The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Again, capital punishment

    Again, capital punishment

    Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau.

    Just a moment, executioner; just a small moment.

    Madame du Barry, at the guillotine, 1793

    Nigerians woke up two weeks ago to learn that four death-row prisoners in Benin City, who were convicted some 15 years ago but had not exhausted the appeal process, had been hanged

    The foursome had been convicted 15 years ago, and had not yet exhausted the appeal process

    The executions drew for the most part strong condemnation at home and abroad, and rekindled the on-again, off-again national debate on the propriety of capital punishment. They also raised searching questions about the ideological orientation of Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.

    It was troubling enough that this stalwart of the progressive community had signed off on the grisly proceedings in respect of two of the convicts ;it was unseemly, his colleagues-now-turned critics charged, that he defended his action so vigorously in the face of the outrage it generated.

    The condemned prisoners had committed crimes of the foulest kind; they had subjected their innocent victims to unspeakable brutality and then killed them in the most horrid manner conceivable. They had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death by courts of competent jurisdiction that afforded them at every stage the due process of law they had so wantonly and callously denied their victims.And what is more, the authorities said, the executions were carried out in accordance with the laws of Nigeria.

    In short, they fully deserved what they got.

    It would be unfeeling to dismiss this line of reasoning out of hand. Lives had been taken, careers and prospects and relationships had been savagely abridged. These heinous crimes, it would seem to follow, should be visited with appropriate retribution.

    But that is at bottom the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye. To achieve the grisly equivalence enjoined by that code, the state would have to do to torturers and murderers and rapists precisely what they did to their victims. In practice, no state does that. So, retributive justice cannot be a goal of the modern state, which is enjoined by municipal and international statutes to act humanely and eschew cruel laws.

    Nor does it help matters to insist that an act is justified or even proper just because it is sanctioned by law. That is the doctrine of rule by law, the doctrine the apartheid authorities in South Africa, and before them, Nazi Germany, invoked to justify their barbarous rule. It has little in common with the rule of law, which is premised on just laws justly administered.

    It is the contention of this column that capital punishment is inherently unjust; that it is inequitable, and that it serves no useful purpose

    Most homicides do not result from cold, brutal calculation. They result, criminologists say, from confusion, anger, stress and panic — in short, from a loss of capacity for rational judgment. The death penalty merely compounds the tragedy that flows from such lapses of judgment, to which even the most sober persons are susceptible.

    Even those murders planned to the most chilling detail and carried out with the utmost deliberation, psychiatrists maintain, result basically from an abnormal condition that may be biological or environmental or both.

    So that, when society executes a capital offender, it is at once condemning the offender for conduct that may have been biologically determined, and absolving itself of any responsibility in creating or sustaining the environmental forces that shaped the offender

    Capital punishment is not the blunt instrument of justice it is claimed to be. It is stacked against the poor and minorities and members of the underclass who, lacking the resources to hire competent attorneys and forensic experts, are more likely than better-endowed persons to be convicted. To the poor and disconnected, “equality before the law” is a myth.

    The support for capital punishment rests principally on the claim that it serves as a deterrent. Knowing that they stand to pay with their own lives if found guilty of murder, only those possessed by a death wish would kill. Without such a deterrent, it is claimed, the homicide rate would escalate.

    If this claim holds true, the homicide rates in the major industrial countries that have abolished capital punishment should have risen sharply. So should the volume of capital crimes in those states that do not practise capital punishment, or employ it sparingly. But this has not been the case.

    To take an American example, the homicide rate in Pennsylvania has remained roughly 6 in 100,000, despite the fact that Pennsylvania has carried out no execution since 1976. On the other hand, from 1977 to 1995, the homicide rate in Texas has stood at 13.3 per 100,000. Nor has the fervor with which Texas administered the death penalty under Gov. George W. Bush and his successor, Dick Perry, led to a significant decline in the homicide rate.

    The death penalty, then, is no deterrent. It deters only those who have been executed, for they will never kill again. But the same end can be secured with far less damage to the social psyche by keeping convicted killers in jail for life, without the possibility of parole.

    Perhaps the strongest argument against capital punishment is its finality. Once carried out, it cannot be reversed even if it turns out, as happens not infrequently, that the executed person was innocent, or that guilt was not established beyond a reasonable doubt.

    About a decade ago, it came to light that 13 of 18 persons on death row in Illinois had been convicted wrongly. This moved the state’s authorities to place a moratorium on executions. That moratorium remains in place to this day.

    No less instructive is the conclusion of a massive study of capital convictions and appeals in the United States between 1975 and 1995, conducted by James Liebman, of Columbia University Law School. The study covered 5,500 judicial decisions.

    In 68 percent of 4,576 cases they reviewed, the appellate courts found “serious, reversible error.” This means that roughly 7 of every 10 convictions did not pass close judicial scrutiny. “American capital sentences,” Liebman concluded, “are so persistently and systematically fraught with error that it seriously undermines their reliability.”

    Liebman’s study and the discoveries in Illinois that some innocent persons had been languishing on death row ought to move advocates of the death penalty to recognise, at the very least, that even the most scrupulous judicial proceeding may be tainted by errors resulting perhaps not so much from the perversity of officials as from human fallibility.

    The possibility that capital punishment may be administered in error — that possibility alone, however remote — ought to weigh decisively on the minds of supporters of capital punishment.

    Those who kill must be held to account. Life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole, sufficiently serves that purpose. When a society puts them to death by way of retribution, it sinks to their level of pathology instead of rising splendidly above it, as a growing number of countries have been doing.

    Of the 54 countries in Africa, 18 have abolished capital punishment, according to data supplied by the United Nations, among them South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Gabon, and, in Nigeria’s neighbourhood, Togo, Senegal, Benin, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire, and São Tomé and Principe.

    Among those countries that still have capital punishment on their statute books, none has carried out an execution for 10 years.

    It is a dent on Nigeria’s international image and its claim to continental leadership that it is not numbered among the countries that have abolished capital punishment outright or placed a moratorium on it.

    Capital punishment is inconsistent with the spirit of the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of the Nigerian constitution, and with the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, to which Nigeria is a signatory.

    It should have no place in the Constitution now under review.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bonds: Stiglitz vs Okonjo-Iweala

    Bonds: Stiglitz vs Okonjo-Iweala

    If you missed Wednesday’s announcement of the outcome of the country’s billion-dollar bond offer to international investors by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, you probably number among the uninitiated in the free-wheeling club of high finance.

    Just in case you missed it, let me attempt a simple summary of the outcome that has since kept Abuja on the orgy of wild celebration: Nigeria put one billion dollars bond on offer; the subscription, said to have drawn top investors from US, Europe and Asia, came in multiple of four! In layman’s language, it means Nigeria had sought to raise one billion dollars from the international capital market but got enough investors to stake $4 billion for a share in the Nigerian pie!

    That obviously meant a lot to Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala; her excitement, so palpable, nearly went overboard. Hear her: “the fact that Nigeria could go to the bond market, after waiting a while and we got four times our subscription, shows confidence in the strength of the Nigerian economy… Over 200 investors could not get any share of the bonds because we were oversubscribed’’.

    She would also add: “The reason we are excited is because as you know, these are turbulent times, especially following expectations of tapering of Qualitative Easing by the U.S Federal Reserve Bank”. Lost perhaps was the irony that the feared quantitative easing actually drove interest rates down – not up; our officials are of course exultant about the prospects of borrowing at relatively high costs! That is what they call “confidence”!

    Let’s look at what the bond in two categories of $500 million each means for the ordinary Nigerian. Whereas the first tranche has five-year duration, it attracts a 5.125 per cent interest rate; the other, with 10-year duration at 6.375 per cent interest rate.

    What happened to the argument made only a short while ago that the loans being sought were cheap, concessionary loans of two percent with some 20-30 years repayment? Does that figure now in the current relapse into the old habits of debt peonage?

    Does anyone bother these days to raise questions about the bizarre financialism under which the nation would borrow at interest rates of six percent only to stash its Sovereign Wealth Fund in off-shore accounts to draw a measly below two percent interest?

    At this point, I should invite you, dear reader, to the seminal contribution Joseph Stiglitz and Hamid Rashid on the subject of Sub Saharan Africa’s increasingly insatiable appetite for sovereign bonds. A must read – if you ask me – for what I consider as its fresh perspective on the raging debate.

    Stiglitz and Rashid had posed the interesting question of why increasing numbers of developing countries have resorted to expensive sovereign-bond issues particularly when their existing foreign debt carried an average interest rate of 1.6% with average maturity of 28.7 years.

    The article, set in the background of the raging contagion of Eurobonds which first birthed in Ghana, but has since spread to Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, C’ote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Angola, Nigeria, Namibia, Zambia, and Tanzania, also contains dire warnings on the danger of the ultra-orthodox financialism which most sub Saharan governments have since fallen spell.

    In it, the duo did a good job of ripping through the official mantra of “surging confidence” bandied as feeding the obsession for the debts when they noted that: “the quantitative easing having driven interest rates to record lows, one explanation is that this is just another, more obscure manifestation of investors’ search for yield”.

    That shouldn’t be hard to understand; in Europe, United States and Asia, interest rate capped at two percent or below offers little or no attraction for “vulture” funds. So, where would the ‘gamblers’ have taken their money except to regions where they can enjoy six percent interest with sovereign guarantee to boot?

    Since when did “confidence” stop being denominated in hard cash – the cash haul described as return on investment? Shouldn’t that knowledge have tempered the claim of achievement? Picture the gambler and the profligate in a game of feints and deception; isn’t it supposed to be game in the muddled world of high finance?

    The article under reference also identified “the conditionality and close monitoring typically associated with the multilateral institutions make them less attractive sources of financing”.

    I love the way the duo framed the rhetorical question: “What politician wouldn’t prefer money that gives him more freedom to do what he likes? It will be years before any problems become manifest – and, then, some future politician will have to resolve them”!

    Now, that is an elegant way to frame a problem that we know only too well – corruption.

    We know the attraction for bonds; they are cheap. The ‘cheapness’ is however not always the whole story. The rents – arbitrage – to be earned by thieving officials have more often than not constituted the major attraction. Even at that, it seems the best way to kick the problems down the road for the coming generation to solve. That is the way things have been. Apparently, they will remain so for a long time to come.

    So, what would the Jonathan administration do next? Go for more bond issues as proof of “investor confidence”? Leave the nation’s financials in utter mystery while living in denial that the nation is fast sinking into debt peonage?

    Have we parted with the so-called “odious” debts in 2005/6 only to re-learn the habits that we once assumed had been shed? How does one explain the mystery behind the mounting debts during a period of sustained oil earnings?

    Permit me, dear reader, to suggest that the so-called “investor confidence” is completely misconceived. The world knows better than celebrate the “fundamentals” of an economy where no meaningful economic activities are going on. Didn’t our officials announce way back in 2008 that our capital market has arrived on the world stage with return on investments said to be highest on the universe?

    How come the market took the hit at the onset of the global credit crisis with the exit of the vultures – the foreign portfolio investors?

    What is the difference between the SAPped 80s and the present? In the 80s, the nation ran into balance of payment crisis because oil prices took a dive. Unable to meet its import bills, and with a huge portfolio of debts to service, it had to endure all manners of economic prescriptions to keep afloat. Three decades after, the only difference is that oil price has not only kept steady, but has managed to surpass expectations. With $50 billion dollars in the kitty, as foreign reserves, even a blind vulture can afford to gamble. You call that achievement; well, I call it common sense.

  • Golden boy, golden age

    Golden boy, golden age

    There is something decidedly golden in the tenure and temper of Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the governor of Lagos, who turned 50 on June 28.

    From “Babatunde who?” in 2007, Fashola has become an emblem of excellence. Perhaps never in the history of Nigeria’s fits-and-starts democracy has a rookie politician taken the public service lane by storm, posting a slew of solid performance, reaping tremendous accolades.

    Governor Fashola would rank second only after Alhaji Lateef Jakande, 2nd Republic Lagos governor (1979-1983) in the sheer race to nip the proverbial low hanging fruits, giving very early signals of a golden morning which forecast an even more golden tenure, which still has almost two years to run.

    Mr. Fashola is second to Alhaji Jakande because while Fashola had a solid foundation from which to launch his own campaign, Jakande was masterly master of his own destiny, despite the rot left by the departing military in 1979, at the end of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s first coming.

    Indeed, in the Tinubu political court, this “foundation” has assumed the high fetish of hallowed debate, on which many stake their honour. Many would argue – and correctly so – that without Tinubu’s solid foundation, Fashola would have been nothing. Other would counter, with equal vehemence – and they are no less correct – that without Fashola keeping faith and brilliantly executing his brief, Tinubu’s own place would have been less assured.

    The truth of the matter is that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Mr. Fashola, his high flying protégé, are akin to King David and King Solomon of the Biblical Kingdom of Israel.

    Like King David who fought endless wars to secure the kingdom against fiery and implacable foes, Tinubu did fight gruelling wars: against a purported elected president with gruff military temper; against a federal constitution with a unitary soul; against general environmental crisis with sky-towering refuse, like Goliath over David; against military-era mindset that state governors were despicable prefects at the whims of an arrogant and insufferable presidency; and even against an impatient, if not outright cynical media, which all but declared Tinubu’s first two years in government as total disaster.

    In these high octane wars, an embattled Governor Tinubu had to juggle politics with policy, fix his state’s financial infrastructure, and engage the judiciary to push for the rights of the states against a behemoth federal government, among others. By the third year, the new vision was taking shape. By the eighth year, after a second term, the foundation was solid and ready.

    Then came “Solomon” Fashola: fresh, cool and focused to take the “kingdom” to higher heights. One of his low-hanging fruits, which by their plan he would quickly move to pluck, was the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which secured lanes were already in the works at the latter end of the Tinubu era. Fashola plucked it with admirable speed and pluck. It was his brilliant morning that foreshowed a dazzling day. The rest, as they say, is history.

    History would come to record Fashola’s many feats in high-grade urban infrastructure. When he eventually delivers on the urban transit trains in the works in the Orile-Iganmu-Mile 2-Badagry Expressway corridor, he would have put his own bold and brilliant signature on the new Lagos multi-modal transportation of his party’s dream. That would be a stiff mountain for the opposition to climb.

    Fashola has brought into the implementation of these programmes a rare reasoned passion – friends call it focus; foes call it coldness – that is nobody’s imprimatur but his alone.

    His healthy obsession with the environment is legendary. Want to know how creatively restless Mr. Fashola is? Beam your gaze on the ever-changing flora and continual landscaping, ever in a state of flux, that is the governor’s never-ending Lagos urban beautification, which he calls “greening”.

    After the impressive greening and lighting of the Lagos Marina, the Lagos inner ring road corridor, spanning Third Mainland Bridge, Iyana Oworo, Ogudu, Alapere and Ikeja Toll Gate, aside from other areas, have become clear evidence of the governor’s stellar environmental policy. Still, it is morning yet, on beautification day!

    What is more? From about the dirtiest city on the face of the earth, Lagos has become progressively cleaner; and ever more secure. The audacious bank robberies of yore have become but distant memory, thanks to a robust public-private sector security initiative that other states have copied. And whoever thought the Oshodi human-vehicular traffic logjam, on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, could ever be dislodged!

    But Fashola’s distinctive legacy is changing the focus of governance from politics to development. That later South West governors of his party have followed suit gives the happy feel that the glorious Awolowo days are here again.

    Still, the Solomon allusion is, for Fashola, a double-edged sword. Solomon, the wisest being that ever lived, was no fool. Yet, his fault, uxoriousness – excessive love of a woman – all but messed up his famed wisdom. That led to the violent split of the kingdom David gave blood and gore to build.

    Governor Fashola’s admirable focus on policy, almost to the total isolation of politics, is ironically the chink in his golden armour. But that tiny chink may well expand, for in the Fashola gubernatorial persona looms a disturbing peep of Thatcherism – a policy wonk’s cold resolve on the integrity of his initiative, even in the face of furious public outcry.

    In the Okada restriction policy, that resolve worked excellently well. The governor was the visionary leader who would enforce the welfare of the generality of his people, even if the affected ultra-vocal minority threw tantrums and cried blue murder.

    But not so in the LASU fee hike policy – and the reason is simple: for a developing country, education is key. Trite: there is nothing like free education. It is “free” because the state is paying for it. Even then, a developing country, in a vast swamp of poverty, cannot afford the Thatcherite conceit that there is nothing like community; and everybody had to carry his or her own educational can.

    Besides, all of Fashola’s now glittering infrastructure would eventually fade and decay. Only education would appreciate with time: in quality, world-class human resource.

    A serious, progressive state must, therefore, make strategic investments in that sector to justify its essence. The Awo credo, that gave Western Nigeria a great head start, was all about that strategic investment. That is why Governor Fashola cannot afford to be sanguine about high fees in the state university, despite the government’s admitted lean resources.

    The political cost of such sanguinity could be devastating. Sound policy might be the hallmark of good governance. But more often than not, even the best of policies are choked by hostile politics.

    Fashola has mastered his policies. But at 50, he must begin to master his politics, if he hopes to go far in statecraft. So far, however, he is sheer gold to Lagos and to his generation.

  • Where is the flood money?

    Soon, it would be exactly one year the unprecedented flood overran many communities located on the banks of rivers Niger and Benue, down to the delta region, destroying houses, farmlands, livestock and fish ponds.

    The surging flood forced most residents of these areas to abandon their ancestral homesteads and other properties to seek refuge on higher grounds where rattled state governments had hurriedly set up relief camps for those who had no where to go. The fortunate ones who have children and benevolent relatives in the cities had a good excuse to proceed on compulsory vacations.

    Though the National Emergency Management Agency exists, they initially didn’t know how to deal with the peculiar situation for obvious reason. They’ve never been confronted with a natural disaster of that magnitude. All they had contended with in the past were plane crashes and collapsed buildings. So, it took quite some time for government and its agencies to come to terms with how to respond to the strange ravaging flood.

    Finally, in a morning televised broadcast on Tuesday, October 9, 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan announced the release of N17.6bn to assist states and communities affected by the flood. Of this amount, N13.3bn was allocated to states and N4.3bn went to relevant federal government agencies.

    The money was appropriated according to the severity of the impact of the flood on the states and their communities. The most affected states (in category A) like Kogi, Anambra, Delta, Bayelsa and Benue got N500m each. Others in categories B, C, and D were given N400m, N300m and N250m respectively.

    Months after the disbursement of this fund, the beneficiary state governments hosting affected communities that are in dire need of relief and rehabilitation were still prevaricating as to how the funds should be deployed until the rumour mill came alive with insinuations that the funds might have been misappropriated by politicians.

    In my own Anambra State, there were whispers that the money had either been fixed in a particular bank of the government to yield interest or simply set aside for the impending gubernatorial war. This perhaps, prompted the Secretary to the State Government, (SSG) Oseloka Obaze to issue a media statement assuring the people that the money is intact. And that the money would only be spent after the board of trustees would have reviewed and agreed on the target sector needs. Shortly after this pronouncement, the government released a consignment of food items comprising of bags of maize, rice and garri to the affected communities. The SSG was later quoted as saying that these items cost N128m. Subsequently, a round of cash was distributed. Atani, the headquarter of Ogbaru local government area of Anambra State got N10m and Osamala got N10m, while other smaller communities got less depending on their sizes. Money was equally distributed around other affected local government areas in the state. When the N10m was shared in Atani, for example, some families got N2,000, some got N1,000 and those living in urban areas and cities but whose properties were equally affected got nothing for the simple reason that the money could not go round.

    The question that many of us have continued to ask is: in what way would this pittance bring about the much vaunted ‘relief’ and ‘rehabilitation’ to the flood affected communities? Is this all the board of trustees and government relief strategists could think up? People’s houses have been damaged; their farmlands decimated; their livestock gone. Instead of government to come up with a resourceful economic rehabilitation program that will help the hardworking people rebuild their lives, it is handing down money to them as if they are beggars. Now that the government has opted for this path, one may be tempted ask what has happened to the rest of the money. Or has the N500m been exhausted?

    The story is not too different in Delta State where affected communities have formally petitioned the state House of Assembly and EFCC to investigate the management of the flood relief money. They allege that instead of openly utilizing the fund, government is selectively giving out N2,000 – N3,000 to flood victims. But instead of addressing the content of the allegation, the Commissioner for Environment, Frank Umare reportedly said that Delta State requires N20bn to deal with flood victims and that N500m is not enough.

    Is the money not being enough an excuse for not managing it transparently?

    Some groups in Kogi State have also accused their government of distributing N3000 to flood victims. This compelled a rebuttal from Alhaji Yabagi Bologi, Commissioner for Information who explained that a total of N139,550,000 was distributed to the affected local government areas and N81,376,646.55 was ploughed into the rehabilitation and reconstruction of schools used as relief camps. What a curious appropriation. Is the commissioner implying that if the federal government did not provide the relief fund, the dilapidated schools wouldn’t have been repaired? That notwithstanding; so what happened to the balance?

    The case in Adamawa state is perhaps the most pathetic. According to NAN’s report which was widely replicated in most newspapers, it was alleged that flood victims were given various paltry sums of money that ranged from N200, N240 to N250. According to Moses Ginam and Francis Emmanuel that spoke to NAN’s correspondent, Mbula chiefdom, one of the worse hit communities in Adamawa state, rejected the 1.8m purportedly allocated to them by the government because it would amount to N200 per person after they would have shared it.

    This appears to be the trend in most states prompting Senator Claver Ikisikpo, chairman, Senate Committee on Special Duties to declare that the flood relief fund has been clearly mismanaged.

    It would seem as if the flood victims are unlucky on all fronts. Apart from the obvious lack of transparency on the part of the states in managing the fund, the Dangote/Agbakoba Flood Relief and Rehabilitation Committee are having difficulty in recovering donations made at the special public fund-raising they held shortly after they were constituted to support federal government effort in rehabilitating flood victims. Angered by the non-redemption of the pledges made by these seeming scam donors, the committee threatened to publish their names except they take concrete steps to redeem them. But if the aim of the threat is to name and shame these questionable donors and so called philanthropists, the Dangote/Agbakoba Committee may have to think again as a good number of them are shameless. They might have made the bogus pledges with their eyes on some flood contracts they could get. And as soon as it wasn’t forthcoming, the flood victims may jolly well go to hell (where they would stay dry). So, for all they care, the committee can broadcast their names on CNN!

    Once again, I implore the Dangote/Agbakoba committee to come up with their own strategy on how to deploy the funds they have raised in order to guarantee some level of transparency and best corporate practices which is grossly lacking in the states disbursements.

    Since the flood relief fund which the states are spending (or have spent) came from the federal government, it is only appropriate that the federal legislative organs or the relevant federal government institution carry out an inquisition on how the flood money has been spent by the states.

    Another rainy season is already here and the meteorological agency has repeatedly warned that this year’s flood could be more devastating, yet the money released to help victims attenuate the impact has been hardly accounted for. What a shame!

    • Nwosu writes from Lagos

     

  • Oguta by-election: matters arising

    Oguta in Imo State has become a metaphor for all that is wrong with our electoral process. More than two years after elections were conducted into state assemblies, it has remained a daunting task for any election to be successfully concluded in that constituency. Last week’s re-run, illustrates most poignantly, the bad example Oguta has become in the nation’s desire to enthrone free and fair polls.

    This sordid record is not entirely new, as the area is home to politicians very notorious for their awesome technology in election rigging and falsification of results. There was a time when election results were written in private homes and hotel rooms even before voting commenced. But all that suffered serious reverses with the insistence by President Jonathan on the principles of one man one vote and general awareness by the electorate for their votes to count. But the behemoths will not let go.

    We have seen how that principle succeeded in demystified prominent politicians in parts of the country as they failed to deliver their wards despite purported claims to huge electoral value.

    The turn of events in Oguta is the predictable outcome of a bad habit that has refused to give way. It is not surprising that the latest election ran into troubled waters; such that it was declared inconclusive by the INEC. According to INEC resident commissioner in Imo State, Prof Celina Okoh, the election was declared inconclusive because the difference in the number of votes between the first and second candidate which stood at 2,011 was lower than the 4,861 registered voters in the remaining eight polling units where election did not hold due to violence. This she said was in keeping with extant regulations in the Electoral Act.

    But this arithmetic is not as simple as it has been presented. A further examination of the ratio of those who voted in the 121 polling units will expose the glaring incongruity in canceling the entire election because of the unavailability of votes from just eight units. Going by the 4,861 registered voters in the eight units under contention, it is estimated that those who registered in the 121 units where elections held will be in the neighborhood of 73,522 voters. Of this figure, only 17,179 actually voted. This represents about 25 per cent of the total number of registered voters. So even if we calculate 25 per cent of the votes in the remaining eight units and add all of it to the figure scored by the PDP candidate in the 121 units, he will still not make it. Even then and going by the pattern of extant results, there is nothing to show that the PDP will win more votes than APGA in the remaining units. The message from this simple calculation is very clear to all. And it is that the people of Oguta have unambiguously demonstrated their preference for the APGA candidate. This must be respected.

    Governor Rochas Okorocha has cried foul blaming the turn of events as part of the grand plan by the PDP controlled government and INEC to rob APGA of its victory. He said APGA won with 9,595 votes as against 7,584 by the PDP in the 121 polling units where election results were collated. The governor also argued that if at all the need arose for any repeat; it should be confined to the eight units where polling did not take place. The last point is unassailable as it draws huge support from the calculations above.

    However, the PDP has equally accused the INEC of collaborating with APGA to rig the election, claiming that its candidate won. It accused APGA of masterminding the irregularities that stalled voting in the eight units. So the game of recrimination continues. From the point of view of both parties, the INEC has issues to resolve concerning its conduct of that election.

    This is about the third time elections into that constituency will turn out unsuccessful since April 2011. Events in Oguta raise serious questions not only on the commitment of the Jonathan administration to free and fair elections but more importantly INEC’s capacity to conduct credible polls. Moreover, reports of late arrival of voting materials in an election involving only a local government, amount to a scandal of unmitigated proportion. And when this is paired with the reported militarization of the local government through massive deployment of soldiers and armoured personnel carriers, it becomes more puzzling why the touted violence could not be contained for the election to proceed unhindered.

    Matters were also not helped by the so-called Abuja politicians comprising elected and appointed officers. They were reported to have stormed Oguta in convoys with their retinue of heavily armed security personnel who added to the tension that characterized the election. Ironically, most of these people had no business in Oguta as they are not even from that local government. Why INEC shut its eyes to the impudence of these politicians and the regulation that no security officer should come to the polling units with arms as was done in previous elections, is one issue that must be thoroughly investigated. Good thing, President Jonathan feels sufficiently concerned by this show of shame that he has tasked the security agencies and INEC to fish out those responsible for the violence. In this task, the first people to arrest are the so-called Abuja politicians, most of them members of the PDP who had no business in Oguta on that day. INEC must summon the courage to bring this category of politicians to book now it is at the receiving end from both parties. Any inquisition that ignores the brazen impunity displayed by these elected federal legislators will be patently meaningless. They are known and their presence and activities in Oguta on that fateful day cannot be denied.

    It has become paramount to check the impunity of these category people who have found it hard to part ways with their decadent and ruinous pasts. The way this singular incident is handled, will send signals as what to expect come 2015. It is either those responsible for this mess are brought to book or we should be prepared for the soaking of the baboons and the dogs in blood as has been forewarned.

    Oguta has become something else. In the April 2011 governorship and state assembly elections, it was the epicentre of popular resistance against high- tech subterfuge by the then government in power to manipulate the outcome of the election. It was a classic test of the will power of the people to take their destiny into their hands. Such was the situation that when the electorate sensed subtle efforts by the electoral umpire in connivance with law enforcement agents to manipulate the election, they rose stoutly and resisted it. Of the 27 local governments in the state, only in that constituency did election not hold due to stiff resistance by the people against attempts to manipulate the distribution of voting materials.

    What we see in Oguta, is the surge of popular resistance against elections that do not reflect the wishes of the people. That is perhaps, what Okorocha meant when he said Oguta has never had elections before now. INEC must rise to that challenge. If it cannot declare the APGA candidate winner because of the issue earlier canvassed, it has no business canceling results from the 121 units where voting successfully held. The right thing is to reschedule voting in the remaining eight units. We have a precedent in the same state to rely on. Canceling the entire results will amount to a plot to procure victory for the PDP through unwholesome means.

  • From revolution with love

    From revolution with love

    Not many Nigerians eyed with enthusiasm the rumbles in Tahrir Square in Egypt last week. Not many are glued to it even now, in spite of the earthquake significance for the Nigerian political earth. It is not a revolution for the young alone. Its rage dissolves hierarchies. About the French revolution, the poet William Wordsworth crooned that “bliss it was that dawn to be alive/ to be young was very heaven.” Wordsworth wrote bliss that did not belong to the French Revolution. Not after the guillotine of paranoia that saw head after head fly out of bodies as hysteric crowds cheered with the glee of hyenas.

    As I write, the revolution has nothing of the neatness of theory, about one order going for the anointing of the new. Revolutions are not sacraments. Often they carry the mournful halo of butcheries. Don’t forget the other ones, including the Russian and Chinese revolutions. They woke up their societies, teased them with dreams of a promised land and, through waves of blood, anger and destruction, returned them to their default pennies and penuries, to their inequities and inequalities.

    That is why this writer is wary of revolutions. The best revolutions are reforms that over long periods become revolutions. So we can talk of the American Revolution not in terms of the result of the war that ousted England, but the country that resulted over 50 years later and became the model for other nations. The non-political ones like the industrial or scientific revolutions did not appear so until late in the day.

    So while many call for revolution Egypt style, I applaud their passion for Nigeria. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, called for it last week. I love a revolution for Nigeria. But unlike many, I think we wax romantic about this subject. We are not close to a revolution.

    Nigerians are too happy for a revolution. We love our tribes too much for a revolution. We love God too much for a revolution. We love our suffering, as master masochists, so we prefer the pain now to paradise tomorrow. We sniff crude oil every day, and the greatest tragedy is that we love oil too much to contemplate a revolution.

    We have never in our history manifested, in any collective way, a revolutionary ferment. We have only pretended it. We have only romanticised it, like in the June 12 struggles and the charade of a labour standoff we had about a year ago. We lack the spirit of endurance and the sense of sacrifice that embroiled Egypt last week and compelled an elected officer who was president to make an apology of a broadcast after dealing a high hand in the fashion of a pharaoh.

    The point though is not that Nigeria is not ripe for a revolution. We are. The problem is that we are too ripe for a revolution. The translation is that we have passed a situation that could have driven other societies to the streets. But we escaped every chance for a revolution. I think three reasons account for this.

    One, tribe. I try not to use the stylised word ethnicism, because what assails us in Nigeria is tribal. The hate in the air that divides us is savage. It is like the loss of innocence dramatised in the Nobel Prize-winning novel, Lord of the Flies. Hatred is no longer hatred if the other group does not fall and die. I recall the old national anthem, “though tribes and tongues may differ/ in brotherhood we stand.” We sang that anthem before we killed each other in a fratricidal war. We see this now in the Niger Delta, in Plateau State, and in the blood fest of Boko Haram around the North. We see it all the time in election cycles.

    The second is religion. I am a Christian, but I see Pentecostalism and the Islamic fundamentalism as twin villains of the day. We are compelled to see Nigeria as the kingdom of God, and we place emphasis on individual redemption as against collective liberation. This contradicts Bible injunctions, but individual salvation should not counter collective bliss. We should be our brother’s keepers. But the religious leaders key into the capitalist ethos to profit from the misery of the day. The consequence is a lack of insistence on change but in finding individual escape routes. It is always “my God, or my Allah.” As Max Weber wrote, capitalism preys on individual piety. The religions as they are practised endorse the status quo.

    The third is oil. Oil reminds me of a story in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. In the centre of a town near Paris before the city quakes under a revolution, a big vat of wine cracks on a rock. It leaks in furious temptation. Everyone scurries to have a share. Those with cups come. Those with buckets come. Ditto those with handkerchiefs. Everyone has their share of the drink. They thrill to this inebriate heaven. Mothers dance with their children. They make circles; and men, women and children rejoice in the liquid spell. But drink comes to an end, the alcohol clears and the whole society regains sobriety. Farmer goes back to farm, mother remembers where she leaves the child, seamstress defaults to her tools, etc. The party is over, and sadly they embrace the repressed reality again. That is what oil means to us. In one way or another, oil defers our engagement with our misery.

    Today we have to face it. Nigerians have not suffered enough. You would think the depredations of Boko Haram would trigger something. Nope. You would think that the stealing of treasuries everywhere would awaken us to integrity. No way. Somebody said recently that the kidnappings indicate our closeness as the poor are sending signals to the rich. But I believe the kidnappers are not thinking about ruffling the rich but want to be rich too. They don’t detest the rich and their corruption. They just want to be like them. That is not revolutionary.

    I think the thieves should steal more. The roads should decay more. The hospitals should be worse than consulting clinics but chambers of death, although they already are. The schools should churn out more illiterates and the bridges should collapse everywhere. Tribal strife should descend to deeper atavistic savagery. The Americans and Europeans should ban us from living in their countries but they won’t. They want our money. We should have a government that gambles all our oil to another country or firm in the West or China. We shall wake up one morning to see that our country is in a shipwreck and all of us are sinking together and there is no one with a God to pray to and a fat bank account to latch on to. We become dependent on our collective salvation.

    Then by our actions, we will begin a meaningful conversation about revolution. Meanwhile, we have a party in which some have wines costing a million naira and others are staggering on paraga, a local brew, or apetesi. Make your choice.

    I despair at this scenario. We are too adept at creating illusory heavens out of hell. So, let us just dream. A dream can be an end in itself. So let us just dream about it, and see Egypt on television.

  • Here’s to all fathers

    Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: it’s no wonder the world is in this sorry state

    My salute to all fathers today is a little belated, considering that Fathers’ Day was celebrated the third week of last month, but as I always say, better late than never. Besides, you know the kind of present that I value most? It’s the kind that comes unexpectedly, is late, and is very expensive. Ah! great is the quality of the surprise that one brings. Now, onto our story.

    To many children, fathers are the breadwinners of the family. He just seems to represent that part of the family tree where money seems to spring from. This is why it is difficult for children to believe that money does not grow on trees. It does; it grows on the father’s side of the family tree. Oh, I’ve said that, haven’t I? it is because when children need to buy a loaf of bread, ‘go ask daddy’; when they need to buy school uniforms, ‘go ask daddy’; when the family needs a car, ‘we’ll ask daddy’; when the family needs a jet, who else can we ask? Happily, the story is changing these days. Now, it is possible to ask mummy for money for bread too but we’ll talk about this some other day.

    Fathers also represent safety. Oh, there is no measuring the great amount of comfort a child gets when he/she knows daddy is near, particularly in a thunderstorm, or in the face of external threats, or in the face of internal threats such as mummy. You would not believe just how much children rely on those muscles. A father said he had to take his son to the hospital for one ailment or the other. When the doctors took the son over and started pricking and jabbing him, the son felt very let down that the father did not rescue him from the wicked doctors with those strong muscles of his.

    Sometimes, those muscles are used to instil discipline via the cane, and that is when things take unnatural turns and confusions set in. A father recounted how his child looked at him with horror when he had to apply corporal punishment. He said he might as well have brought out the knife.

    If we were to ask young children what their fathers represent to them, many of them would surprise us. They would talk about the words associated with their fathers, mannerisms they best remember about them, the names they call them, but more importantly, the image they represent in the house. I read in one book that a child said they called their father ‘Moses’ in their house because every morning, he called the family together and gave them the ten commandments for the day. So, when they saw him coming, they would go ‘Here comes Moses with the tablet of stone’, and he would go, ‘If I ever see you playing with my comb again …’ Another child said they called their father ‘General X, Supreme Commander’. He was fond of barking his commands at them: GET OUT OF THAT CHAIR! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! GO AND BUY ME AN ENVELOPE! All too often, the children quaked and shook uncontrollably at the sound of his voice. Another child said their father was God. He was too fond of saying, ‘Listen, I made you and I can unmake you. You came from inside my body and you can pretty well go back in there.’ Such sweet daddies, these, no?

    Truth is, fathers stand for many frightening things to their children, all too often because those fathers inherited the genes of fright from their own fathers who got them from their fathers who got them from their own fathers, ad infinitum. At the sound of a father’s voice, the child goes into throes of terror and the father goes away thinking ‘Yeah, that’s how to stay in control of the ship: tolerate no dissension from the ranks’. Want to know the truth? Most children tend to see their fathers as being capable of eating them up if they do not do as they are told. That voice is just too scaaaaaary!

    I best remember my father for many things: provisions, a bank account that just never seemed to flow too well in my direction, and THE LOOK. My father rarely applied the cane on us children but he generously applied THE LOOK. THE LOOK was the eye of steel which spelt only one thing: disapproval. Most times, that was all it took for us to want to sink beneath ground level and just disappear from the face of the earth. You took what did not belong to you, you got THE LOOK; you said what you were not supposed to say, you got THE LOOK; you did what you were not supposed to do such as failing your exams, you got that soul, spirit and body crushing LOOK that wordlessly said, ‘Consider yourself slapped and maimed for that thoughtless action’. That look, I must confess, has saved me from many a scrape and has kept me well towed and reigned in. True, I have got into other scrapes in spite of it, but who knows, there might have been more without it. Even now that he is dead and gone, THE LOOK lives on in my husband. Viva la LOOK!

    So, where would we be without our big, bad wolves, particularly since they rule the world?! Oh yes, your world, nations and states’ rulers are all fathers, I think. Let’s face it, some among them are not very successful fathers at home, since sometimes, children sort of develop immunity against the voices, muscles and looks, and just go their own merry ways. Sometimes, though, it’s the fathers who fail to apply the voice, muscle and look and choose to go their own merry way, preferring to give their talents to the nation or the world or drink or partying while the mother rules the home. When one woman and her daughter heard that the head of their home had been appointed into a government post, they both laughed. He had no clout to command at home. Many unsuccessful fathers are today ruling the world, and only one deduction can come from that: no wonder the world is in this sorry state.

    There are many homes which have no fathers for one reason or the other: death, divorce or desertion and it is clear in such instances that their places and shoes are empty. This is because nature has designed that they should be there. Where mothers are absent, their places and shoes would also be empty because nature has so designed that they also should be there. Natural creation of complementarities has stipulated roles for each divide. Fathers are the last bastion of discipline: ‘Junior, if you don’t drop that knife, your father will visit you this evening with the belt’ produces instant compliance. In the same way, mothers are the last bastion of love: ‘Junior, try and understand your daddy, he means well; now come and take a slice of bread’.

    No doubt, fathers mean well for us, in spite of their ways. That is the way nature designed them to be: furious, angry, whirlwinds; we would like to take them just as they are if they remember that homes are supposed to be havens not hotspots; wives are to be loved, not flung across the room like balls and children are to be assisted to grow up to be what they want to be, not forced into prepared jackets that fit the father’s ambition. All the world cannot be my red shoes. So, here’s a toast to all fathers: may your days be long, your cups be full, your voices stay strong and your LOOKS remain compelling. VIVA THATA LOOKA!

  • Senators and their unusual passion

    Senators and their unusual passion

    Of the two houses of the National Assembly, the Senate is the place where you are less likely to find unbridled passion. You can count the number of times when things threatened to spin out of control. One occasion was the ‘burial ceremony’ for former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda.

    The ‘officiating minister’ was then Senate President Ken Nnamani. Even in such heady circumstances, the best senators could come up with were comedy skits – like Adolphus Wabara’s speech mocking the then president before voting ‘no’. When the gavel finally came down it was to off-key chants of something akin to a football match victory song.

    But for pure, undiluted passion you have to go to the ‘Green Chamber’ where the House of Representatives sits. Over time, in their bid to resolve thorny issues, punches have been thrown and furniture hurled in all directions.

    Sometimes the passion in the House gets deadly. When the so-called Integrity Group decided in 2007 to overthrow then Speaker Patricia Etteh, the chamber was split down the middle. One legislator who opposed the insurrection was dragged on the floor and dumped outside the chamber. Dino Melaye, the Speaker’s most vocal advocate, had his expensive shirt shredded. For the late Aminu Safana, another loyalist of the embattled regime, it was all too much: he slumped and gave up the ghost.

    Many have sought to make sense of the difference in character of the two chambers and have come to a few plausible conclusions. Senators are fewer in number and tend to be older. The House, on the other hand, accommodates over 400, much younger individuals. The youth factor means there will be hundreds with very low boiling points – making for a very combustible chamber.

    Against this backdrop, you can imagine my surprise watching on television as two senators tugged at each other’s voluminous babanrigas – waiting to let fly with jabs and uppercuts. We were denied what was turning out to be quite superb entertainment by the spoilsport intervention of a couple of peacemaking senators.

    The day after the aborted senatorial boxing match I read accounts of what provoked the altercation, but came away even more confused. Some said the fight was triggered by the debate over President Goodluck Jonathan’s failure to sign a bill requiring him to deliver a state of the nation address yearly at the National Assembly.

    Another version blamed it on the charged discussion over plans by Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, to arm a local militia as part of his administration’s efforts to curb spiraling crime.

    For me, what was important was not legislators getting excited once in a while: we’ve seen them do similar things in places as far afield as Turkey and South Korea. What was great was that debate was shifting – even if for a day – from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) agonies.

    It was great to see our lawmakers at work. But what work?

    Before the shoving incident, the legislative business on everyone’s lips was the amendment of the 1999 constitution. But of all Nigeria’s most pressing problems the highlight of that exercise from the Senate end was a proposal limiting executive tenure to a single six-year term. Now, we can add another priority item to the lawmakers’ list of achievements – a bill requiring the president to deliver one more boring speech.

    Not to be outdone, the House committee saddled with the same constitution-tweaking assignment has rolled out its own recommendations. One move guaranteed to generate much discussion is the proposal to strip executive office holders of immunity.

    The question I ask myself is: who cares about immunity? In a country of 160 million people those likely to be directly affected by this provision are less than 100. Even if you impeach and jail all of Nigeria’s governors it will not resolve our electricity crisis.

    How many government officials who don’t presently enjoy this constitutional protection from prosecution – be they in legislative houses or some parastatal – have been brought to book? Removing the immunity clause is no guarantee that there will be diligent prosecution, or that men would swear off crime, or corruption will suddenly plummet.

    I would feel much better if it is established that dueling senators nearly came to blows over the Zamfara security question. Insecurity is an issue for which the political establishment has not come up with anything that approximates an answer. Yari’s proposal may be unorthodox and even dangerous, but at least he’s come up with an idea.

    Boko Haram is the screaming advertisement of Nigeria’s crisis of insecurity. But far from the frontlines of terror in the North-East, the country lies prostrate before an army of armed robbers, kidnappers, pirates, illegal bunkerers, ethnic militias and sundry malcontents.

    National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), speaking at the National Civil-Military Dialogue in Abuja a few days ago painted a picture of the gravity of the situation. He said terrorism and other security challenges had thrust the armed forces into joint operations with the police and other para-military outfits in 28 states. That is all of Nigeria bar eight states!

    It is an unusual situation when soldiers get involved with internal policing; it is an emergency when an ad-hoc measure becomes the norm. Our embrace of the unusual is admission that the Nigeria Police as presently constituted cannot deliver on internal security.

    We should be asking why our police are so overwhelmed. At over 400,000 men ours must be one of the largest national police forces in the world. Yet the force is hobbled by its structure, underfunding as well as manipulation by political office holders.

    Those who are unnerved by Yari’s armed militia have not come up with a more creative alternative. Their solution is as lame as they come: post most policemen to Zamfara. The question is what difference have they made in the states where they are supposedly found in numbers.

    Nigeria is too complex to continue to operate one national force. Even the British who once ran the police here don’t have one national organisation, but city and community outfits like the London Metropolitan Police and others.

    The exchanges involving Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi and the Police Commissioner, Joseph Mbu, are further evidence that the present structure has long overshot its sell-by date.

    A situation where a supposed chief security officer of state cannot give instructions to the resident police boss is impractical. You can extrapolate and envision a scenario in which the Inspector-General of Police doesn’t take instructions from the president – but from some higher powers elsewhere.

    It all brings the state police solution front and center of the discussion. The Federal Government cannot fund the police adequately. The force is running in most states because of the benevolent intervention of governors.

    People say states are not sensible enough to manage their own police, yet they are mature enough to fund the force. Managing the police is no different from running any other human organisation. The fact that they bear arms is irrelevant. What is needed is definition of the parameters under which state police will operate.

    Yari’s proposal in Zamfara is a crude form of local policing. But rather than burying our heads in the sand and hoping that the Nigeria Police will suddenly become effective, let’s admit that times like these call for more radical solutions.

    Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba who understands what we’re saying nailed it in the senate last week when he said it was time to look again at the state police idea. Here’s hoping his colleagues can overcome their fears and embrace the future.

  • People’s revolution or military coup?

    People’s revolution or military coup?

    Time will tell in Egypt

    As at last Monday when the Egyptian military gave a 48-hour ultimatum to ousted President Mohammed Morsi to end that country’s political crisis or the military would intervene to do just that, it was almost certain that the former president’s days in office were numbered. There were no indications that he could do any magic to end the political crisis within that period because that was a thing he had not been able to do in months past. So, it was mere formality when finally the military abruptly ended Morsi’s presidency on Wednesday, at the expiration of the 48-hour ultimatum.

    Of course to Egyptians, it was both good and bad news, depending on which side of the divide the people are. While the opposition saw the fall of Morsi presidency as good riddance to bad rubbish, his supporters cried foul, insisting that what the military did amounted to a coup, even if disguised as a call to national service that the soldiers said it was. This is to be expected: one man’s food is another man’s poison. So, the debate will be on for some time as to whether the military acted right or it should have allowed the democratic process to run its full course.

    What cannot be denied however is that President Morsi was no longer able to hold the country together. That was not all, he also (as the army chief, Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi who announced the sacking of the government noted), had “failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people”. The good thing though is that the military did not replace Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president with one of its own, but rather gave the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, the task of “running the country’s affairs during the transitional period until the election of a new president”. Of course Egypt is now too sophisticated for a soldier to take over in the circumstance. Gen al-Sisi also spoke of a new roadmap for the future; needless to say that the military suspended the constitution even as it pledged new elections following about four days of mass protests called by the Tamarod (Rebel) movement, in response to worsening social and economic conditions.

    For a president that came into power on June 30, 2012, after winning an election considered free and fair, following the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, it is too early to expect miracles on the economic plain. But Morsi could have done better, at least on the political front. Unfortunately, his tenure was marred by constant political unrest and a further sinking economy. Morsi compounded his woes when last November he issued a controversial constitutional declaration granting him extensive powers. Power, as we all know, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This naturally led to a growing discontent which was exacerbated by his moves to entrench Islamic laws and concentrate power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, a thing that irked and eventually alienated liberals and secularists. It would appear that the deposed president forgot that he was Egypt’s president and not president of just one segment of the country.

    Whilst not necessarily romanticising Morsi’s removal by the military, there are immediate lessons for Nigeria and other countries to learn from the development. The most usual lesson is that good governance has no substitute. It was lack of it that led to the unceremonious exit of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Unfortunately, Morsi who succeeded him did not seem to realise the need to build bridges across the socio-political divides. We are seeing signs of such ethnic jingoism in our politics, with ethnic champions taking over presidential battles as if it was only votes from their ethnic regions that brought the president to office. Morsi who had just about 51 percent of votes cast in the election that brought him to power last year ought to have known that his presidency was not standing on any particularly solid rock and that he needed to extend a hand of fellowship across political and other divides..

    For sure, Nigerian leaders have a lot to learn from the developments in Egypt. This is not necessarily about the military intervention but more about how the deposed president handled the crisis. Reports already say that Mr Morsi might be tried for the violent manner in which he handled the protests, especially in the front of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters. As a matter of fact, some crimes allegedly committed by the deposed leader are now being raked up, which is not unusual when a man has fallen from grace to grass the way Morsi has. But then, the soldiers and the country’s new leadership have to be careful. As things stand, it is unlikely that Mr Morsi’s supporters will simply fold their arms and allow matters to lie low. Already, there have been violent reactions and these may continue for some time. The implication is that today’s leaders in Egypt too might be tempted to use force to quell the protests and this may open their flanks to accusations of high-handedness that they are accusing Morsi of.

    Although the last may not have been heard about the removal of Morsi, the point is, the military remains a force to reckon with in Egypt’s political calculations. This is evident in the cheap manner in which Mr Morsi was deposed. The soldiers not only gave notice that they would sack the government; they moved at the expiration of that notice and got the government out. Apart from Morsi’s supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood that have been crying foul and alleging that its leaders and supporters were being harassed by the opposition, perhaps in cahoots with the military, other people have been jubilating. So, in the final analysis, what did the extensive powers that Mr Morsi gave himself in November amount to if they could not rescue him when the soldiers finally struck? He was removed like a chicken and left to fight back only on Facebook, where he was asking the same people that he polarised to ignore the soldiers. That must have been a rhetorical statement, given the reactions on the streets of Cairo immediately after his deposition and even from the critical segments of the international community.

    All said, for a country reputed by some historians to have ‘tasted the fruits of civilisation while Europe was still groping in darkness’, there is still need for more political consciousness in Egypt that will deepen democracy by allowing the institutions to work and make it possible for incompetent leaders to be removed through the democratic process. How sweet would it have been if Morsi had been removed through the democratic process? Now, it is the word of the Egyptian military versus that of the Muslim Brotherhood and others who might be sympathisers of the Morsi administration. While the latter claim that what happened was a coup, the former (military) saw their action as a patriotic duty to Fatherland to prevent the country from slipping into an avoidable civil war. Yet, both may be right. For, as far as the Muslim Brotherhood is concerned, democracy is good for everyone else but them. Yet, if the crisis in the country degenerates into a civil war, it is like when heaven falls; it won’t discriminate. The soldiers have promised that the matter won’t get out of hands. How they handle the situation in the coming weeks, perhaps months, will go a long way to determine whether the country will ever be itself again.

  • Wimbledon 2013: reflections on an ‘open era’ that is only conditionally ‘open’

    Wimbledon 2013: reflections on an ‘open era’ that is only conditionally ‘open’

    [For Yusuf Oyeniran, in remembrance of things past; and for Lawrence Awopegba]

    Thursday, July 4, 2013. It is only three days now to Sunday, July 7, the day on which the men’s finals will be played to mark the completion of Wimbledon 2013. That day also happens to be the day on which this article will appear in print.

    I confess it: my passion for watching tennis on television, especially the so-called “grand slams” (Wimbledon; the French Open; the US Open; and the Australian Open) is nearly all-consuming, so much so that my friend, Femi Osofisan, teases me all the time about it. A few years ago, a younger colleague, Professor Wumi Raji of the University of Benin, called me by phone while I was watching one of these “grand slams” and upon my telling him that we had to conclude our conversation quickly as I was watching a tennis “grand slam” on TV, he immediately sent me an email message after he hung up on the phone to tell me how greatly “relieved” he was to discover that I actually had something to do for relaxation other than reading and writing all the time! The next time that I spoke with him by phone I told him that apparently, there is a lot about me of which he knows little or nothing, the passion for watching tennis ‘slams” being only one of them.

    With regard to watching tennis, there are only three other things that I watch with equal interest or attention on TV: world news; football; and independent, experimental films from around the world. Since watching world news is fairly routine and is more or less an everyday affair of no more than two hours on any given day, it stands apart from the others on its own. Watching football needs little explanation, for where and who is the Nigerian, the African, the denizen of planet earth who is not hooked by this game that is, by a long shot, the preferred viewership sport for most of the nations and peoples of the world? Apart from this, a talent for soccer runs in my family and three of my siblings actually went on to become professional football players after the years of boyhood and teenage when talent either fades away or blossoms into a professional occupation. I did play football beyond my teens, but my interest in it as a potential occupational candidate for what I would do with my life ended with my membership of the winning soccer team of Kuti Hall, U.I. of 1968. As for watching independent, experimental films from around the world, I picked up the habit when, as a first-year doctoral candidate at New York University, I took courses in Cinema Studies and discovered that commercial Hollywood and Bollywood, “Indian” films did not have the last word in filmmaking. This account leaves the passion for watching tennis that is the subject of this piece as the one interest, the one consuming viewership-recreational habit of mine whose comprehension is anything but simple and uncomplicated. Let me explain.

    The life experience that serves as the origin of this passion is nothing if not filled with enigma. It can be stated succinctly before going into an attempt at interpreting what it means, what it portends. For in all my life so far, I played tennis actively for only three years, 1962, 1963 and 1964; that is all. I neither played it before those particular years nor I have I played it since then. But in those three years, I gloried endlessly in playing it. To be precise, 1963 and 1964 were the true vintage years, for it was only in those years when I moved from what was called a “day student” to a “boarder” that I found the time, the opportunity to play tennis to my heart’s content. And I became very good at it. Now, two things stand out in this experience that, to this day, still astonishes me. First, I was completely self-taught: from the moment when, at my school, Ibadan Boys High School, I watched senior boys playing the sport, I was hooked and it was only a matter of time before I picked up a tennis racket and more or less taught myself not only how to play the game but how to play it gracefully and masterfully. Secondly, there were no regular “lawn tennis” competitions in our secondary schools in Ibadan at the time. Athletics, yes; football, yes; hockey, yes; even cricket, yes, but only exclusively among the elite schools. But tennis, no; a big no.

    I have not made any systematic research into the matter and so I do admit that there might have been competitions in the sport in the schools in the past. But in my time in secondary school in the early 1960s, there certainly were no competitions in the schools of the Western Region in “lawn tennis”. And this lent an “anonymity”, a selectivity to those of us among the student population who played the game. Since there were no intra-school and inter-school competitions, we could never achieve fame playing the game and for that reason, not too many pupils gravitated to the sport. I apparently did not know it at the time, but I must have liked this “anonymity”, this self-selectivity about tennis as I knew it, played it and grew passionate about it then. One of the two men to whom this piece is dedicated, Yusuf Oyeniran, was among this select company of students at my school who, above all others, stands out in my memory as the person with whom I played some of my toughest and most exhilarating matches. [Yusuf Oyeniran, you and I live in this same Ibadan, but how strange that we have not set eyes on each other since 1964, how strange!]

    The thing that intrigues me the most is the fact that as I much as I loved the sport and was very good at it, I never played it again after 1964, my last year in secondary school. This is all the more intriguing since in all the universities in which I have taught over the decades – Ibadan, Ife, Cornell, Harvard – there were excellent courts and facilities for indulging myself to my heart’s desire if I wanted to play tennis. Sometimes I wonder if the circumstance of being expelled from school in my very last term just before I took my West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) had something to do with this enigma. This expulsion occurred because, allegedly, I led a revolt of the students against the school authorities, a revolt that was unprecedented in the school’s history up to that time. One consequence of this expulsion was that I “grew up” rather precipitously and left all “childish” things behind, tennis being in my mind at the time one of these things.

    I confess that, ultimately, I do not know. All I know is that although I left tennis more or less for good in 1964, tennis never left me. And this is where my reflections in this piece connects that enigmatic past with what I have been thinking this week as I have been deeply absorbed by watching Wimbledon 2013. Perhaps it was the relatively early dispatch of Serena Williams from the competition, for this year in watching Wimbledon I have been forcefully struck by the fact that tennis is the only world sport that I like in which, with the exception of Africans of the Diaspora, Africans from the continent itself are inversely notable only by their total absence. Kevin Anderson and a few other white male and female players are there but that’s about it. The matter would have been of little or no consequence to me if, like Rugby, the sport is hardly played in the cities and towns of African countries. But tennis is played in Africa. It is played in universities and polytechnics. It is played by “officers and gentlemen” of the armed services in some barracks. There are even Tennis Clubs in major cities of the continent, even if we must admit that most, if not all the players are amateurs, not professionals. And let us not forget that this country has produced a Lawrence Awopegba, the other man to whom this piece is dedicated, who shone brightly at regional and international competitions, as did others like David Imonite, Nduka Odizor and Sadiq Abdulahi. But tennis in our country and our continent has never found an institutional home in which competitive professionalism could grow. And this is where the question of the so-called ‘open era’ of world tennis comes into these reflections.

    According to the historians of world tennis, the ‘open era’ that began in 1968 sets off the present decisively from the past, pre-open era when amateur players were the only ones allowed to participate in competitive tennis, the “grand slams” included. In other words, prior to 1968 when the ‘open era’ began, money was not a big factor in world tennis as only amateurs competed in the “slams”. With the coming of the ‘open era’ the organization of the sport entered into an entirely new epoch, though this happened not all at once but gradually. Many things stand out and cry for attention in this historic transformation from one era to another: a phenomenal increase in prize money; the industry responsible for manufacturing equipment and gear for the sport became more and more monopolistic, casting a long shadow over virtually every aspect of the sport; rights to radio and television broadcasts became more and more lucrative; advertizing brands penetrated the on-court and off-court identities of the most gifted players; the players themselves self-organized into rich and powerful associations. Roger Federer or Maria Sharapova are not simply Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova; they are franchises, brands whose off-court marketability are as important as the dazzling and powerful talent that these iconic players display on the courts.

    I hope that it would not have escaped the notice of the reader that 1964, the last year in which I actively and passionately played tennis, is not far from 1968, the year in which the ‘open era’ in world tennis began. I look around me in Nigeria and I find that the organization of tennis as a competitive sport has hardly changed from 1964. For the most part, there are still hardly any truly professional tennis players of note in our continent, always excepting the special case of South Africa. More pertinently, the organization of the sport in our continent has not yet acceded to the level of a cottage industry, let alone talk of a small or medium scale enterprise. The ‘open era’ does not mean that amateurs are excluded from world tennis, but they don’t stand even the ghost of a chance in the prevailing context of the dominance of combined finance, industrial and service capital in the organization of the sport, especially in the “grand slams”. Increasingly, East European and Asian professional players are holding their own against the previously dominant players of Western Europe and the United States. Of all the regions of the world, our continent is the only one that is yet to record a noticeable presence in world tennis. The fact that diasporic Africans like the Williams sisters, Jo-Wilfred Tsonga, Giles Monfils, James Blake, Sloane Stephens and so many others are there with the very best players means that there is nothing “racial” about our non-presence in world tennis.

    For me, this is one of the most compelling proofs that Nigeria is not yet a middle-income economy, for only in the true middle-income economies of the world do professional tennis players have all the material and organisational support systems they need to thrive. But let us keep hope alive. As the ubiquitous, streetwise saying puts it, no condition is permanent, compatriot.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu