The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Passages in the fraternity

    Passages in the fraternity

    In the past six months, the fraternity of Nigerian journalists has lost four of its ablest, all of them of my generation.

    Not to the lucrative field of Public Relations or corporate communications, or to the political bureaucracy, with its delusions of power and influence, but to the cold, undiscriminating handsof death.

    I knew Ayo (Arena) Ositelu, one of the four, only through his writings on sport. Now, sportswriting, like sports casting, is probably the most cliché-ridden journalistic form. String a few stock phrases together; garnish it with some atmospherics; deliver the product with breathless excitement, and you were well on the way to a career in sports journalism.

    The resulting narrative was predictable. But it was rarely remarkable or memorable.

    Ositelu was different.

    Tennis was his passion. And whenever he reported a tennis match, he made you see the flow and ebb, the crosscutting currents of play. He made you know not just the player but the person behind the racquet. He made you feel the atmosphere. He transported you to the scene of action.

    And he did so in graceful, riveting and uncluttered prose, and in a context that gave the event full meaning. You knew you were in the hands of an expert guide and a craftsman who cared deeply about words, chose them with precision, and deployed them with telling effect.

    Someone once rebuked Ositelu for “wasting “such elegant writing on tennis, of all things.

    The fellow must have been weaned on the tradition of sports writing that I described earlier – the one rooted in stringing a few stock phrases together, throwing in some atmospherics, and delivering the package with breathless excitement.

    But there is a richer and nobler tradition — one that elevates sports writing to the status of serious literature, even great literature. Here I am thinking of the writings of AJ Liebling and Grantland Rice in the first half of the last century, and their American compatriot Red Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the third Mohammed Ali – Joe Frazier fight, “The Thrilla in Manilla”.

    I am thinking of Frank Deford, the contemporary National Public Radio personality who has parlayed sports writing into an art form. I am thinking especially of Ernest Hemingway’s gripping writings on bull fighting

    On the other side of the Atlantic, I am thinking of Peter Wilson of The Mirror, called by avid sports fans “the world’s greatest sports writer, on account of his great mastery of that form, and High McIlvanney, the Scotsman who has written for a string of British publications with enchanting facility on soccer, boxing, and horse racing.

    On our own shores, intimations of that tradition of sports writing as literature perfused the work of Bonar Ekanem and Peter “PECOS” Osugo, and is stamped on the commentary of the unfailingly delightful Bisi Lawrence.

    Ayo Ositelu kept that tradition alive until he breathed his last.

    I knew Victor Ogundipe the way I knew Ositelu: through his reporting of the economy, particularly banking and corporate finance. Ogundipe pioneered that genre in Nigeria, along with two or three others. Before him, that kind of reporting was perfunctory at best.

    He wrote about the subject incisively and engagingly and transformed it to the substance of headlines and the frontpages. With his boyish good looks and an elegant wardrobe, he brought glamour and not a little excitement to the trade, at a time the Nigerian economy was caught in the throes of a Structural Adjustment Programme.

    Ogundipe’s kind of expertise was just what the burgeoning banking industry needed, and for a time, he was its articulate and personable public face.

    But he was soon caught up in the intrigues that governed banking and left on terms not entirely his own. His plans to return to financial journalism did not materialise, and he left Nigeria for the United States, where he lived until he died late last year.

    Although he left active journalism more than two decades ago, he was at his death remembered as a pioneer and an innovator. There is no greater tribute.

    Ashikiwe Adione-Egom I knew quite well. I went to work for The Guardian, on leave from the University of Lagos, shortly after he burst on the scene with a 10-part serial for that publication that he signed with the self-deprecating byline, “The Motor-Park Economist“.

    I would learn later that he had had his secondary education at King’s College, Lagos, where he and Guardian managing director Stanley Macebuh were classmates,had entered Cambridge to study archaeology and branched into economics and social anthropology, and that had once served as a financial adviser to the Central Bank of Tanzania.

    He had joined The African Guardian at its inception and served as its editor for several months while maintaining a regular column on the economy for The Guardian.

    There was always something of the tramp about Peter Alexander Egom, as he later chose to be known. The settled life – home, wife, family, personal possessions — was not for him. He preferred to live in hotels or hostels, with as little freight as possible, and with the freedom to move on at short notice to wherever the spirit led him.

    On leaving The Guardian, he went to found and edit the weekly Financial Post. When the publication collapsed, he became resident preacher at a church in Surulere, Lagos, where congregants fondly called him Pastor Luke. Later still, he went to serve as scholar-in residence at the Ibru Ecumenical Centre in Agbarha-Otor, in Delta State.

    For years thereafter, he lived in Abuja in a Catholic facility, courtesy of Archbishop (as he then was) Dr John Onaiyekan. It was then that he wrote his 2002 book, “Globalisation at the Crossroads.”

    The last time I heard of him, he was reportedly affiliated with the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, in some unspecified capacity.

    He cared a great deal about ideas and expounded them with great versatility. But he was no intellectual snob. He was one of the least pretentious scholars I ever met. The Oxbridge thing never got into his head.

    Whatever his circumstances, Egom never lost his engaging, sometimes ribald, sense of humour, and his capacity for friendship.

    And then, Pini Jason, real name Jason Onyegbado. One day I was reading his measured remonstrance of an official of a public agency who claimed he had been victimised for publishing an article criticising its chief executive, Dr Ngozi Okonjo, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy no less.

    It was vintage Jason. Measured. Combative, without being pugnacious.

    Disagreeing, without being disagreeable. Illuminating, without being pedantic.

    During his brief stint in Rutam House, we used to meet at the editorial conferences of The African Guardian of which he was a correspondent and I was contributing editor. I found him enormously well informed.

    His Op-Ed pieces for The Guardian, and his reports for the London-based New African, and for the short-lived ThisWeek magazine were models of clear thinking and lucid writing. The same quality perfused his writing for Vanguard Newspapers, his last stop.

    Jason was as much at home in Lagos and Ibadan as he was in the Igbo country. He wore his Igbo heritage on his lapel but did not make you feel that you should be apologetic that you belong to a different ethnicity. He campaigned for the validation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, arguing that if the winner MKO Abiola could not take power, it would be hard for an Igbo to become president.

    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Jason is that he was largely self-taught. If his formal education extended beyond CMS Grammar School, Lagos, he kept it a close secret.

    In life and in journalism, he exemplified the truth that the best part of a person’s education is that part the person gives himself or herself.

    Ayo Ositelu, Victor Ogundipe, Peter Alexander Egom, and Pini Jason: Nigerian journalism is the poorer for their passing.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • There was a Chinua

    There was a Chinua

    I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him – Mark Anthony, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

    Between Things Fall Apart (1958), his first work and There was a Country (2012) his last, Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), the world-acclaimed novelist for burial on May 23, defined himself: an Igbo man from Nigeria, not a Nigerian from Igbo land.

    That was no high crime against Nigeria, a country that is no nation but passionately craves doting nationalists.

    Though English, the coloniser’s language, provided Achebe his vehicle to global fame, the professor, in Things Fall Apart, told a grim tale of how British colonialism smashed the Igbo pristine world: all too clear in the personal tragedy of Okonkwo, that has held the world spellbound for more than 50 years – and still counting.

    But There was a Country was even more censorious of Nigeria than Things Fall Apart was of Britain.

    If Things Fall Apart was a dignified, taut and divinely crafted creative prose that won about everyone’s attention, empathy and awe, There was a Country, a non-fiction that nevertheless bordered on the fictional, with its wild, sweeping and bad-tempered claims; and ringing denunciation of pan-Nigeria sinners doing in the meek Igbo saints, belonged more to the world of the virago than of the grand old sage, where Achebe rightly belonged.

    Not a pretty sight, to be sure. But that was Achebe’s brutally frank (some insist, impassioned) reaction to Nigeria’s ever-unfolding crisis of nationhood, with its penchant for injustice as national ethos; and the insouciance to dominate, with its happy-go-merry march to self destruction.

    That much was clear from the British-programmed Hausa-Fulani hegemony; the brief Igbo ascendancy that ended in Civil War (1967-1970) and fired the Achebe bitterness in There was a Country; the Olusegun Obasanjo me-first-others-never presidential philosophy, disguised as altruistic national ethos; and of course, the brainless muscle-flexing of Goodluck Jonathan’s current Ijaw presidency.

    The most casual of logical introspections, therefore, must reveal that about everyone is a victim in Nigeria’s vast physical, spiritual and psychological killing mine.

    Yet, what Achebe did in his swan song, There was a Country, was to pounce on co-victims in the Nigerian morass; and with the arrogance of a writer’s licence, tarred them as the Igbo enemy.

    Talking about victims, whoever thinks the Hausa-Fulani are not, even of their own past power rascality, must chuckle at the North’s frantic bid for power after Jonathan. Yet, their grand concept of power, untrammelled ethnic over-lordship served as “national interest”, of pre-12 June 1993 Nigeria, is gone and gone for good!

    Perhaps questioning Achebe’s judgment, by his last hurrah, would be going too far. But beyond clannish roar and the emotive whipping of ethnic flag to toast a master race allegedly stopped in its track, There was a Country did not show enough sensitivity to the plight of the Ndigbo still trapped, and the coming generation to be trapped, in the Nigerian debacle. It certainly did not win the Igbo new allies; nor prescribe a reasonable way out of the jam, beyond a shrill orchestration of the Igbo as victim, without admitting the vast ruin of pan-Nigeria victimhood.

    This, of course, is no unanimous verdict. To the Achebe-converted, There was a Country was a tribute to the master storyteller’s brutal candour, like The Trouble with Nigeria (1983) before it.

    But all too often, people come to be judged by their own professed principles; and there is but a thin line between brutal candour and bad grace, particularly when candour is brutally exercised on wrong occasions. So, it is with Prof. Achebe.

    When Obafemi Awolowo died and politically correct jiving was waxing poetic about giving him a “national burial” (even if Awo was only pre-independence Premier of old Western Region), Achebe cut the crap, insisting Awo did not deserve a national burial because he was a “tribalist”. Well, Achebe himself died not exactly a “nationalist”.

    Also, after Wole Soyinka, his great contemporary, won the Nobel, Achebe quipped: winning a European prize did not make Soyinka the Asiwaju of African literature. WS, a wordsmith that takes no prisoners, promptly countered: he had no intention to become the Ogbuefi of African literature! Was Achebe resentful of Soyinka’s win – and why the ethnic colouration?

    That, of course, dovetails into the sterile controversy over WS, Achebe and the Nobel.

    In sheer fecundity, Soyinka’s 34 titles in non-fiction, novels, drama and poetry tower over Achebe’s 20, though Achebe’s tally also includes classics in children stories, as Prof. Biola Odejide, a children’s literature expert formerly of the University of Ibadan, noted in her tribute to Achebe shortly after his death. Even in their primary fortes, Soyinka the playwright with 15 plays trumped Achebe the novelist with five novels.

    But Achebe possessed the arresting simplicity that ensured probably more people have read Things Fall Apart, his flagship classic, than all of Soyinka’s works combined. So, maybe the Nobel committee settled for fecundity over accessibility.

    That was their choice – and it had nothing to do with Achebe’s secured place in global literature, Nobel or no Nobel. In Nigeria’s often ethnic-powered discourse, however, things are not quite that simple and clear-cut.

    But judged from the prism of writer as robust social crusader (which the Nobel citation also noted), Soyinka is it. Beyond strident protests over Ndigbo troubles, Achebe was much more muffled over other Nigerian crises: June 12 crisis, Ken Saro-Wiwa state murder, among others. Soyinka’s The Man Died and You Must Set Forth at Dawn, fully document how Civil War activism sent the author to gaol; and how he rallied global conscience against the Abacha state murder of Saro-Wiwa.

    So, was Achebe roused to action not by injustice per se, but by injustice meted his native Ndigbo? That is no illegitimate poser!

    The literature of Achebe is simple, rigorous, clear and sweet; the majesty of an uncluttered mind that made Things Fall Apart such a classic; and set a benchmark for the African novel.

    But the politics of Achebe is far less edifying: partial, insensitive, rancorous and insecure – all in defence of his Igbo people and culture, against Nigeria’s internal colonisers: hardly a crime.

    The snag is, with all due respect to individual differences, the Igbo elite does not mind dominating others, yet are shrill to protest perceived domination by others. But to all these, Achebe appeared patriotically blind, deaf and dumb; even with his rather indulgent criticism of Igbo brashness and triumphalism. That made There was a Country so rankling.

    Between literature and politics, therefore, an author met own debacle: noxious gas from Nigeria’s institutionalised injustice, and the resultant fierce rivalry, robbing his golden mind of pristine equitability!

    So, there was a Chinua from Nigeria who could easily have been an icon of global justice. But he bowed out as a patriotic ogre against Igbo-tailored injustice – hardly illegitimate in Nigeria’s killing fields.

    Still, that was a much diminished place for his world-acclaimed genius. But it is yet another glaring example of the harm Nigeria does, even to its greatest minds.

  • Silence without peace

    Silence without peace

    How did it happen that when President Goodluck Jonathan announced a state of emergency in three states, we as a collective did not ask if it already existed?

    Did we ponder the meaning of the term in law and even in common parlance? Or did we queue behind him simply because we believed that an urgent step was required and so we fell prey to a language that obfuscated the facts?

    Did the President take advantage of a fretting people, famished for some kind of final solution to the Boko Haram problem? So, was it a new state of emergency or was it a deft political move to entrap an alienated citizenry in thrall of a ruthless answer couched in theatre?

    These are emotional times for Nigeria. Chambers of reason are frying thin from the embers of passion. Before the presidential broadcast, the presupposition was that he would slam the emergency and dislodge the governors. He has not tempered with the democratic structures, although he sounded an ominous note that pundits and the political class have ignored. He said the governors would remain in the meantime. We hope, for the sake of democracy, that he does not extend his now-excited fangs to defy the constitution that grants him no such powers.

    So, the only thing the President has done that defines this version of a state of emergency is to increase the troop presence and extend the curfew time. Otherwise, nothing has changed in essence. The Joint Task Force has been as ruthless in hounding the fanatical hoodlums. Now, the intensity has gone up some notches.

    So, let us not be hoodwinked by any sort of rhetorical change. What is important in the war against the tyrants of spirits, as I characterise the wayward insurgents, is the primacy of intelligence. Right from the outset of the conflict, we have failed to do two things. One, the Federal Government has never addressed the issue of the killing of the founder of the lethal group, Mohammed Yusuf. Two, and more importantly, the government has failed to put in place, in spite of huge budgets for security, a viable and working intelligence network to root out the vermin at the bottom of the crisis.

    The consequence has been serious. If Yusuf was killed, and no court has received and adjudicated on the matter, how do we expect the group, vicious as it is, to feel entitled to justice? In its alienation, it has decided to take justice in its hands. This explains, in part, their primitive rages, although it does not justify it.

    Partly related to this is the hysteria of vengeance during the 2011 campaigns when threats hit the air that if a northerner did not win, the nation would know no peace. This has shown a northern elite encouragement, if not complicity, in the sectarian outrage in the past few years. The complicity – of men like Muhammadu Buhari and Adamu Ciroma – has not been proved. But that was the anchor of the reprisal comments from special adviser to the president, Kingsley Kuku, and ex-militant Mujahid Asari-Dokubo. They had warned that if Jonathan did not win, peace would not be guaranteed in the land. The hoary and bemused illogic of E.K. Clark followed with his reference to the northern threat in 2011 as excuse for the rants of the two men. This was a case of foolishness answering to foolishness. Neither side had wisdom, but a rascally display of street urchin thirst for chaos.

    The point is we did not as a people address the issue of the northern threat in 2011. Was it a lack of political will, or was it the failure of the President, after assuming power, to address the subterranean malice from the North? President Jonathan failed to do two things. One, he did not attack the threat head on; rather he hid under a horrendous fatalism when he asserted that Boko Haram would disappear someday.

    Two, after a self-proclaimed pan-Nigerian mandate, the President did not extend an olive branch to the North. That is the spirit of victory. As Churchill famously asserted, “In war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity.” There was open gloating from Clark and some Jonathan court jesters.

    In the intervening period, we saw that monster of violence grow. Rather than act, the Presidency became wrapped in fear, shutting inside Aso rock all ceremonies of symbol and grandeur, including the Independence day celebrations.

    All these while, we expected the Presidency to ensure a working intelligence team. We cannot wage a successful war without intelligence. No war, whether between states or between a state and insurgents, ever succeeds without intelligence. In fact, superior intelligence bests superior weapons.

    The northern elite kept mum while it grew, hoping it would cripple the Jonathan administration. After a while, they themselves saw that the Frankenstein wonder had morphed into a Frankenstein monster. They, too, were hostage. Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, produced a more humane monster than this one. The northern elite did not understand that even if the North had power, it needed a country to govern.

    Jonathan did not understand that he was not only President, but the commander in chief. It was a lack of vision of his office, a pathetic surrender that allowed the monster to burn churches, slay priests, burn police stations, murder marquee personalities and subaltern citizens.

    The President, corralled in Aso Rock, would not travel to the trouble spots. He only did that recently. When he did, he failed to make an inroad into their hearts. A nervous president bullied his hosts. He did not take advantage of the chance to empathise with the disinherited and wounded in the place. Rather, he celebrated improvements in Yobe and Adamawa, two states where he has now slammed the emergency.

    This is the story of how the matter degenerated to have ‘warranted’ the declaration of state of emergency. So, whose fault was it that the matter came to this sanguinary pass? While we can blame many forces – the northern elite and politicians, etc – we also know that the leadership was absent or inept while the monster got out of hand. Security is not a governor’s responsibility but the president’s, according to the constitution. He declared the emergency because he had failed. It was a nervous statement of impotence.

    The President does not have all the blame, but the greatest chunk of it lies at his doorstep. He it is who should provide intelligence. He has failed there. In the early days of the insurgency, the intelligence community would have played a role in distinguishing the insurgents from the society. They would have befriended the community early. They failed there. Rather, soldiers became another monster, working without knowledge but fear. So they attack innocents and culprits alike. The result is alienation of those who would have helped to provide the right information to the problem.

    So, the declaration was, as this paper noted in its editorial, Jonathan’s last card. But he is still working without any improved intelligence. So, what we shall see is force without knowledge. Will that solve the problem or pacify the community, where the majority sees both Boko Haram and the JTF as problems. They see the JTF as neither kin nor kind but kindlers of fear. Boko Haram is kin but unkind.

    My fear is that this might achieve quiet without peace. After the state of emergency, shall we find love in that community? Or else, we want the emergency to last forever, which is impossible.

  • An Ambassador’s Odyssey: How internal affairs determine external affairs

    An Ambassador’s Odyssey: How internal affairs determine external affairs

    A Review of Lest We Forget: The Memoirs of Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora

     

    It is a great honour and privilege to review the memoirs of one of the most stellar diplomatic products of Nigeria’s post-Independence history.

    The ambassador is a walking encyclopaedia of that tortured history and perhaps one of its most memorable victims. But despite the occasional bumps and bureaucratic hiccups, it was good and glorious while it lasted. To have become the ambassadorial representative of one’s country at the United Nations barely at the age of 40 is a rare feat even among diplomatic high-fliers. But to be peremptorily retired and recalled three years after and 17 years to full retirement age must be considered a diplomatic tragedy.

    The ambassador’s career illustrates a classic Nigerian paradox which has continued to haunt the nation till date. The very system that recognises and rewards talent and excellence is also the same system that recognises and punishes talent and excellence. It is a Janus-faced system that is capable of good and evil in equal measure.

    All human societies are prone to errors of judgement and procedural mishaps in their preferment systems .But civilised societies build and develop institutional frameworks and safety nets to protect their public service against the frailty of human nature and its tendency to arbitrary tyranny. Almost 30 years after the ambassador’s arbitrary retirement, the Nigerian public service remains a Homeric killing field in which the best and the brightest are routinely sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity and mendacity.

    One can then understand the occasional bitterness and bewilderment and the abiding trauma that lace the ambassador’s photographic recall of events. But it is not all a tale of woes. There are happy moments and joyous events recollected with perfect tranquillity. The ambassador is an illustrious scion of an illustrious lineage.

    Once he is able to put behind him the trauma of a truncated career, Fafowora takes a hardnosed and insightful view of our failings as a nation and the concomitant foreign policy fiasco. The thesis is simple. In the long and short run, a nation’s foreign politics is conditioned and determined by its internal politics. Chaotic internal politics always lead to chaotic foreign policies. The colour and complexion of external affairs are a reflection of the colour and complexion of internal affairs.

    With its rich anecdotes, its hilarious encounters with saints and sadists of power, its unforgettable and finely crafted cameos of living and dead personages, this memoirs is a tour de force of institutional memory. Only a glutton for punishment would wish to become a victim of the ambassador’s perfectly weighed putdown or his pithy and pitiless summations. A few old heroes are disrobed. Emperors walk naked. Unfortunately, some of them are no longer around to answer to the ambassador’s scathing denunciations. All in all, this memoirs will come in handy for our foreign policy planners plotting a way out of our foreign policy conundrum.

    Let me say right away then that this memoirs is destined to become a classic of its genre, a towering contribution to diplomatic literature and a rich mine for students of cultural history, particularly of the westernised Yoruba elite thrown up by colonisation and christianisation. The old Lagos colony comes alive in this memoirs and through its prism we are able to catch a historic glimpse of its Victorian, Georgian and Elizabethan phases.

    My favourite is the unforgettable cameo of the old fabled Lagos millionaire, Pa Da Rocha, promptly appearing on his balcony at 1pm everyday to throw two shilling coins at passers-by. According to the ambassador, there were rumours that Da Rocha was actually long dead and that it was his ghost dispensing the munificence. But this did not prevent Fafowora and his fellow pupils of CMS Grammar School from partaking in the free for all scramble for the old Brazilian benediction.

    It is stuff from magical realism. It appears that we have had ghosts for a long time in this country, but this one was a good and generous ghost. There was also the story of the late venerable musical impresario, Art Alade, arriving in school in a gleaming and glistening Jaguar car while his principal made do with an old banger. But the iron-willed disciplinarian would not be fazed by such display of opulence.

    Fafowora writes the English language with felicity and facility. There is a fluency and fluidity about his prose which hint at a natural flair for writing. When this is added to a racy and riveting narrative style, it is moveable feast indeed. There is a master story teller, a raconteur of exceptional ability, at work in this memoirs.

    If the ambassador’s grasp of historical details is astonishing, his power of recall is a tad short of extraordinary. Fafowora vividly recalls events from childhood, and not even memorable pounded yam meals at the feet of his adoring and doting grandfather in Ilesha escape his attention. What a great professor of History lost to the Nigeria academy! The utter clarity, the limpid simplicity and uncluttered writing remind one of Norman Stone, the former Cambridge professor of Modern History and the celebrated AJP Taylor, the great historian.

    In the event, the loss of the Nigerian academy was the gain of the Nigerian nascent post-Independence diplomatic community. It was a career that blazed forth like a comet resulting in two glorious ambassadorial rescue postings to Idi Amin’s Uganda and later Turkey. It culminated at the UN as ambassador and Deputy Representative of Nigeria’s mission before it was plucked down in orbit by malignant forces.

    Fafowora does not mince word about those he felt were responsible for his plight, which saw him suddenly thrown out of the Nigerian Mission at the UN and to the abyss of joblessness in a foreign land. According to him, the main culprit was the late Ambassador Lawal Rafindadi who was a mere cipher clerk when Fafowora was already a top official of the Nigerian embassy in London.

    Rafindadi was ably assisted by the late General Joseph Garba who appeared to have coveted Fafowora’s job beyond the bounds of decency and decorum. Mention must also be made of the top Nigerian diplomat and former academic who wrote Fafowora a profuse letter of appreciation and thanks after enjoying the ambassador’s warmth and hospitality in New York. But almost in the same breath, the fellow also wrote a damning letter about the ambassador to the federal authorities.

    Although the new military authorities admitted that a mistake had been made, its ranking echelon was said to have claimed that the government had put the matter behind it. The moral and mortal error of military arrogance is that injustice can never be put behind. It will always surface on the front burner, an open sore of the nation.

    It has been said that an ambassador is a person paid to lie for his country abroad. Also, in a famous diplomatic dogfight, General Alexander Haig, the late American Secretary of State, was said to have dismissed Lord Carrington, his British counterpart, as a duplicitous bastard. To which the British earl snootily replied that there was always going to be a problem when you put boy scouts in charge of diplomacy.

    This ambassador is neither duplicitous, nor is he a boy scout in diplomacy. Fafowora has refused to lie about the ugly realities of his country. There is a refreshing candour about this memoirs which occasionally does not sit very well with the classical canons of diplomatic reticence. Anybody on the wrong side of the famous Ijesha tongue would know that it is not an ordinary bruising affair. Future generations of Nigerians will remain grateful to the ambassador for exposing with merciless frankness, the hollow ritual of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

    Had the ambassador been a better politician and a more accomplished insider operative, perhaps his fate would have been different. But throughout his career, Dr Fafowora insisted on doing what was right and proper even if heavens should fall. In following the laid down procedures and regulations, he was as militant as he was uncompromising often courting the ire of his affronted superiors and influential subordinates alike. The chancery is not a place for hostage taking, or for taking chances for that matter.

    There is an almost obsessive insistence on honour and propriety which often make Fafowora to sound like a moral crusader rather than a wily diplomat. In fairness to the author, he had the likes of Simeon Adebo to look up to as iconic avatars of the tradition. An excellent technocrat of immaculate integrity and unimpeachable character, Adebo was often spotted by eagle-eyed superiors who rewarded him with higher portfolios .and each time, the great man turned in an even more superlative performance. But it is unlikely that our ambassador has not heard that the distinguished public servant died a broken and disappointed man.

    It is time to examine the cultural and historical milieu that threw up this remarkable diplomat. The family took its name from the ambassador’s great grandfather who is rightly regarded as the modern primogenitor of the Fafowora clan, even though the original lineage could be traced back as far as the 15th century. Like many contemporary Ijesha family names, Fafowora is a nom de guerre adapted by the modern founding father.

    Fafowora distinguished himself as a warrior in the protracted Ibadan-Ekitiparapo war which had drawn in all of Yoruba land. He was known to have been fierce and uncompromising in war. Such was his total commitment to warfare that his own son and the future ambassador’s grandfather was already a twelve year old boy when he was taken to meet his father for the first time at the Ikirun front. The boy chose to remain with his father at the war front where he tended to his horses.

    With the end of war and demobilisation, the great warrior took to farming and business and became an instant success. The son took after the father, even surpassing him in superlative wealth. His entrepreneurial daring and love of adventure took him as far as the Badagry coast and in particular Oke-Odan where he promptly eloped with his sweetheart, a local princess and the ambassador’s paternal grandmother.

    Here we see new class formations in process and the modern Yoruba hinterland elite in progress. The old warrior class had transformed itself into the nucleus of the new merchant class. Further travel and exposure brought cultural refinement and civilisation which was almost synonymous with westernisation and the adoption of the Christian religion.

    As a son of a wealthy and influential father, the ambassador’s father in 1934 became the first student of Ilesha Grammar School with the magical number 001. He eventually finished at CMS Grammar School in 1938 in the same class as the famous Williams brothers. His son, the future ambassador, followed his father’s footsteps and became a pupil in the same school in January 1954 at the age of 13 and graduated with solid results in 1958.

    The inevitable contacts and collisions between the new Yoruba hinterland elite and the old coastal elite of Brazilian émigrés, returnees and recaptives produced its own great social ironies and explosive contradictions which should be of interest to our sociologists and cultural historians. Gentrification, with its hints of snobbery and exclusion and the attendant stratification of society were also underway.

    The ambassador’s maternal great grandfather was a Famuyiwa, a hardy Ijesha man who had been stranded on the Ileke coastline as a result of the protracted Yoruba civil war of the late 19th century. His son who trained as a clergyman promptly adopted the name Williams. But when the ambassador’s father, who had by then made his way to Lagos as a promising civil servant, asked for the hand of the beautiful Williams daughter in marriage, it was initially frowned upon by the Williams’ clan as an act of great social temerity by an upcountry bumpkin.

    It was the resulting union that was to produce the future ambassador. A blissful and idyllic childhood was brutally punctuated by the death of the mother who succumbed to cancer at the age of 38 in December 1954. The young Dapo, who was barely 13 at the time, was left to provide an emotional shield for his younger sister and infant brother. Far into his manhood, particularly in dire straits, the ambassador recalls the tragedy with pain and an acute sense of loss.

    Yet it is also likely that it was this defining event that steeled his character and forced early maturity on him. It probably also fuelled his determination to succeed in the face of all odds. This was to stand him in good stead as he scraped through secondary school without a permanent address. It also saw him through the Nigerian College of Arts and Science and the University of Ibadan where he emerged with top honours in 1964.

    It was however as a budding diplomat that the future ambassador faced his stiffest test of character. The sparks started flying almost immediately after he joined the Foreign Service. The training officer in the ministry, in what the ambassador described as an act of “deliberate negligence”, locked up all the correspondence pertaining to an earlier admission he had secured to Oxford University and went on leave. The offer lapsed, but when the Civil War broke out some months later, the same officer was among the first to defect.

    Secondly, Fafowora discovered early enough to his chagrin that official quarters in the Foreign Service were not allocated on the basis of seniority and rank but on the basis of region and creed. The ostensible reason for this flagrant favouritism and discrimination was that officers of northern origins, being in unfamiliar territory, would find it more difficult to secure accommodation than their southern colleagues. But as the ambassador would later rue, there is no evidence that this policy was reversed in favour of southern officers when the nation’s capital shifted to the north.

    It would appear that all the internal cleavages that have hobbled Nigeria’s march to authentic nationhood are reproduced at the level of External Affairs. These are the cleavages of ethnicity, religion, regionalism, gender and class. Those who find themselves outside the magical circle often learnt of their posting or promotion from far junior officers who belong. It was in the same manner that Fafowora learnt of his first ambassadorial posting to Uganda.

    During his mission to Turkey, the ambassador was directed by the home office to comment on the desirability or otherwise of Nigeria joining the OIC. Based on his awareness that Nigeria is a secular state, Fafowora urged caution, advising that our observer status be maintained. But an ambassadorial colleague serving somewhere else was unimpressed, insisting that Nigeria was an Islamic state and that the process for full OIC membership should be expedited.

    If Fafowora thought that this was a mere difference of opinion, he was profoundly mistaken. Years later, his ambassadorial colleague could barely conceal his hostility, pointedly referring Fafowora to the original affront as the basis of his intense irritation. To slight his colleague even further, the ambassador not only refused to vacate the quarters he no longer needed, he handed it over instead to a far junior officer. Such was the nature of political and religious animosity..

    Added to all this is perhaps the more fundamental problem of the mode of decolonization. The mode of decolonization also affects the mood and tone of Foreign Policy. Nigeria’s independence was gained on a platter of gold rather than at the altar of heroic sacrifices But Ghana which had a more turbulent trajectory in which Nkrumah moved from prison to presidential palace always had a more robust and vigorous foreign policy than Nigeria. Indeed in the early days Nkrumah viewed Nigeria as an imperialist poodle and there was no love lost between him Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa who was a staunch conservative at home and an imperialist ally abroad.

    Almost thirty years after and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Ambassador Fafowora’s premature exit from service has a ring of inevitability to it. A Foreign Service already devastated by ethnicity, religious bigotry, gender discrimination, post- civil war stress, regional polarization and the bitter division between career diplomats and political placemen now added the virus of Intelligence officers planted to write damaging reports about their colleagues and superiors rather than mounting external surveillance. An implosion was bound to follow.

    It was the last-mentioned virus that proved fatal to the ambassador’s career. He was summarily retired along with many other illustrious and distinguished colleagues in what he describes as a night of long knives. The climate of national hysteria and confusion that followed the termination of civil rule provided the perfect cover for what is nothing but ethnic and religious score-settling. Almost thirty years after, the mind still boggles at the scale of mischief and malice. Yet the nation has failed to draw the appropriate lessons.

    The ambassador’s subsequent incarnation as the director General of MAN, his foray into Yoruba cultural politics and his political appointment as a Special Adviser to the government of his native state of Osun are beyond the immediate purview of this review. His account of this phase of his life is as illuminating as it is filled with insights. But after his stellar Foreign Service career, it is an anticlimax of sorts. It merely shows that for a man of exceptional talents, there is life after diplomatic death.

    This is a powerful book whose pulsating echoes will reverberate in the sanctuary of power for a long time to come. It is a bold and courageous intervention brimming with daring and sheer audacity. Like his Ijesha warrior forbears, Fafowora has thrown his hat in the ring.

    But behind every exceptional man there is probably a more exceptional woman. In ending, I must not fail to single out for particular praise the ambassador’s wife. She has stood like a Rock of Gibraltar behind her husband as an exemplar of self-sacrifice, duty and devotion. The couple was taken to the airport in an ambulance on the day of their wedding which also coincided with the first coup. This is not just an ambassador’s memoirs. It is also a love story at its most sublime, and at a time of political and diplomatic cholera. Let us now rise in honour of this exemplary Nigerian nationalist and Yoruba patriot.

    I thank you all.

     

  • Family Day

    Lack of convergence time for the family is allowing people to go their separate ways, often ending in prison cells, rehabilitation, the psychiatrist’s chair or the electric chair

    I consider myself privileged to have grown up in a large family whose habits knotted ties around us all that mercifully still binds us together today. It also keeps our sanity intact. The most distinct for me is not the talking time; oh no, it was the early Sunday morning ritual of kettle tea and bongos coffee. Oooooh, believe me, that sure was a binding tie. There was first the task of filling and placing the only pot large enough to take all our yawning mouths on the tripod-balanced fire, a duty us littler ones were only too delighted to carry out. As a matter of fact, that was the only duty we delighted in.

    Listen as I tell you, we eagerly forced that pot of water to its boiling point, either by sitting with and chattering to it, or by the divine will of God; we never knew the difference. Then the minute our mothers poured out the sachets of kettle tea or bongos coffee, we were lost in the wafts of aromas that just drew out the craziness in our heads. Hums of songs began to escape out of our thin little mouths, dance steps uncontrollably took over our tiny feet as we shuffled ungainly in tea-induced happiness, and finally, stories of the week’s schooling experiences buried under hopes of future glory found their ways to the surface. In short, our spirits found renewal in that blessed pot.

    Till this day, I have associated my family with that tea experience. I have even grown to associate the word ‘family’ with a particular odour, aroma or scent. Children grow up with it, and it congeals into tissues of memories that impact and influence their adulthood actions. If it is an odour, it scars them for life; if an aroma, it keeps them permanently hungry for mama’s food; and if a scent … Ha, Ha, Ha, if a scent, then my friend, you need to be careful. One little boy told his mother that her scent reminded him of the one that was used on his grandma as she lay in the coffin. Once, my son walked in and declared that the house had this… this… this… intangible aroma of fresh baking cake. Thank God, I sighed; better cake than coffin.

    Anyway, the Encarta defines family as a group related to each other by birth, marriage or adoption. I’m sure you can see all kinds of faults with this definition. One, it does not quite include all the strays that African families tend to gather onto themselves: ‘don’t you remember, she is my great-great-great uncle’s wife’s sister’s grand-daughter-in-law’. Now, did you catch that, because I sure didn’t? Did you say that’s still family? Well then, so is my dog. Indeed, these days, I think I get more family out of my dog. For instance, he recognises me on the street by jumping all over me with muddy paws and all, while my great-great-great uncle’s wife’s sister’s grand-daughter-in-law just nods to me when we accidentally meet on the road. I think it’s so that, presumably, people will not be tempted to associate her with me. Well, she’s young, and I’m old; she’s hip, and I’m all hip; she’s with it (trendy), and I’m without it (good sense).

    Then two, it does not include all the sense of family that all blacks seem to share in this troubled world but which makes them all sisters and brothers, a quite political family. My brother, it’s no small joke o. With all this colour persecution mixed with economic strangulation, it’s all we can do to stay together. Family is the key.

    Three, it certainly does not include the number of people in your neighbourhood who have given it unto themselves to intrude into your world and even take your personal decisions for you. ‘YOU WANT TO BUY A FORD CAR?! ARE YOU MAD?! Let me tell you, you and me, we’re practically brothers even if we are only neighbours in this house, so I can tell you the truth. A Ford will take all your salary.’

    For ease of reference, let’s just put it this way. A family is that group of people who lives in your home and has your best interests at heart. You are lucky if they are also the same people that you make provisions for from your monthly wages. Many times, they don’t coincide; but, like I said, you’re lucky if they do. For instance, you may find yourself using your provisions for people who go by the name of family but who may just wake up one day to tell you that actually, you are not related to them; so you can’t control their lives. Clearly, the family is no longer what it used to be.

    Someone once said that a family is obliged to feed you, even if in Christian charity or because they share ancestry with you, whether you are mad or rich. Truth is that the family is now no longer obliged to own anybody because it does not have the time of day for anybody. Previously, morning time marked the day’s departure point: parents went off to work or farm, children to school and the dog stayed at home. Evening time was for convergence when everyone would meet on the family hearth with stories of how ‘everybody out there is mad!’ Now, parents still go to work but do overtime from evening to morning, children still go to school but do lessons till supper time, while the dog, bored from staying home all day, wanders off into the sunset at sunset. No more convergence time. This is why it has sort of allowed people to go their separate ways; and these ways somehow seem to end in prison cells, rehabilitation, the psychiatrist’s chair or the electric chair. Occasionally, the ways end in the CEO’s chair.

    Actually, I have put it rather mildly. Truth is, the family is now an endangered species. It is dying. Right now, it is suffering from the assault and battery of new definitions (such as ‘partnerships’ of two men or two women living together and raising children, or ménages-a-trois). It is also suffering from modern economic programmes that have left ninety per cent of families in the third world impoverished, forcing mothers to work just to ‘keep things together’. This means that the most important contact for a child is no longer there at the right time: the mother. It is incredible that the world is ready to do anything, give anything, to save an endangered species of animal, like a particular kind of snake, yet would not move a finger to save the most important specie in the world: the family!

    Worse still, in many families, there is a great deal of substitution going on. Many a father has cleverly substituted himself with money; many a mother has done the same with gadgets, and love is now measured in weights. A gift such as a sponsored foreign education for a child equals a good deal of love; a gift of a house is a lot of love; a car gift is some love. Anything below that is just love, thanks. This is why many parents do their utmost to please their little ‘uns: they dip their hands in the nation’s till to show their children a good deal of love. They call it family maintenance.

    Listen. Family Day is the day when we are all asked to take our families out of the cupboard for an airing, and to ask ourselves some questions: What have we made of ours and our duties? What truths and values have we imparted to our family? So, dear reader, when is your family day?

     

  • Sauce for the goose…

    THISDAY EDITORIAL of May13 dealt crudely with the English language: “In the first quarter of this year, that is between January to (and) March 2013….” Or from January to March. But, hold on: who does not know that the first quarter of any year refers to January, February and March? Does the publication think that its readers are daft? This is too boyish, loose and uneducated for an editorial!

    “Local refineries are also springing up with all the pollution that come (comes) with the activities.”

    “…to serve as a deterrent to other people who plan to stealing (steal) our oil.”

    Lastly from THISDAY EDITORIAL under review: “It is therefore time that the authorities took (take) serious measures against these criminals.” Alternatively: high time…took. Got the point?

    Next is THISDAY POLITICS/MONDAY DISCOURSE: “…no other parts (part) of the country is completely safe.”

    “Libyan anti-Gaddafi gunmen lift siege of (to) ministries”

    “ECOWAS condoles Nigeria (condoles with Nigeria) on death of two pilots”

    THE GUARDIAN of May 14 is the next newspaper on our radar: “For long, Nigeria and US have shared strong partnership in security cooperation except for period (the period) during the regime of late (the late) Gen. Sani Abacha when the ties were strained.”

    From the Back Page of the preceding medium come these school-boy howlers: “There should be no preferential treatment for foreign trained (foreign-trained) graduates as what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.” Conscience, Nurtured by Truth: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

    Did you know that ‘big brother’—usually misapplied in Nigeria—means a sinister organisation, a bully or dictator?

    Last week’s edition of this medium goofed thrice: “…for the burial of late (the late) Prof. Chinua Achebe.”

    “Chairman of South East Governor’s (Governors’) Forum….”

    “Litigations delay claims settlements—NDIC” Get it right: ‘litigation,’ like ‘remuneration,’ is uncountable. (This was detected by Kola Danisa/07068074257 & 08179274411)

    “Baga: Satellite evidence turns army logic on its head” (THE NATION ON SUNDAY Back Page Caption, May 5) A rewrite: Baga: Satellite evidence stands army logic on its head (Thanks to Mr. Ella S./08053025322 for this contribution)

    The following three observations taken from Vanguard ALLURE of May 5 are from Mr. Danisa, too: “…whose looks belly (belie) her age.”

    “When they do well, we praise them but if they ere (err), we march against them.”

    Wrong: “If I was you”; Right: If I were you…. This is the subjunctive aspect of grammar. Wrong: “I wrote him”; Right: I wrote to him

    Avoid circumlocutions: “despite the fact” (although); “owing to the fact” and “for the reason that” (as/because); “in addition to which” (and); (Source: Correct English by J. E. Metcalfe & C. Astle)

    National Mirror of May 16 circulated two infelicities: “…the amnesty deal has run into murky water (the murky waters)….”

    “Pre-schoolers (Pre-scholars, you mean?) handling hi-tech with kids’ gloves” Education Today: kid gloves

    DAILY SUN of May 15 contributed the next three infractions: “Delta swears-in electoral commission for LG polls” Is it the commission or its members that were sworn in (take note of the phrasal verb)? Also note that ‘swearing-in’ is correct as a noun.

    “Federation polls: Elected members walk out in protest” An example of half-literacy: ‘walk out’ demonstrates ‘protest,’ among other meanings. So, why the redundancy?

    “Back to the second subject matter, white elephants projects dot the construction landscape of the nation.” (NATIONAL MIRROR Back Page, May 9) This way: white elephants dot…away with ‘projects’!

    “He described him as an examplary (exemplary) politician and enjoined others to emulate him.”

    “Inspection at (on) the premises of the owners will go a long way in decongesting the ports.”

    “Man arrested over wife’s death” The man was arrested for his wife’s death.

    “Recently, the chairman of Parents/Teachers Association of Federal Government College….” Education: parent-teacher association.

    “Remember the police are under the control of the Lord of Aso Rock who received no less than thirty million naira, unsolicited, from the Anambra-born moneybag (moneybags) when he contested the presidential election in 1999”

    “If the university authorities are interested in standards, what have they done about standards in (on) the main campuses?

    “I’ve seen too many progressives turn cold turkey in the end in spite of their honest efforts at the onset (outset, in this context) to change the system.”

    “The successful bidding process, award of GSM licences and eventual launching (launch) of the services of the operators in Nigeria give cause for celebration.”

    “…he had to abandon the bicycle that we borrowed (lent) him for that purpose and made a hasty retreat to Jos.”

    “Niger threatens to hands-off (hands off) sponsorship of pilgrims”

    “A senator who muted (mooted) this idea had this do say…”

    “…in their heydays (heyday) they never imagined the time would ever come….”

    “The day after the panel’s first meeting with the un-amused president (a comma, please) one of the commission’s counsels….” ‘Counsel’ is unchanged even in plural applications.

    “From the foregoing, Japan seems to have learnt it’s (its) lessons from the atomic bomb episode.”

    “…it did happen leaving immense tragedy and loss in (on) its trail.”

    “And I am not just talking about the siege armed robbers have laid on (to) the home of virtually every Nigerian, high or low, rich or poor.”

    “That was what I had at the back of my mind when I almost stopped my junior (younger) brother.”

     

  • From Nigeria factor to emergency? (1)

    From Nigeria factor to emergency? (1)

    ‘Nigeria Factor’ has delayed taking decisive against Boko Haram

    At the beginning of the Boko Haram menace, it was not too difficult to foresee what we now have: emergency declaration in three of the states that had given birth to the country’s most lethal terrorist group. If it had not been for the prevalence of the Nigeria Factor, we might not have gone this far before reading the riot act to a group that must have set out to destroy the federation.

    As a hydra-headed concept, the Nigeria factor has always included a belief in the capacity of the average Nigerian or Nigerian institution to escape the laws of physics, the type of belief that makes it normal to hope that problems may go away on their own or that problems can get solved by talking them to death or praying them out of existence. Sometimes, the factor encourages us to feel that money can be used to solve all problems. In all cases, the tendency grows among the ruling elite and many of the people they rule that the symptom of a problem is synonymous with the root cause of such problem. In the end, applying the Nigeria factor always succeed in changing the form of (rather than solving) the problem to which it is applied.

    When the seed of what became Boko Haram mentality was sown in the first term of Obasanjo’s post-military presidency, we looked away from the issue. When some northern governors declared their states as Sharia states, President Obasanjo ignored them, saying that the decision was a political fad that was destined to fizzle out with time. Some pundits observed then that the decision was to make governance difficult for Obasanjo while others pointed out that the decision of northern governors to declare their states Sharia units was dangerous for the federation and its commitment to secular government. Obasanjo could not be bothered; he continued with his international travels that he thought would clean up the image of Nigeria that was sullied during Abacha’s brutal dictatorship, and the rest is history.

    Then came the militancy of youths in the Niger Delta. The root cause of the militancy was the injustice in allocation of revenue from petroleum and gas. Niger Delta youths, who believed that the region was the victim of the country’s only extractive business, called for restoration of the principle of revenue by derivation that was part of the constitution upon which Nigeria agreed to be one country at independence in 1960. Obasanjo looked away from the cause of the problem. He was quick to attack Odi which he saw as the community that hosted the killing by Niger Delta militants of law enforcement officers. Consequently, media attention shifted to the sack of Odi and not the cause of the violence by Niger Delta militants.Obasanjo called a political reforms conference that also avoided paying adequate attention to the grouse of the Niger Delta militants, particularly their demand for adequate compensation for the destruction of the region’s ecosystem by oil exploration and exploitation, and the rest is history.

    Furthermore, killings of Beroms and other groups in Plateau State came to national attention during Obasanjo’s rule. But the government looked away from addressing the cause of the killings that had since become a part of the culture of Plateau State. Suddenly, the federal government declared a state of emergency in Plateau State for six months, but the situation remained the same, even up till today. This was despite calls on the federal government by citizens committed to a federal republic to focus on the root of inter-ethnic violence in a multiethnic federation. Nothing changed and history rolled on inexorably.

    In the era of UmaruYar’Adua, there was a resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta. Yar’Adua responded to this with amnesty. Militants were given money in exchange for their weapons and their passion for justice in the allocation of revenue to a region that has been de-natured by decades of petroleum exploitation and gas flaring. Again, the focus was on the symptom, not the cause, as the Yar’Adua government created, in addition to amnesty, federal agencies to bring development to the Niger Delta, and it appears that the rest is also history.

    After Goodluck Jonathan became president, despite the controversy over PDP’s rotation agreement that the presidency was still to go to the North after Jonathan completed the term of UmaruYar’Adua, a new group, Boko Haram surfaced. The popular or forced belief was that the group was conceived to make the country ungovernable for the president who had prevented the North from moving power back from the south to the north. Pundit’s insistence that the worldview advertised by Boko Haram was too dangerous for a federation of plural cultures was largely ignored. But whenBoko Haram became very violent and lingered longer than most people had expected, new theories about how to deal with the country’s most violent terrorist sect emerged, one after the other.

    First was the theory that Boko Haram was restricted to the Northeast where it was born and would evaporate with time. Next was the view that President Jonathan was treating the Islamic terrorists with soft hands. General Obasanjo called for more stick than carrot as the best way to end the menace, reminding the nation of his own style of intervention in Odi. Shortly after, the former chairman of the board of trustees of President Jonathan’s party called again for more carrot or dialogue.

    Then came the call by modern and traditional rulers for amnesty. The whole country was encouraged to swallow any pride and beg the terrorists to abandon their worldview, in exchange for money and promise to bring more development to the North. Northern leaders in particular brushed aside calls for a country-wide dialogue or conference to discuss the issues of Boko Haram’s worldview and demands along with those of other nationality and religious groups in the country. Boko Haram waxed stronger by the day. Warnings from international friends of Nigeria about Boko Haram not being just a local group to solve a local problem were also eclipsed by strident calls for amnesty. The result is that we are now at the stage in which President Jonathan believes that the country’s sovereignty has been divided, some left to him and his legislature, and some being seized by Boko Haram terrorist group.

    Finally, an emergency has been declared in three of many more Boko Haram states. What if the military with additional powers given to it by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces succeeds in keeping Boko Haram quiet? Would that be the end of the interrogation of Nigeria’s multicultural federation that has been at the center of Boko Haram’s agenda to turn Nigeria into a Sharia country and outlaw western civilization, the source of Nigeria as a country?

     

  • Granting amnesty to kidnappers

    Granting amnesty to kidnappers

    Nigeria is a blessed nation. Its people are unbelievable. Its leaders are ingenious. Quite very ingenious leaders! From the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the incumbent Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, our leaders have been incredible. Take, for instance, the late President Umar Sheu Yaradua. He met on ground a delicate situation in the oil rich Niger- Delta, which, if not well managed, could have torn the nation apart. Niger Delta youths were angry. Perhaps, reasonably so. They felt they were not getting a fair share of the natural resources which nature has endowed their land with. Consequently, they resorted to militancy to draw the attention of appropriate authorities to their grievances. Thus, began an era of sorrow, tears and blood in the Niger Delta. It was so bad that estimated national revenue from oil started to dwindle since expatriates working in the various oil fields across the region had to flee for fear of the rampaging militants. Sadly, as much as the various security agencies tried, they were no match for the excessively aggressive and determined Niger-Delta militants.

    This was, indeed, the situation when the late President Yaradua came into the picture. Widely acclaimed as the very first graduate president to rule over the country, Yaradua did not disappoint. The scientist that he was, he took the Niger-Delta problem to the laboratory and after series of experiments; he eventually came out with a very innovative result which gave birth to the now famous amnesty programme. The core feature of the programme is for militants, who are willing to embrace the Federal Government olive branch to surrender their weapons, within a certain period of time, in exchange for official state pardon.

    Oh, how it worked like magic! Soon, Aso Rock became a Mecca of sort with several leaders of the various militant groups visiting the villa to pay homage to Yaradua as well as pledged their loyalty to the new amnesty arrangement. In a twinkling of an eye, peace returned to the once volatile Niger Delta region. Of course, it has to be. The leaders of the various militant groups secured diverse mouth-watering deals with the Federal Government while some of their foot soldiers were sent to various schools abroad to acquire quality education aside from being put on good monthly salary packages. Thus, while the oil czars smile to the bank, the militants also have their own share of the proverbial national cake. The end result is that everybody is happy.

    Lucky President Goodluck! At the demise of his late Principal, Yaradua, he inherited a peaceful Niger Delta. But, as it is with leadership; he was soon to face his own challenge through the activities of the Islamic insurgence group popularly referred to as Boko Haram. The group, which had been in existence before the Goodluck presidency, for reasons best known to it, chose the occasion of the Jonathan presidency to demonstrate to Nigerians that it could be as daring ( if not more ) as the Niger Delta Militants. Till date, the group has continued to hold the northern part of the country hostage with its numerous acts of terrorism which have led to loss of countless human lives in addition to destruction of limitless private and public properties. The economy of most of the affected northern states, no thanks to Boko Haram activities, is now in shamble.

    Like his late principal, President Goodluck Jonathan is a scientist. Perhaps, a better one at that, considering he holds Ph.D degree in zoology. Many, understandably so, looked forward to the President coming up with his own version of another scientific solution to the Boko Haram crisis which has now led to the inglorious exit of many top security officials from office. With the President keeping his battle strategy against the Islamic sect tight to his chest, prominent northern figures began to agitate for the adoption of the now tested and trusted amnesty option to ward off the Boko Haram challenge. Soon, powerful individuals began to put pressure on the presidency to enter into dialogue with the group for the sake of peace.

    But the President would have none of that. How do you dialogue with a faceless group? He wondered. On an unusual visit to Maiduguri, a city that is perhaps the worst hit in the Boko Haram onslaught, the President foreclosed entering into dialogue with the group by reiterating his earlier held view that it is a group without identity. However, prominent leaders continue to canvass for amnesty with the revered Sultan of Sokoto adding his respected voice to the call. With time, the Federal Government shifted its position on the issue. A committee, as it is always the case, comprising eminent Nigerians, has been put in place to fashion out strategies that would bring about engagement with the Boko Haram. Most analysts see this step as a prelude to the process that will lead to granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group. To those who support this plan, if amnesty is working wonders in the Niger Delta, it should bring about the much needed peace in the crisis- ridden northern states.

    Now, as we contemplate granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group, there is another major dissident group in the country that one would like to draw the attention of appropriate authorities and other powerful individuals to. Like the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko Haram, this group is equally angry with the country. They are angry that government has not been able to solve the problem of unemployment. Their anger also stems from wide spread corruption that has continued un-abated in the system coupled with other social ills bedevilling the nation. But unlike the Niger-Delta militants and Boko Haram, their operational style is different. It is not really violent in outlook. They just look out for cash worthy individuals who could be kidnapped, for some time, in exchange for handsome sum of money and the circle continues. Welcome to the world of kidnappers!

    As it was the case with the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko-Haram, government is yet to come up with the much needed solution to tackle the activities of kidnappers across the country. But, why look for another solution when we already have one that is working well? Is it not true that you don’t change a winning formula? To stem the tide of kidnapping in the country, we need to begin the process that will bring up a national discourse on the need to grant amnesty to kidnappers. Respected traditional monarchs, politicians and other powerful individuals across the country should begin to bring the issue to the front burner. The press should, as well, echo it. Kidnappers, on their own, need to form themselves into one powerful association with functioning web site and other channels of modern communication since the government is averse to discussing with faceless groups.

    Before we all become victims of the dastardly act of kidnapping, government should begin to give serious consideration to granting amnesty to kidnappers whose main grouse is joblessness. Like the Niger-Delta militant, they could be sent to good universities abroad and equally place on mouth-watering monthly salaries. As it is often said, no development can take placed without peace. If we are to achieve the much needed national development, we should begin the process of granting amnesty to kidnappers now. Lest I forget, we could also extend the amnesty arrangement to other aggrieved members of the society such as armed robbers, rapists, pipe line vandals, 419ers among others. We must not spare anything in our quest for a peaceful society. This way, our overstretched security agencies would have a break and we shall all live in peace. God bless Nigeria!

    Ogunbiyi is of the Features Unit, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.

     

  • Ladies at war

    A fierce war is raging in Nigeria, and I do not mean the one declared by militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

    It is the “battle of the first ladies” – being fought with political and legal weapons in defence of egos.

    Ex-First Lady Turai Yar’Adua is fighting to retain prime land allocated to her in the capital, Abuja, when she was president of the African First Ladies Peace Mission (AFLPM).

    The property was taken from her after the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010 and given to the current First Lady, Patience Jonathan, in her capacity as the new AFLPM head.

    African leaders, nearly all of whom are men, have the African Union (AU) headquarters – a stunning building funded by the Chinese in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

    So, in these days of women empowerment, no-one can fault their spouses for setting up the AFLPM.

    Some critics may argue that such a facility should be within the AU complex in Addis Ababa, but that would not show that Africa’s first ladies are independent of their husbands.

    To the delight of the Nigerian government Abuja was therefore chosen as the AFLPM headquarters, as no other country made a bid to host it.

    Mrs Yar’Adua was known in Nigeria as a very tough woman who saw her union with the president to include a unity of office.

    Many insiders described her as the alternate president, more so when Mr Yar’Adua fell ill and was admitted to hospital in Saudi Arabia in 2009.

    At the time, Mrs Jonathan was the unobtrusive wife of Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, who wielded no power.

    Eventually, Mr Yar’Adua died and Mr Jonathan became president. Power shifted.

    That saw the natural abdication of Mrs Yar’Adua and the enthronement of First Lady Patience Jonathan.

    The battle for the choice piece of land in Abuja started.

    Ex-First Lady Yar’Adua’s lawyers said that the land in question was allocated to her for a non-governmental organisation, the Women and Youth Empowerment Foundation (WYEF), which she had launched.

    As far as they are concerned, it was never meant to be the headquarters of the AFLPM – an organisation launched more than a decade ago.

    Not so, said her successor.

    Her spokesman said the property was originally allocated to Mrs Yar’Adua as president of AFLPM, but was later reviewed in favour of WYEF and the decision by the authorities to re-allocate it to the AFLPM was the only “appropriate logical action”.

    Mrs Yar’Adua took the Federal Capital Territory Administration to court to reclaim the land. She won earlier this month.

    The court ruled there was no evidence to show that the land had been originally allocated to the AFLPM, as claimed by the justice minister. The government responded by saying that it would appeal against the ruling.

    Every Nigerian knows that the battle is not one for the courts.

    Even the court had advised the two parties to settle the matter amicably.

    We lay men say that courts deal with the law and politicians in power make the law. As it is in Nigeria so it is in every other African country.

    Come to think of it, there are scores of properties in the choicest parts of Abuja available for allocation.

    I wish I knew what is driving the battle over this one.

    So far, other African first ladies have not intervened.

    I think they should launch a mission to resolve this dispute, if indeed their objective is to promote peace across the continent.

    Culled from be BBC

     

  • State of emergency superfluous

    State of emergency superfluous

    It requires a huge dose of optimism to trust President Goodluck Jonathan’s instinct in declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. I confess I do not have such an endowment, and I am not careful to hold a contrary position on this very controversial issue. Majority of Nigerians, perhaps 99 percent, favour emergency, and either abusively denounce those who don’t or equate opposition to emergency with support for Boko Haram insurgency. They are entitled to their opinion. The more supporters of emergency work themselves up into a fever over the few of us who see through the president’s manoeuvres, the more convinced I am that both the president and his supporters are misguided and intolerant.

    A day after Jonathan took the plunge and committed the Northeast angrily into emergency, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) spontaneously denounced the declaration and pointed out that the president was in fact playing politics with the issue of insecurity. But one day later, after having had the chance to reflect on the delicate matter and to measure the weight of their courage in the face of massive public endorsement of emergency, the party mellowed its stand from asking the National Assembly to reject emergency to asking them to examine it cautiously. I do not pretend to any of the party’s luxuries. I understand the need for the party to cast a wary, indeed longing, eye on the next general elections, and must therefore be careful not to distance itself too inappropriately from the herd grazing on emergency. But I have no vote to seek, and if I wish, I may even have no vote to cast in 2015.

    Of course the ACN, much more than any other party, did well to publicise its initial opposition to emergency even before it understood which way the cats were jumping. That it has had to quickly modify its original stand merely reflects that its leaders are realists who must watch the ballot box with a defensive keenness that exceeds its vaunted predatory instincts. The scale of support for Jonathan’s emergency declaration must have stunned northern leaders themselves into whooping for the measure, I suspect, against their better judgement. Indeed, in the north, whether among former heads of state or among leading politicians, all we hear is a mellifluous chorus of support for emergency. Obviously, at a time like this, discretion is the better part of valour.

    The dispute over emergency, it must be reiterated, is not about whether Boko Haram needed to be fought and defeated or whether it should be tolerated and pampered. Everyone, except the sect’s members, agrees that the killings in the north needed to be halted. The dispute, therefore, is essentially about methods, not goals. The southern part of Nigeria never liked Boko Haram for one minute, and minced no words in vociferously deploring its methods and objectives, even at the constant and irritating risk of accusing the north of supporting the sect. A corollary of that assumed convergence between the north and the sect is the south’s dismissive characterisation of every northerner who proposes a different perspective of tackling the insurgency as a Boko Haram supporter. Indeed, in my view, the northern part was at first ambivalent to the sect, even seemingly indulgent, and only belatedly horrified and shaken by the huge scale of atrocities the militants were perpetrating.

    Readers of this column will recall my trenchant view of Boko Haram, my opposition to amnesty, except for the sect’s foot soldiers, and only because of the administrative cost of prosecuting every sect member, and my unalloyed support for secularism and democracy. Boko Haram should be fought, and the military should lead the battle. But we must be careful to plan beyond military victory. The question to ask is whether emergency will help the government and the military to explain why they failed to defeat the sect and pacify the region. I suspect it will not. Dr Jonathan’s state of emergency does not only reek of politics, it seems to me a facile and fatuous strategy to divert attention from serious issues pertaining to the long-running campaign against terror in Nigeria, such as the Baga killings. Emergency also conceals the general disinclination of the Jonathan presidency for rigorous thinking and scientific governance and foreshadows a rising dictatorship.

    The Nigerian constitution places the responsibility for security squarely on the shoulders of the president, not in the hands of governors. If anyone was, therefore, remiss in his responsibility for security in the Northeast, it was the president. In fighting Boko Haram, there has been no presidential initiative to deploy forces that the states or local governments disagreed with. Dr Jonathan had the unlimited power to add to and subtract from the number of troops deployed in the war front. He took no input from the governors about tactical deployment, and there was no part of the affected states from which federal forces were barred. Does Jonathan therefore need a state of emergency to raise troop strength? What is he doing now that he couldn’t do without declaring emergency? Warrant to search? Suspension of habeas corpus?

    Section 305 of the 1999 constitution broadly describes the procedure for the proclamation of a state of emergency. As the ACN pointed out in its initial position, emergency was already in force in many parts of the Northeast, but was ineffective. Nobody ever questioned the government’s deployments and even rights abuses until Borno elders began to notice strange killings. In fact, there are no powers granted by emergency proclamation that the people had not already vouchsafed to the president in view of the drastic circumstances of insecurity in those regions. It is, therefore, necessary for to be cautious about emergency and admonish Nigerians on why the proclamation should be considered carefully side-by-side with Sections 33 and 35 of the constitution dealing with the rights of the people. It may even be necessary to draw attention to the entire Chapter IV of the constitution for the public and the National Assembly to appreciate those rights that, in emergency, are or should be non-derogable.

    The proclamation has been sent to the National Assembly, and the two chambers have scheduled a discussion for Tuesday. It is important they remove the fears of the people that Section 305 as applied will not be used inappropriately and narrow-mindedly to derogate the rights of the people under emergency. The legislature must not allow itself to be carried away by popular emotions, nor be blackmailed by the reckless and aggressive support most Nigerians have offered the president. They must carefully determine whether the cause of peace would be served by the liberty the president wishes to take over a war he has largely bungled and prolonged by his dithering.

    By declaring emergency, it seems to me, Dr Jonathan gave the impression that someone else, perhaps the governors of the affected states and their conniving political elite, was to blame for insecurity and Boko Haram. The governors’ economic and social policies probably contributed to the beginnings of the revolt and undoubtedly aggravated it, but it is inconceivable that emergency should be expected to remedy the problem and stamp it out permanently. The president also needed emergency to deflect censorious attention from the alleged atrocities that took place in Baga, Borno State in April. The matter was being probed, until emergency was declared. Not only will the probes now be compromised, it is certain that with emergency, no other probe elsewhere will be entertained. Frightened by the countrywide unanimity of approval for the president’s extraordinary measures, northern leaders have, against their better judgement, abandoned the hapless people of the three states to be sandwiched between the extreme measures of the Nigerian security forces and the brutal fanaticism and extortion of the Boko Haram sect.

    This abandonment is anchored on the indefensible argument, advanced mainly by the south and the presidency, that the people of those states had a duty to expose the sect. In other words damned if they rat on the sect, and damned if for fear of their lives they don’t. I feel for them, and wish we had a more informed, more empathetic and more reflective president. The campaign against Boko Haram failed not because we didn’t have the troops and the logistics to fight the sect, but because the security forces failed to fight a winnable and moral war, and win the confidence of the local populace, as indeed other victorious armies in the world take care to do. It is instructive that while Nigerians were hailing the president’s show of force and firepower in the Northeast, it took a visiting British general, Robert Fry, a former deputy commanding general of the coalition forces in Iraq, to caution against the use of excessive force in the Northeast. But Nigerians would rather those states were smashed to smithereens, and the local populace blamed themselves for not pushing out the militants in their midst. It seems we have lost our senses.

    President Jonathan, I have argued, does not need a state of emergency to take the measures he has just adumbrated. But none in the National Assembly will have the heart to tell him that. I am persuaded that indeed the proclamation reeks of offensive politicking. The Northeast is anti-Jonathan, and will stay so until 2015 and beyond. The president does not have any emotional attachment to those states, and could care less what they feel, as he said when he reluctantly visited them in March. Judging from his anger as he read his speech in a tremulous voice on Tuesday, Dr Jonathan was evidently tormented by his private demons, and was intemperate, unstatesmanlike and full of unnecessary fury. His supposed fierce mien was not, as some imagined, a ploy to display presidential toughness; it instead betrayed his boyish instinct for sophistry, his rustic impulsiveness, and his burgeoning ruthlessness and dictatorial tendency.

    Future generations will recall how, on the excuse of battling insurgency and saving the union, we abandoned to the federal rampage our kith and kin in the Northeast, a majority of whom are law-abiding, and for whom sadly and mortifyingly the rest of the world feels more fellow-feeling than Nigerians. By whooping hysterically for war, rather than for a clinical and brilliant campaign to take out the offending rascals destabilising the union, we seem to say that the problem, whose roots are deeper than military defeat can extirpate, can be destroyed with a massive military blow. Nothing can be further from the reality. Military victory may be achieved in the near future, but it remains to be seen whether the fiery and indecipherable logic of the rebellion and the sect’s promotion of borderless war can be subdued permanently by conventional military tactics.

    But more saddening are those who argue that the president should have sent the governors and their legislative houses packing either for being the cause of this imbroglio or for worsening it. This is simply senseless. Are we so undisciplined that at the first hint of a major trouble we are willing to whimsically dishonour some of the provisions of the constitution, or select which part to obey and which to ignore or downgrade? Strangely, among those who make this nonsensical argument are lawyers and academics who should know better. But it is not only lawyers who are losing their heads, that is, after Aso Villa’s melodramatic buck-passing, even journalists and editorial writers have gone completely irrational. They have not only endorsed Dr Jonathan’s questionable decision to impose emergency, they, who should be the bastion of civil rights and free speech, have issued dire warnings to opposition parties to fall in line behind the president. Already, of course, and as the brusque declaration of curfew in Adamawa showed, executive, judicial and legislative powers have been abridged by the military. The governors will be ceremonial leaders throughout the emergency, even as the affected states may be coaxed into parting with a part of their monthly allocation to the war effort.

    It is necessary for the National Assembly to scrutinise the president’s proclamation very closely and tame it. If, without emergency, the Baga incident elicited so much controversy, what should we expect with the leeway emergency proclamation confers? The legislators must understand that with the events in Rivers State, where federal might is being immoderately and perversely deployed, and the unsupportable and capricious inclusion of Adamawa in the emergency declaration, we are well on our way to a brutal dictatorship. We recall how miserably we fared when we feebly confronted the dictatorship and arbitrariness of the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presidency; it is up to us if in the face of Dr Jonathan’s political dubieties we begin to prevaricate or, worse, wilt. We should not blame Boko Haram for exposing our poor mettle or northern leaders who failed to rally against the sect. If another president takes us for a ride again, and in the end corrupts and weakens the fabric of our democracy, we have ourselves, our weak legislature and our impressionable press to thank.