchill and de Gaulle demonstrated, it takes unusual and even cataclysmic circumstances to produce great leaders. Unusual leaders manifest in unusual times. However, when unusual times fail to produce unusual leaders, the society is endangered. It may take a few more years from now and exciting political outcomes before Nigerian historians and political scientists agree on whether the founding of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the turbulence in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) constituted enough grounds for the making of a great Nigerian leader required for the tumultuous times. But whether that leader is revealed or not, in 2015 or well after, there is no denying that Nigeria is ripe for substantial, if not fundamental, change, on account of the great political, economic and social contradictions the country has sadly had to endure in the past one decade or more.

    The registration of the APC was itself anticlimactic. Not only was there opposition to its registration by alleged PDP proxies, only few people were sure the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could not be compromised by an immoral ruling party. And though it was needless and pointless for the PDP to stymie the registration of APC using the excuse of a dispute over acronym, no one was sure how far the ruling party was willing to go to discomfit the opposition. In the end, common sense prevailed, and a major opposition party was birthed last week. The new amalgamated party, with all the dangers associated with alloys, will hope to exceed both in reputation and achievement the records of its famous predecessors known to us as United Progressives Grand Alliance (UPGA) in the First Republic and Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA) in the Second Republic, notwithstanding the undeniable observation that the circumstances of their births were not too dissimilar.

    APC’s final appearance has doubtless met with euphoric responses from citizens harried by more than 14 years of unimaginative PDP rule, and analysts bored stiff by the fundamental staidness of describing rather than analysing PDP victories after every election. Now, pundits will have to earn their money, and citizens can look forward to real politics of issues, competence, geographic, and behavioural considerations. It is not an exaggeration to also say the country may well finally be on its way to a much more realistic and enduring two-party system, one that may ensure political parties work hard for votes and make those votes count. The country can also look forward to a more boisterous and reflective legislature, one the presidency will have to engage more respectfully and more intelligently than it had done so far. Indeed, not only are the possibilities endless, the emergence of the APC could very well be the tonic needed to guarantee the survival of democracy.

    Even before considering the prospects of the APC in future elections – and it is perfectly sensible to do so even now – it is necessary to look at the new party itself and assess its architecture. The easiest part is the coming together of the three main constituent parties in the amalgamation, to wit, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Staying together will be more challenging; and finding the right formula to win elections will be the most challenging. Once they win power, it is all but evident that they would do considerably and enthusiastically better than the tired PDP.

    The hardest part of the amalgamation is how the two leading parties in the coalition – the ACN and the CPC – will subordinate their strong identities to the new party and work towards forging a new character and identity, much stronger and idiosyncratic than their individual moults, and capable of resonating with voters, hammering out realistic and unifying political platforms, and fighting major electoral wars with well-oiled machines. It must be remembered that previous attempts by progressives to reach out to other parties never went beyond reaching an understanding with other parties through the instrumentality of coalitions. This, therefore, is the first time in Nigeria major parties under progressive panoply are fusing together across ideological divides. But progressivism, as all the progressive parties of Southwest origin have repeatedly demonstrated, is much more than merely a convenient vehicle or an ideological or philosophical force; it is a moral force encapsulating superior and almost theological arguments about how societies are founded, organised and governed. A progressive party, like any metal with unique linear expansivity, responds to external stimuli differently from a conservative or pseudo-progressive party by reason of its intrinsic properties.

    Despite the unending arguments in the Southwest about the progressive credentials of the ACN, there is little doubt that it is the foremost progressive party in Nigeria, and this is in spite of itself, its unorthodox definition of internal democracy, and its sometimes perplexing succession patterns inherited in part from its regional progenitors, the Action Group (AG) and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Indeed, to restrict the definition of progressivism to its internal democracy mechanism is to miss the more essential attributes of that political ideology as it relates to the pursuit of rapid societal change and protection and advancement of civil rights, among other things. Now, juxtapose both ACN’s positive paranoia on civil liberties and its doctrinaire progressivism with the pragmatism of the CPC on one side and the vestigial conservatism of the ANPP on the other side, and you begin to get a sense of the sacrifices the amalgams will have to make in order to confound the PDP naysayers. It will certainly not be an easy task, especially with both the ACN and CPC having been led by two mercurial personalities.

    The reasons the APC was formed must, however, not be forgotten. Its constituent parts seemed to have a foreboding of their impending destruction if they continued to stay disunited in the face of the obtruding PDP. They probably remembered the statement made by Benjamin Franklin before signing the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. He had said: “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” The APC has chosen to take the American’s counsel, fully conscious of and willing to live with the drawbacks of lying on the same bed with strange fellows and loth to resign themselves to the hopelessness and helplessness of being slaughtered in every election. Surely, they are no gluttons for punishment. I think also that they considered the tantalising prospects of winning the 2015 polls and what great and might things they could in consequence do to reform and transform the country, which mighty things the PDP seems happily and indifferently oblivious of.

    If the 2015 polls were held today, and the APC had the good fortune of presenting the right candidate to face the underperforming President Goodluck Jonathan, the result is unlikely to be a close one. Quite apart from the fact that the president’s wife has not exactly been an asset, he has himself comprehensively alienated the Southwest, Northeast and Northwest. As for the North-Central and South-South, he is facing revolt in key, vote-laden parts of the regions, while his hold on the Southeast is only three-quarters sure. To reverse these positions will take a miracle by even the most studious, charismatic and dogged of leaders. But as everyone knows, Dr Jonathan’s main strength lies in his earthy, though often misplaced, candour. That strength unfortunately does not usually translate into votes.

    The scenario above assumes both the nomination of Dr Jonathan and the exactitude of the APC fielding a winning ticket. But here, precisely, is the dilemma the APC and indeed the whole country will face in the coming months. How would they draw the balance between what their hearts tell them about the kind of ticket the country needs for strong leadership and rapid, even revolutionary, transformation, though it be unorthodox and unconventional, and what their heads tell them about the kind of conventional-wisdom, religion-sensitive ticket that is in consonance with national pedantry, though it be counterproductive in the long run? It is in the nature of countries never to be able to resolve such dilemmas.

    The APC on its own will have to determine how safely it can break the mould and stretch the baffling dynamics of Nigerian politics to its elastic limit. More, it will have to determine what its priority is: to win the next election, even if it entailed a horse dose of hypocrisy, or to provide the kind of fiery leadership that will take Nigeria to the big league. Apart from the fact that these two objectives are often mutually exclusive, history tells us that some of the world’s greatest reformers took power in unusual circumstances thereby freeing them from the strictures that would otherwise hobble a leader produced by normality and conventional democratic apparatuses.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Critique of critics

    NATIONAL Mirror Views and Education Today pages of August 1 welcome us to the new month: “Before now, many Nigerians have (had) loudly condemned early marriage.”

    “…live in deplorable and heart renting (heart-rending) health conditions.”

    “Repackaging teachers (teachers’) training curriculum (4)”

    “I congratulate the NUC for (on/upon) the courage to extend the….”

    “Police foil robbery attempt” (Stv Morning Belt News, Monday, July 29) Since the robbery was foiled, it simply means there was an attempt! So, ‘foil robbery attempt’ is indicative of loose thinking. No dreaming: Police foil robbery

    THE NATION ON SUNDAY of July 28 disseminated Victorian (Old) English: “…as the love that binds the people together has gone with the wind.” News review: jettison ‘together’ to eliminate Elizabethan English (add together; join together; bind together; bend corner; pool resources together; extreme end; log of wood; electrocute to death; etc.)

    “…examines efforts to restore the lost love and peace in (to) the zone.”

    “The award is another testimony of (to) your sterling leadership qualities.” (Full-page congratulatory advertisement by the Ekiti State House of Assembly for His Excellency Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Governor, Ekiti State)

    “By going to IBB and OBJ in search of solution (a solution or solutions) to democratic challenges is indication (an indication) of how things have degenerated in the country.”

    “…on daily basis (a daily basis) it throws up millions of carbon in the atmosphere.”

    “Obesere raises alarm (the alarm) over impostors”

    FROM MY INBOX

    Ebere, lest we forget, your so-called 60-year-old ‘uncle’, Kola Danisa, is an intellectual thug. And his linguistic problems are stereotypical: he is not well grounded in the grammaticality/grammatology of the language; he does not read every day; he has no functional library, above all, he is unschooled, un-churched, unlettered, uneducated and uncultured.

    He wrote to me! “Check the word in the dictionary” (it is “look up the word in the dictionary”); “to look something up” means “to look for information in a dictionary or reference book, or by using computer, e.g. I looked the word up in the dictionary. He said “about 12 dictionaries” is wrong, adding that “sound editors do not approximate countable things”! Danisa, nothing could be further from the truth. There is no grammatical “rule” that prescribes or decrees that! It is correct to say or write: We have about 200 employees (Good Word Guide). The book is about 600 pages long (Glossary for College English). At the revival, about 300 souls were saved (Cassell’s German Dictionary).

    Besides, the other day, Danisa said “beehive of activity” was wrong. This is verbicide. “Hive” is shorthand for “beehive”. E.g. “But The Times” (London) did not go for “MS” nor would it condone “chairwoman” in place of “chairman” or Madam Chairman. “The Times” (London) was a beehive of activity – telephones ringing, typewriters clacking, and a lot of busy-looking people, each doing his own thing.”

    I repeat, “uplift” (noun and verb); “uplifting”, like “uplifted”, is an adjective; “uplifter” is also a noun. These words are listed in World Book Dictionary (two volumes). Yes, “upliftment” is elongation for “uplift” (page 2299). The rule of the thumb is: You don’t assert what you do not know.

    “Witch-hunt” (circa 1885) is a noun; while “witch-hunting”, meaning “witch-hunt”, is a noun or an adjective. Note: “witch-hunting” is a correct word.

    Truth to tell, there are many correct words that you cannot find in common dictionaries, e.g. duper, fooler, upliftment, cheater, fraudster, scammer, conditionality, uplifter, etc. They are neologisms. Another note: “challenge” (challenges) is a euphemism for “disability (or disabilities) or problem “crisis” just as “social exclusion” is the latest euphemism for poverty. Therefore it is correct to say or write: The man is physically (or health) challenged.

    In conclusion, I agree with Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 – 1859) when he opined: ‘Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely’. Danisa is a sham, eogorrhoea, a verbal diarrhea! (Bayo Oguntunase, Ikorodu, Lagos, 08029442508).

    “Wordsworth is meant to teach, not abuse. It can teach better if it plays down on such words as ‘bunkum, foolishness, blunder’, etc., which can easily turn off a prospective learner. ‘Errors’ or ‘mistakes’ are more polite words to use in describing what is to be corrected. Psychology of Education teaches that the language/method of instruction matters a lot in learning. I believe Wordsworth has failed in this, but not Prof. Ebere Wabara. Thanks.” (Bassey Amana,Umuahia, 08036121293)

    My response: This column is for the exchange of ideas devoid of any didactic posturing or intellectual haughtiness and it does not abuse, but occasionally employs harsh words for incorrigible numskulls! Anyone interested in the correct use of the English language should be inclined to this unique marketplace, the methodology notwithstanding. ‘Error’, according to Dr. Adidi Uyo, has 19 synonyms—‘blunder’ is just one of them! On a lighter note, I am not yet a Prof.

    Constructive and well-researched reactions are welcome. However, a note of caution: inasmuch as I accept readers’ interventions, the privilege should not be abused by the use of foul language. Freedom goes with enormous responsibility and maturity. The essence of this column is to enrich our knowledge and application of this global tool of communication. Disclaimer: I do not share all the views of respondents especially when they are subjective—my duty is merely the provision of this free platform. Let wisdom prevail as uncouth reactions will no longer be published.

  • Kano! oh, my dear Kano

    If I were to be a poet, there are two cities in Northern Nigeria that I would have written poems about. Poems that if they don’t possess the quality, international influence and reputation of Ibadan, J.P. Clark’s immortal and iconic poem about Ibadan city in Western Nigeria, I would have at least been able to make my attachment to the two cities known.

    Well, since I am not a poet and can no longer find myself writing poetry, or something as elevating as to be called one, I am going to reminiscence and pay my tributes to these two cities in the best way I can. The two cities in question are Jos and Kano. As I am always proud and quick to tell anyone who cares to listen: I was born and bred in Jos, Plateau State and had my adult and tertiary education in Kano.

    Jos is the lovely city of my childhood where I grew and made friends across all boundaries – religious, ethnic, nationality etc- while Kano is the city of my adulthood.

    For those who may have read my book, Home Away From Home: History of Ogbomoso People in Jos, in that book I paid glowing obeisance to the city of my birth and the good people made that city to be home to all. It was there that I formed my views and opinions about the world. I’ll not write much about Jos here as my opinion is already captured in that book.

    This piece is about Kano. In the eighties, I found myself heading to that city after working as a freelance reporter in Jos for about four years. Going to Kano was for me another level of education and getting to see further what the northern part of the country was like. Note the word ‘was.’ Schooling there was fun and exciting; life was easy going and there was no fear of any harassment or intimidation. I fondly remember that we had many students who came from the southern part, especially from Lagos and Ondo states, to join us as students. It was their first time of journeying that far to the north and most of them confessed that they loved it.

    Those ones saw most of us who grew up in the north as their chaperones and pathfinders. As students we always looked forward to weekends to leave the campus for the Sabon Gari area of the town. Here we were free to have our fun and we went from one drinking and fun spot to the other rollicking. It was here that our colleagues who were from the south always felt nostalgic. We met countless numbers of Igbo, Yoruba, Urhobo, Ijaw and other southern ethnic groups. Kano was no doubt a home away from home. We never thought ourselves to be strangers.

    It was in Sabon Gari that we met an elderly Igbo man who we all regarded as our father. He used to run a shop which we, as students, called ‘one stop stall’; the reason was that there was virtually nothing you were looking for that you would not get there. Papa, as we used to call him, was a mobile encyclopaedia, if not of the history of Kano, at least of that of Sabon Gari. When he knew we were students he was elated and anytime we went to his shop he was always ready to tell us the history of Kano as he knew it.

    He would regale us with the history of the civil war and how he survived the period of the war in the city without running to the east when almost all Igbo and other ethnic groups from that part of the country fled home. He told us of how his friend one Mallam Hassan ( I hope I remember the name correctly) saved his life by hiding him in his house and manning his own shop throughout the three years the civil war lasted. Every night Mallam Hassan came back home and rendered account of his sales to him without flinching a kobo off him. He instilled in us the resilience and love of the human spirit over fear, crises and turbulence. Emphasising that no one is bad because of his origin but by upbringing and choice. According to Papa, who then should be in his late seventies, the fact that he was Igbo was purely a choice by God which he as a human had no place in determining. He surely must be dead by now. This was over twenty five years ago.

    Kano was home and no one ever thought we were going to have to feel threatened anywhere one resided. Sabon Gari was the veritable watering hole for all ethnic groups. As many who have ever visited the core north knows, selling and drinking of alcohol is restricted in most parts of the old cities. However, Sabon Gari is a land free from those laws and because the university is located in the area of the city where alcohol is restricted those of us who felt the need of escaping the stifling environment at the weekend always journey there to have our fill.

    This was not restricted to only southerners; I know many of our northern colleagues who during the week observe the strict code of abstaining from alcohol but who we all at the weekend meet at Iya Sikira or Okoro’s bar in Sabon Gari!

    Some of the victims of Tuesday’s orgy of violence in Kano could have been any of us. Who would have thought that some blood sucking individuals would dream up such a devilish act to take other people’s lives? They could have been students like us. The devil has taken over and we no longer feel safe in our country. Will any parent ever feel confident to send their wards to the north again to study?

    I recently took a peek at the admission list of some universities across the country and what I saw was not encouraging. Many applicants from the south are no longer keen in applying for admission anywhere in the north while some from the north too are afraid to cross to the south. Is this how to unify a country and educate our kids? Why do we feel it is safer to send our wards to far-flung places in the Antarctica, Asia and even unknown and uncharted territories in the Americas and far Europe than anywhere in our country?

    How can we restore confidence in our country and begin to live and relate with one another as human beings? When will this bloodletting stop? Who will stop it? When will Kano return to its past glory?

    Kano, oh my dear Kano.