The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Bigfoot is about

Fear stalks the land. There is trepidation all over the nation. Uncertainty and a sense of foreboding, of an approaching apocalyptic meltdown, grip the citizenry. The omens are dire. Never in the history of this country have its people felt more insecure, more vulnerable to man-made misfortunes. A huge monster roams the land, threatening to overwhelm its already weakened defence and resolve. It recalls the fabled Bigfoot or even the more celebrated Yeti, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayan Summit.

Mercifully, Jonathan has cut short his foreign trip. He ought not to have gone in the first instance. It is an elementary law of sovereignty that you do not leave your domain when there is fire on the rooftop. This is the time to talk straight to ourselves. There is nothing to sell or advertise abroad about the nation at this particular point.

It doesn’t appear as if the Nigerian ruling class appreciates the grave dimension of the current crisis in all its tragic, nation-evaporating possibilities. Let us no longer quibble about our situation. Nigeria is embroiled in an unusual civil war. We are faced with a grave emergency. The earlier we recognise this fact, the better for everybody. It is no longer possible to sustain Nigeria under its current configuration.

Those who plotted the endgame of this gifted but troubled nation and the dark scenario of a war of all against all could not have been more prescient. They are spot on their money. Political prophecy has gone scientific. These amazing futurologists know the kind of political elite they are dealing with, that they will fiddle and fumble while Rome burns. A self-fulfilling prophecy requires a self-destroying political class.

This past week has been very scary for those who bear aloft the torch of hope for this dysfunctional nation. Bigfoot struck serially and severally again. The Boko Haram people returned fire in what observers consider to be a reprisal raid for the Baga mayhem. They put the town of Bama to sword, attacking police and military formations before descending on the civilian populace. By the time the smouldering and belching cloud cleared, the town had become a ghost town clogged with horrendous casualties.

As if this was not enough for a nation coming to terms with the utter devastation of its northernmost fringes, a hitherto little known traditional sect calling itself Ombatse struck in the Nasarawa village of Alayko. According to the sect, they ambushed and killed 95 security personnel in retaliation for the killing of nine of its members . It was a re-enactment of Dante’s inferno. In the fiercest of wars, the casualty figures could not have been higher.

If the police force is this vulnerable in a country, it says a lot about the state of the country and its capacity to fulfil its most fundamental obligation to its citizenry. In a ritual of reverse victimhood, the police authorities have directed their personnel to wear black bands for one week as a mark of respect and sympathy for their fallen colleagues.

It should tell us that something very serious is going on. Hitherto, it used to be the populace complaining about police brutality. Now the police authorities are loudly complaining about brutality against their own. With that level of morale, it is clear that the state is on its own.

It is instructive to note that this past week, two current state executives were known to have taken refuge in Aso Rock as the security situation in their states deteriorated beyond their capacity and capability. In Ibadan, a calamity was averted when traders at the Bodija Cattle Market discovered that some of their colleagues had been murdered in Borno State where they had gone to buy cattle.

The insurgents were reported to have separated the ambushed traders into their ethnic stock before murdering those from a particular ethnic group. As soon as the news broke, Snooper spent the entire day answering desperate inquiries from abroad, particularly from affronted intellectuals of Yoruba origins, who wanted to know just when enough would be enough. How long will restrained and civilised people put up with this flagrant provocation?

As if these flashpoints, any of which could tip the nation into terminal and irreversible chaos are not enough, Bigfoot has been at work in the Rivers State, in a political dress rehearsal for actual war. The whole place has become a boiling cauldron simmering and sizzling with intent. Only luck and his own gritty determination separate Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi from sure impeachment by a minority assembly. It is said that when that happens, heavens will not fall.

The pundits claim that such state outlawry and executive lawlessness have illustrious precedents. If heavens did not fall in Oyo, on the plateau and in nearby Bayelsa where serving governors have been tomahawked twice, why should it fall in the Rivers State? Meanwhile, the whole thing is assuming a nasty ethnic dimension with the Ikwerre people pitched against the Ijaw nationality. Are we still in a democracy or the rule of despotic strongmen who do not give a damn about the fundamental tenets of democracy?

As it is usually the case when law and order take a flight and chaos prevails in a society, the lawless and chaotically minded rule the roost, Mojahid Asari Dokubo has been feverishly and ferociously rattling his sabre, threatening the corporate existence of the nation in the process. Asari Dokubo has become the principal Ijaw spokesperson in a land that has produced the illustrious Professor Tekana Tamuno, the great Professor Allagoa and the extraordinarily cerebral if occasionally controversial Professor Tamuno David-West.

In a war situation, it is the man with the men and material that matters. How many arms bearing militiamen can the professors come up with? This is not a matter of book piracy. The real pirates are up and a-hollering. The nation is gradually coming under the odoriferous armpit of political warlords. When last did you hear of a man of ideas in Mogadishu? If the CNN is to be believed, one of Somalia’s best known professors of political science has taken up refuge in a college in Minnesota. There is no point pontificating about the post-colonial state when the real thing vanished over 20 years ago.

So while Asari Dokubo prevails as the pre-eminent warlord of the Niger Delta, the Boko Haram rules the roost in the north with the Sultan, the military and spiritual heir to Othman Dan Fodio, reduced to pleading with the sect to accept amnesty. It doesn’t occur to the well-regarded Sultan that if amnesty had succeeded in the Niger Delta, there ought not to be an Asari Dokubo still threatening the corporate existence of the nation.

Meanwhile, other insurgent groups appear to be cottoning in on the act. The Ombatse folks may yet succeed in carving out a wide swathe around the nation’s heart for themselves. In the east, MASSOB is heaving with Biafran bathos. In the west, the old militia majordomos are stirring again hoping to leverage federal political patronage to reinforce rusting ramparts.

But they will meet with other nascent civilian armies in the combustible region. The dominant political tendency in the region will not allow itself to be so summarily dispossessed by force. You cannot step into the same river twice. Bigfoot is truly abroad and God helps Nigeria and all of us boxed into the tinder box. Like a wanton schoolboy, somebody is busy setting up explosive crackers all over the country.

What we are witnessing is the failure of the post-military amnesty vision in all its material fundament. Genuine amnesty involves considerable contrition and remorse for past misconduct. What is being confused with amnesty in Nigeria is the payment of gratuity and gratification to unrepentant criminals for the cessation of hostilities against their fatherland. It is a question of political and economic expediency since the cessation of hostilities remains a temporary truce. There may yet be some method to Asari’s madness.

The fear of inter-regional and intraregional domination is real and palpable; so are the grievances. Jonathan and his government are looking for Bigfoot in the wrong direction. BOKO HARAM, MASSOB, MEND, OMBATSE, OPC etc are products of these fears with different inflections and intensity. Unless we remove the structural disfigurement of the nation which produces these fears, we will continue to be saddled with economic, political and spiritual warlords.

For many, the Bigfoot is real, an evolutionary bypass, a throwback to the age of Neanderthal hunters haunting modern man. For others, it is a myth, a mirage a troubling reminder of unfinished business, a reflection of humanity’s fear of the unknown. In other words, if the Bigfoot, the Yeti or the Yoruba ologomugomu do not exist, we will have to create them. It is left for each society to plot its way out of the dark abyss. Nigeria is not doing too well in that department. And time is not on our side.

May 12, 2013
More than ever, the president now needs to inspire

Judging from the way he talks, gestures and ruminates, sometimes angrily and at other times dismissively, President Goodluck Jonathan often gives the impression his pressing problems should be laid at the doorsteps of Nigeria’s boisterous and sometimes cantankerous media and the political opposition. The media is deeply judgemental, probing and censorious, and it has given Jonathan’s presidency no quarters. But it has always been all these, and will continue to be much more well after the Jonathan government; for even before independence, it never suffered fools gladly, not the white man and not his docile and colluding black servants. It is pointless for anyone to think that the media can now be tamed or diminished both by legislation and by brute force. Not only will such efforts remain undesirable, it will be ineffectual. On its own, the opposition, whether during military rule or civilian rule, is grounded on constitutional and cultural approbation. To attempt to put a leash on it is to try to make water flow uphill. It is as unrealistically unnatural as it is deliberately quixotic.

It is, therefore, time for the Jonathan presidency to take the predilections of the media and opposition parties as a given and try to locate the problems, weaknesses and limitations of his troubled government elsewhere. Since he assumed the presidency, Jonathan has been suffering from insufficient appreciation of the country’s structural imbalances and disequilibrium, poor policy coordination, unprecedented security challenges gradually metamorphosing into full-scale insurgency, rampant militia activities such as the proselytising Ombatse cult in Nasarawa State, schismatic ethnic politics, and a self-inflicted underachieving cabinet, among others. Singly or collectively, these problems have caused and nurtured instability in the Northeast, dislocated the economy, created a frustrated and destructive army of unemployed youths, rendered Jonathan’s government desperate and insular, and pushed the country firmly towards the precipice. The media merely reports these issues, and opposition parties merely capitalise on them. Neither group has infringed the law or common sense. And neither has acted improperly or with less circumspection than is generally required to keep the president and his government on their toes.

The Jonathan government is not underperforming because these problems are unique, unprecedented or severe. He is not failing because anyone wants him to fail or because he was programmed by legal and constitutional strictures to falter. And he is not confused because the problems are complex and interwoven. The Jonathan government is lost in a self-created labyrinth because he either lacks the capacity to grapple with the problems that mass before him, or he is naturally uninspiring, and so can no more inspire anyone than he can eat or converse with aristocratic finesse. It is well known that governments in Nigeria win elections against the run of play and in defiance of their appalling records. Perhaps Dr Jonathan hopes to capitalise on that historical antecedent by winning elections undeservedly, achieving unplanned breakthroughs, and solving crises either by avoiding them or ignoring them. If he embraces any of those options, he will have it tough going. For, this time, given the intensity of the socioeconomic and sectarian revolt in the North, it is hard to see how his customary pussyfooting and policy inexactitude would guarantee the survival of the country beyond the portentous 2015 an American military think tank warned a few years ago.

Dr Jonathan needs to reinvent himself along the lines his flashes of verbal brilliance and candour indicate. In his many public engagements, he sometimes spoke with simplicity and honesty, almost with engaging bipolarity, as if he always needed to subordinate his real self to his public self, his tortuous and perhaps contrived Christian consciousness to his more popular and secular nonconformism. Not only is it time for him to determine who he wants to be, it is also time to ask himself whether he really wants to save his presidency and what is left of his reputation. He came into politics without having had the opportunity to define politics in terms of the values that shaped his life and upbringing. And from the time he became deputy governor, through the frenetic pace of his meteoric ascendancy, and up to the time he mounted the highest throne in the land, Jonathan did not appear to have paused to define his politics, what he intended to do with power once he got it, and what sort of country he hoped to mould out of its riotous disparateness.

The national crises that weigh on his soul and grieve him endlessly call on him to vote one way or the other. That vote has been long in coming. Since he came in unprepared, he did not have a prepared template to face the problems. If he does not now take a walk in the wilderness and commune with his own soul, it will be difficult for him to make a choice, let alone the right choice. Worse, instead of scientifically and methodically confronting the evils threatening to undermine his presidency and even plunge the country into anarchy, he may find himself conceiving and administering ad hoc solutions. A president must come to the epiphanic realisation that he needs to change himself first before he can attempt to change the country.

But rather than the hard and productive way of changing himself in order to change the country, inspiring himself in order to inspire the country, acquiring knowledge in order to lead the country from a position of knowledge, Dr Jonathan may be embracing all over again the unproductive and hackneyed method of summoning his security chiefs or cabinet whenever he faces an outbreak of crisis. In the past two years or so, the insurgency in the North and militia activities in other parts of the country have combined to unleash a steady stream of bloodletting on the country. The bloodbath never stopped for a moment; but the president has had to cut short his visit to parts of Southern Africa to attend to the killings in Bama, Borno State, and a village near Lafia in Nasarawa State. What initiatives does he hope to bring to the table? Indeed, what initiatives has he brought to the table in the past few months when horrendous killings took place?

Cutting short his visit to Southern Africa is a mere public relations stunt. He had no choice than to do that, for not to do it would have compounded the blame he continues to receive for his inability to stanch the flow of blood in the country. But nothing serious will come from the renewed attention the president is giving the present crisis. His style and approach to the crisis will not change until he changes himself. When he changes, he will no longer go to the scene of rebellion and pass the buck to the elders of blighted communities, or make utterances that inflame passion, alienate the people, and aggravate the insurgency. And he will not also endorse the bloated impression the security forces have of themselves: that their uniforms somehow make them superior, invincible and untouchable. Now that militias and insurgents have defied his warning that no security agent should be murdered without eliciting a disproportionate response from the state’s awesome security machine, what does he intend to do to avenge the Nasarawa killings? Wipe out the entire state?

The country is exploding into many theatres of war. It is time Dr Jonathan took the right and urgent steps. First, he needs to reinvent himself, discover who he is, what kind of politics he wants to play, and what concrete vision of a strong, free and democratic country he wants to have, enunciate and bring about. He cannot discover himself by simply sitting at the head of the table in situation rooms and listening to the same jaded ideas from his incompetent aides, misguided advisers and overwhelmed security chiefs.

Second, he needs to take very bold steps to restructure the country if it is to survive beyond 2015. The first step here is to cause the devolution of the security structure away from the current unitary system. The more he delays, the more likely the kind of ugly incident that occurred at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital between grieving policemen, doctors and morgue attendants will repeat itself. That unfortunate incident is a pointer to the fact that nerves are getting frayed and patience is snapping dangerously. It is only a matter of time before the unimaginable happens. Worse, even if perpetrators of the Nasarawa killings are caught and dealt with, it does not mitigate the fact that more and more groups are defying the state, demystifying the security agencies, and signifying that the country is fast running out of time.

Third, it is incredible that the president does not know he is actually the one playing politics with insecurity, wrongly accusing the media of insensitivity and sensationalism, and unfairly denouncing the opposition for warning of disintegration. It is in fact Jonathan that needs a new, invigorated, bold and effective cabinet. Apart from unadvisedly surrendering a crucial part of his responsibilities to one or two powerful ministers in his cabinet, the president has unfortunately surrounded himself with what a columnist with this newspaper described as ethnopolitical zanies, most of whom don’t know their left from their right, and whose preoccupation is greed and parochialism.

The country is not decaying beneath a welter of crises, much of it sectarian, sanguinary and disruptive. The country is in fact decaying beneath a lack of leadership, uninspiring, insensitive, glacial, but deceptively bellicose, leadership. Dr Jonathan is lucky to be faced with the crises assailing his government. His problem is not that the crises are many, terrible and complex. His problem is how he is responding to them. So far, those responses have not been stirring. But they need to be if he is not to go down into 2015 a failure hoping to be rewarded with a second term for having led his country into chaos and decay.

May 12, 2013
The fire-eating quartet of Jonathan, Amaechi, Kuku and Asari-Dokubo

The suspicion in many quarters is that President Goodluck Jonathan actually thinks he has done substantially well enough to justify his party presenting him for re-election in 2015. Kingsley Kuku, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, and Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), a militant group physically but not psychologically repentant, think so too, and have reiterated that fact in very unpleasant and annoying language. While the president has kept prudently but disingenuously silent on his records and 2015 ambition, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has spoken imprudently loud about his well-known enemies, their Abuja backers, and the subterfuge perpetrated by the presidency in the riverine state.

Reacting to the massive disapproval that greeted his statements warning of economic sabotage and war if Dr Jonathan was not re-elected, but enjoying every bit of the publicity and attendant notoriety, Asari-Dokubo has goaded the public with yet more boastful and provocative comments. He could not be arrested, he threatened conceitedly, because the last time he was arrested and detained, oil production was cut down by a significant margin. This time, he thundered, his arrest would bring oil production to zero. Such buffoonery! There is no doubt that there are lots of troublemakers in the country, many of them lacking in restraint and sense of proportion, but the many silly remarks Asari-Dokubo made showed him to be a halfwit who should be noted but ignored.

Hon. Kuku, who also heads the well-funded Presidential Amnesty Programme, was even more loquacious, insulting and conniving. “It is true that the Presidential Amnesty Programme has engendered peace, safety and security in the sensitive and strategic Niger Delta,” he began incongruously. “It is only a Jonathan presidency that can guarantee continued peace and energy security in the Niger Delta,” he concluded. He also managed to attempt to blackmail the United States warning them that if they fail to support Jonathan’s re-election it could threaten national stability and oil and gas exports. Unlike Nigeria, which is being blackmailed into precipitous appeasement of all sorts of malcontents, the US never likes to be arm-twisted. By now, after hearing all the careless talk by close aides and advisers of the president, foreign powers will have taken the measure of Nigerian rulers’ minds. They will not be surprised that Nigeria is embroiled in crisis.

But much worse is the proxy war between the president himself and the governor of Rivers State. It is a turf war in which two leading politicians are fighting for supremacy. But the war is unsettling the state, promoting animosity, undermining the constitution, and worsening the tension that has enveloped the country from North to South. While the president’s men are fighting for control of the state in order not to lose it in 2015, Amaechi’s men tamely clutch only to the law and the constitution in a desperate struggle to stay afloat. It is not certain how the struggle will be resolved; whether the constitution will be sustained, or whether federal might will destabilise or even overwhelm the state.

Whatever the situation in Rivers, and however the looming apocalypse in the Northeast, and now North-Central, plays out, the country should prepare for tough times ahead. The president can lower the temperature if he wants to. But there is no proof he knows how to or why he should, or more critically, the consequences of aggravating the turmoil in the country.

May 12, 2013
Mixed signals from constitution amenders

Legislators are not giving clear signals on amending the 1999 Constitution

It is becoming more difficult by the day to know what the lawmakers amending the 1999 Constitution are up to. Just a few weeks ago, they released results of votes on areas suggested by the assembly for amendment. It is clear from the list that the amendments to be expected from lawmakers are likely to push the country further into the pit of unitary rule. But the lecture by the Speaker a few days ago in Lagos suggests that the assembly is also contemplating pushing most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent list.

When Nigerians called for a national conference to create a people’s constitution to replace the one foisted on the nation by the country’s last military dictator, lawmakers quickly came out to say that the legislature embodies the people’s sovereignty. They argued that it is not proper to jump over their heads to create another group to amend the constitution, claiming that they were duly voted into legislative office by citizens. On the contrary, federalists argued that lawmakers were not given a mandate to write a constitution, arguing further that the 1999 Constitution is too far from the constitution upon which Nigerian communities agreed to become an independent nation in 1960. Critics of lawmakers’ position also stressed that the constitution the legislators wanted to amend had no input from citizens and that it was at best a document to support transition to democracy superintended by General Abdusalaam Abubakar. The proper thing to do, citizens affirmed, is to extend the rights inherent in democratic governance to citizens to elect their representatives to negotiate a post-military constitution.

Apparently, the National Assembly has been calculating in handling the amendment exercise. It has used the media to give the impression that the amendment is driven by a truly democratic process. First, the Assembly invited self-appointed spokespersons to come to their zonal headquarters to indicate what citizens slated for change in the constitution. It did not matter if such spokespersons consulted with anyone in their constituencies. It did not matter to lawmakers if citizens could afford to travel to zonal headquarters in large numbers or if they could afford accommodation away from home. What mattered was the fact that some persons showed up at each venue to discuss the 1999 Constitution with elected legislators from their zone. Another thing that mattered was the informal voting on issues by unelected participants at the public hearing. One other thing that mattered was that lawmakers were able to publish the results of the voting they conducted over constitutional provisions. At least such open communication with the electorate enabled legislators to show the weight of evidence in favor of further de-federalisation of the polity.

Moreover, it mattered to lawmakers that they were able to publicise their own voting on items determined principally by them. It did not matter if such items are related to worries of citizens about overconcentration of powers at the center in the 1999 Constitution. But legislators felt obliged to demonstrate to citizens that there is correlation between voting patterns at the public hearing and in the hallowed legislative chamber, especially to show evidence that lawmakers agreed on most issues with positions of unelected spokespersons at the zonal public hearings. At best skeptics would call this process good packaging and at worst working to the answer.

What the legislators are now invoking is the principle of majority rule. But what they are missing is that the distribution of legislative seats in the 1999 Constitution is one of the issues that citizens believe should be subject of negotiation at a sovereign national conference or an ordinary constitutional conference. They also appear unaware of the fact that a constitutional conference could have led to a different way of distributing legislative seats among the federating units known for having starkly different attitudes to census figures for the country. Optimists on the issue of lawmakers’ amendment of a constitution believed to be bereft of citizens’ input must have expected legislators to come up with a more federal constitution, to assuage the feelings of federalists who had been calling since 1993 for a sovereign national conference to negotiate a people-authored Union Charter. It is looks like the pessimists might win: the amended constitution is now likely to be more unitary than the 1999 Constitution itself.

Amendments are likely to allow local governments to be divorced from the states to which they belong. The issue of a third tier of government created by military dictators without any reference to the federating units is now likely to be strengthened by amendments by legislators, as funds to local governments may go directly to local governments. The federal monopoly over securing of life and property of citizens is now more likely (than not) to be reinforced in the amended constitution. The provision for State Electoral Commission is also likely to be removed from the current constitution, thereby creating a centralized electoral commission to conduct election to federal, state, and local offices.

If the claim by the Speaker that there are plans to push most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent is true, how will that fit into the items already approved by legislators? Federalists need to be more attentive at this point. If lawmakers are shooting for emptying most exclusive items into the concurrent list with the ultimate goal of creating a residual list, this may be a ploy to change states into glorified sites for Lugardian-type of indirect rule. With the principle of federal supremacy intact in the constitution, transferring more items from the exclusive to the concurrent list may be another working to the answer. The provision of federal legislative supremacy over items on the concurrent list in the current constitution can be used to render states irrelevant. State governors and legislators may be reduced to the status of traditional rulers under indirect rule: allowed to do whatever the overlords approve of and prevented from carrying out responsibilities that federal government wishes to seize from them. This is already happening. The federal government has succeeded in preventing Lagos State from installing surveillance devices to protect life and property of citizens in the state, on the flimsy excuse that the federal government has the intention to install similar cameras in the country’s major cities.

As federal lawmakers continue with the amendment exercise, they need to be made aware of two principles inherent in federal democratic system: the principle of Federal Loyalty and the principle of Federal Comity. The former refers to commitment on all sides to achieve the objectives and fulfill the needs of the federal polity. Citizens including opponents of the 1999 Constitution showed this commitment when they bought the argument that legislators be allowed to amend the constitution. The latter principle is about willingness by all sides to compromise, exercise forbearance, and understand the point of views of others. The handling of the amendment process by the National Assembly does not show there is respect for such principle. Nobody should be surprised if after the amendments are finally out, they succeed only in refueling the call for a sovereign national conference.

May 12, 2013
Who are the Yoruba people? (part 1)

The Yoruba people of South-Western Nigeria are a nationality of approximately 50 million people, the vast majority of whom are concentrated primarily within Nigeria, but who are also spread throughout the entire world. They constitute probably the largest percentage of Africans that live in the Diaspora and they have made their own extraordinary contributions in virtually every field of human endeavour throughout the ages. Descendants of the Yoruba and indeed various ancient derivatives and forms of the Yoruba language can be found and are spoken in places like Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, the United States of America and various other parts of the western world. Today first, second and even third generation Yoruba’s have settled down and spread all over the world and are amongst the best and most sought-after lawyers, nuclear scientists, doctors, industrialists, academics, writers, poets, play writes, clerics, theologians, artists, film producers, historians and intellectuals throughout the world. Wherever they go they tend to flourish and excel.

This is nothing new and indeed has always been the case. The first Nigerian to be called to the Bar was a Yoruba man by the name of Sapara Williams who was called to the English Bar and started practicing as a lawyer in 1879. Yet Sapara Williams was not a flash in the pan or a one time wonder. Other Yoruba men followed in his footsteps in quick succession and were called to the English Bar shortly after he was. For example, after him came Joseph Edgarton Shyngle who was called in 1888, then came Gabriel Hugh Savage who was called in 1891, then came Rotimi Alade who was called in 1892, then came Kitoye Ajasa (whose original name was Edmund Macaulay) who was called in 1893, then came Arthur Joseph Eugene Bucknor who was called in 1894 and then came Eric Olaolu Moore who was called in 1903. Ironically, Sapara Williams was not the first Nigerian lawyer though he was the first to be called to the English Bar. In those days you did not have to be called to the Bar to practice law and the first Nigerian lawyer that practiced without being called to the Bar was a Yoruba man by the name of William Henry Savage. He was described as a ‘’self-taught and practicing lawyer’’ and he was a registered Notary Public in England as far back as1821. These were indeed the greats and every single one of them was a Yoruba man.

My friend and brother, the respected Mr. Akin Ajose-Adeogun, who is a historian by calling and a lawyer by profession, is a man for whom I have tremendous respect. I have often described him as the ‘’living oracle of Nigerian history’’ simply because he has a photographic memory, a knack for detail, first class sources and has read more books on Nigerian history than anyone that I have ever met before in my life. Akin has an extraordinary mind, he is a living genius and I have often urged him to write a book. You can ask him anything about anyone or any event in any part of our country, since or before independence, and he will give you names, dates and the sequence of events immediately and without any recourse to notes, books or sources. After he has given you the information he will then cite his sources and tell you which books to go and read in order to confirm what he is saying. I have learnt so much from him that I must publically acknowledge the fact that I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. He once told me something that I found very interesting and that reflected the semi god-like status that our earliest lawyers, including some of the names that I mentioned earlier, enjoyed amongst the people. These men were not only reverred but they were also admired by all, including members of the British intelligentsia, legal fraternity and elites. Akin told me that many years ago in the mid-80’s Sir Adetokunboh Ademola, who himself was one of the legal greats, who was called to the English Bar in 1934, who was the third Nigerian to be appointed as a magistrate in 1938, who was the third Nigerian to be appointed as a High Court judge in 1948 and who was the first Nigerian to be appointed Chief Justice of the Federation in 1958 said the following words to him. He said, ‘’when you saw the way that the earliest Nigerian lawyers conducted themselves in court and argued their cases you would have been filled with pride and you would have wanted to become a lawyer yourself. Members of the public used to fill the court rooms to the brink and sometimes even the forecourts and passages just to watch these great men perform and enjoy their brilliance and oratory. They spoke the Queens English and they knew the law inside out. It is not like that today’’. This is a resounding testimony from an illustrious Nigerian and it speaks eloquently about where the Yoruba, as a people, are coming from and the stock and quality of minds that they are made of.

Yet the dynamism of the Yoruba and their innovations and ‘’firsts’’ did not stop there. It went into numerous other spheres of human endeavour quite apart from the law. Permit me to cite just two examples. The first lies within the field of medicine. Dr. Nathaniel King was the first Nigerian to become a medical practitioner. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1876 and he was a Creole of Yoruba origin. Next came Dr. Oguntola Sapara who was the second Nigerian to become a medical practitioner and who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1884. He was followed by Dr. John Randle who graduated from Durham University in 1891, then Dr. Orisadipe Obasa who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1892, then Dr. Akinwande Savage who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1900, then Dr. Curtis Adeniyi-Jones who graduated from Durham University in 1901. Others like Dr. Oyejola who graduated in 1905, Dr. Kubolaje Faderin, Dr. Sesi Akapo and Dr. Magnus Macaulay who all graduated in 1912, Dr. Moyses Joao Da Rocha who graduated from Edinburgh University in 1913 and many others followed after that.

The second example lies within the ranks of the clergy. The first African Anglican Bishop and the first man to translate the Holy Bible and Book of Common Prayer to any African language (outside of Ethiopia) was a Yoruba ex-slave who gave his life to Christ, won his freedom and rose up to become one of the greatest and most respected clerics and leaders that the African continent has ever known by the name of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Unknown to many, his original name was Rev. John Raban but he changed it in his early years. Crowther got his first degree at the famous Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leonne (which at that time was part of Durham University). He was ordained an Anglican Bishop in 1864 and in that same year he was awarded a Doctorate degree from Oxford University.

This extraordinary man, who was blessed by God with an exceptionally brilliant mind, was, as far as I am concerned, one of the greatest Africans that ever lived. He not only translated the Holy Bible and the Book of Common Prayer to Yoruba (an extremely difficult, complicated and painstaking venture which he began in 1843 and which he completed in 1888) but he also codified a number of other Christian books and he translated them into the Igbo and Nupe languages. He was literally the pillar and foundation of the Anglican Church in West Africa. Throughout his adult, life he courageously stood up and fought for the rights and the dignity of the African and he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the spread, influence and power of the Christian faith in Nigeria in the late 19th century. He was also the maternal grandfather of the great nationalist, Herbert Macauly, who, together with Nnamdi Azikiwe, founded the political party known as the NCNC in 1944. Crowther was also the father-in-law of Rev. Thomas Babington Macaulay who founded the Christian Missionary Society Grammar School (CMS Grammar School) in 1859 in what was then the Lagos Colony. CMS Grammar School was the epitomy of excellence and a citadel of great learning in those days. It was also the oldest secondary school in Nigeria and the main source of African clergymen and administrators in the Lagos Colony. It is not surprising that it was the son-in-law of the great Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther that founded such a school and that it was his grandson that founded one the greatest political parties that the African continent has ever known. This is another first for the Yoruba.

Yet who are these people and where did they come from? What is their origin and what is their source of strength? What were their migratory patterns over the last 30,000 and more years, and how did they end up in Ile-Ife? What is their connection to the Middle East, to the Arabs of Mecca and Medina, to the ancient Egyptians and to the Nubians of the Sudan? What makes them so special and so peculiar all at the same time? What makes their religious set-up so complicated and so profund, and what allows each of the great monotheic faiths of Christianity and Islam together with the traditional religions to flourish and excel amongst the very same people at the same time? Why are the Yoruba so accommodating of outsiders and what is responsible for their liberal disposition when it comes to their dealings with people from other cultures, other faiths and other nationalities? Why is it that so many Yoruba families have mixed ancestral bloodlines that go back hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of years with so many different nationalities from outside Yorubaland and indeed from outside Nigeria, including the Bahians of Brazil, the Haitians and Cubans of Port Au Prince and Havana, the Creoles of Freetown (Sierra Leonne), the Ga’s of Accra (Ghana), the tribes of Dahomey (Benin Republic), the Edo, the Bini, the Itsekiri and other tribes from the old Mid-Western region of Southern Nigeria and the Nupe, the Hausa, the Fulani, the Shuwa Arab and the Kanuri from the North? What is the cultural and spiritual affinity of the yoruba with the people of the old Northern region and the people of the old Mid-Western Region and why are the people from those two regions and those from the South-West collectively referred to as the’Sudanese Nigerians’? Some of these questions may never be answered but in the sequel to this essay we will attempt to at least view and analyse the Yoruba from a historical perspective and this may explain why they are what they undoubtedly are- ‘’primus inter pares’’, the first amongst equals.

May 12, 2013
Big for nothing? Nanometers to the rescue! – A lay, secular sermon in a light mood

Esu threw a rock yesterday; it kills a bird today/Esu throws a rock today; it killed a bird yesterday/ Esu sleeps in the courtyard; it is too small for him; Esu sleeps in the bedroom; it is still too small for him; Esu sleeps inside a palm kernel; now he has space large enough for him to sleep in!

From the praise chants to Esu, the Yoruba trickster god Nano: a combining form with the meaning “very small, minute” used in the formation of compound words, e.g. nanoplankton. In the names of units of measure, it has the specific sense “one billionth”, e.g. nanosecond, nanometer, nanotechnology.

Dictionary.com (online)

If my memory is not playing tricks on me, one of the words that had a deep and exceptional fascination for me when I was a child in primary school was the Yoruba word, ‘firi!’ (Yes, with the exclamation mark). Roughly translated, it means something that happens, something that flashes by in the twinkling of an eye. More expansively, firi! (please think of it only with the exclamation mark, compatriot) means something that is so brief, so instantaneously transient that it is gone even before you have perceived it, even before its presence has registered in your mind, leaving only the trace of its passage. Firi! Oh word and concept that filled my youthful imagination with wonder! In my imagination, in my mind’s eye, you opened up vistas for which, at that very tender age, I had no words and no speech! That is until about five decades later, when I encountered the word, the concept “nano”, especially as compounded with those units of space and time, meters and seconds to give us nanoseconds and nanometers. In nanometers especially, I at last found a scientific, technological correlation to firi! But more on this later in this lay, secular, iwalesin “sermon”. First, we must talk about that other phrase in the title of this piece, that term of abuse, “big for nothing”, that I remember now also in the reflected light of a particular use that we had for it in my youth.

In Nigerian pidgin, “big for nothing”, as we all know, stands for huge size or number without sense, without discernment and sometimes without compunction. In my youth, boys who were corporeally and vertically challenged by being much smaller than their age were the special prey or target of bullies who invariably tended to be physically much bigger than their years. For the small boys, the ultimate putdown for their gigantic tormentors was, yes, “big for nothing”! Of course, this was usually shouted from the presumed safety of considerable distance between the abused child and the bully. I remember also that in my school’s football team that we called the “First Eleven”, the positions of full backs, right and left, were usually reserved for the biggest boys in the school. The thinking behind this, I suppose, was that you needed size, combined with cunning, to counter the nimble-footed strikers of opposing teams. On the whole, the calculation worked, sometimes so much so that some full backs who were as big as our teachers had legendary renown as terrors to all strikers, nimble-footed or not. But sometimes, the thing did not work and then one encountered the incredible spectacle of a swift but pint-sized centre forward running circles around a full back the size of a giant. I remember in particular one big fellow with the nickname of “Akanmu Jaji” who had size but not – shall we say – a lot of grey matter inside his occiput. As a result of this, we could not dispense with his renown as a right full back, but neither could we be indifferent to the fact that, with his lack of discernment, he could as much cause our “First Eleven” penalties as save it from almost certain goals by the jitteriness that took control of strikers when he approached them. For this reason, though we all thought of him as “big for nothing”, this was whispered only among us; no one dared to say it to his hearing! [Akanmu Jaji, this is all coming back to me from memory of things that happened more than a half century ago. If you are still alive and happen to be reading this piece, please know that I was not one of those who called you “big for nothing” behind your back!)

If, so far in this “sermon” I have given the impression that “big for nothing” is a malaise that comes from nature, let me quickly and emphatically assert that this is not the case at all. Whether one is big, medium or small, in height or girth, has no inherent connection at all to being brainy, resourceful or humane. What is at issue here is the extremely fatuous notion that the bigger a thing or a country is the better, together with the associated belief that with size and numbers come superior endowments or status. And on this account, which country in the world is more benighted than our own country in the association of size and numbers with inherent worth? Which nation, definitely on the African continent but also perhaps in the whole world, is more smitten by this ideology, this false consciousness that equates size with status than our beloved country, Nigeria? If, compatriots, you feel that this observation, this claim is an exaggeration, an expression of the habit of seeing nothing good in Nigeria that is itself a very Nigerian habit, than I ask you to please carefully consider the following few observations that I have randomly selected from a myriad of commonplace realities in our national public life.

First, there is the widespread belief among Nigerians from every part of the country that because we are the most populous nation on our continent we are, or have a manifest destiny as the “giant of Africa” no matter how foolishly and wastefully we use our national wealth. Secondly, there is the regularly bruited boast of the ruling party, the PDP, that it is the largest ruling party in Africa, as if that claim can rid the party of the odium, the colossal scandal of the abysmal level of its misrule in every single one of its three presidential administrations since 1999. Thirdly, what of the claims of Nollywood directors, producers and actors that the Nigerian video film industry produces more films annually than any other national film industry in the world, not excluding Hollywood and Bollywood, the national film industries of the United States and India respectively? No one has done independent research to validate this claim, but even if it is factually or literally true, does this erase the fact that we produce more trashy products, more extremely poorly made and distributed video films than any other country in the world? Finally, what of the fact that with the President and the Executive Governors of our thirty-six states we have more major and mini heads of state than any other country in the world with the possible exception of the United States? And yet what good has this done the country? Has it not in fact made us the country with one of the very highest administrative cost of governance in the world? And are these not all indications or expressions of “big for nothing” writ large and inscribed into the very lineaments of our national psyche? To put this in the plainest form possible, hasn’t the obsession with size and numbers become a fetish that we tend to see as a magical or divine protection against all the things that are terribly wrong with our present way of life?

If my observations and reflections so far in this piece point to the simple ethical and spiritual proposition that big and numerous are not necessarily or inherently good, I would like to say that this is definitely part of my purpose in this piece. So also is the corollary proposition that oftentimes, small and minute will do as well if not more than big and numerous. But this “sermon” has far more important or substantial things to explore than such undoubtedly beneficial moral and psychological truths. This leads us to the enormously important world of ideas, practices and technologies connected with nanofabrication whose central place in the productive and communicative processes of contemporary global civilisation is absolutely not in question.

I have two and only two purposes in bringing this discourse on nanofabrication to bear on this lay “sermon” on our national obsession with size and numbers. One is this: Compatriots, please pay attention to nanofabrication; it is central to many of the things we take for granted in the contemporary global civilisation of which we are a part, things that we ignore or pay scant attention to only at our cost. This is the second of my two objectives in this piece: In one way or another, the ideational and practical applications of nanofabrication have always been with us, with our humans species; if this is the case, we are only returning to some of the best and most positive aspects of our heritage as humans when we turn our attention, our curiosity to nanofabrication.

Is one billionth of a second or of a meter thinkable, not to talk of being practicable? I confess that with only the evidence that I can collect or sense or even intuit with my five senses, the answer to this question is a ringing, categorical no! If you, dear reader, can think of not a billionth, not even a millionth but a thousandth of a second or a meter, I can’t. But then here is the core of this conundrum: there are now so-called super-colliding super-computers that can measure and calibrate at the rate or speed of one billionth of a second or meter. Not only this, there are now thousands of devices and practical applications in everyday life that give concrete proof to this dizzying idea and claim of the measurement of space and time in infinitesimally minute but phenomenally efficient quantities.

For want of space, I will in this discussion give only one example, partly because it bears direct relevance to my profession as an academic and partly because I have never stopped being simply dazzled by it. This is it: In my travels around the world in connection with my work, I carry with me a mini laptop computer that weighs less than five pounds; in the little carrying case that comes with this mini laptop are small pouches into which I place flash drives each of which has a dimension of about two inches weighing a few ounces. And yet, and yet again, with this extremely compact baggage of mini laptop and flash discs, I carry with me books and monographs of hundreds of thousands of pages. In other words, anywhere I am in the world, I have nearly everything I need to keep on working without the need for checking out books and journals from the local library.

I think of the wondrous fascination with the word, the idea of firi! (always with the exclamation mark, remember compatriot) in my childhood. I think of the lines of the first epigraph to this essay and the beautifully poetic enigma of Esu’s abrogation of simple, literal and linear conceptions of time and the paradox of his finding the most ample room for his being only in the tiniest of spaces. I see in these two prefigurations of nanofabrication. “Big for nothing”, your day of reckoning has come! Let all our rulers, all our political parties, all our emergency contractors, all our corrupt public officeholders hearken to these good tidings and take note!

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

May 12, 2013
Now, the good women of the west

While evil lurks in the corner dark, mysterious and as elusive as Bigfoot, goodness radiates its celestial beam and heavenly rays on a beleaguered society. It was Bertolt Brecht, the great German playwright and radical intellectual, who once wrote a play titled, The Good Woman of Setzuan. It was about Shen Te, a good woman, who tries to survive in a harsh and unforgiving society brimming with evil people. Like all revolutionary art, the play is a little bit idealised. But that is the only way to nudge humanity towards a higher telos.

We can report that there are good women of the west as well. The torrent of tears washing down the Ekiti Hills for the late Deputy Governor of Ekiti State and political heroine, our own Funmi Adunni Olayinka, have hardly subsided when another very good woman, Modupe Adeola Adelabu, was nominated to step into her shoes. There seems to be no end to the supply of good and heroic women from the Ekiti hilly homestead.

It was a political master stroke on the part of the governor, combining sound judgment with political dexterity and calculated to reap maximum political dividends without ruffling any geopolitical feather. Judging from the universal acclamation abroad and the joyous felicitations of the folksy Ekiti people at home, it would appear that Kayode Fayemi knows not just the art of war but the art of politics as well.

A princess of the old Ewi dynasty of Ado Ekiti, Dupe Adelabu combines royal charms and nobility of purpose with granite character and a sense of unflinching loyalty hewn out of the rocks of Ekiti. On behalf of the class of 75 at Ife and all those turbulent and rascally boys, Snooper congratulates Her Excellency on a most deserved elevation.

As a petulant pest, Snooper used to wonder in those halcyon days at Ife why the class with its many beautiful damsels had become such a rich poaching ground for the new military and intellectual aristocracy. There was the aristocratic, reserved but unfailingly polite Omowale Sutherland who married the future General Alani Akinrinade.

There was the bookish and ever serious Josephine (now doctor) Aliu who married the future Admiral Mike Okhai Akhigbe. There was the elegant and formidably self-assured Victoria Yogha who married the future General David Mark, And there was the charming regal Dupe Adedugbe who married the late Deji Adelabu, the dapper and ever fastidiously attired prince of Ijero, who became the university librarian at Obafemi Awolowo University.

And while we are still talking about the good women of the west, it does appear as if the ACN. has an inexhaustible supply of these gems, judging by the quality of the women the party has sent forth for higher responsibility. As a progressive and forward looking organisation, the party should now walk its talk and send one of these outstanding women to the gubernatorial mansion come 2015 or sooner thereafter. The west should blaze the trail again. It is time to produce the first female executive governor of the Fourth Republic. Here is wishing our good friend, Professor Dupe Adelabu, a happy tenure.

Next Week: A Review of Ambassador Fafowora’s memoirs.

May 12, 2013
Oga Dele Falegan: The colossus at 80

‘The thorough man knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends’.

– Andrew Carnegie

Chief Dele Falegan’s life has been divinely choreographed

Not a few would wonder as to how this toddler can address Baba Falegan, 80 years plus two days today, as oga, an appellation normally applicable to those older only by some light years .The reason is simple: I am privileged to have shared Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti – UP SCHOOL! -with the baffday ‘boy’, and it so happens that THE SCHOOL has patented that appellation for all those older, whether ancient or modern, and Baba happens to be ancient while I am modern.

Encomiums would pour ceaselessly at the formal celebration on Friday, 10 May, 2013, as Baba turns 80 and all will gather to celebrate a man whose entire life has been dedicated to service to humanity. In recognition of this, the Ekiti state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, ever so appreciative of integrity, has requested his party leaders and brother governors to please join him in celebrating Baba, who continues to avail the state of his prodigious expertise and experience in Economics and Banking. He is, incidentally, the Chairman of the State Sure-P Committee.

Chief Dele Falegan may be thorough, he may have deployed unremitting attention to all he ever did and he just might have programmed his life the best he can but without a scintilla of doubt, his life has been divinely choreographed. Witness the following, for instance, and see the uniqueness of figure 3: Born in 1933, baptized in ’43 and confirmed in ’53 he attended the IMF Training School, Washington D.C, in ’63 and was with the World Bank IFC in ’83. In 1993, he authored his second book on the Nigerian Foreign Exchange mechanism and in 2003, mooted the idea of a group buying an organ for the Emmanuel Church, Ado-Ekiti. Two days ago, on Friday, 10 May 2013, as he turned 80, the Holy Spirit led him to singlehandedly donate, a N20 Million Pipe Organ to the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel, Ado-Ekiti thus fulfilling that which he had proposed to a group ten years earlier

That he is this passionate about a pipe organ cannot surprise anybody who knows Baba well. Born and raised in an Anglican home, it was compulsory for him, as a young boy, to attend all church events which in those days bore strict adherence to the church calendar. His greatest interest was, however, in singing having been picked to join the choir in 1944 by Baba E. S. Ajibade, a very powerful soloist. He has never looked back since.

I have been spectacularly blessed to be mentored by some of the most illustrious of Ado-Ekiti sons, both as teachers and as life- long mentors. They include Chief Fajana, my primary school teacher, Professor Banji Akintoye who taught me both at Christ’s School and at the University, Chief Alex Olu Ajayi and Chief (Dr) JGO Adegbite under who, with late Chief S.J Okudu, I learnt all I ever knew about Higher Education Administration and the Prince, Juli Adelusi Faluyi who remains my constant source of encouragement and admonition.

Add the celebrant to this list and you would have captured about half the men and women the good Lord has used in shaping me. But Chief Falegan caught me darn early; he, the tall, elegant and sartorial top Economist at the Central Bank of Nigeria in the mid-60’s, and I , the young, dashing bank clerk at the Bank of West Africa Ltd.

But boy, didn’t he send me errands on Apapa Road!

I have thus been privileged, for nearly half a century, to learn at Baba’s feet and both he and Mummy, his graceful better half, have taken my wife and I so passionately that he, in fact, calls me – to my shame – more than I call him and the first thing he will say in Ekiti is: oni ayiye ni si ko? – The good one is who I want to greet o.

Another of the highlights of the celebrations will be the unveiling of his magnum opus –MY YESTER YEARS – his Autobiography. An author of no mean repute, Chief Falegan had to be prevailed upon, especially by Mummy and I , to put pen to paper. Why, the reader may ask? Baba’s most distinguishing characteristic is candour –the ability to say it exactly as it is – whether at work or in communal affairs. Knowing how wicked the ‘soul of man’ is, he was being careful not to recall some sensitive issues where his seemingly hard views, most often the road finally taken, were always first met with serious altercations. We prevailed because he agreed with us that truth will always thump falsity. And let me claim some bragging rights here: I was privileged to be one of the three persons who edited the book. We had to be that number because he will simply tolerate no mistakes; whether of spelling or syntax. He is that meticulous.

Chief Falegan was born, the 6th of 20 siblings into the Fatufede warrior family of Ado –Ekiti on 10 May 1933. His father, Chief Daniel Falegan, a big time yam farmer, was a disciplinarian and a lover of Education. He attended Emmanuel School, and Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which he says was so named on 10th September, 1936, by Sir Bourdilion, then Nigeria’s Governor-General, on a visit to Ondo Province. Baba would later obtain his first degree in Economics at the Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a Master’s in the same discipline from the University of Oregon U.S.A.

He joined the Central Bank of Nigeria on July 1, 1961 and by sheer hard work, quickly distinguished himself so much that to his pleasant surprise, he became, in February 1963, the first staff of the Bank to be sent to the IMF Institute in Washington DC to train on monetary policy.

He will be twice lucky as he was, in 1965, again sponsored to the University of Oregon, USA, for a two-year Master’s programme in Economics. He was, this time around, accompanied by his wife, Olufunke, and his one-year old son, Oludare. It was there he had his near fatal operation for pneumonia which cost him the lower lobe of his right lung and to the glory of God he has survived on one and a half lungs since 1967.

At the Central Bank he saw bare faced ethnicity at play. However, the attempt, by Dr Clement Isong, to make his kinsman supersede Chief Falegan as Director of Research was thwarted only an hour before the deed when the Finance Minister, his former boss, Mr A. E Ekukinam, came in to inform Dr Isong of his removal from office as CBN governor once more confirming God’s benevolence on the life of the celebrant. He would later be seconded to the Nigerian Mortgage Bank as its pioneer Managing Director. Again it was by the grace of God that he overcame the ethnic-motivated intrigues in this new place that he had no qualms, whatever, in describing his time there, in his autobiography, as MY THREE WASTED YEARS.

Baba has always, and continues to touch life. Suffice it to mention the case of three of his junior staff who all had grade 1 in their school certificate examination. Because he was a tough act to follow, many of his department’s staff usually seek transfer to others but he just would not approve of these three whom he insisted would not leave the department until they got admission to universities. The three are today, Professor Bode Leigh, former Vice Chancellor, Lagos State University, Dr. Aderungboye, former General Manager, Okitipupa Oil Palm Company and Mrs. Ajoke Oluwasanmi, a retired Permanent Secretary of the Ekiti Public Service commission.

Chief Falegan has served on various boards and consulted for various national and international agencies. Amongst these are: Standard, now First Bank, NISER and the Ondo State Economic Advisory Council, 1976-1979. He served on the Working Party on the establishment of the West African Clearing House and that on the establishment of African Centre for Monetary Studies, Dakar, among many others.

A prolific writer and commentator on national affairs, Chief Falegan is the Atoye of Ado-Ekiti.

May 12, 2013
Of books, bookworms and illiteracy

Congratulations government; you are now presiding over one of the brightest illiterate societies in the world

I read of someone saying during the week that if the poor in Nigeria benefit from a Nigerian government’s policy, it is completely accidental, or something to that effect. I’m sure you and I agree with that statement, if you know what it means. On my part, I interpret it to mean first and foremost that Nigerians (both government and people) have ways of conceiving ideas that benefit only a small number of people, say the government’s men (and women too). So, in this country, the uniform of, say the police or traffic wardens, is changed for some government relative’s sake; and even the president’s diet is changed so that someone close enough can make the supplies.

Don’t let us take this interpretation thing further, or else I might begin to think the statement may also mean that the roads you and I have been travelling on have not been meant for us but since we are such good thieves that the government cannot get rid of… and worse, even the education you and I have received so far have not really been aimed at us but we somehow stood in the way. Really, government’s policies have never been directed at improving the lot of the poor; everything it has done has been for itself. Talk of anyone being self-serving.

You know of course that the converse will also hold true: that everything the government has failed to do has also been for its own benefit. Take the failure to revive and develop the railways, for instance. That is one colossal failure for which the government needs to cover its face in deep and great shame. The wonderful thing is that I can never for the life of me fathom out the benefit it is deriving from that failure when many nations in the world are being sustained by such social services. All I know is that one of the greatest benefits of modern living is still the train, and it is being denied us the poor in this country. But we are not here to repeat ourselves today; let’s leave that for a rainy day.

Oh yes, I remember, the rainy days are here again. How do I know? Oh, because I can see various governments scampering around trying to fix leaky potholes and blocked drainages. You thought I would say because I can hear the rains falling down, down this way? No, I can’t say that because most times when it’s raining, I am too busy wading through flooded roads. When I’m not on the road, however, I pick something up and read. That is how I have come to read so many things: newspapers, comics, drug literatures, books, dog’s ticks (sorry, that’s counting), stars… I would willingly have read the dog’s liver (just to know the signs of the times) but the dog refused to oblige me. Yeah, that’s what bookworms do: read anything that comes to hand. That’s why the dog now runs away when he sees my hands coming.

Bookworms, goes my Encarta, are enthusiastic readers; people who love reading. The good news is that I am not alone. Indeed, I pale into insignificance when I consider a friend of mine who says he can out-read a reader. Now, that is something. Just mention any title in the classics, he’s at home. Even bestseller lists do not go past his doorstep. And he lives in Nigeria. Once, I teased him that I quite believed if he lived in Britain, he would have been one of those who would camp all night in front of some bookshop just to be able to get a copy of a Harry Potter book. He said he got someone to do that for him. I rested my case, but not before I was struck by two things.

One, I reflected on the rise and rise of Harry Potter and why it has not happened here. To begin with, the book publishing industry in Nigeria is suffering from a grave disease inflicted on it by the government. All over the world, it has been known that revolutions in literacy and information can be accelerated only through making books and newspapers cheap and affordable. I remember being sent to buy newspapers for three pence when I was young. That was some big money then, but I believe that it made news and information to be within the reach of more people than it is now at a whopping one hundred and fifty Naira – daily feeding money for many people now.

Somewhere in the seventies, the trend of information affordability failed and I believe it was entirely the government’s fault: first it introduced SAP, and then it raised importation duties on printing materials. Book and news industries practically crumbled under the weight of the government’s wickedness. So, dear reader, even though Harry Potter is possible here, it will not come in a long while because publishing houses are more interested in fighting for survival than in aesthetics or altruism. Now they work very closely with schools’ curricula.

Unfortunately, those among us who can really afford to finance publishing houses that would not be too desperate for survival are not ready to do so. They are the people who have had easy access to the government’s money. Those are more inclined to quickly take that loot abroad where they hope it cannot be traced rather than invest it in something so trite as making the economy grow. After all, it is not their responsibility to help people improve in their reading and thinking habits; let other people do that. Truly, only a foolish rich `un will keep his stolen money lying around long enough for detectives to find or for banks to give as soft loans to publishers.

The second thing that struck me was that the government might have deliberately been trying to keep the literacy level down, much the same way you would keep the noise level down in the house. If I didn’t know the government better then, I would have said it was trying to stifle the people from seeking knowledge, wisdom, information and understanding. Perhaps it was; and well has it succeeded. Congratulations government; you are now presiding over one of the brightest illiterate societies in the world, and you did it all by yourself.

That Nigerians are bright and intelligent, there is no doubt. Just look at the array of their activities: ‘419’ scams, intractable Boko Haram and Niger Delta insurgencies, ‘Yahoo Boys” scams, kidnapping businesses, and yes, more 419 scams. These are the efforts of brains put to work. True, these organs are now run by graduates and undergraduates but they were not started by graduates. You see, a dysfunctional society like ours where everything is upside down would sooner than later cause a malfunction of the brain even in the strong breeds.

The present low level of literacy in Nigeria is causing havoc in every way. People are dying every day because they really do not know the difference between uniforms in healthcare institutions. I hear that general hospital attendants have been known to divert patients to their own home dispensaries because the patients do not know any better. Believe me, a nation’s economic and political survival has everything to do with the amount of knowledge and literacy its citizens have between them. If you don’t believe me, just look at the farming business in Nigeria today: how many mechanised farms can you count? Well, there’s mine, and mine, and mine; that’s all.

Seriously, there is a strong connection between the government’s ‘Vision 2020202020’ or whatever name it goes by, the development of books and reducing the level of illiteracy in the country. That connection is political will. If the government wants a literate Nigeria by 2020, it will be done.

May 12, 2013
Jonathan for life!

Dokubo is a minimalist; our president deserves more than second term

Do you want peace or war”? That was the tactless question asked in a crisis situation by the principal of the federal school where I did my two-year Advance Level programme years back. Of course, trust students; the answer was predictable. It was a tumultuous “Yes, we want war; we want war”. And, in no time, the school was literally on fire. Policemen were called in and before the end of the day, the school was closed down and the students sent home.

I recalled this incident as a result of the threat by former militant, Asari Dokubo, to the effect that willy-nilly, Nigerians must return President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 if they want peace in the country. If they do otherwise, then, the militants in the Niger Delta who are presently on sabbatical would be forced to return to the creeks. “The day Goodluck is no longer the President; all of us who are on sabbatical will come back. There will be no peace not only in the Niger Delta but everywhere. If they say it is an empty boast, let them wait and see,” said Dokubo, who as leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF) coordinated a campaign of violence in the oil producing areas. Dokubo spoke just a week after President Jonathan’s adviser on amnesty, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, was reported to have said in the United States that chaos would set in unless Jonathan was re-elected. Kuku has said he was misquoted though. Dokubo said he was reiterating Kuku’s prediction of “dire consequences” if the President is not re-elected in 2015. He even sounded a note of warning to our Senate to perish the thought of introducing a six-year single term for president, which would preclude Jonathan from running in 2015.

We owe Dokubo a world of gratitude for giving us the option of choosing between peace and war, instead of taking us by surprise. I can assure him that the rats at home have heard and would communicate the message to the ones in the bush. Unlike those of us in the federal school then, Nigerians are not students; they are peace-loving people, a thing many of their leaders have often exploited to their (Nigerians’) disadvantage. With Dokubo waving both the stick and the carrot (the stick should they fail to return Jonathan for a second term, and the carrot should they return the president come 2015), I know Nigerians will opt for the carrot. Indeed, that is what they should do if they like themselves and if they are not to show themselves as ingrates. What else do you do for a president who has remained true to character, a man who has served the country diligently and meritoriously in so short a period, thus confirming the aphorism that it is not how long but how well? Indeed, I doubt if any right-thinking Nigerian would oppose life presidency for our amiable and able president.

What is particularly painful is that many people who have criticised Dokubo have not even given any serious thought to his reasons. When we examine these, we would see that at some point, Dokubo was making sense. Remember that expression and the person who popularised it after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election by Ibrahim Babangida? First, Dokubo has told us something we never knew; that Nigeria is at peace today not because of amnesty granted former Niger Delta militants by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua but because President Jonathan, a ‘son of the soil’, is President. In the light of this ‘revelation’, one should be wondering what nexus exists between Dokubo and Kuku and, by extension, why the latter is still being paid from the public till if a militant kingpin is now telling us that he has sheathed his swords not because of amnesty but because Jonathan is one of their own. And, in case such people have forgotten, he reminded them that he rejected amnesty because he is not a criminal. So, those touting the amnesty programme as having succeeded had better have a rethink.

Second, Dokubo said Jonathan is holding the post for the Niger Delta region and that the region, like other regions that have had a shot at the presidency, is entitled to eight years. Are you wondering where performance is in all these? Please stop wondering, for Dokubo reinforced his point by stating that Jonathan has performed better than previous governments. Again, can you fault him? Even if it is a case of the country of the blind where the one-eyed man is king, Dokubo has floored those who see the Jonathan presidency as incompetent. More fundamentally, Dokubo’s conclusion is pardonable when we remember our class on selective exposure, selective perception and selective retention, meaning you see only what you want to see, interpret it the way it suits you and also decide whether to retain it in your memory or delete it. Even a local saying in my place has it that what is facing someone is backing someone else. So, on all fronts, including street and local wisdom, Dokubo is right: Jonathan’s government is better than previous ( I guess, PDP) governments!

As a matter of fact, I have even heard some people are wondering whether it was the same Dokubo who only a few months back, criticised Jonathan’s government and doubted his re-election in 2015 unless he removed some elements from his government, that has changed position, when the president has not carried out any such reorganisation that would have weeded out the irritants and pollutants. “The President has allowed himself to be imprisoned by some greedy individuals. His goodwill will soon go and that will affect his second term chances,” he had said. Well, that is a fact of life; no condition is permanent. Life itself is dynamic. What is perceived to be black today can suddenly turn to white tomorrow in the face of fresh ‘developments’. If you like you might begin to link Dokubo’s volte-face to the billion naira contracts that the Jonathan government gave him; that, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo said, ‘na yo toro’ (that is your business).

Still on contracts, I hear the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) too is gearing up for a piece of the action. There are reported rumblings in the ‘OOdua house’, with one factional leader allegedly threatening to throw out the other. When such threats are made, we should know what is speaking. Two things normally cause friction between two good old friends – women and money. In the Oodua case, women cannot be an issue because there is more than enough to go round. It has to be money then because, one, it is the root of all evil and second, it is one thing that is hardly enough. No matter how rich people already are, they still want more money.

But who will blame Oodua for quickly keying into this lucrative and ‘legitimate industry’ in Nigeria? All you need to qualify for the windfall is ability to cause chaos, render the security agencies ineffective and sustain it for a long time, and you are in business. Levels will suddenly change and your statement of account will cease to be a source of sorrow and disappointment to you. Indeed, once you hit it big in that ‘sector’ which is fast gaining ascendancy in the Jonathan era, it is the bank managing directors who have to catch cold whenever you sneeze.

It is in the light of all these that I want to set the ball of congratulations rolling for President Jonathan in advance, for his well deserved victory in the 2015 elections. With his kinsman, Dokubo, a former but not tired militant declaring war if the president is not re-elected in the election, the coast is as good as clear for President Jonathan to start preparing his acceptance speech for the Dokubo assured victory. The gods of this era have spoken. Militants, terrorists now rule the waves.

May 12, 2013