The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

ABSU and the revocation of Kalu’s certificate

The recent revocation of the degree certificate of the former Abia State governor, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu by the authorities of Abia State University Uturu, Abia State was not the first of its kind in the country. Before now some universities had after many years of graduation revoked the degree certificates of people whom they discovered that the award of such degrees contravened the laid down procedures for admission and graduation from the universities.

The university, like any other academic institutions, has the right to revoke the certificate awarded to people, whenever it was discovered that they were wrongly awarded. Nothing stops the authorities from taking such action; not even the number of years such certificates have been awarded. So there is no sentiment in the issuance and revocation of certificate awarded by any institution because every institution has a well laid down law, procedures, rules and regulations guiding admission, academic, non-academic curriculum and graduation from the institution which is being handed over to applicants upon admission.

Recently, the West African Examination Council (WAEC), after four years, cancelled the certificates of about 200 persons who sat for their examination at Ogudu Senior Grammar School Ojudu GRA Ojota Lagos after discovering that there were irregularities in the award of the certificates. Some of the affected persons are in their final year in universities and the heaven did not fall. What matters most is that the onus lies on the affected persons to prove the authority wrong by providing substantial evidence before the court that the certificates were not wrongly awarded to them. Many had fought such battles in the past. While some lost, others with incontrovertible evidence to substantiate their cases won them.

As for the case of Kalu and Abia State University authority, the ball is in Kalu’s court to prove the authority wrong by providing substantial evidence before the court to show that he was properly admitted and that he graduated from the university, while in office as governor of the state and visitor to the university.

Trying to link the revocation to political victimisation by the state government is puerile because the university is made up of renowned professors and academics who are not politicians and who know the implications of revoking a degree after many years of awarding it. Unless Kalu wants the world to believe that he arm-twisted the university authority to award him the degree while in office as the governor even when he knew he did not merit such, he should come clean with the transcript issued to him by the University of Maiduguri which he used for inter-university transfer into the Abia State University and even the O’ level certificate he used to secure admission into the University of Maiduguri in the first place.

So many things are at stake in this situation that need to be cleared by Kalu if he wants Nigerians to believe him that he is being victimised by the university authority. The university authority in their various advertorials had justified their action based on the law that established the university academic programme; the onus is now on Kalu to prove otherwise. University degree is not a common product that could be easily purchased. It takes time, resources, discipline and hard work for one to acquire it.

It could be recall that in 2002 when the news broke that Kalu was writing degree examination in Abia State University, Olusegun Adeniyi, the then editor of Thisday wrote an article on the back page of the newspaper titled “Eze Goes To School” where he raised a lot of questions on the propriety of Kalu being a student of ABSU, writing degree examination and at the same time serving as the governor of the state and visitor to the university.

Adeniyi in the article had asked some pertinent questions such as when Kalu was admitted into the university, his choice of the state university and what time did he has as a governor to attend lectures, even on part-time basis if it is assumed that he was admitted as a part time student. Not many Nigerians took Adeniyi’s fears then very serious, rather he was attacked by Kalu’s media aides.

From the way the saga is unfolding today, it appears that Adeniyi and other Nigerians who saw the development from his perspectives might be vindicated at the end of the day, unless something otherwise happens to prove the university authority wrong. Accusing the state government of inciting the university to revoke his certificate is nothing but shadow chasing. The situation goes beyond Kalu’s political differences with any body. It is academic matter that should be sorted out academically and legally, not politically.

Before now prominent Nigerians who were accused of forging certificates or illegally acquiring certificates in the past have taken the matters to court to clear their names. Former Kogi State Governor Ibrahim Idris was once accused of not having school certificate, while being admitted as a law student at University of Abuja. His lawyers took the matter to court and WAEC officials were in court to testify that he obtained a school certificate from a secondary school in Bayelsa State many years ago. Such allegation of certificate forgery was also leveled against Governor Gabriel Suswan of Benue State. Today, Suswan has won the case at High court and the Appeal Court and is ready to meet his accuser at the Supreme Court.

Kalu and his sympathisers should stop pointing accusing fingers at anybody or group as being responsible for the certificate saga. Rather, they should face the reality by doing everything to clear his name from the mess if he is sure of the genuineness of his admission and graduation from the university. Any other thing contrary is bunkum; not even Barrister Amobi Nzelu’s recent claim that he wanted to go to court for Kalu but was discouraged by a Professor from the university who said it was not necessary. How will Nzelu expect Nigerians to fall for such gimmicks? Or is it that Kalu has no evidence to upturn his revoked degree certificate in court?

So if Kalu is not sure of himself and does not have enough evidence to challenge the decision in court, he and his allies should keep quiet and accept the decision in good faith. Meanwhile, all eyes are on Kalu to respond to the university’s decision by taking urgent action to redeem his battered image.

• Dr. Ozoubi wrote Bwari Abuja

March 12, 2013
The hand is Esau’s

Almost eleven years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York and Washington by global terrorism network, Al Qeada, the United States is not giving up on tracking down and punishing the perpetrators of one of mankind’s greatest tragedies.

Last week, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, the founder, leader and funder of Al Qeada, killed by US SEAL in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was arrested by American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working in concert with Jordanian security, in Jordan and flown to New York on Thursday where he was due to appear in court a day later on a charge of conspiracy to kill Americans. The charge obviously relates to the 2001 attacks.

Though not directly or physically involved in the terror attacks, Abu Ghaith offence is linked to his appearing on video immediately after the attacks, speaking on behalf of Al Qeada.

In the run up to the September 11, 2001 attacks he had also held meetings with Al Qeada operatives where he urged them to swear allegiance to the cause as well as Osama bin Laden. He also appeared in video with his father-in-law threatening attacks on American and western targets around the world. So in essence, the man who had been hiding in Iran all these years after September 11, before being deported to Turkey and later Jordan, is being held and is to be punished for what he said, which in all intent and purpose could be linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Closer home in Kaduna last Saturday, the State Commissioner of Police led a team of armed policemen to the premises of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, in the city to arrest a serving senator and one time governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmad Sani, of the emerging opposition All Progressive Congress, APC for comments he made in the course of a live radio phone-in programme, deemed capable of causing the breach of the peace. And what did the senator say?

The man in response to a question whether there was any move by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to register the APC, and if that happened what would be the next line of action of the opposition, responded that if having met all legal requirements for registration as a political party and INEC still refused to grant APC registration, the opposition would march on the Eagle Square in Abuja in a peaceful protest. He added that the Tahrir Square protest in Egypt would be a child’s play to the protest at Eagle Square if the newly formed party was denied registration.

Now pray in what way is this simple and clear answer to a question likely to cause the breach of the peace such that the Commissioner of Police, on a Saturday, had to rush to the radio station, even before the end of the live programme to arrest the senator? In what way could this harmless comment be construed to be a threat to Nigeria’s security as in the way, for example, that Abu Ghaith’s pre and post 9/11 video comments on behalf of Al Qeada is being construed by the US? Agreed that both incidents appear unrelated but the inference being drawn here is that both are rooted in perceived threat to state security, in the eyes of the respective security services in the two countries, by the comments made by the people involved. The question here is whether what the senator said was enough to warrant his arrest and detention by the Commissioner of Police?

On the surface the CP’s action could be termed a pre-emptive move to prevent a possible breakdown of law and order, but a closer look could reveal the likelihood of a more sinister motive on the part of police. The police boss reportedly got a call from Abuja that Saturday morning as the senator was on air, ordering him to arrest the lawmaker. Who made the call? Force Headquarters or the Presidency? With Senator Sani’s comments posing no serious, if any, threat to the peace and security of the nation, one can only deduce form the Police’s action that it was part of the much expected grand plan by the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), to destabilize and frustrate any attempt by the opposition to come under one umbrella to challenge the PDP in future elections. Shall we now say that the Nigeria Police as now an arm of the PDP, the same way INEC is being viewed by the opposition? If this later prove to be the case then our democracy is in grave danger.

I am sure if there was no indication of the likelihood of INEC not registering the APC, Senator Sani wouldn’t have made that comment and I think the man was merely warning or rather advising the electoral body and to a large extent, the Federal Government against doing anything inimical to the good health of this democracy.

And in what looked like a confirmation of the fears of the opposition, INEC has come out that a fledging political organisation named African People’s Congress (APC) had applied to it for registration as a political party. What a smart move. The hand here is definitely that of Esau while the voice is that of Jacob. One needs no soothsayer to know that the PDP and indeed Jonathan’s Federal Government is at work here.

The same way Jonathan sponsored a PDP Governors Forum mainly to frustrate the Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s led Nigeria Governors Forum following his inability to wrest control of the NGF from the Rivers State governor, is what he is attempting to do now with this other APC, to frustrate and disorganize the opposition ahead of the 2015 presidential election. If Professor Attahiru Jega’s INEC fail to see through this, then this democracy is in serious danger.

And there is more danger ahead if the police continue on the path set last Saturday by the Kaduna CP. It then means that we should expect more arrest of opposition politicians and other political elements, even within the PDP that are not on the same page with President Jonathan on his 2015 project. But the president is well advised to note that it is strong arm tactics like this, together with lack luster performance that can imperil this democracy and not what the opposition says.

The police should also remember that its unholy alliance with the Shehu Shagari led Federal Government of then National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the second republic, especially as regards intimidating and witch hunting opponents and collaborating to rig elections led to the fall of that republic. We are in the 4th republic now and I hope the police have learnt their lessons.

The quick response of the Kaduna CP to the Abuja call to arrest Senator Sani is at odd with the character of the Nigeria Police that we know when it comes to response to distress or danger call. May be the Force is changing, but it better be for the good of the nation and not just a few.

One would have expected the Kaduna Police Command and not the military to have discovered the bomb making factory that was uncovered at the Kaduna home of an Abuja based politician last week. The discovery by men of the Intelligence Unit of the 1st Division of the Nigerian Army, Kaduna was shocking considering the number/volume of arms and ammunitions including IEDs involved. Where are we headed in this country if one may ask?

Not that it was a bad thing that the Army discovered this bomb factory, but internal security is the primary responsibility of the police and the earlier the Force steps up its activities in this area, instead of being a willing tool in the hands of politicians to fight their personal battles, the better. We have a greater battle on our hands, the battle against terrorism and the police should take the lead role.

March 12, 2013
Princes of oil

I am sure not a few Nigerians flew into the fury of the righteous when the roll call became news. We heard the names of Nderibe, Dantata, Atiku Abubakar, Folawiyo…these are the princes of oil.

But if you examined their minds deeply enough, many Nigerians would know that they were lying who cried foul. They were guilty of the perfidy of hypocrites. They might have had a moment or two of envious resentment against the princes. It might have lingered or flashed across their minds in the form of these words: “why was I not in their shoes? What would I not do with all that bloc of oil!” They might have dreamed of the life of the big, bright Babylon, the palaces, the cars, the decadence of leisure, the trips of the fantastic as well as the choice toy of the well-heeled among us, both secular and pastoral: the private jet.

We all know that the fabulously rich in our midst are casino merchants, those who reap bountifully where they did not sow. They are the Jay Gatsbys of our generations, those who never sweat except from the exalted exertions on golf courses or the whirligig of the dance floor. We have never as a people condemned unearned showiness. Rather we praise them at parties, honour them with traditional titles, give them national honours, devote monuments to them.

If 83 percent of the oil blocs go to the North, why is Boko Haram festering in that same region? Unlike in saner societies, the Nigerian elites have not factored any sense of responsibility into their acquisition of wealth. Our primitive rich do not know value of money. For them, wealth is to donate token buses to church or throw huge parties to the poor on Friday afternoons. But wealth is responsibility.

What writers, columnists and sundry commentators have said over the news is serious, if predictable: that the North should keep quiet over the Niger Delta states’ allocations. They own the oil, but others enjoy it. Others who enjoy are those who say they don’t have it. But that argument, true as it is, undermines the greater point. The northern wealthy are feudalists in the age of capitalism. They see wealth as their royal rights, and the people as their subjects who should be grateful to God for any crumbs delivered on Friday afternoons. What is also forgotten in the narrative is that even the oil firms have not favoured the indigenes in jobs such as engineers, salesmen, managers, accountants, etc. Other ethnic groups, from both the Southwest and Southeast, dominate those jobs in spite of qualified people from those states. The so-called local content policy is more mantra than practice.

If we want to understand the story of Nigeria, we need to understand the story of oil. Its malignancy is pervasive. It has dazed us into all the vices known to corruption. In the oil states, those who are wealthy are errand boys, they do the dirty jobs, like bunkering, stealing of pipes and equipment, etc. These same errand boys become the oppressors of their own people. They corral weapons, form cults of violence, flaunt money in obscene defiance and entrench a culture of indolence. Oil does not only attract oppressors from outside but recruits servile tyrants within.

Have we asked why the issue of amnesty was “resolved” in the Niger Delta without the question of oil bloc allocation ever raised as a matter of economic justice in the region? Why did the bloc go to individuals and not firms according to best practices everywhere? Why did the Niger Delta not get its share? We did not address it because the amnesty, at bottom, was not about economic justice but about appeasing a cult of greedy and disenfranchised youths. We wanted to let the oil flow for the rich.

The news also throws up the question of capitalism as an ideology of the rich for the many. The recent crisis of the ideology has made some to sound the death knell of capitalism. The crisis of Spain, Portugal and Greece and the struggles of the epicenter of dollar have shown how a few greedy individuals can entrap everyone else. But we cannot forget that a few men like Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, whose doings birthed what historians call the Gilded Age, triggered capitalism as we knew it in the 20th century. In spite of their excesses, the same society gave us the progressive era, where they were checked with several legislations including anti-trust laws. It was capitalism checking itself. The present age was birthed by the technological and mercantile geniuses, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. What these men did was to show that they could conquer the world. What the system showed was that law could chasten them.

The wash of derivatives and other insanities drove the system to excess and ruined everyone’s pocket. But we can say that this was a society that worked with money.

Ours is a society that does not understand that wealth is not for consumption alone but to empower the society for more wealth. In his book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorsten Veblen showed that wealth can be used to build a life of leisure that can percolate from the top to the bottom. Harvard Professor John K. Galbraith demonstrated that if we don’t handle wealth properly we will have an affluent society but a mass of the poor with decaying social services and infrastructure.

That is the society we have today in Nigeria. We have affluent persons with the poor everywhere. That is why the irony is potent that where we have the most oil blocs have thrown up the most vicious threat to the society.

The death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has raised question on what to do with a nation’s oil wealth. He is a man as god today to his people. He redistributed for most part the oil wealth and reduced poverty by about 20 percent, with free education and health care, among other social services. The point has been raised whether that policy is sustainable where the money is distributed rather than used to stimulate more wealth as their Latin American counterpart Lula in Brazil did with capitalism. Lula brought 30 million people out of poverty.

Either system is better than ours where a few people acquire the wealth primitively and flaunt them as though they are the blessed of the Lord. It is oil that brought Boko Haram. Before oil, the North developed thriving agricultural and textile cultures. The Niger Delta had palm produce, groundnuts, fishes, lumber, etc. That is the wisdom in the Delta beyond Oil programme initiated by Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.

Oil suffocated all. That is why the princes eye the gold of the creeks. Without oil or its abysmal use, the North would be quiescent with prosperity.

In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of two Cities, a big vat of wine cracks open by accident on a French street and everyone helps themselves with cups, hands, even handkerchiefs, and all are merry, holding hands and dancing. When it is finished and the effect dissipates, everyone remembers what they are doing before the revelry. The farmer to farm, seamstress to shop, butcher to the meat, all to their default suffering in pre-revolutionary France.

Maybe we are waiting for our oil wells to dry up before our liberation from the dazzle.

March 11, 2013
A fearful Jonathan

Then Jonathan went to Maiduguri, he did exactly what I predicted he would do. Rather than show love, he extracted debt. And without grace or finesse. But from the rhetoric of the urbane Governor Kashim Shettima, Borno will not go to the bank for Jonathan. Jonathan imposed an army of occupation instead of an embrace. He closed down the city. But it was because he was afraid. Like a snake, he masked it with braggadocio, dripping with venom. He said he would not negotiate with ghosts. So if they are ghosts, it means he cannot find the militants. Of course, he has surrendered. He should employ exorcists and withdraw the soldiers. He did not learn anything from the 11 wise men who visited before him. Of course, the governors were not John the Baptist because Jonathan is not their anointed one.

March 11, 2013
Metuh’s misguided claims

The national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh stirred the hornet’s nest last week when he bandied curious claims on the quest by the South-east for the presidency.

Hear him “I am not aware that the Igbo are calling for the presidency; you can quote me on that. I noticed that one or two disgruntled persons are saying it. Nigeria has gone beyond the equation of where a person (presidential candidate) comes from”.

He further went wild by asserting that the most important credential for that office is the capacity and capability of whosoever is leading Nigeria and not about where he comes from.

Metuh is entitled to his personal views no matter how infantile they may sound. But since he purported to be speaking on behalf of the Igbo race, it will be inappropriate to allow him get away with the irreconcilable issues thrown up by his claims.

For one, his position on the subject matter is not only vacuous and irresponsible but totally at variance with subsisting realities in the country.

Besides, it is replete with tenuous assumptions that cannot stand the weight of evidence to the contrary.

The first flaw is the propriety of arrogating to himself the conscience of the Igbo and the barometer with which their political temperament can be gauged. He neither possesses such attributes nor is he verily in a position to speak for the race. Apparently, he has been so absorbed by the little trappings of the office of the publicity secretary of a ruling party to the point of now assuming that South-east leadership is all about PDP. It is not so.

At best, he can partly speak for the PDP which has not hidden the fact that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock given the high level subterfuge to have Jonathan run for another term.

But he could as well have gone ahead to canvass support for his boss than denigrate his people as lacking in the credentials for the presidency. That is the reading of his claim that the most important credential for the office is the capacity and capability of the leader and not where he comes from. Its logical inference is that the South-east does not have people with such credentials. The other is that if there are agitations from that zone, they are not based on these leadership credentials but solely on where the person comes from. Nothing can be as asinine as this postulation. He is not aware there are demands from his geo-political zone to ascend the highest political office in the country except from one or two disgruntled persons. By his warped calculations, the views of these ‘disgruntled persons’ cannot represent the true feelings of the zone. But he should have gone further to let us into the grounds for the disenchantment of these people.

By the way, Metuh should tell us the ingredients of this capacity and capability to occupy that office. We also need to be educated on the astonishing leadership qualities the late Yar’Adua or Jonathan had that qualified them for the presidency that are not abundant in other parts of the country.

Perhaps also, we require further clarification on the circumstances that threw up Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan into that office. Or why the much touted second term ambition of Jonathan is trying to tear the country apart if where ones comes from is irrelevant in the political matrix of this country?

In effect, if the prescriptions by Metuh were the factors that led to the emergence of Jonathan as president, why are such qualities no longer relevant today? Why is the north up in arms against his second term bid? And who stands to benefit in the event Jonathan is intimidated from running?

These posers expose the insincerity in Metuh’s position and cast him as one hired to work against the overall interest of his people. This strategy is not new. It has been the bane of the South-east. It is for the same selfish prompting that he called Rochas Okorocha a regional player who should be ignored at the national level for his scathing remarks on the performance of the PDP in the zone.

Metuh displayed unmitigated arrogance when he boasted he had directed his South-east publicity secretary to reply Okorocha since his office was too big to do that. And true to type, that reaction came from the vice national chairman of the party, Col. Austin Akobundu (rtd) who ended up making a mockery of himself and the man who prompted him on some of the issues he raised. Akobundu queried the performance rating of Okorocha and the decision of the All Progressives Congress APC to hold their meeting in Borno instead of Imo, asserting that it showed they were not comfortable with Imo. This is to say the least childish given the self evident reasons by the APC leaders for the visit to Borno, the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency. It was a personal risk the governors took to show sympathy to people of the state who have suffered direly on account of the security challenge. Is it not a twist of fate that Jonathan mustered the courage to visit Borno and Yobe states a few days after governors of the opposition were there? Yet someone speaking for the same president was denigrating the governors for that well thought out visit which exposed the tepid handling of sensitive national issues characteristic of the PDP government. Instead of taking the blame for lacking in the right ideas, Doyin Okupe had the effrontery to accuse the governors of opportunism for holding their meeting in Maiduguri after their maiden outing in Lagos.

If there is any measure of opportunism and desperation in these visits, it is coming from the presidency which hurriedly amassed the entire security arsenal to ensure the safety of Jonathan. Such show of force contrasted sharply with the prevailing atmosphere when the governors visited.

But then, the opposition governors were not expected to have been there before now, given that they came together just a few weeks back. The presidency should squarely lick its wounds for thoughtlessness on the matter rather than seek imaginary enemies in the private or public engagements of the opposition governors.

Beyond this however, Metuh is on his own on the right of the South-east to canvass support for the presidency come 2015. It is a right which neither his PDP nor any other body can abridge or circumscribe. The reality on the ground today is that where one comes from is still the determining factor for choosing the president of this country. And until this primordial calculation changes, the Igbo owe nobody any apology to seek their turn. It is for the same reason that the South-south people are hell bent on Jonathan running. That is also the reason the north wants it by all means. That was the raison d’etre for Obasanjo’s ascendancy to that post in 1999. Metuh must be called to order for attempting to denigrate the Igbo race. At any rate, what concessions has he got for his largely marginalized and impoverished people to want them give up that inalienable right for now?

March 11, 2013
The colonel in heavenly cockpit

With the passing this past week at the age of fifty eight of Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan leader, Latin America has lost one of its most colourful leaders and potent force against global imperialism. The iconic colonel was in every material respect an original in the true sense of that word. An unreconstructed military putchist, he had twice tried to seize power in bloody military uprisings only to be eventually swept into the Venezuela Presidential Palace in a popular and democratic uprising against the ancient regime.

Thereafter and for the next 14 years, the son of impoverished middle class teachers unleashed his strange and utterly quixotic brand of socialism on the Venezuelan populace, winning unprecedented popular approval in the process. By the time he died of cancer-related complications in a military hospital in the capital city of Caracas last Tuesday, Chavez has become an authentic hero of the teeming masses of the Venezuelan people and the nearest thing to a secular saint.

The unprecedented outpouring of grief on the streets, the hysterical wailings and chants of “Chavez to the pantheon”—a heartrending reference for the late leader to take his place beside the legendary Simon Bolivar, a.k.a the Liberator—only confirm Chavez status as one of the most illustrious sons of Latin America of all time. The pantheon of great Latin American leaders who lived and died at the behest of their people would be smiling indeed .

In order to better appreciate the global odds Chavez faced, it is appropriate to situate his career and anti-imperialist and anti-American jingoism within the context of the turbulent template that threw him up , particularly the end of the cold war and a resurgent and rampart American mega-power. Unlike the morally and ethically compromised Manuel Noriega who screamed at “Gringo piranhas” even while cutting a deal under the table, Hugo Chavez was as straight as a primitive arrow. He was a genuine article and a real man of the people.

Almost 30 years after President George Bush, the Elder called for a kinder and gentler world as an antidote to the neo-conservative cruelties of the Reagan years, the world is neither a kinder nor a gentler place. If anything, the modern world is increasingly marked by arbitrariness, by a brutal and random contingency, and by the sure and sheer certainty of uncertainty. The only thing predictable is what is unpredictable.

Perhaps it is foolish and delusionary in the extreme to expect human society to escape the more sinister anomalies of human nature itself. Even the so-called idyllic and harmonious communities of the past are nothing but ideological mirages; fictional constructs through which we vent our frustrations and disappointment with the present. As somebody famously quipped, if there is anything sure about the organic communities, it is that they are always gone.

Still, there can be no denying the fact that militarily, economically, politically and spiritually the world might have gone to the dogs in the last 30 years. Thanks to the principles of globalisation which made it possible for capital and labour to be switched round the globe and for the constraints of time and space to be summarily abolished, western countries, particularly the USA, have been able to exponentially increase their wealth.

But this new-found prosperity has also led to a widening of the gap between the filthy rich and absolute poor, thus fuelling social disaffection within countries and among countries. The great political irony here is that it is the social inequity arising from economic inequality of staggering and idiotic proportions that has brought an African American to the White House for the very first time in the history of the United States.

It is only the politically incurious who will be taken by surprise that the most potent forces against Barack Obama’s ascendancy comprise of the rump of the old Reaganite redoubt in alliance with the new missionary right with its bible-thumping fundamentalists. This is America’s contribution to the New Crusade. They brook no intellectual opposition, and with their wild-eyed fanaticism and the zealotry of their unipolar vision of human civilization and modernity, they represent a danger to both America and an increasingly multi-polar world.

Militarily, the USA has extended its unrivalled dominion over the rest of the world. Perhaps, not since the Roman Empire has the world seen such awesome power and might. It has been suggested by military experts that after America, the next 25 countries combined do not possess the martial superiority of Uncle Tom. Grappling with America is like wrestling with a 500 pound gorilla in the jungle.

Yet the tense stalemate of Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq suggests that in the evolving world, military might is not enough to prevail. Discretion may still be the better part of military valour in matters of political and ideological contestation, particularly if the ideological conflict comes with a religious and spiritual coloration. It is easy to militarily subjugate a territory, but it has proved not so easy to coerce a people into surrendering their religious beliefs. It is always a duel unto death.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 have shown the world how globalisation can work both ways. Switching men and material round the globe in a ceaseless manner, using electronic transfer of funds to thwart financial surveillance and deploying modern communication gadgets to abolish the constraints of time and space, the religious adversaries of the west were thus able to use the very principles of globalisation against the masters of globalisation

This is the turbulent trajectory that has defined the life and times of the late Venezuelan leader. Yet despite Hugo Chavez’ sterling patriotism, there are a sizeable number of his country people who would frown at this posthumous apotheosis and near deification of a man they consider to be a mortally flawed demagogue. To a few of his fellow Venezuelans, Chavez remains a divisive and controversial figure who exacerbated the economic and ethnic fault lines of his nation.

To them, his economic doctrine was barmy and simply did not make much sense, based on socialist emotionalism rather than a sound attempt to use god-given resources for truly transformative purposes. By dipping his hands freely and joyously into the petroleum reservoirs of his nation like some oilman of Caracas, Chavez has shown himself to be nothing but a vagabond potentate who would have led his country eventually into economic ruination.

This may make economic sense, but it is a politically worthless argument. There can be little doubt about the salutary and telling effect of Chavez largesse to his people. By his emancipatory policies, Chavez has freed the most wretched of the Venezuelan earth from the clutches of the most desperate of poverty, disease and illiteracy.

But more importantly by allowing the Venezuelan people to enjoy their god-given bounty, Chavez has returned us to the first principles of sovereignty: that power and national resources belong first and foremost to the people and not to a thieving political elite and their mealy-mouthed equivocations about a mythical transformation. This is a signal lesson to the ruling classes of other Third World countries, particularly Nigeria.

In the end, what is important is what a leader means to his people and not what the homogenising citadels of political and economic correctness feel. In the age of western-induced globalisation, the reaffirmation and reassertion of national destiny has returned to the front burner. The nation-state paradigm may be frayed and frazzled at the edges but it still remains the most dominant instrument of territorial mapping.

In death, Hugo Chavez has joined the illustrious pantheon of Latin America leaders who lived for their people and fought with them. Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Fidel Castro, etc. Together with a stellar galleria of equally iconic writers, poets, novelists, essayists and philosophers they have succeeded in forging a unique identity for the Latin American continent and as the counter-hegemonic lodestar against late imperialism.

It was often said that the right may win all the major political battles in Latin America, but it will never produce great leftwing writers of the global stature of Pablo Neruda, Louis Borges and the incomparable fabulist, Gabriel Marcia Marquez. Yet the rise and ascendancy of a series of leftwing, anti-imperialist governments committed to a more humane and equitable vision of human society in contemporary Latin America may no longer be a historical fluke but the final working out of some momentous historical contradictions.

The world and humanity at large may yet have the Latin Americans to thank for providing us with a way out of the six hundred year epistemological cul de sac of western modernity. As they have done with their Liberation Theology, their concept of no-capitalism, the stellar challenges of their original and groundbreaking scholars to the grandiose claims of Metropolitan modernity, the contributions of their institutions to a new global knowledge order and the vast array of different developmental models emanating from their governments, they have shown us that it is possible to envision a more humane and redemptive world order. May the great soul of Hugo Chavez rest in peace.

March 10, 2013
President Jonathan’s extemporaneous love note to Borno, Yobe

From what I gathered from the governor of Yobe during my visit, the problem is coming down (abating). It is coming down in Adamawa, in Gombe, in Bauchi and in Niger. But in Borno, we still have some problems. So, if you elders will not condemn it, you will continue to suffer under the terror of Boko Haram, because without peace, we cannot develop Borno. Myself and any head of the security agencies do not want to pay one day allowance to anybody… We need that money to do other important things that will change the economy of this country. We need that money to fund agriculture and to create wealth across this country, including Borno State.

“We are not happy to be spending so much money in the Niger Delta, keeping the JTF there. We are not happy to be spending so much money keeping the JTF in Borno State and other places. Definitely, we are not. In fact, if the elders agree now to come and sign agreement with me that I should move out all the JTF, but if anybody dies in Borno State, I will hold them responsible, I will sign and I will move, and I will do it. If somebody dies, yes, I will take you. I am going to remove the JTF, but come and sign and I will remove the JTF and you guarantee the safety of life and property of individuals. When you do that today, as I am going, the JTF will start moving to their barracks. But you must guarantee, if anything happens to anybody that you must be held responsible. If the circumstances that brought the soldiers are no longer there, that day, they will all leave.

“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. So, if we the elders of Borno State will not condemn it, we will continue to suffer under the terror of Boko Haram, and without stopping Boko Haram, without peace in Borno State, we cannot develop Borno State. Who will come and invest in Borno State? You award road contracts, who will come and work? Nobody! So, let us not play to the gallery.”

March 10, 2013
Okon sets a cat among the pigeons

Only an event involving two of Nigeria’s most illustrious sons could have attracted the stellar crowd that graced the formal investiture of Wole Soyinka as the first recipient of the Awolowo Leadership Prize. It was perhaps the greatest collection of eminent Nigerians since the great philosopher-statesman dined alone. The commodious Harbours’ Hall filled to its full capacity.

Unknown to a snooper disoriented by flu and long distance gallivanting, Okon had slipped his domestic mooring and dressed like a traditional Efik chieftain, the loony lad was right there in the crowd glad-handing and back-thumping like a politician of the First Republic. Snooper was aghast by this display of social delinquency by this impossible boy. But the make-belief racket was unsustainable and a brisk commotion soon engulfed the reception foyer.

“Where is your card?” Okon was asked by one of the delectable hostesses.

“Me, I no dey carry card. I come represent dem paramount ruler for dem Jamestown for Calabar. Abi you no sabi say na him safe Papa Awo from dem godogodo soldiers?” Okon retorted with a devilish sneer.

“So have you registered?” he was asked again.

“Me, I no be politician. So I no dey register nothing. Na dem Lai Mohammed dey do dat one for Abuja. Lai na my friend. Him nickname na Okunrin Raufu”, Okon sniggered. At this point, having realised the opportunity cost of detaining the scoundrel, he was waved on. But fate intervened and Okon was accosted by a lone television crewman.

“Sir, how do you see the occasion?”, the earnest and intense looking chap asked a self-important Okon.

“Me, I no be woman. Na woman dey use Ladies Occasional pill”, the mad boy intoned with a swaggering gait to the squirming embarrassment of his stranded interviewer. The affronted chap decided to seize the initiative.

“What I mean is this: how do you see the prize given to Professor Soyinka today?”

“Hen hen, na dat one you for say. As for dem prize, na dem Yoruba people dey deceive dem Nigerian people. I like dem Kongi man, but make him no dey follow follow dem yeye Yoruba people. Abi you wan tell me say dem no find Efik man to give dem prize? When dem wan lift heavy crane na Efik man, but when dem wan award prize na Yoruba man. Abi you think say we know sabi dem trick?”

“Now that President Jonathan has reversed himself over UNILAG name change, are you happy?” the interviewer asked Okon with a deadpan expression.

“Wetin concern agbero with dem knock engine? You see the problem with dem Jonathan be say na reverse him dey drive. Him dey reverse into everything and everybody. Everybody dey run from am like dem Gaiser for permanent reverse. He done reverse into dem Obasanjo and Baba dey cry for inside him bedroom. Na no break no jam vehicle or wetin dem Yoruba people dey call pakaleke Express. But katakata go burst when he come finally reverse into dem abandoned mala petrol tanker. Na dat one Baba Lekki dey call holocaust. Dem locust go dey scream ho, ho ,ho!!!!” Okon intoned with feverish excitement. At this point, even the interviewer became overwhelmed with apprehension. Casting furtive glances across the place, he quickly melted into the crowd with Okon in hot pursuit.

“Yeye Kobokobo boy, you don finish the interview? You no even ask me about dem Patience woman”, a viciously jubilant Okon screamed at his heels.

March 10, 2013
Be warned, you can be ‘googled’

Last Thursday, while searching for a term I was not familiar with on Google, I stumbled on an article titled: 5 Ways to spot bad employees…before they are hired

I was curious about what it means to be a bad employee and clicked to read the article.

One of the five ways titled Google the candidate caught my attention.

The article by a staff of allbusiness.com stated thus: Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even industry articles can reveal interesting details about a person that you’d never be able to uncover in even the best interview. This kind of research can also help you uncover inaccuracies in the candidate’s résumé.

The above advice to employers reinforced my belief that people should be careful about what they put online. In the present digital world, you are as good as what search engines say about you than your carefully prepared curriculum vitae or the positive impression you give at interviews and during your interaction with people.

Employers want to know more about you than your educational qualifications. They want to know the company you keep, the quality of your thoughts and many other things about you which what you say or share online or is said or shared about you online can reveal.

I remember reading a quote that cautioned against unrestrained use of the internet that said in future, some of us may have to change our names to erase our cyber past.

With growing internet access in the country, we all seem to be too eager to share so much online at the slightest instance. Many are so obsessed with posting on facebook that they literally violate their own privacy.

While it may be okay to indulge in some occasional sharing of information and pictures, especially on anniversaries and a few other special occasions, what many do on the social media is an abuse of the forum at their own expense without realising it.

We don’t have to share information about everything we do. We need to realise that almost everything about us online can be found through use of search engines.

If you are very active online, search for your name on Google and you will be surprised what you will find. Things you have forgotten about and things about you that you are not aware are online.

To regulate use of social media for instance, some organisations abroad have social media policies. There are things employees must not do online for the sake of the image of their organisations. Since I first posted a part of this article on facebook last week, I have read various responses with some saying it may be better not to share anything online. The solution is not about staying offline. No one who wants to be taken seriously in this age should. What is necessary is a lot of caution in deciding what we should and should not publish online. Google must be able to say something about you however little. The issue what will it say about you. The option is yours.

The next time you’re online, remember you are documenting for scrutiny the kind of person you are. My advice: Know what to post online. It could make or mar your opportunity to get that job or position you desire or retain your present one.

March 10, 2013
Awo Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka: Only the deep can call to the deep

Professor Soyinka wrote two books, ‘THE MAN DIED’ and ‘Ake: The years of Childhood’, right within the prison walls.

Leadership in the currently troubled regions of the nation has been remiss. I have lamented, on numerous platforms, the delinquent silence of religious and community leaders where the religious rights of others were trampled upon, often terminally, where again and again martyrdom became commonplace – yes, the genuine martyrdom – made up of innocents, singly, in sectors, often brutally but always with the confidence of immunity. … there is also the issue of leadership of wrongful silence and inertia; the folding of arms and the buttoning of lips when leadership – and not merely localised – was desperately needed to lead and inflict exemplary punishment on violators of the freedom of belief, and existence of others. The examples are too numerous and depressing, and this is hardly the occasion for a recital of human derelictions that only stir up negative memories’ -Professor Wole Soyinka in ‘WINDING DOWN HISTORY’ – a lecture delivered on the occasion on his being awarded the maiden AWO PRIZE FOR LEADERSHIP.

As far as reputations are concerned, those of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Professor Wole Soyinka are already cast in stone. Soyinka, like Awo, is your quintessential epitome of integrity, credibility, discipline, selflessness as well as visionary leadership and people-centredness; the very categories the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation prescribed when it decided at its July 2011 special dialogue on Transformational Leadership and Good Governance that the prize is ‘established to encourage, recognise, reward and celebrate excellence in Nigerian leadership’. Without a scintilla of doubt, Professor Wole Soyinka stands shoulder high, over and above any other Nigerian, however, eminently worthy of consideration in these regards.

On December 19, 2012, at a media briefing at which the columnist was present, the selection committee unveiled the recipient of the maiden award of the prize in the person of the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. The prize, the committee said, is an initiative of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation, which was set up in April 1992 to serve as the custodian of Chief Awolowo’ intellectual legacy. The Foundation, it went on, was established as an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organisation dedicated to immortalising the democratic and development-oriented ideals of the great Nigerian leader.

The prestigious biennial prize is structured to follow a rigorous process of nomination and subsequent screening by a selection committee made up of some of the most outstanding Nigerians. And for purposes of assuring cynical Nigerians whose first reaction will be to doubt the veracity of that claim, the membership of the committee is as follows: Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Chairman, Mr Justice Mohammed Uwais, Professor Akin Mabogunje, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Olorogun Felix Ibru, Professor O.O Akinkugbe, Bishop Emmanuel Gbonigi, Bishop Matthew Kukah, Professor Adetokunbo Lucas, Professor Ladipo Adamolekun, Professor Anya O. Anya, Mr Bola Akingbade, Professor (Mrs) Funmi Soetan and Mr Niyi Adegbonmire.

In line with the relevant guidelines, nominations for the maiden award were invited between June and September 2012 at the end of which, we were informed, an impressive number of nominations were received. These were then subjected to very rigorous and careful consideration after which Professor Wole Soyinka emerged the individual adjudged to have demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, many of the core values associated with Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo we know only too well as one for whom there was no higher purpose than the growth and development of the people he was called upon to lead. For him, the raison d’être of governance is the happiness of the greater majority of the people, and for that reason, he continues even in death, to inspire and to motivate serious leaders to work in the service of the people they lead. However, as much as we know Papa Awo, none of us can seriously ask the question: Professor Wole Who?

Who then is Awo maiden laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka?

Respected globally much more than many an African President , Professor Wole Soyinka, celebrated Nigerian playwright, poet, polyglot, social critic, teacher, moral crusader and political activist, is one man you can neither pidgeon hole nor compartmentalise. A man of impeccable integrity, first African recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986), Professor Soyinka wears his lifelong battle for justice like his birth suit. And in this regard, it was fascinating to hear his friend and classmate at the Government College, Ibadan, some sixty-something years ago, Professor Ladipo Akinkugbe, say at the award night, that free or in harness, the awardee can be trusted to fight for the cause of justice. Incidentally, Professor Soyinka wrote two books, ‘THE MAN DIED’ and ‘Ake: The years of Childhood’, right within the prison walls.

Whether in trenches or at the barricades in Nigeria where he is the nemesis of tyrants and absolutists, or whether he is fighting for racial and political justice in Europe or for gender equality and religious justice anywhere else in the world, you can bet your last dime, it is with the same seriousness and commitment.

Professor Wole Soyinka is truly a world citizen.

For him, therefore, the award night was one not to be missed in drawing attention to the many demons presently tearing at our very existence as a country; be it an in-explainable First Ladyism’s gluttony towards the ‘appropriation of public funds to feed her phantasmagorical projects, her illusions of power, delusions of grandeur and allied obsessions’ or ‘those who threaten the very existence of the inhabited world with their own agenda of eliminating its humanity – unless it adopts its own warped reading of reality’, gloating unashamedly: ‘We shall win, because we have nothing to lose. When any of us is killed, we rejoice, since we know he has gone to join the ranks of the martyrs, but when we kill the other side, they go into mourning’.

The laureate’s harsh words for those who, out of fear, were tongue-tied and demonstrated what he called ‘wrongful silence and inertia; the folding of arms and the buttoning of lips when leadership was desperately needed to lead and inflict exemplary punishment on violators of the freedom of belief, and existence of others’. Nor did he subscribe to those fanciful and escapist theories ‘in which we can comfortably bury our heads, taking refuge in propositions that all we have to do is eliminate poverty,eliminate unemployment, eliminate class distinctions, eliminate alienation, eliminate illiteracy to achieve that smooth paste in which all granules are atomised and attain the harmonious ideal’.

Much as this shopping list of contradictions must form a background consciousness of what is desirable, he holds that they only ‘provide us a cosseting picture of the totality’. It is, he says, an understandable tendency in human nature to concentrate on what seems performable: what seems beyond immediate solution had better be accorded proportionate space and attention’.

While Professor Soyinka was not so quick in declaring religion an enemy of humanity even though,’ time and again, it has proved a spur, a motivator, and a justification for the commission of some of the most horrifying crimes against humanity despite its fervent affirmations of peace, he affirmed, without the slightest hesitation, that ‘it is time that the world adopted a position that refuses to countenance religion as an acceptable justification for, excuse or extenuation of, crimes against humanity’.

In concluding, even though the ever graceful and reticent Dr (Mrs) Olatokunbo Awolowo Dosumu will loathe this, the piece will be incomplete without due mention of her untiring and totally commendable commitment to the Awolowo Foundation, a cause to which, without a doubt, she has committed her all since inception in 1992. Located in a serene part of town, the Foundation resides in a squeaky clean and absolutely inviting, tastefully manicured premises that can simply intoxicate with joy. This is where she daily coordinates the activities of a Foundation that so uncannyly represents the man Awo.

It was from here she put together the Maiden Awo Leadership Prize award night; an event that had in attendance the crème d la crème of the Nigerian political and business class, the academia as well as the spiritual and traditional.

It was obviously a night to remember at the well appointed Harbour Point, off Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos. It was an event that is certain to spur other eminent Nigerians to great works that should make them worthy nominees for the next award in 2015.

March 10, 2013