The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • A hegemon in a peripheral region: Future of Nigeria’s foreign policy -1

    When one discusses world politics and which country has power and influence, the United States as a global hegemon comes to mind. The United Nations recognises regional integration as part of the building blocks for global peace and development. In this regard, depending on which region of the world one is looking at, one can identify regional hegemons in different parts of the world. In Western Europe, Germany is definitely a big force in the European Union because of its economic dominance. In South America, Brazil is an emergent regional power. China, Japan and India are dominant countries on the Asian continent, whilst among the ASEAN countries; Indonesia is certainly recognised for its future potentials. South Africa and Nigeria would be for the foreseeable future the giants among the constellation of states surrounding them. In North Africa and the Middle East, Egypt remains the dominant Arab country because of its population and size, in spite of the military dominance of Israel in the region; and in Eastern Europe and Eurasia generally, Russia in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union would always remain a force to be reckoned with because of its military power and advanced technology.

    Not all regional hegemonic powers command the same influence. In any case, the powers of these regional powers are relative to the powers of the countries in their regions of predominance. Power confers influence on countries that have it. A country could have influence without power, but in most cases, most powerful countries have influence. There’s also a price to pay for being a regional power. Neighbours do not usually love powerful countries in their neighbourhood, there is always some element of resentment and envy and sometimes this is extended to nationals of regional powers. The image of the “ugly Americans” as an expression of hostility not necessarily to individual Americans but to their country because of its pre-eminence and domineering presence can also be seen in the way West Europeans partly for historic reasons resent the Germans and people in Asia generally resent the Chinese. In South Asia partly for historical and religious reasons, Pakistanis do not like Indians and Sri Lankans are wary of Indian influence. In the Pacific Rim, the two Koreas are united in their dislike of Japan. The same feeling can be observed in the treatment of Nigerians in West Africa, if not in Africa, south of the Sahara, as a whole. It does not really matter whether a hegemon or nationals of a hegemonic country throw their weight around, their domination is assumed. This preamble is necessary to situate our topic in its right context and perspective.

    Current political and economic reality

    All countries in West Africa, the area of Nigeria’s domineering power and influence belong to the Economic Community of West African States. The ECOWAS which is made up of the Republics of Benin, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cape Verde, Niger, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Togo, and The Gambia was formed in 1975. One of its founding members, Mauritania has had to withdraw because it felt it was not gaining anything from the Economic Union and also possibly because of criticism by members against its racist policy in which the Moors oppressed the blacks (haratin) who by some estimates are the majority.

    The current population of Nigeria is estimated at 170,123,747 and the population of the remaining 14 ECOWAS countries put together is 144,589,549. The nominal GDP of Nigeria is currently put at 238.920 billion dollars; whilst the total nominal GDP of the other 14 countries put together is 133.222 billion dollars. The closest to Nigeria in population and GDP is the Republic of Ghana with an estimated current population of 24,200,000 with a nominal GDP of 46.7billion dollars. This means that the Nigerian economy is over five times that of Ghana, while its population is about seven times that of Ghana. There is a remarkable decline in Ivory Coast GDP, obviously because of the war and instability in that country.

    For cultural, linguistic and colonial historical relations with France and Great Britain by countries in West Africa, there is a noticeable dichotomy between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. This sometimes led to sharp political and economic differences and consequent clash of interest sometimes between Nigeria and some of these Francophone countries acting as surrogates of France. This was most noticeable during the fratricidal civil war in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. The dominance of Nigeria can be captured by a cursory look at the Gross nominal GDP of all the Francophone countries and their population compared with that of Nigeria. The nominal GDP of the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo and Guinea added together is 81.289 billion dollars and their population is 106, 270,874, compared to Nigeria’s GDP of 238.920 billion Dollars and population of 170,123,103. Even when the Lusophone countries of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde are added to the Francophone’s figures, the overwhelming Nigeria’s figures are still staggering. Of course population alone is not the only index of power but it is an important one. In the future politics among nations, any country with less than 100million people is not likely to amount to much. This is why countries like France and now the Russian Federation are paying their women to have more children. Of course overpopulation could be a drag on a country’s economic development and consequent power. But population that is educated and that can be easily mobilised is a factor of power. This was captured graphically in the 1960s when Premier Chou en Lai said in the event of war with the United States, China would be ready to lose 100million people and would still have one billion people standing. He added that if all the then 1.1billion Chinese people jumped from a certain height and the same time to a spot, the force would precipitate an earthquake that would have global consequence.

    The dominance of Nigeria is therefore clear and this dominance is obviously reflected in the weight at which Nigeria punches in the West African sub-region. This has led to some writers to describe the situation as that of Gulliver and the Lilliputians. This of course is not a good diplomatic expression and if used by Nigerians can bring a lot of hostility rather than friendship to the country.

    Leadership of course, carries its own burden. In the past, Nigeria has always followed a policy of self-abnegation in dealing with other African countries whether in ECOWAS or in the OAU now AU. This is why Nigeria deliberately removes itself from competition for the post of Secretary-General of the two organisations. But for the fact that the ECOWAS Secretariat is located in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja and the moribund scientific commission of the AU was located in Lagos, Nigeria in spite of its huge budgetary support for these two organisations was not getting much that was commensurate with its contribution. Critics of Nigeria’s foreign policy in recent times have argued that this past policy needs to change and that Nigeria needs to make its presence felt in relation to its financial support for these two organisations. Even though this policy of self-abnegation is not cast in iron, it is not likely to change soon.

  • The man died

    The three of them came out of Dodan Barracks that day looking not too worried. It was a reassuring look for the millions watching them on television. Their looks may have been informed by the promise they extracted from former military president Gen Ibrahim Babangida. They had come to see Babangida over the death sentence passed on Maj Gen Mamman Vatsa and others by the Maj Gen Charles Ndiomu-led Special Military Tribunal for coup plotting. The literary giants had risen as one to plead for the condemned men, especially Vatsa, who was also a man of letters.

    As the trio left Babangida’s presence and headed for their car (they rode together in one), reporters ran after them to get a gist of what transpired at their meeting with the former ruler. Although their visit was unannounced, by the time they were leaving Dodan Barracks, the world had known that the country’s leading literary minds had come visiting. So, we were all hanging on every word that poured forth from their mouths as they answered reporters’ questions. Will the men be executed or not? That was the question to which we wanted an answer. We waited with bated breath for them to provide that answer.

    Although, they did not give a yes or no answer, they were somehow sure that the men would not be executed. They and the nation which had expected that their intervention would save the men were disappointed because the men were executed that day. The time of execution remains a mystery till today. The Babangida regime executed the men shortly after Prof John Pepper-Clark, Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka and the late Prof Chinua Achebe left Dodan Barracks. Or was it before they left? Nobody seems to be sure of the time, but what is certain is that they were executed despite Babangida’s assurance to these eminent men that he would see what could be done to save Vatsa and co.

    The trio had even not left the hallowed ground of Dodan Barracks when news broke of the execution. Till today, these intercessors have not got over this shocking development. The late Achebe is likely to have died last Thursday without forgetting that sad event of March 6, 1986. The late Achebe hit the limelight when he was barely 28, with his award winning first book, Things Fall Apart. Although, he wrote many other books after that, Things Fall Apart is his magnum opus.When you mention the name Achebe anywhere, people are likely to say the author of Things Fall Apart.

    It is as if the late Achebe was a one-novel author the way he had come to be associated with his famous book. What seems to endear the book to many is the simple manner it is written and its locale, which focus mainly on the culture and norms of his people. It is a book that can be associated with different cultures. All you need do is to change the original setting and relate it to the culture you have in mind and before you know it you have your own Things Fall Apart. This is, however, not to detract from the ingenuity of the late Achebe.

    He was a master story teller and this reflected in all his other works like No Longer At Ease, which is the sequel to Things Fall Apart; Arrow of God, A Man of The People, Anthills of The Savannah, Morning Yet on Creation Day, The Trouble With Nigeria and There Was A Country, among others. The late Achebe’s generation was somehow blessed. They were born in a Nigeria which gave everybody an equal opportunity to utilise his God-given talents. A Nigeria where no matter where you come from, you stand head and shoulders with others. It was a great period for our country.

    Talents were allowed to blossom. The likes of Soyinka, Pepper-Clark and the late Achebe flourished. With their talents, they soared as they excelled among their peers. “Reading”, Francis Bacon says, “makes a man and writing, a complete man”. These were complete men, who bested the white man in his own language. We are happy that they are Nigerians because wherever they are in the world they are our worthy ambassadors. With them, our flags are always flown high. Through their writings, they became citizens of the world. Their faces spark instant recognition anywhere they are in the world.

    Ha, that’s Soyinka; ha, that’s Pepper-Clark; ha, that’s Achebe, people say when they see them, and the door opens instantly, a departure from the shabby manner in which many of us are treated when we travel abroad. The late Achebe was a writer-fighter to the end. Never a man to call a spade a farming implement, he showed the stuff he was made of in his last controversial book : There Was A Country where he opened old wounds over the 1967-70 civil war. He made some assertions in the book, which many consider damaging. But that had always been the style of Achebe, the man whose chi broke palm kernels for to eat.

    At 82, Achebe died at a ripe old age. In our culture, such deaths are not mourned but celebrated.

    The outpouring of grief

    over his death is to show

    that we are saddened by his passage and also thank God for a life well spent. This is why I find the tribute paid to him by Pepper-Clark and Soyinka in their joint statement on his death fitting. They said : ‘’For us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter. Of the ‘’pioneer quartet’’ of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced – one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist Chinua Achebe.

    ‘’It is perhaps difficult for outsiders of that intimate circle to appreciate this sense of depletion, but we take consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed, those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuation of the literary vocation. We need to stress this at a critical time of Nigerian history, where the forces of darkness appear to overshadow the illumination of existence that literature represents. These are the forces that arrogantly pride themselves implacable and brutal enemies of what Chinua and his pen represented, not merely for the African continent, but for humanity. Indeed, we cannot help wondering if the recent insensate massacre of Chinua’s people in Kano, only a few days ago, hastened the fatal undermining of that resilient will that had sustained him so many years after his crippling accident.

    “No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry and retrogression”. Yes, the man died, to borrow the title of Soyinka’s novel, yet the man lives. Men like Achebe don’t die because they have left works that will outlive them. Whenever we pick a copy of Things Fall Apart, we see him; whenever we pick a copy of There Was A Country, we see him. Adieu, Achebe. May you find rest in the bosom of God.

  • Achebe: Africa’s best

    Achebe: Africa’s best

    Without doubt, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe (November 16, 1930 to March 22, 2013) was one of the world’s greatest novelists and essayists and, for me, Africa’s greatest literary figure. When I said so in my review last October of his There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra – his controversial story of Nigeria’s civil war which has now turned out as his last literary output – one angry, presumably Yoruba, reader condemned me as “a Yoruba hater,” apparently for daring to think Achebe was a greater literary figure than the Nobel Literature Laureate, Wole Soyinka.

    How this view made me a Yoruba hater I couldn’t understand because I thought Soyinka won his prize on his individual merit and not because he was Yoruba. Of course, his victory was bound to make not just every Yoruba proud. It was also bound to make every Nigerian, indeed every African, proud. I certainly felt proud that cold wet day in 1986 as part of the Nigerian official delegation that accompanied the man to the ceremony for the award. But then there was nothing contradictory between the pride I felt and my opinion of the relative merit of Nigeria’s two greatest contributions to the world of Literature.

    When Soyinka won the Nobel Literature prize in 1986, the first African to do so, not a few Literature buffs thought Achebe was the more deserving of that honour. As a layman, I thought so too. By the time Soyinka won the prize he had, of course, become a worldwide renowned playwright, poet, political activist, novelist and essayist. As a playwright he had produced over 13 plays, several of them classics – notably The Lion and the Jewel (of which I have fond memories as a play regularly staged by the drama club of my alma mater, Government College, Bida), Kongi’s Harvest and Death and the King’s Horseman. He had written two novels, The Interpreters and Season of Anomy, two autobiographies, the controversial The Man Died and Ake, and countless literary and political essays.

    None of Soyinka’s plays and novels had the impact of Achebe’s first, and by common consent, best novel, Things Fall Apart, which he wrote in 1958. By 1986, it had become Africa’s and one of the world’s best selling classics, translated into more than 30 other languages. By the same 1986, Achebe had written three other novels, No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and A Man of the People (1966). Each of them was a classic, written with his inimitable readability, simplicity, eloquence, coherence, rigour and insightfulness.

    A year after Soyinka won his Nobel prize, Achebe wrote his last novel, Anthills of the Savannah, which, like A Man of the People that presaged Nigeria’s first military coup, was a satirical dig at power drunk politicians, the difference being that whereas the first was about politicians in mufti, the second was about politicians in khaki. Anthills was a finalist in the prestigious Booker Prize but lost out to another novel by a British novelist. And just like A Man of the People presaged Nigeria’s first coup, Anthills, in a way, presaged the dubious but failed attempt by a leader, this time a soldier turned civilian, to sit tight in office. The Nobel Literature Prize, like all prestigious prizes, is, of course, not a popularity contest. It is also about intellectual depth and insight, among other qualities. But then Achebe, like Soyinka, never pandered to popular taste in his novels; all of them were profound narratives about the clash of cultures and the corruptive influence of power.

    Soyinka, no doubt, deserved his Nobel literature prize. Certainly he was a more eloquent speaker than Achebe. However, I had always thought Achebe was more eloquent, and certainly more readable, than Soyinka, with the written word. And the Nobel Literature prize was about the written word.

    Whatever anyone’s comparative rating of Soyinka and Achebe in the literary world, it was senseless, even mean, to begrudge Soyinka his good fortune of winning the ultimate prize in Literature because, as I just said, he deserved it. What never made sense to me, however, was the apparent belief of the Nobel judges that Achebe too never deserved the prize until he died, even though for many years he had become a perennial nominee for it.

    Since Soyinka in 1986, three other Africans – two South Africans, Nadine Gordimer (1991) and J. M. Coetze (2003) and an Egyptian, Naguib Mahfouz (2006) – have won the prize. It is not clear to me as a layman, and I suspect too, many Literature buffs, how any of the three deserved the prize more than Achebe. But then, Achebe would not be the first truly great writer to be refused admission into the very elite class – there have been only 109 members to date since 1901 when the first prize was awarded – of Nobel Literature Laureates. In this he was in the excellent company of George Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984) and Graham Green (The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American), etc.

    But Nobel Literature prize or not, Achebe was undeniably the man who pioneered and popularised modern African English Literature. His greatness, however, went well beyond his novels. Just like he was a superlative novelist he was also a first class essayist. Probably his best was The Trouble with Nigeria, written after his bitter-sweet experience in 1983 as a leading member of the leftish Peoples Redemption Party led by the radical politician, the late Malam Aminu Kano.

    As the blurb of the little book said, the essay was “both a savage indictment of the current system and a message of hope for the future.”

    “The trouble with Nigeria,” he said in the opening sentence of the essay, “is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” There was, he said, nothing wrong with the Nigerian character, its land or climate or water or air or anything else. What was wrong, he said, was “the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”

    His diagnosis of the Nigerian ailment was spot on – but only up to a limit. It’s hard to disagree with him that the ultimate responsibility for the virtual failure of the Nigerian state today is that of a leadership that preaches what it does not practise. But, as I have argued recently on these pages, the followership also has its own share of the blame. For, if leaders get away with saying one thing and doing the opposite, it is largely because followers do not regard their own roles in society, no matter how small or lowly, as positions of trust. In other words, if we all did our own bits we would never have found it so difficult to hold our leaders to their responsibilities.

    Like all human beings, Achebe as a writer and as an individual was, of course, not perfect. But of all his imperfections, I think the worst was that he seemed to share a by and large self-inflicted persecution complex of his Igbo kith and kin.

    No doubt the Igbo have suffered persecution in Nigeria, the worst manifestation of which was the 1966/67 pogrom against them mainly in the North, which eventually led to an even more devastating three-year civil war in the East.

    The cause of this Igbo persecution, the man said in Chapter 9 of The Trouble with Nigeria, a chapter he called “The Igbo Problem”, was envy by other Nigerians at their success in catching up and even surpassing the Yoruba that had had decades of head-start in the politics, bureaucracy and commerce of the country.

    This success, he said, carried a “deadly penalty: the danger of hubris, overweening pride and thoughtlessness which invites envy and hatred; or even worse, which can obsess with material success and dispose it to all kinds of crude showiness.”

    This character flaw apart, the real problem with the Igbo since Independence, he said, was “the absence of the kind of central leadership which their competitors presume for them.” This, he said, had left them to “self-seeking, opportunistic leaders who offered them no help at all in coping with a new Nigeria in which individual effort would no longer depend on the rules set by a fairly impartial colonial umpire.”

    After this diagnosis of what he called the Igbo problem, it was strange that he would proceed in his last autobiographical book, There was a Country, to accuse everyone else, including the “fairly impartial colonial umpire” of being united in their hatred of the Igbo without any reason, and go on to locate the Igbo problem squarely in this hatred.

    The goal of an African writer, Achebe said in his last book, is to challenge stereo-types, myths and false images of ourselves and retell the continent’s stories in ways that can foster the progress of our society. By and large, he conquered those challenges in his novels and essays but failed to so in his attempt at writing History.

    In what may be considered one of those twists of irony, it can be said that the man whose first shot at serious writing was his best gave his worst shot in the twilight of his life after he had had all the experience and wisdom to produce the very best.

    However, in spite of his last poor shot, the man remains for me Africa’s greatest literary figure and certainly one of the world’s best ever.

     

     

     

  • Achebe: a tsunami of crocodile tears; Wanted: Genius Grants in budgets, books in schools!

    Achebe: a tsunami of crocodile tears; Wanted: Genius Grants in budgets, books in schools!

    Chinua Achebe whose ‘Things fall apart…..the centre cannot hold’, has given Nigerians and others worldwide, in 50 languages, happy rehearsal times, exciting copycat wrestling scenes, many jokes, the fruition of a myriad love unions, many pre-examination sleepless nights and a legion of pleasant memories. Thank you, Sir. May you Rest in Perfect Peace. Amen! Note ‘Chinua Achebe’ does not flag red for ‘spell check’ on computers as the name is ‘recognised’-an accolade speaking louder than ‘GCON’ Awards. Achebe studied with a ‘wonderful school library’ and started medicine in the University College, Ibadan, only to change after a year –Nigerian medicine’s loss and world literature’s gain. So many in medicine write seriously – an old ‘disease’ needing a new name–mediliteratitis or mediliteratureitis. You choose! But contrast his literature book access in Umuahia 1944 to our 2013 bookless, libraryless and a nearly illiterate youth and readerless society. What price a book- Achebe’s death?

    Weep with those who will cry a ‘tsunami of crocodile tears’ in the corridors of power. Many of those crying loudest championed the truncating of education, practical science and book availability during 1983-2013 and some now actually sit in senate perpetuating mischief! Boko Haram started, surreptitiously, then as Boko Haram Phase 1, with falling standards, federal government anti-reading policies and withdrawal of annual grants for library books and sports. Phase 2 is the bombs, burning and executions. There were probably more literature books in Chinua Achebe’s primary and secondary schools and University College Ibadan in 1944-50 than now – 50 years and $600,000,000,000 later. He nearly died in a Nigerian pothole and moved to the USA where care of the physically challenged is a human right, not a human wrong and a First Lady ‘alanu’ Easter hand-out photo-op. No doubt some government organs and many people who could have, but did not, provide the needed 17million books, will pay a few millions for a ‘befitting burial’ – the one thing Nigerians are expert at- funeral extravagance and financial waste in the abuse of culture!

    Meanwhile the schools will remain bookless as we await another ‘irreplaceable icon’ to die. The Nigerian presidents, blessed with inexplicable longevity, who failed in every sphere including education, are mostly still alive. Is this their punishment- to witness a failed education system in a failing state with failed ‘simple science’ refineries? Do they have any conscience as they spew out ‘obituary sound bites’? If he, the great Chinua Achebe, could not influence Nigeria to buy books for children during 82 years of an illustrious literary life, what hope have we with our petty articles, like this, in an ignored and vilified press? Literature, culture and the arts are entrepreneurship strategies abroad, creating events and T-shirt and other memorabilia and also wealth. But do Nigerian banks and corporate Nigeria know that?

    Let us weep real rain forest tears for our children’s booklessness even as those with power achieve nothing and weep a tsunami of crocodile tears and advise on education. What stopped any one of six Presidents and over 100 state governors giving a N5m or N10m Annual Achebe Grant directly to Achebe for ‘anything artistic local or worldwide you like, Sir’ knowing that an economically beneficial work of literary genius would result. But they dish out billions for NASS and political office holders and open our vaults to pardonable thieving governors.

    The professional must take back recognition from politicians. Education does not require another billion naira Summit in Ladi Kwali Hall. It requires books, posters, sports and science equipment in Nigeria’s 70,000 schools and 1,500,000 classrooms. Even President Jonathan’s reading project needs many books, Nigeria cannot develop with just a narrow national reading book list. No nation will survive if all pupils read only the ‘famous four or five Nigerian authors’. Nigeria probably has over 5,000 books written by 1,500 Nigerian authors needing a readership. When did a minister, commissioner, principal, teacher, parent or student visit any good bookshop or publisher last? In spite of booklist corruption, the literature list can be broadened by simple mathematics like buying fewer copies of more books, just as we used the ‘The St Gregory’s book Way’ in St Gregory’s College in 1961. There the literature teacher came to class with six copies of five titles. Each of the five class rows had a different book to read and exchange every two weeks with another row. In 10 weeks every student had read five books and the exam was in week 13 for the price of one book per student. In a year 15 books are read, in three years 45 books were cheaply read by each and every all students between forms 1 and 3. A student who has read 45 books has a different take on life than most.

    Anyone seeking to immortalise an already immortalised Chinua Achebe, should allocate budgetary funds for ‘Genius Grants’ for other icons before everyone who is not a politician dies or emigrates. In Nigeria last week, NANS and other youth organisations shamelessly took 10 plus full page colour congratulatory adverts for a young former youth senate president. Where did that approximately N5m come from? What an insult to Nigerians and an abuse of Nigeria’s political learning process. Note that 100 ‘we have lost an icon’ obituary pages@N500,000, totalling N50m will not put books in schools – failing yet again a ‘dying wish’ of Chinua Achebe.

  • Agakameh’s illogic

    Agakameh’s illogic

    Reading through Dele Agekameh’s column of March 20, entitled ‘Not a shouting matter’, what constantly echoed in my ears were the immortal words of the slain Burkinabe charismatic leader, Thomas Sankara, when he tried to define the sacred role of men who bear arms in the service of country.

    Without the right political education, according to him, a soldier will probably not be better than a common rogue. But the pen, they say, is even mightier than the sword. To stretch Sankara’s logic further, much more would then be expected of a true writer. Being an intellectual pathfinder, he/she will necessarily possess, as minimum working tool, a sound sense of judgement, to say nothing of clear ethical compass.

    On that outing, Agekameh tragically failed this critical test. As a keen student of logic myself, I can tell when a writer chooses to be fair or execute a hatchet job. It is pathetic watching Agekameh struggle, paragraph after paragraph, to dignify what is patently a hatchet job with an elegant intellectual apparel. After a brilliant laundry work, the only thing he perhaps left undone was spraying deodorant on Adoke, his idol.

    To be sure, the point at issue was the reported altercation between Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State and the Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke, two weeks ago at the Council Chambers, Abuja . As members awaited President Goodluck Jonathan’s arrival to commence the Council of State meeting, Adoke was said to have moved over magisterially and told the Edo governor off openly that the Edo Attorney General should be blamed for the seeming stalemate in the trial of suspects (two sets!) for the gruesome murder of his Principal Private Secretary, Olaitan Oyerinde, on May 4, 2012.

    Agekameh chose to over-dramatise the sense of outrage Oshimhole had expressed over Adoke’s open rudeness and downplay the substance of the original question: the curious dereliction of the AGF in the entire saga. Oshiomhole only asked the simple question: ‘Am I the one who asked the DIG to send the report to you (AGF)?’

    But to confuse the conversation, a red herring, a subterfuge had to be fabricated. To Agekameh, in addressing Oshiomhole so impudently, Adoke was only speaking ‘on a lighter note’. Lighter note? Over a murder case?

    For better understanding, perhaps it’s necessary to put things in context by drawing a narrative. Following President Johanthan’s order last May, the Inspector General of Police detailed the DIG to unravel the murder puzzle. But on the ‘completion’ of his investigation, the DIG curiously sent the file to the AGF’s office in a case that clearly falls within the jurisdiction of the state.

    Confronted with similar murder case involving Senator Teslim Folarin in Ibadan in 2011, the same office of AGF had waded in and clarified that it was a state matter. So, now that everyone is agreed that the DIG erred by sending the file to Abuja, why for God’s sake did Adoke not refer the file expeditiously back to Edo Attorney General if indeed he is committed to the cause of justice he swore to uphold? But that is to even pretend that there is no other sordid complication here. Just as police flaunt a case file over the murder case on the one hand, the DSS on the other parades another group of suspects on the same matter!

    Earlier, a director with the Justice Ministry had offered what seemed a honest explanation before the House Committee which opened a public hearing on the confusion. Oshiomhole also appeared at the public hearing and restated that all he wants is justice for his PPS who left behind little children and aged parents. That day, the director did not mince words in confessing that the Justice Ministry was confused about what to do in view of the conflicting reports by the SSS and the police. Curiously, a day later, the AGF’s office publicly disowned the poor guy!

    Against this backcloth of simulated ‘confusion’, one would have thought the job of a worthy writer or columnist is clearly cut out. The murder of Olaitan is already painful enough; allowing the search for his killers to degenerate to this cynical bind is to mock the bereaved. A columnist that is truly worth his/her calling should be engaged in bringing some illuminations to the dark tunnel. Rather than vilify the already traumatised here, the least expected of a columnist faithful to his/her vocation is asked why would the president not direct the National Security Adviser to untie the jig-saw puzzle of conflicting reports by DSS and the police to save the nation further international odium.

    Really, that is the issue here. But determined to please Adoke, Agekameh chose to dance on Olaitan’s grave by praise-singing a man whose job it is to push the wheel of justice in the right direction but instead elected to profane things by speaking on ‘a lighter note’ at the Council Chamber. By joining Adoke in the circus to make light of Olaitan’s murder, one can only wish Agekameh spare a moment to think of the little children and widow the slain PPS left behind, or his aged parents left with the abominable task of burying their own kid. If he does, then he would realise it is certainly not a laughing matter.

    Rather than be vilified, I think Oshiomhole deserves kudos for the uncommon commitment he has thus shown to the cause of his slain disciple in a society where the average boss would be the first to shed crocodile’s tears at the graveside but soon afterwards begins to pay lip-service to the memory of the departed. But Oshiomhole will not abandon a fallen comrade. Again, it is false to accuse the governor of heating things up. On the contrary, but for the exemplary leadership the governor displayed the day Olaitan was murdered in Benin City , more blood would have flowed. That morning, the whole of Benin was paralysed as angry youths poured onto the streets, chanting war songs. Given the build-up to the incident, particularly the earlier threat of fire and brimstone by some political actors in the state ahead of the then pending governorship elections, fingers were naturally being pointed. The youths actually embarked on a procession round the city that morning.

    Summoning his persuasive skills, Oshiomhole stood before the mob and, barely holding back tears himself, appealed to the youths not to resort to violence but let the security agents fish out the killers. He actually gave the police an ultimatum of 14 days to find the killers. Now, it is more than 10 months Olaitan was brutally murdered and no one has been brought to justice. So, does it make any sense for Oshiomhole to now join Adoke in making jokes on Olaitan’s grave?

     

    • Osaigbovo wrote from Abuja .

  • Road to Biafra?

    Road to Biafra?

    Politics aside, it does seem that the Federal Government of President Goodluck Jonathan has no clue to the raging terrorism ravaging the northern part of the country. And the fact that the south has not been torched (yes, torched) yet by the terrorists is due largely to lack of capacity by Boko Haram, Ansaru et al and not any act of deterrence by our security forces.

    It is not as if they are afraid of coming down here or love us more than our compatriots in the north, the truth is that they don’t have the wherewithal yet, when they are ready they will strike here and may be to a more devastating effect.

    And at the rate at which the security situation in the country is deteriorating, these agents of death could sooner rather than later acquire what is required to cause mayhem in the south and thus throw the country into chaos and crises.

    With things looking likely to fall apart security-wise for the country under President Jonathan’s watch, it remains to be seen how long the centre would continue to hold if things continue like this. But while we all hope and pray that Boko Haram and Ansaru don’t tear our country apart, I think it is about time we put our heads together to find a lasting solution to this menace. This federal government cannot do it, or if you like cannot do it alone. We all must get involved.

    It doesn’t matter how many times Jonathan apologists haul abuses at those who dare to lay the blame squarely at his government’s doorstep, but the fact remains that if we leave our security solely in the hands of this President and his men, only God knows where this country would be tomorrow.

    If I sound like an alarmist, pardon me, I don’t mean to, but I am worried that since three years or so ago that Boko Haram began to unleash its terror on Nigeria, we have neither been able to peg them back or eradicate their menace. The list of the orphans, widows and widowers of terror kept on increasing. After every attack and killing our President went on air to promise hell for the terrorists; he always ordered the security agencies to get to the root of the matter and bring the perpetrators and their sponsors to book, yet nothing tangible or sensible has been achieved in this regard.

    Monday last week was a horrible day in the office for the people of Kano city, northwest Nigeria. A Lagos bound luxury bus with close to 70 passengers on board was heading out of the new luxury bus park at Sabongari area at about 5 pm when two suicide bombers drove in a Volkswagen Golf car. Pretending to be intending passengers, touts besieged the car asking the bombers their destination in order to direct them to the luxury bus next on line. But these agents of death had other destination in mind. They wanted to go to hell and were hell bent on taking as many innocent souls along with them as possible. As the loaded luxury bus was about leaving the park, they rammed their car into it and within seconds there was a loud bag and the area exploded into a ball of fire. The rest of the story you know.

    This latest suicide bombing in the ancient city is no different from several others in the past that have left the bulk of Nigeria’s northeast in ruins and Kaduna and Kano in the northwest in chaos. But what is so significant about this Sabongari luxury bus park bombing is the fact that that area of Kano is inhabited by non-indigenes mostly from the south, particularly Ibo from the southeast. Although the ethnic configuration of the victims shows the diversity of the population of Kano, the fact that the bombers chose that park to strike was an indication that they meant to cause ethnic unrest between the Hausa/Fulani host community and the southerners, especially Ibo.

    And anybody conversant with the history of Nigeria’s 30-month civil between 1967 and 1970 will recall that the ethnic massacre of Ibo in the north led to their massive exodus back home to the then Eastern region on the orders of the military governor Colonel Emeka Ojukwu. One thing led to another and Nigeria went into a civil war that cost millions of lives on both sides.

    Do these terrorists want to send us into another civil war? Yes, I think and I quite agree with the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero on this score. The revered traditional ruler who recently escaped assassination by unknown gunmen, rightly suspects that this must be the motive of the bombers. But can Nigeria survive another civil war? NO. We can’t as a people and a nation. In fact no country, I think, has ever survived two civil wars. The more reason why we should all put our differences apart, especially as regards the incompetence of the Jonathan regime and work together to defeat these agents of terror that are bent on destroying our nation. We must avoid the road to Biafra and save Nigeria.

    I strongly believe leaving the job to security agencies alone will not defeat Boko Haram or Ansaru and their likes. Intelligence plays a big role in identifying and apprehending the terrorists, and this can only be gathered if the people living with these terrorists give them up. One could recall that Lawrence Aninih that notorious armed robber that was terrorizing Benin City and environs, together with his gang in the 80s was only apprehended when the Binis got fed up and revealed his hideout to security agents.

    Boko Haram and Ansaru operatives, I believe don’t have their own separate mosques, neither do they live in the open desert. They live and worship among the people in the north. So, who is shielding them? Until this area is addressed by both government and leaders in the north, we might just be wasting our time in the fight against terror. If truly they have any grievance(s) let’s listen to and talk to them. Might at times is not always right, so the government should also apply some carrots to get these people off the path of terror.

    There is need for a change in tactic and strategy. We should also approach those countries that have traveled this road before and have come out of it to learn how they did it. Countries like Algeria, Turkey, and Colombia could have one or two things to teach us.

  • Beware, rumour monger

    Beware, rumour monger

    Even if he does not carry out his threat to move the Baleysa State Assembly to pass a law criminalising rumour mongering, Governor Seriake Dickson has secured an eminent place in the Nigerian press in general and the sociology of the media in particular with a locution that is sure to go down as a seminal breakthrough in the taxonomy of news.

    He called it “dem say dem say” journalism.

    Unlike “hard news” and soft news” and “cocktail journalism” and even “junk news” (one person’s “junk” is another person’s treasure), the term leaves no room for ambiguity. Its meaning is clear, self-evident even. It is easy on the tongue, and has a rhythm, a cadence that is easy on the ears.

    Above all, it has the great merit of being uniquely Nigerian. They are welcome to their radio trottoir (radio of the verandah) in Cameroun, where the natives are trapped in the Francophile/ Anglophile divide. Thankfully, we suffer no such encumbrance here.

    Now, some context.

    To the consternation of the authorities, a wave of rumours, compounded by an avalanche of propaganda, has been sweeping Balyesa in recent weeks, sponsored no doubt by people who, even without Dickson saying so, do not mean well for Bayelsa.

    Indeed, Dickson could have added that the rumour mongers and propagandists also do not mean well for Nigeria. If they did, they would not be peddling their pernicious wares in President Goodluck Jonathan’s home state – his backyard, to put the matter bluntly — without fear and without remorse. The question cries out to be asked: Is nothing sacred to them?

    Surely, no responsible government can allow that kind of thing – “dem say, dem say” journalism, to call it by his evocative coinage — to go on unchecked. Accordingly, he has put practitioners of that mode of communication on notice that they will henceforth be made to pay for their temerity, be they reporters, bloggers, or just plain talebearers.

    This time, they will not be able to take refuge behind the usual shibboleths of “freedom of speech” and “human rights” and all that. And they can expect no aid or comfort from one of the usual sources, the United Kingdom. For the UK Government has felt obliged, in the face of the kind thing that has been going on in Bayelsa, to take measures to rein in the press.

    It is not clear whether Governor Dickson was influenced by developments in the UK media, but he inaugurated last week a high-powered committee to tackle what he called “the pervading feeling of negativity” in the state, despite all the good things that have been happening there and the wonders Balyesans have been working at home and in Abuja.

    “That is not right and must therefore be checked,” he told members of the committee on rumour-mongering, aforementioned, comprising ranking public servants, representatives of the clergy, traditional rulers, market women, and for good measure, an official each from the State Security Service and the police

    To curb the tide of negativity in the state, Dickson will employ a two-pronged approach. The first, a campaign of mass education and enlightenment on the programs and policies of the Dickson Administration, belongs in the remit of the special committee. The goal is to promote value-orientation and good governance (ha!), and the Committee will work closely with other agencies of government to achieve that goal.

    This approach is rooted in Dickson’s firm belief that underdevelopment, lack of education, and a decline in public ethics, are chiefly responsible for the propaganda and the avalanche of rumours that could overrun the state if not tackled firmly and decisively.

    In addition, the Committee will serve as a “clearing house” for members of the public to settle their doubts on issues concerning the government and the state. The government will provide “dedicated hotlines” through which members of the public can seek and receive clarification on the issues of the day and thus avoid engaging in” unnecessary speculation.”

    In this vexing matter, Dickson could have relied on the proposition settled centuries ago that ignorance of the law or of process to prescribe summary punishment for the rumour mongers and propagandists who are roiling Bayelsa. But, committed democrat that he is, he has gone out of his way to create an atmosphere in which no residents can claim that they had no reason to doubt what they heard or read.

    The crucial test is: Did they avail themselves of the opportunities provided for the public to ascertain the veracity of what they heard or read? Does the material at issue come stamped with the imprimatur, the nihil obstat of the Committee?

    The second tack of Dickson’s campaign has as its anchor a bill he is presenting to the Balyelsa Assembly for urgent enactment into a law providing stiff penalties for propaganda and rumour mongering.

    Hear it from the Governor himself:

    “Going forward, we hope to sponsor a legislation that will provide punishment for false dissemination of information and propaganda, either against the reputation of private individuals or about government or its officials.

    “Of course, we are all aware that the existing laws provide for offences such as criminal defamation of character and so on. But we are going to come up with a legislation to punish ‘dem say, dem say’ people.”

    So, there you have it, all ye practitioners of “dem say, dem say” journalism and all ye merchants of rumour and peddlers of propaganda, whether you are plying your trade on old media or new media.

    Some people are already drawing dark parallels between the proposed law and the 1964 Newspaper (Amendment Act),and its precursor, the Eastern Nigeria Newspaper Law of 1957; Decree 11 of 1975 (the so-called Ohonbamu Decree promulgated by General Murtala Muhammed, Decree Four, which has continued to define General Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, and of course, section 59 of the Criminal Code.

    Easy, gentlemen; easy. As the Bayelsan authorities have explained, journalists who adhere to the ethics and best practices of the profession, and those who stick only to what has been officially certified to be safe for public consumption have nothing to fear.

    It is worth remarking that the proposed law is already curbing rumour and propaganda even before its enactment. Nobody seems willing to talk about the nature and content of the rumour and propaganda that led the authorities to move so resolutely against a plague that was about to consume the state.

    All I could find out — in the strictest confidence, I should stress – is that there had been some murmurs about a ghost super-permanent secretary drawing a hefty salary and enjoying bountiful perks into the bargain and wielding enormous extra-ministerial power through remote control

    Apparently, there had also been some whispers, barely audible, about one small town in the state that has been piled and continues to be piled with far more federal munificence that it can absorb – the latest being N6 billion on a church and a “youth centre” — as if there is no other town in Bayelsa worth developing.

    Plus tales from the oil industry, the parallel one that does not figure in the national accounts: the major player, the surrogates, and the beneficiaries, names not withheld.

    Who then can in good conscience blame Governor Dickson for moving so resolutely against such negativity?

    Inside sources tell me that Aso Rock, an even bigger casualty of negativity, considers Bayelsa’s Anti-rumour Committee an attractive model and will be studying its proceedings carefully.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bad maths or bad faith?

    Bad maths or bad faith?

    After last week’s intimation of another cycle of subsidy removal by President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerians ought to be forgiven for daring to invoke divine judgment on those determined to afflict them a second time. After the lockdown of the economy in January 2012 during which the polity was rocked to its foundations, it would seem a bit too much that government would seek to re-open the fuel subsidy matter so soon – at least not with the wounds still fresh.

    But here we are – some fourteen months after – with the President making a fresh bid to take out the “remaining” subsidy. Of course, it didn’t come with new or compelling arguments being advanced; rather it was a case of being stuck with the same old lines of unreason and obduracy. The presidential edict was unambiguously declarative: “we cannot continue to waste resources meant for a greater number of Nigerians to subsidise the affluent middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of fuel subsidy”.

    I suppose it is late in the day to embark on the task of re-educating the administration on its fixation with the so-called subsidy on petrol. Or to the fact that it has barely thought through an agreeable solution to the fuel subsidy conundrum in the whole of the last 14 months. Or even to remind it of its failure to deliver basic services to the Nigerian people all of which have rendered the ordinary citizen endangered.

    I guess it’s alright for the overfed, corrupt and the utterly inept governing elite to pick on the vanishing middle class as practice target after laundering billions of naira among its friends in the subsidy scam. Fair game isn’t it?

    What this goes to show however is that the nation still has a long way to go to resolve the fuel-supply riddle. If it seems any indication, Nigeria Labour Congress’ rejection of the planned hike in petrol price and government’s insistence on being tragically beholden to the subsidy removal idea would seem to point at the battle ahead.

    I need to be clear in my views about the subsidy. It is bad for the economy; I verily believe it is – in the long run. But the long run is not here, yet! I will argue that the pump price of petrol, to the extent that it is not cost-reflective, is ultimately injurious to the economy. I must say that one of the difficult tasks I have had is convincing my friends that the current price of N97 per litre is actually below cost price – using the Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA)’s reference landing cost of N131.10. And this cost is even exclusive of the distribution costs. Such has been the touchy nature of the subsidy mathematics that not many would even agree with the figures despite their being verifiable. I have since given up attempting to convince anyone on how perverse the current regime of subsidy is.

    But then, the point about the subsidy regime is that it is the effect, not the cause of the problem. It is the by-product of the political economy of abdication, the strange political economy under which an oil producing nation would export raw crude while importing its refined products wholesale. As for the sustainability of the annual payout drawn from the treasury – nearly a trillion naira by current estimates – I am yet to see anyone contest the fact that the expenditure is wasteful, barely supportable but definitely outrageous. That is one leg of the equation that Labour and other stakeholder groups should chew upon before they set out to the bargaining table.

    However, the obverse side of the fuel import mathematics is worse –treasonable! Has anyone taken stock of the amount of foreign exchange expended on the annual bazaar of wholesale fuel importation? I mean the direct cost of procuring forex; the innumerable indirect charges to the exchequer as well as the countless unrealisable benefits along the value chain?

    What about the pressures on the forex market and its direct impact on the macro-economy? Do the latter, reckoned in billions of dollars, not exceed the annual computation on subsidy? And what makes the latter any more ‘sustainable’ than the former?

    It must be said that the government’s partial but bad mathematics (and economics) is only a part; its bad faith has become increasingly apparent. As must be obvious now, the federal government does not seem to be interested in building any refineries now or in the near future. What the reports about lack of activities at the sites of the three proposed Greenfield Refineries suggest is that the federal government merely sold the nation a dummy on the issue of the refineries. At this time, it seems more concerned with cornering more of the gravy from subsidy as against addressing fundamental problems.

    Don’t ask me whether the billions earmarked for the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the four refineries will turn around anything; only the fortunes of the contractors at the corridors of power gets turned around in these parts!

    I have heard some say that it will be foolhardy for the Jonathan administration to tinker with fuel price at this time. They cite the insecurity situation: the scourge of kidnapping in the South; the resurgence of internecine conflicts in the Plateau; the terror of the Boko Haram in the North-east and parts of the North-central. Of course, there is the youth unemployment said to be hitting record high levels of 50 percent.

    Such fears obviously say little of the administration’s capacity to do mischief.

    Will President Jonathan do it? I don’t think the issue is ‘if’ but ‘when’. Sure, the nation will have enough of SURE-P and other extra-constitutional contraptions to douse public anger whenever it happens – minus the refineries – the surest and next best thing to fixing the problem. And if it seems improbable that an outsized government will need another bureaucracy to deliver on the services that other agencies already undertake, you can put it to the citizens hunger for action. It’s all part of the tragedy of the unpatriotic governing elite, mired in the cesspit of its own greed, and too blind to see beyond its nose.

  • Resolving the Jos citizenship crisis

    Resolving the Jos citizenship crisis

    The struggle between the predominately Christian Berom/Anaguta/Afizere (BAA) ‘indigenous’ groups and the overwhelmingly Muslim Hausa-Fulani ‘settler’ group over the right of ownership of – or control over – land, power and resources has been the major driver of the Jos crisis. Scarce resources have generated fierce competition and, no thanks to unbridled and self-centred politicisation, cyclical violence. The latter has been defined and worsened by both local and national dynamics. Because of the country-wide indigene-settler question, inter-communal conflicts have tended to take on national character and expression. The Jos crisis, precisely because it is more a national than a local issue, will most likely be resolved only when the citizenship of all Nigerians is constitutionally guaranteed and faithfully implemented.

    Since 1994, Jos, a foremost ethnic melting point in Nigeria with its attractive year-round semi-temperate weather, has been rampaged – along with much of Plateau State – by identity politics overtly encapsulated by both ethnic affiliation and religious confession. The city’s long-standing and enviable cosmopolitanism which had, for decades, evinced a culture of intimate cross-cultural relations, including marriages, between Christians and Muslims lies, today, in tatters. Due to its apparent interminable cycle, violence has become tellingly more frequent and deadlier since September 2001 when the first major episode of inter-communal violence broke out.

    At the origin of the indigene-settler dispute in Jos are the claims and counter-claims to the ownership of the city on the basis of first migration arrival. Indigene-settler conflicts have appeared fiercer and more endemic in Jos because of the historic and bitter struggle between the two groups. Memories of deprivation, subordination and exploitation since the slave raids, between the 16th and the 18th centuries, by the Emirate North on the Middle Belt remain evergreen in the region.

    The BAA groups have been further aggrieved not only by the spirited attempts of the Hausa-Fulani group to subjugate them through the early 19th century, Usman dan Fodio-driven Jihad but by the perceived support of the Hausa-Fulani politico-religious elite by the British colonial authorities to establish its hegemony over the Middle Belt. Reclaiming their rights, as the indigenous peoples of Plateau State, has been the dominant narrative that runs through the BAA’s contemporary politics of reverse discrimination against their perceived ancient oppressors. Conversely, the Hausa-Fulani community has been aggrieved about its lack of access to power despite being the majority in Jos North, the city’s biggest, richest and most contentious local council. They also decry their disenfranchisement and perceived lack of political inclusion in Plateau State.

    The maiden 1994 crisis, during which long-standing disagreements over land and chieftaincy titles, stoked violence, pales into relative obscurity in comparison to large-scale inter-communal violence in 2001, 2004, 2008 and 2010. The uptick in bomb attacks, suicide bombings and bomb plantings since December 2010, a manifest indication of Boko Haram’s infiltration of the ancient tin city, has exacerbated existing inter-communal tensions. Increasingly well-trained militants, loosely organized along religious and ethnic lines, have proliferated. The internecine conflict has often been very bitter precisely because privileges and entitlements, guaranteed and under-written by the issuance and possession of the certificate of indigeneity, are a zero–sum game: the gain of one group is the loss of the other. Like other ‘settler’ groups across the country, the Hausa-Fulani community, bereft of this certificate, is deprived of meaningful citizenship. It suffers discrimination in recruitment into federal institutions, admission to most of the federal universities and education at military academies and access to schools and jobs. The door to effective participation in local politics is virtually shut against its members.

    Poor governance at all levels of government; economic deregulation (that hurts all save the thieving ruling elite and its objective and subjective allies) and rampant corruption have compounded ethnic, religious and regional fault-lines in Nigeria. The notion of national citizenship and its material manifestation on the ground, appear to have been largely abridged by both ethnicity and ancestry. By, thus far, demonstrating political weakness and unwillingness to holistically and decisively address this problem, the federal government and the Plateau State governments appear to sanction the perception, in informed quarters, that there is an elite conspiracy against peace on the Plateau and elsewhere. Yet, government alone, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot find a permanent solution to the crisis.

    Nigerian leaders – political, traditional, religious, civil society, community and others – working in tandem with informal peacemakers like elders, youth and women groups should urgently devise a calibrated response to the various challenges posed by Jos’ indigene-settler conflict. The onus is on the political elite to set the pace, tone and tenor both in general and specific terms. Their class interest – as well as common sense – should egg them on.

    At the general level, urgently needed is the construction of a template for proper, transparent and accountable management of public funds in Nigeria. There is the need to put to good social use, the country’s daily oil receipts, foreign reserves and the excess crude account. This will stymie the current practice of allowing a few villainous public officials to squander the billions of dollars involved. Governments at all levels have the responsibility to reverse “the notorious phenomenon of Nigeria being immensely endowed yet having one of the poorest citizens in the world”, as a Nigerian editorialist recently lamented. The governments should fully embrace genuine democratic ethos, reduce the physical, emotional and policy gap between them and the people and carry on in a manner that will convince Nigerians that their core interests – security and welfare, according to the 1999 constitution – matter to their leaders. They should develop, use and mobilize the country’s rich human capital and articulate and implement policies capable of enhancing equality, reciprocity and social justice across the board.

    At the specific level, the first thing the federal government should do, working with the Plateau State government, is to begin to reverse the entrenched impunity in the Jos crisis. It can do this by naming, shaming, prosecuting and jailing instigators and perpetrators of violence. Many of them – individuals and groups – have already been identified by the judicial and other commissions of inquiry set up in the past by both governments. Trials should duly observe the rule of law and be informed by the need for deterrence. The governments should bolster law and order without embracing an exclusivist physical security agenda. Operation Rainbow (OR)’s unique human security agenda on the Plateau, at the instance of that state’s government, needs and deserves all the funding and encouragement it can muster.

    An inclusive political system is arguably the best antidote to entrenched reciprocal fears between the two antagonistic communities in Jos – as well as in other parts of the country. Peaceful means should be used to promote political inclusion. Rights and duties should be allocated on the basis of social justice.

    The federal government should work with the National Assembly to give Nigeria’s acute settler problem a constitutional solution by replacing the moribund indigene provisions in the constitution with a common citizenship for all Nigerians based on residency. The National Assembly should quickly revise and pass into law the Residency Rights Bill sponsored in 2004 by a group of senators. Thereafter, the federal government should organize and fund a nation-wide civic education programme that would inculcate in Nigerians the significance and virtue of a common notion of citizenship, based on respect of ethnic and religious diversity, national unity and cohesion. All of the above should be capped by sustained political and cultural work in the many communities already torn apart by the indigene-settler dispute.

    • Professor Amuwo, a governance, conflict and development consultant, contributed this piece from Dakar, Senegal.

     

  • Akpabio, donations and media hysteria

    Akpabio, donations and media hysteria

    Lately the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Chief Godswill Akpabio has come under a barrage of coordinated media attacks on account of donations that he has made to groups and individuals. The donations which have attracted media rage include: N230 million on behalf of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors’ Forum in support of the St. Stephens Civic Centre, Otueke, Bayelsa State; a Toyota Prado jeep to Mr And Mrs Innocent Idibia (TuFace) and a N6 million donation to over 1,000 delegates drawn from six states at the PDP South-South zonal meeting in Port-Harcourt.

    Hardly had Governor Akpabio announced these donations than there has been a mass hysteria and sponsored commentaries in the media, some based on total ignorance. It is noteworthy that none of these donations was uncovered through the investigative ingenuity of any journalist. In the spirit of transparency which has guided the conduct of government business in Akwa Ibom State in the last six years, Governor Akpabio made these donations conscious that all these events were covered by the media.

    What the commentators may not have known was that donations and grants are captured in the Akwa Ibom State budget and whatever the Governor does under this sub-head cannot by any stretch of imagination be described as fiscal recklessness. In other words the Governor acted within the ambit of fiscal law as passed by the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly.

    In the last six years, the administration of Chief Akpabio has consistently devoted over 80 per cent of its annual budget to capital projects. Also, in carrying out these projects, the administration has made prudent management of resources its watch word as it has plugged all loopholes and leakages and devoted a huge percentage of the budget to infrastructure. This largely accounts for the uncommon transformation that the state has witnessed in the last six years.

    Without bothering to check, some commentators believed that the Akwa Ibom State governor at the fund raising event in support of St. Stephens Civic Centre just got up and announced the donation without informing any of his colleague governors of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Such perception stemmed from the lack of knowledge that this matter had come up during the last PDP Governors’ Forum meeting and whatever donation Chief Akpabio announced on behalf of his colleagues must have been what was agreed upon through consensus.

    It is difficult to understand why the donation of a Prado jeep (the media has mischievously increased in to two) to the Idibias has attracted so much media attention. The rationalization of Governor Akpabio’s gift to the Idibias by a well respected Akwa Ibom State indigene, Architect Ezekiel Nya-Etok who had ran against Chief Akpabio for the office of the Governor in 2006 will suffice. According to his posting in the social media about the car gift, “Governor Akpabio took a decision that I agree with totally… my reasons are as follows: strategic support. I believe that one of the essences of government is giving strategic support to her citizens.

    “Any citizen of the state that attains an outstanding position in life must be supported by the state to move to the next level in the larger interest of the state, and to be a source of inspiration to others. These people could be referred to Ambassadors of the State. The fact that Annie has been able to attract the life time commitment of this man is worth a second look… TuFace is not just a Nigerian, but an Ambassador of Akwa Ibom State, and this, on account of our patient and illustrious daughter called Annie.

    “Herein is the wisdom: Governor Akpabio seized the moment! A big fish swims into the waters and a discerning fisherman didn’t spare the net. Today, on account of an SUV and N3 million sponsorship, Tuface is no longer just an in-law of Annie’s parents, but now adopted as in-law of Akwa Ibom State… Again, nowhere in the world will an issue concerning the state be mentioned where TuFace is, that he will not feel a sense of commitment and responsibility to rise to the occasion. Smart move Governor,” he said.

    Nya-Etok’s summation reflects the thinking of most Akwa Ibom people in this whole needless saga. They have stood by their governor in supporting one of their own. Indeed they know that generosity and freely giving spirit is in the nature of their governor and they have always commended him for this and use it as a parameter with which future governors of the state would be judged. They have wondered why non Akwa Ibom people should cry more than the bereaved in this well-intentioned gift.

    But by far the most ridiculous of these criticisms is on the donation of a modest N6 million to about 1,000 PDP delegates during the zonal meeting in Port-Harcourt. The media has focused so much attention on the “N6 million Mr Biggs largesse” that the whole essence of what governor said was lost on them. Chief Akpabio had urged the PDP members to be united and unwavering in their support of the party and to be steadfast in their support for President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Curiously, even as the message went viral just a few moments after it was delivered, the video was carefully edited to present only the aspect of the donation, which in any case, the governor should not be apologetic about his support for his party. Everywhere in the world, it is a known fact that party organization is not cheap.

    Akpabio is not just an ordinary member of the PDP. Apart from being a governor on the platform of the party, he has recently been elevated to the board of trustees of the party and also a member of the party’s national caucus. These positions come with enormous responsibilities. It is intriguing that a donation of mere N6 million to the party should attract such level of vituperation. In this same country we had also witnessed how a party contributed over N1 billion to the weeklong celebration of their leader’s birthday; the media itself cannot say it has not benefited from the so called “Akpabio largesse” and yet we did not see any sanctimonious editorialising. And therein lies the hypocrisy of the media.

    But it is gratifying that even in the midst of these bitter and politically motivated criticisms, they all acknowledged the stellar performance of Akpabio as the governor of Akwa Ibom State. There is a general consensus that Governor Akpabio has redefined governance in Nigeria. The indices are dizzying. His administration has built over 320 new roads; four concentric flyovers; over 35 new bridges; five new general hospitals; an international specialist hospital, completed an international airport, and a 171 megawatts independent power project; built a brand new state-of-the-art Governor’s Lodge, a fully digitalized Governor’s office and banquet hall; a first in West Africa e-library; a one-stop entertainment and resort, Ibom Tropicana Entertainment Centre, a 15 storey, 250 rooms, 5-star hotel; a first-in-Africa underground drainage project using the pipe-jacking technology; declared free and compulsory education up to secondary school level and free medicare for children under five years, pregnant women and the elderly; and over 4,000 other rural projects spread across the 31 local government areas in the state.

    All these could not have been achieved through “fiscal recklessness.”

    • Ebenezer is a public affairs analyst based in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State