The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Forgive Victor Moses

    Forgive Victor Moses

    Our players should be courteous. Super Eagles coaches deserve the kind of respect our players give to their European counterparts.

    We see how they comport themselves in their European teams. Many may argue that these clubs have structures. But I ask, has Stephen Keshi not created a structure in the new Eagles? If you ask me, I will say ‘yes.’ So why do they still misbehave?

    Perhaps, many of these boys would have got the right ‘lessons’, if they had not been allowed to spend too much time playing the beautiful game unhindered as kids because their absence eased the problem of over-crowding at home and reduced the number of mouths to feed.

    Quite a few overcame the tough they had. They combined playing soccer with acquiring knowledge, which they now use to earn a living.

    Victor Moses’ case is pitiable. He stands today in England alone, all alone. No father, mother, brothers or sisters. Moses lost them all to the insensitive carnage in Kaduna, according to his accounts.

    As an orphan, he lived a reclusive life. Catered for by foster parents who didn’t know the African culture of nurturing kids, Moses has been unable to bridge that gap, now that he is mature as an adult. This is not to say that foster parents don’t nurture kids properly.  They do. Perhaps, Moses’ case is the exception to the rule. You won’t blame the young Nigerian growing up in foreign land, oblivious of what the future held for him in those traumatic years.

    The story was once told of how Moses didn’t bother if he had a privilege discussion with the sports minister of his country at the Heathrow International Airport in England. The minister, we were told, recognised Moses inside the airport lounge and walked up to him to exchange pleasantries.

    The minister could have ignored Moses like many of them do, but he chose to chat with the Chelsea star. In fact, the minister wanted to congratulate Moses for opting to play for Nigeria. He succeeded but Moses was not interested in further discussion, as he fiddled with his telephone. Of course, his ears were covered with the ear phones of his set. Will anyone blame Moses for that? Certainly not this writer since Moses has walked this earth alone after his parents’ death.

    Interestingly, the minister wasn’t offended by Moses’ conduct. The star had been listening to his music before he was politely interrupted by the minister. He sympathised with him and felt perhaps he was not in the mood to be distracted.

    This Football Mirror of England’s account of what Moses said about himself: “Austin Moses, my father was a Christian minister in Kaduna at a time when religious violence between the Muslim majority and Christian minority was rife.

    “Thousands of Christians had been killed there in 2000 when they objected to the imposition of Islamic Sharia Law.The news wires mention countless examples of Christian pastors being butchered in their churches by Muslim rioters.

    “Still, Austin Moses remained a pastor and with the help of his wife, Josephine, continued with his missionary work. He did not have time for football but Victor played every day, in the streets or on a dusty concrete pitch surrounded by houses. His heroes were David Beckham and Michael Owen.

    “But in 2002, there were more religious riots. The family knew that because Victor’s father had his own church, he would be a target. Victor, the couple’s only child, was playing football in the streets with a ball made up of sticky tape bound tightly together when his uncle came to find him.

    “He told him rioters had set upon his parents in their home and murdered them. He said Victor’s life was in danger, too. The little boy, an orphan at 11, was hidden at a friend’s house.

    “I just tried to be careful afterwards,” he said. “It was a week after they were killed I came to England. They got me out as quickly as they could for my safety.”

    “He left so fast and in such panic, shock and bewilderment that he did not even have the chance to bring any pictures of his parents.”

    Why the narration about Moses’ past? Today Moses is not with the Super Eagles in Brazil for the Confederation Cup. It was reported initially that he was injured. Many questioned this shocking revelation because he had nodded down a brilliant cross which Fernado Torres blasted inside the net in Chelsea’s 2-1 against Everton at Stamford Bridge to qualify for the 2013/2014 UEFA Champions league competition.

    They couldn’t reconcile this setting with the injury claims, especially as Moses didn’t limp off the pitch. Incensed by the development, NFF sought to know from Chelsea what his problem was. But the English replied to say that they had released John Mikel Obi and Moses, the two Nigerians in their employment, to play for Nigeria.

    Having known the truth, NFF and indeed the team’s chief coach wanted to know what his problem was. Rather than pick his calls or return the voice messages left on his answering machine with a call, Moses, I would rather say, shied away. He didn’t have the courage to tell Keshi and NFF eggheads the truth. He surely needed a break from the beautiful game to be with his kid, born by a live-in lover. I won’t blame him.

    The flipside to the tale of the two players is that Mikel was courageous to tell Keshi that he needed to rest. He was excused to miss the friendly game against Mexico in Houston, United States. Mikel returned to play pivotal roles in Nigeria’s 1-0 victory against Kenya in Nairobi and against Namibia in Windhoek on June 5 and 12.

    Nobody has heard from Moses. Keshi and the NFF are amazed but have remained calm. But Keshi’s and NFF top men’s silence is betoken. Moses may go the way of Osaze Odemwingie because he has refused to pick his calls or return messages that he obviously listened to.

    Indeed, the body language of those in the Glasshouse and the Eagles technical team suggests that Moses has been axed. No qualms but don’t we think we should treat his case as that of a first offender? As a young boy, he certainly didn’t know how to tell both parties that he needed a break.

    The difference between Osaze and Moses is that the latter spent part of his ‘holidays’ wishing the Eagles well before their games and congratulating them where necessary after such matches. He also hasn’t said anything about his absence nor did he go the Osaze way of pouring inventive on the coaches or the NFF.

    Keshi should reach out to Moses, scold him and get him back to the team. Moses knows he erred, although he has consistently said he was gutted by the ‘injury’ that forced his absence from the Eagles’ busy June schedule. Moses doesn’t know of the Chelsea letter that put a lie to his injury story.

    Eagles need Moses. One goal from 180 minutes of soccer against Kenya and Namibia is an appalling goals record, given the pedigree of our players. Keshi and NFF need to close ranks with our erring players. We need to play the next stage of the 2014 World Cup qualifiers with our best stars.

    We lost so many scoring chances against Kenya and Namibia as attested to by NFF’s General Secretary Musa Amadu and his boss Aminu Maigari in post match comments. Even Keshi acknowledged that his boys were wasteful. For the next stage, there should be zero tolerance for fluffed chances because the opposition will be stiffer, having separated the boys from the men in the team.

    I don’t expect much from the Eagles when this year’s Confederations Cup competition begins today. It is a learning curve, one in which we can gauge our coaches’ technical savvy against some of the best tacticians in the world.

  • Like June 12, like Biafra

    TOFA’S FICTIONAL JUNE 12: I was in a quandary as to how to open and manage the long, sad story of Biafra and June 12, 1993 in just about 1000 words until I read Alhaji Bashir Tofa’s comment on the issue. Recall that June 12 represents the day Nigerians voted for a certain MKO Abiola; the day they bonded and chose Nigeria for the first time in her life and for her sake. Remember June 12, the E-day that took the baton from the Biafra war on our relay race of infamy. And remember Tofa, the neophyte who was drafted to run against MKO on that day of history, a man whom the gods ensconced on the laps of history but who can’t figure out that phenomenon even 20 years after.

    What did Tofa say? He said that the June 12, 1993 election is fiction, a dead issue. If you thought he made a mistake, he didn’t, he repeated it a few days later in Daily Sun interview (Wednesday June 12, 2013, page37) thus: “I sincerely believe that it is an episode that we need to get over with and look forward to a better electoral process and, therefore, a better democracy.” Gee! This really is the real problem with Nigeria; we are so blessed with non-leader leaders. How could a former presidential candidate, a leader in every respect describe his country’s history as fiction and ask that it be forgotten? How can you manage today and shape tomorrow if you discard yesterday? Is it possible that Tofa cannot see the connection between yesterday and today or, is he simply shuffling the cards of perfidy that has been perfected by the average Nigeria elite? Can’t he see that for 20 years June 12 has not gone away and like an aggrieved ghost, it will not? It has to be atoned.

    JUNE 12 AS A SHORT CHAPTER IN THE BIAFRA BOOK: If Tofa cannot fathom a history in which he was an actor-observer, how can he decipher the mysteries and metaphysics of the Biafra war of 46 years ago? Of course he suffers a blurred vision (or no vision at all) like most Nigerians, and surely cannot see that June 12 is but a short, sad chapter in the Biafra-Nigeria story. Whereas June 12 is an injustice to MKO Abiola and Nigerians of goodwill, Biafra was injustice to the Igbo race and humanity. Whereas Abiola lost his mandate, his wife, his businesses; a few Nigerians died and we lost our resolve to reconstruct our mother land anew, Igbo race suffered genocide. Untrammeled genocide executed with licentious impunity. It was about the extinguishing of the lives of about one million people, yes 1000,000 people. It was the infamy of a brother gleefully slaughtering his brother man, woman and children by sword, by axe, by machete, mortars and by starvation. It was a cold calculation to exterminate.

    The Biafran injustice unlike June 12 is the story of vengeful hatred, of mass killing of a people on the streets of Nigeria, of beheading people and loading their torsos on Eastern region bound trains, of cutting open pregnant women and harvesting their fetuses, of forced digging of own graves and burying alive, of mass execution, and mass burials on shallow graves…of unspeakable blood-cuddling bestiality not known in modern history. To begin to talk of material losses of Ndigbo in that blight is to chase a rat when one’s house is blazing. Is it the malicious shrinking of Igboland into a potato-sized, landlocked area it currently occupies, the excising of the mineral rich areas, the seaports and worse, seizure of entire towns and cities built up by the Igbo. For instance, the entire Port Harcourt which built by Igbo was hijacked and to hide the infamy, a funny re-designation of the streets and neighbourhoods with quasi-Igbo names was enacted. Thus after the war, Umokoro (the children of Okoro) suddenly becomes Rumuokoro, a blatant rumour and national thievery that has remained unchallenged till today. Oh, what woeful national chicanery turned to state policy! And we have lived this lie for 46 years.

    The Biafran injustice, unlike June 12, is the orchestrated brigandage of seizing Igbo houses and estates across the country in the guise of abandoned property. If it is not coordinated stealing on a national scale, how could a man abandon his property in his country? And many are still keeping those stolen properties till today, suffering no pang of conscience, passing to their generations, accursed, bloody heritage. What about the stolen shares, voided insurance policies, lost cash balances in the banks, lost businesses and business debts? It was a holocaust by another means but unlike Hiroshima which has continued to enjoy physical, emotional and spiritual restitution, Biafra gets only snide remarks and Igbo have received no concessions, no reconstruction, no reconciliation and no sign of remorse from their traducers.

    THRIVING CULT OF VILLAINS: Tofa calls June 12 fiction because Nigeria too is fictional. He wants us to forget it because we are a people living in denial. All this means nothing to him because he is a part of the growing cult of villains leading us as we shamble through this journey to nowhere. They do as they like, they say what they would, they live in a heady, heedless world of their own. They invoked Biafra upon us, reaped the bounties and left us to nurse the wound and live the trauma. For them Biafra was fiction better forgotten and un-interrogated; same June 12 – fictional Nigerian history.

    But what might be the mindset of a man who participated in the history of a people and does not recognize it. Tofa did not see his duty as a leader in Nigeria in June 1993 to re-enact a robust democracy in Nigeria. The same way General Ibrahim Babangida could not see that history was handing him a gift as the maker of modern Nigeria. He was so enamoured by the immediate fropperies of power he couldn’t see it. Sadly, he still has not seen it as he still not reconciled to it. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is MKO Abiola’s kinsman who suffered from acute case of sibling envy. He bad-mouthed Abiola even in his travails and in death, he would not acknowledge or recognize him notwithstanding that he was the chief beneficiary of June 12. His tragedy today however, is that even after enjoying the largesse of June 12 as a two-term president of Nigeria he remains a wee little personality under Abiola’s shadow.

    General Sani Abacha is gone, so ingloriously gone that he is better left well alone. Chief Ernest Shonekan who was a subterfuge president for a few unremarkable days is still around or is he? Same for Senator Arthur Nzeribe the master of no scruples, the old man who would leak the soup plate with his tongue as Igbo would throw their jibe. He who was in the vanguard of that mindless scheme called ABN; the very instrument for scuttling June12. Where on earth is he now? Name them: Chief Tony Anenih is still up and about, roaming the world seeking to fix things that are not broken. Anenih was the erstwhile chairman of Abiola’s party that won an historic election. We must not forget General David mark, reigning senate president. He was among the young Turks, the giddy ‘Babangida Boys’ in the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) whom Babangida said, said Abiola must not be president. Mark still has not said anything to Nigeria on June 12.

    Enough said. But a man who does not know where the rain started to beat him, will never know where it stopped beating him, that is vintage Chinua Achebe. If we do not know that our troubles started with Biafra and the Igbo question we will be long in the cold.

  • Between then and now

    Between then and now

    What has changed since June 12, 1993? The uniformed services, shamed out of office after thirteen years of official terrorism, are no longer in direct control. Beyond that, the body politics hasn’t changed a bit. Indeed, there are significant lessons unlearned.

    I do not want to belabour the reader with the known quantity. An election was contested keenly, and a candidate won with clear margins of victory across the nation, a once in the lifetime of the sleeping giant that would have created the much needed action in the direction of nationhood. But that was not to be because in the eyes of a few, Nigeria was not to be unless they are in charge.

    There were protests and rallies, and then a prolonged battle sustained by the undying optimism of a minority led by NADECO and a coalition of progressives at home and abroad. The struggle was not without its ups and downs. The forces that have always scuttled the emergence of a political nation out of the motley crowd of ethnic nations were at their strongest. They turned the battle against military dictatorship into a sectional and sectarian struggle. It became a we-versus-them affair. And within the struggle itself, ego had its field day and the stress of the battle clearly showed. In the end, the unseen forces that believed in a future for the country intervened giving her a second chance.

    How has the second chance been used? I want to focus here on four areas of national life that contributed to and/or directly caused the debacle that was the aftermath of June 12, 1993 elections.

    First is our system of electoral politics and the way we approach elections. The remote and immediate causes of the June 12 fiasco have been well documented. What still stands out was the way the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida manipulated the sensibilities of the political class and mischievously dribbled them for purposes other than national interest. His idea of leadership at the center was coloured by, not necessarily evil, but certainly primordial considerations of personal and ethnic hegemony. While the June 12 election held the promise of a united nation, Babangida and his crew opted for the unity of a clique promoting the agenda of hegemonists.

    Sadly, nothing has changed in our electoral politics since the beginning of the present dispensation fourteen years ago. Between 1993 and 1999 the nation was at the brink of collapse as the clamour for peaceful separation rang clear and loud. Shouldn’t it shock reasonable people that we have not moved a bit from the insanity that almost leave us dead as a nation?

    Electoral manipulation greeted the very first elections in 1999 and has only undergone various forms of perverted perfection since, with desperate declarations of elections as “do or die” events. The deliberate and bare-faced bungling of the election of the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum is the latest example of the shamelessness of the political class. And it is a mirror image of the June 12 experience. For just like that experience, we are now treated to the drama of participants in a free and fair election shamelessly denying their involvement and asking for evidence of their participation. They are protesting, after the event, that the election shouldn’t have been conducted because NGF Chairs have always been selected by consensus. Well, shouldn’t this have been agreed to by all participants? And if there was not an agreement because some die-hard democrats preferred an election, and you acquiesced, do you have a right to complain because the outcome doesn’t favour you? It’s all in character, and is good evidence that we have learnt nothing and gained nothing. And it is just an indication of what to expect in 2015.

    June 12, 1993 represented hope for a new sense of nationality with the expectation of a genuine unity of purpose. However, the hope began to be shattered with the struggle for the restoration of the mandate that followed the annulment of the election. Instead of a united front, efforts were made to regionalise and ethnicise the struggle. And that effort has not abated even since the return of civil rule in 1999. We can debate the depth of our ethnic tensions at this time compared with 20 years ago. I am sure, however, that no one can deny what is obvious, that we do not now have a united country and the very idea of a nation is constantly being threatened. If a group can insist that their man must be president or there will be an end to the country as we know it—whatever the election results are—then we know that something is terribly wrong with our sense of who we are and what ideals we espouse.

    We now think in terms of our ethnic nations, its marginalisation and all, with no corresponding interest in the entity named Nigeria. Why don’t we just get together then and reach a peaceful accord for everyone to go to their tents? I think what now holds the country together is the private interests of the political class. It is why the various elements of the ruling party who would have nothing to do with each other still get together to reconcile their differences. The Northern Governors Forum is out to protect the interests of the North. So is the Southsouth Governors Forum. These groups are majority PDP governors. But there is no overriding PDP national ideal that prevents conflict and promotes harmony between the sections. What does is the private and sectional interests that each governor wants to protect. As long as those interests are there, and can be protected by patching up difference, we may expect the Nigeria project to go on. But this is not a guarantee for lasting hopes for the survival of talk less of the prospering of the nation.

    Finally, we may ask about how we have fared with respect to respect for the rule of law and combine this with the so-called war on corruption. The two are related and have always had a combined effect on the prospect of national development and progress. The first president inaugurated after the June 12 debacle was himself a victim of the manipulation of the rule of law. But he went on to perfect the art of manipulation in many ways, the most egregious being how he mocked the Supreme Court ruling on his seizure of Lagos State Funds.

    Subsequent administrations continue to mock the rule of law. The Nigerian Judicial Council is by our constitution the authority over the appointment and discipline of judicial officers. But their pronouncements now have to be agreeable to the political class, otherwise they are ignored with impunity.

    The June 12 debacle is attributable in part to the depth of the corruption of the body politic literally and metaphorically. And we have learnt nothing from that experience. This is why there is so much cynicism about the government rhetoric on corruption. If there is a war going on, it is not visible to the majority of our people. Indeed, they see the opposite when we granted pardon to a notoriously corrupt politician who the international community has written off and an irredeemably corrupt person. The politician that our judicial system absolved from the crime of corruption was found culpable by a foreign court. It is unclear how long we have to wait for our government to redeem itself and our nation from the current state of political stupor.

  • Niggers with attitude (1)

    Today, we struggle to turn white or some blurred pallid shade of the British or American. Some desperately seek to turn French, German, Ghanaian or South African even as you read. Nobody wishes to be Nigerian. Nobody seeks to be a Nigerian; and the few instances that we think we do are irredeemably marred by our conscious and desperate bids to perpetuate base sentimentality and cosmetic norms as the essence of the Nigerian spirit.

    What is the Nigerian spirit? What culture of humanity best codifies the core and immutable individuality of the true Nigerian? Who is a Nigerian? Today, we live in the world of the Nigerian nigger. Niggers occupy our public offices and worship houses. Niggers parade our corridors of power and lord it over us with condescension and élan reminiscent of ‘slave-making ants’ on 17th century western cotton fields and sugarcane plantations. Niggers constitute our ruling class and with unabashed silliness and arrogance, they treat us like lesser niggers on a slave plantation.

    And don’t we just love to be less than? Even when oppressed and irresponsibly shortchanged, we choose to be docile, bending over unquestioningly before the brute force of fellow niggers treating us with disdain. I am not a nigger. I do not know about you but being a Nigerian nigger has made it possible for most of us to get insulted in places where the average American “Negro,” or to be politically correct, “African-American” could never be insulted. Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mali, USA, United Kingdom, Brazil Greece, Ghana, South Africa, Algeria, Mauritania,, Kenya, Cameroun, Botswana and Ivory Coast to mention a few have learnt to mock and scoff at the Nigerian nigger.

    Being a Nigerian nigger is more humiliating than it seems, but we who are the objects of ridicule have grown to cuddle disdain like a day old babe. We have learnt to love it. Being a Nigerian nigger means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means clinging with relish to life amid psychological death. It means watching your children grow up with palls of inferiority in their mental skies. It means committing cultural and mental hara-kiri and then wandering about dissatisfied as a tormented ghost.

    Being a Nigerian nigger also implies being the one that inflicts such hurt and untold hardship on fellow nationals. It means spewing webs of brilliant and not-too brilliant arguments, materialism and ethno-religious mayhem “in the interest of our nation,” according to the intent and designs of our “concerned,” and covetous neighbours.

    Being a Nigerian nigger means fretting over such inconsequential things like an American President’s refusal to visit Nigeria. There is no sense in fretting over President Barack Obama of USA’s deliberate snub of Nigeria on his recent visits to Africa. But we choose to fret over it anyway. Many a columnist and soapbox critic have blown it out of proportion and still labour desperately to incite apprehension and outrage over the decision of the American President to ignore Nigeria.

    President Obama has every right to snub Nigeria. In fact, I hope Nigeria suffers many more occurrences of such perceived disregard by many more powerful leaders of the world. Perhaps it will inspire us all to get our acts right and conduct our affairs in manners that would make us deserving of patronage and recognition rather than the pathetic wimps we have become, craving and demanding for unearned greatness and attention.

    Beneath our terror over President Obama’s snubbing of Nigeria subsists a shameful reality; the desperation for unearned acclaim and approval of Western superpowers. This smacks of prevalent inferiority complex and insignificance of the contemporary Nigerian.

    Why would any columnist or soapbox critic belabor the American President’s snobbery of Nigeria? That many of us proficiently personify the hopelessness and dire inconsequentiality of cowed American niggers indeed excites some ponderous metaphor; yet any conscious attempt to stimulate our wildly weak and untamed minds is tantamount to igniting a ravenous and uncontrollable fire. Need it be emphasized that any progressive effort at impeding our rudderless enterprises is to incite our volatile minds to a harvest of violence and bloodletting in defense of the status quo. What can I say? We are simply wired to self-destruct.

    Like Akin Akindele rightly observed in his ponderous literature, “The Military Franchise,” “the west has succeeded in conscripting most of the world to revolve around it” and we Africans, Nigerians particularly, have sadly settled to play “third” fiddle, in shameless actualization of our label as a “third world nation.” This shamefulness continually manifests in daily, in our approach to governance and determination of national affairs: Nigeria has become so politically and socio-economically inept that we have made the nation a dumping ground for all manners of perverseness, substandard products and corruption. From the touted legitimization of homosexuality to substandard goods and food items, Nigeria has evolved into a latrine for the worst of western-european rot and perversion

    I am not saying that there is nothing to learn from our western neighbours but we are equally in position and even stand at better advantage to teach them so much. It’s the way the universe is ordered; every race has its role and significance to world civilization. But despite the fact that the Egyptians – though Egypt has been reduced to a puppet state – succeeded in putting Africa on the world map, no other African nation, not even Nigeria, the delusive “Giant of Africa” has succeeded in distinguishing itself as a worthy propagator of a particular civilization.

    By resigning to our current role as a global pawn and toilet paper, we have inadvertently shunted our race into playing “third” and disposable fiddle, like glorified eejits eternally strung to minister on to the desperately justified ego of the western-european. Even more appalling is our moral claim to western civilization. Many amongst us, the so-called intellectuals particularly, continually argue that we have as much stake in the western-european wealth and civilization. And to drive home this fact, they attend the best of western-european schools in pursuit of over-hyped Ivy League education that has so far enabled and empowered a “globally distinguished rare breed” of scholars, administrators and economists to administer the most savage policies on to our defiled and battered nations of the “third world.”

    Being chic and modern means being unashamedly western or european. That is why our three arms of government persistently embark on wasteful and disgraceful trips abroad to learn western-european techniques of governance – I do not know the purpose of these idiotic ventures as they usually come back backward and even more inured in their brand of ‘sophisticated ignorance;’ apology to the presidential nigger who popularized the term ‘sophisticated ignorance.’

    Worrisome as it is that we naively project cosmetic norms and culture as the core of the Nigerian civilization, it’s more amusing to see our women burn their souls and burn their hair as they hide both under scalding strands of western-european feminism, ‘Brazilian hair’ and animal hair in their desperate bid to look caucasian. Even we men are still overwhelmed and haunted by the inferiority complex that plagued our forbears that we still pass it on from one generation to the other. We are hostages to cultural debriefing by alien civilizations.

  • Tablet of knowledge

    If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles; we are then engraving that upon ‘TABLETS’ which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity”. Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

    Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, the Governor of the State of Osun, being a black man from Africa, may not have many things in common with Daniel Webster, the white American author of the above quotation. But venturing into the inner rooms of both men’s minds individually, one is likely to discover a common signpost upon which a common indelible identity is inscribed. That identity is FORESIGHT which is the hallmark of statesmanship. Incidentally, both Webster and Aregbesola are statesmen in different lands and at different times but with similar goal. And, in their unified identity, both of these extraordinarily oratorical men will go down in history as statesmen with footprints on the sands of time.

    Daniel Webster is, today, globally remembered for his forthrightness and vocal championship of justice both of which have put his name in the history’s hall of fame. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s uniqueness in setting pace for African leaders in the realm of governance has conspicuously marked him out as a vertical political leader in the midst of horizontal others. If the phrase ‘Giant Stride’ bears the insignia of achievement, it must be synonymous to Rauf Aregbesola in connotation. Of all the elements of legacy that can be bequeathed to any human being, none is comparable to knowledge. It is only with knowledge that the continuity of human civilisation can be guaranteed across generations and times. This is an axiom upon which Ogbeni Aregbesola placed a premium for the certainty of today and the assurance of tomorrow.

    Going by the quoted poem above, any sensible person will confirm that in contemporary Nigerian system of governance only the ingenuous ‘Tablet of knowledge’ (Opon Imo) is qualified to be the mother of all legacies. The thought of it was right. Its design was right. Its environment is right. Its time is right. And since all it takes to be right in governance is to get things right no pleasant success of today can turn into a bitter failure tomorrow except by accident of negligence. With the ‘Tablet of Knowledge’ at hand for secondary school pupils in Osun State who says the time for renaissance is not here? While presenting the wonder ‘Tablet of Knowledge’ publicly penultimate Saturday, Ogbeni Aregbesola stated thus inter alia:

    “The idea of an electronic tablet is not our invention, and we make no such claim, for it would be patently false. But we have made something completely unique out of the existing idea. Hence, we make bold to say that Opon Imo is a tablet like no other on the face of the earth. As we speak, learning devices are usually e-readers that require internet connectivity to access their library resources. But Opon Imo stands alone. It is a complete library in a single computer tablet. It’s a complete and closed system that cannot interface or interconnect with any other system, because it does not need them to function. It was commended at Harvard University and by the Mayor of Pittsburgh who made no disguise of his admiration for the device.

    It is a first-of-its-kind standalone learning tablet in the world for self-paced study. It provides three major content categories vis-à-vis, e-library, virtual classroom, and an integrated test zone. The virtual classroom category contains 63 e-books covering 17 academic subjects for examinations conducted by WAEC, NECO and JAMB as well as non-academic life-enriching subjects such as History of The Yoruba, Sexuality Education, Civic Education, Ifa on ethics and morals, enterprise education, hints and tips on passing SSCE and ‘How to live a Healthy and Happy life’. This section also contains an average of 16 chapters per subject and 823 chapters in all, with about 900 minutes or 15 hours of audio voiceovers.

    In the integrated test zone of the device, there are more than 40,000 JAMB and WAEC practice questions and answers dating back to about 20 years. It also contains mock tests in more than 51 subject areas, which approximates to 1,220 chapters, with roughly 29,000 questions referencing about 825 images.

    From the foregoing, there can be little argument that Opon Imo is a veritable tablet of knowledge that levels the learning playing field for all students from different social backgrounds. It allows students to learn at their own pace, wherever and whenever they choose. It provides robust and uniform learning content for all students, and offers a feedback mechanism for monitoring their performance.

    Opon Imo also has the advantage of offering a highly interactive computer-based learning and testing environment. Opon Imo weighs 1.1kg. Its small size and light weight allows for flexibility in its use, which means a student armed with Opon Imo can learn walking, sitting or even lying down. With Opon Imo, learning becomes fun, easy and interesting. Because this tablet of knowledge is going to be distributed free to our students, it not only relieves their parents of the financial burden expended on learning materials, it likewise relieves the students of the burden of their book-laden backpacks. As the Mayor of Pittsburgh enthused, it also relieves students of ‘bad back’. His argument is that carrying a heavy backpack is bad for the back, therefore doing away with backpack is good for the back.

    Opon Imo has numerous other advantages. It can be solar-powered; it can record audio lessons; saves students the stress of copying notes and spares them more time to learn; facilitates early exposure of students to ICT; it has up to six hours of battery life; and its touch screen makes for easy use. To crown it all, this little device will greatly facilitate our free education policy by saving the state a lot of money that would have had to go into procuring text books on an annual basis. Indeed, the saving is humongous. Were the state to engage in the physical purchase of hard-copies of textbooks for the 17 subjects taught in our public schools, hard-copies of 51 audio tutorials, hard-copies of JAMB and WAEC past questions and answers for all subjects for a period of 10 years, it would (conservatively speaking) cost a whopping sum of N50.25billion.

    In addition, we do not have to buy books as long as the tablets are in use. We also cannot quantify the cost of the virtual classroom which does not even exist anywhere, except in Opon Imo.

    The introduction of Opon Imo is a precious high point in our comprehensive plan to totally remake the public school system in Osun. Our first concern after our inauguration was education. We discovered then, to our chagrin, that only three per cent of secondary school leavers in the state had the requisite pass for admission into tertiary institutions. We quickly held a summit of education stakeholders which looked into the state of education in the state and made far-reaching recommendations.

    In a world tilting inexorably towards ICT, Opon Imo is a bold statement of our determination to qualitatively redefine public education. With Opon Imo, we are certain to open the doors of good education to more of our students who would otherwise have been denied that priceless opportunity. Through education we are rescuing our children from possible misery. As Victor Hugo famously put it, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison’. Through Opon Imo we are opening more doors to more students to learn. By educating our youths we are also doing our society a world of good for an educated society will most likely be a better society. This is duly affirmed by Maya Angelou who pointed out that, ‘When you know better you do better”. With this milestone and those words of wisdom can anything else be called ‘FORESIGHT’? In a nutshell, the ‘SOURCE’ remains the ‘SOURCE’.

  • City key for ‘nomadic’ scholar

    City key for ‘nomadic’ scholar

    One good turn, according to an adage, deserves another. Perhaps nothing encourages good deed as much as appreciation. To show appreciation for good deed is to ask for more. This is what Ilorin indigenes did to the delight of all well-meaning people penultimate Sunday when they came together from all walks of life to treat an intellectual ‘settler’ to an appreciative reception. The occasion was a sort of gala night in royal regalia.

    It was a rare gathering of the crème de la crème of Ilorin indigenes who uniquely clustered the Kwara State Banquet Hall to clad one towering non-indigenous scholar in a historic wreath of honour. The cynosure of the august gathering was an international household personality whose contribution to the development of the city in the past two decades has remained non-such. Whether in Africa or even in the world academic circle, Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede the immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin is like a golden fish which has no hiding place. But it takes only men of worth to recognise a vertical man of worth with special reverence.

    The relevant question here is not who and who attended the occasion but who and who were not there? Where you have colossal names like those of Governor Abdul Fattah Ahmed; former Governor Bukola Saraki; the Emir of Ilorin, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Sulu Gambari; the former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Alfa Belgore; the former President of the Federal Court of Appeal, Justice Mustapha Akanbi who chaired the occasion; the former Special Adviser to the President on security matters, Major-General Muhammed Abdullah Adangba; an erstwhile Grand Khadi of Kwara State, Alhaji Abdul Kadiri Orire; the Immediate past Grand Khadi of the State, Justice Mutallib Ambali; the current Grand Khadi, Alhaji Harun Idris who was eminently represented by Justice S.O. Muhammad; the Kwara State’s Doyen of the Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), Alhaji Salman Alarape; the 2011 Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) governorship candidate, Alhaji Dele Belgore (SAN); the current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Professor Abdul Ganiy Ambali; the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Professor Shuaib Oba Abdul Raheem; the Vice-Chancellor of the Kwara State University, Professor Abdur-Rasheed Naala; the Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Saka Onimago who stood in for the Governor; Alhaji Saka Sa‘d a former Chairman of the University of Ilorin Council and coordinator of the reception; Prominent city indigenes like Alhaji Sa‘d Belgore; Justice (Mrs.) Raliatu Elelu-Habeeb; Alhaji Usman Ajidagba; Arch. Faworaja and Professors Kuranga. Of course, there several personal friends and associates of Professor Ishaq Oloyede such as Mallam Yusuf Olaolu Ali, Professor Yusuf Lanre Badmus, Professor Wahab Egbewole, Dr. Aliu Badmus, Alhaji Jamiu Ekungba and Alhaji Jamiu Afolayan were all there to grace the historic occasion. Besides, the rank and file of Ilorin Muslim Clergy including the Chief Imam of Ilorin, Alhaji Muhammad Bashir Al-Fulani, the Imam Gambari Alhaji Said Al-Gambari and Imam Imale, Alhaji Abdullah Abdul Hamid, as well as a retinue of other important personalities too many to mention here.

    Though, admission into the Banquet Hall was strictly by invitation, virtually all sectors of Ilorin society including the professional, the economic and political groups, the social and traditional communities, as well as the academic and religious bodies were proudly represented. In the citation of the honouree eloquently read by Professor Yusuf Lanre Badmus, Professor Oloyede was virtually described as a signpost of guidance beaming light to all directions of the environment to the benefit of all and sundry. The hallmark of his achievement is in the education sector where as a former Vice-Chancellor, he was generally acknowledged as an exemplar.

    Professor Oloyede is not the only non-indigenous scholar of international repute resident in Ilorin. But his selfless service to humanity in that city without thinking of the factor of indigene-ship stands him out of the crowded pack. In recognition of his unique service and in acknowledgement of his indelible legacy therefore, this Professor of Islamic Studies whose ambition of becoming a fellow of African Academy of Science was recently fulfilled has added a further step to his footprint.

    Socially, Ilorin is a highly civilised city with a fertile soil of profound knowledge on which towering intellectuals in various fields of leaning grow uninhibitedly. A realm of oriental and occidental diffusion though, Ilorin still maintains her cultural and traditional trait. These are manifest in the people’s marital life style, extended family affairs, economic and moral conduct, maintenance of cultural chastity and veneration for the Emir, the Galadimas and other elders.

    Intermarriage and tribal interaction through urbanisation has shown the old city as a typical example of an isogloss. And today, it may be very difficult to know by conduct or by appearance who is not a true son of the soil.

    All the people irrespective of their tribes, tongues and creed automatically acclimatize and acculturate in the perennially peaceful environment created by the ancestors of the city. Hospitality, chauvinism and radiation of ecstasy, are entrenched in the culture of Ilorin inhabitants. However, an average Ilorin son is allegedly trained to be crafty and this earns the inhabitants the appellation ‘’Ilorin mesu jamba’’ meaning Ilorin the custodian of craftiness.

    Religiously, people see Ilorin through the spectacle of Islam. This is hardly disputable since more than 80 per cent of the in habitants are Muslims. One can attribute the overwhelming beam of Islam on the city to the early romance by courtesy between Alimi and Afonja in which the earlier converted the latter to a Muslim. More may be said about Ilorin in this column in future. By virtue of the key to the city offered him by the assembly of indigenes, Professor Oloyede can genuinely claim to be an indigene of Ilorin. That is the fruit of education. Or what else can one say?

  • Five jobs I won’t take

    Five jobs I won’t take

    THE President’s job is no easy task.

    There must be times Dr Goodluck Jonathan will wake up in the morning, frown his boyish face, scratch his greying head of hair and murmur: “Isn’t there an easier way of earning a living?”

    He came into the office with tremendous goodwill. When the late President Umar Yar’Adua was gravely ill, Jonathan would just have stepped into the office of president, but a conclave of power mongers ensured that he had a tough time. They smuggled in the ailing president in the dead of the night and began to issue strange bulletins on his health. A massive protest to ensure that the right thing was done was launched. Jonathan became acting president. When Yar’Adua passed on, Jonathan mounted the saddle.

    In no time, the reality of the situation was laid bare. First, Niger Delta militants expanded their field of operation to Abuja, disrupting the Independence anniversary celebration with bombings in the heart of the city. Jonathan was damn too sure the militants were not responsible for the morbid job and he so announced. No investigations; no consultations.

    Enter Boko Haram. The ghoulish activities of this fundamentalist sect is well painted on the wide canvass of blood that is spread across the Northeast, with some strokes in Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and some other parts of the North. Boko Haram, which means western education is a sin, has ensured that schools and churches remain closed in many areas as it pursues its wild dream of Islamising Nigeria. Many homes have been destroyed. Businesses have been shattered and life has become a game of chance.

    To Boko, add the other harams, such as armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, primitive ritual killings for money, cultism and political assassinations. Spice them up with the massive pension fund scam, the collapse of infrastructure and the inability to draw a line between politics and governance, which continues to raise tension, overheating the polity. What do you have? A mess. A cocktail of problems.

    There seems to be a feeling of despondency in the land. The Jonathan presidency is buffeted by bitter criticisms of its activities as it continues to fumble and wobble, smoking and clanking like an old locomotive. Now, some of the critics, who insist that this administration has no clue to any of our numerous ailments, are saying that we never really knew Jonathan, the former teacher who became a deputy governor, governor and president – all by default. Legendary luck, some say. He himself told of his early days in the creeks of Otuoke, the hitherto unknown town that has suddenly found itself propelled high into the sky, most likely beyond the dream of its progenitors, how he had to struggle through it all, walking barefoot to school. The slogan now is: Never trust with power a man who wore no shoes to school.

    On May 7 in Nasarawa, a team of security agents, including 46 policemen and 10 Department of State Security (DSS) men, were killed in an ambush. They were said to have been on their way to arrest the spiritual head of a group, Ombatse, Baba Lakyo, who looks like any other old man having a nice time in a quiet village. Baba Lakyo said he was told that Governor Tanko Al-Makura ordered the security agents to bring his head. He was, according to him, away in a nearby village when he heard that Lakyo had been invaded, adding that his god killed the invaders who he claimed were drunk.

    How will Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar resolve the mystery of losing so many men in one operation? How many did the other side lose – assuming that the unlucky security agents fought against human beings and not Baba Lakyo’s god, as he claimed – in the battle? Was there no exchange of fire? When will Nigerians know what actually went wrong with that doomed mission? Abubakar has been railing that the killers of his men would face justice. When? How? Have they been found?

    Before the Nasarawa incident, 12 policemen had been killed in Bayelsa State. Boko Haram makes the task of seizing police stations and setting them on fire such an easy venture, like kids playing in the rain. It smashes prisons at will, setting inmates free to join its army.

    With all this, who would like to be an IG?

    These days, governors are the subject of all manner of jokes after the election of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), which has raised fears about the feasibility of a free and fair election in 2015. There is this newspaper cartoon in which a dad asks his little boy: “Son, which is greater, 16 or 19?” The son replies: “Dad, I’m not sure.” “Why?” “I saw our governor on television, shouting that 16 is higher than 19.” The dad says: “Don’t mind him. Follow your teacher, 19 is greater than 16. You know the governor is a politician.”

    In the embarrassing election, of the 35 governors who voted, 19 were for the incumbent chairman, Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi and 16 for Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang. But, instead of conceding defeat and embracing Amaechi in the true spirit of sportsmanship, the Jang faction, apparently emboldened by the Villa, rejected the result and declared its candidate winner. It carried on with the joke as if it had won an Olympic gold medal, showing off its dubious prize at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) secretariat and the Villa. It then went on to open a secretariat. Amazing. Amusing.

    Then the video of the election hit the internet. One local television station also beamed it.

    How does it feel to be a governor on the other side that is widely seen to be a bad loser?

    For a governor, it is not enough to perform well on the job and be hailed by the people. If you stand on principle and justice, the Villa may come after you, turn your friends against you and seek to embarrass you in whichever way it deems fit, no matter how contemptible. A plane that has flown you for long may just be discovered to have no valid documents or the pilot has not filed a manifest and, suddenly, you are grounded. Or you may just wake up to find that some oil wells –if yours is an oil producing state – belonging to your state have been ceded to another. Or you may just find that the party structure has, with little legal gymnastics, been snatched off your hands and you have all manner of allegations hurled at you. Among such allegations are those that are so nauseating, such as being disrespectful to the president, and nebulous as well as ridiculous, such as insubordination. Then, you get suspended from your party.

    I admire the eloquence of Minister of Special Duties Kabiru Taminu Turaki, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North. He and other members of the committee have been going about the assignment with great enthusiasm, believing that when the guns stop to boom, the gladiators will surely come to the table for talks. In him you see a rare passion for a mission. But imagine the minister and our own Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, red bow tie and all, sitting across the table with Abubakar Shekau – massive, black beard and dashing eyes – an AK- 47 rifle slung on his shoulder. What language will they speak? Arabic? Hausa? English?

    A few days after the committee hit the road, the government unleashed a state of emergency on three states – Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. The full might of the military has been brought on the insurgents. Is this to soften up Boko Haram before the eventual dialogue? Where will the Turaki Committee find Shekau – he has a $7m bounty on his head – to talk to?

    When the government talks about cracking the power problem nowadays, Nigerians laugh. Today, there is a plan to hit 10,000 MW by December; tomorrow, the 3,000 or so MW we are sharing crashes and there is outage. Many thought with Barth Nnaji, the professor of Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Robotics at the helm, we were going to get it right. Then he was forced to quit a job he did with so much zest. Now, many are asking: Who is the Minister of Power?

    It’s too late for me to be a policeman; I’m above the age qualification for the Police College. I can’t be Power minister; it is not in my line of trade or my training. I don’t want to be a governor – the intrigues, sycophancy, cowardice and lies. Do I want to be president? No. I don’t want to be told that because I had no shoes in school I have developed a great passion for shoes, not just to beautify my feet but to kick my critics in the groin. No.

  • Fire on, Fayemi

    Fire on, Fayemi

    The Supreme Court’s decision over the gubernatorial conundrum in Ekiti State has finally rested the issue of the gubernatorial election in Ekiti. Even to a non-legal person like myself, it was clear to me that the decision of Segun Oni to challenge the judgement of the Appeal Court on the electoral malfeasance which culminated in his being illegally declared as governor was unchallengeable constitutionally. This is because all electoral disputes terminate at the Appeal Court. Appealing to the Supreme Court on the grounds of violation of fundamental Human Rights should have been known to be legally dicey. Lawyers have to eat and no lawyer would tell his client that his case is unwinnable. Of course, in the corrupt environment of Nigeria, some people would have goaded Oni in taking the case to the Supreme Court with the assurance that the judgement can be politically influenced. This wild expectation was of course conceivable in the Nigerian environment where anything goes. Mercifully, justice prevailed and the status quo ante remains in Ekiti. The incumbent governor is governor in fact and indeed as well as in law. He is not only in government, he is also in power.

    I have said this before about Segun Oni that he appears to me as a gentleman and when he was governor of Ekiti State, a highly respected friend of mine, an academic colleague and a former boss asked me to support Oni and wondered what I had against him? My answer then was and is that I had nothing against him, but that he was in the wrong party. Of course I do not have more than one vote and I do not want to be arrogant that my opinion counts seriously, politically, what I can say with all modesty is that I have played some part in the educational and diplomatic development of Nigeria. I also played some part in the struggle against Abacha which earned me six months detention and which led to the late Chief J.A.O Odebiyi and Baba Archdeacon Alayande wondering why I did not offer myself for position of Senator in 1999 on the grounds that service deserves its reward. My nephew Akin is a politician and I was not going to have a situation where two politicians are fighting in the same mother’s womb.

    Thirdly, the Osuntokun brand in Nigerian politics is not inconsequential and I can say without any fear of contradiction that the role of my family in the political evolution of this country would remain imperishable. These, I believe are my credentials that made it necessary for my support to be sought. Now that the battle for the governor’s position has been fought and won, I advise Oni to move on and to support the incumbent Governor Fayemi for the benefit of Ekiti State if he really loves the state and I have no doubt that he loves the state. In any case, there are so many ways of serving the state than being governor. If he offers to serve and genuinely means it, Fayemi would accept the offer. This was clearly stated in the governor’s broadcast to the state after his victory. The governor said he was prepared to forget all the shenanigans that took place when Oni was governor and wipe the slate clean. This should be regarded as the highest form of magnanimity in victory.

    Since coming into the saddle in the rulership of Ekiti almost three years ago, Fayemi has demonstrated how prepared he is for the job. Unlike political leaders in other parts of the country, he had a well planned agenda of development which he has scrupulously followed up till date. He did not wait until he was in government before developing his programme. This is why he was able to hit the ground running with his vision and mission. His emphasis on infrastructural development is based on the well thought out belief that any state or country that is not in constant motion is dead. This is why he has crisscrossed the state with excellent roads. His greatest impact in this regard is at the capital city itself. I spent nine of my formative years in Ado-Ekiti and it is now impossible for me to recognise anywhere because of Fayemi’s magic touch. He is not restricting the transportation revolution to Ado-Ekiti alone, he is even building a virgin road to connect my town of Okemessi with Ido-Ile, where there was no road before. I cite this example as a demonstration of how comprehensive his development agenda is. I have been in education, apart from forays into diplomacy, all my life. I was a director of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and I know a bit about higher education and education generally. This is an area in which Fayemi has excelled and would still excel. His consolidation of the three universities in Ekiti into one is a masterstroke. This is because the state is not in any position to fund one university adequately, not to talk of three. We were deceiving and fooling ourselves under Oni by having two specialized universities, one on Education and the other on Science and Technology. With our gross revenue of less than four billion naira a month, how three universities could have being inflicted on us beats me. Fayemi saved us the embarrassment of this delusional ambition. I must say here that since the history of higher education in Ekiti, it is the Fayemi administration that has ever released substantial amount of capital vote for physical development.

    His funding of education is not limited to Ekiti State University; the college of Education in Ikerre-Ekiti has also undergone phenomenal development and transformation. In a discussion with the governor when I was bemoaning the fact that Ekiti State is not rich because we don’t have oil, the governor was clear in his mind that the intellectual solidity of our people is more than millions of barrels of oil. As if I did not know this, officials of DFID, in a private conversation with me said the same thing that in terms of people, Ekiti is the richest state in Nigeria and it is my belief that when Fayemi has finished with us in Ekiti, we would donate him to the centre, so that other Nigerians can be beneficiaries of the programmes of this intelligent young man. It is the quality of one’s mind, rather than the amount of natural resources one commands that matters. The highly developed economies of Germany and Japan with their little or no natural resources with stupendous intellectual prowess and brain power prove this.

    This is incontrovertible because I bear testimony to it. He has recognised the nexus between primary, secondary and tertiary education and this is why he has expended a lot of money on computer literacy at the lower level of the educational ladder. I remember my nephew bringing his young Anglo-Nigerian children on holidays to Ekiti and staying in Ikogosi, Hot Spring Resort. I was pleasantly amazed and pleased by the comments of these young people about the environmental beauty of Ekiti and how they would continue to come to Nigeria on holidays to enjoy the goodness of the Ekiti natural environment. I hope and pray that the tourist attraction of Ekitiland would be properly harnessed beyond Ikogosi. All these would require funding and I know our cerebral governor must be addressing himself to this.

  • A lion in winter

    By the time Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he had become a legend, a status he attained by his dogged fight against apartheid. To become a legend while alive is no mean feat. Only a few people are so labelled in their lifetime and it derives from their exploits, crusades or struggles. These exploits are not for their own personal gain but for the collective good of the people.

    Many of us are familiar with the story of South Africa, a richly endowed country where the Whites settled and never wanted to leave. The minority White in South Africa turned themselves to tin gods and resorted to suppressing the Blacks, the owners of the land. For years, the Blacks were made slaves in their own land. They lived in slums, while the Whites stayed in posh houses. Everything about life and living were skewed against the Blacks.

    It was just a matter of time before something gave in such a society where people were born into struggle. From the cradle, a black South African child had to fight for his rights and other basic necessities of life which his counterparts in other parts of the world took for granted. Blacks fought for their right to life; right of association; right to education; right of worship, you name it. They could not enter certain places because they were designated for Whites only. Some bars, schools and residential areas were closed to them. It was so bad. One had to be a Tom Quisling to access such places.

    It was hell on earth being a black South African because they were treated as sub-human. In no time, the people learnt to fight and fend for themselves in defiance of their tormentors. The Whites made the Blacks to become freedom fighters, a trait which is being passed to the younger generation today. The Mandela generation did the spade work for their offspring, who today are also no pushovers when it comes to standing up for their rights. The struggle, it seems, is in their genes.

    ‘’The struggle’’, Mandela says, ‘’is my life’’. Indeed, for the nonagenarian, it has been a lifelong struggle. Even at the ripe old age of 94, Madiba is still struggling, but mercifully not of the hue of the apartheid era. The lion is today struggling for life. If Mandela goes today,something which many of us do not pray for, he would not have died in vain. The outpouring of emotions since he was hospitalised on Saturday shows that he is a man well loved. How many of our leaders today will enjoy this kind of sentiment if they were in Mandela’s shoes?

    I cannot really point at any. Instead of a show of love and concern, the people will be cursing and wishing them dead by now. Isn’t there a lesson in this for them? There is, but will they ever learn? It troubles the hearts of many to see Mandela weighed down by a persisting lung infection. A man, who in his heyday was a Trojan, who looked even the most fearsome of men in the face, lays bedridden in hospital, battling for life.

    Mandela is a fighter; his fighting spirit saw him through his 27 years in prison under harsh conditions from which he probably might have contracted this lung problem. This is not an obituary on Madiba but an ode to a man among men; a man of character and principle, who has shown the world that it is better to wage peace than war. Mandela may be fighting for his life today, but we will forever remember his struggles against injustice not only in his home country but also in other parts of the world.

    The African National Congress (ANC) on which platform he was elected South Africa’s president in 1994 was founded in 1912, six years after his birth in 1918. Mandela was not among the founding fathers of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which transformed into ANC in 1923. He and people of like minds like the late Walter Sisulu and the late Oliver Thambo joined the ANC in 1944. Mandela, a lawyer, was destined to become not only ANC but South Africa’s leader. His imprisonment for life for treason on June 12 (that date again!) 1964, was to prepare him for the task ahead.

    When he became president four years after his release from jail, he showed that he had learnt a lot about life. If Mandela went to prison a bitter man, he came out as an apostle of peace. There was no bitterness over his persecution for all those years. The fighter had transformed in prison, though the fire still burned in him; the fire to make every South African feel at home in his country, no matter his colour or creed. This has been Mandela’s mission since he left prison 23 years ago at 71.

    No wonder this man of

    peace jointly won the

    Nobel Peace prize with F.W de Klerk in 1993, three years after he regained his freedom from prison. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela may be down today as a result of age, but his lights are not yet out and we pray that they will not go out soon. But if they do, the world will remember him for good because he taught us how to forgive even though we may not forget. Contrary to what many thought of him in the days of the struggle that he loves ‘trouble’ because his middle name, Rolihlahla means “trouble maker”, the circumstances of the time shaped the man.

    How many in his shoes would have stood by and watch their people being oppressed by a minority group all because it has the means to do so. Thank God, the man has put that behind him. As he struggles on his hospital bed for life, we pray that he pulls through because we still need him around as a father figure. ‘’I can rest only for a moment for with freedom comes responsibilities and I dare not linger for my walk is not yet ended’’, Madiba said in his classic book: Long Walk to Freedom. Madiba, your walk has not yet ended because we don’t want you to go now. It is not time to say goodnight.

    But if the Lord says otherwise, who are we to question Him. If that happens, we all know that ‘’you have fought a good fight; you have finished the course and you have kept the faith” and the good Lord shall reward you accordingly for showing the light for the world to follow. Get well soon, Madiba.

    June 12, 20 years on

    Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Bashorun M.K.O Abiola. It is certain that as long as Nigeria remains in existence, the June 12 saga will never be forgotten until we do what is necessary in memory of this democratic icon. The democracy we enjoy today was brought about by Abiola’s sacrifice. If Abiola had not laid down his life in the struggle to actualise his mandate, chances are that we will still be under military rule. Abiola died so that democracy will thrive. Even though, former President Olusegun Obasanjo refused to recognise his late kinsman for his democratic efforts, it is not too late for the government of the day to give honour to whom honour is due. Let us put behind us last year’s fiasco in naming the University of Lagos after him and look for a more enduring way to honour him. By so doing, we will be sending a message across to our compatriots to always stand up and fight for their rights no matter what they go through. If we don’t honour Abiola now, it will look like he died in vain. No, this should not be the lot of a man, who left his large family and chains of businesses to seek an improvement in the welfare of the masses. His campaign slogan was ‘’farewell to poverty’’, I am sure that if his election had not been annulled, we would have sung the nunc dimitis of lack and want by now. Is it not an irony that the businesses and the home that this man, who wanted the best for the poor of his country, left behind are being made to suffer today? Most of the businesses have even collapsed all because he is no longer around. And the battalions who depended on him have been abandoned. Abiola may be dead, but his legacies will endure because he was a man with a large heart. He touched lives. This is why in death, he has become larger than life. Nigeria is the worst for his death

  • PDP’s intolerance of criticism

    Some of our highly esteemed readers have raised issues about what they term ‘fixation of this column with PDP’; incessant criticism of President Jonathan administration in spite of his acclaimed achievements and ‘arrogance and disdain of the Yoruba political elite for political parties and political leaders’ that did not take root from the South-west. Let me first remind our readers who are eminently entitled to their views that a newspaper is a market place of ideas and are therefore free to send in their rejoinders instead of name-calling.

    But let us start first from the last. Our experience since 1999 does not support such a thesis. Political tendencies in the Yoruba nation stress from extreme left to the extreme right. Yoruba can therefore lay claim to joint ownership of PDP. Indeed ex- President Obasanjo defined whatever the coloration of PDP is today. He is the very personification of the party’s anti-democratic tendencies, its lack of internal democracy, ‘do or die election’, rule of gangs, and disdain for the judiciary and the legislature.

    Among the PDP leaders, Ahmadu Alli and Bamanga Tukur, the past and the current chairman of PDP have their parallel in the South-west. If Ahmadu Alli once nominated his son and wife for board positions, Obasanjo and his buddy, the late Lamidi Adedibu ensured their children became senators. If Tukur’s son was fingered for alleged involvement on the fuel subsidy scam, so was Arisekola’s son. Akala, Oyinlola, Daniel, former speaker Dimeji Bankole Fayose are as vicious as their other PDP young Turks from the north or elsewhere in the country. The point is that PDP is PDP, whether from the north, east or west. They all suffer from a common affliction-greed. If PDP has become a national malaise, its criticism where ever it is coming from will appear to me a patriotic act.

    And as for the president’s outstanding performance, I think it is not the duty of the press to give awards to institutions it is expected to keep on their toes as it has done with disastrous consequences in recent years. If the president has wares to sell, he has many paid through the public purse already doing that. They had an outstanding outing on May 29 when every minister that spoke praised the president for his outstanding performance. We saw then during the PDP family carnival that followed when professional praise-singers earnestly pleaded with the president not to abandon grateful Nigerians in 2015. Their outpour of emotion was only comparable to that of North Korean Generals who often weep publicly in show of support and love for their leader.

    Besides there is the president’s minister for information and the duo of highly competent and gifted, Abati, the author of ‘The president they don’t know’ and Okupe, who expressed preference for the nomenclature ‘attack lion’ as against ‘attack dog’ which his critics said he was during Obasanjo’s presidency.

    But perhaps what those who are complaining about fixation with PDP have failed to realise is that PDP apart from the military has been the most important institution in our society since independence. It has since 1999 defined our present and future. It has ruled for 14 years and has sworn to rule for the next 60 years. Only last week, the Political Adviser to the President, Ahmed Gulak demonstrated PDP’s desperation when he said “As long as the people who are gathered at the banquet hall of the presidential Villa are alive, we will not let governance slip out of our hand in our life time”.

    In pursuit of this dream, this is a party ready to exploit all the divisive issues in our polity, from ethnic differences, opposition political parties and even religion. Governor’s forum is polarized with government supporting losers of an election. A faction of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is today seen as a spiritual arm of PDP. PDP has also been alleged to be sponsors of both the Niger Delta militants and North East Boko Haram insurgents. Government has integrated the leadership of the former with mouth-watering contracts while government is on the verge of granting amnesty to the later.

    Besides political intrigue, there are other reasons why closer attention must be paid to PDP. In the last 14 years, most of the items under the exclusive list have been abused. The federal government controls education, yet unlike the political parties of the first republic that built public schools, PDP government is under-funding public schools while its leading members are busy building private schools charging outrageous fees that drive our children to move in droves to neighbouring countries in search of university education.

    Insurance is on the exclusive list, the party sold NICON, a national asset to their member. Airline is on the list, leading members of the party became airline operators. Construction, alteration, and maintenance of federal roads, are on the exclusive list, budgets on roads were allegedly diverted to fighting elections, while the nation’s network of federal roads have collapsed. Railways is on the list, yet after Babangida’s fraudulent railway revolution, promoted more on the pages of newspapers, successive PDP administrations have been awarding contracts after contracts that are often derailed by members of the party because of greed. Monitoring of quality of local produce and imported goods are the responsibilities of the federal government, yet, substandard goods and fake drugs flood our markets. The federal government controls the police, the police not only remain poorly paid, ill-equipped and ill-motivated, their pensions funds were stolen by civil servants right inside the of the Head of Service in Abuja. Prison is on the exclusive list. That perhaps explains why it is relatively easy for Boko Haram insurgents to move around unchallenged, liberating prisoners in the North-east of the country. Annulment and dissolution of all marriages are the exclusive preserve of the federal government. Even if the president and his PDP escape the charges of being responsible for increase in the rate at which old marriages are collapsing, they cannot escape responsibility for the failure of our youths to get married. Marriage is perhaps the last thing in the mind of a jobless youth.

    These are serious issues to be addressed by President Jonathan who is instead seeking protection from his Ijaw ethnic nationality. But the president must know he is as much a captive of the Yoruba. Obasanjo imposed him. The Ijaws were nowhere to be found during the constitutional battle over the rights of Jonathan who himself went into hiding while the Yoruba fought to secure for him the position of Acting president. Besides, the Yoruba, except Ogbeni Aregbesola and his Osun people who probably consulted Ifa divination before the 2011 election massively voted for Jonathan.

    If no one else, the Yoruba owe the nation a duty of preventing the president from escaping with false claim of being the most criticized president in the world over socio-political and economic problems that predate his ascendancy. He must be reminded that in similar circumstances, Barack Obama, his counterpart in America who inherited a suffocating $16 trillion dollar external debt piled up on two senseless wars by his Republican predecessor, unprecedented level of unemployment, accepted criticism with philosophical calmness claiming he understood the frustration and anguish of the unemployed. He was humble enough to admit it was in fact because of those problems he was elected by American people.

    President Jonathan already has too many professional praise-singers massaging his ego. While they continue with their highly rewarding enterprise, critics of government must not be discouraged by name-calling. The press has contributed more to our national development and stability of our nation than any other institution. It survived the colonial masters and their draconian laws, as it did the military with its obnoxious laws and will survive PDP current attempt to exploit divisive issues of religion and ethnicity to undermine the integrity of its critics.