The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Ominous signals

    There is a huge cloud hanging over the Nigerian political space. It is evident from the utterances of groups and individuals. It can be seen in their actions or inaction. And the body language of key political personages also betrays this slide to the precipice. At the centre of the heating up of the polity, is the competition for the highest political office in the country-the presidency. Any and every issue sacrosanct for the overall survival of this country is now unduly politicized, trivialized and sabotaged.

    Even with two years to the next general elections, statecraft has been relegated to the background as sections are pitched against each other bandying spurious claims and counter claims. Not unexpectedly, these have resulted to threats and counter threats as to what harm awaits the nation should things not go the way of the contending interests.

    Much of these threats have come from the North and the South-south for very obvious reasons. But the North has been the greatest culprit in these divisive actions and utterances. It feels it has been badly shortchanged from that elated office given the eight years of Obasanjo; the six years Jonathan would have completed by 2015 and his touted desire to run again despite the purported agreement he signed in 2011 to serve one term. For these, northern leaders feel it is their turn to take a shot at the presidency and nothing can stand on their way. Also to their advantage is the original zoning in the PDP; an arrangement currently shrouded in controversy.

    But the South-south feels their son, Jonathan has a constitutional right to a second term and nothing should stop him from availing himself of that right. Their years of neglect even as the source of the nation’s wealth is also cited as a key reason they should be allowed for once, preside over the sharing of the nation’s wealth that is earned from their backyard. They are also piqued that Jonathan has not been allowed to do his job through contrived insurgency from the Boko Haram sect. The senseless killings in some parts of the North and the constant avowals by the insurgents to force Islam on the rest of the country are viewed with serious apprehension. This is more so, with the body language of some northern leaders which tend to lend tacit support to the violence in that part of the country. There are valid issues in the contending viewpoints. But a key point of note is that the two contending paradigms are being sponsored from within the ruling PDP. For a party that has boasted to rule for 100 years irrespective of its performance rating, it is not surprising why it is being seen as the surest way to power. Those threatening fire, lime, and brimstone should Jonathan run and make it or fail to make it, have their eyes on the capacity to manipulate that office to achieve electoral success. If they have faith in the sovereignty of the electorate; if they are firm believers in the sanctity of free and fair elections, their indecent desperation in concentrating all efforts in the PDP would have been needless. Even with the bitterness and hostility in that party that has seen it suspending two governors, its leaders still boast of the successes they intend to record in coming elections. One begins to wonder the source of this optimism if we remove the power of incumbency that has become a euphemism for rigging and falsifying election results. Rather than threats and counter threats, it would have made sense if the aggrieved were exploring other democratic methods of achieving their goals. And these abound in a truly democratic setting.

    However, Jonathan has the final decision to make. The success or failure of which will definitely shape the direction of events. There are two scenarios. The first envisages a situation where Jonathan runs and secures the ticket of his party. Going by the threats from the north, he should be prepared for the worst. We should expect civil unrest, escalation of violence and violent activities. After all, we now know that violence in the country peaked after the last primaries of the PDP. It will be worse this time around. These could manifest even before elections and degenerate thereafter as its outcome will be fiercely disputed. And if our experience in such matters is any thing to go by, the incumbent will be hard put to convince the world that he did not manipulate the outcome to personal advantage. Any observed infractions will be latched on to fault and discredit the outcome of that election.

    In the event of this, Jonathan, still wielding the instruments of coercion, will come down heavily on the anarchists. But the success or failure of this strategy will depend on the volume of violence that may erupt. Even then, the threats would have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is also the possibility of violence erupting from the opposition if the election fails the test of free and fair polls. We may witness a verity of the ‘dogs and baboons soaked in blood’. From both the point of view of the PDP and the opposition, possible sources of violence abound.

    The second scenario is a situation where Jonathan declines to run or runs and fails to secure his party’s ticket. This will see a northerner flying the flag of the PDP in 2015. Jonathan’s kinsmen said they will take resort to full blown militancy that can bring this country to its knees. This could commence before the elections or thereafter. If it begins before the election, then that election may not hold. Jonathan will then find himself waging a war against his kinsmen. If it commences after a new president, possibly from the north has been sworn in, the Niger Delta people are in for serious trouble. They may witness the treatment meted out to the Boko Haram sect in an escalated and vengeful proportion. The situation will be worse if the north succeeds in defeating Jonathan at the primaries and eventually wins the election. They could even become very vindictive, using power the way it pleases them.

    They will rule for eight years and then hand over to another zone in the north to compensate for their thirst for power. No body in the PDP will have the moral right to challenge them given that zoning in that party has almost been considered dead. But then, that would be another source of conflict within the nation’s body politic. Other sections that have been denied that office will commence another round of agitations. The country will know no peace. And the prediction that the Nigerian state will fail, may inch nearer. The PDP should therefore take the blame for overheating the Nigerian political environment. All the bickering, intolerance and tension are traceable to their doorsteps.

    It is getting clearer that the party does not have what it takes to steer the ship of this nation safely. Going by these threats, whichever way the political pendulum swings in that party, is bound to midwife violence of inestimable proportion.

    That is the harm champions of regional or sectional causes for the sake of cornering the presidency are doing to this country.

    But the big question is, should Jonathan run or not given the foregoing circumstance? Rational calculations instruct that he should run and he will run. What are the issues? He is still allowed another term by our constitution. Two, if he chickens out, he would have been seen to have succumbed to intimidation. Three, he could fathom that he has not been really allowed to fully implement his programs through contrived violence that has held this country down in the past two years or so. Again, he might consider it risky to relinquish power now given the way the north is going after it.

    To chicken out, will be at the risk of posting an unenviable record of the worst president this nation ever had.

    Jonathan will run; threats of violence notwithstanding. Instead of violence, those aggrieved should explore alternative avenues to vote him out. Happily, there is a coalescing opposition capable of tilting the balance. In it, the various zones may find, a more orderly and rancor-free circulation of power and through it, safely navigate the impending doom.

  • The functions of state dysfunction

    The functions of state dysfunction

    (A call for a sovereign summit)

    Recent events, particularly the bizarre developments of the past fortnight and the unfolding fratricidal bloodletting within the ruling party, the PDP, make it mandatory to focus once again on the state of the Nigerian post-colonial state. The danger is not that the PDP might implode but that it might take nascent democracy and the nation itself along with its misbegotten debris.

    As it is today, the PDP is in total shambles, a power consortium bristling with buccaneers, political cannibals and other consorts of patronage and unearned privilege. It has never pretended to any higher ideal or superior nationalist agenda. It was born in perfidy and is dying in felony. Even by the miserable standards of party formation in post-independence Nigeria, this is quite a new low.

    At least its forebears withstood the ravages of their internal contradictions and remained essentially as parties until the military summarily disbanded them. But this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a party is openly disembowelling itself for all to see. It is quite a gory sight, a gruesome enactment of political seppuku on a national scale. But as a people and a nation, we owe it a duty to posterity to prevent ourselves from being consumed in the inferno of its infamy.

    In its classical ideal, the state embodies and encodes the society along certain stern and immutable principles which guarantee the stability and survival of its territorial reach.. This means that the state orders and organises society for optimal self-actualisation. The more impersonal and transcendental the ideal, the more the state is able to function with impersonal rigour and transcendental efficiency.

    In some extremely well-organised and disciplined nations, the state radiates and emanates such rigour, ruthless efficiency and quiet terror that it often comes close to an Absolute Spirit or deity. In such societies, state worship becomes a national religion. The state is the Father and Law-giver. For the citizens, the fear of the state is the beginning of wisdom.

    The entire society is suffused with its ideological apparatuses. It is the ultimate Kabiyesi, firm but just and fair. In the old Kongo before the Belgian king arrived to do his genocidal bit, it was not for nothing that the state was known as Bula Matari or crusher of rocks. Anybody that stood in its way risked being crushed. But it also acted as a benevolent and indulgent father. .

    The perversities of the Nigerian state in its current incarnation make it imperative to raise a few posers if only for the mental health of those trapped in its territorial hellhole. Is state disarray a cover for something far more sinister going on? In other words, can a modern state benefit and in fact profit from its own disorganisation and disorientation?

    In a cheeky and perverse manner, this seems to be the case with the contemporary Nigerian state. The more disorganised and dissolute the state appears to be, the better organised and resolute it is in discharging its primary obligation and fundamental raison d’etre of plundering and evacuating the resources of the nation. Those who designed the colonial state as a vehicle of metropolitan predation must be chuckling in their graves. The Africans have managed to stay one step ahead.

    We have now come to the juncture in political theory where a functional value must be allocated to dysfunctionality whereby state dysfunction obeys only the logic of its own inner function as a scientific machine for primitive extraction and expropriation of national resources. A nation under such historic affliction acquires the veneer of modernity and civilisation whereas social cannibalism and Stone Age political savagery are the order of the day.

    Archaeologists of the future, while excavating the ruins of a gifted but doomed Black society, will be amused to no end at the remains of primitives clutching modern GSM phones or of some later day Rasputin still clasping at indices of phenomenal economic growth even as supervised carnage and spiritual barbarity were the norm.

    Contemporary Nigeria is a classic illustration of state dysfunction as the organising principle and primary function of the state. We have left behind the concept of the order in disorder so beloved of some prominent African political scientists. In that scheme of things, the disorder is often accidental, purely without design and the culmination of a march of folly of intellectually challenged rulers.

    In any serious and properly functioning democracy, a state of emergency is an emergency for the state. It means that the nation has entered uncharted waters, requiring extraordinary and out of the normal routine and measures. The entire political class and not just the ruling party must coalesce in a bipartisan front to confront the threat to the nation. But to treat a national emergency with the kind of grandiose buffoonery we have witnessed in the last fortnight points at some sinister war-gaming.

    At the last count, three northern states have become a theatre of war and emergency. This is in addition to several economic, political and religious flashpoints across the entire country. With this dire exigency, you would have expected those in power to stop digging. But they have been digging furiously.

    Last week, they added the scalp of the Sokoto state governor, Magatarkada Wamakko to the hunter’s bag. What this means is that the entire northern fringe of the nation is a roiling cauldron of insurrection and insubordination. The Sokoto state chapter of the PDP is in open revolt.

    The PDP northern senate caucus is up in arms. Governor Aliyu Babangida is rampart against federal authorities and rearing to go, even as Isa Yuguda of Bauchi makes discordant noise. As the entire north dissolves in political combustion, total emergency and possible civil war loom in the region. And this is going to be supervised by a Southern Commander in Chief and a Southern military commander.

    The ethnic sabre-rattlers and assorted power mongers who seem to have captured Goodluck Jonathan are egging him on. Their claim is that what is happening in the north is good and desirable for the nation, since the north has supervised the mismanagement of the country for so long. In the process, they have turned what is supposed to be a pan-Nigerian mandate into a narrow ethnic platform for the domination of Nigeria in perpetuity.

    Even if it were to be so that some northern leaders mismanaged Nigeria, the purveyors of this abject and objectionable canard have forgotten that their own forebears were permanently in bed with the oppressors while the particular ethnic nationality they now openly revile and traduce were in open and permanent revolt against injustice for as long as it lasted.

    In any case and unless their closet agenda is the balkanisation of Nigeria, they should realise that the current closure of the Nigerian state under the guise of equalisation of oppression can only lead to permanent warfare and instability. It will open the door to a new Robin round of terror whenever Jonathan leaves or is forced to leave power.

    The question that should now concern all patriotic Nigerians is why the nation is prone and vulnerable to periodic closures .under each ascendant group, particularly in post-military Nigeria. We saw this with Obasanjo and the pan-Nigerian cult of personality that finally unravelled his administration. We saw this with Yar’Adua and the provincial and backward looking feudal clique that attempted to seize power in the name of a mortally afflicted man. Now we are seeing its ultimate manifestation in the somnambulist farce of the Jonathan administration. History repeats itself indeed.

    We cannot blame a state for becoming a burden on a nation when this is what it was designed for in the first instance. This is the historic conundrum before Nigerians. The state is an alien contraption forcibly grafted on diverse and mutually incompatible nationalities and has continued to be so in all its post-colonial transformations and mutations.

    We must warn once again that elections alone cannot resolve the conundrum except as a tentative and token holding device to ward off the inevitable. In such circumstances, no genuine transformation can also take place without a fundamental reconfiguration of the state and a redesign of the nation. A sovereign gathering of nationals is inevitable for Nigeria. Whether we must continue to postpone it and prolong the misery and the biblical suffering of our people is an entirely different matter.

  • Welcome, Opon-Imo; goodbye, Igba Aimo

    As Osun people take ‘Tablet of Knowledge’, they should say ‘never  again’ to PDP-type ignorance

    Even Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo would have turned in his grave on June 3, when Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State presented ‘Opon-Imo’, the magic computer tablet that his administration has been working on for quite some time, to the world, at a well attended ceremony in Ilesha, Osun State. Not a few persons have acknowledged, and rightly too, that since the introduction of free education in the defunct Western Region by the late sage, Chief Awolowo in 1955, ‘Opon- Imo’ remains the second most revolutionary project in education, not just in the geo-political axis, but nationwide.

    The point is that only the mischievous will see an elephant and say it seems they just saw something; when we see an elephant, we should say so. ‘Opon-Imo’ is a milestone. That explained why Nigeria literally stood still for Aregbesola when he launched the computer tablet. The array of personalities that graced the event cut across ethnic, political and religious divides, which is something to cheer in a country where politics is being introduced into virtually everything, and in the most cynical, if not outright damaging manner. This was something that was killed in the June 12, 1993 presidential election (that would be exactly 20 years on Wednesday), but which was annulled by reactionary elements in the country.

    The Aregbesola administration has no choice but to be creative in its handling of education in the state, if it must live to its billing as a progressive government. The government inherited a situation where only about three percent of secondary school leavers in the state had the requisite pass for admission into tertiary institutions. This was an unusual situation in a south-western state which called for an unusual answer. The government quickly held a summit of education stakeholders which looked into the state of education in the state and made far-reaching recommendations. Needless to say that ‘Opon-Imo’ is one of the major responses by the government in tackling the problem.

    So, what is ‘Opon-Imo’? I do not know whether it has a parallel in the world, but I know it is novel in the country, at least no government in the federation, whether federal, state or local has done such a thing. According to Aregbesola, “It is a virtual classroom containing 63 e-books covering 17 academic subjects for examinations conducted by the West AfThe Yoruba, Sexuality Education, Civic Education, Ifa on ethics and 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”.

    Aregbesola added, “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”.

    In fact, there is so much to say for this computer tablet. But I would not dwell much on that because so many people have discussed these in some details. Suffice it to say that power supply is not a problem for those who might want to look at that aspect of our national life. Already, the UN organisation has said it would adopt ‘Opon-Imo’ as one of the major tools of its West African regional harmonisation efforts in education. This, as well as how ‘Opon-Imo’ affect governance is my concern. A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.

    But shouldn’t charity begin at home? You can be sure it won’t, at least not when the issue has to do with progress; and especially so that the charity is coming from an opposition political party. It is instructive that this all-important computer tablet was launched at a time the country’s ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was busy doing nothing, or at best going after some of its leading lights, celebrating and covering its laggards with the ubiquitous ‘federal might’ that the party’s leadership and the presidency keep demystifying by the day with their actions and utterances.

    Rather than bring innovativeness into governance, the ruling party has continued business as usual. The other time we were debating how much to spend on the vice president’s lodge. At a time when the government should be busy dreaming dreams for national development, the whole machinery of government was deployed to ensure the government’s favoured candidate won the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election. Just last Thursday, the PDP suspended another governor (in line with my prediction last Sunday that the party would deal with governors who refused to team up with it in voting for its failed candidate in the NGF election, Jonah Jang). We should expect more of such sanctions over frivolous matters, including governors being nailed over the inability of the party’s leaders to successfully perform their conjugal responsibility on bed, should that suddenly happen. And this is the attitude that the party would carry to 2015 and still expect to win the election.

    If indeed knowledge is power, then one can start imagining what the impact of ‘Opon-Imo’ would be on educational performance in Osun state in the next few years. And, for the benefit of many of our youths who mistake Obafemi Martins for Chief Awolowo due to our shambolic educational curriculum, it is important to stress that what is happening, especially in the south-western part of the country today is not novel to the region; they have their roots in the past. The former Western Region (now Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ekiti and Ondo states) was the pace setter under Chief Awolowo’s premiership. The region has many firsts to its credit: the first skyscraper in the country (Cocoa House); the first region to implement free education; the first stadium in West Africa (Liberty Stadium, Ibadan; the first television station (WNTV) in Africa (forget the attempt by the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the ’80s to turn history on its head by claiming that the first TV station in Africa was established in Libya). We still have such people in the country today who would want to rewrite our unfolding history in their own image rather than in the image in which it occurred.

    If indeed Victor Huho is correct that ‘He who opens a school door, closes a prison’, then we can imagine how many prisons the Aregbesola administration must have succeeded in closing with its giant strides in the educational sector in Osun State. ‘Opon-Imo’ must necessarily remind one of the years of the locust that the PDP rule in Osun was. With ‘Opon-Imo’, ‘Igba aimo’ (the time of ignorance) must have been over in Osun; it must never return. Osun people are not dogs that will always return to their vomit. This, the people will confirm when they go to the polls next year to retain their governor. Goodbye to jati jati.

  • The “Arewa” North and our parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy (2)

    The “Arewa” North and our parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy (2)

    The gains evidenced by the creation of the NDDC, Niger Delta Ministry, Amnesty Programme, 13% derivation and even the Jonathan Goodluck Presidency have only meant more wealth for a handful of individuals in the region. Overall, the average Ijaw youth, for instance, is as distant from better life as he was when Major Isaac Boro was in the swamps fighting to defend the autonomy of the Niger delta Republic which he proclaimed. And therein lies the danger. A more ferocious army is gradually building up as the little gains from the long years of struggle continue to move in concentric circles of a greedy and insensitive elite class.
    Abraham Ogbodo, “New Militants For the Niger Delta”, The Guardian, Sunday, May 26, 2013

    Dear Itse:

    Last week, I rather very briefly touched on an observation that the fiercest opponents of fiscal federalism based on resource control are Northern conservative supremacists, while Southwestern and Southeastern conservatives and centrists tend to be its lukewarm supporters. Permit me to now expatiate more substantially on this observation, given my strong belief that it’s historical and current ramifications lie at the heart of the crises of nationhood and community that not only threaten our existence as one country but is also at the base of the horrible economic and social conditions of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians in every single part of the country.

    As you pointed out several times in your piece that prompted this series, Nigeria at the moment of its emergence after political independence from British colonial rule was based solidly on fiscal federalism and resource control by each constituent region of the nation. I would add that as a matter of fact, this claim has a longer history, for Nigeria at the point of the amalgamation of the North and the South in 1914 was also based on fiscal federalism and regional resource control. Indeed, this historical fact is so central to your arguments in your article of May 26 in particular and, more generally to your thinking on fiscal federalism that you insist absolutely that we must revert back to this long history before our country took the wrong turn of doing away with fiscal federalism and constitutionally enshrining and politically enthroning the bloated federalism that has turned the states into fiefdoms controlled by a bloated and infinitely corrupt and wasteful federal government at the hegemonic centre of affairs in the country. Since this view or position is so central to your thinking as well as the thought of nearly all fiscal federalists, whether conservative or progressive, let me repeat it: we must go back to the long years and decades when the constituent, federating regions were considerably autonomous of the federal government that in fact substantially depended on contributions from the regions in form of taxes.

    In all seriousness and without diminishing the case for fiscal federalism at the present time, I wish to argue strongly that reverting to the past on the matter of fiscal federalism needs far more careful thought, far more rigorous theoretical analysis and historical interpretation than most fiscal federalists, whether conservative or progressive and democratic, have given it. To put the matter as simply and as concretely as possible even though we are dealing with a very complex set of issues that altogether have caused so much destructive violence, unsustainable and maladjusted development and crisis-ridden disruption of peaceable community in so many parts of the world, we did not move from the fiscal federalism of the past into the bloated and parasitic federalism of the present peacefully and in full possession of the best parts of our human nature, individually and collectively. This is the heart of the matter and democratic and progressive fiscal federalists must realize that they must not – and indeed cannot – leave this issue out of their consideration. Permit me to expatiate on this observation, this claim as graphically as possible.

    Dear Itse, please let us consider the not so curious fact that the two most opposed regions of the country when it comes to fierce opposition versus equally fierce support for fiscal federalism in our country also happen to be the poorest and the least developed parts of the country. I speak here of the North and the South-south or the Niger Delta respectively. Additionally, let us think of the fact that these are the two regions of the country that have given rise the deepest and most ferocious armed insurrections against the Nigerian state, specifically in its incarnation in the bloated and wasteful presidency. I speak here of Boko Haram in the North and the “militants” in the Niger Delta. It so happens that these are also the two regions of the country with the widest gap, the deepest chasm between a demographically tiny but unspeakably wealthy elite and the rest of the population of the region. And let us not leave out of the equation the fact that the North and the Niger Delta are, in these matters, merely the worst manifestations, the most egregious instantiations of what is true of virtually all the other regions of the country: a small obscenely wealthy elite; extreme poverty and economic hardship for the vast majority of the population; insecurity of life, property and personal possession for all, rich and poor, the powerful and the marginalized. Democratic and progressive fiscal federalists cannot afford to make light of or worse, completely disregard these very widespread and even defining features of the political economy of our country that came into existence with our move from the fiscal federalism of the past to the thieving, wasteful “barawo” and “jaguda” federalism of the present.

    Dear Itse, I write of these issues with a sorrowful but not pessimistic consciousness of the historic fact that these things that we are experiencing with our imploding and wasteful federalism have happened and are still happening in so many parts of our continent in particular and in other parts of the developing world in general. Nearly everywhere in our continent where an extractive economy has become predominant over either agricultural production of export crops and/or middle grade industrial production of light consumer goods for export, these same distortions of community and development have come in their wake. South Africa under apartheid and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in almost the entire period of its post-independence existence are the worst examples, but the list contains other serious cases like Gabon, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, Liberia and Guinea Bissau. And if the historical allusions in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Nostromo, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, are to be believed, this matter of extractive economies and the violence and disruption that come in their wake have deep roots in the 19th century in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America.

    I hope that the readers of this piece can deduce from the discussion so far that there are no easy solutions, no beguiling nostrums available to us with which to deal with the crises and challenges that we face in the historic transition from our past of fiscal federalism and regional resource control to the present nightmare of our bandit republic, our kwashiorkor democracy. The image of kwashiorkor appeals to me because of the symbolic meanings that we can extrapolate from the bloated stomach juxtaposed with a main trunk and limbs that are atrophied, all supplanted by an oversize head. Both the distended stomach and the misshapen head contain no sustaining food for nourishment or thought; they become massive precisely on account of a deprivation that is so severe as to be almost inhuman. I cannot think of a better image or metaphor for the real “democracy dividends” our peoples have been given since the transition to civilian rule from the preceding military autocracies that were the dress rehearsals for the post-1999 period. Again, let me say that this kwashiorkor democracy finds its worst deformations in the North and the Niger Delta, the two extremely opposed regions of the country on the all-important issue of fiscal federalism and resource control.

    Dear Itse, let me in conclusion say that nothing I have said in this long open letter to you is a repudiation of fiscal federalism and resource control. My central argument in the series revolves around two major issues. First, I strongly believe that fiscal federalism cannot credibly and productively be invoked in our country without giving due recognition to the extremely violent conditions that accompanied and still sustain our historic transition to the present bloated, wasteful and exploitative federalism. When we had a truly federal system and the regions were relatively autonomous, this was largely because the surplus that sustained each region of the country and made them self-dependent came from cash or export crops produced in the regions themselves. With the emergence of an extractive, offshore and foreign-dominated industry as the mainstay of the economy, the basis of the regions’ and states’ self-dependence and relative autonomy have been more or less almost totally eroded. And we must never forget for one second that this historic transformation was accomplished by great violence, a violence that continues to this day in both statist and non-statist expressions.

    The second of my two concluding issues is far more complex than the first one. Let me state this as simply as I can without oversimplifying things. I believe that the only truly helpful and productive way that we can invoke fiscal federalism as an issue that can unite all true progressives, radicals, democrats and patriots is to link it with the fate of the vast majority of the poor, the looted and the marginalized of all parts of the country. I say this without sentimentality, with my feet planted firmly on the soil of realism and hope, pragmatism and idealism. If I am not mistaken, fiscal federalists and their opponents, routinely, even emphatically base their claims and counter-claims on the either principle of derivation (pro) or national unity (con). As far as I am aware, the only notable radical and progressive intellectual that has tried to combine these two principles of derivation and national unity is the late Yusuf Bala Usman. But he did so on the basis of an argument that was so bizarre that it more or less divided progressives of the North and the South. This argument rested on the claim that Niger Delta crude oil belonged to the North as its point of derivation because the oil of the Niger Delta creeks actually had their deep geological origins in the North, even though their point of extraction is in the South. It is significant that in this argument, Bala Usman never talked about those whose lives and futures have been blighted by crude oil extraction in the South and the North. Also significant is the fact that Usman made this argument in a debate with G.G. Darah who on that occasion did speak on behalf of the poor and the exploited, but only of the Niger Delta.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Why teachers matter

    I was recently invited to give a talk to some English students at a University on career prospects for them. Their first option should be teaching but I know it is the last option for many graduates. Even for some who read Education related courses, they would do anything to avoid taking a teaching appointment except they have no other choice.

    In listing my options at the lecture, I said l would like to start with the one I know they don’t like to hear about and asked the students  if they could name what it is and expectedly they all chorused ‘teaching’.

    At one stage or the other, we have all been taught by teachers and want good teachers to teach our children, but ironically not many graduates want to become teachers. Most parents, even teachers themselves dream that their children become Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers and some other choice professions for reasons not unconnected with the poor image of the teaching profession and the poor remunerations they earn.

    The on-going strike by members of the Nigeria Union of Teachers in nine states which have not paid the 27.5 per cent Teachers Enhanced Allowance, and the minimum wage of N18,000 is indicative of the contempt the affected states have for teachers.

    According to the National President of the NUT, Micheal Olukoya, “while some state governments, after much struggle, have come to terms with the provisions of the agreement, it is regrettable that 5 years after, nine states are still in their season of prevarications.”

    Considering the crucial role of teachers at all levels of education, teachers need to be adequately and promptly paid to ensure that they perform their duties. Unfortunately, teachers are one of the poorest paid professionals. The joke has always been that teachers have to wait till they make it to heaven to get whatever reward they are entitled to.

    It is indefensible that the nine states in question have taken this long to implement the demands of the teachers. All state governments always claim to be committed to improving the standards of education  but what this strike has shown is that they may well be paying lip service to whatever commitment they have or are not getting their priorities right on education.

    If some state governments have complied, there can be no justification for others not to do so if they appreciate the need to have well motivated teachers who will not be forced to resort to staying away from classroom to get what they deserve.

    For the affected state governments, their lukewarm response to the strike suggests that they don’t care for how long the strike continues. They probably would have taken the strike more seriously if some other workers in their states like civil servants and doctors were the ones on strike.

    Academic staffs of polytechnics nationwide have also been on strike without the federal and state governments seeming too bothered about their complaints. The strident pleas of the students who are the worst hit for an amicable resolution of the disagreement have fallen on deaf ears.

    We need to stop treating teachers as second rate professionals. But for teachers, many accomplished professionals, including the governors may not have attained whatever status they lay claim today.

    The defaulting states should pay up and not complicate the already sorry state of education in the country.

  • Now, who’s going to call us back from the brink?

    This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face

    Whenever I have reflected on the skeins of sordid threads being woven into what goes for governance, particularly our democracy in this Fourth Republic of Nigeria, I feel more and more certain that the trepidation in my heart is not coming from too much coffee. I think it is because my ears are hearing too much, my eyes are reading too much and my mouth cannot say enough. So the surplus sordidness passes through my veins and arteries into my circulating blood, gives a thousand excuses for disturbing the blood flow, goes into my heart and makes it go ‘Thump, Thump, Thump!’ The other day, I had to go to the doctor to complain about those thumps, and I don’t even live in a story building, I told him. Reader, I cannot begin to describe for you the mortifications I was put through to get to those thumps. First, I was poked beyond description, then half stripped (don’t you go getting things into your head!) then told to begin to ride a stationary bicycle like the little boy I was, all in the semi-toto. Anyway, the good doctor, finding nothing, began to shake his head in perplexity. That was when I told him not to worry, he should just take the pulse of the nation’s politics for a clue.

    Yes, things just seem to be going from worse to worse these days, don’t they, particularly over this NGF thing? Really, the whole mess has left me wondering about a lot of things. To start with, when I began to hear about the Governors’ forum, I thought it was to enable the governors to come together, compare notes over a bottle or two of beer and generally wind down after a good quarter’s hard work. Then I began to hear that just about everywhere has one governors’ forum or the other – national, regional, parties, gender … What? No gender based forum – That’s because many of them are in mufti. Anyway, I really did begin to wonder – what the deuce are we doing with all these forums? Is that part of governance? Is it in the constitution? For goodness’ sake, who is looking after me while their excellencies are busy seeing to the affairs of their forums?

    Forgive me. I err, I think, in thinking that these forums have not served a single purpose. If we look at it objectively, I’m sure we will find that they have been useful. Let’s see. Have you noticed that in nearly all the states, minus a few serious ones, nearly nothing is happening except for a few stabs at governance? The lives of the people remain unchanged. Every morning, families still load their cars with jerry cans in search of water like in the primordial times (yep, they had some kind of mobility then); candle factories and lantern companies are still surviving though in fierce competition with generator companies for electricity just as in the cave times (they also had some kind of fossil energy then); and yes, people are still moving around on pothole-filled roads (just as they were before those roads were made). So, mercifully, those forums are keeping our dear governors so occupied that they have not had time to look into these things. Who knows, if they had had the time, might they not have made things worse? So yes, we like our pain, thank you.

    The story I am about to tell you is true, painful and I have also told it umpteen times, but at this point, I don’t care. There was a man who went to his Rabbi to complain that life was too difficult; nine of them lived in a room. The wise Rabbi asked him to go take in a goat and after one week, he should return. One week later, the man was prostrate. Nine of them plus one goat in a room was pure hell. He was asked to go and take out the goat and return after a week. He returned to exclaim that life indeed was beautiful; just nine of them in a room, no goat. So you see, it’s all a matter of perspective. Let the governors have their forums and let us have the devils we all know so well. Life is beautiful, no electricity.

    Those forums also tell me that our governors are using their time most judiciously. The fact is that most of them have at least twenty or more commissioners, a hundred plus special assistants and about two hundred senior special assistants. Now with all those hands (and legs), what on earth is left for the governor himself to do? As Obasanjo himself used to say, his ministers’ achievements were his own achievements. So there, those blessed forums help to get them governors out of our hairs so we can go about our daily scratching. Thanks to our otherwise preoccupied governors, many really oouuuld women are still gathering a few firewood pieces they no longer have the necks to carry; families are still bearing the burdens of looking after their terminally sick relatives without governmental assistance, and much more. What do these matter, when the governor needs all the time he can get to travel abroad and see to those newly purchased houses, golf courses, girl friends, etc.

    Then, those forums actually help to protect our governors against sudden attacks of say … poverty. Everyone knows there is safety in numbers. When they all know what the other is doing through those get-togethers, there is little chance of anyone straying too far from the fold and doing too much good for his people. Oh no, not a chance. Such a one can quickly be reined in and told in very certain terms that governance is not about governing but appearing to govern. That one is quickly shown that governance is about motions and gestures rather than achieving. Achieve! What is the world coming to if governors are now to achieve?! I tell you, those forums are super useful.

    There are many other reasons but don’t let us waste time on any more except this last one. Have you noticed how they all have kept us riveted to the news these past few days, so that we all are more concerned now about which governor is really the chairman of the NGF rather than what each governor has done for his people? Have you? We all are now so distracted we can hardly eat. Many of us cannot believe that our governors cannot count; many of us cannot believe that the president would have a hand in joining others not to be able to count that we let our foods burn on the stove, poor as they are (the food that is, not the stove). We are all seeing that nineteen votes are counted for one person, and sixteen for another and who struts around with the president’s medal of recognition? Your sixteen, of course. Now, imagine James Earl Jones intoning this: This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face. Newton’s Law of gravity also don’t mean a thing. Just because a building falls and hits you on the head does not necessarily mean it is obeying the law of its weight. It may just be obeying our president.

    So, what does it matter that the role of those blessed forums does not exist in the constitution? They can still take our time, wring out our hearts, confound our senses and generally distract all of us to a point of frenzy where we chew out our heads and pull out our hairs. Problem is, who is going to pull us back from the brink?

  • Now, who’s going to call us back from the brink?

    This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face

    Whenever I have reflected on the skeins of sordid threads being woven into what goes for governance, particularly our democracy in this Fourth Republic of Nigeria, I feel more and more certain that the trepidation in my heart is not coming from too much coffee. I think it is because my ears are hearing too much, my eyes are reading too much and my mouth cannot say enough. So the surplus sordidness passes through my veins and arteries into my circulating blood, gives a thousand excuses for disturbing the blood flow, goes into my heart and makes it go ‘Thump, Thump, Thump!’ The other day, I had to go to the doctor to complain about those thumps, and I don’t even live in a story building, I told him. Reader, I cannot begin to describe for you the mortifications I was put through to get to those thumps. First, I was poked beyond description, then half stripped (don’t you go getting things into your head!) then told to begin to ride a stationary bicycle like the little boy I was, all in the semi-toto. Anyway, the good doctor, finding nothing, began to shake his head in perplexity. That was when I told him not to worry, he should just take the pulse of the nation’s politics for a clue.

    Yes, things just seem to be going from worse to worse these days, don’t they, particularly over this NGF thing? Really, the whole mess has left me wondering about a lot of things. To start with, when I began to hear about the Governors’ forum, I thought it was to enable the governors to come together, compare notes over a bottle or two of beer and generally wind down after a good quarter’s hard work. Then I began to hear that just about everywhere has one governors’ forum or the other – national, regional, parties, gender … What? No gender based forum – That’s because many of them are in mufti. Anyway, I really did begin to wonder – what the deuce are we doing with all these forums? Is that part of governance? Is it in the constitution? For goodness’ sake, who is looking after me while their excellencies are busy seeing to the affairs of their forums?

    Forgive me. I err, I think, in thinking that these forums have not served a single purpose. If we look at it objectively, I’m sure we will find that they have been useful. Let’s see. Have you noticed that in nearly all the states, minus a few serious ones, nearly nothing is happening except for a few stabs at governance? The lives of the people remain unchanged. Every morning, families still load their cars with jerry cans in search of water like in the primordial times (yep, they had some kind of mobility then); candle factories and lantern companies are still surviving though in fierce competition with generator companies for electricity just as in the cave times (they also had some kind of fossil energy then); and yes, people are still moving around on pothole-filled roads (just as they were before those roads were made). So, mercifully, those forums are keeping our dear governors so occupied that they have not had time to look into these things. Who knows, if they had had the time, might they not have made things worse? So yes, we like our pain, thank you.

    The story I am about to tell you is true, painful and I have also told it umpteen times, but at this point, I don’t care. There was a man who went to his Rabbi to complain that life was too difficult; nine of them lived in a room. The wise Rabbi asked him to go take in a goat and after one week, he should return. One week later, the man was prostrate. Nine of them plus one goat in a room was pure hell. He was asked to go and take out the goat and return after a week. He returned to exclaim that life indeed was beautiful; just nine of them in a room, no goat. So you see, it’s all a matter of perspective. Let the governors have their forums and let us have the devils we all know so well. Life is beautiful, no electricity.

    Those forums also tell me that our governors are using their time most judiciously. The fact is that most of them have at least twenty or more commissioners, a hundred plus special assistants and about two hundred senior special assistants. Now with all those hands (and legs), what on earth is left for the governor himself to do? As Obasanjo himself used to say, his ministers’ achievements were his own achievements. So there, those blessed forums help to get them governors out of our hairs so we can go about our daily scratching. Thanks to our otherwise preoccupied governors, many really oouuuld women are still gathering a few firewood pieces they no longer have the necks to carry; families are still bearing the burdens of looking after their terminally sick relatives without governmental assistance, and much more. What do these matter, when the governor needs all the time he can get to travel abroad and see to those newly purchased houses, golf courses, girl friends, etc.

    Then, those forums actually help to protect our governors against sudden attacks of say … poverty. Everyone knows there is safety in numbers. When they all know what the other is doing through those get-togethers, there is little chance of anyone straying too far from the fold and doing too much good for his people. Oh no, not a chance. Such a one can quickly be reined in and told in very certain terms that governance is not about governing but appearing to govern. That one is quickly shown that governance is about motions and gestures rather than achieving. Achieve! What is the world coming to if governors are now to achieve?! I tell you, those forums are super useful.

    There are many other reasons but don’t let us waste time on any more except this last one. Have you noticed how they all have kept us riveted to the news these past few days, so that we all are more concerned now about which governor is really the chairman of the NGF rather than what each governor has done for his people? Have you? We all are now so distracted we can hardly eat. Many of us cannot believe that our governors cannot count; many of us cannot believe that the president would have a hand in joining others not to be able to count that we let our foods burn on the stove, poor as they are (the food that is, not the stove). We are all seeing that nineteen votes are counted for one person, and sixteen for another and who struts around with the president’s medal of recognition? Your sixteen, of course. Now, imagine James Earl Jones intoning this: This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face. Newton’s Law of gravity also don’t mean a thing. Just because a building falls and hits you on the head does not necessarily mean it is obeying the law of its weight. It may just be obeying our president.

    So, what does it matter that the role of those blessed forums does not exist in the constitution? They can still take our time, wring out our hearts, confound our senses and generally distract all of us to a point of frenzy where we chew out our heads and pull out our hairs. Problem is, who is going to pull us back from the brink?

  • Okon romances Bigfoot at Ife

    To the lush, alluring and eternally enchanting OAU campus at Ife and its celebrated Staff Club with Okon in tow. Nestling among giant trees and overlooking a magical mountain range straight out of the fabled Igbo Irunmole, the OAU Staff Club remains a tribute to Hezekiah Oluwasanmi’s visionary genius.

    It was here in the seventies and eighties that some of the most brilliant debates about military rule and the fate of the nation took place under an iconic almond tree. The almond tree was still there this Friday afternoon—or was this an optical illusion? But the presiding deity was nowhere to be found. The deity in question, Professor Akintola Aboderin, a.k.a Akin Abod, supervised the debates under the tree while beer and much bile flowed. Aboderin was a Yale prodigy who was already turning in research papers as an undergraduate. But all that now belongs to institutional memory and aborted hopes.

    Okon had been dazzled and dazed by the architectural beauty of the landscape, But not to be fazed, the rummy lad immediately began running errant commentary.

    “Chei, Oga na god go punish dis wicked Yoruba people. So na here dem come sink all dem Oyel money?” the mad boy crowed.

    “Okon, watch your tongue. This is an important place.” Snooper admonished the mad boy.

    “So na important place go mean make man see dem truth make man no talk?” the rogue charged back.

    “Okay then” snooper said ominously. This seems to have quietened the boy a bit. But all hell was let loose as soon as we entered the club\s premises.

    “Wey all dem yeye professors, abi werepe don finish dem for dem farm?” the mad boy charged. An embarrassed snooper tried to hush the boy up.

    “You lunatic, I have told you these people are eggheads,” snooper cautioned.

    “Ah oga,” “na true, he get one of dem I dey see and him head come be like dem tolotolo egg.” The mad boy jeered. It was at this point that Luke, a veteran staffer of the club, hailed snooper.

    “Ha Mr president.” Luke saluted. But the satanic boy quickly picked the scent of blood.

    “Chei, we dey pray make god give us better pikin. Oga, so na for here you come be president?” Okon chortled to snooper’s seething rage. It was at this point that Charles Ukeje, an Associate Professor, reverentially guided snooper towards a row of immaculate whitewashed chairs. Charles’ father, the late and much beloved Animalu Ukeje, a,k.a Comrade Animal, was Vice President to snooper.

    “This is the elders, corner,” Charles intoned.

    “No wonder, but why dem chair no get wheel?” Okon grunted sarcastically. It was at this point, and as if on cue, that the elders started trooping in. Welcome, Mr Sagay a.k.a S.O.G, welcome Professors Adewumi and Monone Omosule, welcome the ever urbane and courteous gentleman, Professor Aduayi, welcome snooper’s buddy, Professor Owolabi Ajayi of Cobra fame and ,of course, welcome Dr Bunyamin Kukoyi, a.k.a Bigfoot, prizefighter and inimitable master of urban affray. It was Bigfoot that immediately caught Okon’s fancy.

    “Do you remember the day I wanted to beat you up at Ifewara for rowdy conduct?” Bigfoot asked a bemused snooper without any sense of irony. The old pugilist immediately began regaling us with his duelling exploits, particularly his encounters with local thugs who always ended in hospital. One of these, a local toughie called Agbo, fouled his trousers after Bigfoot administered physical therapy.

    The most hilarious was the occasion in secondary school when he was sent home to bring his father after a nasty fracas. In place of his real father, Bigfoot rented a local Ijebu man who wasted no time in slapping him several times as the principal reeled out his offences. Okon was immensely impressed. He never uttered another word that afternoon. The fear of Bigfoot is the beginning of wisdom. It has been a wonderful afternoon, folks.

  • Trending now

    Trending now

    After all, in spite of its tumultuous, literally asphyxiating existence, the PDP still managed to hold what  it  called a Family Party

    Olatunji Dare, the iconic satirist, would have titled this article MATTERS ARISING, being that which he has not only patented, but popularised in the Nigerian journalistic world. So much has happened within so short a time that concentrating on a single one, like that historic Supreme Court decision by which the PDP finally buried itself in Ekiti, no Yoruba land, grandiose as it is, would still have robbed my readers of something. After all, in spite of its tumultuous, literally asphyxiating existence, the PDP still managed to hold what it called a Family Party just as its one time Alpha and Omega did not only give its party a wide berth but managed to haul stones at the umbrella-loving party from nearby Dutse.

    Since then, Abuja has been planning a major putdown whilst Baba has himself roused his disillusioned, old reliables to Ota to try cobble together a rearguard response just in case the now famous suspension without defence lands on their laps.

    However, since the Holy writ says where thy treasure is, there also will your heart be, let us begin our raconteur with the heartwarming event of Friday, 31 May, 2013 which sent the entire Ekiti and every Omoluabi Yoruba, not to mention most democracy-loving Nigerians, into a delirium.

    I rode in company of the Deputy Governor, the First Lady, the Secretary to the State Government and the Chief of Staff from the State House into town and I could hardly believe the sea of heads, in assorted uniforms, brooms in hand and all singing panegyrics that I had thought only Osun State A C N people were capable of. I had seen them in Osogbo and was completely bowled over during the swearing in ceremony of the people’s governor, the Ogbeni, in 2010, and I can never forget: ‘inu igbo loyin ngbe (2ce) a ki nkole adete si gboro, inu igbo loyin ngbe (Bees will always be found in the bush, not amongst human beings), impliedly banishing some people from town.

    But that drive which took close to two hours from statehouse to Ojumoshe – a distance of less than 5km – was to be completely dwarfed the following day when the governor, Dr J K F -Just Keep the Faith-Fayemi, Ilufemiloye 1, of Ekiti, breezed into town to thank Ekiti people who, through thick and thin have said: A mo ti ruun ka i wa o, Ekiti kete -meaning, Ekiti has got what it wants/desires.

    His drive into town was simply awesome and for kilometres long, dancing and jubilating, grateful Ekiti citizens thronged him all the way.

    I have always said that the Yoruba know their leaders and are appreciative when, like immortal Awo, a government’s concern is the happiness of the greater majority of the citizenry.

    The lesson of those two town rides, in my view, is that aspiring PDP gubernatorial candidates should be humble enough to set their gaze, not on the 2014 election, but, may be, the one after, in 2018 or thereabout because Ekiti spoke so loud and clear on those two days. All these, not because Fayemi is such a handsome young man, which he is, rather it is because this is a non obstructive, Omoluabi governor, almost self-effacing, who knows nothing other than burying his head, a minimum of 16 hours a day, in their service.

    The evidence of his achievement is everywhere. So we need not go into the details of Engr Oni’s case which any serious lawyer should have advised would fall flat on its face as long as the legal doctrine of RES JUDICATA has not yet been annulled by some Nigerian judges. Credit for that not happening, even in this case, must go to the Nigerian Chief Justice, Hon. Justice Aloma Mariam Mukhtar, to whom Nigerians, to the last man, owe a debt of gratitude for her daring do; her no-holds barred cleaning of the Augean stable one of her recent predecessors left in the judiciary. Nigerians know all too well that the roforofo that one left is still simmering, with a faultless Mr Justice Ayo Salami still out in the cold.

    Back in Ekiti, what name did the PDP people not drop; who did they not say had the ears of the ‘oga at the top’; he who would merely dictate what he wanted for his party man? All that we in Ekiti could rely on were, first, the Almighty God, given that this is a country of anything goes; second, the fact that the case was long dead, concluded at the Ilorin circuit of the Court of Appeal, way back 2010, and thirdly, the fact that Justice Ayo Salami, who they never ceased to demonise, had been investigated by no less than three NJIC panels with him emerging from each smelling like a thousand roses. Only President Jonathan, his conscience and his advisers can answer fully as to why Justice Salami is yet to return to his post long after the NJIC has so requested of the President.

    As to reasons why Ekiti will always root for governor Kayode Fayemi, just two examples of his multi-sectoral achievements will suffice: His government’s Urban Renewal project, which took off in the state capital and is being extended to other towns this financial year and his Tourism programme, which is a critical part of his 8-Point Agenda..

    Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, will confuse a returning visitor who last visited some 3 or 4 years ago. The urban renewal programme has completely rejuvenated Ado-Ekiti. The entire town is illuminated all night and the roads, all tarred, mirror the great and beautiful work governor Fasola is doing in Lagos.

    Take a trip out of town and see a completely re-engineered Ikogosi warm spring, the linchpin of the state’s tourism programme. The Ikogosi Tourist Centre, decrepit and literally abandoned at the commencement of the Fayemi administration is today a wonder to behold with a total of 10,000 hectares of land dedicated to its wide life, golf course, apartments, conference centre etc, without any sexing up of the natural conjunction of hot and cold water which is its primary allure.

    The centre is already being developed into a destination of choice for local and international tourists, complete with good roads and internet facilities. The Ikogosi ecology richly showcases nature’s endowments in the state. As a visiting writer recently put it: ‘long stretches of green valleys, vast rain forest and mountain ranges dotting the landscape; Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort will simply take your breath away’.

    It already boasts of a well landscaped 116-hectare resort, one executive VIP chalet, three VIP villas, 12 western suites, 70-five standard rooms of various styles, and seven support staff quarters. Others include nature spa / beauty centre; gym/fitness shop; herbal shop for local medication; arts and crafts shops for souvenir items; 300-seat multi-purpose conference hall, 120-seat and 50-seat meeting and function rooms; variety/shopping mall; amphitheater; double standard rooms for students on excursion and campers and 300-car parking space. As mentioned earlier, Tourism is a critical part of the governor’s 8-Point Agenda to transform the state as it is programmed to be a major source of internally generated revenue.

    We conclude our pot pouri then with the totally ludicrous Nigerian Governors Forum brouhaha where, in our very face, they are trying to replicate another election annulment, probably as a precursor to what 2015 may portend. The most unfortunate thing here is the spectacle of Mr President, like he did when governor Gbenga Daniel inspired a legislative coup in the Ogun State House of Assembly in 2010, and the president on a visit to Abeokuta could say nothing of that illegality, he is today backing a man who was roundly trounced in a very transparent election which the entire world has watched on U.Tube. You will not but wonder whether they care a hoot about how the outside world views Nigeria.

    In all these, however, and like Snooper did not fail to mention in his column in the last edition of The Nation on Sunday, the greatest loser will most probably be governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo State, who appears to have put his integrity on the line over this so obvious a matter. Incidentally, he is, as yet, not even officially a member of the ruling party. He is yet to stop questioning the bona fides of the election, even though he has not denied that he voted, nor has he stopped lampooning the video of the event. How convenient.

    However, anybody near governor Mimiko right now should please ask him the following question: Mr Governor, will you kindly explain to the Nigerian public, the morality behind the SSS Reports, as well as the Video Record plus the Waribi Idepe incidents in Ese Odo with which you made your case at the Election Tribunal in 2007-2008?

    Or has Mr governor forgotten so soon?

  • Misquoting Abiola Ajimobi

    Misquoting Abiola Ajimobi

    NATIONAL MIRROR Front Page sub-headline of June 6 joined in governors’ childish theatricals: “NGF: Legal fireworks begins (sic) next week”

    Now the inside pages starting with advertorials: “This is yet another landmark in the life of a philantropist” (Full-page advertisement by Sheperdhill Security Ltd.) Spell-check: philanthropist

    “Generousity (sic) per (sic) excellence again.” (Source: as above) There should be no full stop because it is not a sentence. A rewrite: Generosity par excellence again

    “Ajimobi hails police for returning peace to Oyo” Is National Mirror insinuating that the police took away ‘peace’ in Oyo and are now returning it with Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State as the crown witness? The police are merely restoring peace—not returning it! These Jimoh Ibrahim ‘boys’ can misrepresent someone!

    We move to the Views Page: “Some of them go about on (in) private aircraft with security agents at their beck and calls (call).”

    Education Today pages are next: “Adeola Odutola College alumni inaugurates (inaugurate) lecture theatre”

    “Recent crackdowns on examination malpractice…has (have) led to hundreds of prosecutions and scores of convictions.”

    “Tuition: EKSU students laud instalment payment” Campus News: instalment plan (not payment)

    Let’s vacate National Mirror of June 6 after this journalistic trademark: “….reports that majority (a majority) of Nigerians are going through….”

    The word ‘followership’ is a Nigerian coinage. The approved entry is ‘following’ or ‘followers.’ An example: The APC has a large following or many followers. Also note that ‘witch-hunt’ is not a verb as many people often use it! It is a countable noun. (Contributed by Uncle Kola Danisa/07059188542)

    The Guardian Editorial of June 4 posted a sentence wrongly: “So could the instances of delayed tax remittance and clear failure by FIRS to mete out sanctions on (to) defaulters….”

    “Service can only be enjoyed on MMS enabled (MMS-enabled) phones that have the correct MTN data settings.” (Full-page advertisement by MTN)

    Still on THE GUARDIAN: “Borno engages 64,000 youths in poverty reduction schemes” Appointments: poverty-reduction schemes

    “The federal government must, therefore, set up a special task force to monitor all its activities, projects and make sure that they are commissioned (inaugurated) on time.”

    “Explore the possibilities of world class (world-class) education within the country at Elizade University.” (Full-page advertisement)

    “…in addition to sitting for our post UTME (post-UTME) scheduled to hold on….” (Source: as above)

    Last week’s edition of this medium fumbled on five occasions: “Saraki’s media aide added that after the closed door meeting….” Truth in defence of freedom: meeting behind closed doors (not closed door meeting)!

    “According to him, the video was not an official recording of the forum, and, as such, remained untameable (untenable).”

    “Real reason Olu Akanmu quits (quit) Airtel”

    “The estranged couple, we gathered, still remains (remain) friends for the sake of their four children.”

    Lastly from this platform: “Firms’ profits re-open (reopen) cement glut claims” Phrasal verbs abhor hyphenation.

    THISDAY, THE SATURDAY NEWSPAPER of June 1, goofed: “Even before this season rounded-off (rounded off), players and coaches (coaches’) transfer news have (had) even overshadowed some matches….” Global soccer summer transfer: ‘news’ is uncountable

    “Below are photographs of personalities at (on) the occasion.” (Source: as above)

    “Don’t miss out on the thrills and anxiety (anxieties) every week as thousands of talented singers battle for the grand prize of N24 million and the career changing (career-changing) Sony Music Contract.” (Full-page advertisement by glo Unlimited)

    “Count me out of governors (governors’) leadership crisis, says Jonathan” This is sheer gobbledygook by our President! Such prevarications are best for the marines! It is better to be silent at a time like this than to be misleadingly loquacious and manifestly daft! Most Nigerians are not dullards. Otherwise, why is GEJ solidly backing the Jang affront?

    “School holds inter house (inter-house) cultural competition”

    “Fraud free (Fraud-free) immigration to Canada”

    “South-South Monarchs (Monarchs’) Forum”

    “Quality all purpose equipments at GOOFA Nigeria Limited” A rewrite: Quality all-purpose equipment (uncountable)

    Wrong: “Go and on/off the generator”; right: Go and put on/off the generator

    Wrong: “Wash hand basin”; right: Finger bowl

    Wrong: “Use the packer to pack the dirt”; right: Use the dust pan (not ‘packer’)…. (Sent in by Uncle Danisa)

    The next two blunders are from Stv Early Morning News Scroll of May 21: “Preventing external agression” Spell-check: aggression

    “Aviation workers suspends (why?) strike, FG intervenes”

    “Clearing drainages in Delta” (THE NATION ON SUNDAY Headline, May 26) ‘Drainage’ is non-count and is a system of drains—the right entry here should be ‘drains’ and not their collectivization.

    THISDAY of May 18 offered readers three juvenile errors: “Court winds-up (winds up) firm, jails officials over My Pikin mixture”

    “Churning out series (a series) of life-transforming soap operas endeared….”

    “The group though had fought against government and its agencies on many occasions but came into the nation’s consciousness when….” The Saturday Newspaper Cover: ‘Though’ and ‘but’ cannot function in the same environment—‘it’ should take the place of ‘but’ to foreclose lexical insurgency!

    “It is not that I see Igbo land as an (a) hostile region….”

    “Jos, the capital of Plateau State (another comma, please) is one of the few cosmopolitan towns in the country that have (has) enjoyed peaceful co-existence relatively.”

    “…the president and other stakeholders in the nation’s well-being rubbed minds (brainstormed, exchanged ideas/views.…)” It is not possible to ‘rub minds’!

    “He had ordered more soldiers posted to the troubled (trouble) spots of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa with an instruction….”