The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

Budget 2013: An opportunity for the national assembly to atone for its many shortcomings

The National Assembly must become the ears and eyes of the Nigerian people

It is a self-evident fact that there is a millstone around the neck of the National Assembly as far as corruption or fighting it is concerned. What with instances of chairmen of some of its investigating committees being caught dead in acts of corruption? The following readily come to mind – The Power Probe in which the hunters became the hunted, the Probe into the Capital Market collapse and the notorious Lawan probe of the Oil Subsidy saga. There have also been several allegations of budget padding right within those otherwise hallowed chambers. This is not to forget the outlandish and scandalous salaries and allowances members have awarded themselves at the expense of poor Nigerians. Not even one of those among them previously touted as progressives has been courageous enough to denounce their unconscionable pay packet as anti-people. Yet, as unprepossessing as the National Assembly is, it looks like the only institution that can save this country from the President’s obvious inability to confront corruption head-on. So embarrassing is this government’s highly flawed approach to the subject that not even former President Obasanjo who is largely regarded as the godfather of the Jonathan administration can hold back any longer. Therefore at a recent event in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, he launched a scathing attack on the government for its glaring failure in the anti-corruption battle as well as its uncoordinated approach to reining in Boko Haram which is either appeasement today or an effete sabre rattling the following day with Nigerians being regularly told that the government is ‘on top of the matter.’ I have had others argue, however, that Obasanjo has to considerably damage Jonathan to succeed in inflicting his next candidate on Nigeria, the third in a row, and whoever that is; but even this insinuation can hardly detract from his justified rage against Jonathan this time around.

Nothing that I know has rattled the President more than the recent threat by the National Assembly to start drawing up grounds of impeachment against him for his very poor implementation of the 1212 budget; a failure which both the House and the Senate categorised as an act of gross misconduct. That effort had the momentary, salutary effect of putting both the president and his Finance minister on some overdrive but they have since gone back to the status quo ante with reported delays in the release of, especially, capital votes which is done in fits and starts even in this final quarter of the year. In one word, the Jonathan administration is simply overwhelmed in more ways than one but corruption leads the pack.

The scenario playing out right now in the course of the National Assembly considering the 2013 draft budget for approval is not only alarming but extremely dangerous for the polity. Of all that we have seen since the sundry, shadowy NNPC accounts of the Babangida era or what we all experienced in the Obasanjo years during which there was a preference for implementing his draft budget proposals rather than the Appropriation Laws, in a classical show of impunity and disregard for both the National Assembly and the laws of the land, I do not think anything compares with the current government’s in-your –face illegal attempt to rig the budget against itself by ensuring that total national revenue is deliberately under-captured as in the proposed 2013 budget.

So distraught was a citizen the other day on reading that revenue from gas was not accounted for, or included, in the draft 2013 budget presented to the National Assembly that he vehemently bemoaned the probable consequences of such an illegal act. In a letter to the editor of this newspaper, he wrote: Sir, let us imagine a situation where crude oil prices do not exceed 40 US dollars per barrel and the demand for Nigeria’s oil drops drastically because the U.S which imports about 40 percent of our crude oil, cuts down significantly on her imports; let us contemplate a situation where the revenue of Nigeria can no longer support the huge allowances and remunerations that our rulers award themselves. Would it not be interesting to see the scavengers of Abuja scamper away because the honey pot has been wiped clean? Board members of many redundant and unprofitable government corporations shall find nothing again to satisfy their lust. State governors will be hard pressed for their lack of ingenuity and creativity as they would not be able to cope with riots in their states caused by their inability to pay salaries of their generally unproductive workers. The centre, he concluded, will no longer hold again and the attraction of this union shall rapidly wither away.’ In that case secession or attempts at it would become superfluous as those holding us captive would have to rush back to their villages for survival..

Nor is that, by any means, the worst case of this government’s lack of transparency. It has now been brought to the public space that a major subsidiary of the NNPC simply just do not pay its revenue earnings into the federation account but rather goes ahead to spend such huge funds even when not appropriated. If this turns out to be correct; that under the watch of a world reputed Finance Minister this illegal act is the practice, it may simply mean that Nigeria is far beyond redemption because nothing in our constitution permits it and state officials having anything to do with this illegality will deserve due disciplinary measures, however high or untouchable they consider themselves.

Ensuring that probity underpins as well as under gird our national budgets have thus become a sacred duty the National Assembly owes this country. Both in this regard, as in the constitutional amendment exercise it is currently undertaking, it will be in the best interest of the members to know that Nigerians do not trust them. However, since it is far worse, as we have seen, time and again, and extremely dangerous and unrealistic to count on the serially professed good intentions of the executive arm of this government, Nigerians are prepared to give the National Assembly a second chance to redeem itself.

We are, for instance, currently thousands of megawatts shot of the power we have been routinely promised by Abuja and the controversy that accompanied the ongoing attempt to unbundle PHCN has not done much to rekindle hope in the citizenry that things will be better. The current leadership of the National Assembly has shown that it can jettison partisan politics to legislate for good governance and, ipso facto, for the good health of the country but the citizenry, courtesy civil society, and the press must ensure that it is kept on the leach. The National Assembly is far too big, too constitutionally empowered and critical to our national survival to fall prey to the scare tactics and the phony antics of the executive branch whose spokespersons, in spite of all our best hopes, have proved singularly disappointing the way they think every opposite message and the messenger must be thrashed.

Nigerians are acutely aware of the shortcomings of the National Assembly itself but being the only institution with its type of constitutional powers, it must rise to the occasion and become the ears and the eyes of the Nigerian people in this titanic battle against a government that routinely romances corruption, treats insecurity of life and property as given and regards Boko Haram madness as nothing but Nigeria’s turn to have a taste of its own terrorism as Mr President once described it.

November 18, 2012
Fuel subsidy and Jonathan’s surgery

It wasn’t many weeks after the crown settled over his ears that President Goodluck Jonathan, and perhaps some of his minders, knew that Palladium would be a lifelong opponent. The columnist’s grouse is of course not congenital; it was triggered by the president’s disagreeable worldview that sees him being shifty when firmness is desired and rigid when compromise is required. Even before the election that enthroned him was conducted, this column had concluded that the president, who was then an acting president, would win, but would be incapable of governing with the innovativeness and discipline a harassed and broken nation needed. The columnist, readers will recall, had endorsed Mallam Nuhu Ribadu for the presidency, but also concluded that the young man’s time was not yet, for too many things were loaded against the uppity anti-graft czar, not least his age, judgement, and frequently misplaced candour . I am happy to restate that the president has not made a disciple of me.

I single out for consideration today Jonathan’s fuel subsidy removal policy. Speaking a few days ago while receiving the report of the graduating participants of the Senior Executive Course 34, 2012 of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, at the Presidential Villa, the president insisted that what was left of subsidy must be removed in order to free the industry and attract investors. It was an inelegant perspective couched allegorically in patient-doctor format. Hear him at his rhetorical best: “Why is it that people are not building refineries in Nigeria, despite that it is a big business? It is because of the policy of subsidy, and that is why we want to get out of it. To change a nation is like surgery. If you have a young daughter of five years who has a boil at a very strategic part of the face, you either, as a parent, leave that boil because the young girl will cry or you take the girl to the surgeon. So, you have the option of just robbing mentholatum on the face, until the boil will burst and disfigure her face, or you take that child to the surgeon. On the sighting of a scalpel of the surgeon alone, the child will start crying. But if she bears the pains, after some days or weeks, the child will grow up to be a beautiful lady.”

Not only has the president determined that the subsidy problem is a boil, he has also concluded that it is located on the face. He also assumes that the boil was left untreated until it became ripe and reached the ugly dimension he talked about. Finally, he assumes that the patient cannot have a second opinion, and that the surgeon is competent enough to make the incision required to prevent scarification. But suppose the so-called boil is only imaginary and indeed psychosomatic? Suppose the patient is a haemophiliac or a diabetic? In Jonathan’s allegorical world, we are after all permitted to cavort among many suppositions. Judging from his antecedents and his responses to Nigeria’s enduring problems and challenges, Jonathan cannot, however, be supposed to be a qualified surgeon, let alone one whose diagnosis is accurate. In January this year, in his attempt to perform surgery on this same boil of his finding, he almost decapitated the national head. In surgically addressing a boil he says is strategically placed on the face – thank God he sees us as a potentially beautiful girl – how can we be sure he will not remove an eye?

Has Jonathan treated the cancer that has made our roads death traps? Has he tackled the security problems in the Northeast and all over the country? Has he responded well to the decay in the education sector, the misery in the health sector, and the confusion in transportation and electricity generation and distribution sectors? He pursues boils but leaves cancers and cardiac problems unattended. He is preoccupied with saving a girl’s pretty face when the patient is suffering from the far more devastating afflictions of leukaemia and haemophilia. The fact staring us in the face is that in his allegorical world, Jonathan seems more appropriately a self-trained nurse who has picked up bits and pieces from eminent surgeons during ward rounds. He depends on the apolitical Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for his knowledge of economics, though the economic orthodoxy she purveys has doubtful utility for Nigeria’s unique cultural, social and political milieux. In her first coming, she was obsessed with the desire to pay off the country’s debts; in her second coming, she is now obsessed with the countervailing desire to acquire debts. She reminds us of the illustrious and self-satisfied Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who at his first coming was obsessed with nationalising what he described as the commanding heights of the economy, and at his second coming was so fixated with privatising everything we briefly feared he would privatise the presidency or the country itself.

There is not only no convincing proof of the existence of fuel subsidy, as the trial of the so-called subsidy thieves has indicated, it is also clear that neither Jonathan nor his favourite aides and mannequins in the oil sector have given us statistical illustration of what is happening in the industry in terms of production, consumption and refining. Nigeria’s oil industry is so immersed in confusion and inefficiency that it must require extreme arrogance and insouciance for the government to focus only on the financial rewards of removing the subsidy, and ignoring the unsavoury fact that the burden of such removal will be borne mainly, if not only, by the poor. The surgeon-general has spared no time to consider the consequences of the subsidy removal, nor even talked about it, except to refer to it in exasperating tones. Never has a government anywhere, not even in autocracies, sailed near the wind as recklessly as the Jonathan government and his colluding cabals. The poor are overtaxed, over-levied, can’t afford school fees for their children, have no access to decent or qualitative healthcare, and have no access to housing. They are left hungry, isolated and dangerously alienated.

President Jonathan fancies himself a political, developmental and financial surgeon, and is impatient with any talk of second opinion. He wants to railroad his patient into surgery, in the tenuous hope that the patient will not die on his poorly equipped operating table. He knows the threat from the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) is mere noise, and he believes the Save Nigeria Group (SNG) has discredited itself by its indiscriminate accusations and hysteria. He is convinced it would be a mark of courage to defy the patient’s alarm and to proceed urgently to surgery, and in 10 years, as he said at another forum, Nigeria would enjoy a turnaround. He will probably expatiate on this wild and unsubstantiated optimism in today’s presidential media chat. But there is nothing he says that will persuade us he has the discipline and the team to remake Nigeria. Except to the jobholders around him, everyone knows his government lacks the depth and initiative to snatch the country from the jaws of poverty and underdevelopment.

Sadly, now, there is nothing anyone can say to persuade Dr Jonathan that the world is not flat, as his subsidy theory imagines, or that the consequences of subsidy removal, which he and his aides deigned to give only palliative gestures, would not far outweigh the benefits his economists talk about. We hope it is not superfluous to remind him he is a democratically elected president, and that that singular fact makes it obligatory for him to convince us of the existence of a subsidy regime in the downstream sector of the oil industry, and that that subsidy is of such magnitude that except we did away with it, we could not hope to prosper. We may not trust that he would grasp what we readily see, namely that an indifferent and illogical policy issuing from him could mix lethally with an impoverished and alienated public to produce such effects as no revolution is sufficient to mimic. But we have a responsibility to restrain this eager surgeon, lest he make an incision purporting to save a girl’s pretty face only to destroy the patient, and with her, bring an entire republic down.

November 18, 2012
Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (2)

Okada illustrates devaluation of life in Nigeria

He said in this column last week that the failure of a fragile middle class in Nigeria to determine cultural standards as it is done in modern societies is manifested in the opposition to regulate the use of okada as a means of mass transportation and suggested that okada illustrates the devaluation of life in Nigeria. We added that the cancellation of okada in other states and its recent restriction in Lagos State is the right thing to do to protect citizens and a necessary condition to make citizens demand with consistency and vigour that governments at all levels provide proper infrastructure for safe mass transportation.

The shrinkage of the middle class during the decade of Structural Adjustment Programme substantially reduced the efficacy of the middle class as the guardian of cultural and social standards. The pauperization of the masses and the middle class during the era of SAP created a situation where the line between middle-class and lower-class cultural values became too thin to be visible. Consequently, cultural standards that were raised by the middle class created by the nation’s founding fathers and sustained largely until the 1970s evaporated under military regimes. Even under post-military civilian governments, higher taste and standards in respect of all aspects of life continues to disappear under rulers who themselves do not share middle class values. Should we be surprised that citizens are up in arms that okada is a means of livelihood when some of their governments and wealthy citizens purchase okada for the jobless in the name of poverty alleviation?

Just as failure of the state to carry out its own responsibility brought okada on the nation, so has it degrade the quality of life in many other areas: public hygiene, civic aesthetics, safe marketing, etc. When Lagos State started to invest in city beautification projects by establishing green parks across the state, citizens already used to the degraded culture thrown up by SAP and care-free attitude of post-SAP governments cried foul. They called Raji Fashola Guru Maharaji and Flower Planter. They took a philistine view of the government’s creation of parks, arguing that the money spent on planting flowers could have been used to feed the poor. Many of the poor today sit in the parks to eat their lunch, forgetting that the parks in which they relax today used to be public toilets.

Many years ago, Oshodi and other areas of the state used to be market sites in which street traders and their merchandise prevented motorists from moving. When the Lagos State government issued ordinances to stop street trading in such areas, several spokesmen for the poor advised the government to stop harassing hardworking traders that are trying to make a living in a tough economy. If the government had not remained committed to its vision of transforming Lagos into a cleaner and safer city, traffic problems spawned by on-the-road traders could have prevented movement of goods and services across the state and by implication from the state to other parts of the country.

The devaluation of life that okada mass transit represents affects other aspects of life. Even civil servants whose counterparts in all successful countries are standard bearers are known all over Nigeria to encourage politicians to invest millions in bore holes in preference to public water works. Ministries of water now spend more money and energy on bore holes than in any other part of the world, despite warnings that bore holes can induce seismic disorder.

It is not fair to blame advocates of poor taste who appear to be in the majority in the country, particularly those opposed to ordinances designed to enhance public order. Most of our citizens have for too long been degraded by many years of irresponsible governments and unresponsive governance. Governments that have for decades provided excuses for not carrying out their obligations to citizens have caused citizens to lose their sense of safety and good taste, especially in their bid to survive the harsh economic conditions created by bad governance.

Of what significance is public order and safety to hungry people? This is the reasoning of citizens who see okada as a job or a poverty alleviation scheme that should take precedence over citizens’ safety and security. Of what importance are beautiful parks to hungry men? Of what value are streets devoid of trash to citizens who rummage through trash cans from time to time? Hard times have the capacity to rob human beings of higher-order sensibility and even of sensitivity to ordinances that are designed to ensure safety and order.

What should be of immediate concern to life and self-respecting citizens is how to move the country from a pidgin culture into a modern one. Because Nigeria is a multiethnic country with diverse value systems that are being managed in a unitary manner, citizens all over the country are in a state of flux. Their languages and cultures are increasingly pidginized. Attempts of confused citizens to create a semblance of order out of chaos in politics, the economy, and in other areas of life have led to the cultural chaos that now prevails all over the country.

The ongoing tension between advocates for okada workers and owners and the Lagos State government arises from misplaced hostility. Lagos State traffic laws that regulate okada movement or ordinances of other states that ban use of okada do not indicate government’s lack of concern for citizens. On the contrary, such laws derive from genuine concern for safety of citizens.

The tension that is required is for citizens to impress on their representatives in government that over concentration of power and resources in the centre is not likely to lead to a motivated and functional middle class that can bring development to Nigeria. Okada is a glaring example of failure of the state. The call for restoration of functional federalism is not just about politics or revenue sharing. It is also about returning to a system that creates values for individual and community development. A society that is left to operate as a pidgin society should not blame citizens for subscribing to the ethos of anything-goes.

November 18, 2012
Sex scandal claims another dignified scalp

An eight-month affair, short in duration by Nigerian standards, has doomed the reputation and career of General David Petraeus, 60, Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Petraeus, who has just resigned his appointment, made his reputation in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as the successful US military commander in both countries. After a stint in the CIA, which position he assumed only last year, he was expected sometime in the future to run for the White House. That will no longer be possible because of the sex scandal inadvertently unearthed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while looking into a petition by a 37-year-old Florida socialite, Ms Jill Kelly, who sought protection over threatening emails sent by an anonymous woman.

The FBI traced the threatening emails to Paula Broadwell, Petraeus’ biographer, who thought Ms Kelly was her rival for the attention and love of the CIA boss. Ms Kelly is married and has three children; so too is Ms Broadwell, with two children. One of the Broadwell emails reads: “Stay away from my man,” and another says: “Does your husband know you are touching Gen Petraeus under the table?” Like a domino, however, the FBI has also discovered thousands of pages of emails exchanged between Ms Kelly and Gen John Allen, who was recently nominated as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) commander in Europe. Investigations are still ongoing to find out whether there was any inappropriate relationship between Allen and Kelly, and whether there was an affair between Kelly and Petraeus in the past.

It is clear Kelly did not know the identity of Broadwell when she sought protection from the FBI, nor do we at the moment have insight into whether Broadwell’s allegation against Kelly is true or false. It is, however, amusing that married women could fight over other women’s husbands. What should the legitimate wives do? Petraeus and Allen’s families would be praying that more seedy revelations do not come to light as it happened in the Tiger Woods case. Petraeus, for instance, is reputed to have mentored many people; his family must hope that he had no affair with some of the women he mentored.

Here are Palladium’s homilies on mentorship and biographical writings. First, as much as possible, let a man mentor a man. Cross-gender mentorship is fraught with difficulties and temptations. Second, considering the acute closeness biographers have with their subjects, let a man write the biography of a man, and a woman that of a woman. As every schoolboy knows, and as every worker can testify, interacting with the opposite sex on a continuous basis breaks down all barriers – including looks, religion, class etc. – to starting a relationship.

I do not pretend that my homilies are applicable to Nigeria. If the same moral yardstick used by Americans and Europeans were applied to Nigeria, there is hardly a state house, military formation, civil service, media house (tee-hee), hospital etc. that can stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, I would like to be challenged by one state house, just one, from the topmost echelon of government to the lowest rung (ha-ha). After all, according to the late Bola Ige, in his book People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1940-1979), pages 299-300, the flamboyant Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, a former Finance minister, remarked in the heat of the British Parliament Profumo scandal that no Nigerian minister would resign his portfolio simply because of sex scandal. That doctrine has endured; so too has our age-long turpitude which is clumsily hidden under a tapestry of cultural, religious and social permissiveness.

November 18, 2012
The goodness of Olusola Saraki

Like everyone else in the country I was informed about the death of the Waziri of Ilorin, Dr. Olusola Saraki, on the morning that he passed on and the news saddened me immensly. This is because he was one of the greatest, kindest, most compassionate, most generous and most selfless leaders that we have ever had in this country. His power and influence stretched from the Second Republic when he was the Leader of the Senate on the platform of the NPN up until today. He made the dreams and aspirations of many come true and throughout his life he brought nothing but smiles to many faces. He was my late father’s close and loyal friend and he was like a father to me and so many others. This is not a good time for him to go because Nigeria needs him now more than ever and we shall all miss him dearly. My heart goes out to the Saraki family. I mourn with them and I stand shoulder to shoulder with them today. Like the biblical David said about the passing of King Saul, I am constrained to say about the passing of the great Oloye Olusola Saraki, ‘’how are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle. How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished.”

In Shakespere’s famous play ‘’Julius Caesar’’, whilst trying to warn Caesar about the prospect of death, Calphurnia said ‘’when beggars die there are no comets seen.The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’’. Caesar responded promptly and appropiately by saying ‘’Cowards die many times before their deaths.The valiant never taste of death but once’’. Dr. Saraki was not a beggar or a coward. He was a prince in every sense of the word and since his passing not only have many comets been seen, not only have the heavens been blazing forth his death but the whole of Nigeria has been mourning him. What a befitting honour this is and none is as deserving of such honour as the Oloye. Like Julius Caesar, he did not fear death even though he must have known, like Mark Anthony said in that very same play, that ‘’the evil that men do live after them, the good is often buried with their bones’’. With Saraki there was no evil but plenty of good. And those of us that he left behind must not allow that ‘’good’’ to be ‘’buried with his bones’’. It is just one example of that ‘’good’’ which I intend to share with you in this essay.

If the truth be told many wonderful things are often said and written about great and powerful leaders in Nigeria after their passing. Some of these things are true and some are not. Yet In Saraki’s case I assure you that these things are really true. The following story that I am about to share with you is not only an eloquent testimony to that but it also proves the fact that Dr. Saraki was not only a truly great, compassionate and kind man but that he was also selfless and sensitive to the suffering of others. In early 1998, during the turbulent yet dying days of General Sani Abacha, a promising and brilliant young journalist by the name of Mr. Tunde Oladepo, who at that time was the Abeokuta Bureau Chief of the Guardian Newspaper, was brutally murdered by agents of the Federal Military Government in his home in Abeokuta and in the prescence of his wife and two very infant children. The murderers wore masks and committed the crime in a terrible way that is best left to the imagination of readers. I will not repeat those sordid details here. What I will say is that no-one deserves to die in that way. After butchering Tunde the three murderers went over to the wife and children, who had been in the same room whilst the killing was taking place and who witnessed the whole event, and removed their masks so that she could see their faces clearly. They seemed to relish in the pain that they were causing her and the fear that they were instilling in the children. The point that they were conveying to the young bereaved widow, like all predators and beasts often do after their kill, was one of total impugnity. They were saying that ‘’we have done this to you and your family, you have seen our faces and yet you are utterly powerless to do anything about it’’. This was the height of cruelty and after their horrendous display of callousnes and brazen power and control they left the house. Yet the torment for the Oladepo family had only just started.

A little background would be helpful here. Tunde had been murdered simply because of his stringent and uncomromising support for NADECO and the fight for the realisation of the mandate of Chief M.K.O Abiola who had won a free and fair Presidential election in 1993. Nigeria was in turmoil in those days and there was literally a war going on between those that supported NADECO and Abiola and those that supported Abacha and military rule. Thousands of young men and women, mostly unsung and unkown, were murdered, tortured and driven into exile by the Government of that day simply because they stood on the side of righteousness, justice and truth. Tunde was one of such people. He was a great supporter of NADECO and he took great risks for his country, the cause of freedom and the cause of democracy. Sadly, in the end, he paid the supreme price for his stand. It was in that context, for that reason and with that background that Tunde Oladepo was murdered. Yet the torment of the Oladepo family did not end with his murder. As a matter of fact it had only just started.

I say this because what happened next beggars belief. During Tunde’s burial ceremony many came to honour him and of course they were most welcome. However to the utter shock and chagrin of his young widow and two young children, the three butchers that had killed her husband and that had also shown their faces to her after the murder turned up at the burial as well. Not only did they turn up but they also went over to the young widow and, with a wicked smile, whispered their ‘’commisserations’’ into her ears. This was not only frightening, bizarre and macabre but it also had the intended effect. Mrs. Oladepo was completely terrified and was frozen into silence by fear and trepidation. Had they come back to kill her and her children too? Did they have unfinished business with them? Was the pain and torment that they had inflicted on her family not enough? These were the questions that shot through her mind. Yet she had the prescence of mind, courage and discipline to hold her peace knowing that if she didn’t she may invite instant death upon herself there and then and upon her children. What a strong lady she was. Once again she got the message from her tormentors loud and clear. And the message was the following- ‘’we kill, we bury, we destroy, we are above the law, we are untouchable, we control everything, we can get away with anything and there is NOTHING that you can do about it’’. Such was the nature of those that killed for Abacha and such was the clime of those dark, evil and dangerous days.

After the burial and after all the mourners left Mrs. Oladepo soon found out that she and her two young children were all alone in the world. Not only did she fear for her life but she also feared for the future of her children. She had no means to live, she had no business and she was finding it difficult to get all the dues that were owed her husband. Worst still all those ‘’big men’’ (and I have their names) that her husband had supported and fought for in NADECO and most of his old friends turned their back on her and offered her nothing in terms of encouragement, substance, protection or support. She had no money and no way of surviving in a country that was exceptionally dangerous and that was in deep conflict and turmoil. Worst of all she knew that it was only a matter of time before the assasins came back for her and her children because she had been forced to see their faces, not once but twice. She and her two children were the only living witnesses to their homicidal butchery and therefore they presented a real threat to them. The ‘’system’’, like the mafia, does not leave witnesses alive for long and they always tie up loose ends. It was only a matter of time and she knew it. Her only recourse was to secretly flee from Nigeria, just as many other NADECO widows and fighters had done, and seek greener patures and safety elsewhere until the evil had passed. Yet for this she needed resources and support and there was none forthcoming from anywhere. She was literally in despair and every day was a nightmare for her. She was deserted by all and she literally had to fend for herself and her two little children on a daily basis. These were indeed difficult days for the young widow because she had no money and all hope seemed lost. All she could do was cry, hope against hope and pray to God. Then things suddenly changed.

She was sitting in her house one afternoon and there was a knock on her door. She welcomed the strangers in with some trepidation, not knowing who they were or who sent them. There were two men. They told her that they worked for Dr. Olusola Saraki and that they had been sent to her by him. They said that he did not know her husband and had never met him before but that he had read about the murder and terrible tragedy in the newspapers. They said that he felt moved by the fact that Oladepo had left a young widow behind and two infant children and that consequently he had sent a token of sum of money to them to help them at that difficult time. They handed over 250,000 naira cash to her (which was a lot of money in those days) and then promptly left. Mrs. Oladepo was overwhelmed and she knew that this was an answered prayer. Now she had the resources to leave Nigeria and, with the support of the NADECO network, she could move to the relative safety of Ghana and from there, with the support of NADECO and the Canadian Embassy in

November 18, 2012
World kindness week: Try being kind to your fellow Nigerians!

Today, give a cup of kindness to your parents, family, friends, neighbours, fellow Nigerians. One day, you might need it back

Look at it this way. I bet that if you and I were to be placed on a kindness scale to find out how kind we are to others, I would do better than you. Let me tell you why. First, I greet anyone I meet on the street with a smile. Then I regularly give my lunch to strangers. Then, biggest of all, I give my money to the poor. Did you believe me? How could you?!

To start with, it is not possible for me to smile at everyone I meet because most times I am driving, I am too busy praying that the blessed car would not decide to stop somewhere along the route because it wants a drink of water, like a stubborn horse. It has happened before, and believe me, it was not a smiling matter. There I was driving along peacefully and minding my own business when suddenly some passersby started to gesticulate wildly to me, pointing at my bonnet. I thought they wanted a ride on it and was getting some nice, explosive expletive ready for them when I noticed that smoke was escaping from the said bonnet. Well, I need not tell you that the story ended with me running out of the car; oh yes, the engine was still running too, thanks for asking. Luckily, some good Samaritans came to my rescue. But I did not at all like the mechanic’s question. ‘Did you not watch the temperature gauge?’ ‘Where is it?’, I replied. Also, his laughter did not help much. Well, since that day, I have learnt to keep one eye on the blessed gauge, and one on the car in front of me. Now, can you ask again why I do not spread kindness by smiling at everyone I meet?

Then of course, I have recently found out that my weight is shooting through the roof. I cannot honestly say that I do not know why. I have long since suspected that eating too much pancakes and akara can have a deleterious effect on the body. The stupid things have a way of pretending they do not know where to go and pile themselves up instead around the waist and hips and chest and head and arms and … One morning, you just wake up and find the scales lying to you again that you are overweight. But deep in your mind, you know it is because you forgot to be kind to people by sharing with them the little pancakes and akara you have been blessed with. Of course, like everything that goes against nature, there is retaliation. Now, I have to take four-kilometre walks around my neighbourhood each dawn mumbling something about this kind of crime and punishment not being a fair bargain.

Obviously, I live a very busy life, not quite on the fast lane, but busy enough, thank you. If I am not poring over books by grading, reading, correcting, reading, grading, asking, (e.g. what does a student mean by ‘snake bites student, lands in the hospital!’), then I’m teaching. For that, I find myself hopping madly from one hour to the next, trying to beat the time, the traffic, and the toilet routine. With such unearthly engagements, how on earth do you expect me to see the beggars standing by the roadside? And when I do see them, I have sort of noticed that each one of them brings out his/her disabled arm or leg or other part (no matter how private) for my viewing pleasure. Isn’t that so annoying? So, how can I spread love and joy to those who wake up in the morning with the determined aim to take advantage of my good nature by shoving their amputations or swellings in my face? So, no, I do not give my money to the poor; I am too busy and grumpy to see them.

Not so, says the World Kindness Week which runs from the 13th to the 20th of this month. During this week, we are called on to remember the usefulness of performing acts of kindness to our fellow human beings. It is the week when we are told to remember what kindness is all about and what it looks like: having enough compassion to be considerate and caring towards others, particularly those who cannot pay us back. Like the beggars.

I have always said that Nigerians are the unkindest set of people on earth when it comes to dealing with one another. In fact, I have gone so far as to say that Nigerians hate one another with uncommon hatred. It is only unkindness that can prompt anyone to hide the public’s millions and billions and trillions of Naira in untraceable accounts and then run behind his race or religion for cover against the rest of the country. It is only unkindness that will make a driver of one of those big Jeeps or Lorries or Trailers shove everybody else off the road into a ditch or even death just because the law is too weak to catch them. I know someone who died from that. It is also unkindness that would make a Nigerian carpenter or plumber promise that he would be with you at eight in the morning, knowing you have an emergency, and then turn up two days later. I have found that very few Nigerians are really humble at their jobs; they are too busy respecting money.

Listen, there are too many reasons why we need to be kind to each other. To start with, the world is round. Really. You see, what goes round does come round. Someone told the story of how he was travelling along a lonely road early one evening and came on a vehicle that had pulled up by the side of the road. The owner had run out of fuel. He parked his own car, satisfied the owner’s fuel needs before going on his own way. Not long after, he had a mechanical failure on a lonely road too, on a dark, stormy night. He could not believe it when someone pulled up beside him and helped him out of his jam that night; no money could have bought that.

It is true though that much danger sometimes attends an unwary act of kindness in Nigeria because we have so much to deal with – wickedness, superstition, ritual murderers, and yes, policemen who jump to wrong conclusions, etc.,. One family was said to have been on a journey and came across what looked like an accident victim. Stopping to see what they could do, they were soon surrounded by ritual murderers who had used a decoy to get them to stop. To cut the story short, they lost a son to the cut-throats that day, and the family has not been the same since then. We are each other’s victims.

Then there is the unkindest cut of all, superstition. Ugh! I tried to be kind once and placed some food items outside my gate for whoever might be in need of them. Someone quietly took me aside and said that people might think I had been asked to do so by a Babalawo. So, I tip-toed backwards, dragging my carton in again. Yes, yes, the things that westerners take for granted like honesty, simple cleanness of heart or even, yes, honesty, are missing in these parts.

Nevertheless, the World Kindness Week is here to remind us that kindness is not an old-fashioned word. It still lives, and everyone can do with a little bit of it; for many, even a smile would do. Today, give a cup of kindness to your parents, family, friends, neighbours, fellow Nigerians. One day, you just might need it back.

November 18, 2012
Universities or glorified higher schools?

Even without the recently released report of the Needs Assessment Committee on public Universities, the state of rot in the institutions has been apparent to anyone who cared to know.

What the report of the committee established following the 2009/ASUU/FG agreement has succeeded in doing is to provide a graphic detail of the decay of the public universities which we should be ashamed of as a country that claims to be the giant of Africa.

With the report, we no longer need to wonder why our public universities do not rate high among universities in the continent, talk less at the global level.

Among other findings, the committee confirmed that physical facilities for teaching and learning in government owned universities were inadequate, dilapidated, over-stretched and improvised. Laboratories and workshops are old with inappropriate furnishing.

Some Engineering workshops are operating under zinc sheds and trees, while some Science-based faculties ran “Dry-lab” due to lack of regents and tools for real experiment.

The manpower crisis in the institutions was also exposed by the report which indicated that only 43 percent of the academic staff had the required PhD qualification. Majority of the universities are grossly understaffed, they rely on part-time and visiting lecturers, have under-qualified academic and have no effective staff development programme.

In terms of hostel facilities, the report stated that “lavatories in most of the hostels in Nigerian universities are both inadequate and unfit for human use”. In Michael Okpara University for instance, female students take their bath in the open!

It is very unfortunate that the public universities, many of which used to be the pride of the nation globally have degenerated to their present pitiable level.

How can we produce employable and competent graduates from institutions that lack virtually every required facility conducive for learning?

I recently addressed some post graduate students of a federal university in a lecture room with tattered rug and torn window blinds and was very sad about the very depressing environment students have to learn. It is not unusual for students to scramble for seats in overcrowded lecture halls and sometimes there are no classrooms for lectures.

More than 25 years after being a squatter in Eni Njoku Hall of the University of Lagos, I was in the hall three years ago and couldn’t imagine how students managed to live in the hall with its state of dilapidation. The toilets stink, new students who had paid for hostel accommodation had to look for the doors of their rooms which had been detached and the double bunk beds were in bad shape.

With the rot now documented, one can only hope that the government will not allow the report to gather dust like many others before now. The recommendations of the committee should be urgently considered and implemented if the institutions have to continue being called universities instead of glorified higher school

Provision of standard education is supposed to be one of the priorities of the government. It is bad enough that successive governments have not given university education the attention it deserves and yet we are quick to complain about the quality of graduates of the institutions.

What is apparent from the report is that not enough funds have been provided for the universities and even what has been provided has been mismanaged.

The time to act is now before any further decline that could further devalue the certificates issued by these institutions.

November 18, 2012
Obasanjo the incomparable

He should not have slammed Jonathan on security and corruption

Delivering his damning verdict on the Jonathan administration the way he did, was impertinent, tending to speak more, negatively, about the ex-president and less about the man he criticised.

Last week, in Warri, Delta State, at what was otherwise a commemoration of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s 40th anniversary as a preacher, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo lashed out at the federal government, pooh-poohing its handling of the Boko Haram insurgency. Obasanjo likened the sect’s terror, which has claimed thousands, to a sore that Dr Goodluck Jonathan failed to treat early.

“My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early enough, it festers and becomes very bad,” he said. “Don’t leave a problem that can be bad unattended.”

He also dismissed Jonathan’s anti-corruption efforts, and those of Umaru Yar’Adua, and appeared to be looking back with nostalgia to the days of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Was he entirely off the mark? Not quite. Even President Jonathan knows that most Nigerians expect more in containing Boko Haram than he has delivered. The people also know that sleaze remains a present danger to the health of the country and everything it holds dear.

Still, the former president should have held back his fire until he had left the public space and had the ears of the current commander-in-chief he helped to install. More importantly, he was not qualified to deliver that sort of verdict.

But we know the Egba chief enough to expect the unexpected. We hate him. We love him. And sometimes we are not quite sure what we feel. To the man himself, what we feel may really not matter. He has this aloofness about him on what people think of him and his actions or inactions. He said, for instance, that he did not read local newspapers, and so essentially did not care what Nigerians said about him. Whether that detachment is a natural trait or derives from the stubborn airs that come from long years of running the country, or even from his phenomenal good fortune, is difficult to determine. He first presided over Nigeria’s affairs as an army general, easily having his way, according to the traditions of the military. Then, he returned as a two-term civilian president who would have preferred to keep having his way. That return to power was in itself quite memorable. We were told that influential people were visiting to persuade him to run, even though he was just fresh from prison. We were told that everything was in his favour. He is from the Southwest whose people were still smarting from the denial of an Abiola presidency. He is of the military constituency and was considered capable of checking the power lust of military adventurers. He feared no one, just the type of leader Nigeria needed. That could have filled any mortal with a sensation of immortality. How many parade such a profile?

As president we found him quite enigmatic. After leading us to believe he was overflowing with knowledge, he went back to school to study for a degree at the Open University. When we hoped to see him leave Aso Rock at the end of eight years in power, the infamous Third Term agenda popped up. When we nudged him to speak up on the matter, he declined, until the people’s voice drowned it out altogether. Thereafter, Obasanjo said he never really wanted a third term and that God would have obliged him if he asked. In retirement, his opinion was still sought after, but sometimes he disappointed news hunters at airports, preferring to dance for them, rather than answer their questions.

When we expect him to remain at his farms, we are somewhat shocked to see that the world still seeks his wisdom. In February, to mention a recent development, he was in Senegal to mediate the country’s political upheaval as Senegalese protested yet another presidential candidacy of 85-year-old Abdoulaye Wade. This month, Obasanjo was selected to head a 250-strong ECOWAS election observer mission to Ghana ahead of the country’s polls on December 7. He is to help promote transparent and credible elections there.

A man of such stature should know when to speak publicly on issues that disconcert him in the government he helped to install. He ought to be better advised too when making comparisons. In Warri, Obasanjo recalled the Odi invasion, implying that he prevented a worse security situation by deploying troops to the Bayelsa riverside community. He said the troops killed all the youths accused of killing policemen in the town. He did not say the invaders also killed innocent residents, including the aged and utterly devastated the town. In any case, militancy in the Niger Delta started in his time.

Obasanjo wrote off Jonathan and Yar’Adua in fighting corruption, conveniently glossing over the fact that his own administration hardly did any better, in spite of Ribadu’s best efforts. How many high-profile thieves were jailed in his time? How many fraudulent elections were upturned in the courts?

Last week in Warri, the enigma simply continued.

November 18, 2012
Maduka vs. Ubah

Cosmas Maduka we know, but who is this Ifeanyi Ubah? This is the question on the lips of many

Something told me when in September last year, Ifeanyi Ubah, Managing Director of Capital Oil and Gas Industries Ltd. marked his 40th birthday with the kind of fanfare that is rare here, despite the loss of sanity when ostentatious lifestyle is involved in our land of plenty and want combined. But what it was I could not put my finger to. It was sickening to see newspapers sell their cover pages for the adverts placed to mark the occasion. The questions on the lips of many then, including those of us in the media were: who is this Ifeanyi Ubah? Where is he coming from? They are the kind of questions you ask when you see strange things in a not-too-strange land. Indeed, it was as if the birthday was celebrated to bring Ubah into limelight. It was only after that that we hear he imports about one-third of the petroleum products we use in the country. We know there is a lot of stench coming from that sector, which appears no one that matters want cleared anytime soon.

Anyway, that is just by the way. Since nothing broke, one had to put the matter behind and move ahead with some other things. Ours is a land of plenty in terms of news, particularly the negative hue, which break with stunning rapidity; so, the question of a drought for columnists and editors does not arise. Moreover, what is my own, even if someone painted the country red or spent as if money was going out of fashion to mark his birthday? Why do I have to wait for something to break about just one man in the midst of other items begging for attention? At any rate, Ubah is not a public official. Above all, it is generally acknowledged that a drunkard is not necessarily a spend-thrift; he is after all spending his money.

This was the situation until about a week ago when Dr. Cosmas Maduka, Managing Director, Coscharis Group of Companies opened up on a business transaction involving him and Ubah that has now gone awry. It is a long story, but a summary would suffice. There was a joint venture business agreement between Maduka and Capital Oil (Ifeanyi Ubah) for the importation and sale of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) under which Maduka was to provide the funding while Capital Oil would provide the logistics for the importation as well as handle the sale of the commodity (petrol), based on its expertise in the business.

“This agreement provided for an account to be opened into which Capital Oil would domicile proceeds of subsidy collected by way of Sovereign Debt Notes for the products imported, which together with proceeds of the sale of the products would be used to repay the bank’s credit facility,” Coscharis said. In all, 10 Letters of Credit were opened and fully negotiated, all backed by a $164million facility that Maduka secured from Access Bank, where Maduka is a non-executive director. According to Maduka’s account, there were no issues with the first six Letters of Credit. Problem began when products for the remaining four Letters of Credit did not arrive. What was at stake here is about 130,000 metric tonnes of petrol that Maduka claims is yet to be delivered. This has made the repayment of the facility scheduled to come from the sales proceeds impossible. And, what we are talking about in Naira and Kobo by way of exposure to Access Bank is about N21billion, with interests accruing. Although this figure is being contested by Ubah who said on a Channels Television interview that he could not tell the exact figures because the books were yet to be reconciled; the fact is that some money is hanging out there. Anyone who watched that interview carefully would be able to put two plus two together to get four.

But how could Maduka, despite his experience, exposure and all, have fallen into this kind of problem? The story of his life is one that would inspire anyone that is ready to work hard, that not even the sky is the limit. This is a man whose father died when he was barely four years old, and the responsibility of taking care of him and the other children left behind by their late father became that of his mother. If anyone had a humble beginning, Maduka is it; he at one time had to hawk bean cake ‘akara’ for his mother, he was at another an apprentice under an uncle selling motor spare parts, etc. Not for him the flambouyant lifestyle associated with the typical bragger who has only a few coins but thinks he has arrived. This is a man whose antecedents one could trace, from his humble beginnings to his stardom as a motor dealer of repute.

Obviously some of these other considerations get pushed to the back seat when business is the issue. Indeed, some who have found it difficult to believe what is now happening are insinuating all kinds of things, including the fetish, in the entire arrangement. If not, they insist, why would Maduka have ignored all the pieces of advice given him by those who should know, not to touch Ubah, not even with a long stick? “In spite of the numerous warnings against having anything to do with him, Maduka felt the urge to assist the young man because he felt no one could be as bad as he (Ubah) was being portrayed and after all, Ubah is his kinsman from Nnewi,” a statement from Coscharis said. There were other reasons: These included his (Ubah’s) alleged failure to remit sales proceeds to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) after selling petroleum products stored in his tank farm; alleged failure to remit sales proceeds to Mrs. Uju Ifejika, who had a through-put-arrangement with Ubah, after he had allegedly sold the petroleum product in his care; alleged refusal to settle his indebtedness to several banks; and his alleged exposure to Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which has taken over his bank debts. No doubt, proper due diligence would have saved Maduka the embarrassment he is presently experiencing.

And this is where the lesson lies, not just for Maduka but for every other person out there who is motivated either by the desire to do business or the desire to be his or her brother’s keeper. It would be gladdening if Maduka could come out unscathed from this sad episode. But the N21billion must return into the coffers of Access Bank. This would appear his main concern and rightly so.

All said, this matter should not be treated as ‘two fighting’ because, as we used to say in those days in school, two cannot fight because two is a figure. It goes beyond treating it as a mere business transaction that went bad. In the first place, it has implications for the country’s anti-corruption war and, secondly, we should not give the impression that ours is a country where we have completely lost our sense of values. It is one case in which the anti-corruption bodies and the security agents must be interested in. Whether what is happening now is part of my fears about something breaking about Ubah is difficult to tell for now. But anyone who is familiar with the biblical story of the two women who fought over a child that King Solomon eventually resolved with wisdom would understand what is at stake here. Someone who has built a name over the years would not want that name rubbished just like that. As they say,” a good name is better than gold and silver.”

November 18, 2012
Achebe, Awo and Igbo-Yoruba relations

When I wrote in this space two weeks ago on Chinua Achebe’s new book, ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra”, a number of readers wondered why I was silent on the on-going controversy on the role of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Minister of Finance and Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council, during the war. Is it true that he described starvation as a legitimate weapon of war even as millions of hopeless people were dying from hunger and easily preventable diseases?

Well, I chose not to focus on that aspect of the book because so much has been written already on the issue. Secondly, I really do not think it is a productive debate. It has generated more heat than light. Perhaps the fairest and most objective piece I have read on the controversy is that of Simon Kolawole, the perceptive This Day columnist. He contends that the Biafrans were wrong to have rejected the opening of a corridor to get food to the starving population. If there was fear that the federal side could poison the food, simple laboratory tests would have proven if this was true or not. On its side the Federal Government ought to have done more to ensure food got to millions of starving people. It could have more actively involved international organizations in this respect. Furthermore, if the Federal Government could bomb Biafra intensively, it could have used the same air planes to bombard Biafran towns and villages with food. After all, the logic of the war from the federal side was that there was no Biafran state in any meaningful legal sense of the word. In the eyes of the Federal Government, therefore, Biafrans were Nigerian citizens and extra effort could have been made to prevent the mass starvation so graphically depicted in the Achebe’s book. That would have placed the General Yakubu Gowon administration on a higher moral pedestal.

But then, were Awolowo’s actions during the war motivated by a desire to eliminate the Igbos and so as to pave the way for his vaunting ambition to rule Nigeria as Achebe asserts? I think this position is rather far- fetched. There is absolutely nothing in the vast civil war literature to legitimate this allegation. Furthermore, Awolowo’s strenuous efforts to help prevent the war are copiously documented and he wouldn’t have gone to such length if he really wanted the East out of Nigeria. However, it is important to note that Achebe indeed recognizes Awo’s talent and said so much in the book. For example, on page 45, he writes: “By the time I became a young adult, Obafemi Awolowo had emerged as one of Nigeria’s dominant political figures. He was an erudite and accomplished lawyer who had been educated at the University of London. When he returned to the Nigerian political scene from England in 1947, Awolowo found the once powerful political establishment of western Nigeria – sidetracked by partisan and intra-ethnic squabbles. Chief Obafemi Awolowo and close associates reunited his ancient Yoruba people with powerful glue – resuscitated ethnic pride – and created a political party, the Action Group in 1951, from an amalgamation of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Nigerian Produce Traders Association and a few other factions”.

Achebe’s unsavoury perception of Awo’s role in the war must be understood within the context of Igbo/Yoruba relations in both the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras. The relationship between these two ethnic groups in turn centred essentially around their two most formidable and charismatic leaders – Nnmadi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo. The rivalry between this two, their mutual suspicion of each other thwarted any meaningful political handshake across the Niger and had profound effects on the course of Nigerian history. For instance, in the 1940s, both Zik and Awo were members of the Nigerian Youth Forum, the pre-eminent nationalist organization of the time. In 1941, the seat of Sir Kofo Abayomi as a member of the Legislative Council representing Lagos became vacant. There was therefore an election to fill the position. While Awolowo, an Ijebu, backed Earnest Ikoli an Ijaw man, Azikiwe threw his weight behind Samuel Akinsanya, an Ijebu man. After an acrimonious campaign, Earnest Ikoli won the election. Azikiwe subsequently resigned from the Youth Movement claiming that there was a tribal gang up against Akinsanya that resulted in the latter’s loss to Ikoli! This further strained Igbo/Yoruba relations as most Igbos left the Nigerian Youth Movement and it became an essentially narrow Yoruba organization.

Another case in point was the 1951 western regional election. Azikiwe contested the election on the platform of the NCNC and won a seat to the Western House of Assembly. His aim was to become Premier of western Nigeria and he had sufficient political following in the West to achieve this. But by then, Awolowo had transformed the Egbe Omo Oduduwa into the Action Group (AG), one of the most disciplined and well organized parties ever in Africa. The Yoruba political establishment resented that Zik had such large following in the West when no Yoruba politician enjoyed the same following in the East. They could not envisage a situation in which an Easterner was Premier of the East, a northerner would be Premier of the North and then another Easterner would be premier of the West. Thus no stops were pulled to thwart Azikiwe’s ambition. An incomparably astute politician, it is difficult to understand how Zik could not have seen that, no matter how much he was loved in the West, there was no way he was going to become Premier in Ibadan given the geo-political configuration of the time. On the day of the convocation of the Western region Assembly, the Action Group had a majority of elected members and was able to checkmate Zik and produce the Leader of Government Business in the person of Awolowo. But then, not content with aborting Azikiwe’s premiership ambition, the Action Group capitalized on indiscipline within the ranks of the NCNC and prevented Zik from being elected from Ibadan to the centre as a federal legislator. Of this incident, Chief Bola Ige wrote in his political treatise that “since the Action Group had shown their majority on the floor of the House, there was no need to over-kill Zik by denying him election to the federal legislature”.

At the time of the 1951 carpet crossing incident at the Western House of Assembly, Achebe was a student at the University College, Ibadan. He watched the situation closely and was disappointed at what he perceived as the introduction by the Action Group of tribalism into the country’s politics. It is within this context that we can properly appreciate Achebe’s perception of Awo and his role during the war. The 1951 incident has over time haunted Nigerian politics making a handshake across the Niger impossible. If historical animosities can be overcome and hurting memories healed, there can be a strong Igbo/Yoruba political alliance that can link up with progressive forces in the north to win power and lead Nigeria in a new direction.

November 17, 2012