The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Re: The census of ghosts

    Boko Haram are quite known but they only operate under disguise. Since Nigeria’s security apparatus is not able to control and terminate Boko Haram in its entirety, they have graduated from snipers to wanton killers of fellow Nigerians. The offer of state amnesty has been largely drummed to their hearing, hence they have resorted to escalated killing to justify the need for state amnesty or as usual state pardon. In total submission to the will of wanton killers before turning some states into graveyards, please grant them what they want! – Olutayo

     

    Bros Tatalo. I have been reading you for a very long time and I thought you will never be wrong. I am so flabbergasted today because you are wrong – there are no ghosts in this country at all. Let check your four types of ghosts one after another:

    1. BOKO HARAM MEMBERS: Boko Haram members are not ghosts because they hold meetings with eminent politicians in the North and even take photographs with them. Various pictures they took with the Borno State Governor, for example, were published by the press. Oga Tatalo, ghosts don’t hold meetings with humans and take pictures!

    2. GHOST WORKERS? No! There are no ghost workers in Nigeria at all. Names Like Nelson Mandela, Ahmadu Bello, Abraham Lincoln, Fela Kuti, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Murtala Ramat, Ramat Muhammed and many others that are on LGA council pay rolls all over the country and on the federal parastatal pay rolls are not ghost workers at all because they have managers, supervisors, offices, co-workers, accountants, bank accounts, employers and they are well known by all these and their agents. Some of them even sign attendance register twice every working day. Oga Tatalo, ghosts don’t get employed by mere mortals and then sign attendance registers!

    3. THE GHOSTS OF PENSIONERS WHO HAVE DIED WAITING FOR THEIR PENSIONS? No sir, you are wrong again! Nigerian pensioners don’t die like that. Some will live up to 200 years and many that were employed by Lord Lugard are still receiving their pensions regularly (as at when due). Tatalo sir, if you doubt me ask the chairman of the Task Force on Pension Reform, Dr. Abdulrasheed Maina.

    4. GHOSTWRITERS? Noooh! Oga Tatalo! Just take the write ups and leave the ghosts. – Idahosa Osagie Ojo

     

    GEJ can’t talk with ghosts in Nigeria, but talks with them through “back channels” in foreign lands. – Fula

  • Re: Nationals against the nation

    Omo Iya…all dis grammar because we ask you to convert to Islam. If you do not want virgins you can pass them along to Okon and the rest of us. We know what to do with, and to them. – Iska Countryman

     

    Na wa o. Are you trying to be funny or what? This is a serious piece and here you are trying to make light of it. The rational civilisation of the West will always and for all time have the victory over your anachronistic religion of hatred. Please you need to be careful with your comments. – Axelrod

     

    The Nigeria as we know it would survive your ‘rational civilisation’ crap. – Iska Countryman

     

    The Nigeria Army (NA) – all eyes on the NA. As long it coheres, those Yusufiyya remain a mere irritant. If the army splinters, kyrie eleison. – Obinnna75

    The eboes are holding on to the army hot potato. Trust me, history will not repeat itself. – Iska Countryman

    Great article as ever. But why does Prof. never mention Achebe. You kept quiet when he released his last book, and now that the man is dead, Prof still prefers silence. Is Prof afraid of anything? – Pjay

    Vintage Tatalo doesn’t paint the portrait of he who has just departed to join the pantheons in a hasty manner. Doing so will cause him so much anguish never so fathomable by us mere mortals. – RealityCheck

     

    So much grammar and long story. Snooper, if and when you and your APC people get there, leave the subsidy, in fact reduce the price of fuel to show your love for the people. Life is so easy from the computer’s keyboard or the Ipad. – Kooldealer

     

    I would love to rightly assume that conversion to any religion should not be through force. If any religion or doctrine has what it takes to convince and it has inherent in it such things that, a person desires, then it is should be a matter of personal choice and not something that you impose on anybody.

    Interestingly, as humans, we have the will to choose whosoever we desire – and even if a person was born into a family with high level of religion connotations – and grew up therein, that does not, hinder such , as he/she becomes an adult from deciding whatever he wants, based on personal preference and decision, and yet such must be in accordance with acceptable conduct and the rule of law.

    However, genuine thirst and real craving for true knowledge becomes necessary. In fact, when you come to look at it, if you don’t pass or succeed, in elementary school, how can you proceed to secondary- and hence, how can such a person proceed, to all the other levels of secular education! In addition to that, if you can’t as easy as that, get, a virgin here on earth to marry- and, I guess, you must be somehow, in the right place and at the right time, and must have lived that sort of life, to get anywhere near that, particularly if you are not one of the discerning- then where are you going to get that from- on the other side, where there are no marriages! If it was, in the sixties, seventies, and perhaps eighties, then that may have been possible, in some communities and also in some part of the world. Genuinely speaking, it does not add up! I mean what virgin- in fact, only few men perhaps have got anywhere near that in the natural.

    Therefore, please don’t let anybody fool you- if your grammar is not in place in secondary school and also through A levels, then except you get into adult education somewhere or, a personal tutor teaches you or you simply teache yourself and learn it, then your grammar is likely to be out of place. Why is that? It is because there are rules and regulations that you must comply with.

    Therefore, based on these, we must never forget that the natural man will no matter, what manifest the things of the natural man – and except he becomes a new creature and then craving and hunger for such things – would rule him. – Idoniss Ando

  • ACN, UPN, pipeline contracts and OPC

    ACN, UPN, pipeline contracts and OPC

    Shortly before the inauguration of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, I travelled by public transport to Ilorin. Somewhere in Ibadan, we came upon a band of Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) toughs wielding various weapons including automatic guns, short machetes and axes. Their leaders/commanders wore various specially embroidered clothes that harked back to the era of the Yoruba wars. Apart from small gourds strapped to their jumpers, they also wore red wrist or head bands with cowries stitched to them. They stopped traffic majestically and defiantly, and strolled across the road with not a care in the world. A few kilometres down the main road to Ilorin, we again encountered another band, this time in a convoy of beat-up cars and perhaps a pick-up van, if my memory serves me well. They drove fiercely and menacingly, some sitting on top of their cars, and others popping their heads out of the windows as their vehicles bobbed and weaved through the choked traffic.

    This was in the late 1990s, barely a few years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide raged in all its atavistic and sanguinary fury. Using the autocratic regime of Gen Sani Abacha as pretext, Yorubaland began to regress into anomie and idolatry. While still in traffic, and as OPC militants were strutting their stuff, I became both troubled and humiliated. Was this what the Southwest had become? Was the region’s civilisation so tenuous that it took just one destabilising incidence to demolish its accomplishments and send the region lumbering abjectly into the embrace of undemocratic and impulsive bands of area toughies? The OPC may no longer be brazen and daring as it was, but it has kept its structure fairly intact, and continues to attract mainly those who, like cultists, want a sense of adventure and meaning to life.

    The Southwest was somewhat lucky to have understood very early the pitfalls of putting its hopes and trust in an ethnic militia. Given the cold shoulder in polite circles, the OPC quietly morphed into a militia of local enforcers and security consultants. These jobs were needed to keep them busy in place of the revolution they, and many people, believed loomed in the 1990s and early 2000s. After reading about the Rwandan genocide and watching a documentary on it, not to talk of the post-Tito Yugoslavia that dissolved into civil war, it was easy to make up my mind about the dangers of indulging ethnic militias, whether among the Yoruba or in Boko Haram territory. The Yoruba were lucky the OPC experienced considerable attenuation over the years; the North is not so lucky in the hands of Boko Haram, which they at first indulged, then lamely opposed, and finally watched with quiet dismay and resignation from afar.

    For those who naively put their trust in the OPC as the saviour, backbone and standby militia of the Yoruba, the ongoing struggle for pipeline security contracts and leadership supremacy between Frederick Fasehun and Gani Adams can be very disillusioning. Sometime in April, Dr Fasehun had delivered a broadside on Mr Adams for attempting to match him wit for wit and brawn for brawn. But he also acknowledged that he had bidden for a pipeline security contract because the six million youths in his militia deserved the federal government’s economic patronage, just as Niger Delta youths are beneficiaries of very lucrative federal government contracts. No one knows where he got the outlandish figures of OPC membership. But responding to the ACN spokesman’s criticisms that he bade for the contract in order to fund a political party and turn it into a destabilising counterpoise to the region’s dominant party, Fasehun offered a most peremptory and non-ideological argument indicating that in his political world everything boiled down to money. That this materialism subverts the lofty principles of the Southwest, especially the lodestar of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) he is presumptuously trying to revive, is immaterial to him.

    I have read many opinions on the contract bid by the OPC leaders, and find them humbling. In defending Fasehun, most of the views quite illogically ignore the contradictions between propping up oneself as a saviour or defender of the Yoruba and being a federal government contractor. The Tompolos, Boyloaf and Dokubos of the Niger Delta have never tried to sound principled or ideological. From their antecedents and their current standing, they give the firm impression they need financial empowerment more for its own sake than for any esoteric reasons. They are not driven by any principle of democracy, federalism, human rights, or any other lofty values that ennoble humanity. If the right contracts are dispensed to them, it becomes an incentive to work with and give support to the government of the day. In this they are at least honest, for they do not attempt the disingenuousness their OPC counterparts have now become famous for. How Mr Adams and Fasehun, for instance, hope to get pipeline protection contracts from the Jonathan presidency and in the same breath defend the values that have characterised the Yoruba for centuries is a puzzle. More puzzling is the fact that they do not see the tragedy of outsourcing security to ethnic militants and repentant bigots.

    But the dishonesty of the OPC leaders and their self-serving philosophy do not end there. They are not squabbling over ideology, or over political orientation, or even over societal reengineering. These self-appointed defenders of the Yoruba race are squabbling over two things only: contract from the government, and leadership position in the OPC. It is a surprise that it has taken so long for many Yoruba elites to see through the gimmickry of the militia. While the contracts have not yet been awarded, Fasehun has spoken condescendingly of subletting less than one-third of the contract’s value to Mr Adams’ faction of the OPC. The latter, inured to the paradox of Yoruba defenders fighting for crumbs from a potential enemy, is asking for nothing less than half of the total value of the contract. This, he says, is because he leads about 90 percent of the membership of the OPC.

    The dissembling duo already has projects in the pipeline. While Dr Fasehun is attempting to revive the defunct UPN, Mr Adams, less pretentious, less ambitious, but perhaps more practical and self-important, simply wants to keep his boys engaged and happy. Both suggest that the Southwest deserves it, for the ACN, according to them has proved incapable of taking care of the welfare of the region. On April 18, Fasehun published a rambling and innuendo-ridden advertorial in which he attempted to rationalise the revival of the UPN. The best in the advert is his exaggerated affectations on democracy. But it would have been better if he had not published anything, for it is clear that in spite of his activist years, he lacks both the depth and character to preach democracy to anyone or offer leadership to any group.

    Fasehun assumes that merely invoking the name of UPN is enough to bring back the glory of the Chief Obafemi Awolowo era. He forgets that it was not the party that ennobled Awo; on the contrary it was Awo through his brilliance, depth, passion and discipline, not to say contempt for federal handouts, that ennobled the party. What virtue will Fasehun bring to the party he seeks so cavalierly and comically to resuscitate? I can see none. And what on earth has come over opinion writers and analysts that they give Fasehun a hearing, he that recently asked for Major Hamza Al-Mustapha to be pardoned, he of doubtful ideology and of hidden motives? Had the ferment in the country graduated into a revolution and any of the two OPC leaders assumed prominence, imagine what terrors, poor judgement and mediocrity would have been unleashed on the region.

    As Mr Adams said in his provocative response to Fasehun’s angry and disrespecting characterisation of his rival, the two OPCs are perfectly irreconcilable. But much more than the struggle for leadership of the ethnic militia, the pipeline contract controversy has exposed the superciliousness of the older man and the superficiality of the younger claimant. The elites and opinion moulders in the Southwest must surely have taken the measure of the two pretenders to the Yoruba throne. They are first and foremost contractors, a duo of self-serving and ambitious leaders without the farsightedness, discipline, sacrifice and competence to interpret the past and decipher the tangled skein of Nigeria’s future, let alone embody the values and virtues that have stood the Southwest out for centuries.

  • Baga massacre: Jonathan’s words return to haunt him

    Two Fridays ago, soldiers of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) swooped on Baga, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Chad, Borno State, leaving in their wake some 185 people dead, many of them, according to locals, women and children. The casualty figures are disputed, with the MJTF arguing that not more than 35 people or so died, and the locals insisting that in fact more than 200 people perished in the military assault. The military have given very colourful but hard-to-believe story of the assault. They insist they got intelligence information that Boko Haram militants were massing in a mosque in the town. A patrol was sent to assess the threat, but the patrol was met with extraordinary firepower during which an officer was killed, in fact beheaded. The MJTF reinforced and descended on the town, but was again met with great firepower. This time, however, said the military authorities, they were ready, and scores of civilians and militants were killed.

    Going by the worldwide condemnation of the excessive firepower deployed by the soldiers, the Jonathan presidency has ordered full-scale investigation into the assault, with a promise that offending soldiers who breached the military rules of engagement would be punished. Not only are we not told what would happen to the Chadian and Nigerien troops in the MJTF, there may be nothing to indicate by what proficiency the MJTF managed to sustain only slight injuries. No soldier died in the reprisal raid itself.

    Baga locals, however, gave a different account. They insisted the problem actually began at a cinema house where a misunderstanding between cinema goers led to some shootings that drew the attention of a nearby patrol. Unfortunately, an officer was killed, hence the reinforcement and the savage reprisal. When the reprisals began, said the locals, the militants had long gone, while most residents of the town who bore the brunt of the MJTF revenge were not even aware of the severity of the commotion at the cinema.

    Whether the government and National Assembly inquiries will reveal the truth, including accurate casualty figures, is difficult to say. But many people suspect that the reprisal was inspired by Jonathan’s intemperate remarks in Borno and Yobe States when he visited both places in March. (See right). This column had warned at the time that the president’s undignified remarks could return to haunt him in the months ahead. The suspicion is that that has now happened, a fact that has prompted calls for the president and offending soldiers to be dragged before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Palladium had on March 10 concluded: “So, now, will the president begin applying the Odi method perfected by Chief Olusgeun Obasanjo, and which he himself condemned as ineffective? If anyone still holds out hope that Jonathan has the depth and judgement to rule a complex nation, especially one facing dire ethnic and religious challenges, I offer to the optimist the president’s view on the consequences of killing security agents. And if anyone thinks we are not in even deeper trouble than we imagine, I offer the same presidential remark as an example. Let every community in the country beware; even their deviants cannot afford to bite a soldier, protest against police tyranny, or fight a security official to the death.”

  • What Jonathan said when he visited Borno, Yobe (March 7-8, 2013)

    “…Let me be very frank, because the analogy that oh, when one soldier is killed the soldiers come and kill scores of people, we have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security job that ordinarily soldiers are supposed not to be involved in. But because of the calibre of weapons the militants are using, the police alone cannot stand. And government will never sit down quietly and wait for insurgents, for some people to take up arms and take a part of this country. Never.

    “Whether it is in the Niger Delta, and I have given the directive to security services, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in the Niger Delta, I don’t want to hear that one security officer is killed in the South East kidnapping, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno State or any part of this country. I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. This people leave their families, stay on the roads and the bush so that we will sleep, and I will not want to hear that one of them is killed.

    “We will not allow it and I will not celebrate death of one security officer anywhere in this country, whether it is in Bayelsa State, whether it is in the Niger Delta, Anambra State, South East, South West, North West, North Central, anywhere. We will not, and I repeat, will not accommodate it…”

  • Adieu Moremi Ekiti

    Adieu Moremi Ekiti

    In a way, the Book of Revelation, in its apocalyptic Chapter 7: 9, must have had the late Mrs Funmilayo Adunni Olayinka, in view when it says: ‘after these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one can number, of all nations (states), tribes, peoples and tongues standing before the throne …’

    Callers at the Ekiti State House, at her family house or at the Olayinka’s in Osborne, Lagos we can count but there is hardly anybody that is somebody in the public life of this country that has not visited, personally, or sent an emissary, to pay his/her last respects to the departed Ekiti State Deputy Governor as well as commiserate with the families she left behind. It has been a complete outpouring of love and emotions for a woman that lived a dedicated life of service and in her very short stay left her mark on the sands of time.

    William Shakespeare could not have been more apt when he wrote in MACBETH:

    “Out, out, brief candle!

    Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

    And then is heard no more’.

    Above is how the bard of Stratford-upon-Avon described the illusory nature of life; here today, gone tomorrow; but all thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, death has, forever, lost its sting. And so, like Goke Omidiran, in a poem specially crafted for the occasion, we can mock death and enthuse:

    ‘DEATH, WHERE ART THY STING?

    If you can take a beauty out in a flash

    And able to cause pain untold here to a living soul

    But failed to stop the joy in heaven of a child come home

    A darling daughter standing in the warm embrace of her king

    Then death where art thy sting?”

    Rather than mourn therefore, we have been celebrating the life of this God’s special gift to us all, emboldened by the cocksureness of Apostle Paul when he said in 1 Cor.15: 12- 22:”

    12. Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13. But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. 14. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain. . 15.Yea and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ whom He raised not up; if so be that the dead rise not. 16. For if the dead rise not, and then is Christ not raised. 17.And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in sins. 18. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. 20. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. 21. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive?”

    It has been tributes galore and overwhelming crowd at all the activities lined up for her rites of passage. For instance, the wake keep event in Lagos was slated for 5 pm at the huge THE HAVEN Events Centre, Ikeja, but an hour before commencement, it had become near impossible to find a parking space on the humongous parking lot.

    Of the hundreds of tributes to our dearly departed, space will permit us touch on only two: the first, by an old man on the line to receive her remains: “I believe this woman was great. I doubt if anyone has ever been this honoured in the state. I have been here since 1.30 pm”.

    The second is the 2,269 -word tribute by her boss and Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi which I will try my utmost to compress into about 500 words. Wrote the man with whom she spared nothing in the effort to make poverty history in Ekiti:

    ‘I was already seated when she walked into the busy Chinese restaurant in Ikeja that fateful evening end of January 2007. We had spoken on the phone twice but never met. I instinctively stood up and beckoned her to my table – ‘Mrs Olayinka’, I called out. She was that recognisable in the crowd. ‘Good evening, you must be Dr Fayemi.’ I answered in the affirmative and we greeted warmly. The meeting was to explore the possibility of her joining my ticket as the Deputy Governorship candidate of the Action Congress in Ekiti State and my friend, Femi Ojudu and our Leader, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, had broached the subject matter with her already but the feedback from them was: sceptical but not out-rightly negative.

    “She asked pointed questions based on her Google search of my name, wanted to know about the campaign agenda and was worried about political violence, given what she knew of the recent past. She had also read about my wife and was keen to know more about her work. I too asked about her experience in the corporate world, her family and her worldview. It became clear that she was bold, driven, deeply religious, and very concerned about entrenching good governance in her home state as elsewhere. Her earlier discussion with Femi Ojudu and Otunba Adebayo had clearly helped but she was still not ready to commit.

    “To my relief, she phoned few days later to say she had given it extensive thought, prayed about it and consulted widely and was ready to give it a shot. Thus began a journey that I could only describe as God-ordained until the cold claws of death snatched her away from us on April 6, 2013.

    “And was the journey rough and tough!

    “Had she been faint-hearted, she would’ve thrown in the towel when she arrived Ewi’s palace in Ado-Ekiti shortly after to all manner of unimaginable expletives. But her steely resolve manifested early as she simply waved off the incident promising to win over the nay-sayers , which she did.

    “Fortunately, Bisi and Funmi got on very well from the minute they met. And the relationship grew from strength to strength despite the common tendency of people to try to generate conflict between two strong, principled women. Indeed, in many ways, they became inseparable – till the end.

    “I cannot now recall the exact date she gave me the worrisome news about the lump she had felt in her breast but it was after the re-run election in 2009. She kept me in the picture from that moment – right from the first wrong diagnosis that gave an all clear to the second diagnosis later in the year that confirmed there was a problem – leading to surgery in the United Kingdom, late 2009. To our great relief, from now till early 2011 when another check indicated that the cells had metastasized to another part of the body the cancer was in remission following chemotherapy and radiotherapy as well as regular checks in the UK and at home in Nigeria. And so she renewed the battle with the dreaded disease with some of the world’s most renowned oncologists in Nigeria, America, Canada and the UK. All through, Bisi was at hand with her in the UK from September 2009 till her last visit in February 2013. We did everything and refused to accept that the situation could not be saved. Funmi was also a source of inspiration. She never gave up on recovery from cancer. She kept hope alive and refused to stay off work – no matter my admonition.

    “Funmi Olayinka was indeed the Moremi Ekiti. In the true tradition of the legendary Moremi, she gave her all in defence of our people. Indeed, there are bound to be many people who will insist that had she stayed away from politics and Ekiti, she probably would be alive today. But not Funmi who, as a devout Christian, believed we all have an appointed time with our Maker. She was never given to regrets. Pleasant in disposition, Funmi was always business-like. With extra-ordinary dedication, she was focused on our goal of bringing succour to our people in Ekiti and at no point, whatever, did I have a reason to doubt her commitment, loyalty or integrity. She was stellar in the performance of the tasks assigned to her and she was clearly central to the success of our administration to date.” Fayemi concluded: ‘your family is now my family. Bisi and I will forever remain grateful to you for being part of the Collective Rescue Mission and you’d remain my sister, my friend even in death.”

  • No infrastructures, no hardware? Don’t worry, software will sustain you! (1)

    No infrastructures, no hardware? Don’t worry, software will sustain you! (1)

    Since, as the saying goes, charity begins at home, let me start the reflections in this two-part series with some experiences from my own personal and professional life that bear directly on the subject of the series. This subject is none other than the individual, national and global effects and ramifications of living in what I choose to call a software civilisation, the very first of its kind in the history of the world. As we shall see, our exploration of this topic will enable us to get a grasp, perhaps even to get an understanding of some of the most important aspects of modernity, especially with regard to our place in it in Nigeria, Africa and most of the developing world.

    The facts from my personal and professional life that I wish to use as illustrations for my topic in this series are three. One: I never succeeded in having my application for landline telephone installed in my house at Oke-Bola, Ibadan. My application, together with the fees I paid, was never rejected outright; it was just a case of happenstance that no one ever came to lay the lines that would have connected me to the grid. To this I may as well add the fact that those whose houses had landline telephone were only a little more fortunate than those of us who didn’t. This was because, generally speaking, the landline telephone system in our country worked so erratically, so fitfully that it could be compared to the way a car with dead batteries constantly has to be jump-started to get it to move.

    Two: I never succeeded in learning how to type fast enough on a typewriter to be able to use the machine to produce my articles, monographs and books by myself. Consequently, I always wrote in longhand which I then handed to typists to turn into typescripts for me. When I look back now, I am stupefied by my memory of how long, how laborious and tedious it took to produce all the articles and books I wrote in the period, apart from the fact that it was also a very expensive process too. [Francis Akhabue, where are you today? You made a small fortune typing for me when I taught at OAU, Ife, but I did not complain then and I am not complaining now].

    Three: When the computer emerged as an absolutely indispensable equipment for professional academic life, it took me a long, long time to adjust to this epochal development. This was so hopeless a case that for sometime when I was at Cornell University, I was one of three professors out of about sixty in the English Department that didn’t use computers and therefore could not be integrated fully into the department’s computer-driven records and communication listserve. It was only when the department decided to “bribe” me and the other two holdouts from the computer revolution by buying us the most expensive, state-of-the-art computers complete with the most sophisticated software and apps that I relented. And even after that and for a long time, the computer sat unused in my office. That is until one day when Femi Osofisan arrived at Cornell on a visit and more or less shamed and coerced me into taking my first faltering steps at mastering the use of the computer.

    Readers of this piece would have by now, I hope, sensed that there is a happy ending to this small narrative from the past of my personal and professional experience. And indeed, there is. Today, like all the other denizens of planet earth, I am the deeply gratified possessor of unbelievably cheap landless and wireless handsets that easily connect me to both the closest and the farthest quarters and regions of the world. As a result, these cheap handsets have enormously compensated for all the years and decades when I languished as an unsuccessful and frustrated applicant for a landline phone. And needless to say, I do not miss the disappearance of typewriters; gone forever is the infernally laborious task of writing in longhand before having it transformed into a typescript. With the disappearance of longhand writing in my professional and creative life, writing has become infinitely easier, more pleasurable and more fulfilling than my experience of it before I became an unabashed and grateful beneficiary of our global software civilisation. [Femi Osofisan, who among the two of us is laughing now? You got me going on computers and I shall forever remain indebted to you for it, but you are still transfixed in that prehistory of textual production in which longhand writing necessarily comes before conversion to electronic typescripts!]

    On that note, let me tarry a while longer in these reflections on the good, “happy-ending” side of the story – or stories – that I wish to tell in this series before we get to the not-so happy and perhaps even tragic narratives. Perhaps the most affecting “happy-ending” story of all is the fact that fellow beneficiaries of the software civilization are numbered in their billions. And significantly, they include some of the poorest and the most economically and socially marginalised members of our global community. The list and the range of these “talakawa” beneficiaries are almost limitless. Indeed, this is so significant that in my opinion, it ranks as one of the greatest success stories of modern life, this story that tells of how millions and even billions of the poorest people in our world, some of whose economic and social capital is far below the absolute poverty line, are nonetheless able to participate in many of the productive, communicative and recreational processes of national, regional and global economies. What am I referring to here?

    Today, the poorest people of the world can, thanks to our software civilisation, speak and text people across the length and breadth of both national communities and our collective global community. With their cheap handsets, roadside mechanics, barbers, tailors, welders, hair dressers and even vendors and hawkers can reach present and potential customers without leaving their shops, or shacks or their homes if these also serve as workplaces from which they earn their livelihood. Similarly, the poorest nations on the planet with very bad roads, with failed or failing factories and ever decreasing industrial productive capacities, with desperately poor and inadequate municipal services and amenities can, thanks to computers and software engineers and technicians, participate in every aspect of global economic processes, with special regard to the financial services sector, currently the driving engine of the global economy. Indeed, on this account, I can testify from direct personal experience that some of the services offered through online banking and e-marketing by Nigerian banks and financial services corporate enterprises are ahead of similar services offered by U.S. banks!

    To place these observations and claims in a historical perspective, consider this fact: Some 20 to 30 years ago, all of these unprecedented developments affecting the poorest peoples and nations on the planet were simply unthinkable, let alone being realisable. This is because the infrastructures, the hardware were simply either not there at all or were grossly inadequate. I mean, which barbers, welders and roadside mechanics could have had landline telephones when I, a senior academic, couldn’t? Rich and poor, who could text anybody in Nigeria and the wider world without using telegrams which only the post offices could transmit, and that with very severe limitations on the number of words that you could cram into a telegram? Which bank or financial services operator in the country could remit funds for you to relatives or friends in any part of Nigeria in a matter of minutes, not to talk of relatives and friends in the wider world? Who had any inkling that one could actually watch live broadcasts of sporting events taking place anywhere in the world when all that we knew then in terms of live broadcasts of sporting events were radio broadcasts that only rich people who had shortwave radios could tune into?

    I think nothing reveals the unprecedented impact of our current software civilisation than the fact that in many parts of our country and continent, our infrastructures are still as bad, still as inadequate as they were 20 to 30 years ago. As a matter of fact, some infrastructures are in worse conditions now than twenty years ago! But in spite of these realities, we are still able to participate as consumers of all that the world can offer though the software revolution. In other words, if we were still completely at the tender mercies of our greatly inadequate and inferior infrastructures – the physical and technological hardware of our production and communicative processes – all the amenities and services now enjoyed by everybody including the very poor among us, thanks to the software revolution, would still be a dream, a fantasy far beyond anybody’s reach. This, I confess, is what made me give this series its intriguing title: “No infrastructures, no hardware? Have no worry, software will sustain you!” But are these the last words on this covert morality tale of modernity and its satisfactions and contradictions? Far, far from it!

    Let us deal with this topic carefully, rationally. If you take the simple and globally ubiquitous handset, the bulk that constitutes the physical reality of the phone is the hardware, the “infrastructure”. The SIM card and all the micro-processes preprogrammed into the phone that enable it to be used as phone, radio, calculator, torchlight and computer screen for sending and receiving emails are the combined software. For the most part, nearly all of us take the “hardware”, the physical object for granted and instead concentrate on our enjoyment of all the facilities and services enabled by the software. But without the ‘hardware”, without the compact physical object itself that serves as both housing and enabler for the work of the software, we would be unable to get from the handset all the things that we have come to associate with it. This is the enigma, the paradox that the software civilisation confronts everyone, every society and every nation in the world at the current time. Let me express this dilemma, this conundrum as succinctly as I can: You can take the infrastructures for granted as much as you like because the software revolution enables you to do a great amount of things that all the denizens of our planet now uniformly enjoy, but if your region of the world and your nation lack the basic infrastructures of modernity, you are condemned to an experience of modern life that will be filled with great contradictions, acute frustrations and seemingly unending insecurities.

    In next week’s column we shall see how this enigma plays out in our specific national and continental context. Here is a preview of this context: on the one hand, death-trap roads, inadequate and fitful power supply, crumbling public utilities and amenities, and hospitals and health clinics that are so bad that they serve more as waiting rooms for the mortuary than temporary shelters from ill health and diseases; on the other hand, banking and financial services facilities and global phone and communication access that are in the front ranks of 21st century high-tech developments. Meanwhile, compatriots, text your friends and relatives all you want; talk to four people all at once as you shuttle from one to another of your four expensive handsets. But go carefully as you drive on our roads and highways. [KK, I swear that I am not thinking of you here!]

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • How to influence the world

    How to influence the world

    Not many Nigerians will agree with Time Magazine that Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde aptly described as Queen of Nollywood named among the magazine’s 2013 edition of The 100 Most Influential People in the World is the most influential person in the country.

    Some people have wondered what she has done to deserve such global recognition. We are all entitled to our opinion but what cannot be denied is the fact that she is indeed an accomplished Nigerian in her own right with her contributions to the movie industry in Nigeria.

    For a mother of four who has played leading roles in about 300 movies and has no scandal associated with her in an industry known for all kinds of sleaze, Jolade-Ekeinde is a role model.

    Richard Corliss, Time’s movie critic who profiled OmoSexy as the actress is called by her fans noted that Jalade-Ekeinde brings a juggler’s grace to her roles as actress, singer, reality-show star, mother of four and philanthropist. “Success hasn’t spoiled Africa’s most renowned leading lady. Rather than going Hollywood, Omotola wants to stay Nollywood” Corliss wrote.

    To be sure, the list always generates controversies worldwide with observers always wondering what the basis of selection by the TIME editors are. Bill James, inventor of modern baseball statistics who was named in the 2006 was told by a friend that he was not even one of the 100 most influential people with the Rex Sox, a professional baseball team based in Boston, where he worked.

    In the 2007 Time 100 list, managing editor Richard Strengel according to Wikipedia explained that the Time 100 was not a list of the hottest, most popular or most powerful people, but rather the most influential.

    “Influence is hard to measure, and what we look for is people whose ideas, whose example, whose talent, whose discoveries transform the world we live in. Influence is less about the hard power of force than the soft power of ideas and example,” he stated.

    Instead of engaging in needless arguments about who should make the list or not, I prefer to note what they are being acknowledged for. I am interested in how whatever they have done, however little has contributed to making the world a better place.

    There is a lot to learn from the lives of most of the people on the list which anyone who wants to influence the world should emulate.

    Valerie Jarrett, 56, an adviser of US President, Barrack Obama was described as first among equals.

    “ She brings clarity of thought and purpose to her work. She is a good listener who comes to the table not with some preset notion of distrust but rather an open mind; she asks tough questions and tries to find solutions,” Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman of the board and CEO of General Electric wrote about Jarrett.

    Indian Finance Minister, 67, Palaniappan Chidambaram listed in the Titan category according to Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley is detail-oriented. “He works from 8- 8 and has a reputation of getting a lot of things done.”

    On Basketball star, LeBron James, 28, Derek Jeter, shortstop for the New York Yankees wrote, “He never takes a rest, on any play. His all-out effort is what stands out when you watch him. He is someone anyone, in any profession, can look up to. Set the bar high for yourself, like LeBron does.”

  • Love and leadership

    Love and leadership

    •A wise leader is ointment unto a wound but the uncaring ruler is like sharpened glass in the eye.

    Love and leadership. Rarely do these words appear in tandem. Conventional scholarship treats them as if one is fatally allergic to the other. This error visits at our peril.

    A quick survey of the world reveals a smoldering planet. Boiling hatred and cold indifference strut triumphantly. War, strife, economic crises, food shortage, resource battles reveal that life will be less inviting for most people ten years hence than it now is. Old antagonisms remain while new ones become quickly invested with a disturbing permanence.

    Leaders may opt to use the unprecedented reach of the state to change their nations for the better or to impose themselves upon populations in ways dictators of the past would die for and did die for. Unfortunately, most modern leaders have not used the vast instrumentality called government to accomplish much that is great. Generally, they have scarred their people or turned their backs against them.

    Progress in science, technology and economic knowledge has been perverted to segregate global and national societies into extremes of wealth and poverty. The complex apparatus of governance empowers and alienates at the same time. As a leader, a person occupies a world immensely different than the world he is tasked to lead. Unless possessed of keen perception and focus, he becomes trapped in his small but powerful orbit while being alienated from the larger one he must govern. Most leaders are both prisoner in and warden of their unique ambit. They act upon but are not participants in that prosaic world occupied by common man.

    As such, they no longer lead. Leading requires an organic connection with the led. This connection is lacking. They make policies and order things but do not lead people. They are like angry, amoral scientists conducting experiments. The more elaborate and frequent the experimentation, the less empathy they have for the subjects of their tests. Should the subjects deign to wince or moan, the angrier and more amoral the experimenters become. Sadly, these subjects are the decent people you see at work, on the bus, in the store, and in the mirror.

    Leadership has become barren because it has lost humanitarian drive. Few modern leaders talk with passion. Fewer act with it. Yet great passion is needed to overcome the inert, vapid meanness of modern bureaucracy. To counterbalance the dull vastness and expanse of government, leadership must be inspired and be capable of inspiring both the unwieldy government apparatus and a numbed public. Unfortunately, today’s leaders are more driven by political calculation than by conviction or compassion for the people. Lacking the spirit to attempt the noble, they bask in what is base. They do what is palatable for those who inhabit their elite realm yet little ponder how their decisions affect the vast numbers who live in the larger, less stately world. Elitism has become so strong and shameless that it can now be spoken of as bordering on something evil.

    Adversity is said to reveal the character of a person. This is partially true. Adversity may unveil the strength of a person’s character. If you really want to know a person, don’t pound him with adversity. Laurel him with success. Nothing reveals the soul of a man more than acquisition of money or power. The poor and weak must behave meekly lest they be crushed for contending with the stronger. The weak must appeal to morality and justice for they lack other weapons with which to fight. Turn an average man into a powerful one; he often severs his pursuit of justice and the sense of proportion that comes with it. He joins the behavior he once criticized. In reality, he never believed in justice and morality. They were survival tools employed to help move him toward his immoral objective.

    In short, the poor and weak do as they must. The rich and powerful do as they wish. With money and power at easy disposal, a man reveals his true self; the unbecoming revelation of his vice is no longer a liability because no one dare challenge him. Thus, most politicians cannot remain true to their public word because they prefer to keep fidelity with their selfish designs.

    Most leaders in the western world and in their former colonial playgrounds are more ambitious than compassionate. Nowhere is this imbalance magnified than in economic policy. Few leaders primarily consider the plight of the working class and the poor although the majority of the people. Instead of thinking how they may accommodate the interests of the elite and rentiers of the world within the context of advancing the interests of the common and lowly, they first cater to those who already consider themselves the masters of all. If the concerns of the hoi polloi can be squeezed into a small corner of that large box, they will do the squeeze, lauding it as a populist achievement knowing full well the great herd of people has been dreadfully shortchanged. If they cannot fit in the people’s interests, so be it as well.

    All you have to do is tell the poor they must suffer because government gave them too much in the past. The price for the past generosity has matured and must be paid. Conditioned to suffering and inching by, the people accept this mean, superfluous austerity as the natural order of things. With a nearly religious conviction born of ignorance, they believe they must suffer because this evil japery is what is preached by those in high positions. But many in high positions are possessed of the lowest social morals. Yet this tale has been told so long and convincingly both the liar and victim are deceived by it.

    The poor thus willingly exchange the unfair smallness of their lives for something even less. If you press them, they cannot even remember what precious thing government gave them that they must now recompense at such a cost. They cannot say because there is nothing requiring the steep toll. They have been duped by the misplaced application of the morality of individual frugality to national governance. Yes, individuals cannot long spend more than they earn without falling into bankrupting disaster. However, national governments don’t suffer the same restrictions as individuals since national governments have the unique ability to issue currency. A currency issuer can “earn” as much money as they like. However, the elite have succeeded in imposing a Spartan penalty on those already suffering a Spartan life. Meanwhile the elite gain a libertine’s reward for their already libertine ways. In effect, the elite tell the masses they are politically and morally liable to pay for the excesses of the elite. The common and poor accept the unjust surcharge.

    Nowhere is this imbalance more on display than in the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Cameron government embarked on a severe austerity program. They treated the nation and its population as villains in a crude morality play wherein the profligate must pay for their errant ways by donning a coarse hair shirt after having endured prolonged and severe economic flagellation. Thus, Cameron and his smug Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, forced austerity upon a weakened economy.

    They slashed the government’s budget claiming growth would ensue. What they wrought is recession upon recession. Millions of lives have been impaired. Even the global champion of financialism, the conservative IMF, warned the bumbling Brits that they have gone too far off the ledge. The heartless IMF was forced to complain that Cameron’s knife wielding had become so draconian that it imperiled other nations as well the UK. Yet, Cameron and his sidekick stubbornly continued their painful imposition. All evidence substantiates the folly of their actions. In that fine Tory tradition, the two insisted they were right and that objective fact was never a good measure of economic policy.

    The fallacy of this brand of economics has long ago been exposed. The intellectual justification for clinging to this old rag has vanished. Yet, Cameron and his ilk across the world cling nonetheless. Their adherence is not based on rationality. It is based more in the strength of their bile and not on the content of their brains. They did not come to elitist economics as the logical conclusion of an intellectual journey. They embraced ugly economics because it fit their inhumanity, the low opinion they hold of their fellow man. Conservative economics mirages itself as an objective school of thought. It is an intellectual mask used to conceal mean, misanthropic sentiment. Most of those who adhere to classical economics care little about the general public.

    The world remains locked in a contest of good versus evil. Enslavement fights enlightenment. Poverty contests prosperity. Indifference opposes compassion. Odium battles love. Evil’s most effective weapon is subterfuge. It seeks to make you believe it is good and that good is evil. Thus, purveyors of this mean economics tells you what they do is morally sound and the only practical alternative. They lie a great lie. Their entire edifice of intellectual thought is founded on an ancient hatred. They believe the poor and humble are inherently inferior. Thus, anything done to better their lot is quixotic and wastrel. The poor are as they are because that is who they are.

    This brings us to a most basic point. Those who embrace this conservative philosophy can never mold or reshape modern society for the better. Their brand of conservatism may have served some utility two centuries ago. Now it manacles human progress. Although we live in an era of born-again conservatism, the challenges we face — those of poverty and inequality — call for enlightened and compassionate leadership. We need visionary leadership. To be a visionary leader, one must love the people such that he considers their plight night and day. Upon awaking, the first thought is of them. Retiring at night, the last thought is what to do on their behalf the next morning.

    A leader must love something greater than himself be it a nation, a company, a church or his family. The love of that thing must also be greater and more intense than the leader’s love of self.

    Those who think more about themselves than about other things and people should forget the quest to lead. One’s thoughts reflect the abundance of one’s heart. A person who thinks more about his narrow interest is not a fit leader. That person will devote the people and institution he leads toward his ambitions instead of devoting himself to the collective good.

    Conversely, love of others begets problem solving because love compels a leader to improve the lot of those for whom he deeply cares. Without love, the poor are perceived as inherently wretched, grubby and ignorant. With love, the wheelbarrow boy becomes a potential CEO. One can see a groundbreaking inventor in the young man constructing toys from discarded wood for his younger siblings. The girl walking along the side of the road in tattered school clothes becomes a future president.

    Leaders must never be satisfied with seeing the people as they are. A leader must believe in them more than they do themselves. If a leader is satisfied with people as they are, that leader will never do enough to exhort them toward what they can become. Nations enter their golden era when they convince even the people of the most humble social station to strive toward their better selves and to pursue their better dreams.

    The blossoming of a nation requires faith. A leader must believe in and act in reliance upon the inherent goodness of the people. He must believe they can improve. Given the chance to work at decent jobs with decent wages, the unemployed will apply themselves with verve and dedication. Given the chance, the homeless would live in a home and the ignorant would love to learn. Given the chance, the poor would seek to prosper and the hopeless would find in their heart a way to rekindle hope.

    In the end, the sun shines on the good and evil, the just and unjust. However, because God is kind to all does not mean we should treat all brands of leadership as equal. The conservative, classical brand seeks to define your place and then confine you to it. Enlightened leadership seeks to identify your better destiny, and then encourage you toward it. I see no close contest between the two.

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • Amaechi in the eye of the storm

    Amaechi in the eye of the storm

    Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State is a human being, and can therefore do wrong. Only God is infallible. But one thing that no one can deny, friend or foe, is that the governor is working hard in the right direction to improve the lot of his people.

    I was in Port Harcourt with a colleague in August 2011 to interview him. The governor has left no one in doubt that he knows where the shoe pinches and is prepared to apply the needed soothing balm. Some of his policies may be unpopular, like the banning of ‘Okada’ in the state, but then, many other states have followed suit, a confirmation that ‘Okada’ not only demeans our people but has sent too many to the grave prematurely, just as it has rendered many invalid. For sure, I did not agree entirely with some of the views the governor expressed during the interview. For instance, I disagreed with his view on the contentious fuel subsidy, which was the view of many of his colleagues (that subsidy must go and all that). But you could notice in him the passion of a man in a hurry to bring development to his state.

    Rivers State, like most other Niger Delta states is oil rich; but unlike most of those states, the richness is only beginning to translate into physical development in the state, years after the people last witnessed such development in the Diette Spiff administration. Without doubt, Amaechi’s achievements in the areas of education, road construction, power supply and even security, have stood him out as a beacon of hope in the south-south. It has been said often that human memory is too short. This may be true; but not so with the people of Rivers State who cannot easily forget how they used to raise their hands in Port Harcourt streets to show that they were not bearing arms. That was when armed robbers and other criminals held sway. All that is now history, with Amaechi partnering with the state police command to nib in the bud their illegal activities.

    Many of us who still remember the story of how he became governor would realise that he is governor because it had been so ordained. Left to the powers-that-be then, to wit, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Amaechi would not have been governor. As a matter of fact, his file had been closed by President Obasanjo who then acted God and declared Amaechi’s candidacy as having ‘k-leg’. It was by divine intervention that Amaechi met with favour in the courts and he was pronounced governor, thus becoming the first governor in the country who never contested any election!

    The same Amaechi before whom President Obasanjo built a wall of Jericho on his path to the State House in Port Harcourt is now midway into his second term. This should be instructive. Interestingly, he is in the midst of a fresh turbulence. Although the governor keeps giving the impression that all is well between him and President Goodluck Jonathan (that is the way it is in Nigeria; here, you don’t even disagree with the president, not to talk of fight him), that does not agree with public perception. However, while both of them are entitled to the phony jolly good fellow relations, the question that readily begs for answer in the public domain is: why would any political party want to rubbish one of its best? Before our very eyes, we have seen the ruling party (in particular) in cozy relations with all kinds of characters, even granting presidential pardon to a common thief; yet, that party is having a running battle with one of its best. Why? Before we know what is happening, that party would throw its ‘Worst 11’ forward and expect Nigerians to vote for them. That has been our problem since God-knows-when. Alhaji Shehu Shagari was forced on us when there were better candidates in the north that could have worn the presidential shoes. Obasanjo imposed an ailing Umaru Yar’Adua on us, and supported him with Goodluck Jonathan. See where we are. Will Obasanjo in retrospect and in good conscience say he has done the best for this country in this regard?

    Amaechi’s brush with the president has not just begun. As a matter of fact, as far back as August 2010, he has had a brush with the President’s wife, Patience Jonathan over the primary school being built in Okrika by the Amaechi administration. The governor told her that he had asked the local government chairman to contact owners of land around the school so the houses would be bought and demolished to enable children learn in a conducive environment, without distraction. Mrs. Jonathan was angry that the governor was using ‘must’ when he should be having dialogue with the Okrika people because land is a serious matter in Okrikaland. She may have a point there about consultation, but where is land not a serious issue in Nigeria?

    But madam was too annoyed over this issue that affects her people that she forgot she is First Lady of the country and not that of Okrikaland; she left the state which she was visiting in annoyance, leading to the cancellation of other engagements. Obviously, the president could not have been happy over such a development.

    There was also the issue of the Soku/Oluasiri oil fields that caused friction between the Presidency and the governor late last year. Although the Presidency quickly intervened to make the matter look like one between Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State and Governor Amaechi, it was clear that the hands could have been those of Esau, but the voice was Jacob’s. If anyone was in doubt that the Presidency was involved, a press statement by the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information, Markson Fefegha, dispelled an earlier statement by the Rivers State government that accused the Presidency of mischief as disrespectful, insulting and smacks of arrogance. So, who is fooling whom?

    As far as I am concerned, there is but one mind in the President and the PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur, and it is bent against Amaechi. In this kind of struggle, Governor Amaechi should know that no weapon is prohibited, provided there is the ‘federal might’ cover. As it happened in Bayelsa State with former Governor Timipre Sylva, the war might be fought from all fronts – on land, on air, on the sea, etc. It is the kind of fight in which anything, anything, not excluding deploying the teeth (biting) if that is what would make him capitulate. That was why, a few months back, the party leadership tried to whittle down his power as Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), by sponsoring the PDP Governors Forum headed by their anointed Godswill Akpabio.

    We must, without doubt, be having some idea about the kind of candidates that the ruling party would throw forward for the 2015 elections. One would have thought that a President Jonathan who has directed his party to bring in more states in the 2015 elections would put forward the party’s ‘First 11’ and showcase some of its best, because, bad as the PDP is, it still has a few persons that know what they are doing. But we have always had the misfortune of having governors and other leaders who met treasuries empty and left them empty.