The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Nigerian Athletics: tucked somewhere between Achilles’ heel and Athlete’s foot

    Nigerian Athletics: tucked somewhere between Achilles’ heel and Athlete’s foot

    I have always loved the mythical story of Achilles. You know what myths are, don’t you? They are generally those tales told by a people to convince themselves that they did not suddenly descend from the planet of apes and moronic monkeys, but have something closely resembling human beings in their ancestry by telling tall tales of heroes past. Imagine being imbued with the kind of supernatural powers Achilles is said to have been endowed with: invulnerability, heroism and extreme good looks. Now, what would I not do with some good looks? Make the men swoon and fall flat before my very feet and the women green with envy, get abducted and fought for by very handsome men like Helen of Troy was, and very easily dispense good will to all men and women like confetti at a wedding. I would be able to afford it; after all, I would have all these good looks. Now, there is something to wish for.

    You probably thought I would pick heroism? Pshaw! Don’t you know, haven’t you heard that heroism is not very profitable in Nigeria, what with the succession of uncaring governments at all levels that we have had? If we had not been having caring governments, someone, somewhere would have intermittently apologised to and greeted Nigerians for heroically bearing up all these decades with decaying infrastructure; without regular electricity, potable water, and adequate security; and with decaying sanity. So, no thanks, I cannot pick Achilles’ heroism; it makes you suffer for nothing. Just ask the nation’s athletes like Mary Onyali, Falilat Ogunkoya, and so on.

    I have many times come to the conclusion that the nation’s human resources are concentrated on the streets, in the mass of individuals who fleet with debonair carelessness between and among equally fleeting vehicular traffic, doing nothing but trading. And I have thought, ha!, there go perishing on our streets our farmers, students, intelligentsia, Platos, Aristotles, athletes, Jacks the Ripper, Houdinis, and all other materials that make a nation great while the country looks on. So, I was not too surprised to read an interview recently granted by Onyali, one of this nation’s former athletes, where she expressed the notion that indeed, we are losing our best athletic materials to street trading. Meanwhile, the athletic population of the country is drying out.

    What exactly then is the problem? Mammoth, and it begins with the government. Over the ages, our governments have had the primitive and stone age-inspired urge to always appoint people who have no inkling whatsoever into positions that require not just knowledge but a specialised kind of knowledge. What kind of aberration on earth should inspire the government to keep appointing non-sport related politicians to head the sports ministry is still a mystery. What do we expect him or her to do there but play politics of money and chess?

    I have recounted the story before but I will tell it again mostly because I love laughing at my own stories, even if no one else does. A Nigerian sports contingent once went to attend a sports related conference taking place in a neighbouring country. By the time the contingent arrived it was led by the minister himself, had held up the opening ceremony by four or so hours, and it was fifty men or so too large! I agree, I may have exaggerated the number a little, but you must pardon me, I was not there, and my fellow Nigerians’ unreasonable penchant for leaving their desks and following ministers around does get my goat. Anyway, I was told that all that the contingent did after the opening ceremony was take photographs before departing for home, to the consternation of the other countries’ contingents. Very expensive pictures, you’ll agree. That attitude just describes our Achilles’ heel to the point.

    Achilles’ heel, which is said to have been the most tender and vulnerable part of his body, is the part that is said not to have entered the River Styx into which Achilles had been dipped as a child to give him his supernatural power and make him invulnerable to the enemy’s arrows. So, that is the point of weakness in the supernatural body of our hero. Naturally, I have my own theory. I think that his heel, like any other soldier’s at the time, was the one part not covered by the whole armour which all soldiers were compelled to put on, much like every Nigerian household is now compelled to obtain a power generator set because of, you guessed it, the unserious attitude of our fellow Nigerians to work. Hmm, that Achilles’ heel again!

    This serious problem of attitude has incapacitated and cancelled the nation’s long-standing tradition of fishing out talents from street games, schools’ games and any other games to fill slots for competitions and bring glory to our motherland. Now, I hear our brainy sports officials are thinking of going to Jamaica, not to import Jamaican rum, but to import Jamaican athletes! That’s even better. In many instances, I heard that officials would even rather field their clueless relatives in those serious competitions so that the allowances could come ‘to the house’. Oh yes, how else do you think Rome was built if not on that kind of patronage? So, the nation’s athletics programmes continue to suffer want for lack of athletes and brains and right minds.

    As a result of this sobering fact, the nation has succeeded in courting a severe case of athlete’s foot, the fungal infection that affects the foot, especially that of an athlete. No, the encyclopaedia did not say that last bit; I added it. Now, I am told, sports grounds all over the country have been taken over by politicians who prefer to build their tasteless and excessively large houses on them. School children’s games have no sponsors, so many of them run their competitive races barefoot in the hot, hot African sun. Can there be a surer way of getting athlete’s foot? I ask you! I ask you!

    This country needs a more vigorous sports programme. It should begin by the thorough education of the populace on the beneficial role of sports, exercise and recreation in the life of the individual. Most of the people adjudicating on sports matters in Nigeria today, sad to say, do not even know the meaning of the word and what it entails. I have also told this story before, but I will repeat it for the sake of the stone deaf. Once, my friend and I were on our usual early morning’s four-kilometre walk when one of her colleagues at work spotted us on the road and waved at us. Later on, the colleague accosted my friend and, in a spirit of camaraderie, jocularly patted her on the back for trying to cut down on fuel costs by hiking to work, our sports wears notwithstanding. That, my friend, is all the sports education most of us have around here. Now, imagine what happens if that knowing one were to become a sports minister!

    On this world athletics day, I urge you to put on your hiking boots and your thinking cap. You need your boots to help you discover or rediscover what it feels like to liberate your body from the tight grip of laziness, inactivity, a sedentary lifestyle and insouciance to health matters and allow your body to come alive under the helpful hands of exercise. Go out and run. Your thinking cap will then fit you; and, like electric jolts passing into a death row convict, wisdom will pass into you like lightning bolts and you will join me to beg the government to take the matter of sports a little more seriously. Our very lives depend on it.

     

  • Neither Obj nor Gej

    Neither Obj nor Gej

    I have said it before. You must give it to him. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is a wily tactician. The Ota farmer and old soldier is a formidable and dangerous foe to have. Ask the late Dr.Chuba Okadigbo. Ask the unassumingly cerebral Chief Audu Ogbeh. When the vengeful schemer decides to eat pounded yam and egusi soup with his perceived enemies, the latter must dine with utmost caution. Even after his initial tiffs with incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan over the handling of the Boko Haram insurgency, OBJ was recently a surprise visitor at Aso Rock. He not only prayed passionately for GEJ at the Aso Rock Villla, he later enjoyed a sumptuous lunch with his host at the presidential residence. Was all forgiven? Was all forgotten? Had godfather graciously forgiven godson? Not on your life. The Owu chief has a long and capacious memory. You do not prick his giant sized ego and go scot free.

    He was thus on hand last Sunday at the 50th birthday ceremony of his former aide, Mrs ObyEzekwesili, to aim damaging darts at his protégé’s administration. He heaped high praise on Ezekwesili and his other former aides. He claimed that they served Nigeria selflessly and meritoriously. “When I look at you, I thank God for making you available to serve my administration, to serve Nigeria and to serve God at the time you did”, OBJ told an obviously elated Ezekwesili. We will recall that the latter recently generated uproar when she accused the Jonathan administration of mismanaging the country’s foreign reserves. Obviously that was the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau. Enraged presidency officials did not contradict her statistics. They rather accused Ezekwesili without substantiation of corruption when she was in government. OBJ rose in stout defence of his administration’s integrity. He not only boasted that he was not afraid of being probed; he pointedly accused the incumbent administration of perpetrating corruption through the proposed pipeline protection agency. What then are the police and other security agencies existing for, the former President rightly wondered?

    But will the GEJ administration respond gallantly to OBJ’s challenge? Will they dare sanction the probe of the ex- Lord of Aso Rock? It is unlikely. And the reason is simple. An incumbent who permits the probe of his predecessor will be open to the same treatment when he leaves office and dogs in Nigerian politics do not eat dogs. Otherwise the OBJ administration has so many questions to answer. Have we forgotten the misbegotten Transcorp venture and the ex-President’s reported procurement of massive shares in the project while in office? Have we forgotten the unethical donations to his presidential library project? Have we forgotten the controversies over the Petroleum Trust Development Fund? Have we forgotten the questionable and hardly transparent sale of public assets like the refineries to cronies – a decision reversed by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua? Have we forgotten the over $16 billion that went down the drain we hardly an impact on the power sector? Have we forgotten the virtual ‘Boko Haramisation’ of the 2003 and 2007 elections; presidentially sanctioned ‘do or die’ polls in which several states were practically ‘kidnapped’ by the PDP until they were eventually salvaged by the judiciary? Have we forgotten the massive political corruption attendant on the ill-fated third term agenda? But the sad fact is that the incumbent administration equally has serious questions to answer: massive pension funds fraud; the gargantuan oil subsidy scam; questionable pipeline security contracts; the rot at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation; presidential pardon for convicted corrupt officials and much more. So dogs will not eat dogs. Give it to him. OBJ is a smart man.

    But why are OBJ and many of his former aides so critical of the GEJ administration? It is not necessarily that they love Nigeria better. It is not necessarily that they hate the corruption they are shouting so loudly from the rooftops about. After all, it is unlikely that some of them would still be walking the streets free today but for the inefficacy of the anti-corruption agencies in the current inept dispensation. Many of them are only exhibiting frustration at their loss of influence with the exit of their benefactor, OBJ, from power and their failure to continue to rule Nigeria from the back door even while out of office. When many of these ex-officials criticise the non- performance of the GEJ administration, they forget that the government they served never laid a firm foundation for its successors. With the possible exception of the telecommunication sector, virtually every sphere of our national life – electricity, roads, agriculture, refineries, aviation, rail transportation, education, health, employment creation etc – was in a decrepit condition after eight years of their being in power.

    It was quite annoying hearing Ezekwesili pontificating so eloquently on good governance, transparency, corruption and democracy given the glaring failings of the government she served in all these areas. Given its own intellectual poverty and the ideological vacuity of the PDP, the OBJ administration relied on over rated ‘technocrats’ and ‘experts’ who may have been individually brilliant but lacked original and intelligent ideas for the transformation of Nigeria. As a result of their failed neo-liberal policies, the National Bureau of Statistics reports that “As of 2010, more than 60% of the population of Africa’s largest oil producer and most populous nation lived on less than $1 a day, up from 51.6% in 2004”. In other words poverty steadily worsened in Nigeria throughout the OBJ years and the trend continues today. They performed the dubious miracle of the economy reportedly recording accelerated statistical growth while the majority of the people accelerated faster into misery and penury.

    Amazingly, the GEJ administration continues to pursue the same neo-liberal policies that have compounded Nigeria’s underdevelopment over the last two decades while purporting to be pursuing a nebulous transformation agenda. Their chief economic guru, Dr.NgoziOkonjo-Iweala, continues to trumpet rosy growth statistics that are completely divorced from our existential realities. It is what I can only describe as the spectacular mediocrity and superlative ineptness of the GEJ administration that has given OBJ and his team the temerity to try to portray themselves as superstars after squandering a golden opportunity to salvage the country. A country that hands over its fate to accidental public servants may be disastrously heading for a tragic national accident. Presidential media aide, Reuben Abati, recently derisively described Ezekwesili and her co-travellers as ‘yesterday’s men”. Yes, he was right. But he forgot that sooner or later all public officers are fated to become history. In particular, it is of utmost importance that come 2015, GEJ and his team are confined to history so that new men and women of vision and ideas can lead Nigeria in a new direction. Ladies and Gentlemen, in the ongoing tussle, I vote neither for OBJ nor GEJ.

  • Concessioning, my foot

    It is heart-warming that many people expressed surprise over my in-depth knowledge of the many atrocities in our sports federations. Many readers have condemned me as strictly a football writer.

    I accept that claim because football remains our number one sport. And I really love to persuade readers to cultivate the habit of reading The Nation and Sportinglife, ahead of others. My dream is that someday soon, The Nation and Sportinglife will be Nigerians’ encyclopedia for information.

    One of the anomalies of the last sports federations’ elections was the concessioning of unpopular sports. One had thought that popular sports, such as athletics, basketball, polo, gymnastics, boxing, table tennis, cycling, golf and cricket, with rich history of sponsorship, should have formed the fulcrum of concessioned sports.

    In asking for those sports to be concessioned, what the eggheads at the National Sports Commission (NSC) ought to have done was to visit the firms that identified and bankrolled those games, urging them to return. They should have guaranteed those firms tax waivers for their involvement in sports. They should also have allowed such firms’ nominees to run the show themselves since they pulled out because there wasn’t proper accountability for the cash pumped into such federations.

    Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas has singlehandedly bankrolled a table tennis competition for over 43 years. Sponsors fell over one another the golden era of ping pong. The present Lagos State Commissioner for Sports, Barrister Enitan Oshodi, made table tennis competitions the platform for advertisers to connect their goods and services to the masses that thronged the stadium. Enitan’s reign ensured that our players interfaced with the best players in the world through exchange programmes in China, for instance.

    The mood in the sports hall was always electrifying, with the spectators cheering ceaselessly, as players exhibited their skills. No sponsor would shy away from exploiting such platforms, especially, if their goods are the consumables. The feel- good setting that comes with watching the fans sip from sponsors’ products on television is unquantifiable.

    Veteran journalist Eddy Adenirokun changed volleyball by appealing to the corporate world to support the sport. Volleyball players, like those of other sports with sponsorship, wore the jerseys on which the sponsors’ products’ names were inscribed. Nigerians looked forward to volleyball championships. Today, such events hold only when elections or international tournaments are near.

    It must be stated here too that our sports didn’t lack sponsorship. The administrators of yore were honest. They spent the cash on what it was earmarked for. They organised competitions that compelled sponsors to advertise their stuff. They accounted for the cash spent and introduced innovations that made the events exciting.

    Adequate funding from the firms will come when federations’ boards made up of credible people. The presence of men and women of integrity in the boards will restore the confidence of those who want to commit cash to such sports.

    Good leadership is infectious. It propels all other components of sport to always produce their best. It elicits discipline within the rank and file of federations. It reduces suspicion among members, athletes and coaches because they trust their leaders.

    Lagos State is the new Mecca of boxing, simply because of the Lagos Boxing Hall of Fame, headed by Olawale Edun, the former commissioner for finance. Edun has set the template for boxing to thrive by targeting the grassroots for talents. Sports development not directed at the grassroots won’t work.

    Edun’s template for boxing, in other climes, would compel the government to persuade him to expand the scope to discover boxers round the country. Children look forward to the last Saturday of every month for the Lagos boxing hall of Fame shows. The ripple effect of this laudable programmme is the formation of boxing clubs and programmes across the local government areas in the Centre of Excellence.

    Interestingly, eight boxers of the Lagos State Amateur Boxing Association (LSABA) will challenge their British counterparts at the fourth international bouts organised by the Lagos State Boxing Hall of Fame (LSBHF).

    Edun, LSBHF Chairman, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos that the competition would hold in October in London. The boxers are seven boys and a girl.

    Edun said that the motive for the bouts was to give the boxers some international exposure, to increase their proficiency and prepare them for other international engagements.

    According to him, the British Boxing Association invited the boxers for the international competition for them to be well-grounded in the sport.

    “The international bouts will expose our boxers to international competitions as well as helping them to sharpen their competitive edge for other international engagements,’’ Edun said.

    Indeed, the absence of boarding houses in secondary schools has killed sports. As a student of government College Ughelli, I could play as many as six sports because the facilities were inside the premises. GCU had a sports calendar where students knew what clothes to bring to the school each term. Immensely talented students looked forward to winning the Victor Ludorum Cup, aside being invited to play for the school culminating in wearing the state and Nigeria’s colours in international sports competitions.

    There were also several school sports competitions, such as Hussey Shield, Gray Powell Cup, Morocco Clarke, Lady Manuwa Cup, not forgetting the National Sports Festivals that have now become the platform for big officials to siphon money.

    Rather than waste cash on hosting National Sports Festivals, governors should urge the local government areas to build sports facilities that will attract the indigenes to embrace sports. I look forward to the day when there will be at least one sporting facility in each of the 774 local government areas. It would be the fillip in ensuring that sports thrives as a business in Nigeria as in other climes.

    The indigenes would definitely learn to play the sport available to them. Those who cannot participate will become coaches while the rich men and women will bring the cash to run competitions and pay the athletes.

    Sport can create employment, take the indigenes off crime and improve their health.

    Sports Minister Bolaji Abdullahi should ensure that the new boards in the sports federations have credible people, with the pedigree of changing the fortunes of distressed business concerns.

    We need to stop this trend of recycling people who end up waiting for government cash to run the sporting associations. A lot of people have discerning templates to change the face of the industry, if given the opportunity to do so.

    Lagos State is experiencing a sports renaissance, using credible people who the corporate world can trust. There is hardly any sports programme in Lagos that isn’t sponsored by a blue-chip firm. Why? Simple; those who run sporting bodies ensure that every dime provided is spent on the purpose for which it was given. There is accountability, which inevitably eliminates scams and suspicion among members.

    The talents are here; what we lack is a culture that is anchored on a calendar that sports friendly blue-chip companies can incorporate into their fiscal budgets.

    Our sports facilities must be maintained. Old ones should be upgraded to provide the platform for local and international competitions for our athletes.

    The minister should ensure that the National Institute for Sports (NIS) performs like its contemporaries elsewhere. It should be upgraded to function as the training ground for our coaches. It should also serve as the brain-box of our sports where policies are implemented.

    Oshiomhole, this is your life

    The die is cast. Today in Okpepke, Comrade Governor Adams Oshiomhole has his job cut out for him-he must finish the 10km Marathon Race. Not one to shy away from challenges, Oshiomhole has been training to prove his critics wrong.

    But can Oshiomhole really complete the race? Why not? But the bigger poser would be if he will know when to back off from the race.

    The governor will find sufficient support from the indigenes and my heart tells me that he will complete the race.

    Come on Comrade, you are the man to beat today. This is another one-man one-race. Show them that you have what it takes. Carry go Osho baba. Talk na do governor. I hail o!

    For the visitors from East Africa, the comrade is a man of the people. Underrate him at your peril. Governor Oshiomhole is the real deal at the maiden 10km Marathon race in Okpepke.

  • Issues from Okotie’s roadmap template

    Issues from Okotie’s roadmap template

    These are trying times. And everyone agrees that only a revolution or a reform could restore the country and halt our current slide to the precipice. Rev Chris Okotie’s well-articulated views on the need for a new development roadmap highlighted in his article on his Facebook page said it all.

    As one Lai Ashadele wrote in his reaction to the Reverend’s commentary on Facebook: “succinct and proactive as the submission in A Roadmap To National Recovery are, the bulk of our leaders is made up of visionless people with corruption fully engraved on their bodies. To them, the clamour for a proactive leadership is a noise from the pulpit. Some of them agree with suggestions from people of Okotie’s class, although they have, by implication, been indoctrinated into the corrupt bracket to which a large percentage of them belong.”

    Don’t mind the new configuration of an opposition party; its human contents are the same with the current ruling class. Nigeria should revert to the parliamentary system. It is cost effective and allows free hand for zonal development, according to the hopes and aspirations of each zone. An alternative option is revolution, like the Arab Spring’s; or complete disintegration.

    Tough talk! Unfortunately, some of Mr Ashadele’s ideas may not fly because of our peculiarities as a multi-ethnic and disunited nation. Disunity, more than anything else, is the reason why the Arab spring-style revolution may be very difficult to actualize in Nigeria and not timidity as Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State said recently, while dismissing suggestions that the current dispensation is under threat of a revolutionary change.

    It should be reckoned that at the end of the new constitution review exercise, the final report of the majority views of Nigerians from the collation of votes nationwide on various contentious issues like terms of elected office holders, rotational presidency, immunity for public office holders state police, fiscal federalism, return to the parliamentary system etc, is that the new constitution may not be a revolutionary document after all, if the National Assembly adopts the report of the reviews.

    From the view expressed by a broad-spectrum of the Nigerian society, we’d continue with the present presidential system, perhaps with slight modifications. The parliamentary system, though cheaper to run, was rejected, perhaps because of our past bitter experience with it. Yet the changes we need are drastic and far–reaching and may not necessarily require constitutional amendment or dramatic changes in the governing structure. Decisions like reduction in government overhead cost, enforcement of fiscal discipline and effective implementation of federal character in the appointment into government jobs require strong incorruptible leadership, not necessarily constitutional changes.

    Some people have argued that even with our present faulty system, a bold, transparent and effective leader should be able to function with little encumbrance. Personal sacrifice by leaders has a way of percolating down to the populace as Rev Okotie suggested in this excerpt: “The reported donation of the President’s salary to charity is mere tokenism. Mr. Jonathan should shed weight; he has too many aides, about 130, according to an estimate, not counting those of his vice president, ministers, permanent and temporary secretaries, etc. The bureaucracy is top heavy at the centre. There are too many ministries and ministers. Each of the 36 or so ministries has a minister and minister of state.

    “The ministers have individual aides who, in turn, have secretaries, personal assistants, drivers, advisers, consultants and so on. No wonder personnel cost takes a large chunk of the federal budget. We do not, at this critical period, need more than 18 ministries, run by 18 ministers and 18 ministers of state. The MDAs should be drastically reduced. The states and local governments should also cue into this cost-cutting plan. We must save money from prudent management of national resources and show Nigerians that our leaders can actually offer sacrificial leadership in times of emergency like this.”

    Any strong leader can effect these changes, if he buys into them, but Jonathan, from his antecedent, lacks the political will to carry out reforms that could ruffle sensitive feathers. His handling of critical national issues from oil, the subsidy probe, oil theft, the banking reforms, PDP internal affairs and, most importantly, Boko Haram and related security issues have confirmed fears that our president is merely groping, not sure of what polices to pursue to tackle the daunting challenges he is facing.

    The latest indication of the president’s lack of firmness is his response to the Boko Haram amnesty request by northern elders. After initially rejecting amnesty for the violent Islamists, President Jonathan reconsidered his position only days later after the Northern Elders Forum met with him at the Presidential Villa to lobby for amnesty.

    But clearly, this kind of President’s flip-flop does not augur well for a nation that is anxiously seeking to rebuild and remodel through a Transformation Agenda. Presidential Jonathan must show he is fully in charge of Nigeria.

    A reaction by one Dr. Stephen Ogbudu to Rev Okotie’s piece hit it right on point: “President Jonathan needs a willing team to salvage Nigeria from the decay of the past and the present. What we need today is a national rebirth; not rebranding. I bleed inside of me and ask when can we do away with greed and put our nation first? Let us stop blaming Jonathan. He does not have the guts.”

     

    •Effiong wrote from Lagos

  • Jonathan, Amaechi and wanton pettiness

    Jonathan, Amaechi and wanton pettiness

    Some four months into his first (or is it second?) tenure as elected President of Nigeria, Otuoke-born Goodluck Ebele Jonathan gave the nation what could easily pass as the most quoted ironical statement by any Nigerian leader, dead or alive. Compelled by the rash of criticisms against what was perceived then to be a kick-and-follow leadership style with its crying imprimatur of rudderlessness, a howling Jonathan had fired a riposte: “Some Nigerians still want the President of this country to be a lion or a tiger, somebody that has that kind of strength and force and agility to make things happen the way they think. Some others will want the President to operate like an army general, like my Chief of Army Staff commanding his troops. Incidentally, I am not a lion; I am not also a general. Somebody will want the President to operate like the kings of Syria, Babylon, Egypt, the Pharaoh, all – powerful people that you read about in the Bible. They want the president to operate that way, the characters of the Goliath. Unfortunately, I am not one of those. But God knows why I am here, even though I don’t have any of those attributes, or these kinds of characters I have used as an example.”

    I recollect vividly that one of my Ogas at the top here, Sam Omatseye, had warned of the dire implication of having at the helm of our tottering democracy, a leader who is still trying to define his place in power. A leader that is neither ruthless nor meek. Here is the one that flounders as the nation’s woes pounds harder; the one that is called clueless but continues to bumble through the tidal waves with ruthless confidence. In the long run, Omatseye noted, such leaders’ ferociousness and cold-bloodedness are better imagined than experienced. All we asked for was a principle directive by which he plans to govern us for four years. What we got was a long-winding response from a man who was clearly on a self-discovery mission—the powerlessness of power. The biblical David is well known to us. But who is this Jonathan that is neither a lion king nor a Goliath? He is not a Pharaoh of old neither is he a modern-day Commander-in-Chief! Should we believe him when he says all he needs to transform Nigeria are our prayers and God’s soothing balm?

    Surely, we couldn’t have voted for a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or did we? On that saddle of leadership is a man who lives according to the dictates of his party’s manifesto and rules of engagement. That explains his principled stance on rotational Presidency when he feigned ignorance of any gentleman’s agreement reached with the North that power must reside within the geo- political divide when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died on the throne. As a sitting President and leader of the party, he could have invoked the powers of his office to circumvent the unwritten agreement. That is what anyone desperate for power would have done. But, Jonathan never did that. He was too refined, too gentlemanly to give a thought to the sheer wiles of despots. In fact, it was on the basis of his democratic commitments that he was dashed the presidential ticket. He never struggled for it because the party apparatchiks appreciated his meekness, his candour and his simplicity. After all, he was once like the rest of us before God blessed him with shoes to slap the village roads!

    As a matter of fact, those who craved a ruthless, decisive and all-commanding leader simply because of the general anarchy in the land miss the point. If Jonathan had been that which some persons wanted him to be, he would not have looked the other way when a certain Timipre Sylva held sway in Bayelsa State. But being meek and quiet as a dove, he completely turned a blind eye to the drama as the ‘people’ voted Sylva out of office and installed Seriake Dickson. Even when Sylva hollered that he was the crooked hand behind the dirty political game that pushed off the Governor’s seat, Jonathan was as cold as cucumber. He said he was too busy at the national level to get involved in local politics. Any wonder Dickson has proved to be his own man in the few months he has spent in Bayelsa State Government House?

    If Jonathan had heeded our call to be a Pharaoh-King, Goliath-like or a roaring lion, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State would not have had the latitude to exercise his democratic right of free speech against the system the way he has been doing in the last few months. It takes a meek and understanding President to ignore Amaechi’s sacrilegious affront to the Office of the First Lady on the pretext that he wanted to bring development closer to the people. Or is it too much too much if a state chief executive keeps his mouth shut when the wife of the President sneezes? Yet, Jonathan ignored the indiscretion. Today, as Amaechi confronts the greatest political battle of his life from within and without, it is to the President’s credit that he has refused to be dragged into the fight. He has turned deaf ears to the usual beer parlour rumour that he is sworn to ensure that the Rivers Governor never gets re-elected as Chairman of the Governors’ Forum; that he set up the PDP Governors’ Forum to whittle Amaechi’s growing influence; that there was more to the grounding of the Governor’s official jet than the issue of licence and ownership; or that the sudden removal of the state’s party executives and the swearing in of a faction loyal to a minister in his cabinet has the full backing of a roaring President! How dare ascribe such pettiness to a man who has so much on his hands to the extent that he has found it extremely difficult to talk about his political ambition in 2015? Why should he waste his time on a lightweight governor from his backyard when he needs all the energy he can muster to tackle the activities of insurgents and the danger to our socio-economic well -being?

    My take on this is simple: this President will not succumb to any blackmail or intimidation that will transform him into what he is not. It is too late in the day for the snail to change its form or for Mr. President to turn into a ruthless, enemy-hounding, fire-spitting leader. He is not petty and he will, therefore, not be dragged into a simple matter of a state chief executive who is going through normal patchy times. And for those who insist he is simply hiding behind the mirror to unleash deadly punches on perceived enemies, here is the simple answer of a meek President: “You know, these days, for you to be an intellectual and for people to listen to you, you have to abuse government.” Interpretation? They are at liberty to run their watery mouths anyhow! Is there really any need for a Tiger to proclaim its tigritude? Shouldn’t action speak louder than words? Stop the presidential abuse now! Or else…ask Amaechi or Sylva!

  • Imperatives of a new political order in Nigeria

    Imperatives of a new political order in Nigeria

    There is so much that has transpired in this nation since the return to civil rule to clearly indicate that Nigerians have learnt nothing from their political history and the mixed experiences since we attained flag independence.

    A few conjectures might be in order to gauge what has coloured the thinking, actions, inactions, reactions and responses of our political elite. It is either they have learnt and forgot to apply the lessons that ruptured the first civilian administration or they have learnt and are unable to implement constructively because the forces of nature have bound the country to perpetual turmoil.

    This nation has so much going for it what with an abundance of vast natural resources and a human resource that is the epitome of resourcefulness, creativity and vibrancy, but all these have counted for nothing due to the prevalence of political groupings that are largely populated by politicians that are motivated by the love of self than the love of country, inordinate and primitive acquisition of wealth. The driving force of the average Nigerian politician is to acquire power without providing services. The goal of most of the politicians who parade the corridors of power is to come out richer than their constituencies at the local, state or federal levels.

    Many of them are ethnic jingoist with false claims as national leaders whose singular interest is to stoke the fire of ethnicism to power their ride to national acclaim where it is a veritable tool for further destruction of the patched national fabric that is straining to hold together a people that mouths national cohesion, while the choruses in their hearts are for the quick dissolution and disintegration of the nation.

    It is a warped mentality that has had profound negative impact on the social, political, cultural and economic development of the country since Nigeria was put together about a hundred years ago. It is apt and pertinent to look at the country with a hundred years already spent and to see if we could look down the road and see another hundred years together as a nation.

    Since the civil war and the abysmally failed attempts to heal the wounds that were inflicted on the nation physically and psychologically, there has been no redemptive moment from the men and women who have aspired over the years to lead the nation. Whether cIadded in the fierce camouflage of sterile khaki or dressed with a false air of flamboyance in agbada or suits, most of the leaders are dealers and thugs defending mandates stolen at gunpoint or in electoral frauds.

    At 100 years a nation cannot claim to be learning anymore. The nation seems to have come a full circle and this is a critical junction to review some of what has happened to us and look for ways out of this endless orgy of violence, insecurity, poverty and underdevelopment and all the vices that are by-products of a country steeped in corruption. With 100 years in our kitty, we should be preparing for a most deserved rest from the work of building infrastructure and raising a generation that will be leading us to the next century.

    Unfortunately, the country is caught in the devastating death throes of peculiar problems from across the country. In the northern parts of the country, there are countless deaths from bomb blasts and other Improvised Explosive Devices that have been perfected by the terrorists in the deadly sect, Boko Haram, and all the other offshoots that are springing up faster than it takes a bomb to explode. The activities of these groups have paralysed commercial and economic engagements in almost every part of the North. It is difficult if not impossible to determine when life will take its normal pace again in that region. The army of youths which were ignored when the North stood over the national space as political colossus has risen to haunt them and there are no answers from even the greatest of the sages in the region.

    The South West of Nigeria known for its stock of people that are highly educated along western standards, there is a dangerous slide in the balance of those with access to education. There seems to be little or no attraction any more for education. Who needs education in a country where there are no prospects for job when you graduate? Why do you need to waste all the years to graduate when there are dropouts with state-of-the-art cars, mansions and cash that they got over night without the benefit of good education? The area boy or miscreant menace is taking roots in this region and challenging all the prim and proper order of the vaunted hierarchical system that took years to build.

    Education, which was the hope for raising the next generation of leaders, has floundered on the rock of massive corruption in the school system. There are no scholarship schemes any more to encourage the outstanding scholars, and where they are available, they are given to the children of people who are already stupendously rich or to their cronies. The schools are hardly maintained as the allocations hardly reach the departments where they are really needed.

    With no region spared of the national malaise, the South South is drowning in the muck of environmental degradation caused by the badly co-ordinated exploitation and exploration for crude oil. No government, since oil was discovered in Oloibiri in present day Bayelsa State, has implemented plans that will bring about reforms in the way business is done and to ensure that there is life for the citizens after oil. Beyond human beings, the flora and the fauna have been damaged. The rich eco-system and the bio-diversity that have sustained marine life are in danger of complete extinction. The anger and disillusionment brought about by the system led to the rise in the kidnapping industry and life has never been the same since.

    But kidnapping has found a most fertile ground in the South East with its thriving republican spirit and the ever- increasing desire to keep up with the Jones and the Jonesses. With a peculiar lifestyle built around the Epicurean philosophy and supported by a trend of buying cars that will be left in garages and building mansions in the village with no intention to live in them, but with the ultimate aim to flaunt current and anticipated status. Kidnapping is seen in the same way as trading. You take a human being like any of the commodities traded in Aba, Onitsha or any of the flourishing commercial centres and trade him off not to the highest or willing bidder, but to the most traumatized.

    The hospitals and clinics still remain mere consulting places were the poor are sent to get their death sentences, while the affluent in the society fly to their hospitals in Europe to receive medical services that are not available in this country. There are more guns in Nigeria today than during the civil war. The tension is even more palpable and can be felt in every open space in the country. The impact is undeniable. There is a damaging brain drain and the attendant high level capital flight that has made a thorough mess of the huge revenue that has been generated in the past.

    There seems to be nowhere to turn to get respite. The air travel is dangerous. Flying across the nation has become so nightmarish as many of what are called planes are just so by names. The highways are death ways that are not even good enough for cargo haulage. The railway coaches and wagons are at best scraps compared with the modern system of railway transportation across the world.

    Over the years, successive governments have spent billions on electricity generation with what emerged becoming more darkness and just about 3000 megawatts of electricity from all the hydro and thermal generation points in diverse locations in the country.

    Every individual has become a government.The rich provide personal security guards to ward off armed robbers who are on the prowl seeking who to maim, kill and destroy.

    The nation is certainly adrift. Although we have never had it perfectly organized from the beginning, it has never been this tattered. Hopefully, there is a way out and it will emerge through a new political order built on trust, discipline, honesty and commitment to national growth and development. It will be devoid of the winner-takes-it-all mentality that is the current craze among politicians today. It will take the initiative of a few men and women of goodwill that must come together to change what has been to what should be.

     

    •Otunba Adebanjo, National Coordinator, National League of Democrats.

  • Is the end near?

    These are bizarre days. On Tuesday a woman heard a gunshot from her kitchen.

    Stepping out to the porch, she saw her two-year-old daughter lying in a pool of blood. She was shot by her brother just three years older. She did not make it. The boy’s gun was a rifle made for children and given to him by his father.

    I fancy that strange. But that may be because I’m African and Nigerian. In our culture no man buys such a lethal weapon and presents it to his five-year-old, say, on his birthday. In some parts of the United States where that “accident” happened, guns are presented to kids even before they start primary school, though, it must be said, the weapons are not intended for crime, only shooting animals and such sport. Even then, some Americans are aghast, asking what maturity can be expected of a pre-school boy armed with a real gun. It is a rhetorical question. Strange.

    On Wednesday an African-American man did not seem to understand why jurors convicted him for capital murder after he shot and killed a 79-year-old woman. He said the bullet was not meant for the septuagenarian, but his own daughter who testified against him in a sexual assault case in which the daughter was the alleged victim. I find that strange and I figure you might consider it strange too.

    In Nigeria questions are still being asked as to what happened last month in Baga, an otherwise quiet fishing community in Borno State. A joint military team had engaged the notorious Boko Haram sect members in a gun battle after it was reported that the insurgents attacked a patrol team killing a soldier in the community. The next thing we heard was that much of the town was burnt down, well over 2000 buildings up in smoke, while no fewer than 187 persons were killed, according to a report. The question is, who burnt Baga, Boko Haram or the military? The military said the fire was the handiwork of a rocket-propelled grenade; Human Rights Watch, a rights advocacy group, said the fire was too extensive to be caused by a rocket grenade.

    I find that strange, even more so considering that ours is a country whose soil is soaked with the blood of people cut down so violently, especially in the North.    There is no greater danger to security and Nigeria’s nationhood now than the fundamentalist group running riot in the North. Its members have been consistent in their mission to cause maximum damage, leaving the Presidency and security community’s approach to tackling them with flip-flop strategies and inconsistent spirits. Neither tough talk today nor appeals tomorrow has tempered the militant sect. Nor too has the latest strategy: amnesty overtures. It appears the thirst for blood is even getting stronger and insatiable. The hometown of a former inspector-general of police has been attacked, as have several other locales.

    It is a strange world. What will quench the thirst for blood in the land? When or how will the killings stop? Is the end of the country near or that of the world, for that matter? The Bible paints a bleak picture of the end-time. It builds up, like a taxiing airplane, before it takes off, but unlike the plane, the end of the world is not a pleasure flight. There will be so much discomfort, even agony, so much violence, and not a little disagreement in high and low places. I picture the falcon not hearing the falconer, things falling apart in families, parents being unloving, children being unruly. Love waxing cold, or when it picks up, it is strange love indeed. Men will go after their kind, women after women.

    In fact, you do not have to picture it. It is already here with us.

    Earlier in the week, the international media was awash with the public admission of a top US basketball player that he was gay. He was applauded by celebrities for coming out of the closet. One of those who applauded him was another basketball great, John Amaechi, an ex-National Basketball Association (NBA) star, of Nigerian-British parentage. A public speaker, role model and sport analyst, Amaechi was the first former NBA player to reveal publicly that he was gay.

    It is becoming increasingly politically correct to endorse homosexuality and lesbianism. Many countries across the world have given men and women the all-clear to enter into sexual relationships with, and marry their kind. It doesn’t matter who you love, was how Obama put it during his campaign for second term. Several states in the US have legalised same-sex marriage. It seems to be of little or no consequence that two biblical cities were wiped out for such indulgences.

    In South Africa a boy unsettled the authorities of his school when he told them he had two mothers, his parents being legally married lesbians.

    In Nigeria the campaign for same-sex unions has been mounting, the only stumbling block being the David Mark-led Senate, which has continued to shoot it down.

    In Syria and Iraq, blood is flowing, as it is in Afghanistan and India. Israelis and Palestinians have no love lost between them. Between North and South Korea, there is tension, as there is between the former and the United States. The Chadian government smelt a coup recently, accusing neighbouring Libya of helping ‘rebels’.

    Is the end not near?

     

  • Tenure, integrity and politics

    Tenure, integrity and politics

    I  confess  to an addiction, of   recent,with witty cartoons, which   is  bound to affect  my analysis on this page for some time and I crave the indulgence of readers in this regard . One of such cartoons this week told the story of a leader who selected two successors  with two traits, namely honesty and simplicity. Later he noted that the honest one lied with his health   while the   simple one was left to manage a complicated situation beyond his capacity. Eventually the leader was charged   with a proclivity   for choosing weak leaders  on the two occasions   he left office   thus creating problems for the political system  he  managed,  both as a soldier and as  a politician. Really I do not think anyone needs a soothsayer  to know  who  I   am  talking about.  But that is the setting of the stage  for my observations and analysis of today.

    Incidentally it   was reported this week  that at the 50th birthday   party  of Oby Ezekwesili,  former Minister of Education, a  former Head  of State, retired General Olusegun Obasanjo asked the Jonathan Administration to hold him responsible for the actions of his government instead of going after those who served in his administration, during his two terms of office from 1999  to 2007. The presidency has since denied that it was probing the former president’s tenure  of office. In addition it was widely reported that President Gooodluck Jonathan will not seek a second term in 2015  if the Senate approves a single 6-year term of office for the president and governors as proposed in the   on-going  constitution review  process. While  this was being digested however the news filtered that Bolivia’s President Evo Morales who came to office in 2005 has been given the green light   by the constitutional court in that nation to contest for office for a third term in the December 2014  elections although the term of office for a serving president when he came to office was two terms. So a comparison with the Nigerian situation and president is very well in order today.

    Similarly  the news that 96  year old Brazilian millionaire president of FIFA  Jorge  Havelange has resigned his position as Honorary President of FIFA  over  published  allegations   that he took bribe while in office between 1974  and 1988  engage our attention. Also  in football, I  take  a look at the just concluded UEFA  Champions league semi final  overall  7-0   walloping of Barcelona   by Bayern Munich and make bold to assert   that  the   German side were motivated or   propelled to their  superlative   performance    by  the prospect of their new manager from next season who once coached  Barcelona, more   than the mere wish to defeat the Catalan giants. I  will elaborate on this later.

    We  go back to the issues arising from the Oby Ezekwesili birthday namely that of accountability   and integrity, in that the former ‘Madam Due Process ‘had  asked the Jonathan Administration to account for a figure she gave that the Obasanjo Administration had left in the kitty. The present administration had given a different figure and there has been heated debate and acrimony over the matter , with some insinuating that efforts were made to scan contract files where the former Minister served to incriminate her for illegal acts while in office. She  too asserted boldly that she was not a politician but would say things as she saw them. Which was a fallacy on her part because the moment she became   a minister, she ipso facto became a bona fide politician,  to be treated  and regarded as such. But  then I admire her boldness in confronting her detractors on the matter as well as the insistence of her former boss that corruption has not been well tack led by the present administration.  This   is an issue that the present administration cannot wish away, and for which it should employ more time and resources to curb;  very much in the way and manner the Nigerian Judicial Council –NJC- is purging the Judiciary,  in spite of the  sordid and  embarrassing  daily revelations   from the inner recesses of our temples  of justice.

    On the second and third term issues in both Nigeria and Bolivia  in Latin America,   a comparison at least on the facts of the two  situations can  be  quite productive and educative. First  is the observation that what the former President Olusegun Obasanjo was unable to achieve is what President Evo Morales has just done so easily. Morales was entitled to two five year terms when he was elected in 2005. In 2009 he called for a referendum on a constitutional amendment for three presidential terms. The opposition insisted that he would not be eligible to contest after his two terms and the matter went to the constitutional court which has ruled that he could-leading to charges that he has bribed the judges of the constitutional court. Which  undoubtedly means that Morales can contest  again in the presidential elections next year 2014  for another 5-year term and that  effectively makes him president till 2019, as the longest serving president of his country.

    In the Nigerian situation the senate has proposed one six year – term but has precluded incumbents from participating in that dispensation . There was news that the president will not participate. But then he can always emulate the Bolivian example by asking for a referendum or going to the Supreme Court for judicial interpretation on his eligibility to contest as an incumbent and the determination of his tenure. This is not strange in Africa as Paul Biya,  aged  80, who  has been president in   neighboring Cameroon   since 1982 did it well before the expiration of his tenure and he was reelected for another 7–year term   just in 2011    and, he is still   there.  Nigeria however is  a different ball game and one can only watch as the incumbent president plies the slippery waters of presidential reelection  in a vibrant and quite volatile political system like Nigeria.

    In  the case  of  bribe involving Brazil’s aged Jorge   Havelange  I believe some people in FIFA  just wanted to settle old scores  and give the impression that FIFA  is  fighting corruption and is quite democratic,  which is not true . The  commission that Havelange   took was normal at the time of his tenure and was not regarded  as a bribe then .   Havelange   was a millionaire who reportedly used his resources to make FIFA  financially independent  during his tenure ,  at a time Sepp Blatter was FIFA’s Secretary. Havelange was shocked that Sepp Blatter  current FIFA  president, was planning to succeed him  then as FIFA’s  president but could do nothing about it and the crafty Blatter has been in charge ever since with the support of people like Issa  Hayatou who has been president  of African soccer or CAF    for years. Hayatou   has made any change impossible in the leadership of African soccer, as long as Sepp Blatter- who brought the world cup to Africa – is in charge, in a  ‘rub my back and I rub yours’  arrangement that is the modus operandi in FIFA’s  global politics and management.

    Lastly let me say again  that the issue of tenure  had a role in the fantastic performance of Bayern Munich in trashing  Barcelona in the semi final of the UEFA  Champions league , thus creating an all  German final  at England’s Wembley  Stadium  at the end of May. This really is my conclusion from the facts of the end of tenure of the present Bayern Munich  Manager, Jupp  Heynckes and the man  to succeed him from next season  Pep  Guardiola,   former Manager of Barcelona. The owners of Bayern have hired former Barcelona coach Guardiola  to take over the management of the club from next season. As  a result when the draws for the semi finals were made the present  Manager  Heynckes  was advised to seek advice from his successor on Barcelona but he refused. He insisted he needed no advice from the man  his bosses had already chosen to succeed him as he knows enough about Spanish clubs including Barcelona  and he  went to prove just that. His Bayern demolished Barcelona in a display of sheer power , speed and masterful soccer skills that had no regard for the reputation of Barcelona or its star Messi, the best player in the world today.

    It  is my contention that dressing room politics triumphed over board room politics in the way and manner the Bayern players performed. They  may not have said as much,  but they were showing   loyalty, solidarity   if not sympathy  for  their outgoing manager and at the same time telling the management and bosses at Bayern  that their existing manager was as good if not better than his incoming,   signed  and sealed replacement.  I  expect the Bayern team to eventually beat Borussia Dortmund in the all-  German final. That is, if they had not burnt themselves up with the grudge match with Barcelona, in which team spirit gave a strong, valiant   and    standing,  salute and farewell   to the tenure and quality of their Manager   – to redress the  imbalance of his being replaced  by a  much younger  Manager from a now beaten and disgraced Barcelona.

  • Jonathan’s new task for workers

    Jonathan’s new task for workers

    The lyrics of one of Fela’s popular songs resonated in my head as I read the reports of the allegations traded by President Goodluck Jonathan and Nigerian labour leaders over the scourge of corruption in Nigeria. In the song titled Authority Stealing, two parties label each other as thieves, rogues and armed robbers, and also took turns to refute the labels. I had thought the dramatic arrangement would never find expression in real life until President Jonathan and Nigerian labour leaders traded similar accusations at the Eagle Square, Abuja venue of the Centenary May Day 2013 celebration on Wednesday.

    In the address he delivered on the occasion, the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, had accused the President of encouraging corruption by granting presidential pardon to a former governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, after the latter was convicted by the courts for stealing billions of naira belonging to the Bayelsa State Government while he held sway as governor, with Jonathan as his deputy.

    Omar said: “Corruption remains the most serious factor undermining the realisation of our economic potential. Government must not only make commitments to fighting it, government must demonstrate this commitment by its actions, by its style and by its body language. In this regard, we find the pardon granted to a former governor who was convicted of corruptly enriching himself as unfortunate and a major dent on the government’s commitments to fighting corruption. To reclaim lost ground, government needs to reassure Nigerians that it is still committed to fighting corruption by conclusively dealing with pending cases of corruption.”

    His position was corroborated by the President General of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Peter Esele, who condemned the light sentence given John Yusufu, a pension thief convicted and fined a paltry N750,000 for conniving with others to defraud the Police Pension Office of N27.2 billion. Esele called on the National Assembly to immediately review the laws under which Yusuf was tried. He said: “We are particularly miffed at the ridiculously ‘friendly’ sentence that was awarded by an Abuja High Court against John Yusuf, the self-confessed pension thief, some weeks ago. We reiterate our earlier stand that the said sentence should be appealed against by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). We also prescribe that the provisions of the laws under which he was charged and sentenced be reviewed by the National Assembly with a view to stipulating sufficiently commensurate punishment for the offences therein. John Yusufu and his likes should not be allowed to loot our collective commonwealth and go scot free.”

    But before the labour leaders could settle into their seats, President Jonathan was on his feet, throwing verbal jibes at them and accusing Nigerian workers of shielding their corrupt colleagues instead of blowing the whistle. “Labour has been in the forefront of the demand for good governance and increased action against corruption, and these issues are being vigorously tackled on various fronts. Prosecution is being pursued in matters arising from the fuel subsidy fraud. Embezzlement of pension funds and other serious long standing malpractices are being demystified by this administration. Even at the core of this perpetration are the senior and junior members of labour unions. Greater attention to peer review action on the part of labour will be much appreciated,” President Jonathan said.

    As would be expected, the verbal exchange between the President and the labour leaders has been generating reactions. A querulous friend told me that the task of fishing out corrupt public officials, which the President has saddled civil servants with is simply unrealistic. Citing the Alamieyeseigha case as an example, he reasoned that it would have amounted to a combined act of blasphemy and foolhardiness for a poor civil servant in Bayelsa State to sound the alarm bell when Alamieyeseigha buried his head in the state’s treasury and sucked out its content until it became virtually empty. Such a temerarious civil servant, my friend argued, would be lucky if his woes were limited to being relieved of his job. Otherwise, the poor whistle blower would not only be fired for embarrassing the state’s chief executive and his army of executive aides, he would also be hunted and hounded until it would become impossible for him to remain in Bayelsa or even Nigeria.

    He further queried: “Even if civil servants are culpable in acts of corruption, would the appropriate response from the Presidency be to pardon those that are convicted? What then becomes of the saying that two wrongs cannot make a right? And since when did it become the responsibility of civil servants to arrest criminals? And if they do, what fate awaits them when the thieves so arrested are set free by the powers that be? Their effort would not only be an exercise in futility, it will also expose them to the risk of being attacked by the questionable characters they seek to expose.”

    But I think differently. Nigerians who before now had accused the President of falling short of the imagination needed to lead a country as complex as Nigeria must be burying their heads in shame after his brilliant antidote to corruption in public office. By some condemnable acts of omission, it did not occur to the army of Jonathan’s critics at home and abroad that a civil servant can do much more than carry files from one office to another. To justify their huge pay and also prove that they are loyal and patriotic, our civil servants must combine their primary jobs with those of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, the State Security Service (SSS), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and other agencies of government hitherto saddled with the task of fishing out thieving workers. The civil servant must now not only learn to arrest his thieving colleagues, he must also prosecute them where necessary.

    That, I insist, does not amount to usurping the duties of the security agencies. It is in keeping with the saying that if a man sights a snake and a woman kills it, the important thing is that the snake dies. And those who think the new assignment Jonathan has given Nigerian workers would render the anti-corruption agencies redundant should be told that it is a perfect arrangement because the agencies may have no time for anti-corruption war in the weeks ahead. As the President’s second-term campaign gathers momentum, they will be too busy prosecuting the war for his return in 2015.

  • Why Baga matters

    Despite the denial of the Nigerian security forces that laid siege on Baga in mid-April, burned down more than two thousand houses, which they later derogatively referred to as thatched dwellings as if that sign of the poverty of a people justified official arson, and massacred more than 100 innocent civilians, thanks to satellite technology, Human Rights Watch has confirmed the original media reports.

    It is not beyond the conscience of the agents of government and most assuredly, not a few members of the public with sadistic orientation to dismiss the justified outrage from all corners as misplaced. For such mindsets, what happened in Baga pales significantly in the face of the horror of the Boko Haram initiated assaults on innocent members of the public. I think they are wrong.

    First, it is morally unjustifiable to respond to the barbarism of Boko Haram with a government authorised act of barbarism, and this is what Baga meant in reality. What is unfortunate about this is that we have seen too much of its kind. Reprisal attack on villages and towns in which some security personnel were harmed has been a regular occurrence since the beginning of this republic.

    We remember Odi in 1999 with all its rawness and crudity. We cannot forget the attack on militants in villages of Benue State in 2001, an attack that killed more than 200 people, mostly innocent civilians. Nor can anyone forget the 2010 raid in the Niger Delta. In each of these cases, the modus operandi was similar. Set villages on fire, shoot escapees and deny involvement. Whether it is the case of the police avenging an assault on fellow officer, or a group of navy ratings dueling for a pound of flesh in the streets of Lagos, Nigerians have not been protected from official hooliganism run amok.

    Second, those who would defend the outrageous conduct of security forces in Baga are better reminded of the old-age principle that even in cases of civilian-to-civilian atrocities, two wrongs don’t make a right. This is why, in its wisdom, society came up with a system of justice with the purpose of rational adjudication of inevitable cases of conflict, knowing that one cannot impartially be the aggrieved, the prosecutor and the judge in one’s own case. Therefore even in cases of obvious aggression on the part of an individual or a group, it is expected that an independent arbitrator be allowed to pronounce on the guilt or innocence of the accused.

    Third, it is also an age-old principle that in the matter of judgment and punishment, the accused must not be lumped together with the innocent. This principle is so ingrained in our pre-colonial cultures that the symbolism of the unity of a hand is invoked to drive home the point. Thus despite that observed unity, and the fact that it is difficult for a hand to operate without the collective involvement of the fingers, our people insist that in the matter of guilt and innocence, we must be scrupulous in the assignment: ika to se lobaa ge (the king orders the cutting of only the offending finger). The reasoning is clear. Even in such a difficult situation of assigning responsibility, it is important to find who the culprit is and he or she alone must be punished. If our traditional cultures could be so sensitive to the fundamental principle of criminal justice, why is our so-called modern sensibility so compromised?

    In the Baga case, the consistency of the story across multiple media reports about what happenedcannot be brushed aside no matter what the official report of the government investigation comes up with. With gasoline in hand, soldiers reportedly doused and set thatched-roof houses on fire, then shot residents as they tried to escape. One is reminded of the practice of dry-season hunting when bushes are deliberately torched so bush rats are forced out and shot. Even little children are not given the benefit of probable innocence in a case beyond their understanding. One report suggested that a child was even snatched and thrown back in the flame. In the end, more than two hundred were slaughtered.

    The story line from the military is that Boko Haram militants are solely responsible for the Baga tragedy.In that narrative it was the militants, armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs that resisted the military from positions around local people and their homes. In other words, Boko Haram used people as shields. Assume that this was true; the question is what should be the reaction of the military in that regard? If it was determined that the militants were camped around people’s homes, making them hostages in their own homes, should the military retreat and reengage later or should it still go ahead with planned assault paying no attention to the risk to civilians?

    That question may be answered one way by the military and another way by reasonable people confronted with the irrepressible conscience of humanity. But even that position of the military has been countered and it is unclear why it should be accepted in view of the fact that it has always been the recourse of the Nigerian Armed Forces whether at Odi or the Kalakuta republic. When will it stop?

    What the military response to Boko Haram in general, and in this instance in particular has done is to provide the group with a favorability rating in eyes of the poor and dispossessed that the government would normally want to get on its side. For the ultimate goal of the response to an insurgency cannot just be to kill it but to make it so unpopular that the citizens would have nothing to do with it. However, when you make no distinction between the insurgents and the civilian populations that are caught in the cross hairs of the battle, then you end up creating more insurgents or at least insurgency sympathisers.

    In 21st century Nigeria, our official conduct has failed to match the moral sensibilities of the 18th century village ethics in the matters of dealing with our own. We have not demonstrated the respect for human lives and community integrity that our forebears understood and practiced. If in the currents of the world religions that we claim to embrace, our systems of responding to cases of minority infractions are so morally outrageous, then we have to rethink the foundations of our so-called democracy. The world is watching.