The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Annals of concupiscence

This past fortnight, sex has been roiling the waters on both sides of the North Atlantic, or the pond, as that body of water is often called here, with a touch of lyricism.

That conflation was first accorded editorial notice in 1991, during this space’s incarnation in Rutam House

Back then, in Britain, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Alan Green, was caught, not for the first time, chatting up a woman of the night in a sleazy London neighhbourhood. Persuaded that he could not have been discussing the weather nor asking for directions to the nearest house of prayer, the police closed in and arrested him.

Suddenly, he had a great career behind him.

In the United States, it came to light that the swinging televangelist Jimmy Swaggert ritually prepared himself for the next rousing revival by procuring prostitutes to indulge his kinkiest adolescent fantasies. His congregation shrank dramatically, and the funds that had sustained his opulent lifestyle dried up.

The following year, in 1992, another conflation of that kind occurred on both sides of the pond, and was duly noted in the Rutam House space. The leader of the Liberal Party, Paddy Ashdown, outed himself when documents detailing his sexacapes with a young woman were stolen from his solicitor’s office. The woman, bless her discreet British heart, refused to sell her story to the tabloid press and promptly alerted Ashdown, who then came clean.

Other than seeing his surname recast as Pantsdown, Ashdown suffered no serious damage from the affair.

Meanwhile, in America, Bill Clinton, front-runner for the presidential ticket of the Democratic Party, saw his dream almost foundering in the wake of revelations by Gennifer Flowers that the twain had carried out a passionate love affair for a decade, no less.

Clinton – or “Slick Willie” as his detractors called him— survived Ms Flowers, clinched the race, and survived Monica Lewinsky on his way to becoming one of the most accomplished American presidents, and one of the most remarkable statesmen of our time.

Today, the names in the news are bigger than all the characters named above except Clinton, and the consequences more far-reaching.

Who would have thought that the world’s most reputable news organisation, the BBC (or the Beeb as they call it fondly in the UK), exemplar of all that is prim and proper and of good report, would be rocked to its foundations by sex, of all things.

Yet, that is what has happened.

Following whispers that its iconic entertainment producer Jimmy Savile who died last year had sexually exploited his ardent young fans and artistes, the BBC began an investigation, then inexplicably dropped it. Its rival, ITN took up the matter, and confirmed the whispers with a mountain of evidence.

Suddenly the BBC found itself mired in and desperately trying to fend off allegations of a cover-up. When it went on to identify a senior political figure, wrongly, with sexual abuse of minors, it found itself in tabloid territory not unlike that previously occupied by Rupert Murdoch’s scurrilous News of the World, now late and unlamented.

Its director-general of only 54 days, George Entwhistle, resigned in double quick time. His predecessor Mark Thompson, who was due to resume work in the United States as chief executive of The New York Times, found himself in an uncomfortable spotlight, as did his new employers. Was he the right person for the job?

Influential but not disinterested figures in rival networks called for the dissolution of the BBC Trust and breaking up of its news and current affairs operation.

“No sex, please. We are British.” So goes the saying. But this past fortnight, the Savile sex abuse scandal and its ever-widening ramifications have dominated the front pages and the headlines in the British press.

The treatment has been characteristically sedate, however; almost clinical. Those looking for titillation will be disappointed. The news is rooted in the sex scandal. But it also examines painfully the BBC’s departure from its own matchless professional standards in the handling of the investigations.

The abuses are tragic indeed. But it would be sad if they were to be compounded by measures that could further erode that mix of autonomy and integrity and professionalism that has made the BBC the global gold standard in broadcast news and programming.

On the other side of the pond, the sex scandal involving the retired four-star general and lately director of the CIA, David Petraeus, 54, and his winsome biographer who was literally as well figuratively embedded with him for the better part of a year in Iran and Afghanistan virtually chased the depredations of Hurricane Sandy and the fallout from the U.S. presidential election off the front pages and the headlines.

It was a scandal that almost didn’t break. If the biographer had just made the most of the dalliance, the affair might not have come to light. But Paula Broadwell, 40, an Army reservist and aspiring academic, grew territorial, to the point of sending threatening e-mails to another woman she thought was competing for the general’s attention. That woman, described as a “socialite”, referred the matter to the FBI. The FBI found a treasure trove of the compromising communication, turned over the stuff to the CIA, which confronted its boss with the material, whereupon he decided to resign.

In retrospect, it is something of a surprise that the scandal did not break much sooner. For their private communications, Petraeus and his biographer used nothing more discreet than open e-mail. It was almost as if they were daring the usual intruders to find them out.

This, at any rate, is the story in outline. But it is far more complicated. The “socialite” has turned out to be an influence peddler who is almost drowning in debt. The officer who discovered the compromising e-mails, it has since emerged, may not be disinterested investigator; he too has his eye on some collateral romance, if not career advancement.

Broadwell, wife of a psychiatrist and mother of two children, it has turned out, is no biographer. She had hired a ghost writer for the book, according to some reviewers a fawning hagiography, with the suggestive title “All In . . . The Education of General David Petraeus. Its subject, previously adored by the media as the quintessential soldier and scholar and statesman rolled into one is now being cast as a phony general who presided over phony ways in Iraq and Afghanistan. For now, his Princeton doctorate has been spared.

And GOP legislators, still reeling from the drubbing their feckless candidate Mitt Romney was handed in the recent presidential elections, quickly and predictably insinuated a political conspiracy into the whole thing

Petraeus, they are claiming, was pushed to resign by the White House, to avoid being subpoenaed by Congress to testify on the attack on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the American ambassador and three officials were killed – testimony the legislators said, would show conclusively that the White House had been less than forthright on the issue.

This being America, the most salient elements of news – sex, beauty, power, ambition, and a hint of conspiracy – will keep this scandal in the news for quite a while.

My American friends and colleagues have been asking me how the Petraeus story would have played in Nigeria.

I tell them that if it ever surfaced, it would have been the stuff of tawdry gossip and salacious speculation for no more than a week. As a general rule, we leave the business of throwing stones to those who are without sin.

November 20, 2012
Why Nigeria must remain indivisible!

It is an unsettling irony of fate that it was from the erstwhile most becalmed society of northern Nigeria, the Kanuris, with mild humanity, that the nation is experiencing the current spate of terrorism that is now spreading in an astronomical manner to most states of the federation including Kaduna, the home state of our revered Vice President, Nemadi Sambo. But for the efforts and sacrifices of the Armed Forces, the problem may by now have gone beyond comprehension.

Surprisingly, all these nefarious activities are speculated to have been geared towards an attempt to break up our blessed federation on religious and ethnic lines. The movement behind these unscrupulous suicide bombings goes by the name of ‘BOKO HARAM’ which is in itself untenable, illogical and totally uninformed.

If ‘Boko Haram’means: “Western Education should be condemned, the proponents have failed to realise that the so-called “Western Education” had its foundations and indeed origins in “ARABIC EDUCATION”. Most of what make civilization come from science which is based on mathematics, physics, mechanics which, like Arithmetic and Algebra, are Arabic words and concepts. Even our numerals that is 1,2,3 et cetera are Arabic figures! The pharaonic Arabs in Egypt were the cradle of civilization.

Our culture, history and languages do have interwoven links with other parts of the country and the bonding is so strong to the extent no bile of any disgruntled elements in any community can destroy the country.

Let us now elucidate on these links which will put to shame the attrocious activities of our latter day agents of balkanisation. Kannuris are the dominant race in Borno and Yobe States with the Berbaris and Karkars as significant minorities.

According to the diary of Clapperton, one of the explorers of the Niger that is still available in the Museun in Bama, the capital of Dikwa Emirate, the Olu of Warri, Obi of Onitsha through cultural similarities in kingships, carnivals worships and masquerades among others can testify to the unity in diversity of the country.

Beyond Onitsha into Enugu, the people are nicknamed ‘Waa waa’ by their Igbo kinsmen. This is because the Enugus use the Yoruba word ‘Wa’ exactly with its meaning of “Come”.

In the sourth-south, Isaac Adaka Boro regarded as the “first militant”of the Niger Delta, in his book on his revolution asserted without qualifications that Izons who we call Ijaws (following the colonial adulteration) originally came from Ile-Ife.

To a large extent, the Igbo language is an outlandish version of the Yoruba tongue. From a collection of Igbo words that one came up with about three decades ago, it was discovered that the Yoruba language was in transit from Oyo to Lagos, through Ekiti to Owo and finally into Igbo land while in the process, it passed through some structural changes but retain what linguists regard as “the roots”; that is the essence of the original letters of the word which usually are the consonants, but occassionally are turned into vowels.

Take a few examples: from Lagos to Oyo, the Yoruba word “House is Ile”; in Ekiti, it becomes ule,; in Owo, it becomes uli and in Igbo; it turns to ulo. The word money in Lagos/Oyo Yoruba is owo; in Ekiti, it becomes eo; in Owo, it is egho; in Benin/Edo, it is igo; while in Igbo it is ego. Many words of every day use are the same in the two languages such as “aka” “arm”, “umu.” A ‘wife’ in Yoruba is iyawo; in Igbo it is “wayin” with the roots interchanged. Take the Yoruba word “orisirisi” which means “different.” Igbo would say “ndichiche”because the letter “R” is a weakness in the tip of the Igbo man’s tongue! Eniyan in Yoruba is Oniyan in Ekiti/Ijebu and onye in Igbo.

The Yoruba would say “Wa nibi” “Come here” Igbo would say “Bia neba a”. The letters “w” and ‘b’are both ‘labials’ that is pronounced with the lips including ‘v’’p’ ‘f’ and are interchangeable. The word ‘wa’ is ‘va’ in Ewe in Togo/Benin both meaning ‘come’.

One has gone this far to show outstanding and indisputable marks of homogeneity of different Nigerian peoples in their cultural, economic and historical co-existence that no force on earth can ever dissolve. It would be like lifting the Olympus or uprooting the “Ayoba Hill” in Ado-Ekiti. Impossible!

Other countries of the world look up with great admiration at the pre-eminence of Nigeria in world affairs. Our intimidating black population, our untapped natural resources, our oil, our land mass, much of which are fertile, our ability to survive hitherto as a single integral entity even after colonia rule even‘though tribe and tongue may differ’, our enviable cultural heritage in every linguistic community as typified by our Udiroko in our blessed Ado-Ekiti under our Oba Adeyemo Adejugbe Aladesanmi III, the Ewi of Ado, a world spectacle that beams from the peak of a pyramid of a plethora of cultural festivals which are original and which no age can dispute.

We in Ekiti cherish our clear-cut identity and decry the ostensible neglect of our multifarious needs by successive central governments despite ceaseless outcries of our state Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and our king, the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti. For example, why should a cash-trapped state be burdened with restructing dilapidated Federal Roads ? Or why should there not be a Federal secretariat in a State created sixteen years ago?

Ekitis will resist to the extent any move by any satanic group to ever continue to contemplate the dissolution of our hard-won and God-given Nigerian Federation.

• Ajayi is Odoba of Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti state.

November 20, 2012
Saraki the father, Saraki the son?

There were at least two ennobling traits in the private life of Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki (1933-2012) that public figures today can imbibe to strengthen their homes and enrich the polity: religious tolerance and compassion.

Dr. Saraki, a devout Muslim and an iconic figure in Kwara, married a Christian, Florence Morenike, in 1962, according to an interview he granted Tell magazine in March 2011.

Kwara is a cultural mishmash, though being the southernmost outpost of old Sokoto Caliphate, has in Ilorin an Emirate, which links the local ruling theocracy right back to the ancestral capital of Usman Dan Fodio. As a symbol of power, therefore, Islam looms large; and its adherence or non-adherence may make or ruin many an aspiration to political leadership, even if the Nigerian state is officially secular.

That Dr. Saraki practised his faith but left his wife to practice hers, so much so that between 1962 and his death in 2012, Mrs Saraki added to her name, another prefix of “Deaconess”, is a salute to religious tolerance that chides Nigerian Christian and Muslim fundamentalists in these troubled times. It simply shows that beyond the hot ardour of doctrine, God is one and the same.

Then, compassion. Ripples’ first consciousness of Dr. Saraki, as a secondary school boy in the 1970s, was of a young medic who would die first, rather than turn his back on the less fortunate that needed help.

So, when the man the Nigerian media would later dub the “Strongman of Kwara Politics” came onto his own, at the end of that decade and beginning of the Second Republic (1979-1983), Ripples knew his risen Kwara profile was just desert for years of compassionate investment, even if Ripples did not particularly care for Dr. Saraki’s peculiar politics of democratic feudalism, with all its telling oxymoron.

So, when the Awoist Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) apparatchiks, with their famous four-cardinal programmes of free education, free health, mass shelter and integrated rural development were sneering at Saraki’s reported “feudal” opportunism, it was clear again it was empty gas driven by plain partisan envy.

Saraki’s genuine compassion for the Kwara masses, long before any partisan kill could be made, was real. Saraki had planted slow and long. For him, it was political harvest time.

But while these two fine traits laid the foundation for the Saraki ascendancy, his bid at democratic hegemony was clear – for in Saraki’s feudal political view loomed the rather undemocratic ethos that if a royal does not die, another does not bid for the throne.

But unlike the rather incongruous but not unusual tenet of democratic royalty (with the likes of the Kennedys, the Bushes and to some extent, the Clintons in the United States), which throws up different figures from the same family over the ages to bid for the democratic throne (ah, another violent oxymoron!), the late Saraki was the Alpha and Omega of his own feudal universe. The Oloye was yesterday. The Oloye is today. And the Oloye would ever shall be, mortality or no!

In such a paradise and hell of total domination (paradise for the Oloye, hell for his political rivals), the Ilorin democratic rabble, who the Oloye loved so dearly and who in return doted on their benefactor so completely, became at most times democratic zombies to be periodically pressed into devastating service to maintain the Oloye electoral mystique. Saraki’s opponents sneered this rabble was gorged silly on subversive generosity. But it was clear Saraki had trumped his political foes in real-politik.

Still, if the Kwara masses had by and large been pacified, the elite never were so. That shaped the way for a Saraki-Kwara elite war of attrition, a war which Dr. Saraki won by and by, until he ran into the ambush of his own son, Bukola, ironically a beloved firstborn and another medic.

While French Emperor, the great Napoleon Bonaparte met his waterloo in today’s Belgium, the great Oloye met his in the intimate mess of sibling political civil war, with the wise patriarch backing the clear wrong horse – or more appropriately, the wrong mare!

How was Saraki supposed to triumph in that high-stake battle? He pulled his troops from the ruling state and federal party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for a new and unknown quantity, the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), faced the full wrath of combined state and national incumbency and threw up a woman, though darling daughter, Gbemisola, who the Oloye would willy-nilly install in a Kwara of conservative political temper and unfazed religious chauvinism. Besides, the Ilorin elite waited with bated breath for the Saraki denouement – and all the sweeter because the Saraki were cleaning themselves out!

With all these odds, the old man still expected, at the roar of Baba Oloye, all these walls of Jericho would fall? Hubris never came in starker and more tantalising form!

Now, all the old political friends turned fiends – Adamu Attah, Sha’aba Lafiagi, Mohammed Alabi Lawal, Salmon Adebayo, the senatorial surrogate who outsmarted Saraki but disappeared into oblivion after serving out a four-year term, et al – must have flit through the Oloye’s mind, as he faced the first major defeat of his political career and his eventual demystification.

So, who carries the gospel of Saraki’s democratic feudalism to the next generation – Saraki the Son, Bukola, who vanquished his old man and seized the empire, even if he insists no regicide had taken place? Hardly!

Hardly, because the political demographics have changed. The West Central State of 1967 is a different ball game from the Kwara of 2012. Besides, Saraki did not leave behind a comprehensive canon of work, ala Obafemi Awolowo, to articulate his vision and emblazon his philosophy – maybe he didn’t have one?

And of course, because of the paternalistic megalomania of the late Saraki’s politics, he boasts no boisterous and winning disciples, ala Awoists, save, of course, Saraki the Son, albeit in a bitter-sweet form. How can Bukola politically slay his father and yet claim to continue with his legacy?

It would therefore appear the passage of Baba Oloye has thrown the Kwara political firmament wide open. Kwara may be the southernmost horn of the old Sokoto Caliphate. But it is also the northernmost rim of the old Oyo Empire. So, it could well be a new and fierce ideological battle ground between the regnant Northern conservatism and looming South West’s social democracy.

By the way, it would have been interesting what would have become of Kwara politics, had the Second Republic not aborted, and had three-month governor, Cornelius Adebayo, completed his term on UPN mandate.

Whatever happens however, dogma would not win the next war. But earning the trust and reverence of the Kwara masses would. That is the abiding legacy of Baba Oloye, as Saraki the Son and his political foes lunge for the soul of Kwara, in the post-Saraki era.

November 20, 2012
The face of Boko Haram?

As the saying goes, as long as there are still lice in the hair, the finger nails can never be free of blood. That seems to be the case with Nigeria and our home grown terrorist organization called Boko Haram.

Each time we pretended the threat was over or we are on top of the security situation, the group, believed to be linked to the worldwide terror network of Al Qeada either comes out smoking or throw up another trick.

You remember a couple of weeks ago they said they were ready for peace talk with the Federal Government which sent Aso Rock into wild jubilation, only for them to strike few days later at the home of Major General Muhammed Shuwa (retd) in Maiduguri, Borno State, snuffing the life out of the civil war hero.

Their offer of peace talk, blindly embraced by the Federal Government has been neither here nor there since the announcement was made. The man they nominated to be their negotiator-in-chief, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), a former military Head of State as you know, has declined the nomination. Saudi Arabia, their chosen venue for the peace parley has not said anything about the proposed peace talk, suggesting that the Arab country probably doesn’t know anything about it.

With the government’s optimism and initial embrace of the offer of peace talk by Boko Haram driven, from my own view, by naivety, President Goodluck Jonathan has now come out to say that no talk is on-going with the terrorists who he says are faceless. Informed sources within his government were reported to have said that the Federal Government was not sure of the position of Saudi Arabia on the issue.

So we are back to status quo ante.

Having said so much about Boko Haram and the latest offer of peace talk, it would have been ideal to move to other issues but then as stated above, as long as lice are still in the hair…

Listening to a former governor of Yobe State and now a Senator representing Yobe East Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Alhaji Bukar Abba Ibrahim, one is left with no option than to revisit the issue of Boko Haram.

Speaking on the floor of the Senate penultimate week while contributing to debate on a motion on the state of insecurity and banditry in Maru village in Zamfara State, Senator Ibrahim gave a robust defence of Boko Haram and explained why the terrorists took up arms against the Nigerian state.

Hear him: “Boko Haram is just like any religious sect; it has existed for ages. It is not a new phenomenon altogether, but it is the activities of security agencies, particularly the police, that pushed the Boko Haram people to the wall by killing their leaders; killing thousands of other innocent people. That is what forced them to come out against the Nigerian state”.

Further blaming security agencies for causing Boko Haram insurgency, Ibrahim said; “they are killing people; many people, day in, day out. If one army officer is killed in an area, they will come and cordon off the whole place and kill people they can get hold of and then burn all property in that area. What has property got to do with people killing security agents on the road? If a security agent was killed on patrol, they will come and burn the whole area”.

While calling on the head of the various security agencies including the National Security Adviser to look into the activities of their agents regarding the Boko Haram issue, Senator Ibrahim surprisingly couldn’t find any harsh word to say on the terrorists.

I’ve heard his kind of argument before especially from people around the North east where the insurgency is at its fiercest. While one could understand where they were coming from, it is hard to accept their explanation.

Recall that a group that calls itself Borno Elders and Leaders of Thought had equally blamed the security agencies for driving Boko Haram into terrorism. In fact they called for the withdrawal of the troops.

If one could excuse the ordinary person in the Borno/Yobe axis and the self-serving Leaders of Thought having this kind of mentality, how do you explain it when a two term governor of one of the most affected States who is now a serving Senator of the Federal Republic is giving this kind of justification for terror. This is bad and spells danger for Nigeria if such a highly placed personality, a supposedly distinguish public officer is saying this, and inside the hallowed chambers of our National assembly for that matter.

His explanation suggests that he knows Boko Haram or has a fair idea of who the people are. While it looks far fetch to say that he probably has a link to them, the defence of the organization that he gave on the floor of the Senate could only have been made by someone with inner or insider knowledge of Boko Haram.

Can you recall that President Jonathan once said there are Boko Haram elements/sympathizers in all the three arms of government, including the legislature? Is the distinguish senator representing Yobe east one of those the president was talking about? I am not accusing this gentleman of anything but his comments coming on the heels of his nomination by Boko Haram as one of their negotiators in the proposed peace talk with the Federal Government speak volume about what he knows about these terrorists and on whose side he is.

While neither holding forte for the security agencies or condoning their excesses no individual or group has the right to bear arms against the state except may be in a situation of war. So, if Boko Haram declared war on Nigeria because they were wronged by agents of the Nigerian State, what should we expect? And if the people continue to harbour Boko Haram because they felt they were unjustly/unfairly treated by agents of government, shouldn’t such a people expect to share from the punishment being meted out to the terrorists? And if the reason Boko Haram took up arms against Nigeria was because of the harsh treatment they received in the hands of agents of Nigeria, why then were they bombing churches, killing Christians and some other innocent Nigerians under the guise of fighting the federal Government? Were these innocent souls also agents of government?

If anybody had been worried as to how and why a faceless terrorist group like Boko Haram chose Senator Ibrahim and co to negotiate peace with government on their behalf, that person should worry no more. Now we know that these guys are not spirits, they have a face. Now we know who they are and why they are killing us. But who will save us from this terror? These same security agents accused of causing it? I agree that our boys have not behaved very well in this fight against terror, innocent souls have been killed and the authorities need to do something urgently about this. Anyone found guilty among them should be punished. Mr. President are you listening?

November 20, 2012
Buhari in Boko Haram’s matrix

Keen observers of events will have little difficulty in accepting that the recent peace offer by a group purporting as the dreaded Boko Haram religious sect was destined to die prematurely. For one, the person who announced the supposed deal (one Abdulazeez),the conditions attached to it and the names of those to intercede on behalf of the sect, were issues that at once, cast doubt in the minds of discerning public.

Matters were not equally helped by the inclusion of Gen. Muhammed Buhari, a key opponent of the present regime of Jonathan as the coordinator of the supposed peace talk. His nomination meant so many things to different people. Predictably, Nigerians were torn between those urging Buhari to accept the offer albeit in the overall interest of peace and those who viewed the issue from a contrary perspective.

Buhari was therefore left with two difficult choices: to accept the offer or refuse it. He opted for the latter. Decision theorists are interested in whether the preferred choice of Buhari was the best for him in the circumstance. In other words, was his choice rational; capable of minimizing his losses in the event of the worst outcome? And what were the possible consequences or stakes in reacting either way? We shall return to this later.

Before now, we have been made to believe by key personages in the north that there are at least three faces of the Boko Haram insurgency. By their logic, there is the original Boko Haram which has axe to grind with the government for killing its leader Mohammed Yusuf and several of his followers. This represents the authentic Boko Haram that is intent in installing an Islamic state in the country and doing away with anything western. As at today, the acclaimed leader of that group is one Sheikh Shekau.

There is also the criminal Boko Haram that manifests in the robbing and killing of innocent souls. The fact of this group which has no identified leader is given credence by repeated disclaimers from the Shekau group denouncing some criminal activities undertaken in its name.

The third is a simulated group suspected to be part of the strategy of the government to break the ranks of the real Boko Haram. No less a person than Mallam Shehu Sani, leader of the Northern Civil Society Coalition shares this view. He had in a recent interview, claimed that some of these scams called peace initiatives were “perpetrated by people at the highest levels of government and security” He cited the peace deal which the Minister of Information and the President’s spokesman affirmed to have been held sometime ago in Saudi Arabia but which Shekau denounced as one of such scams in high quarters.

Given the above scenario, what were the options really available to Buhari when one Abdulazeez, purporting to be deputy leader of the sect named him as the coordinator of the supposed peace negotiations? His immediate reaction would be that of suspicion. Suspicion because the name Abdulazeez was for the first time being sold to the public as an authentic representative of the real Boko Haram even when the acclaimed leader Shekau, has not said anything.

Above all, the speed with which the federal government accepted the offer together with the list of all those named to represent the sect were enough to fuel another round of suspicion.

Predictably, Buhari rejected the offer out rightly. He based his reasons on the existence of three shades of Boko Haram. For him, there is the Boko Haram represented by the slain Muhammed Yusuf protesting injustice by the Nigerian state. There is equally a band of criminals cashing in on the insecurity in that part of the country to rob, maim and kill innocent people in its name. Jonathan presidency which has displayed crass inability to tame the monster is seen by Buhari as another manifestation of Boko Haram.

For these, he seemed to be contending that it will be an exercise in self-destruction to accept an offer coming from a very questionable quarter. And he is absolutely right. This is more so when Shekau, the authentic leader of the Muhammed Yusuf group is not known to be in the picture of the latest peace deal.

That apart, accepting such an offer could lend itself to misinterpretation given his position as a key opposition leader in this country. His detractors could capitalize on it as evidence that he has links with a sect that has levied war on the country, killing thousands of innocent citizens, destroying churches and private buildings of inestimable value. For someone who still nurses presidential ambition, that would amount to political suicide on his own part. His political party the CPC rose to this trap when it accused the PDP of contriving to smear Buhari by linking him to the dangerous sect.

It would appear therefore that the most rational choice open to Buhari given the circumstance was to reject the offer emanating from very questionable quarters. Neither the arguments bordering on the imperative of ensuring peace nor the dictates of the roles envisaged of a supposed statesman are enough to mitigate the personal risks which acceptance could expose him to. He had to bow to the logic of self preservation. That is rational calculation; rational choice.

But the federal government did not help matters by aiding this suspicion through its hurried acceptance of the contentious deal. The indecent haste with which it accepted the offer; all those nominated by the group and Saudi Arabia as the venue, will remain largely foggy. This is more so when it is realized that the initial peace negotiations which the same government was said to have held in that same country sometime ago, were roundly spurned by Shekau. And till date, nothing has come out of it. Was that not enough for the government to have smelt a rat if it had no hand in the events that produced this supposed new deal?

We are yet to be told who brokered that botched peace deal in Saudi Arabia and how much of our national funds were put into it. Sani feels that deal was a scam and he may be right. He also thinks the latest one may follow the pattern of the one before it because those purporting to be speaking for the authentic sect are not known to be the real leaders of the group. As someone who has made some attempt to get the matter resolved and who maintains some link with the group, we have no reason not to take Sani seriously.

It is curious why the government would prefer to deal with the Abdulazeez group when the real promoters of the violence that has held this nation prostrate are not part of the calculation. At the point we are, nothing seems to be happening and the supposed peace deal has hit the rocks.

Perhaps, the objective of these spurious peace deals is to give the impression that the government is interested in negotiating with the group. This view further contends that the objective is to stave off accusations that it prefers force to dialogue as a way out of the security challenge. Jonathan has also been accused of not applying the same measure the late Yar’Adua adopted that saw the end to the Niger Delta militancy. All these could be said. But Boko Haram must show it is genuinely desirous of dialogue. For now, there is no serious indication from the Shekau group that they are seriously committed to ending the mass murder that has trailed their activities. And that is the unfortunate thing about these peace talks.

November 19, 2012
Remembering the poor

I have always wondered why wealth faints easily in this country. The custodians, who we call wealthy, come alive, flaunt, swagger and plume themselves in the sunlight of the day. But, like a plant that runs out of its supply of the riches of photosynthesis, they faint and expire.

In this country, prosperity lives and dies just like the poor. They both have a short lifespan. The rich may endure to their hoary years, but not their riches. We have had many who grew rich, soared to fame and glamour. But where are they now? Those who reigned in the 1960’s bowed out with a sigh in the 1970’s. Those who purred with leonine pride in the 1970’s lost their manes of honour the decade after. So it has been, a story of rises and falls, glamour and dolour, plum and prune, acclaim and silence.

The reason is that they make money for themselves because they work only for themselves and their families. They do not work for the society where they blossomed, that gave them both chance and fulfillment. This thought overwhelmed me recently as I contemplated the fundraiser held November 8 in Abuja, where man of means Aliko Dangote spearheaded the drive to help all the lowly and helpless who were tossed out of their homes and heaths by the recent flood.

Many of the rich were there, but not enough of them. What struck me was that Dangote had to go out of his way to persuade the very rich, including the bank chiefs, to consider the poor. The bank heads came off with the excuse that they had to consult their boards first in order to give to the poor. At least, the bank leaders were there, some of them.

But where were the telecoms leaders, who fleece us by the seconds with services? Where were the oil servicing companies? Shell was reported to have donated hefty millions. But where are the others?

Dangote had announced his hefty donations early. But the other companies have swathed themselves in the excuse of officialdom. What boards did they need to consult? The flood did not consult anybody before it swamped on the vulnerable, lapping up their homes and flushing away their memories in tides of tyranny. They huddled up in camps, falling ill, birthing and bearing babies, weeping, lost in the dry ecstasy of sorrow and bemoaning the former simple life they never cherished enough until the cruel epiphany of nature’s visit.

So if the floods had swept many of their branches, would the banks not have held an extraordinary board meeting? Of course, it is because it is a conflict or tragedy of low intensity for the banks that they decided to wait till whenever the next scheduled board meeting to table the matter of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians dislocated by nature’s insensate moment.

This is because the banks were not formed to serve except for the profit of the owners. Their vaults are full of money but empty of love. They contradict what writer Steve Maraboli asserted, that “The bank of love is never bankrupt.”

A fundamental problem is that we do not know the value of money. In the secondary school, one of the cardinal lessons of economics classes was that money was a standard OF VALUE. We were never taught what value was in relation to money, except as a nexus in the exchange of goods and services. That was what the banks have exhibited over the flood victims. Not the banks alone but corporate Nigeria. They have placed a mercantile soul over the somber throbbing of neighbourly love, patriotic giving or even the much-ballyhooed virtue of corporate responsibility.

Let us go over the seas to the United States where a fiercer storm surged. Hurricane Sandy might have taken the country by storm, but not the tender spirit of giving by its companies. I tracked the donations of American companies in the wake of the disaster. Tons of companies had already pledged and donated over $100 million barely a week after it happened. They did not need to consult boards because giving was an integral part of their fount of being.

Nigerian companies do not consider giving of the charitable sort as a defining quality of their existence. They have enough to sponsor sports, Nollywood vanities and other cultural dissipations. Nothing evil in those. But what of the ones you do without the fare of self-aggrandisement where the companies’ billboards will not loom in the background? Francis of Assisi noted that “it is in giving that we receive.” The companies abuse this credo because they see the giving as a cynical indoor, as investment for profit but not for the improvement of lives.

They rather should take in the spirit of Queen Elizabeth’s words that “blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.” Sometimes we forget that the ordinary folks are the great givers. A good percentage of the victims come from oil-producing areas that nest the golden egg of Nigeria. It is the paradox of the giver desiring giving.

The tragedy though is not that we don’t give, but that we don’t know the value of giving. At long last, some of the banks and oil firms and telecom giants may buckle and surrender some funds from their corpulent savings. What we lack is a sense of philanthropy.

There is some charity in this society, but what we need is philanthropy. “Much corporate giving is charitable in nature rather than philanthropic,” noted David Rockefeller. Philanthropy is the habit of giving. Charity is a fleeting show of love. In spite of the billionaire’s quote, America is a great example revealed in all the recent tragedies from Katrina to Sandy.

We have abandoned the African culture. We come from a communal stock. An age ago, we cared for our neighbour’s son when he was not even in danger. Today we look the other way when he is in the throes of death. How did we fall from that grace? Some have cited ethnic differences, but that accounts for little because in the big firms we have persons whose kinsmen were swept off by the floods. It is the fissures of capitalism, with its emphasis on self over others. Individualism emboldens coldhearted indifference to the fortunes of others. Also, the birth of cities breaks down a sense of community. Three, the colonialism created a false centre called government with its bureaucracies and laws and commerce. But the ordinary person does not yet relate to it as part of his own. So when tragedies happen like the flood, it is an “other,” not us. As Jean Paul Sartre wrote, “hell is other people.”

It is the job of leadership to knit this system so that we own it. Even President Jonathan, who should inspire, was ensconced in America without a sense of urgency while water bred tragedy at home. Delta State Governor Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan promptly cut short his trip and returned. Jonathan had more “important” things to do.

Part of the problem with lack of philanthropy is that this is a poor society and those who grow rich still think poor and do not remember the real poor. It means the rich are “poor” in spirit, to parody Christ. “One must be poor to know the luxury of living,” wrote novelist George Elliot. The striking point is that the rich are too busy enjoying the luxury to remember the poverty of others. Dangote is bucking that patrician trend. It is not for nothing that we have the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations. These were created by men who transferred wealth from generation to generation favouring the poor.

It is the job of the elite to snap out of their self-absorption and create by example and self-nurturing the tradition of giving. Winston Churchill struck the right note when he said, “we make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

To make giving a part of Nigerian life, the rich must remember the poor as a habit

November 18, 2012
A Titan despite everything

Snooper mourns the passing of the late master of Ilorin feudal politics, Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki. Human greatness has nothing to do with ideological and political divides. You do not have to share a man’s political beliefs in order to acknowledge his distinction. Any other thing is spite and self-belittling hatred.

Despite our profound disagreement with his feudal and ultra-conservative brand of politics, there can be no doubt that the late physician was a titan in this peculiar territory. He was a master of the masses and a lord of the lowly. Despite the fine aristocratic airs of a northern feudal baron, there was always more than a hint of menace and steely resolve lurking just below the surface. This was not a man to toy or mess around with

You cannot come from virtually nowhere to impose yourself on a political environment so completely and comprehensively that nothing seemed to have been before without great political balls or cujones. Saraki’s collection of gubernatorial political scalps from Ibrahim Attah to Mohammed Lawal attests to his valour as a political headhunter in the jungle of Nigerian politics. The shy diffidence, the courteous affability and urbane restraint only made Saraki a more deadly customer. He was a man of spectacular pluck and grit.

Yet despite his progress-challenged and development-unfriendly brand of politics, there was always a hint of great compassion, of genuine generosity, honour and nobility of spirit about the man. Despite the foolish political misjudgement which led him to enter the ring with his ruthless and equally determined son, he was honorable enough to acknowledge defeat and to concede that perhaps his time was up in politics. Like all great politicians, the gambling instincts which stood him so well in his colourful career also proved his eventual nemesis.

Saraki’s last days were spent in the political shadows marked by declining health and even more dramatically declining political relevance. Kwara politics appears to have moved on. There is time for everything. There is no political empire on which the sun will not set eventually. This time it has taken the rising son to accelerate the setting sun. Things do not get more tragically ironic. May his great soul find perfect rest.

November 18, 2012
King Lear comes to Agbaji

Great political drama is afoot in Kwara State. Dear readers, let us leave bombers, bunglers and the ailing Nigerian state alone this week for a trip to the land of Dadakuada music. In Ilorin, a fascinating and superbly choreographed royalist soap is winging its way to a fateful climax. It is absolutely riveting, a combination of Dallas and Dynasty with the old King Lear thrown in.

The stage is set. The firecrackers are crackling to the resounding beat of war drums in the eerie background. The sanmoris, the jamas, the onitijus, the onigogos and the fanatical hordes of Oke Suna—the quarters of the faithful—are watching with keen interest. These foot soldiers with their core of itinerant Muslim preachers, politicised clerics, jaded jihadists and other spiritual wannabes have always been the real power behind the throne since the Islamic coup of Malam Alimi , and they make the former fiefdom of Afonja such a fascinating sociological case history.

But don’t forget that Napoleon once famously observed that a throne is only a bench covered with damask. The end of a political dynasty or its metamorphosis is here. There are echoes of fierce ambition, of filial impiety and political perfidy. There are hints of a fey and slightly unhinged king Lear about to preside over the dissolution of his own political empire.

The main protagonists are very well known. In one corner of the royal ring prowls the aging political pugilist and much lionised avatar of Kwara politics, Abubakar Olusola Saraki, an outstanding surgeon of politics if ever there was one. A man of superhuman energy and vitality combined with extraordinary political dexterity, Saraki has grafted and sutured together a durable political dynasty which has endured all stress and storms. Like all thoroughbred feudal monarchs, Saraki does not take hostages. Behind his jovial and avuncular comportment lies steely glint and an iron will of implacable severity.

In the other corner, Saraki’s son and heir now unapparent, Abubakar Olubukola , crouches with tigrish fortitude and in fine feline fettle, too. Bukola’s imperious airs of feudal entitlement and his occasionally fatuous and ill-judged pronouncements on national matters may not endear him to many, but there is little doubt that he has proved himself a formidable political dead ringer of his famous father. After eight years of being in charge of Kwara state, the medical doctor on permanent sabbatical has cobbled together a canny alliance which has sent his father and benefactor packing from the royal castle and now threatens his political supremacy.

As far as political intrigues go, this is the father of all biological coups and the ultimate designer baby of political patricide. Thrown into the ring with them as hostage and hostess is the favoured daughter and latest pretender to the throne, Olugbemisola Saraki. A serving senator of the Federal Republic, the fetching and delectable Gbemisola is no Benazir Bhutto, the redoubtable daughter of the East, who had to face off her vagabond and wayward brothers to grab the ultimate laurel. It is more like a sea lioness being thrown into pool of crazed sharks.

But complexities and contradictions do abound. A democratic throne is a violent oxymoron. Modern Nigeria itself is a land of rowdy contradictions and at this point in time there is no point in ruffling feathers about the peculiar sociological and cultural milieu of Kwara state. Suffice it to note for now that baring a violent revolution in Nigeria which abolishes its last vestiges of feudalism, it is virtually impossible to win back in peace time what you lost on the pre-colonial warfront.

Had William Shakespeare lived around this time in post-colonial Nigeria, his extraordinarily fecund imagination would have found much grist to its ever churning mill. But even the great bard of Stratford-Upon Avon would have been forced to accommodate new pressing and urgent realities. King Lear has come to Agbaji, but the old royal baggage remains in Elizabethan England.

In King Lear, we see a sick, tired and worn monarch in a fit of senile grandeur trying to divest himself of his royal patrimony. In other words, a king is presiding over the dissolution of his own empire among his beloved daughters. His condition is as simple as it is simple-minded: protestations of love and devotion from the daughters. While the first two, Regan and Gonerill, faithfully and opportunistically began singing sonnets of love, the third, Cordelia, promptly demurred, claiming that there is indeed no art to find the mind’s construction on the face. The father promptly disinherits her, inviting a calamity of unimaginable magnitude.

Had King Lear been a modern day monarch, he would probably have been diagnosed as manifesting the onset of senile dementia clinically known as Alzheimer’s Disease. He would have been sanctioned or eased from the throne. As usual with Shakespeare, while he was rhapsodising about the nobility and stoic lack of guile of an older world represented by the old king, he was also foreshadowing the arrival of a more complex and complicated society mediated by the Industrial Revolution and its urban pathologies. The new man is epitomised by Edmund with his ubiquitous savvy and Machiavellian audacity of courage.

As he took his case against his own son to the crowd of faithful in his Ilorin GRA redoubt with the cogency and the clinical clarity of an absconding medico, there was no sign of senile dementia in the older Saraki. Although now betraying signs of the depredations and corrugations of age, Abubakar Olusola Saraki was as nimble-footed as he was quick-witted. His beloved son has been misled by idiots, a furious democratic monarch charged. His logic is simple and compelling: if you subscribe to a royalist code of succession and benefited immensely from it, you cannot change the code in midstream. By toying with this sacred and divine order, the son has joined the former henchmen of his father in the gallery of infamy and political treachery.

This is all well and good, but there is something about Saraki senior which reminds one of the medieval rulers in the epoch of classical feudalism. Like King Louis of France who famously retorted that “l’etat c’est moi!!”, Saraki elder is proclaiming: “Kwara state is me!!!.” This monarchical veto and autocratic fiat is incompatible with a democratic dispensation. Like a medieval ruler, Olusola Saraki attributes divine wisdom and absolute infallibility to his choices which jars with the idea of the citizen as a discrete sovereign in his own right. It is noteworthy that the camp of the son has been quite muted in its response and diplomatically coy about taking the battle frontally to the old man’s quarters. With the reins and levers of power firmly in his hands, Bukola appears content with running rings round his old man before moving for the kill with a little help from the federal might. A plebeian intruder who was rude to the founding father was quickly slapped down and sent to political Siberia.

Having prevailed over all his former associates turned mortal adversaries such as Adamu Attah, Shaba Lafiagi and lately Mohammed Lawal, it will amount to an epic irony if the older Saraki were to succumb to his own son in a royal battle of wits and will. That would be divine justice of punitively poetic proportions.

Having seen the inside of government and governance for eight years, what Bukola Saraki seems to be saying is that there is time for everything. Even for a famous First Family, the patriarch’s wisdom cannot approximate to the collective wisdom of the people. The retort will be that the son was a political nobody before his father enthroned him and he is in absolutely no position to query his benefactor except he is succumbing to dark and sinister sibling rivalry and filial ingratitude masquerading as public order and morality.

In all this, the vaster multitude are nothing but bemused spectators in a play of giants. This has always been the case with this northernmost outpost of the old Yoruba Empire. Have cavalry and Islamic charms and will travel. Afonja, its old Yoruba ruler, a courageous but feckless generalissimo with remote maternal roots to the Oyo royal lineage, was the last coup maker of the empire. He demanded and eventually got the suicide of the last king, Awole, after accusing the latter of plotting to eliminate him.

After Afonja himself was sent down in a palace coup with a hundred arrows embedded in his body, making him stand in stiffened erection like a crusader’s effigy, a succession of Fulani emirs were treated with absolute scorn and contempt by the warlords. One of them, Moma, was assassinated in 1895. In the case of the gifted but half-crazed Balogun Karara, he routinely marched on the capital from his Offa redoubt installing and removing emirs at will until the colonial intervention put an end to the road show.

This is the suzerainty that Olusola Saraki inherited by default. Ilorin has not always been the political hunting ground of the Sarakis. In 1964 when Saraki, a freshly qualified doctor from Britain, attempted to run as an independent candidate for the House of Representatives, he was given an electoral black eye and forced to beat a humiliating retreat to his Lagos base. But he rallied, deploying the allure of increasing prosperity and the power of guileful generosity.

By 1983 when he helped the UPN’s Cornelius Tunji Adebayo to trounce Adamu Attah, the sitting governor, Saraki had become the undisputed political boss of Kwara. But queries about his ambiguous pedigree and dubious lineage persist. Till date, there has been no response to a devastating riposte from Abdul-Ganiyu Abdul-Rasaq, the notable Ilorin lawyer, that Saraki’s father was an Abeokuta indigene who only came to Agbaji for Koranic studies. But even then, the current rulers of the famous city are not indigenes themselves. In Saraki, Ilorin was merely obeying its old logic of political warlordism combined with spiritual predation.

There are tantalising possibilities in the current face off between father and son which show that history often moves forward by lurching sideways. If the elder Saraki were to prevail against his son, would he have the courage and bloody-minded audacity to bring the full weight of treason against his adored son? If on the other hand, the younger Saraki succeeds in vanquishing his father would the old man, now worn and exhausted by age and political misfortune, suffer the fate of cruel banishment like the old King Lear?

Either way, something tells snooper that the bell is tolling for the Saraki dynasty in Kwara. If Bukola prevails, he would have succeeded in opening up the democratic space in Kwara in a profoundly ironic and paradoxical manner. This in spite of himself and his decidedly reactionary worldview which he ventilates with imperial arrogance.

If on the other hand the father trumps the son, he would have succeeded in installing the first female executive governor in the history of the nation, a feat that has eluded far more progressive enclaves. If this feat were to be achieved in a harshly patriarchal bastion of feudal politics, it will show the cunning of history on spectacular display. Judging from what we have heard of her, nothing will then stop Gbemi from washing some dirty family linen in the public space if only to permanently see off her disloyal brother.

Every success contains the germ of eventual failure. There may be not much to choose between feudalised democracy and democratised feudalism, but history is still unfolding. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a political sadist cruelly taunted his bedridden father. “This is one deal old Joe cannot fix”. It looks like this is one deal Oloye cannot fix. King Lear has finally arrived in Agbaji. But it will be noted by many generations to come that a major political physician once passed through the plains of Kwara.

November 18, 2012
The Odour of Chrysanthemum

And while we are still on the subject of the distinguished departed, it is meet to report on the passing of the legal legend and indefatigable colossus of jurisprudence, Justice Kayode Esho. He was a man who used the instrumentality of legal adjudication to advance the cause of political justice in a backward neo-colonial society. This great icon will be missed by many who have come to admire his sharp and penetrating intellect, his vast erudition and implacable forthrightness.

In the past week or so, Nigeria has lost four of its most eminent and distinguished sons, Hope Harriman, the great industrialist with his cutting wit and hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie; Lam Adesina, columnist, educator and great grassroots politician; Olusola Saraki, the Ilorin power broker, and now Justice Kayode Esho. The odour of Chrysanthemum, the flower of death as D.H Lawrence famously reminded us in a remarkable short story, pervades Nigeria.

The deaths of these great and illustrious Nigerians is sending a grim message to us. We are fast approaching the final end of an era; the era of titans. Unfortunately, and as we have seen in the particular case of football, not many new great products are coming off the production line. To put it bluntly, the factory of true human greatness and genuine distinction seems to have shut down in the nation a long time ago. Lilliputs have gone for lollypot.

It is a dark, dismal and depressing scenario. But there is hope based on a dispassionate reading of history. It is precisely when a society reaches the end of the road when something miraculous happens. Neither in rectification or retribution will Nigeria be an exception.

November 18, 2012
‘How Lam prevented another civil war’

• Ex-CPS recalls the late gov’s encounter with Buhari

But for the maturity and wisdom of the late former Governor of Oyo State, Alhaji Lam Adesina, Nigeria could have been plunged into a second civil war.

A former Chief Press Secretary to the late Governor, Chief Kehinde Olaosebikan, yesterday said in Abuja that a conflict between Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani would have thrown the country into another war.

He told our correspondent that a former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, had led a combative delegation of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) to meet Adesina in 2000 in his office.

According to him, “Precisely on the 13th of October, 2000, former military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, in company with former Military administrator of Lagos State, General Buba Marwa, had led a heavy team of Arewa Consultative Forum in a combative mood to the office of the governor in protest against the alleged killings of over 69 Fulani cattle herders in Saki Area of the state.

“General Buhari whose arrival to the Secretariat complex was preceded by scores of lorry loads of Hausa men and boys said pointedly at the executive council chambers of Oyo State that his team came to meet the governor to seek reasons why the people of Saki should not be dealt with for killing Fulani herdsmen. He did not stop at that, Gen Buhari accused Governor Lam Adesina of complicity in the killings and using his position as governor to pervert justice.

He quoted the former Head of State as accusing the former governor of shielding the culprits. According to the General, they therefore wanted immediate stoppage of the killings, justice and compensation for the mass killings of the Fulanis or vengeance across the country.

Olaosebikan added: “As weighty, indicting and provocative as the General’s allegations were against the governor, Alhaji Lam Adesina remained unperturbed as he only fired back with his own well-coordinated arsenals in form of refined strategy, robust explanations and effective engagements.

“Lam Adesina identified all the points raised by the General and simply asked the heads of the organisations directly involved to respond.”

He quoted Lam Adesina as saying: “ Before I thank you for this visit, you have come to tell me something, I also want to tell you something and that something is to make an appeal. General Buhari has been a former Head of State, Brigadier Marwa has governed Lagos for some time and with credibility… so you are national leaders of this country. Even though, by accident of birth, you are from the North, so you can be born anywhere, may be next time when I am coming to the world I will be born in the North or the South South.’

He attributed the manner in which frayed nerves calmed to the level-headedness of the late governor, thus preventing what could have led to another civil war.

November 18, 2012