The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • In America: A sad day for civil rights

    In America: A sad day for civil rights

    Last week, as the civil rights community and African Americans in particular awaited the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County vHolder, the mind called up an incident that had occurred some 19 years earlier, in 1994.

    I was on assignment in Washington, D.C., and had gone to the sprawling Barnes & Noble Bookstore downtown during a break, more to feed my eyes than to purchase all those seminal books I wished I could add to my collection, based on their rave reviews and the reputation of their authors.

    As I was leafing through one volume, I noticed a middle-aged man stop as he approached me from the other end of the aisle, take a close look at me, and then move one. When he went through this procedure a second time, and then a third, I could hardly contain my discomfort.

    On his fourth round, he stopped just a few feet from me, and taking my full measure with his eyes, said, in a voice that was non-threatening but inquiring: “Sir, would you be Justice Clarence Thomas?”

    I still had a fairly decent head of hair and a moustache sprinkled with grey, was roughly of the same age, and might indeed be thought to bear some resemblance to the contemporary associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the second black person to hold that distinction.

    My discomfort grew into panic.

    The last person you want to be mistaken for in progressive circles or in the African American community is Justice Clarence Thomas. In his three years on the Court, he had more than earned the denunciation that greeted his nomination and the vilification that dogged his confirmation hearings. He was the polar opposite of the great legal icon he was named to replace, Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom The New York Times described on his retirement as “a model and a monument.”

    If word went round that Thomas was in the neighbourhood, there was no knowing what might follow. Any trace of panic on my part could make matters worse.

    So, I summoned my voice at its most untroubled, looked my interlocutor in eye and said, “No, sir. I am not Justice Thomas. I do not know him. I have never met him. I have never . . .”

    Apparently sensing my deep unease, he cut in.

    “You are not Justice Thomas, I can tell,” he said. “You have an accent.”

    Was I mightily relieved!

    But the feeling was short-lived. As if determined to prolong my agony, he said, almost off-handedly, “But you sure look like him.”

    As soon as he turned the corner, I dropped the book, ran out of the store and jumped into the first available taxicab.

    To return to Shelby County v Holder, the case that called forth the foregoing recollections: the case originated in a petition by a county in Alabama, a state with an odious record of racial discrimination, urging the courts to strike down a law that bars nine states from changing their voting laws in ways that could disenfranchise residents without the approval of the United States Department of Justice.

    The law, revalidated by the Court’sunanimous decision in 2006, was enacted as part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made it possible for generations of African Americans to register to vote for the first time, without having to pass stultifying literacy tests and without having to show that they owned property.

    The tests were so brazenly manipulated that very few even among educated and propertied African Americans could pass them, leading a frustrated the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., to complain that, at the rate at which it was being carried out, voter registration of the black residents of the state of Alabama would take about 150 years.

    Some five decades later, the right to vote continues to be circumscribed, especially in states controlled by the Republicans, in ways that on their face seem to apply to the general population but are at bottom designed to suppress the votes of African Americans and Latinos who tend to support the Democrats.

    It is notorious, for example, that African Americans generally flock to voting centres to cast early ballots after Sunday worship. To prevent that, some states outlawed Sunday voting. In a variation of that theme, they also cut early voting so drastically that, as happened last November, voters in many cities had to wait in line eight hours to cast their ballots, a steep price for persons at the lower end of the economic scale.

    In yet another variation of that theme, the Republican majority in many states redrew electoral districts in such a way as to dilute the black vote and make the election of African Americans or a Democrat virtually impossible. So that, today, although Republican candidates polled at least a million votes fewer than Democratic candidates, they hold a commanding majority in the U. S. House of Representatives.

    It took spirited legal challenge mounted by disaffected citizens, with the backing of the Justice Department, to block the enforcement of the more brazen of these voter suppression laws during the 2012 U.S. General Elections.

    Scarcely five months later, a county in Alabama – a state in which an election was cancelled recently because an African American was favoured to win despite all the mago mago – was asking the Supreme Court to void the federal law mandating Department of Justice to vet changes of that kind to the state electoral laws.

    Last week, a month to the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and its highpoint, Dr King’shistoric “I Have a Dream Speech,” the Court did just that, effectively cutting the heart out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in a 5-4 ruling that seems to have been scripted from the oral arguments it had heard in March 2013.

    Chief Justice John Roberts, for the Court, said as he had said during the oral arguments, that the United States had changed to the point that the law no longer reflected current racial realities in the United Sates.

    His four fellow conservatives on the Court, including Clarence Thomas, duly concurred.

    Separately, Thomas, who as is his habit had sat impressively through the 79 minutes the oral arguments lasted and had asked no question nor demanded any clarification from attorneys to the parties,entered it as his opinion that voiding Section 4 of the Act requiring the nine states to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting laws did not go far enough.

    He said he would also have struck down Section 5, which seeks to prevent the 9 states from circumventing the prohibitions of Section 4. He went on to note gleefully that, with Section 4 voided, Section 5 had become otiose.

    In a powerful dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reached back to a speech by – who else? – Dr King about how the “moral arc of justice,” though long, “always bends justice” to admonish the Court’s majority for the great harm it had just done to civil rights and justice. Its decision, she said, was an egregious error and a disservice to Dr King’s legacy and the nation’scommit-ment to justice.

    The Court’s ruling is only the latest in a long line of illiberal judicial opinions that have curtailed class actions, made it harder to sue manufacturers of dangerous drugs, employees accused or discrimination in the work place, and, in the words of the commentator Frank Rich, continued to do “everything to permit the abridgment of the rights of minorities even as it strengthens the rights of corporations.”

    This is the company Clarence Thomas keeps and revels in.

    Planting Clarence Thomas in the Court was a masterstroke by President George W. Bush and the Conservative Establishment to slow down, if not reverse, the march of civil rights and indeed the progressive agenda in America. And it has worked beyond their most optimistic calculations.

    The first President Bush probably spoke a greater truth than he realised or intended when he declared that Thomas, who had no judicial experience whatsoever, was “the best man for the job.” Their job.

    In the African American community, there were dozens far more qualified than Thomas on every score. But none could be counted upon like Thomas then – and even now — to be the scourge to his own people.

    The U.S. Supreme Court could not have gutted perhaps the single most important piece of legislation from the civil rights era without Clarence Thomas’s collaboration. His abstention would have saved it, at least for now.

    Next time anyone in the African American community tells me that I look like Clarence Thomas, Iwill call 9-1-1.

     

    •Portions of this comment first appeared in my March 5, 2013, column, titled “In the Shadow of Rosa Parks.”

     

  • Westminster has gone mad again!

    When Nigerian playwright, Prof. Ola Rotimi (God bless his soul!), wrote his hilarious play, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, he certainly did not have Britain in mind.

    But is the Queen’s own country capable of the sick joke of a proposed visa bond targeted at former colonies in Africa and Asia: Nigeria, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka?

    The hilarity is not in Britain’s right to control its immigration. That is legitimate and serious business. It is rather in its hypocrisy of comic pretence: playing dumb that its cruel empire past has caught up with it.

    So, the mortal fear of forfeiting three thousand Pounds Sterling, courtesy of a visa bond, would keep desperate economic barbarians off their former Metropolis, when the former colonies are in all but ruins? Ah!

    Coming from a Tory government, headed by The Right Honourable David Cameron, which name ironically sounds like Cameroun, another raped victim of German, British and French colonial greed, the policy has all the notoriety of Thatcherite racism.

    But did Westminster think that after decades of blind plunder under many fanciful names – Pax Britannica, British Raj, British Pacification of the Natives, etc, etc, – citizens of its former colonies would just melt away, while the colonisers live happily ever after?

    Meanwhile, the most pleasing irony: if at the height of British imperialism the chaffing colonies screamed “Africa for Africans!” or “India for Indians!” it is sweet comeuppance Britain now wants to bawl, “Britain for the British!”, but is too hypocritically restrained, stiff-upper lip tradition, to scream! Hence, Mr. Cameron’s proposed racist policy. But good to know the Brits also cry!

    Still, you must feel their anguish. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born Al-Qaeda terrorist who gained global notoriety as the “Underwear Bomber” despite his failed mission, used the Queen’s own city as his own Londonistan to savour hate sermons and hone his terror skills.

    Then, the evil Michaels: Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, Islamist twin-loonies ironically bearing the Christian name of the fiery archangel, and GOC of the heavenly hosts, Angel Michael. The loonies subjected the holy streets of London to the most profane slaughter of a British soldier, Drummer Officer Lee Rigby.

    The irony is these two loonies are ethnic Yoruba – in any case, their parents were; before getting lost in the Diaspora. Yet, in the Yoruba motherland, only the raven mad would kill in the name of religion. The Yoruba credo of religious freedom and faith liberality is long settled.

    So, how did Britain hap on this monstrous duo that caused universal pain and anguish, with their gruesome murder of that innocent British soldier?

    Because of this bone-chilling outrage, the Brits are perhaps more than justified to design policies that ban, from their country, African and Asian barbarians; the first of which is Mr. Cameron’s proposed visa bond.

    But perhaps if the colonised peoples too had had the muscle to repress the colonising Brits, with the invaders’ pacification (euphemism for mass murder of the resistant, which ran into millions), and the ensuing mass physical, psychological and spiritual dislocation over endless years, there would not have been brainwashed monstrosities like Abdulmutallab, Adebolajo and Adebowale. Nor would there be economic migrants.

    Chinua Achebe’s famous Things Fall Apart spoke of such spiritual and psychological disorientation, using his native Igbo as case-study. So, did Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Weep Not Child, a classical match-up between greedy British ruffians and land grabbers using the missionaries as front and an equally determined though pitifully less armed locals, insistent on reclaiming their land; thus creating the classic Yoruba fabled confrontation between the happy killer and the merry suicidal.

    Even Brit, Edward Morgan (EM) Forster, in his A Passage to India, painted the snickering bigotry and allied evils of the British against natives in the so-called British Raj of India which, by the way, had as victims most of today’s India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the latter-day pariahs of callow Mr. Cameron’s new visa bond!

    Did Mr. Cameron think something would not give, after his ancestors’ brutal repression of other peoples, and making away with their wealth; and thereafter installing near-imbeciles to ensure the British gravy continued long after flag independence?

    True, the likes of Achebe used the dominator’s language to achieve global fame, a far cry from the self-fulfilling prophecy of congenitally challenged Africa and Africans, by the likes of Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness. Wole Soyinka used this same English language to win the Nobel, the prime global literary prize. wa Thingo has enough literary clout to live in exile’s happy pain, as his native Kenya treats him like the Biblical prophet without honour.

    But to every Achebe, wa Thiongo and Soyinka, there are myriads of economic flotsam and jetsam, churned out by a disarticulated Africa and, to some extent, Asia. This is the global class that has come to plague Britain and it co-western imperialists. It is therefore a question of the Brits’ ancestors having eaten sour grapes; and their offspring’s teeth set on edge! That is Mr. Cameron’s generation; and that explains his bond!

    But not even Mr. Cameron’s visa bond would remove that plague. Still, a fairer international economic system could. If more Africans and Asians live and earn productive living in their home continents, then maybe Westminster would need less punitive visa bonds to control immigration.

    But the humongous western greed is yet to be sated; and Africa, mostly run by pre-programmed cretins, is not about to surrender its notoriety as global economic laggard. That is why Mr. Cameron must reveal his callowness by trying to bully his favourite African retards to join the 21st century Sodom and Gomorrah his country and Uncle Sam unashamedly lead; and daring any African moron, on the pains of aids, to raise his voice against same sex marriage, the West’s latest abomination!

    Still, a Ghanaian that goes flocking to Britain only has himself or herself to blame. Ghana is no El Dorado. But by somewhat gathering its best hands over time, despite the western hysteria that subverted Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and nearly aborted the Ghana dream, the old Gold Coast is well on the way to attain its manifest destiny.

    Not so for Nigeria, ruled from the beginning by Whitehall’s cynically programmed Uncle Toms. And that is bad news for Mr. Cameron’s visa bond. So long as there is economic paralysis at home, the economic barbarians from here would do whatever it takes to hang in there, visa bond or no!

    The bottom line? The Nigerian government must wake up. Mr. Cameron’s visa bond might well graduate into mass expulsion of Nigerians from Britain. Such reverse forced exodus forebodes nothing but ill.

    The angry and bitter repatriates would settle for nothing less than where they were coming from. Meanwhile the local misfits holding mediocre courts are absolutely incapable of upping their game. Before you know it, the happy-to-kill clashes with the merry-to- die!

    If a better Nigeria emerges from the smoke, then something good, though unintended, would have come from Mr. Cameron’s visa bond.

  • A visa bond of trouble

    From all indications, the British government may have, at least for the time being, backed off from its earlier proposal to impose a ‘punitive’ £3,000 (N730,000) visa bond on travellers from a group of six Afro-Asian countries deemed to pose “high risk” of immigration abuse. Last week, UK’s The Guardian quoted a member of the Liberal Democrats, the coalition partner of the ruling conservative government as saying that the policy has not been “signed off’. However, far from suggesting that the proposal was off the table, he gave hint that the government still agreed in principle with the policy although he noted that the “exact details of how it is to be piloted, including the size of the bond, is still being discussed in the government”.

    In other words, whether the six countries affected by the policy likes it or not, the visa bond policy which targets India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Ghana — all non-white Commonwealth nations may have come to stay.

    The collective outrage by the nationals of the affected countries about a measure they considered as discriminatory, although understandable is somewhat misdirected. To start with, visas are by their nature inherently discriminatory; countries put visa regimes in place to restrict the influx of immigrants into their territory. It is elementary that not every one that applies for a visa ever gets one, including applicants ordinarily deemed as qualified!

    What are the arguments against the measure? That Her Majesty’s government, as leader and primus inter pares in the Commonwealth has no business imposing such patently unfair visa regimes on fellow commonwealth members? And that because of the rich historic ties between her and the group of six, the measures are simply unfair! In the first place, those who bandy the argument obviously forget or chose to forget, that the sun of the British Empire is said to have set in different parts several decades ago. It set in India and Pakistan in 1947; Sri Lanka 1948; Ghana in 1957; Nigeria 1960, Bangladesh 1971. Just as it seems fashionable for my generation to recall a time when they needed no visas to travel to Britain, part of the problem is the temptation to relapse into nostalgia; to reset the relations buttons to the 60s and the 70s!

    The issue here is that Her Majesty’s Government has already determined that the targeted countries posed high risk of immigration abuse! That is the judgment by a sovereign government to which they are entitled! Shouldn’t we have spared ourselves the emotionalism while making the case that our citizens seeking sojourn in UK are model citizens?

    Today, the global economy is in a flux; In UK for instance, youth unemployment is 7.8 percent, moderate by the standard of its peers in Western Europe. Before the global crisis, it was a little over five percent. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) for instance reports that the number of people looking for work for over a year has more than doubled since 2007, up from 391,000 to more than 902,000.

    Like America, the subject of immigration remains a hot button one. A Britisher put the issue in perspective when he observed rather wryly: “You don’t need a PhD to understand that when the number of unemployed people vastly outnumbers the number of job vacancies, and public housing stock is under huge strain, it’s a very bad idea not to radically restrict immigration. This isn’t rocket science”.

    So, is the £3,000 the answer to the immigration problem?

    I agree that the policy lacks rigour. What it does is adjudge the potential traveller as guilty until proven otherwise. Moreover, the act of singling out of six countries as “high risk” immigration violators is apparently in bad taste. And if you ask me, it is unlikely to deter the potential illegal immigrant; it simply jerks up the cost of procuring the exit card!

    However, I think the problem is that we pay too much attention to what the Brits are doing to fix their problem. My problem is that we are not even about to start dealing with ours which is to fundamentally address the question of why our youths have found the lure of foreign pastures irresistible despite the dangers and frustrations, or why many would readily pay the ultimate price than stay to work things out.

    Last week for instance, we heard Foreign Minister Gbenga Ashiru swear to “defend the interest of Nigerians by whatever means we can”. With what? A tit-for-tat wouldn’t be a bad proposition except that in our circumstance, it would be a most laughable one. What would that amount to given that the migration is almost wholly one-way?

    I say take it easy; we have seen similar posturing before. Didn’t one minister, Stella Oduah once threaten to ban British Airways from flying the Nigerian airspace over claims of unfair discriminatory practices? Has the world ended since the threat came to no effect?

    At the root of our problem is governance. We churn out graduates into a labour market already bursting in its seams. We cannot even guarantee admission for our children in higher institutions preferring instead to outsource admissions to Ghana, Ukraine and other foreign universities. In the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination UTME held in April for instance, of the 1.7million that sat for the exam, only 520,000 spaces are said to be available – less than a third. For our army of youngsters, theirs is an annual sentencing into an uncertain, bleak future.

    If you ask me, I’ll insist that our enemy is within; at least the Brits are not nearly the enemy we think they are – not anywhere those foreign investors who pose as friends but act like fiends by bringing in labour for jobs that locals can conveniently do.

    As always, the point must be borne in mind that the right to travel is nowhere guaranteed; not even in No-Man’s-Land.

  • The Abia youth empowerment model

    April 24, was like no other day in Umuahia, capital of Abia State. For those who were witness to history, the city happily embraced thousands of Abia youths who had thronged the Michael Okpara Auditorium and the Umuahia Township Stadium for two epoch-making events. They had come from all the nooks and crannies of the state and beyond, to participate in the Abia Youth Empowerment Summit – a policy initiative aimed at uplifting young men and women in order to harness their creative potentials.

    The spontaneous show of solidarity and appreciation for the driver of the event, Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji, was overwhelming. In their numbers and colours, thousands of youths cheered as he made for the podium in the company of Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria ( CBN ), who had been billed to speak to the youths.

    Sanusi, ever engaging and never shy to address important subjects, did not disappoint as he made a meal of the instructive topic, “ Youth Empowerment as Panacea to Insecurity in Nigeria.” His appearance at the 1st Ochendo Annual Lecture Series which was symbolically dedicated to the youths, was as pioneering as it was thought-provoking. Indeed, the occasion served as a reminder to the fact that one of the greatest challenges confronting leadership, especially in emerging economies, is the task of harnessing the huge deposits of human capital. To state that this critical resource remains the most strategic of all factors of production is to repeat the obvious. Does elementary economics not teach that labour is the factor that bears the brunt of managing other elements in the production equation? And where else can we readily find a better stock of ‘Labour’ if not amongst this vibrant strata of our populace ?

    Available data gleaned from reputable global agencies continue to support and lend credence to the above assertion. While this fact is held as correct, there is also a constant reminder that each economy remains unique in the shape and size of its demography. The matrix of this relationship is, perhaps, the reason some societies have been celebrated for the large number of youths that make up their population.

    No doubt, a robust and youthful population is a huge asset waiting to be deployed for greater deliverables. And, this is where Africa nay, it’s components, is generally believed to hold a comparative advantage. Or, what would you make of an economy where nearly 45 percent of its ever-growing population is within the age bracket of 18-35 years? Now, you know why Africa would continue to remain a source of envy even though the industrialized economies continue to hold the levers of technology, dictate the pace of development, and largely determine what price to pay for what they lack.

    Indeed, this is the crux of the matter. To argue that Africa’s rich endowments and poverty of ideas is a huge paradox would be an understatement. Her comparatively younger population, largely unskilled, illiterate, sick and malnourished has become a bomb waiting to explode. And, it may, indeed, explode if the growing class of emerging leaders insist on playing politics with the future of youths.

    This piece, therefore, lauds the exemplary policy initiative aimed at redirecting the course of development and hinging same on youth and people empowerment. First, while the Ochendo Annual Lecture Series is designed as a fertile ground for intellectual exchange, the Abia Youth Empowerment Summit, A- YES, organized in collaboration with the Ochendo Youth Foundation ( OYF ) is the vehicle through which the governor is systematically investing in the future of Abia State. This was why after the Lecture at the auditorium, everybody moved to the Umuahia Central Stadium where hundreds of free equipment for self reliance were distributed to young beneficiaries from across the state.

    Governor Orji’s several interventionist programmes are the reason the state has now attained an enviable height in peace and security management.

    Central to the Abia youth development model is the aggressive pursuit of education-for-all policy. Under this scheme, education is being offered free to all Abia children up to secondary school level. This is in addition to the return of schools to their original owners and the total infrastructural overhaul of remaining public schools. This scheme is further complemented by scholarship grants which is enjoyed by students at both local and international universities as well as the regular retraining of well motivated teachers to cater for citizens who cannot afford to attend private schools. Thousands of young Abians are currently reaping from this novel initiative.

    The state, in partnership with the CBN, has disbursed agricultural loans worth over a billion naira with special focus on areas that support young farmers. The Ochendo Liberation Farms which are located in the 17 local government areas of the state attest to this fact. Statistics show that over 20,000 youths are currently engaged in the return-to-land project involving the revitalization of many farm settlements and plantations across the state. The resuscitation of all the plantations in Abia State has created so many opportunities. Viable palm plantations, cocoa, rubber, plantain and most recently cassava is now found in the three senatorial districts.

    The state is also aggressively pursuing the agriculture value-chain concept by introducing hybrid seedlings and developing processing factories which hold ample job opportunities for youths in the rural areas. The process of fertilizer distribution has been made less laborious for rural farmers with the youths being given free fertilizer allocations to encourage their involvement in this critical sector.

    Self-employment is also being driven to the zenith by training and equipping youths with both financial support and the asset base that support the growth of their businesses. The cab operators and other services is located within this sphere. For the first time in the history of Abia State, Governor Orji gave out over 200 brand new commercial vehicles free to young beneficiaries. This, in addition to easing the transportation challenges facing the state, has created a trickle down effect in the economy. This initiative has been complemented by the First Lady, Mrs Odochi Orji, with her efforts focused on girl-child education and skill acquisition. Today in Abia, you can see proud young owners of fashion shops, hair dressing salons, bakeries and other ancillary businesses feeding their aged parents and sustaining their families.

    To further drive youth employment in the rural areas, the state recently met the partnership requirement to enable her participate in the Rural Access and Mobility Projects ( RAMP ). Under this initiative, over 500 kilometers of access roads is being tackled in rural Abia with multiplier effects on the agro-economy and youth employment. Indeed, nearly 7000 youths have been trained and absorbed in the direct labour scheme of the Abia State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission ( ASOPADEC ) and Abia Road Maintenance Agency (ABROMA). These youth centered initiatives of Governor Orji has wiped off all manners of criminality in our rural areas.

    Many more have become self – employed even in the urban areas. Specific mention must be be made of the biggest industrial market in Umuahia and Ohiya Artisans Village which have productively engaged over 5000 youths. These two specialized centers were specifically conceptualized by the governor to target the thousands of freed apprentices who roam the streets because they are unable to start their own business. Today, if you go to the industrial market and the artisan village, you will see proud young shop owners living their dreams as a result.

    A lot more could be said but even ardent critics have come to acknowledge that Governor Orji’s response to governance is providing answers to the dilemma confronting his peers in the quest to strike a sustainable balance between resource and management. In Abia today, enterprising young people are gainfully engaged, the rate of crime is at its lowest ebb. There is security of lives and property and with the current revolution in infrastructural provision coupled with the conducive political environment. Abia State under Ochendo is witnessing unprecedented renaissance .

    Any surprise then that accolades continue to trail his several engagements with Abia youths which has turned Abia from a pariah of sorts to a Mecca for major national events. In the last 12 months alone, NUJ, JAMB, NYSC, Catholic Bishops of Nigeria, Senate Press Corps and many other organizations have held their Annual retreats in Abia. These and more are golden testimonials to what can be achieved when a creative,committed leader is in the saddle. From kidnapping and other social vices , Abia youths are now the fulcrum around which the new era of liberty and prosperity is hinged. For Ochendo, it is time to say a well deserved well done.

  • Thinking aloud

    It is fashionable these days to blame all our woes as a nation on Britain, the colonial master that coupled together the northern and southern protectorates of the territory around River Niger in 1914 to birth a country christened Nigeria.

    The British no doubt have had more than a hand in our fortune or misfortune as a people since we were forced to be together as a country a century ago next year, but we should take the praise for what we have done well and accept the blame for every misfortune that might have befallen our dear country.

    Among the colonial masters that Britain sent to administer Nigeria before independence in 1960, one name stood out and will forever be remembered as long as we remain a country: Lord Frederick Lugard.

    He, it was that merged the northern and southern protectorates to create the country Nigeria, so named by his girl friend then (we were told) to describe the area and the people around River Niger.

    Down the years up till independence the British sent different officials to administer the country and their decisions had profound effect on us as a people. Independence did nothing to reduce the British tendencies to make policies and legislations that have impacted well or badly on us. Remember the botched Anglo/Nigeria Defence Pact immediately after independence that was fiercely opposed by Nigerians, especially students of the University of Ibadan.

    There had been more, and one in particular that is still with us today was the decision of the British under their iconic Tory Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher to impose visa restrictions on Nigerians traveling to the United Kingdom. Prior to that time, Nigerians, as citizens of the British Commonwealth (of nations) had easy access to the UK, but Thatcher changed that and today hundreds if not thousands of Nigerians queue at the gate of British High Commission every week day seeking entry visas into the United Kingdom.

    By the way, the visa is not for free and some of them even had to borrow to raise money to pay for the visa and even some among the very few that were lucky to be granted the visa had to sell or use their properties as collateral to raise money to buy air tickets and meet other sundry expenses. Some emigrated to seek better life in the UK only to be disappointed by the reality of the situation that the streets of London are not littered with Pounds Sterling. To come back home became a problem to them, not only because of the shame of being labelled a failure by their folks back in Nigeria, but most importantly because the resources to return were not just available. So they became a burden on the British.

    And now to heap more miseries on these unfortunate/desperate Nigerians who still believe they can’t succeed in life unless they get to the UK, another Tory Prime Minister David Cameron plans to introduce a £3,000 indemnity fee for all Nigerians seeking visa to enter the land of Queen Elizabeth. The money would be forfeited to Her Majesty’s government should they overstay the time on their visa. And if and when they are caught, its straight back to Nigeria.

    Immigration is a hot political/economic issue all over Europe and even the United States and Cameron might just be pandering to the extreme right of the political spectrum in the UK who blame every economic, social and even political misfortune of the British society on immigrants, especially those of Africa and Asian origins.

    While the British are within their rights to regulate entries and even departures into their territory, singling out Nigeria and a few other so called high risk countries for this new visa regime is discriminatory and smacks of racism. Are Nigerians the only people that overstay their visa in the UK?

    It is good that the Nigerian government has decided to fight this new British visa regime, but that is not all. Our government should vigorously pursue and implement policies and programmes that would make going to Britain unattractive to Nigerians especially our youths. It is a fact that most of these people emigrate for economic reasons. Millions of our youths are not employed and in some cases unemployable. I am sure if there is something good for them to do at home they wouldn’t be rushing and desperate to emigrate to any other country. So, while the federal government fights to get Britain to dump this new visa regime targeted at Nigerians, it should also fight to create employment, make our schools and hospitals better, world class, and make the roads and other social infrastructures better. We can start with uninterrupted power supply and we would be amazed at the number of jobs, especially small scale businesses that this would create.if we can achieve this it would be thanks and no thanks to Britain.

    May be we need to fight this battle harder so as to safe our youths in particular from being exposed to the kind of sexual culture that is so pervasive in the western world including the UK. The other day Prime Minister Cameron was chiding Nigeria for our government’s (national assembly) strident opposition to same sex marriage. Leaving the insult aside that Britain still believes she can dictate to us, especially our social life, same sex marriage is alien to our culture and it is those demented few amongst us who engage in it that wants to destroy our culture and the fabric of human existence. Under the guise of protection of fundamental human rights Cameron, Barack Obama and their co-travelers in Europe and America want to destroy us and our culture, tradition and existence, we should not allow them. They should let Africa be.

    The other day some of these demented Nigerians protested against the arrest and prosecution of some members of the so called Nigerian Gay and Lesbian community by the police in a Magistrate court some where in Anambra state. It was also recently reported that some of them had a meeting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital and even issued a press statement to that effect. What is this country turning into? Sodom and Gomorrah? I think the police should be alive to their responsibility here. Anybody that violates the law against same sex conduct or marriage should be made to face the music. The problem with our police is that before you know it, some bad eggs in he force would turn the law into an opportunity to extort and even frame innocent people. Yes our police men and women are poorly paid and badly treated, but extortion is not the way out of their plight.

    May be the government has found a way out of the problem of underfunding of the police with the recent decision to give one percent of revenue from the federation account to the police. The amount would be treated as first line charge, meaning that the money would be removed first before whatever is left is shared among the three tiers of government. This is good. But can we trust the Nigeria Police and indeed the politicians in the Ministry of Police Affairs, the Presidency and even the Police Service Commission to spend this money judiciously and for the right purpose?

    Over the years there have been reported cases of massive corruption in the police. Some former Inspector General of Police have been indicted and even convicted on fraud, in some cases, outright stealing of police funds. If they could do that with the ‘little’ that gets to them now, you can imagine when one per cent of our consolidated revenue is remitted to them in addition. But this is not enough reason to deny the Police better funding. One strongly believes that poor law enforcement and not inadequate laws is responsible for most of the crimes committed in this country, including fraud, election rigging, money laundering et al. If our police are well trained, remunerated, and properly quartered they will curb most of these crimes and our society would be the better for it. But if we leave them the way they are, then we should be pleased to live with the consequences of such a rotten system. The way you lay you bed is the way you sleep on it.

    Finally, the Sunday newspapers were awash with the photograph of President Goodluck Jonathan and Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi shaking hands at the Port Harcourt International airport. That the two are sworn enemies is not in doubt, but let’s hope this photo op is not a photo trick after all. This is hoping the hatchet has been buried. The better for the nation.

     

  • Again on NGF controversy

    It does appear the crisis generated by the disputed election into the chairmanship of the Nigerian Governor’s Forum NGF will for long, dominate public discourse. If some governors are not blaming their colleagues for alleged betrayal, some others are seen talking of collective failure for the pass that has become the outcome of that election. There are also others rooting for an amicable resolution of the matter. Yet, the same election is before the court as Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola has challenged his colleague of Plateau State, Jonah Jang for parading himself as the chairman of the forum when Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers state was actually elected by a majority of the votes cast.

    At another level, the presidency which should be working to resolve the impasse is neck deep in fuelling the controversy. At least on two occasions, it has taken actions that have portrayed it as the unseen hand behind the schism in the forum. President Jonathan has not only gone ahead to recognize Jang as the chairman of the forum, he also fixed a dinner for the governors on a date and time the first meeting of the Amaechi group was slated.

    This is so even as Jang and his group have held meetings in their newly rented office without being challenged or have their meeting clash with key events at the presidency. And after one of such meetings, Jang’s faction proceeded for a meeting at the presidency in which Jonathan recognized him as the chairman of the NGF, which he is not.

    The maiden meeting of the NGF called by Amaechi since the crisis came up last week. After notices of the meeting had been circulated, the presidency curiously summoned all the governors to Abuja for what it termed a mid-term dinner for the same day and time. The immediate reading of that meeting was that it was a subtle attempt by the presidency to throw spanners into the NGF meeting so as to promote the claims of Jang to its leadership.

    What had promised a test of power was maturely handled by 15 governors that attended the meeting summoned by Amaechi. Having shown their presence at the Rivers State Governor’s lodge venue of the meeting, the governors resolved to adjourn in deference to the dinner called by Jonathan. But they succeeded in making their point. From there, they proceeded to the venue of the dinner, though after the president had arrived.

    It is equally instructive that there were at least five PDP governors from the north in Amaechi’s meeting. This is very instructive as it goes to show that the so-called consensus within the PDP fold before the election was nothing but a ruse. If anything, the level of attendance has shown that those supporting Jang are being less than honest. The level of response and solidarity with Amaechi despite obvious attempts by the presidency to mess up that meeting is also very revealing.

    It leaves no one with any shred of doubt that those who voted for Amaechi were not ghosts. It also speaks volumes about the purported consensus to have Jang as the NGF chairman. And as the governor of Niger State Babangida Aliyu succinctly put it, though northern governors agreed on Jang’s consensus candidacy, “when the election took place, the conscience of the people prevailed over consensus”. That is the real issue.

    It is therefore puzzling that some governors who really took part in the election that produced Amaechi are latching on to a very questionable consensus when the ballot box has said it all. Having voted, its outcome takes precedence over whatever agreement previously arrived at by any other group. That is the only reasonable way to look at the matter.

    But rather than accept the outcome of the election, some 16 governors who voted for Jang opted to float a parallel forum with Jang as their leader. They rented an office and have been holding their meeting there. If this had come from some other quarters, perhaps we could have excused it. But since it involved chief executives of states, the matter becomes more puzzling. If anything, it casts the integrity of those governors in a very bad light. That is the point Delta state governor Emmanuel Uduaghan made when he said in a radio and television programme that the turn of events at that election has shaken the people’s confidence in them. Hear him “I think we (governors) owe Nigerians apologies for the turn of events at the forum. We have no excuse for what has happened at the forum because the people expect so much from us.” Uduaghan has said it all even though he was one of those who pitched their tent with Jang after he failed to secure the mandate of his colleagues. The lamentations of the Delta State governor mirror vividly the inherent contradictions in the raging disputations over the authentic leader of the governors’ forum. And as he rightly argued, there is no excuse for what happened. There was no excuse for forming a splinter group despite the fact that things did not go the way some highly placed government functionaries wanted them. It is one thing to be dissatisfied with the outcome of that election and a different kettle of fish declare Jang the winner when such a declaration did not tally with the facts on the ground. That is the very grave error those supporting Jang have committed. It would have been neater if those governors had stopped at rejecting the outcome of the election.

    Had it been so, discussions will now focus on how to resolve the areas of difference. Now a loser has claimed he is the authentic leader having rented an office and recognized by the president, the matter has become more complicated and messy.

    It is a mark of this mess that the sitting arrangement at last week’s National Economic Council NEC meeting had to be altered such that none of the disputants was recognized as the chairman. That is part of the monsters we create. But then, the NGF is a voluntary organization. Why it has attracted the kind of heat it is now generating can only be located with the ambit of partisan politics. It all has to do with the politics of 2015.

    Otherwise what is there in that seemingly inconsequential organization that should make the rest of us lose sleep? But politics is involved and Jonathan’s desire for another term is at the centre of it all. Those who support Amaechi both from the opposition and the ruling party are all united by one goal. And it is to ensure that Jonathan does not make it this time around. They could differ in their approaches but their goal is the same.

    But more fundamentally, by attending the meeting summoned by Amaechi, those PDP governors have made a very bold statement. They have said very unambiguously that the simmering schism within the PDP has come to stay. They are saying very boldly that they have a different political agenda that runs at cross purposes with that of Jonathan.

    Viewed within this context, it becomes clearer why the crisis within the NGF will not easily abate. Being irretrievably tied to the politics of power shift, its fate will depend on the direction of the unfolding political competition. Whether Amaechi can appropriately fit into that change agent, is a matter for another day.

  • God’s graffiti

    God’s graffiti

    If you saw the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, in 2007, just before he ascended the throne, you need to see him today. Then he was a sprightly young man. Today, he looks like a sprightly young man, if you don’t look higher than his forehead. If you dare into that higher territory, into the forbidden region of his hair, you encounter age.

    Once your eyes fall on the grey hair, you contemplate the contradiction. The hair belongs to another person, a comparative Methuselah, hoary, wizened, frail, going. Not to a 50-year-old, not to his eyes that light up his face like an audacious candle. Not his tongue that weaves through legalese, that cuts through policy like a wonk, that insists on good roads, on rule of law, on the revamped schools, on the Eko oni baje sing song. Not his feet, sometimes too martial for its lankiness, walking though city projects. Not his smile that belies the grit within.

    With eyes dreamy, tongue razor sharp, his feet martial, the governor of example can live with his one handicap: the disappearing youth of the hair. But wait a minute. What does a disappearing hair tell us? That age has happened prematurely? That the eye however dreamy, mind however agile, tongue however sharp and feet however swift, the hair is a signature that the rest of the body is undergoing the same siege. We on the outside may never know.

    But we only have the spirit to tell us. And the spirit, as we all know, is master of the flesh. And that is why, even if the hair tells us that Governor Fashola, is not the 50-year-old he looks, his works reflect the genius of the 50-year-old we expect. Or shall we say, his works are the grey hair. So when we see the massive infrastructure work he has done, the housing projects, the Trojan work on the rule of law, the work on education, it is the hair that tells us of the toll. The eyes lie, the tongues deceive, the feet walk astray, but the hair, in its luminous boldness, tells us that the man Fashola is the toiling governor we see every day.

    His spirit, bubbly as ever, tells that matter is nothing. He works and he works and the body can tell its own story. The work is his spirit, the exertion, the exercise of the power within. It is like the words of Jimmy Carter in his autobiography when he defines old age as when “despair replaces hope.” So the grey hair may well be the liar here. Not the feet, or skin, imperious eyes or leaping feet. Since he hopes all the time, in works and deed, for a better Lagos, the hair is the loser, not him, not Lagosians, not history. Just the hair. When the hair fails, no despair.

    The Bible says “the grey hair is the crown of glory,” but I doubt if it had the age 50 in mind. But if you see it as the crowning glory of a task, then Governor Fashola should feel blessed. His eyes, dreamy and triumphal, are cast on history. He wants it, even if he is coy about talking legacy, to be glorious and kind.

    Winston Churchill, never one to shy from his stature in life, said in his famous growl, “history will be kind to me for I will write it.” Churchill actually put pen to paper and wrote chapter after chapter about his stewardships and others as well. But it is not what Churchill has written that has placed him in the front rank of all statesmen in history, it was what he did. He rejigged pride in his island nation against the superior behemoth of Hitler’s army. He marshaled arms, diplomacy and the English language.

    Fashola has been writing his legacy, and he still is. All over Lagos today, we see the handwriting in motion, in road work, in the trains undergoing tests to decongest commuting. We see it in his search for a decent society. The restriction of Okada was an instance of courage. Many thought it was heartless. Many thought it was elitist. Many thought it would raze down the city. No one countered the view that it saved lives and advanced the stride to a decent society. Governor Fashola, as Professor Itse Sagay noted, is not always about what we see, but the imponderables. What we see can perish, but what we don’t see will endure: rule of law, decency, education standards, simple values like lack of ostentation in office. Roads decay just as integrity decays. Both are called corruption. But the decay of the latter is more damaging. Hence his emphasis on the latter.

    A leader will not bother about his grey hair when his name is becoming an idea rather than a reference to person. So Fashola has become, not only to ACN, but to other parties an instance of what you can do when given an opportunity to serve. He turned 50 to great eclat not because he turned 50 but because he has turned the benefit of his half a century on earth to an eminent account. So his grey hair should be seen as “God’s graffiti,” apologies to Bill Cosby. If that is the story, then we can go back to the Proverbs assertion that it is the “crowning splendour.”

     

  • Fayemi’s Ikogosi School

    Fayemi’s Ikogosi School

    For two weeks, 50 graduate students gathered at the scenic Ikogosi warm springs to learn. That in itself was counterintuitive for Nigeria. We usually see such resorts as ambience of vanity. But there is room for that. Kayode Fayemi, the governor who knows, made it sublime. He brought bright Nigerian professors from Europe, South Africa and the United States to tutor Nigerian graduate students of Ekiti State origin in a wide variety of subjects. This was a tour de force for graduate schools in the country.

    I learned that there was a huge contrast between what the students learned in the summer school and the daily digests from their local teachers. The students also privately admitted that. This is the tragedy of brain drain, and the summer school is designed to teach them how to keep abreast of the latest in research, thinking, debate and access to the higher reaches of knowledge in contemporary world.

    Graduate school is about rigour, and they got loads of that at the summer school from our local imports. We cannot keep them here, so the summer school is the smartest to eat our cake and have it, to let the professors teach abroad and also teach here.

    If we have this in the most elite of education, we can wonder what we have at the foundational levels. Education in Nigeria is our greatest tragedy today, and unless we tackle the quality of mind of the young in their malleable stage. That is why we must support moves like the summer school.

  • The second coming of Western Nigeria

    The second coming of Western Nigeria

    As the old West heaving and inching its way forward once again leaving the rest of the country roiling in the quagmire of potential state failure? This is a very dangerous question to ask, given the potential of the Nigerian post-colonial state to equalise underdevelopment and backwardness. While it is on record that the post-colonial state in Nigeria hardly produces growth and development, it is also on record that it can reduce growth and development as a result of malignant, ethnically motivated vendetta.

    Yet just as it happened at the dawn of the Nigerian Republic when Obafemi Awolowo’s visionary governance drove the region to the very frontline of modernization, it does appear that something is stirring in the old west all over again. It is a development worthy of closer scrutiny. For as they say, there may be quite some architecture remaining in old ruins.

    But it is morning yet on this new day of creation. Before the question of development can be broached, there are theoretical hurdles to be scaled. There are templates and rubrics to be established and some fundamental developmental posers to be raised. In the interest of both nation and region, there are troubling posers to be addressed. For development to be holistic, integrative and redemptive, the evolving paradigm of governance must itself be subjected to merciless and astringent scrutiny.

    From the rump of the old Benin empire where Adams Aliu Oshiomhole is turning the old municipal village of Benin to a modern metropolis, to the sprawling chaotic mess of the old Yoruba war camps of Ibadan that Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi has laid a fierce siege to and on to Lagos which has regained its lost glory as the pre-eminent megalopolis of Tropical Africa, something new is gradually emerging from the old West.

    Two weeks ago, a fortuitous trailer accident on the Lagos Bye pass forced snooper to traverse the entire length and breadth of old Ibadan and one was shocked by the transformational typhoon that has swept off the urban debris. From Agodi it took exactly five minutes to get to old /Dugbe through the gleaming Queen Elizabeth Avenue and the new miracle of the former Mokola metropolitan mayhem. From what used to be the ultimate town planners’ nightmare of Dugbe, it took three minutes to get to Molete through Oke Bola. Formerly, this was a whole day’s journey.

    And this is not discounting the emerging miracle of Osun state and the transformational fury of Hurricane Rauf. Snooper has not visited either Abeokuta or old rustic Ado Ekiti, but if the reports from the joyous residents of these ancient Yoruba cities are to be believed, they are being frogmarched to the very frontiers of modernity. Even the worst critics of the ACN governments in these states are privately puzzled by the pace and frenzy of the unfolding radical reengineering and the mobilization of the populace for visionary self-actualization.

    For a people long accustomed to evil and inept governance, it is easy for cynics to pooh-pooh these developments as token trifles. But we must start from somewhere even if it is at the level of the profoundly symbolic .The critical posers that need to be raised are these. When is real development? Is modernization the same thing as westernization? Can modernization become a driving ideology in itself for a political elite? If this is so, can the vision of urgent modernization blur, obscure or even replace the old binary division between the capitalist and socialist visions of societal transformation and their third way mutants and variants?

    We ask these questions not out of intellectual indolence or mere political grandstanding but from genuine puzzlement and as a mental tool for understanding the fundamental human impulse for capacity building and societal transformation in all its clashing disparities and sheer differentiation of vision often based in culture and history. Just as there is no single route to human salvation, there is also no single route to national development. All happy nations are ultimately the same, while every unhappy nation is unhappy in its own unique way.

    What unites successful nations is the huge transformational leap they have taken for their people and not the preferred method and methodology of rapid development. All transformational political elites have a firm vision of where they want to take their countries and how they are going to get there. Human tragedy is an orphan but societal triumphs have many foster parents.

    For example, while India with its chaotic and sometimes infuriating democracy is ruled by liberal democrats with a passion for transformation, China is governed by humane authoritarians with a passion for the uplift of their people from the abyss of poverty and immiseration. In Singapore, we have seen how an ageing autocrat with stellar vision drove the backwater peat bog and colonial slum from the Third World to the First World in one single generation.

    The leaders of the fabled Asian Tigers have managed to deploy the traditional strengths and residual values of their respective societies to force their respective countries into global reckoning. Often, they have managed to turn the table on western nations in an economic battle of wits and will. The runaway success of Japan and China has led to a potentially momentous restructuring of the World Economic Order.

    In Brazil, particularly after the advent of the iconic Lula, Brazilian leaders have concentrated on a radically humane transformation through the policy of lifting millions of people from millennial peonage and the poverty trap. The current unrests in that country are a profoundly ironic tribute to the success of that scheme.

    It is not a twenty cents revolution as a leading western newspaper puts it—cynically referring to the raising of gasoline price by that amount. It is rather the return of the long repressed, of unfinished business and of a twenty per cent revolution which has come to demand its full wage. In Chile and Argentina with their better educated workforce and more durable middle classes, the leaders opted for western-style market reforms to drive the transformation of their respective societies.

    What then is the lesson to be learnt from all this? The first is that all human societies, when led by the correct elite, are naturally forward looking. Any human society that chooses to look backward, like Lot’s children, will be frozen forever in the oceanic and salty sand of time.

    As we have seen with the examples of the countries mentioned and with the Industrial Revolution in England, the intellectual and spiritual Revolution in Germany, the political Revolutions in France and the USA, all human societies are driven by a fundamental impulse towards modernization. Modernization needs not be accompanied by violent revolutions, but if it is, so be it.

    This is why it is unfortunate that while many Nigerian patriots are burning the midnight oil about how to redeem and transform the nation, some members of the Arewa Consultative Forum are insisting that the current misbegotten structure and lopsided federation should be left as it is. These political dinosaurs should be told that they represent a human tragedy for the nation.

    Having ravaged and ruined Nigeria for the better part of fifty years, they are no longer in a position to dictate terms to the nation. If their claim that all is well with the current structure of Nigeria were to be believed, then the sorry and sordid state of the nation and the north in particular is a stinging rebuttal.

    Modernization is not the same thing as westernization. Every human society must find its own preferred route to modernization. As the Chinese famously put it, it doesn’t matter what name you call a cat as long as it catches mice. In a recent article comparing China with India, Amartya Kuma Sen, the great economist and Nobel laureate, noted that as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese leaders concluded that there was no fundamental qualitative difference between the average Japanese and the average westerner.

    The only difference was in human capacity building. They thereafter set to work, building a template for human transformation which survived the rabid militarism of the Japanese feudal ruling class. When the warlike ethos was leveraged into massive production after the tragic war, the Japanese work force gave western economies a good run for their money.

    It seems then that for all human societies, the golden key for unlocking rapid transformation and accelerated modernization lies in human capacity building and the relentless accumulation of human capital. As they set about transforming the old west, the modernising trailblazers will need to look more closely at the issue of human capacity building.

    Human happiness is the measure of all things. This is where Chief Obafemi Awolowo excelled and the gains have survived disastrous military incursion into the polity. In whatever transformational schemes embarked upon, they must also set much premium, like Awo, by accountability and transparency. There is a hysterical and traumatised electorate out there.

    Often, successful human societies rely on tropes from the past to energise the present. This is because you cannot step into the same river twice. The old monolithic and near homogeneous west has been shattered, fractured and balkanised by military incursion, leading to uneven economic development and the development of uneven political consciousness. Much of what goes on in the region today is driven by healthy peer rivalry rather than a solid holistic vision of regional development. It is left to the new leaders of the region to come up with an integrative, unified and harmonised framework which can drive even faster development.

    Finally, it is important to remind the emergent modernizers that paradise cannot exist surrounded by hell. Nigeria is currently a hellhole bristling with delirious denizens. Two options are available. It is either the new leaders of the old west insist on the immediate convocation of a sovereign gathering of Nigerians which will restructure the country and free the creative genius of its diverse people or they must be at the vanguard of a pan-Nigerian electoral revolution which must inaugurate a new nation. The current status quo has completely exhausted its political and historic possibilities.

  • Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars

    As all roads lead to Ado-Ekiti this weekend for everybody  that ever had anything to do with our truly remarkable school- Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which we call The School: alumni, parents, spouses, family  and the lot, it is all glory to God that He inspired some of His anointed men to plant and water what has turned out to be a truly phenomenal institution molding men and women of intellect,  not only in Ekiti, its location and primary catchment area, but all over Nigeria. Today, hundreds of Christ’s-School products are professors in all areas of study; from the Humanities to Medicine, to the professions, even to Aerospace science and are spread all over the world doing what they know best to do – banishing ignorance and expanding the frontiers of knowledge just as thousands of its alumni, as medical doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc are providing various services to humanity both at home here in Nigeria and overseas. Amongst our alumni are two of the earliest winners of the Nigerian Merit award, just as The School has produced university Vice-Chancellors and state governors – military and civilian.   Or need I say that two of Nigeria’s most celebrated professors of Neurosurgery, the late Professor Kayode Osuntokun and Professor Adelola  Adeloye cut their teeth in The School? The Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi is, for instance, a distinguished alumnus of The School just like his deputy, Professor Dupe Adelabu and the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Ganiyu Owolabi. Such is the sheer profundity of Christ’s School that a whole page of this newspaper will be infinitely inadequate to tell its story.

    Our School is so unique that not a few has  accused us of acting like a cult because whenever or wherever we ex-students  meet, irrespective of age and when exactly you  attended The School, you immediately become like uterine brothers and sisters.

    This was precisely the objective of the founding fathers.

     Archdeacon Henry Dallimore who founded The School in 1933 was clear in his mind as to what sort of education he intended and what manner of character he wanted foster among the students from the very beginning. ‘The total impact of the education to be given,’ wrote Professor Olofinboba and co in THE BUILDER, ‘was to make the individual a useful person to himself and his community’. For this reason, initial subjects taught in The School included the following outside the normal academic subjects: Tailoring, Brick-making, Plastering, Building, Carpentry for boys and Weaving and Knitting for girls. Agriculture and Cattle keeping were added in 1945, thus by many decades before, Christ’s School was already doing what today’s 6-3-3-4 and all its other newer variants had been grappling with for decades. Above all, however, the founders wanted to nurture the ‘total man’, whose entire life will be rooted in and around Christ. To amply demonstrate this, everything about the school revolved around Christ: the name, the motto, Christus Victor, just as the first two letters of the word ‘Christ’ is inscribed in Greek.

    But if Apollo (Archdeacon Dallimore) planted The School, our Paul, who watered and nurtured it to world renown is the Rev Canon Leslie Donald Mason, C.B.E, O.O.N, M.A, Dip.Th, Dip Ed, whose children we all are since he never was married. To all Christ’s School students, Canon Mason was Principal, father, counsellor, benefactor, friend, teacher, all. He ensured you never dropped out of  The School for financial reasons. He indeed paid the fees of many a student.  He knew all the students by their first names and could identify thousands by their voices.

    For a very long time, he was our doctor and dispenser as he converted one of the rooms in his hilltop house to a dispensary. A strict disciplinarian, all the same, Canon Mason was a man of simple taste and life style and so was able to handsomely impart in the students respect, simplicity, humility, honesty, loving kindness and diligence. It should therefore not be a surprise that wherever you find an old student of Christ’s School, you are face to face with a complete gentleman/lady who is ever willing to lend a helping hand, whatever the circumstances.

    In appreciation of all that Canon Mason did for us at The School, a book: The Reverend Canon Leslie Donald Mason (1908-1989): THE BUILDER, was written in his honour by the alumni association under the lead of the late Professor M.O.Olofinboba.

    He was succeeded in 1967 by Chief R.A. Ogunlade, another truly remarkable man of God who also gave his all. Indeed, he made Biology easier for us than eating very ripe banana. He was such a gifted and exprienced teacher.  An old student of The School himself, Chief Ogunlade ensured there was not the slightest diminution of all the good standards Canon Mason with whom he had worked very well had laid down. One of his key achievements was the seemingly effortless manner in which he successfully achieved the tasking merger of the Ekiti Anglican Girls’ Secondary School which was founded in 1955 by the Anglican Church, with Christ’s School; a thoroughly daunting  assignment.

    Christ’s School had been founded in 1933 as Ekiti Central School, taking students into classes V and VI and took in students from within and outside Ekiti. It moved to its present AGIDIMO HILLS site in 1936 and it was there, on a visit by the Governor-General of Nigeria in that year, that he named The School, CHRIST’S SCHOOL.

    Christ’s School has, however, also had unsavoury stories to tell. For a very long time you would think it was taboo for an old student of The School to be appointed the Principal. It was even rumoured at that time teachers of some specific subjects, like Mathematics, were being deliberately denied the school. This time, therefore, coincided with that period when a series of individuals for whom our culture, history and practices meant nothing, or principals who were, in fact, jealous of its popularity were appointed as principals over it. This was mostly during the military era but there can be no denying the fact that some principals in the same period did their very best for The School. A good example of the latter is Chief R.F Fasoranti who gave impeccable service to The School that he is still fondly remembered till today.

    Christ’s School will always remain a pace setter and its products exemplars. In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars, chosen solely on performance at the entry point examination. Today, there is hardly a university of note without some of its professors being ex-students of The School. In Medicine in particular, where it must have close to a hundred professors, if not more, Christ’s School continues to make terrific impact even in the UK, and the U.S.A, just as it has produced men and women in the professions and in the Episcopacy, especially the Anglican Communion where it has produced many Bishops.

    The 80th Anniversary, which is a mammoth home-coming for ex-students from every nook and cranny of Nigeria and the Diaspora, kicked off to a wonderful Thanksgiving service in many churches locally, and abroad on Sunday, 23 June, 2013. In my church, at the Archbishop Vining Memorial Cathedral, Oba Akinjobi Road, Ikeja, Lagos where the Lagos branch had its own thanksgiving, it was a wonderful sight-seeing  the entire congregation, not only joining us to mellifluously sing The School song, CHRIST IS OUR CORNER STONE,  but for most, who must certainly be aware and appreciative of the huge impact Christ’s School has made and continues to make, to  actually join us at the altar for the blessings.

    Friday, 28 June, 2013 will equally be awesome as the one and only, Sir Christopher Kolade, himself an old student and former Nigerian Envoy at the Court of St James’, London, takes to the rostrum to give the anniversary lecture. Saturday will be unique as we spend the day with the students and the evening, is already billed as an evening of fun at the evergreen Quadrangle where I had last been in my final year which is exactly 50 years ago this year. On Sunday, we shall return again to church to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for all He has done for us individually and collectively and, very importantly, for The School.

    All these will then come to a befitting end with The School Prayer:

    Grant O Lord

    That Christ’s School may continue

    To be a Christian School

    Not in name only

    But in deed and in truth

    For the sake of Christ

    Whose name we bear

    Amen.