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The battle of two Orjis

Since the beginning of the year, the media has been awash with the story of the attempts by former Governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu to re-enter the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the resistance of such effort by the state leadership of the party led by Governor T.A. Orji and chairman, Senator Emma Nwaka. The scenario has unarguably drawn both critics and antagonists of both parties into the public domain.

However, an objective understanding of the Abia political situation can only be attained if we cast our minds back to the political dynamics in Abia State since 1999 and how it has evolved till date.

Such proper understanding will equally enable us understand why such effort by Orji Kalu evokes so much passion and emotions especially by Abia politicians and the stiff resistance to such re-entry by the current leadership of the party.

Orji Kalu in Abia State evokes so much emotion because his administration was one that came to power with so much support by a wide spectrum of the Abia population in 1999. It has to be stated that between 1999 and 2002 when there was still some pretence to governance, the Kalu administration constructed few short roads, which were concentrated in urban centres of Aba and Umuahia. However, by 2003 these roads which the Kalu administration used to showcase as its achievements had started showing signs of collapse due to poor conception and execution, and by 2006 most of them had actually collapsed. The gradual collapse of these roads was simultaneously followed by the collapse of a more fundamental value, which was the gradual collapse of democracy in Abia under Kalu’s watch, and its substitution with the rise of the dictatorship of the Kalu family.

How did this situation arise? Early in the administration of the Orji Uzor Kalu, the dictatorial tendencies of the Kalu family, the muzzling of dissent voices and alienation of critical segments of the Abia population were the main contradictions that generated an opposition group led by the trio of Onyema Ugochukwu, Ojo Maduekwe and Vincent Ogbulafor.

Towards the 2003 elections, the imperative of ensuring electoral victory for the PDP, had led to the resolution of the Abia leadership crises in favour of Kalu and his mother. Such resolution equally led to the ascendancy of Mrs Eunice Uzor Kalu as the de facto leader of PDP in the state.

The 2007 gubernatorial election was mainly between the PDP led by Chief Onyema Ugochukwu and the PPA, which had Chief T.A. Orji, a technocrat with friends across the divide as the candidate. While the PPA, which had Governor T.A. Orji as the candidate won the governorship election and majority of the state assembly seats, the PDP clinched the majority of the National Assembly seats and some state assembly seats. The situation however remained such that the Kalu family dictatorship was still in full gear. The power of the dictatorship was exercised in a manner that gave them unlimited control over several organs of the government thus leaving Governor T.A. Orji very little room to utilize the mandate given to him by the Abia electorates.

The situation was made worse by the monopolization of the big projects contracts by the Kalu family companies and their inability to deliver. The matter was not equally helped by a burgeoning security challenge that was threatening civic and economic activities especially in the urban areas of Aba and Umuahia. As if history was repeating itself, these contradictions caused implosive crisis within the PPA that brought about Governor T.A. Orji seeking for another platform to contest for the 2011 governorship election. This development metamorphosed into the merger of Orji’s PPA large followership with the PDP. The fallout was a sweeping victory by the PDP in all the contested positions.

It has to be noted that Orji’s magic wand that made this history in Abia politics were his candour and exceptional humility that paid off in unifying the political bigwigs and reintegrating the state to the mainstream of national politics.

The most significant aspect of the 2011 elections was the round rejection of the Kalu family dictatorship as symbolized by not only the rejection of all PPA candidates but also the eventual woeful failure of Kalu who contested for Abia North Senatorial election. He lost despite his empty boasts and grandstanding.

Over the past two years, this has guaranteed a quantum leap in governance in both qualitative and quantitative terms. At least, democracy has finally been restored to the people under the current leadership of Governor Orji and the PDP in the state ably led by a tested and self-effacing politician Senator Nwaka. The evidence of the new order can be taken from a little incident that happened a few months ago at Arochukwu Local Government chapter of the PDP, where the LGA Chairmanship position became vacant and a successor-Hon Obinna Nwankwo was elected in a transparent and constitutionally stipulated manner. There was no interference from either the state governor or the state leadership of the party. Such a thing would not have happened under the former era.

Another milestone of Governor Orji’s visionary leadership is the synergy and harmonious working relationship between the state government and the Federal Government. This has brought about a number of federal government projects to Abia State. Some of the projects include: the Abiriba-Nkporo-Eso-Edda Road, rehabilitation of Ohafia-Arochukwu Road, re-opening of Osisioma NNPC Depot, the reconstruction of federal roads by FERMA, the Independent Power Project at Alaoji, the Labour Institute in Umuahia, etc. These harvests of projects were in contrast to the locust era of the Kalu family when Orji Kalu engaged the Federal Government in meaningless confrontation.

Again, the achievement of elite consensus has enabled the state government to concentrate effort at pursuing its legacy development agenda undisturbed by unnecessary political bickering and scheming. The most outstanding example of the healthy political environment is the numerous construction sites all over the state and building modern institutional monuments in Umuahia.

Those who know Orji Kalu well will agree that his sudden re-appearance to Abia scene after two years in the cooler, and his desperation to re-enter the PDP after re-organizing his PPA will only have one agenda in mind and that is to cause confusion and balkanize the Abia PDP, while repositioning his party (PPA) to actualize their plan for 2015. It is too late in the day for Abia people to be dragged back to Egypt by Orji Kalu and his band of buccaneering adventurers.

• Chief Ike is former chairman Arochukwu LGA, Abia State.

February 26, 2013
2015: So you want to be president?

Until lately, few of the many puzzles the first-time visitor to Nigeria encounters could have been more intriguing than the warning in bold letters they find on the façade of many homes in many of the bigger towns: THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE.

“If it’s not for sale,” the visitor must wonder in his or her innocence, “why call attention to that fact? Surely, any person offering to buy a house that is not on the market cannot complain if they roughen him up and throw him into the streets on the perfectly sensible ground that he could well be an intruder with criminal intent on his mind.

It could be worse, of course. The owners of the property could just as easily – and with greater profit to their own equanimity – hand him over to area boys forever lurking in the neighbourhood and abandon him to their not-so-tender mercies. Or they could march him to the nearest police station, serenaded by the jeers and taunts and curses of passers-by, and turn him in as a burglar caught in the act

Even in the more genteel section of town, offering to buy a house that has not been placed on the market is a fraught proposition. When it is proclaimed in bold letters on the property that it is not for sale, the contumacy is compounded.

As if this puzzle was not mystifying enough, a new one that cannot fail to raise questions in the visitor’s mind about the political rationality of the natives has now been added.

Hardly a day passes without a political figure proclaiming in full-page newspaper advertisements in lavish colour, on radio and television, on billboards and wall posters and in handbills, that he is not contemplating running for higher office (usually for president), has never contemplated such a move, and will never contemplate it.

To leave absolutely no room for any misreading, the statement usually adds for effect that any person who asserts, suggests, insinuates, implies, or in any other way creates the impression, by word or image or any other means whatsoever, that the declarant has ever harboured, now harbours or will ever harbor such an ambition, belongs in a lunatic asylum and should be rushed there without further delay.

You could hardly blame any visitor who concluded on encountering such abject disavowal again and again that aspiring to higher elected office is the greatest political crime in this realm. You would have a hard time convincing the visitor that political ambition has not been criminalised – at least, not yet.

It was not always like this.

Back when politics was politics and politicians were politicians, you adopted one of two strategies if you were desirous of climbing higher on what Disraeli called the greasy pole.

You proclaimed your desire from the rooftop and as loudly as possible, thus serving notice on anyone with any eye on the same position that he or she would have to reckon with you.

This strategy also carried with it the advantage of primacy, which is no small matter in politics. If you were the first to declare, you or your supporters could always label anyone declaring after you a spoiler driven by no higher motive than envy and malice.

Nor is that all. If you cannot silence them altogether, jumping out ahead of the pack could also be an effective way of serving notice to all those professional malcontents who are forever kvetching about one thing or another to keep their intrusive eyes off you or face the consequences of their temerity.

The late Godwin Daboh understood this strategy very well. Even while the rules of the game were yet to be fashioned, Daboh would declare that he was going to run for governor of Benue. Thereafter, if anyone wrote or said anything he didn’t like, he would threaten to file a lawsuit seeking compensatory damages on the ground that the speech or publication had ruined his chances of being elected governor. . .

Daboh had his faults, but you could never accuse him of reticence.

The second strategy is to keep everyone in suspense, without affirming an intent to run or denying it – the kind of strategy Dr Goodluck Jonathan has been employing with regard to the presidential election scheduled for 2015.

Those “on ground,” to employ a delicious Nigerian locution, say that his “body language” points powerfully to his seeking a second substantive term in 2015. But the wily resident of Aso Rock has steadfastly refused to be goaded into saying anything remotely definitive on the issue.

“It is too early to talk about it” has been his stock response when pressed on the matter. He could for good measure add that the whole thing is a distraction when so much that has been malformed, deformed or unformed is awaiting transformation. From this vantage point, he can survey the entire field, identify potential challengers, and neutralise them on the threshold.

Could this be what has happened to Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, or are their current travails the products of pure coincidence?

No sooner was it bruited that the one might be running for president in 2015, with the other as vice president, than the political environment began to crackle. Though billed only to play second fiddle in the rumoured project, Amaechi frantically bought acres of pages in the newspapers and large chunks of prime time on radio and television, not forgetting billboards and handbills and social media, to proclaim that he had no plan to run for president or vice president.

Apparently, they did not take him at his word.

So, knock him off his perch as chair of the influential National Governors Forum. Failing that, create a separate caucus of PDP governors with a complaisant governor as chairman, to dilute whatever influence Amaechi may still muster. He may be governor of an oil-rich state, but he knows only too well that he can be brought to heel by the Federal Might.

Did I hear someone just say that the EFCC is waiting in the wings?

In this political season, fear of the EFCC is the key to self-preservation. Consider the cruel swiftness with which it was deployed against Timipre Sylva, former governor of Dr Jonathan’s home state, Bayelsa. Recall how it was pressed into service to rein in one party in what was essentially a war of words between protagonists of the previous order and the present one.

After his son was arrested, charged with trafficking in foreign currency and denied bail, Sule Lamido, who had been playing the waiting game, announced that he would not be a candidate for president in 2015.

In the months ahead, we are likely to see many more political figures declaring in the most emphatic manner possible that they have no plan to run for president, possibly going so far as to echo American Civil War general, William Sherman, who warned those seeking to draft him to run for president, that if nominated, they would not accept and if elected, they would not serve.

The PDP might well end up begging Dr Jonathan to run for re-election in 2015 because no one in the party currently holding high elected office is willing to risk being smothered in the EFCC’s net.

But the “No Vacancy In Aso Rock” opera, led by Tony “The Fixer” Anenih, had better not take the curtain call yet. Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu for one is not in the least fazed. He says he is not afraid of running for president and will announce his plans at the opportune moment. He has even summoned the audacity to assert that Dr Jonathan, having solemnly undertaken to hold office for just one term, cannot in good conscience run for another.

Bravo, Talban Minna.

Expect the EFCC or the ICPC or both of them to come calling shortly.

February 26, 2013
The bond of honour

The evolving story of President Goodluck Jonathan’s one-term pact with governors invokes a critical signpost of the statesman: honour.

Honour is not only a virtue, it is life. History has plied us with many men and women who have amplified this rare human light. Constitutions swear by, with it Mandela has gained immortality, Washington crafted the United States presidency on it, Jesus died for it. All other virtues – love, courage, loyalty, truth – find validation in the acts of honour.

Honour dwarfs money, reinforces friendship, disdains consequences, affirms heroism. A love story slacks when it lacks honour. And it is because, against all odds, it is truth between partners that consummates all. In Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horsemen, the epic theme is the failure of honour at the last moment. Okonkwo, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, dies for the honour of his people, even if tragically the novelist propagates surrender.

When the news of the pact broke, it conjured a recent absurdity: Dame Patience Jonathan’s banquet. She threw the party to celebrate her recovery from a terrible illness, which still remains nameless. The President and his crew of publicists denied that the woman was embroiled in so serious a situation. Just like the stories of the ailing governors who wrapped their medical narratives in a cloud, we knew what was going on and we did not know what was going on until we knew what was going on.

But in the banquet last week Sunday we saw the extravagances: the extravagances of dances and choreography, the extravagances of flatteries, the extravagances of sartorial vanity and the extravagances of money. But the worst of the extravagances was lies. The same people, including the President, who said all was well or routine with the First Lady came to celebrate with her over the fact that all was not well before it became well. It was a banquet of lies because the basis of it was a lack of honour. Before the party we witnessed another extravagance: of curses. She poured woe on those who said she had died. It is not the sort of civility we expect from the first family.

So, if the President could not be faithful to Nigerians in smaller matters such as telling the truth to the Nigerian people on his wife’s situation, why should the governors expect him to be faithful about a matter such as fulfilling a promise to abdicate an ambition to be president.

Governor Babangida Aliyu is an ebullient man, whose dramatic flair in his public utterances is sometimes matched by a stunning candour. When he means it, he would say exactly what he means by saying exactly what he means. And for many in the media, the news blindsided us. How come no one had this scoop and the word was not out there to haunt Jonathan through his campaign and the early year of his Presidency?

Was it that the governors had such infinite confidence in the man that he would not renege? Or was it naivety, losing the art to find his mind’s construction in his face? Maybe President Jonathan meant it before he did not mean it, especially after he settled to the epic pomp, grandeur and dizzy comfort of the throne? The aphrodisiac has taken root. The President’s spokesman, Ahmed Gulak, griped that Jonathan did not win Niger State. He implied that since the northern governors as “field commanders” did not capture the North for Jonathan, then the President owed no one any obligation, pact or no pact. Gulak has fallen into Jonathan’s moral gulag.

The governors who sat – 20 in all – were probably lost in amnesia at the time. Two governors who were there confirmed to me that the meeting held, one of them told me how the President was almost moved to tears at the proceedings. But by December 2010, when the deal was allegedly brokered, Jonathan was pooh-poohing another pact of honour: zoning.

Jonathan denied that such agreement existed. Constitutional maestros blindsided him by telling him that it was in his party constitution. He countered by appealing to his constitutional right. He had the right to run, but not the honour to step down. The same Jonathan swiveled back shamelessly to zoning in doling out positions. Why did the governors sign another pact when they knew all this?

Jonathan’s men deny it, but when did honour matter in this Presidency? Even if there was no pact between the governors and the President, the President has not earned the right for us to believe him based on what that Presidency has turned itself to with its serial untruths.

“It is not titles that honour men,” wrote Nicolo Machiavelli who knew a thing or two about opportunistic lying, “but men who honour titles.” The President and his men have not honoured the Presidency because what they said have not settled their differences with what they do. He has said many things about governance, about infrastructure, agriculture, education, but the chasm between reality and promise is a big gulf.

Was it not the same President who said that he had no hand in the intrigues to oust former Bayelsa State Governor Timipre Sylva when the heat was on and all fingers pointed in his direction? But did he not come out in Yenagoa in his unforgettable stone-throwing speech to say that he was the one behind it because the ex-governor did not perform and singled out an uncompleted hotel as evidence?

I don’t expect the President to say anything now about the so-called pact. Even if he signed it, he can still invoke, as in the case of zoning, his constitutional right to run. But it is a matter some have challenged in court, and the jury is still out. It is not a matter of law but of honour.

It is an irony of juridical history that the law came into being to inspire and preserve the honour of men, yet men can hide under it to subvert honour. Hence the American essayist D. H. Thoreau said, “The law never made anyone a whit more just.” That was the frustration of law theorists like the eminent Ronald Dworkin who died recently. The author of Law’s Empire argued that moral principles were superior to all else in interpreting the law.

The pressure to give up the transient comforts of the now often militates against the pursuit of honour. That is why gallantry among soldiers, the sacrifice of a family member, the desire to be a statesman and not a politician over lofty principles often fail in human societies. That is the challenge of our politics, not only in the PDP, but every party in the land. But Jonathan, as the man on top of it, has not shown examples.

“I would prefer even to fail than to win by fraud,” wrote playwright Sophocles. When you fail for honour, you win for society. That is the challenge before Jonathan.

February 25, 2013
Lagos bomb: matters arising

Given the way police authorities reacted to the bomb blast that killed a man and seriously injured another in Lagos, one had the initial urge to treat the incident as an isolated one that should not be blown out of proportion. This self-imposed caution was further dictated by the security challenges the nation is currently passing through. The fact that the explosion occurred under a seemingly innocuous bridge and did not take the shape of the terror attacks common in the northern parts of the country also combined to take the shine off that isolated but deadly bomb attack.

But when my little son came back from school and asked “Daddy is it true that Boko Haram is coming to Lagos”, it dawned on me that the incident cannot possibly be played down no matter how hard one tries. My first reaction was that of surprise and then I asked what he meant by that. He told me he heard Boko Haram was coming and that they had already exploded a bomb that killed some people in Lagos. According to him, the rumour of the impending invasion of the sect was everywhere.

It then struck me that there are issues the bomb blast at the FESTAC-Amuwo Odofin link bridge has brought to the front burner despite the efforts of the Lagos Commissioner of Police, Umar Manko to play it down. Initial reports that filtered quoted Manko to have attributed the blast to electrical fault.

But when he visited the scene of the incident, he reversed himself and acknowledged the bomb even as he described it as a minor blast. He said “what happened here was a minor explosion. The improvised device that went off was not the type Nigerians were use to. It is the one common with torch battery”.

It is apparent that the police chief wanted to disabuse the minds of the public from constructing parallels between this and Boko Haram attacks for fear of panicking. That is why he was quick to add that it is not the type we are used to. That also, is the reason he likened the device to the one common with torch battery.

But whether torch battery or some other lesser contrivance, the device got the targets and dealt a death blow on them. It left horror in its trail such that the casualty figure could have been much higher were it detonated in a crowded area. This singular realization and the fact that it is the first of its kind since such attacks commenced in the north may have combined to spread the rumor that Boko Haram has infiltrated the state. Though the suspicion that it could be the handiwork of that religious sect is a very remote possibility, yet the incident bears positive correlation with the culture of violence introduced into the nation’s political landscape by the Boko Haram insurgents.

For all one may wish to care, Improvised Explosive Devices IED’s have since been popularized by the insurgents such that it has sunk deep down the sub-conscious mind of the people. Frequent reports of improvised explosives hurled at the JTF, hidden along the road side and planted here and there, have combined to give the impression that bombs can easily be manufactured by whosoever cares.

And in an impoverished society likes ours battling with myriads of social problems including high level criminality, the consequences could be very devastating. That is perhaps, the potent danger the incident has brought to the fore. That is the monster Boko Haram has unleashed unto this country. And since one monster begets another, it is not surprising that criminally-minded people will find it easy tool to eliminate opponents and settle personal scores. That is the real danger we are being made to face by virtue of that attack. Perhaps, the only bomb attack in Lagos before now was the one that killed veteran journalist Dele Giwa during the regime of Babangida. Though the nation did not imbibe the culture of letter bombs which that incident tried to introduce, there is nothing to give comfort that the use of improvised bombs for sundry devious objectives will not fester. That is the real danger now confronting us all.

If our recent experiences are anything to go by, then we are in for another trouble. That was how kidnapping started in a very small scale involving the taking into hostage of foreign oil workers for ransom. It soon blossomed to an all-comers affair, degenerating to a very ridiculous level. In Abia State, it turned out an all comers affair as even commoners and local travellers quickly became easy prey. We saw how that devious activity held the state prostrate and virtually killed Aba until the collective might of the federal government had to be massively deployed to redeem the situation. The same pattern was toed by 419 and similar fraudulent activities. Till date, both criminal tendencies still fester despite concerted efforts by the government to make them a dangerous source of human engagement. That is the danger of importing high-tech criminality into a society that is still grappling with the daunting challenges of development.

It is not unlikely that these were the fears that informed the casual manner the police set out to play down the wider implications of that explosion. But no matter how hard they try, it is obvious that something with dire repercussions for peace and security in the country has just happened. This is more so, as there is everything to suggest this singular incident had as its main objective, the settlement of personal scores. The target was Chief Pius Oladele, Chairman of the Sand Dealers and Dredgers Association in the area. This is not in any doubt. The bomb was planted around a dwarf brick wall beside the bank of the canal where Oladele usually sat to relax. The security agencies might as well have some other lead on the matter but every indication point to an assassination mission. And this makes the entire affair more frightening.

If Nigerians have come to that point where improvised explosives can be freely used to eliminate opponents, then every body is in trouble. Before now, the use of hired assassins had been the vogue. We also know how difficult it has been for the law enforcement agencies to resolve the riddle many of these have posed. Now, we are being led into improvised explosives that will further task the energies of those charged with maintenance of law and order. The difficulty in fighting Boko Haram terrorism is instructive. We may soon be confronting IED terrorism.

The police have said they are on top of the situation. We have heard this worn out cliché over and over again. They have arrested some suspects. We hope they will make serious breakthrough into this issue such that will discourage other evil minded people from taking resort to it to settle personal scores. But the issues must be that weighty since the process of making bombs, planting and detonating same could be a very tasking and risky enterprise. For now, let us watch and see what the police will make of this incident.

February 25, 2013
A Moment to Reflect on the Talakawa Condition in Nigeria and Our World

Talakawa: Hausa, noun: Of or pertaining to the poor. The poor as a social category, as a community of the desperately needy deserving of the solicitude of the wealthy and powerful

Herald: English, noun. 1. A person, event or thing that precedes or comes before; forerunner, harbinger. 2. A person, event or thing that proclaims or announces: A good newspaper should be a herald for truth.

Dictionary.com (online)

This Sunday, February 24, 2013, I begin this weekly column in The Nation. Readers accustomed to reading my column, Talakawa Liberation Courier, in The Sunday Guardian, will immediately recognize that there is an echo of that column’s title in the title of this new column in another newspaper: Talakawa Liberation Herald. I could have retained the former title in this new discursive context, this new journalistic space. But since my “migration” from The Guardian, so to speak, represents for me a momentous event in my journalistic work of more than forty years in the Nigerian press, I decided that it was necessary for me to also change the title of the column.

Perhaps some months or maybe even a year or two from now, I shall write fully on why I left The Guardian for which I have written continuously since it was founded in 1983, perhaps the only one left among the old or aging writers, academics and commentators that were there at the beginning of the Guardian group. For now, all I will allow myself to say is that I left without rancour or bitterness but with a great deal of sadness and anger. In the meantime, my “migration” to The Nation, I feel, is an occasion that provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the column itself, hoping in the process to clarify both for myself and for my readers what it is I have tried to do – and continue hoping to do – with and through the column. In a nutshell, this exercise entails the question of the informing perspectives, ideas and values on which the column is based. And of course, with regard to these perspectives, ideas and values, the central concept is the term “Talakawa”. Concerning this concept, I wish to address two central propositions, two cardinal theses that the readers of this piece will be as startling and as confounding as I find them. What are these two theses or propositions?

In our country, Nigeria and in many regions and nations of the world, age-old cultural definitions and social meanings attached to the poor as a definite, recognizable demographic category are changing beyond recognition to include social groups and strata that would never have been remotely close to the actual and potential ranks of the desperately poor or needy. That is the first of our two propositions. Permit me to expatiate on it carefully.

Now, I do not speak Hausa and neither can I claim to have deep ethnographic knowledge of Hausa culture and society. What I do know about the meanings attached to the term “Talakawa” comes mostly from information I have gleaned over the decades from colleagues and comrades who both speak the language and have insiders’ ethnographic knowledge of its culture and traditions. From these colleagues and comrades, I have learnt that with the addition of the suffix “wa” to any ethnic or social group, a distinct collective identity is inscribed on the designated group. Examples are “Hausawa” or “Yarubawa” for the Hausa and the Yoruba ethnic groups respectively. I have learnt also from these “native informants” that in the wake of the oil-boom and the rise of a class of arriviste nouveau riches whose special symbol of new-found, lavishly spent wealth was the Mercedes Benz, the term “Benzawa” was coined on this same principle of adding that suffix, “wa” to identify and draw attention to a particular social group. [Incidentally, in Kiswahili, we have “Wa-Benzi” for the Hausa “Benzawa”, the same word serving reverse roles as suffix in Hausa and prefix in Kiswahili!]

At any rate, the most important thing that I wish to draw attention to in the term “Talakawa” is implied in the first of the two epigraphs to this piece. This is the idea of the poor as a community of the destitute and the needy deserving of the benevolence of the wealthy and the powerful. Behind this idea is the historic fact that in many traditional and strongly hierarchical societies of the world, most of the poor remain poor generation after generation. Through unexpected good fortune, a few individuals in a particular generation might escape the scourge of desperate poverty but for the most part, most don’t and do not even expect to. To repeat: that is what the term “Talakawa”, in its traditional or received historical and cultural meanings, basically implies: a social identity, a worldview in which life circumstances and chances are more or less permanently fixed. I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect that this is what many readers of this column will instinctively think about when they see the term “Talakawa” in the title of this column.

But capitalism in all parts of the world has changed that profile forever, giving new twists to what is involved in being within the ranks of the very poor, thereby opening up the range of experiences attached to being a member of the “Talakawa”. Abstractly, theoretically, there is no single modern capitalist country or economy in the world in which moving out of age-old, generation-to-generation poverty is completely or effectively blocked from anybody. People move from rural farming communities to the cities, they move from one job to another, and they move from one trade or profession to new ones perpetually, all in the hope, the promise that they stand a chance of having better lives than their parents and grandparents. But except in the richest countries in the world with high-income economies, most people in our country and our world in fact remain poor and only a sprinkling among their offspring will have better lives than they had.

“Talakawa” has historically become a broad, inclusive term that includes millions of factory workers and wage labourers who earn significantly less than the national, regional or local minimum wage; hundreds of thousands of vendors and hawkers whose daily and monthly trade turnovers are unbelievably paltry; uncountable numbers of grossly underpaid teachers and junior clerical staff; multitudes of pensioners and old people without solvent children to act as their social safety net in their last years. As I have repeatedly tirelessly in my column in The Guardian, 7 out of every 10 Nigerians live below the absolute poverty level; in some parts of the country, the figure is close to 8 out of ten in rural areas. In other words, and to use an analogy to drive home the point, like the group of animals that when molting completely shed their old skins, the term “Talakawa” has taken on new meanings, new expressions that were unthinkable in the traditional meanings attached to it. This is why unlike the “Talakawa” of old, the new “Talakawa” cannot expect – and at any rate will never get – the consistent, regular paternalistic benevolence of the wealthy and the powerful; they must fight it out by themselves, with the non-paternalistic help and solidarity of members of the elite who take up their cause. This leads logically to the second of our two propositions which, in my opinion, is far more confounding than the first proposition.

In the new millennium, the demographic constituencies of the “Talakawa” have been massively expanded by new patterns in which the young and the highly educated are significantly represented. Two years ago, the Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, gave the figure of over 20 million as the statistic for unemployed high school and university graduates with no prospects of employment anywhere in sight. This alarming figure is further compounded by the fact that the median age for Nigeria is 19. For those unfamiliar with the concept of the national median age, what it basically means is that 50% of Nigerians are below the age of 19 while 50% is above that age. If you raise the computational age to 30, then you get more than 65% of the Nigerian population below 30. In other words, there is a vast demographic bulge at the younger age strata of our population and this bulge feeds right into present and future specters of being and/or becoming “Talakawa” among considerable numbers of our the young of our society.

We might choose to take some comfort in the fact that this phenomenon of great numbers of young and educated people falling into joblessness and poverty is indeed a global phenomenon, the effect – and resultant cause – of spirals of global crises in world capitalism. As the saying goes, misery loves company! In some European countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland, the figures for unemployed, educated and restless youths are close to 40%. And drawing from a personal experience, I have simply been stunned by the number of my undergraduate students at Harvard University who, in the last half a decade or so, have been expressing to me grave, terrified misgivings concerning what the future holds in stock for them.

Each region and nation of the world must of course seek its own answers, its own solutions to the specter of being and becoming “Talakawa” – without of course being indifferent to issues of great inequalities between the various regions of the world. In the case of Nigeria, I wish to give as much emphasis as I can muster in saying that poverty, or the “Talakawa” condition, is the one single factor that unites all our ethnic and regional communities. Show me any one single geo-political zone, any state or group of states in the country where the poverty rate is better than the 7 out of 10 absolute poverty level and I will eat my words. Show me any part of the country in which, no matter how well the elites are doing politically and economically compared to other regional, zonal and ethnic competitors in the political class, the masses of the people are faring better than ordinary folks in other parts of the country and I will mortify my spirit by attending an all-night vigil of one of our most fanatical evangelical sects!

Indubitably, the “Talakawa “ question is the bottom line of all the crises bedeviling our country since it is both directly and indirectly linked to all the other crises and challenges. This, by the way, is why this column can never possibly exhaust the range of issues it can and will take up. Beyond this and more impersonally, I would argue that the “Talakawa” condition ought to be the first item of discussion in a sovereign national conference that will sooner or later have to be convened if Nigeria is to survive as one unified, egalitarian and democratic society. In the weeks, months and years ahead, I hope to join my voice to the voices of other members of the “commentariat” [this playfully ludic term is, I believe, Victor Ifijeh’s] in The Nation and other organs of popular and progressive national conversation in our country

February 24, 2013
Evidence of further marginalisation of core Southwest

As is often the case when there are matters of great moment, this column is being yielded today to Chief S.B Falegan, Economist and Banker, former CBN Director of Research, and governor Kayode Fayemi’s deliberate pick for the Chairmanship of the Ekiti State Sure-P Committee, who takes a deep and dispassionate look at other areas of South-West marginalisation by the Jonathan administration. Happy reading.

I hope and believe those who are speaking about the marginalisation of southwest Nigeria are not limiting their comments to human capital alone, but should look also at structural capital especially infrastructural development. The recent announcement by the Federal Government to construct 10 new rail lines as appeared in PUNCH of Monday December 24 2012 page 26 (business and economy) further confirms and reinforces the discrimination by the Federal Government against the Southwest of Nigeria especially the Core south west of Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and Oyo States. The information as contained in page 26 of that paper is partly reproduced below

The Federal Government has announced plans to construct 10 new rail lines to cover other parts of the country currently not linked by rail. The Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, said on Friday that already feasibility studies had commenced on seven of the proposed railway lines. Umar, who spoke in Lagos at the inauguration of the Lagos-Kano train service and resumption of fuel haulage by train from Lagos to Offa, said that the feasibility studies on three other planned rail line would be done in 2013 . He gave the total distance of the areas to be covered by the seven rail lines as 3,421kilometeres. The minister said that at the completion of the feasibility studies, the railway development project would be undertaken through public private partnership arrangement. “Upon final construction of these lines, it will improve mass movement of Nigerians and open windows for rapid economic development and regional interaction,” he said Umar stressed that all the new rail lines would be constructed as standard gauge track for the movement of fast trains. According to him, the new lines will cover Lagos-Sagamu-Ijebu Ode-Ore-Benin (300km); Benin-Agbor-Onitsha-Nnewi-Owerri-Aba, with additional line from Onitsha-Enugu-Abakaliki (500km).

It also included a 615km-high-speed rail track from Lagos to Abuja, passing through Lagos, Oshogbo and Baro. The minister listed Ajaokuta (Eganyi) – Obajana-Jakuru-Baro-Abuja, with additional line from Ajaokuta to Otukpo (533km); Zaira – Kaura Namoda-Sakoto-Ilela-Birnin Koni (520km) as other areas to be covered. Others are costal rail line linking Benin-Sapele-Warri-Yanogoa-Port Harcourt – Aba-Uyo- Akampa-Ikom-Obudu Cattle Ranch (673km); and Ajaokuta- Eganyi- Lokoja Abaji-abuja line (280km). The other three lines, whose feasibility contracts would be awarded next year, are Port Harcourt Unuahia-Enugu-Makurdi-Lafia-Kaduna-Bauchi-Gombe-Biu-Maiduguri; Ikom-Ogoja-Kastina Ala-Wukari-Jalinhgo-Yola-Maiduguri and Kani-Nguru-Gashua-Damaturu-Maduguri-Gamborun-Ngala.

With ten new railway lines, that exclude the core southwest, pray does the phrase “other parts of the country currently not linked by rail” include Oyo-Ekiti-Ondo? Pray why is such planned railway not extended between Oyo State (Ibadan) and Ekiti State (Ado-Ekiti) to Ondo State (Akure)? Pray how will these economic benefits extend to those neglected states? Pray how do they benefit from economic integration so orchestrated? Indeed, this deliberate policy has further shifted the operations of companies like Lafarge Wapco Cement, Dangote Cement etc who operate enormously heavy duty trucks and trailers to the neglected states to further destroy the few federal roads and those being reconstructed by these neglected states from their meager funds. You need to travel Ilesha-Akure-Owo-Benin road to see the daily carnage. Ekiti State is completely caught off between Akure and Ado—Ekiti unless you go via Akure-Igbara Oke-Igbaraodo-Ado in a circular way. Why should Okitipupa-Ondo-Akure-Benin road not be dualised? Or the Akure-Ado-Ekiti-Omuaran road from the same SURE-P? More questions are begging for answers.

The Role of SURE-P As an instrument of nation-wide intervention development strategy.

In its decision to remove oil subsidy, the Federal Government set up a subsidy withdrawal organ (SURE-P) which is to use the proceeds for financing development projects nationwide While each state is free to use its own share for projects of its choice, the federal share is to cover the whole federation in key areas. SURE-P, in concept, coverage, and policy implementation discriminates against the Southwest, especially the Core Southwest as shown in SURE-P documentation.

Item 2.9 List of Road Projects: of the 1,326km roads, the 295km allocated to SW/SS covers Benin-Ore-Sagamu dual carriage way. It should be observed that the Benin-Ore-Sagamu dual carriage way has always been in the annual federal budget for the past 20 years. The NATION of Saturday 16th February 2013 page 6 has the story that the Federal Government has obtained fund from the SURE-P to construct the dualisation of Abuja-Benin Road. Yet the federal authorities are aware of the appalling state of federal roads in middle and core S/W (Ondo-Ekiti-Osun): Akure (Ondo State) to Ilesha in Osun State. The same is true of Iyamoye (Kwara State) to Omuo, Ikole, Ogotun in (Ekiti State) to Osun State. Ekiti State has the shortest federal roads in the federation and yet not one km of these roads is considered worthy.

Item E1:33 Irrigation Projects: 19 irrigation projects are listed with 4 going to NE, 3 for NW, 3 for SE and 3 for SS. The two listed for SW go to Ogun and Oyo State as if those are the only states in SW. The Ero Water Dam and Lake, covering 11kilometres in Ekiti State is one of the largest water/irrigation projects in Nigeria established at the same time as those listed above in other parts of the country which are to benefit from SURE-P. Why should it not qualify for SURE-P like others listed above?

Item E2:34 Rural and Urban Water Supply Projects: The little Osse mentioned in Ekiti State is put there merely to demonstrate federal presence and involvement. The Ero Water dam mentioned above can combine both irrigation for agriculture and water supply while Arinta Water falls should quality for tourism under the federal scheme. Item 36&37: Selected Power Projects: What is needed here from the Federal Government is a second 132/33KV power substation project in the northern part of Ekiti and the urgent completion of the on-going one which is no more adequate for the state capital not to talk of its adequacy for the whole state. If the Federal Government can embark on all these projects with or in addition to SURE-P funds, why is none of the federal roads as shown earlier in these core southwest not receiving federal attention?While our legislators must continue to be vigilant and alive to their responsibility to the electorate, they must not underestimate the power of policy formulators who deliberately and mischievously plan and execute such policies of discrimination to their sectional advantage. That is why I appreciate the action and vigilance of Senator Femi Ojudu (Ekiti Central) in detecting the fraud in the 2013 budget proposal for road construction where one or two roads in other states were shown as Ekiti State roads.

Senator Femi Ojudu should go and take a critical look at the Dredging and Canalisation work at Ureje River under the Federal Ministry of Environment in Abuja. The contract was awarded for N1.2billion and reported to have been completed and paid for in 2010 whereas no work has been done on the site which is already overgrown with weeds. The contractor who quoted for N890 million for the job lost out.

I have at my disposal a list of 44 Water Pump Projects by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources for Ekiti Local Government areas in the 2012 appropriation act which a detailed examination shows are mere repetition of previous years’ appropriation. Yet there is the impression that the projects for the bore holes have been executed and completed. That brings into question the role of Benin-Owena River Basin authority in Ekiti State development.

Walls have ears, windows have eyes.

MUYIWA IT’S YOUR DAY.

With thanks to the Almighty God, here’s wishing my dear friend and brother, Chief Olumuyiwa Runsewe of Singafrique Engineering Ltd, Lagos, happy birthday as he celebrates the 65th of his glorious and chequered life today. Long may you live in great health, my brother.

February 24, 2013
Yoruba marginalisation: To what effect? 2

Another aspect of actual marginalisation is the type that affects all Yoruba citizens. This pertains to direct and indirect neglect of infrastructure in the Yoruba region. Such neglect appears to be designed to disempower and discomfort the generality of Yoruba people. All the federal roads in the Yoruba region are in a state that destroys Yoruba business and frustrates citizens that travel on such roads. Even federal roads in Yoruba states that contribute significantly to non-oil revenue for the country are generally neglected. For example, the roads to Apapa, the country’s largest port for goods into Nigeria, Niger, and even Mali, are all neglected by the federal government. Most businesses that bring VAT revenue to the federal government from Lagos, Ibadan, and other Yoruba cities where consumers abound are slowed down by badly maintained federal roads that connect various Yoruba states: Lagos-Ibadan; Lagos-Benin; Ibadan-Ilesa-Akure; Ibadan-Osogbo-Offa; Ife-Ore; Ibadan-Ogbomoso; Agege-Abeokuta; etc. Most Yoruba states that produce cocoa, coffee, and other exportable produce are hobbled by the neglect of the roads from such states to the port city of Lagos.

In addition, the Jonathan administration gave the impression during his campaign for office in 2011 that his government would deregulate or privatise establishment of rail transport system. It has not happened since he got elected. It is even being rumoured that some Nigerians selected to meet legislators during the one-day consultation over constitutional amendments last November have said (who,where and how?) that they do not want the federal government to allow states to have any role in establishment and running of rail transport. To be fair to Dr. Jonathan, he did not create most of the problems, but what can be honestly held against him is that the core of his election promise was (and still is) Transformation. Certainly, the Yoruba region has seen in the last few years more of regression than transformation in terms of infrastructure.

We said last week that Jonathan’s main problem with regards to exclusionary government policies and practices is that he sings the promise of transformation to the nation while his government excludes the Yoruba region (more than any other region) from access to federal government jobs and federally-funded infrastructure. And this is despite the fact that the Yoruba region constitutes about 22% of the nation’s population.

A lot has been said in the media about Jonathan’s direct exclusion of Yoruba from the federal public service. There have been reports that many of the federal ministries and agencies under the president’s watch have encouraged retirement of more Yoruba (than people from other regions) from the country’s public service and hiring of fewer Yoruba (than people of the other five regions) into the service. But very little is reported about indirect disempowerment of the Yoruba region under President Jonathan. There have been several subtle but striking efforts by the Jonathan administration to slow down development in the Southwest.

It is obvious that Lagos State is the country’s most cosmopolitan state. It is generally referred to by politicians and regular citizens as Mini Nigeria, a state that has more people from all the nationalities in the country than any other state. It is also common knowledge that Lagos State has more Yoruba people than any other state in the federation. It is no exaggeration to say that all extended families in Yoruba section of the country have their most-endowed sons and daughters in Lagos State. In terms of intellectual and material resources, Lagos State stands out as the most developed state not only in the Southwest but also in the entire country. In effect, any effort to unhinge the economy of Lagos State is a sure way to unsettle the average Yoruba family.

In a way similar to Obasanjo’s hostile attitude to growth and development in the Yoruba region in general and Lagos State in particular, the Jonathan administration appears to relish unsettling of Lagos State’s economy and by extension the economy of the entire Yoruba region. In the time of Obasanjo, the federal government did everything possible to stop federal allocations to Lagos State on the excuse that the state created additional local governments. In the case of Jonathan, he demonstrates insensitivity to efforts by his government to disrupt development efforts by Lagos State government.

There is a report that the Jonathan administration is set to introduce a special petrol consumption tax that is to be collected and spent by the federal government or its agency. If more than 30% of all vehicles in the country are used in Lagos and over 50% of all vehicles in the country are used in the Southwest, it is clear that any effort to introduce petrol consumption tax that is to be controlled by the federal government is tantamount to denying the Southwest of additional revenue that should come to the region from such consumption tax. As if the loss of revenue by Lagos State and other Yoruba states via federalisation of VAT and issuance of driver’s licence and vehicle registration is not bad enough, President Jonathan’s government is eager to impose another consumption tax that may not be used to service the communities from which such tax is collected. The parlous state of so-called federal roads in the Southwest does not indicate that revenues collected from petrol consumers in the Southwest and put under control of the central government in Abuja would be used readily to fix the roads in the region. Such policy to further de-federalise the country is more damaging to the economy of the region than direct reduction of Yoruba presence in the federal service. Using petrol consumption tax to rob the Southwest of funds that should be used for infrastructure development and improvement of the welfare of citizens in the Yoruba region is an indirect way of additional disempowerment of the region.

Shortly after complaints by several groups about marginalisation of the Yoruba, the Jonathan administration announced its intention to build another sea port in Badagry. Lagos State may be the largest state in the country in terms of population but it is the smallest in terms of land area. The federal government under Jonathan has ignored requests from Lagos State for special status to enable the state improve the welfare of the teeming population of migrants from other states. Even efforts of the Lagos State Government to get the Jonathan administration to guarantee a foreign loan to enable the state provide modern mass transportation to move over 18 million Nigerians that live in the state in a safer and more orderly manner have been rebuffed by the current federal government.

It is, therefore, amazing that the same federal government is suddenly interested in building another port in Lagos State. Is this a part of the strategy to respond to charges of marginalisation, just as the superficial repair of Lagos-Ibadan and Lagos-Ore roads were put on the federal list of must-do items before 2012 Christmas to ward off complaints of neglect of the Southwest? How much space does Lagos State have for it to host another port in a country that is in a position to establish elsewhere several sea ports that can carry some of the burden that Lagos has carried for over a century?

Lagos State needs special intervention to make existing wet and dry ports in the small state run well, without having to damage business and residential opportunities in the state. The state needs to be given derivation benefits for existing wet and dry ports that have taken so much of the state’s limited land area. It is in the interest of Lagos State for the federal government to make ports in other parts of the country work and create jobs that can reduce the exodus of migrants to Lagos every minute. Lagos is already suffocated. What the federal government needs to do is to reduce the suffocation through special grants and policies that assist the state to improve its mass transit system, not another port that shrinks the place for indigenes and residents or damages roads that the state has built for the benefit of its residents.

Without listening to calls from Lagos State for Jonathan’s government to repair the road to Apapa and Tin Can ports, the Jonathan administration is planning surreptitiously to make nonsense of the investment Lagos State has put into modernisation of the road between Badagry and Oshodi. This is after heavy trailers going to other parts of Nigeria and even to Niger and Mali have made the road between Apapa and Ibadan dangerous for vehicular movement. If President Jonathan wants to reduce the burden on Lagos State, it should revive the rail line to Apapa and thus reduce the wear and tear on Lagos roads, not to use excuse of another federal sea port in Badagry to damage the soon to be commissioned Oshodi-Badagry road.

Apart from praying for federal governments under leadership of men and women that can respond to the demands and challenges of administering Nigeria’s multiethnic state in a way that gives each nationality a sense of belonging, it is also possible to provide structural changes that can reduce fears of marginalisation of any of the groups in the federation. Such structural changes will immunize the federation against leaders or federal governments that may lack the sensitivity needed to run a truly united multiethnic federation.

To be continued

February 24, 2013
Patience Jonathan’s second chance

Lazarus must have been green with envy hearing that Mrs. Patience Jonathan was in the valley of the shadow of death for one week. We had thought that Lazarus’s had been an unbroken record, having stayed only four days in the grave before Jesus Christ came and woke him up. But our president’s wife has broken that record. Although she acknowledged that she is not Lazarus, she nonetheless made public the miracle that God has done in her life at the thanksgiving service to mark her return from the ‘land of her ancestors’: “I am not Lazarus but my experience was similar to his own. My doctors said all hope was lost …It was God himself in His infinite mercy that said I would return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days”.

Never mind that her aides had merely told us she went abroad to rest. One would have thought we had more than enough rooms to rest in the country. Even if we don’t have one befitting the status of the First Lady of the Federal Republic, what stops us from awarding billion naira contracts for construction of world-class rest rooms in the Villa? Anyway, she left without a tangible word to hold on to for those of us who were concerned, and rightly so, for her whereabouts. When we were persistent in trying to get something from the government concerning this, one of her aides was almost angry with nosey newsmen who kept asking about when madam would return from her trip. He asked them whether she was his mate that she would take the trouble to disclose such vital information to him!

Yet, not a few persons had accused the presidency of lying on this issue. But it is wrong to accuse the presidency of lying because the presidency cannot lie. It merely amended the truth, by saying that Mrs. Jonathan had only gone to rest abroad, following the rigours of the 2011 elections and after hosting the African Ladies Forum, when in actual fact the woman was already having a tete-a-tete with her ancestors and would have been admitted to the league of Saints Triumphant but for Divine intervention.

Anyway, we should thank God for Patience Jonathan’s life because it is not all the time that people who die ‘resurrect’. As a matter of fact, Yoruba people would warn that no one should play with fainting because many people who did never had the privilege of returning to this world; by the time they woke up from their expensive joke, they did so in the great beyond. That is particularly so if the people involved were Muslims. But that was not the portion of our First Lady; glory be to God.

Since what the president’s wife experienced was a rarity, she must know that God has a purpose for bringing her back to life. Even in Yoruba mythology, when someone dies prematurely, it is believed that he or she would be sent back to earth at the border between the earth and heaven. So, for Mrs. Jonathan to have been sent back to life meant she had an unfinished business which the heavens wanted her to complete. Many of those who claimed to have had the same experience returned to tell us tales about what the other side looks like.

So, did Mrs. Jonathan see any vision for Nigeria throughout her ordeal as a dead person? Or, what precisely did she see? Did she see any of our departed elder statesmen while she was dead? Are they on the same side with Father Abraham or are they on the other side? Are they happy with the way we are? Are they looking back at what we are doing in the country, or they have completely abandoned us as a lost cause? Are they impressed with her husband’s style of governance? Did madam see Lazarus whose record she has just beaten?

While madam is preparing her answers to these questions and probably more, I can imagine the kind of fierce battle she would have had with that ultimate leveller, Death. To be quite frank, how many of us in Mrs Jonathan’s shoes will succumb to death just like that, leaving behind all the opulence of Aso Rock Villa, and Jonathan another Eve married? Where were such Eves all the years that they ‘siddon look’? I can imagine Death itself fleeing in the course of the battle to take Mrs Jonathan’s life, lest it got demystified in the process. Remember the story of Jacob who wrestled with an angel all night until the angel succumbed before daybreak, so that human beings and angels would not meet.

But to have been dead for one week is not a child’s play; as a matter of fact, Mrs. Jonathan should write about her experience and she will make billions from the title/s. Imagine all the big people who would run over themselves to drop their cheques at the launch! I am surprised people are not yet putting congratulatory advertisements in the media over Madam’s speedy recover (pardon my Sir Shina Peters’ expression) from the dead. Yet, some people who never like people in power would not rejoice with our first family. Indeed, I saw some of them on my way to the General Post Office in Ikeja, Lagos, last Monday, who were speaking blasphemy about the report that Mrs. Jonathan said she was raised from the dead after seven days. They were querying why that had to be our problem when neither ‘the woman’ nor her handlers told us why she was taken abroad in the first place. How then does her thanksgiving make such big news? I literally took off from the scene because such careless talk in those days of military rule could land one in Gashua. Thank God for democracy.

In the lighter mood, when people return from Mecca, we call them Alhaji or Alhaja. In the same vein, when people return from Holy Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we know they are called Justices of the Peace (JP). Now that our First lady has just returned from the valley of the shadow of death, how do we refer to her to distinguish her from people who merely fainted or were in a trance?

But Mrs. Jonathan said something that was not funny; she said that some of her aides, thinking she was dead, had already started selling some of her personal effects. This is something that is common among the ordinary folks and one would have thought that is an affliction to be found only among them. Now that we have seen that the rich also suffer such affliction, it might be interesting to know how the president’s wife has been coping with such aides with itchy palms, who were not honest over little things. Are they also having a second chance or they have already been jailed, while awaiting prosecution?

And, talking about second chance, I guess that would be the new song in the country for some time to come. As a matter of fact, don’t be surprised if very soon someone comes up with the ingenious idea that since God was kind enough to give the First Lady a second chance, then, the First Citizen’s second chance is already signed and sealed in heaven; it is only waiting to be delivered, come 2015.

But on a very serious note, two fundamental questions remain to be answered in spite of the celebrations, the thanksgiving and all. The first is what was Mrs. Jonathan’s ailment? And the second is how much it cost the taxpayer?

February 24, 2013
There was, indeed, a country

I have just finished reading Prof. Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra. Since the publication of the memoir last year to a welter of controversy over what the writer wrote or failed to write, I have declined to enter the fray because I didn’t want to fall into the same line of thought that I always accuse people of – that is judging a book only by its cover or blurb.

Although I got the book almost as soon as it was off the press in Nigeria, but I never got to read it until recently because I already had some books lined up for reading before its publication. However, I read the excerpt published in The Guardian of London which led to the hail of controversy that subsequently made the book become such a hot cake that it instantly became the first book in Nigeria, at least to my knowledge, which though not a recommended text was pirated in the first few weeks of its publication. In Lagos traffic today the pirated copy is the most hawked and available book apart from the ubiquitous ‘pure water’.

Although many reviews of the book have been written both in local and international newspapers, I feel that as a reader and as someone who grew up reading the respected writer and regarding him as a role model and no doubt one of the early influences that made me chose my line of career, the book under consideration falls short of what he has, for me, stood for in all his other books, most especially The Problem with Nigeria.

There is no doubt that Nigeria is a country in search of heroes and role models and intellectuals such as Achebe and the rest of them should at the twilight of their lives look for things that would unite rather than further divide their country of birth.

In reading There was a Country, I came away with the impression that despite the fact that the civil war ended over four decades ago, people like the much-respected Achebe still, feel the war against his people was still on. This siege mentality must stop and those in a better position to stop it are the Achebes of this world. But if people like him still feel the way he wrote about it in the book, then we have a long way to go.

I was barely five or so when the war started and I was living in the north then, and though it was not the centre of the war I can, however, attest to it that the pogrom was real and those not killed there died while running back to the East just as it has been happening of recent with the incessant ethno-religious crises that have gripped the North in recent past.

However, as the Yoruba say, “if you don’t forget yesterday’s shortcomings you will never get one to play with.” It is high time we put the war behind us and think more of how to move beyond our present challenges. The unfortunate civil war has become a sort of industry for many who use it as an excuse to be aggressive and ride roughshod over others and feel sidelined (the siege mentality).

I was born in the North and lived and schooled there for over three decades, I have also lived in the East and now live in the West. so if anything, I can claim to know Nigeria and Nigerians as much as I know the back of my hand, if you permit the cliché.

There are so many claims and assertions in There was a Country, which should not have come from a writer with the standing of Achebe. Take for instance this, “There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s action after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatise that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be integrated into Nigeria, one of the reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.”

I beg to differ. What I can deduce from this claim by this respected writer is that only the Igbo hold the key to the development of this country! I am afraid; it is this kind of thinking and frame of mind that is holding our country down and responsible for our predicament. This is ethnic supremacy and nonsensical dismissal of other ethnic groups as backward and only meant to be gatemen, gardeners and cooks.

That is not all; the respected writer believes the decision by the federal government to ban the importation of stockfish and second hand clothes, “two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.” How can the use of second hand clothes and consumption of stockfish achieve this? Come on we must grow up.

By my own reading, one of the major pitfalls of the book is that the writer with the role he played as an envoy for the late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu to the former President of Senegal who himself was a distinguished poet and writer, shows that he (Achebe) was a close ally of the late Ojukwu, and based on this premise, a reader like me expected that he should give us a more accurate and detailed portrait of the late Biafran leader.

But what do we have? Just passing comments that in no way pointed to the mind of the chief planner and executioner of the plan to take his part of Nigeria out of the federation.

In this memoir at least, we know where the writer stands where the issue of the war, the federation known as Nigeria, General Yakubu Gowon and most especially the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo are concerned, and to some extent, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. But what does he think of the late Ojukwu? He was dodgy and unclear where the late Biafran leader was concerned. This is not the Achebe I grew up to know and admire. Many things were left unsaid while some of those things said were done with a forked tongue.

There was, indeed, a country and a war memoir.

February 24, 2013
Time to rethink Nigeria, I think

There is a regular, beer-parlour joke about marriage and it goes thus. In marriage, the priest usually intones, ‘a man shall leave his mother and father and shall cling to his wife with whom he shall become one’. Yes, a much beleaguered man replies to his neighbour, the question is which one. True, when two people decide to come together in a marital union, it is all you can do to stop yourself from pulling one or the other aside and asking in consternation, have you quite thought this through? Listen, what you’re about to do will not only land you in hot soup, you will even have to cook it yourself. More importantly, in the history of the world, no perfect couple exists; indeed God is still looking for two people who agree on the brand of toothpaste to use.

So, with two people not being able to manage a marriage, here we are asking a country of different nationalities to manage their contrived and greatly multiplied ménage of strange bedfellows. Ha! This is why chaos rules in this land, ok! In this country of the deaf, lame and blind, all kinds of ideologies have come to play. Just listen here.

Currently, we have an ideology that says one for one, none for all. This enables every individual to get to positions of power and then use that position for himself, family and group against the interests of the overall majority. Then there is another ideology that says some for one, none for all. By this, every individual is constrained to defend his or her tribal kinsman against the interests of the national majority. Finally, there is the strangest of all the ideologies: all for one, yet none for all. This permits all individuals to worship another individual who has elevated himself to the national common hood of thievery at the great expense of the vast and silenced majority.

In all of history, no rat, elephant or lion has ever been known to adopt any of these ideologies for its own survival. It is not just because they have no pockets to hide things in, nor is it because they cannot open bank accounts to hide money in; it is more because I think they have not been able to throw away the sense of decency that God wrote into their genes in the way some Nigerians have thrown theirs over the shoulder. This is why a lion might kill to eat, but would hardly kill for hoarding or sport; a rat might hoard one or two things but believe me, it only takes things people don’t need or miss.

I am thinking about the leaders in Nigeria who manage to show the entire world how not to manage exalted public positions. Take the example of the most recent story-break in the land involving hundreds of billions of Naira. The story is so nauseating its worse than cholera. Indeed it’s an outbreak that makes you go, ‘Yuk, what kind of country is this where people do what even animals don’t condescend to do?’ What is an individual doing with hundreds of billions of Naira, feeding?

When we heard the story of the fellow who was alleged to have pilfered over twenty billion from the police pension funds, I reported here that it had me whistling in astonishment. When I heard recently how a certain chieftain of the Pensions Reform Task force, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, was said to have made away with something between one hundred and ninety-five to four hundred billion naira, pension funds of a group of people, I could no longer whistle. My lips puckered but nothing came out, especially when we heard he had been allowed to escape from the country with his loot. I just kept thinking, where is Michael Jackson to sing ‘This is it!’? This has got to be it. Anything after this I think will make Nigerians leave Nigeria for this government. Well, it would have failed to arrest the slide into total abyss, would it not?

Anyway, I think it is not a normal situation that a citizen would fail to appear before the legislature, no matter their character, in defiance of the national law; it is not a normal situation for a police chief to be asked and fail to arrest the said citizen in spite of the fact that he was within the country and enjoying the fresh air of the same country he so flagrantly betrayed; it is certainly not a normal situation for the police chief to not be able to arrest any citizen in the land. I remember writing something in the papers a few years ago that displeased the police and I assure you, they located me all right in the little corner of the little city I lived in then.

You have to agree that the situation begs for both questions and answers; I think it actually begs for more questions than answers. Why is it possible for such gargantuan levels of fraud and stealing to continue to take place? And as we look on, before our very eyes, why are the figures rising? Why are we now so helpless, police and all, if indeed we are? Have we completely gone bereft of our senses? Are there not enough things to use such monies for so that generations to come can bless us: an efficient rail transport system for the nation, electricity in every village including mine, public water flowing through every pipe in the land, a co-ordinated waste evacuation system in all the cities … people, there is so much to do with money in the country that this is just not the time to go diverting it.

The problem with this country from the start has been the strange set of ideologies adopted by leading individuals in the course of our history and across the land. With our lips, every one of us has paid homage to a ‘new Nigeria’ but we have all failed to go to work creating one. A new, indivisible Nigeria, with a ‘non-negotiable unity’ requires selflessness, an ideology that, apparently, none is ready to adopt.

So, rethinking Nigeria for newness involves three simple steps. First, we must change our national ideology. The ideology of selfishness must be replaced by selflessness. This is where everyone brings into the national purse his/her talents and resources in order to add and construct, not to take and destroy. The habit of destroying, knowing that regional, ethnic and even religious group adhesions would readily give support to individuals in case of prosecution, remains one of the most serious poisons working against this country.

Secondly, there must be a new set of ethos to replace the current one which appears to give nearly every Nigerian the droit de seigneur over other Nigerians in his/her post. People easily forget that they are working for the public and get too carried away by all the power in the office. The greatest abusers of traffic laws are the police drivers, and drivers of state functionaries, including governors, lawmakers and those from government house. As a member of a sadly small but still sane community in Nigeria, whenever I have seen a government vehicle on the roads, I have given them right of way. That way, I ensure I get back home.

This complete disregard for the law will not profit anyone in the long run. For us to rethink Nigeria, there must be a new regard for the law and this can only happen when leaders retain objectivity. Allowing someone who has committed such a financially heinous crime to escape is tantamount to allowing expediencies to drive the government. Evil portends evil.

February 24, 2013