The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Democratic emperors?

    Democratic emperors?

    IN November 1981, Alhaji Muhammadu Shehu Kangiwa, Second Republic and first elected governor of old Sokoto State (now Sokoto and Kebbi states), fell off his horse and died while playing polo, in the 1981 edition of the Georgian Polo League.

    Did the governor, as a public figure, have the right to endanger the life of a public property, even if he had his inalienable private right to play polo?

    In October 2012, Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, governor of Taraba State, crashed in a small aircraft he was personally flying, sustaining serious injuries with all the passengers on board. Now, did Mr. Suntai have the right to risk his life as governor, even if he had a private right to indulge his passion for flying?

    These are hard questions in a republican and federal state, satisfactory answers to which would help to strengthen state institutions and deepen democracy. Where, for instance, do the personal rights of a governor end and where begin state strictures, in exchange for immense gubernatorial – or even presidential – benefits, that come with that office?

    In other words, did Governor Suntai have the right to fly himself, even with his pilot’s licence, knowing full well the avoidable dangers such an adventure constitutes to the life of the Taraba governor, which though he is, he is not a sum total of?

    And even on his hospital bed in Germany, is the governor culpable of risking the lives of hapless aides constitutionally sanctioned to be with him and even risking the collective asset of his state – the crashed aircraft, which the governor does not own – even if he knew that the flying of the plane should have been left to more professional hands?

    If indeed the governor could be legitimately charged with culpability in risking the lives of lesser mortals in his suite by his decision to fly, what logic drove the evacuation of the governor to a foreign hospital, while leaving other victims of the crash at home?

    And if the logic of flying the governor abroad is for better care, is Nigeria, a republican state, now saying that though republican tenets proclaim every citizen equal before the law, some of its own citizens are more equal than the others, as in George Orwell’s famous satire, Animal Farm?

    Even more on the basis of justice and equity: should the governor get rewarded with better care for executive recklessness, while the victims of his actions are abandoned to their fate, even if the government can counter-argue that it is giving the governor’s aides the best care it could afford?

    This annoying double standard and brazen lack of respect for the rights of the underdog must have fired the ultimatum Femi Falana, SAN, issued to the powers that be to fly the other crash victims abroad as the governor or face a legal challenge – but more on that presently.

    The Yoruba – and certainly other cultures – have a wry way of dismissing unbridled excesses that lead to foretold but needless disasters, even in the most private of affairs.

    “Omo yo tan, o npe baba re l’eranko” [The wayward brat calls his doting father a fool], goes a Yoruba proverb. But who does not know that the parents just need to cut off their munificence to bring the brat crashing and begging?

    A more detailed anecdote, made more popular by Juju music ace, Ebenezer Obey, spoke of a vain, rich man who rolled out everything, in a reckless celebration of the unknown festival of wealth and prosperity. In the heat of it all, he fell off his galloping horse, broke his neck and died!

    Thanks to Chinua Achebe and his classic Things Fall Apart, the non-Igbo are exposed to similar societal sanctions, in Igbo traditional society. One of those follies, as pointed out by the master storyteller, is the all-muscle-no-brain who felt himself powerful enough to challenge his chi (personal god) to a wrestling bout!

    All these underscore only one thing: order is the first law in heaven – and is certainly not the last on earth! So even in the primordial state, modes of behaviour guide the community. In the complex modern state, these modes are codified into the Basic Law, which not only creates public offices and institutions but also clearly states the relationship among state officials – such as a governor and his aide-de-camp, chief security officer (CSO) and chief detail: all these three, incidentally put in harm’s way by Governor Suntai’s decision to fly an aircraft, though it must be stated that the governor could not have wilfully endangered his own life, not to talk of the other three’s.

    And just as well the three victims: Dasat Iliya (aide-de-camp), Timo Dangana (CSO) and Joel Danladi (chief detail) have been flown to Germany for medical care, as with the governor, according to newspaper reports of Sunday, November 4.

    It is not clear how much this change of heart had to do with Mr. Falana’s threatened suit, though the story spoke of bowing to public opinion, with the additional spin that the governor, perhaps to salve his conscience, had insisted on their coming to Germany.

    There is nothing to suggest that spin, of the governor insisting his security aides should be brought to join him in Germany, is contrived. But it is a moot point, with the reported extent of the governor’s injury, if he is in any condition to bother about the state of his fellow victims in the crash.

    Besides, there is ominous gathering of clouds that the polity is set for the Taraba version of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan Vs Yar’adua Cabal constitutional outrage, with a Taraba cabinet lobby reportedly suggesting that though Deputy Governor Garba Umar is good enough as deputy governor in the eyes of the 1999 Constitution, he is not good enough to act as governor during the governor’s medical leave, in the eyes of this puritanical lobby – and Alhaji Umar’s personal faith appears to be the culprit! See how a reckless individual action can put the whole polity in a tailspin?

    While wishing Governor Suntai quick recovery, his odyssey should serve as timely warning to the president and Nigeria’s gubernatorial tribe that stringent conditions come with the office of president or governor – and that is strictly obeying the laws that created these high offices.

    If Governor Suntai had obeyed these laws, he would not have decided to himself fly a plane (when a full time pilot could be procured for that chore), put himself and his security aides in jeopardy and gift his state a potential but needless constitutional crisis, in a North East that already has its hands full with the murderous Boko Haram insurrection.

    The president and the governors are not democratic emperors, which is a contradiction in terms. Rather, they are creations and servants of the Constitution, without which they are nothing but ordinary citizens, as others in a democratic republic.

     

  • So you want to be a vice chancellor?

    So you want to be a vice chancellor?

    The University of Ilorin recently went through one of the most fraught processes in the calendar of a Nigerian public university: the appointment and transfer of authority to a new vice chancellor.

    The contest is not for the faint of heart. Formal qualifications count, to be sure. An applicant must have an earned doctorate from a “recognised university,” That, I take it, excludes all those “universities” that exist only on the Internet, from which anyone can for a modest fee obtain a degree in any subject under the sun and beyond without taking any course work and without writing any examinations.

    The bachelor’s degree lies at the lower end of the fee scale. The standard doctorate, a Ph.D, costs substantially more. Not surprisingly, a senior doctorate, the D.Sc or LL.D, attracts premium fees. But the cost is well within what Nigerians who patronise the awarding institutions can afford, plus a contribution to the institution’s “development” or endowment fund.

    For his munificence – for it is usually a man – the patron gets by way of certificate a parchment large enough to cover a dining table, inscribed with his name by the finest calligrapher in the neighbourhood, stating how he had not merely fulfilled but greatly exceeded the requirements for the attestation. And it comes with a gold-foil seal as large as a saucer.

    Do not be deceived by all the frippery. In fact, I offer it as a proposition that the greater the tinsel, the more worthless is the certificate it adorns.

    If the patron is the discriminating type, he can ask the president and officials of the university to fly to Nigeria, all expenses paid, to confer the degree on him in his house or at the local community hall, to the pulsating beat of highlife music supplied by a live band, and with the local monarch and his chiefs and the usual freeloaders in full throng to felicitate with the son of the soil whose genius had reverberated across the oceans.

    It is all a matter of cash – cash in hard currency, that is.

    To return to the process of appointing vice chancellors in the Nigerian university system: An applicant must have an earned doctorate from a recognised university. It helps if the candidate has also published in “reputable journals,” those which subject submissions to rigorous peer review before publication.

    But even a solid bibliography will take a candidate only so far. Connections count, of course. But they are no substitute for hustling of the rawest kind, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation, bribery, voodoo – indeed, everything in the toolkit of skullduggery.

    Ask Professor Olu Obafemi, the playwright and dramatist.

    The recent change of baton at the University of Ilorin, I gather, was mercifully bereft of such mago mago. But it nevertheless left some rancour in its trail. The integrity of the process of short-listing candidates has been assailed by at least one of the candidates, who has since proceeded to court to seek relief.

    Professor Rasheed Ijaodola has reportedly filed a lawsuit before the Federal High Court, Ilorin, challenging the selection of Professor AbdulGaniyu Ambali for the top job, saying the process was “irregular, improper, unlawful, null and void.” Other disaffected contestants have since reconciled themselves to the outcome.

    Professor Is-haq Oloyede, the vice chancellor who oversaw process at issue, has handed the reins of office to Professor AbdulGaniyu Ambali, and all seems quiet on campus. There they were, at one of the events marking the change, resplendent in a matching outfit — aso ebi — to call it by its proper name.

    The atmosphere had much more in common with a family ceremony in the owambe tradition than with a momentous transition at an institution of higher learning. But Neither Oloyede nor Ambali should be blamed for this. Blame it, instead, on the casual manner in which appointments to that high office are made, consummated, and terminated.

    Professor Ojetunde Aboyade, the distinguished economist unfortunately no longer with us was driving back to Ibadan from Lagos when he heard on his car radio that he had been appointed vice chancellor of the University of Ife, as it was called at the time. They had sounded him out, it needs to be stated. But he had rejected the offer firmly.

    The great surgeon, Professor Horatio Orishejolomi Thomas, also late, was entertaining guests in his official residence after presiding over the convocation at the University of Ibadan when he and his guests heard on the evening news that he had been dismissed “with immediate effect.”

    If these and many other cases of the same kind were the extreme, even the process of handing a senior academic officer a letter of appointment and asking him to report for duty at such and such a time as if he was a clerical officer is only a tad less disrespectful.

    And yet, there is never a shortage of applicants for the position, and many of them will stop at nothing to clinch it.

    Elsewhere, the assumption of office of university president or vice chancellor is almost like the assumption of office by an elected head of government. It is heralded by an inaugural ceremony lasting several days, a mixture of the academic, the social, and the cultural.

    When a new president was named some ten years ago for Knox College in Galesburg, an hour from my base in Peoria, Illinois, and the birthplace of the historian Carl Sandburg, festive bells rang throughout the area.

    Lectures and symposia that drew participants from near and far were staged. A command performance of Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman” was staged for several nights, culminating in the attendance on the final night of the Nobelist himself, during which he delivered a lecture that kept the huge audience spellbound.

    It was on that closing night that I met for the first time Dr Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, then on the faculty of Northern Illinois University at Macomb, Illinois, and now vice chancellor of Kwara State University. From his seat in the rafters, he delivered a citation on Soyinka, improvised óríkí and all, that set off the proceedings on a strong Nigerian note.

    This, then, was the context in which the new president delivered an inaugural address, in which he laid out his vision for Knox College. It was not just another routine in the university’s life but a milestone in which faculty and students and staff and the neighbouring community participated, one that would inspire and serve as a reference point for years to come.

    That is the way to accord the public university in Nigeria its special place in the scheme of things. After all, it is not a ministry, department, or agency. It is also the way to stamp the office of university vice chancellor with the respect and dignity it deserves.

    Private universities, where the vice chancellor is for all practical purposes the proprietor’s factotum, also stand to gain much by this arrangement.

    The National Universities Commission should lead the way, working through the Council of each public university.

     

  • A waste of time

    A waste of time

    A weak-kneed federal government ever so eager to claw at just anything to be seen at doing something about the Boko Haram menace. A weary Boko Haram caught in dire prospects of being routed in the senseless but clearly unwinnable war against the state.

    Throw in the well-choreographed high-decibel propaganda by self-styled elders alleging genocide in the atmosphere of an unprecedented offensive by the Joint Military Task Force (JTF). No better scenario could have been contrived for a so-called dialogue.

    Welcome to the Made in Saudi Arabia dialogue sought by the Boko Haram for and on behalf of themselves and their sympathisers! Finally, it seems time to bring in the old template of appeasement!

    What has changed to necessitate the offer by the group to negotiate with the federal government?

    Good question.

    The first and perhaps the most obvious is the changing military equation between the JTF and the terrorists. Whatever misgivings lie about the on-going operations by the JTF, there is no longer any question as who between them is having the upper hand. I do not think anyone suffers the illusion that the men of the JTF would beat a retreat anymore than the terrorists would come to some Pauline conversion in some future time. To its credit, the JTF isn’t just increasingly having a firm grip on the war, it seems to have done well in the difficult circumstances it found itself. While it seems far-fetched to suggest at this point that the Boko Haram is close to being decapitated, there are enough signs to suggest that the noose may finally be tightening in on the group. This obviously needs to be sustained.

    The second reason is the collateral costs on both sides which continues to mount. While the burden of the war on terror would seem barely tolerable to the federal government, the economies in most states in the North-east where the Boko Haram are on rampage not only lie in ruins, they are in tatters. But worse is that the prospects of socio-economic activities in the foreseeable future look increasingly grim. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the leaderships in the areas worst hit by the activities of the terrorists pretend to be oblivious of this reality; or is it that they underrated the resolve of the federal government to confront the menace?

    How about their positions which have oscillated between playing the ostrich and feigning ambivalence on the Boko Haram question? Or their latest rallying cry in which the JTF is accused of genocide?

    Agreed, the charge of excessive use of force including allegations of rape and summary executions of innocent citizens in the theatre of operations may possess some grains of truth. If true, the crimes would be inexcusable. However, it does appear to me that these cannot be as generalised as painted by the Borno Elders Forum. Of course, the allegations deserve to be investigated and where the crimes are established, punished.

    Be that as it may, the nation as it is, would remain eternally in debt to the JTF to for pushing the costs of the insanity, or if you like the insurgency –to the sect and their sponsors – far beyond their assumed gains. That the option of dialogue has suddenly become conceivable is because the Boko Haram realises the futility of the war! The magic is to make things irreversible!

    I need to highlight a third factor which has made dialogue conceivable. It is the question of how long it would take for the cover of the big masquerades behind the sect to be blown. It seems to me that it is no longer a question of “if” but how soon this would be achieved. It is after all, common knowledge that two senators and an ex-Governor from Borno State are under security watch; indeed, one of the senators is currently undergoing trial; the other under investigation for an alleged link with a suspect currently in custody. At intervals, the name of the ex-governor keeps popping up as if to hint at a complex but intriguing internecine play. By the way, I do not think that anybody needs further proof of how embedded the Boko Haram is in the North-east or wherever the forces of the Boko Haram have been on rampage.

    So, how to go? Time for the security agencies to follow the money. It’s hard to imagine that the security agencies have up till this time not stumbled on valuable leads on the financiers of the Boko Haram.

    What do I think about the proposed dialogue? Dialogue is of course good. It is after all, infinitely cheaper than fighting an all out war. The question is what will the Saudi dialogue as proposed by the Boko Haram achieve? More pertinent question is what does the Boko Haram want?

    It may well be that the Saudi dialogue may help resolve the riddle of what the group really want or what it actually represents. For now, it seems premature to even speculate on whether their desires can be accommodated in a secular, republican state. Even then, it seems that the more immediate task is one of isolating the original Boko Haram from the mutant but no less bloody-thirsty variants loosed upon the nation.

    That done, the next charge is to deal with the matter of the innocent victims of their mindless terror. Will that also come up in the course of the parley? Will the group also be willing to pay restitutions to victims of their terrorist acts? On a more serious note, will the leaders be expected to repudiate the satanic ideology which legitimises mass murder?

    Of course, the more embracing question is whether, given the state of security in the North today, it would not amount to a sheer waste of time and resources to make the Boko Haram the issue. I make the point because of our penchant to treat symptoms rather than deal with organic causes of disease. The root of Boko Haram lies in poverty and failure of governance. Will those also be part of the agenda at the Saudi forum?

     

    • This column goes on vacation from next week

     

  • How Fayemi is remaking Ekiti

    How Fayemi is remaking Ekiti

    When Dr. Kayode Fayemi marked his two years in office on October 16, as the governor of Ekiti State, no one was left in doubt that his achievements in office speak for themselves. This is a state that was considered one of the most backward in the South West in terms of physical and social infrastructural development. Previous administrations in the state were all busy playing politics of acrimony to the detriment of human and physical development in the state.

    But in the past two years, Dr. Fayemi has been busy, quite busy indeed touching lives, bringing hope back to the people; making the populace feel the importance of democracy. Obviously, the governor has the calling of a visionary, a sentimental leader of people who believes that once the electorate are properly catered for, there will not only be peace in the state, but the people themselves will often wear glimmer of smiles on their faces.

    This is indeed the Ekiti State of today. As the governor and his team of committed lieutenants went about commissioning landmark projects in all the crannies of the state, what was uppermost in the minds of the rural people was how to make these legacies permeate the total psyche of the populace. “We are here to serve and help the governor achieve the dream of making Ekiti State one of the foremost in the country,” was how 79 year old Olayinka Ibironke, a retired teacher, described the situation. And he truly wore the face of a happy man in a new era of hope.

    This happened at Omuo-Oke where the governor went to lay the foundation stone of an ultramodern Trailer park. “A park of this nature,” the governor noted, “would help to facilitate the movement of heavy goods from here to other parts of Ekiti State and the nation.” This was an assurance that sent breezy frenzy into the spines of the people who gathered to witness and cheer the governor. Like Ibironke, most indigenes of Omuo-oke, a quiet rural settlement, deprived of modernity for a long time, have been at pains to move goods like planks and woods and food items from their place to other points of need.

    While the governor was in Iluomoba, another rural enclave to lay the foundation stone for Life Academy, his primary concern was to reignite the flame of good and sound education in the people. The Iluomoba academy is to give easy and accelerated access to education to the people long known for their love for civilization. “Education is our greatest asset and it is our prerogative to make it work, functional and effective,” the governor had said. Then what is education if it can not be made accessible to the people who not only need it, but crave to always make it their bedrock? With that notion in the hearts of the people, they warmly welcomed the prospects of having an academy that will soon usher in glorious moments into the lives of Iluomoba people.

    A tour of most rural settlements in Ekiti State revealed that the people now feel a sense of belonging. The newly commissioned electricity project in Ilupeju-Ijan in Gbonyin Local government area which had no light for many years in the past, is a good demonstration of a leader who does not believe that darkness and light should meet. Light is good for the people. Even the Holy Bible ordered that there should be light so that the children of God have would be in good sheer here on earth. Light brings progress and encourages the people to feel at home with what they have. Indeed the Ilupeju-Ijan community can feel it.

    The Ilupeju-Ijan project is an eye opener because it shows a governor who is not selective and partisan with the projects he delivers to his people. His mission has been quite purposeful; to ensure that development is evenly distributed and shared so as to discourage apathy in the thinking of the people. This approach has been largely successful because in every local government, the people have every good reason to sing the praises of the government. Good work, as it is said, is like a full blown pregnancy. No one can cover it with her hands. Fayemi’s achievements glow and illuminate and glitter in their droves, registering in stages and in different facets in people’s lives.

    So far, the many colleges and primary schools hitherto abandoned and neglected in parts of the state have been rehabilitated for the good of the people. Some of the prominent ones are the Omuo-Oke Grammar School and Obada High School. The other one is the Africa Church Comprehensive High School, Ikere. These schools had for too long been left in the hands of people who did not manage them well. Today, the schools are back to what they used to be in the days of yore. The students and pupils of these schools are not only excited and happy to go to school, they cannot stop being grateful to a governor who is wholly people oriented and properly focused and well driven.

    Travelling from one end of the state to the other now is easier and faster. The roads in most of the rural places have been retouched to meet the yearnings of the people. These roads include Erijiyan-Ilawe, Efon-Ipole Iloro-Ikogosi roads. Incidentally these roads lead to the famous Ikogosi warm spring tourist resort which has been renovated by the governor to boast tourism in the state.

    Ikogosi is a visitor’s delight by all standards and the governor has ensured that the facilities there have been modernized to attract more visitors to the place. It is, in fact, one of the greatest natural gifts to this nation in terms of aura and beauty. This was why the governor took time to tare the roads leading to it.

    Equally, the Ado-lyin road, the Ado-Afao road and the Odo –Owa Okeila road and more, all leading roads linking Ekiti State with Osun State have been reconstructed by the government of Dr. Fayemi.

    The climax of these chains of achievements was coming back to life of the Udo-uro electricity project long abandoned for no just reason. The governor has not only revived it, it has also been commissioned to add value to the social lives of the people. Close to it also is the Efon water project, Okemesi water project, Ido-Ile water project, Ido-Ile basic health centre. Others are Iropora Skills Acquisition Centre, Erelu Adebayo Orphanage Centre, Iyin, all of which have been made to thrive again.

    In truth, governor Fayemi is focused, he knows how to carry the people along. His avowed love for his people is never in question. This is why he does all he can to satisfy and please them.

    • Ademuliyi writes from Okemesi, Ekiti State.

     

  • Reflections on management of Nigeria’s economy

    Reflections on management of Nigeria’s economy

    The Nigerian economy has been off the rails over the last four decades or so. The situation took a turn for the worse as it literally dropped off a cliff and now lies in a ditch, face down. The manifestations are obvious; youth unemployment is high, poor power supply, poor road network, obsolete rail system and sub-standard educational and health systems. Overall, the average Nigerian is living in appalling conditions with mud or mud-brick [dwelling] houses using firewood as cooking fuel and depending on kerosene as source of lighting. Only limited households have access to pipe-borne treated water for drinking and cooking. To boot, many people in the country use the bush as toilet. Infant and under-five mortality rates are very high. In the area of security, Nigeria has not fared well either with several incidents of kidnapping and terrorism occurring every month. A generic reason for this parlous state of the Nigerian economy and wider society is the poor perception of what economic management really means. It is perhaps not immodest to assert that our top managers of the economy have not demonstrated sound understanding of what it takes to manage a modern economy.

    A modern economy thrives on the platform of a lean and highly-efficient government, an enterprising and active private sector, functional infrastructural base and a robust academic environment. These would be supported by a highly-mobile military and people-friendly Police force. As complements, a modern economy needs an articulate, educated and enlightened political class as well as a neutral and fair judiciary and strong labour movement. Therefore, the fundamentals of modern economic management are derived from proper understanding of the structural linkages within the economy. Such appreciation would be reflected in what to do when there is an upsurge in economic activities (boom) and what not to do when there is a slow-down. It is the interaction of the policy and economic variables that usually engage managers of a modern economy at the macro level where the central government operates on a routine basis. At equilibrium, the right mix of policy variables will produce the desirable level of economic variables and the citizenry would be reasonably at peace – obtaining the goods and services they require at the right places, the right time and the right prices with full employment.

    There are two other segments of the economy that needs attention; the meso and micro segments. Between the macro level of the economy on one hand, and the micro level [comprising consumers and producers] on the other, there is the middle or meso level. The two sets of meso level economic variables relevant to modern economic management are markets and infrastructure. Markets form part of the mechanisms through which economic and policy variables transmit signals or connect to operators at the micro level. Policies or other forms of interventions alter market conditions faced by individual households and producers through changes in relative prices and quantities traded. The other component of the meso economy is infrastructure. Three types of infrastructure are readily discernible, namely: economic, social and institutional. Investment in economic infrastructure like roads, electricity and irrigation facilities promotes economic activities and boosts money supply, thereby stimulating production.

     

    Government needs to also invest heavily in social infrastructure as they impact positively on the lives of individuals as well as promote production. The foremost social infrastructural facilities are related to the provision of health services, educational facilities and water to the population. Institutional infrastructure forms the bedrock of public administration and internal and external security. Included here are all government institutions at all levels of government. Top rate performance of these institutions on a sustainable basis is a sine qua non for efficient management of a modern economy. With optimal levels of infrastructure in place, the right enabling environment would have been created for the micro economy to thrive.

    Our economic managers must realise that in managing a modern economy, the least attention should be given to political, religious and ethnic considerations. Rather, the primary focus should be on such economic factors as creating an enabling environment for the private sector and markets to function efficiently. It is pertinent to note that no road, electricity facility, school, hospital, police or military force is owned by political parties in Nigeria. Neither are any of these infrastructural facilities solely used by Moslems, Christians, Hausas, Igbos, Efiks, Binis, Yorubas, Fulanis, Nupes or Urhobos. They are of universal usage; indeed, public goods and services in which we must invest. Nigerians must also amend their attitude towards the management of infrastructural facilities in the country. We tend to build facilities and then go to sleep. Even as the population increases regularly, we do not plan to upgrade, maintain, sustain and expand our facilities. With increased demand and stagnant supply, the facilities soon become over-stretched and decayed.

    Nigeria is a particularly strange case, completely at variance with propriety and defying logic. Most states are too poorly resourced and managed to have any economic future due to high cost of administration. In spite of these facts and owing to ignorance of and insensitivity to current realities, many people are agitating for the creation of more states as if new entries will run on auto-pilot. For the size of our economy at present, the cost of governance is very high. Why are there so many public institutions in the country? Why should salaries in public service not aligned with the scope of responsibilities and schedules? Why should our law-making be a full-time job? Why should the lawmakers, Ministries and CEOs of public institutions have the power to engage Special Assistants and Advisers at the expense of government even as many of them have little value to add?

    Nigeria has to take the counsel of the US President Barak Obama. On a visit to Ghana some three years ago, he had advised Africans that the way to progress is to build strong institutions rather than strong leaders. Failing to do this, African countries cannot leap forward into the 21st Century. For instance, we cannot lay claim to building strong institutions in Nigeria if a major political party [as an institution] can put forward a felon for high office and he “governs” a State for eight years; subsequently planting his scion as a key player in government. How then was the man expected to focus on good governance. Rather, he looted the State treasury of billions of Naira, evaded the law in his country only to be convicted through diligent prosecution in another country. This clearly exposes Nigeria’s weak institutional infrastructure.

    • Dr. Akinyosoye, an Applied Economic Policy Analyst and Data Management Specialist writes from Ibadan.

  • The fog of war

    The fog of war

    A few years back when I ran a column on 40 years of Biafra, my cell phone crashed from invectives of malicious fury. The overwhelming line from the rage was that I exercised the temerity to address a matter that I should have left in the grove of silence. I had tackled the Nigerian civil war and the opportunities missed for peace instead of the headlong rush to hostilities and I fingered Odumegwu Ojukwu and the genocidal bigots of the North for blame.

    Ironically, when Chinua Achebe published his now tempestuous work, There Was A Country, the Yoruba intelligentsia and political elite were up in arms, clobbering him for not keeping silent on issues like his charge of genocide on Obafemi Awolowo.

    I welcome this debate. Achebe brought his grand image as role model and Africa’s preeminent novelist to bear in his book. After reading, I discovered a wasted opportunity. His haunting style and limpid prose fell prey to a tendentious logic. Mostly, the book is marked by what he did not say than what he said. For a book that generated storm for its boldness, its lack of virtue derives from well-calibrated silences. For instance, he condemned the absence of the civil war from school curriculums. But he did confront some fundamental issues of the Nigerian crisis of the 1960s.

    The first was the pogrom. Igbo died in droves but the circumstances of that dark cloud of our history still loom over us. Nothing even Aburi, where Yakubu Gowon and Ojukwu parleyed like adversaries, tackled them. If important numbers of an ethnic group dissolved in the genocidal savagery from another ethnic group, how did anyone expect the nation to go on without justice being visited on those involved? It was a mercurial moment as Igbo ran away from what they thought was home. Tears, blood with carion flesh was Igbo in their own country. Relatives saw relatives expire just before they too vanished under the prejudice of knives, daggers and guns.

    Ojukwu was urged to ask Igbo to return to their various towns and businesses outside Igboland when no one had prosecuted the murderers. They wanted a nation built on a lie. The Igbo decision to go to war was difficult to fault. When the civil war came, there were stories of insensate killings. Federal generals lined up men, women and children and executed them in cold blood. All of these were well-documented. Rape, beatings, arson and other manifestations of abuse became routine parts of the story in eastern Nigeria.

    When the war ended, Gowon did not address these issues. He was only interested in bringing Ojukwu to trial, which reinforced the suspicions by historians that the egos of Ojukwu and Gowon overwhelmed any sense of propriety on the eve of the war. Gowon denied ever knowing of the barbarous cruelties of his generals who even defended their actions openly. Why were they never brought to trial? If Ojukwu and his men on the Biafrain side committed offences against the Geneva Convention, why was he also not brought to book on his own show of ruthless hubris?

    The militancy in the Niger Delta, the ethno-sectarian blisters in Jos as well as the eruptions of Boko Haram come from a nation that failed to address the fundamental issues that ruptured the nation in the 1960s.

    Up till today, all those who committed war crimes or genocide in the Second World War are being tracked around the world and tried. The Balkan crisis of over a decade ago still makes headlines today with the trials of generals like Karadzic. After the Rwandan earth clotted with brotherly blood, the nation could not be reborn without cleansing the past with trials and prosecutions. South Africa had its truth and reconciliation moments.

    If Ojukwu’s goal was secession, why did he occupy the neutral Midwest with all the tales of rape, harassment, curfew? Achebe wrote as though he had no evidence. It seemed Ojukwu wanted the Midwest oil? Why was he heading for Lagos?

    Achebe’s book has presented us with an opportunity. Too much malice festers in the Nigerian blood for us to look across ethnic aisles as a fraternal brood. We still evince what novelist Sembene Ousmane calls the “perfidy of lies and hypocrisy of rivals.”

    It is out of that tainted blood that Achebe churns out what should have been another masterpiece from the storied author. We cannot also address the pogrom without addressing some of the issues that triggered it. Did the Hausa-Fulani fear the ascendancy of the Igbo, and was that the reason for the thirst for Igbo blood? Was the Nzeogwu-led coup an Igbo agenda or the coincidence of more Igbo officers at the prime? Achebe failed to address the issue comprehensively. He did not drop an ink on why it failed in the east.

    On Ironsi, he argued that the general repulsed his attackers. But he did not even tackle the other suspicion as to whether the man had a tip-off or was spared by the majors. He merely painted Ironsi as reconciliator. On Decree 34, Achebe did not address the possibility that the law gave the Igbo advantage over other ethnic groups and some saw the decree as anointing that move. Some scholars wondered if Ironsi enacted the law out of hegemonic hubris or naivety. We shall never know. But Achebe feigned ignorance of this naunced perspective.

    Columnist Mohammed Haruna recalled a writing of a former New Nigerian head who was confronted after the Nzeogwu-led coup by writer Cyprian Ekwensi and other Igbo who claimed they had come to “take over.” There was no doubt of Igbo dominance of the civil service. If the Hausa-Fulani preened over their dominance, why should another group not try for power? It is the story everywhere. Only in the U.S. today is there a conscious effort to restrain such hegemonic pride. At the time of the Nigerian crisis, America resented voting rights for blacks. It was the extraordinary statecraft of President Lyndon Johnson that compelled Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act against the majority impulses. His Democratic Party has lost the South since.

    Even today, Ijaw openly flaunt their position because Jonathan is president. The point is not that a group cannot win, but that everything has to be done by rules agreed upon by all. The Igbo, including Achebe, have shied from admitting the obvious. Achebe claims Igbo are the most progressive people in Nigeria but falls shy of admitting that the Igbo seek to dominate. I would have loved him also to address the issue of Igbo political class that continues to play a game of mercantilist subservience and selling out the whole group for a mess of contracts and sinecure positions.

    On genocide, we cannot deny that many Igbo died of starvation. We cannot also deny that Awolowo saw “starvation as a legitimate weapon of war.” His singular move to change currency was, from the federal side, a policy of genius. It was death knell to Biafra. Achebe argued that Awolowo did that to foster his ambition and he wanted to kill many Igbo in order to ensure that. Awolowo’s assertion about starvation and war would have nailed him forever as a sadist of war. But history documents his visit to Biafra, even at the risk of dying in the hands of Adekunle. He returned wondering what happened to all the food sent to Biafra. He discovered that the food probably went to the soldiers. Sad as it was, you cannot feed your enemy soldiers.

    Achebe did not tell the story of the economic divide of Biafra. The soldiers and bureaucrats did not starve. This was well-delineated in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half Of The Yellow Sun and other books. Achebe suffers serial dislocations and one’s heart goes out to him as he tells the story of how his family escapes death from a bombing just when his mother reels in her death bed. But the writer does not show he and his family crave for food. He actually has two cars while ordinary Biafrans survive on desperate vegetables and lizards.

    Achebe will be veering into psycho-history to show that Awolowo intended to starve ordinary civilians with the currency policy and not to win the war. War policy has consequences. In the war against Iraq, General Colin Powell said: “Our strategy in this war is very simple: first we are going to cut them off, and then we are going to kill them.” Civilians tragically suffered deprivation. In such consequences, we cannot forget the slogan during the American civil war: “Richman’s war, poor man’s fight.” Awolowo wanted to win the war. What ambition did Awo want with Gowon when he was already second in command in the government? If he wanted to be president anointed by Gowon, would he not want the love of Igbo to win the election? Achebe was not clear with prose.

    Why did Ojukwu not open the food corridor, a thing that forced an expatriate adviser to resign? Ojukwu was believed by some to have allowed the starvation because it served as a potent propaganda tool? Was that true? Was it true that Awolowo saved all allocations to eastern Nigeria and gave them after the war? Why then did we not see massive rehabilitation in the east after the war? What did Asika do with the money? Was it even enough after all the depredations of war?

    The Igbo have remonstrated against the indigenisation decree and have accused Gowon and Awolowo as targeting them. The more this matter is examined, the more one is convinced that the Igbo suffered unfairly from that law. They had lost everything. That law put them at a disadvantage. But it is a credit to the genius of the race that they have bounced back in spite of such disadvantage.

    Why did the issue of abandoned properties not go through vigorous trials? That was one of the most vicious parts of the after-war imbecilities of the Gowon administration. Clearly Gowon’s reconciliation efforts were half-hearted.

    We did not address many issues and that is why they reincarnate. We can still look back, not in anger but for truth. We have done so without equity or truth. History continues to mean different things to different Nigerians. And we act according to our past. What one group sees in history, another denies. “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me,” wrote poet Derek Walcott. What history recognises the Igbo does not recognise the Yoruba. It is only if we have the courage to convene a body of truth and reconciliation, with the culprits named and victims vindicated, that we can avoid the replay of past eruptions. In future plotters will know that evil has official penalties. It is only then that we can fulfill Elie Wiesel’s words that “for the dead and the living we bear witness.” Or else the dead will continue to haunt the living in the Boko Haram, militants and the human infernos of Jos.

    Historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote in The Histories about the civil war that wracked Rome after Nero and how the tissues of its imperial splendour suffered from egos, greed, plunder, malice and lies. One of his epochal lines was, “conversation increases with hope.” Rome lacked that gift of hope. For us, we need conversation with the past. Without it, we cannot guarantee a future without rancour. That is the gift of Achebe’s book.

     

  • Season of oil well disputes

    It will not be out of place to posit that the country is currently entangled in fierce disputes for rights to oil wells among its constituents. From Cross River to Akwa Ibom, Rivers to Bayelsa and Anambra to Kogi, the story is the same. Not unexpectedly, these have pitched the disputant communities against themselves with fears that the smouldering controversy may lead to the break down of law and order. Though the dust of the 76 oil wells which Cross Rivers state was made to cede to its sister state of Akwa Ibom is yet to fully settle, the federal government has in its hands two new serious agitations to grapple with. The first is that between Rivers and Bayelsa states over alleged attempts to annex ancestral lands, communities and oil facilities located in Kalabari land in Rivers to Bayelsa state.

    The matter came to a head last week when elders and chiefs under the aegis of the Kalabari National Forum staged protests in Abuja and Port Harcourt to underscore their seriousness on the issue. President Goodluck Jonathan was fingered as the brain behind the attempt to forcefully cede five Rivers oil communities to Bayelsa.

    As should be expected, the presidency has denied the allegation accusing its sponsors of nursing a hidden agenda of instigating conflict between the Ijaw people of Nembe and Kalabari in Rivers and Bayelsa states.

    Equally, the dispute between Anambra and Kogi states also hinges on the right to oil fields in the just commissioned Orient Oil Refinery built by the Anambra State government. Kogi and Enugu states had soon after the declaration of Anambra as the 10th oil producing state made claims to oil wells servicing the refinery. But the dispute has largely narrowed down to Anambra and Kogi states.

    In its reaction, Bayelsa state government came out very strongly laying claims to the oil wells.

    While denying the allegation of any attempt to forcefully annex any territory or people into Bayelsa State, it claimed that the 11th edition of the administrative map of Nigeria published in 2000 placed the said communities within the territorial boundaries of state. According to them, “it is very common in the Niger Delta given the manner states were created for communities or clans to be in one state while part of their ancestral land is in another. The family, clan or community does not cease to be traditional owners of such lands, while the state in which the land forms a part exercise administrative control over such land and therefore entitled to derivation”.

    But the Rivers state government has countered querying the intention of the Bayelsa State government in singling out the 11th edition of that map while remaining curiously silent on the 1st to the 10th. It accused Bayelsa of concealing vital information in the case as the oil wells had been part and parcel of Rivers state. According to governor Amaechi, even the federal government had admitted in court that the 11th edition being bandied by the Bayelsa State government was an error which is evident from the first to the 10th editions. They said it was wrong to have released monies to Bayelsa State instead of paying them into an escrow account pending the resolution of the boundary dispute as directed by the Supreme Court.

    In its own case, Kogi State Governor Idris Wada claimed that the oil wells servicing Orient refinery are located in his state. For that, he said Kogi is major stakeholder in the refinery. But Governor Peter Obi of Anambra disputes this arguing that the land and the wells are within the territorial boundaries of his state. He gave a history of the refinery and the huge investments made on it with the monies of the Anambra people and wondered why the claimants waited for the refinery to come on stream before coming up.

    The simmering crises between these states have once again drawn attention to some salient issues that are central to the peace, progress and development of this country. First, they have exposed the inherent weaknesses in our sole reliance on oil as the only source of revenue. Because of this mono-cultural economy and the advantages that accrue to oil bearing states, people are prepared to go to any length to lay claim to lands suspected to have oil deposits. Secondly, they also brought to the fore, the inherent flaws in the way states were created in this country by the military. That is why the Kalabari people have their communities and ancestral lands in Bayelsa even when they are in Rivers State.

    It meant that such crucial variables as contiguity, cultural affinity and the need to respect the culture and living patterns of a people were not given due consideration. The right thing would have been for the Kalabari people together with their communities, lands and villages to form part and parcel of Rivers State where they rightly belong. Had it been so, the current fierce dispute between the two states would have not arisen in the first instance. There is definitely something anomalous in having a people belong to one state while their villages and lands are in another.

    There is also every thing wrong in allowing such an untidy situation linger for several years after Bayelsa State had been created. What this implies is that the exercise separated the Kalabaris’ from the relics of their identity as a people. Instead of properly delineating boundaries such that they coincide with that of the state in which they form part of, they are split between two states. Its result is now the situation in which they are denied the benefits of what nature has bountifully placed at their back yard. It is inconceivable how the derivation money paid to Bayelsa will be used for the benefit of the Kalabari people who own the land but live in Rivers.

    Had there been proper delineation of boundaries, the current recrimination between the two states would not have arisen.

    This point can be gleaned from the contention of the Bayelsa State government that by the manner states were created, communities that found themselves in some states had ancestral lands, communities and villages in another. This is anomalous and at the root of the current disputations. It is also a huge puzzle that relevant federal agencies are relying on the so-called 11th edition of the map without reference to the 1st to 10th editions. The interpretation is that by being silent over the position of these editions, they have something to hide. It will be very interesting to know the position of these editions; at what point the map changed and the reasons for it, more so as the President has been fingered in the current imbroglio.

    In all therefore, Jonathan has a serious burden to discharge given the consistent accusing fingers being pointed at him by the Rivers people. It is not enough to say that the statutory bodies handling the matter are independent. The Rivers people have been unequivocal in their claim that those bodies are under undue pressure from the presidency. And this should not be a surprise given the way things are handled in this country. Nobody will be surprised that politics may take the centre stage in resolving these issues. But nothing should be done to scuttle the visionary initiative and huge investments of the Anambra people in Orient Refinery, the ambitions of later day claimants notwithstanding.

  • Politics and impolitics

    Politics and impolitics

    The Ondo state election has come and gone. It is time to clear the gore on the political battle field. Snooper congratulates the declared winner, Dr Olusegun Rahman Mimiko. It was a tough and hard won victory. There were many fronts and many proxy battles. It was a close run thing. Snooper has never seen Mimiko so rattled and frazzled in his political life. Statistically, it was the political equivalent of a dead heat. But it is a good thing that the ACN has decided to put the election behind it. Democracy is about simple majority, and you cannot win all the time. It is time to retool and refocus.

    It was not a perfect election. But you cannot blame a river for being sluggish in midstream without looking at its source. As the late Dr Abel Goubadia famously noted, it is impossible to have a perfect election in a country where there is no proper record of birth and death; where there is no proper identification of citizens; where there is no valid census; and where public utility bills smack of elaborate forgery and outlandish fiction.

    Whether we like Attahiru Jega or not, the national outfit he leads is also a victim of systemic dysfunction. In the circumstances, one should congratulate Jega and his team for making the best of an impossible situation. It will be grossly partisan and unfair to dismiss the efforts the nation has made to heave away from the electoral chaos of the immediate past.

    In retrospect, the ACN made some strategic and tactical blunders. It allowed itself to be tricked into fighting the wrong battle and probably with the wrong choice of offensive weapons. It was unwise to have allowed the struggle to have been framed or perceived by the public as a contest of political titans. The Yoruba love their political heroes. But they also have profound empathy for the proverbial underdog.

    Better still, then, the heroic underdog. Once Mimiko was allowed to wear the garb of the heroic underdog fighting off the armada from Lagos and fictional imperialists and conquistadors from the metropole, the ACN had its back to the wall. By so doing, he was able to rally the sub-ethnic brotherhood. And by so allowing, the ACN was hoisted on the petard of its most potent weapon.

    There is a subtle dynamics to this politics of identity which goes to the heart of Yoruba character and which is deserving of more scholarly scrutiny. The Yoruba are Republican monarchists if ever there is such a contradiction or paradoxical formulation. They love their kings for the order and stability they bring to society. But they turn swiftly against them once they become overbearing and overreaching.

    For over 300 years, the Yoruba people have been engaged in a war of will and wits with their kings, sometimes reining them in and sometimes deposing or decapitating them. In the same breast, conservative and radical tendencies cohabit and coexist. When the ACN, spearheaded by the then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu , were embroiled in political warfare with the PDP and the federal might as implacably represented by General Obasanjo, the Yoruba people supported them as heroic underdogs.

    They like the message of hope and redemption they brought. But when they believed they could sniff another hegemony in the making, they gave them an electoral black eye. Only political illiterates would construe this reversal of electoral fortunes as the swan song or the beginning of the end for ACN.

    Political dominance is not a football match to be won and lost overnight. Once the right lessons have been learnt and the right conclusion drawn, the ACN retains the balance of power in the old region. This is even more so in so far as the issues of a misbegotten federalism and a lop-sided structure remain on the top burner.

    This is why the post-election hysteria and alleluia, the shrill denunciation and unremitting demonisation of individuals, remain unhelpful. Rather than a solid analysis of the way forward, what has been on display is vindictive vitriol and crass defamation. Probably unknown to their vendors, these hate-surfeit castigations say more about the character and psychological state of their purveyors than the object of their hatred and fearful loathing.

    But if one can understand the caterwauling of the unenlightened, the ranting of those who have taken up permanent combat position on the social media and their fellow internet interns and internees of cyber caves, what can one say about otherwise respectable intellectuals who also indulge in the habit of fanning the embers of hatred and hostility?

    Surely if their aim is to capture power or to dislodge the ACN party from its regional stronghold, they must know that it takes more than surly diatribe and spiritual grandstanding to found an authentic party. It takes clarity of vision, psychological stamina, organisational discipline and a certain generosity of spirit which conduces to the surrender of self and ego to the collective self-interest.

    No one is saying that either the ACN or its leadership is a collection of saints. There are no saints in politics. In contemporary Nigeria, that will be the shortest suicide note in history. It was not for nothing that Charles de Gaulle described certain exceptional historical figures as “sacred monsters” Yet as we have noted, some of the current imperfections of party formations in Nigeria are traceable to the provenance of the Fourth Republic in military autocracy.

    In 1998 at the onset of party campaigns, General Obasanjo famously transported loyal delegates to the Jos Convention of the PDP all the way from Abeokuta in a sealed train. Appropriately, the wily military strategist bivouacked his democratic troops outside the tin city from whence he established contacts with the forward units of storm troopers already engaged in preliminary skirmishes.

    In a classic textbook military operation, the original founders and owners of the party were muscled out. They fled one by one and sometimes two by two. In an even more historic riposte, Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, upon noticing that the retired senior military officers with whom he had founded the original APP were rapidly absconding, famously asked them whether their new “posting” was out. It was the beginning and end of the PDP as a truly democratic party. Till date, Shinkafi himself remains in a political sanatorium.

    It was these “shock and awe” tactics that the old Afenifere and the AD succumbed to. After mopping up stragglers from his party, the general turned his friendly bearish hug to the AD/Afenifere and the APP. Neither survived. In order not to court summary extinction, the ACN appears to have understudied and mastered the battle order of the PDP while perfecting its own grand initiative.

    In the process, it was almost inevitable that ascendant party in Yoruba land would pick the same virus that has infected its much loathed bete noire. The symptoms include militarisation, monetisation, regimentation, the use of camouflage and deception and the tight leash on party internal democratic procedure in order to ward off infiltration and mole-planting. Ironically, it was the last two that would prove fatal to the party’s aspiration in Ondo. As internal and external pressures for genuine democracy grow, as the PDP is forced by failure to relax its vice-like grip on the nation, the other parties will also find themselves forcibly democratising and liberalising their internal procedures.

    Once again, and in as much as one regrets the political demise of revered elders, it is the old Afenifere that appears set to become the principal casualty of the unfurling dynamics. Perhaps this is just as well since there is time for everything. You cannot continue to invoke the name and sacred memory of a man in whose political ideals you know longer believe in. It is not what you say that matters, but what you do and are seen and perceived to be doing. Politics is too serious a business to be left in the hands of clergy men and retired bishops.

    Unable to grasp and comprehend the strange irrational dynamics of new political developments, fighting a new war with old weapons, the Afenifere has in the last decade been outsmarted twice from opposite ends of the political spectrum. First by Obasanjo and the PDP which infiltrated and destroyed their party, and then by the better-organised and better focused ACN that stole their ideological thunder.

    Now in a political development that will put their political twilight in acute jeopardy, they are set, bound and trussed, to deliver themselves as political hostages to the same reactionary forces they have heroically battled all their life. Snooper is personally aware that not all the old men are in tune with the retrogressive antics of their old comrades. But they cannot break ranks publicly.

    God forbid, if any of these great men were to answer the last call at this moment, will it be governor Mimiko’s lot to serve as the solitary pall bearer? Mimiko himself is too wily and wary a politician to serve as lone chief mourner in turbulent and adversarial circumstances. This is the major danger of the Masada complex, of fighting to the last man. There will be no one left to serve as a mourner.

    If it is not impudent and impolitic to advise our political patriarchs, the way forward is not to further alienate the ACN and its leadership. With five core Yoruba states under its control, ACN looms large in the old region. Politics of bitterness and hatred only compound and aggravate errors of judgement. The Afenifere grandees should seek out leading luminaries in the old region who still admire them but who also have leverage with the ACN leadership to broker a truce between them and their estranged younger comrades. As the late Chief S.O Gbadamosi famously rued at Ile-Ife during the June !2 crisis, what will they tell the late sage when they finally meet up?

  • Flying to conclusion

    ( Okon delivers his magisterial verdict)

    Snooper sympathises and commiserates with our avid aviator and flying governor of Taraba state, Danbaba Suntai, as he is swapped up in a German hospital battling life-threatening injuries. It was reported that Suntai’s personally piloted light aircraft crashed about 38 miles to Yola Airport on the Yola-Numan Road hours after departing his native Taraba state from a private airstrip.

    They are grave questions bordering on state and national security to ask when a serving governor is perpetually prone to taking personally to the sky. It is said that after pumping billions of naira in an unviable airport, Suntai summarily abandoned this project only to build for himself an airstrip near his village of Suntai. In obedience to good taste and compassion, we will leave further questions until the grounded governor fully recovers. From a remote distance, Suntai looks like a decent and urbane fellow who can be fruitfully engaged.

    Still from a purely human angle, snooper cannot hold back a grudging admiration for Danbaba Suntai’s pluck and courage. There is something to be said for any individual who has conquered humanity’s natural fear of dizzying heights and the starry stratosphere. For those who have been bitten by the bug, next to the fear of flying is the fear of not flying.

    Those who have heard or read about the exploits of Antoine De Saint-Exupery, the great French aviator, will know what we mean. The dapper and Bohemian Frenchman practically lived in the skies and died there. Remarkable poet, writer and philosopher, Saint-Exupery flew several solo missions for war and peace in his rudimentary, ill-equipped planes until he met a watery end off the coast of North Africa.

    And those who have read Charles Lindbergh’s remarkable memoir, Hour of Gold; Hour of Lead, will know what it means for a solitary individual to engage the demons of the skies without adequate provision or reliable aeronautical data. Lindbergh was the first human to fly solo across the Atlantic from America to Europe.

    It has been noted that Danbaba Suntai’s first love was flying. Even though he secured admission to that famous aeronautical institution in Florida, he was cheated out of contention by sheer financial adversity. He trained as a pharmacist instead. But even as an elected governor, the chap from Suntai never forgot his first love. Obviously by private arrangement, he sought and secured admission to the Aviation School in Zaria where he was trained to become a pilot.

    But in a piece of delectable irony, Snooper had been thinking that the controversy as to whether Suntai was a trained pilot was thus resolved when an angry listener to Gbenga Aruleba’s morning programme on AIT shot back to claim that what the governor went through was a “crash programme.”

    It was at this juncture that the inevitable Okon crashed into his master’s bedroom.

    “Oga dem don say dem governor dem give am crash programme.” the mad boy sneered.

    “So, what is your own there?” snooper demanded angrily.

    “No be say dem train am to crash be dat? Abi na Okon’s head no correct again?” the crazy boy shot back and was promptly expelled from the room.

    It all reminds one of a story from the famous Readers’ Digest. Locked into the blue and eerie skies, a trainee paratrooper once asked his trainer what would happen should the parachute refuse to open. The gruff old warrior took a look at the frightened fellow and then shot back. “That, my boy, is what they call jumping to conclusion!” We must hope and pray that His Excellency has not flown to conclusion.

  • “This is madness”——Mohammed Shuwa

    Dear readers, those were the exact words of the late General Mohammed Shuwa upon landing in the country on the morning of February 19, 1976 only to discover that General Murtala Mohammed, his Kano compatriot and head of state, had been assassinated in an abortive military uprising. Although a most senior and respected general, Shuwa had loyally elected to serve under Mohammed as a member of the Federal Executive Council.

    Today, 36 years after, the country seems to be under the spell of a worse madness. On Friday, this pious and quiet general was reportedly gunned down by Boko Haram insurgents in Maiduguri. If a man could survive the civil war as one of its top commanders only to succumb to a violent sect, something is definitely going on. An endgame is unfolding in the north which could spell terminal disaster for the entire country.

    General Shuwa was by all accounts a first class officer, a first rate gentleman and a very humane and compassionate man. May his gentle and noble soul rest in peace.