The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Anglican church fights its leader

    Anglican church fights its leader

    The appointment of Sarah Mullaly as the new archbishop of Canterbury has touched off not a little controversy in Christendom.

    The contention is that a woman is not permitted by scripture to lead the people of God. Those who make such claims often cite passages of the Bible.

    For instance, Paul roared to Timothy, “I suffer not a woman to teach or usurp authority over the man.” To the Corinthians, he urged that the woman should “learn in silence.”

     Other points are that Jesus Christ did not pick a woman among the 12 apostles and 70 disciples. Paul’s assertion “Let a bishop be blameless, a husband of one wife,” presumes that a bishop must be a man. Yet in Old and New Testaments, we have women who, with the blessings of God, could be described as called by God. The word prophet means “to call.”

    We have Mariam, Deborah, wife of Isaiah, Jezebel, Huldah, Noadiah and Anna.

    Mariam fell out of favour for rebellion. But the most distinguished of them all was Deborah, who the Bible announces glowingly: “Deborah, the prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, judged Israel at that time.” Huldah affirmed the book of the law to Josiah.

    Anna was called a prophetess at the time of Christ’s birth. Jezebel was a false prophet. She was never anointed. Just like male impostors. You can be anointed and God can take it away, as God did to Saul. Hence David begged God not to take the holy spirit from him.

    Paul is known to have mixed his opinion with revelations. It takes discerning to distinguish them. After all, he himself wrote, “the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet.”

    It may well be that Men are God’s preferences but it may also be because, in Bible times, God was working through, not necessarily affirming, a patriarchal world, a world that placed women in a leash. That may explain why Jesus chose only men.

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    Yet, Mary Magdalene played great role in Jesus’ life. And can we forget that the first evangelist of Christianity were women who saw an empty grave and proclaimed that He has risen? Is that not all the essence of Christianity. The 11 apostles hid their tails behind their legs. Even Paul asserted that if Christ did not rise from the grave, then the faith is in vain.

    Men always bit the woman’s neck like a hunting cat throughout history.

    A woman in charge challenges the hubris of the ages. Men often underplay the power of women. Great men from Sisera to Sheba died by a woman’s cunning.

    And General Namaan regained his limbs by a maid’s counsel. Scriptures show men do not monopolise strategy. Some say God allows women to reign only when men fail. But when have men not failed in history? Just like when God backed the Zelophehad daughters on inheritance rights. Or when Esther led her fellow Jews to freedom.

    Maybe women don’t want to remain under the bushel anymore. Neither does the Almighty. It is time for them to take charge and the holy spirit may be behind them. The problem with religion is that we superimpose culture on it. Church is not a man’s world. It is Christ’s.

    An irony: a king wed and divorced a woman for England to divorce the Catholic Church and start the Anglican Church. If King Henry VIII shed Ann Boleyn to beget the Church of England, Archbishop Mullaly may be enjoying history’s revenge.

  • Billionaire vs the union

    Billionaire vs the union

    There is nothing that the story of oil will not do in this country. It is black but a devious beauty. It is a tale of a beautiful woman or what poets call a femme fatale.

    Nobel Laureate Garcia Marquez in his immortal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, wafts the tale of Remedios the Beauty, a celestial vision that titillates the fancies of mortal man.

     Men lose their way, croon and drool in vain, fall and even stalk her bathroom. But the beauty does not fall for anyone. She glides on, tragedy in her wake.

    So we may say of black gold, our black beauty. It is a story that entails both our most famous billionaire and our most famous trade unions.

    Dangote versus NUPENG. Dangote versus PENGASSAN. But normally, if these two forces met in battle, where would the popular army amass? The polls would naturally say the unions have it.

    Dangote outflanks the unions in popular favour today. That is the sorcery of oil. It is what happens when, in the words of Shakespeare, “witchcraft joins with beauty.”  It is, on the surface, a contest between the people and the billionaire.

    The people lost. It is, of course, a false victory.

    The people seem to lose because of what trade unions can mean today. They hark back to American revolutionary cry to yank off the yoke of colonial England: “No taxation without representation.” We have unions without representation.

    First, it was NUPENG, and the fight over trucks. They say Dangote was going to take over their business. They have thousands of Trucks to Dangote’s a fraction of theirs. But they were defending their corruption of the oil tanking business in cahoots with top fang-men in the oil business, including the NNPC. Dangote had come to intrude but they wanted to “chop” alone.

    Dangote may have a few trucks today but, maybe, tomorrow, he will outpace them. They wanted to nip the billionaire in the bud. We are not there yet.

    And if they wanted to fight, it is what the Yorubas call  Ija’gboro, a street brawl. In school, we called it “two fighting.”

    They fought shy of going to court. That is what the United States did to tame Bill Gates, and what the European Union has done to Google. Gates was a boa constrictor. He had no pity.

    Business men are no mice. Hence Philosopher Proudhon says, “all wealth is theft.”  Don’t expect a milk of human kindness from a capitalist. Capital has no bloodstream; hence it can shed blood.

    PENGASSAN is no different. The fight was over labour.

     The man fired 800 workers, a stunning number. PENGASSAN wanted revenge. Rather than take it on Dangote, they took it on the people. Festus Osifo and company’s agenda did everything that made the people hate bad governments and oppressors.

    First, they endangered our daily bread by trying to cut off pipelines that funneled the fuel of the economy.  It was to reduce the wealth of the nation. NNPC said output dropped 16 per cent just in those few days. That meant fuel scarcity, rise in inflation because transporters would pass on the cost down to the consumer. It also means negating the downward trend of inflation in the past few months.

    Two, they would compromise national security. Oil and gas pipelines bake our bread and make us safe. Pipeline busters are often men of the underworld: militants, hoodlums, bandits, etc.

    It shows that they had taken over the role of the criminal. They had turned themselves into corporate fangs. They are the new corporate raider, raiding the peace of the land. Labour union as terror.

    In the past, the labour union was a terror of ideology. We have a name once associated with NUPENG and PENGASSAN. It is Frank Kokori. He is the first name in oil heroism in Nigeria. He may be abstract to many. But when heroes matter, Kokori is named.

    During the tumult of our democracy struggles, the army lost sleep because of him. Whether they slept or rose, they had nightmares about this man.

     Kokori was the secretary, and he was the man who signed off or signed on for strike. If our present oil agitators are seeking their pockets, he was living a cause above oil and gas. Kokori gave up the promise of compromise with Abacha and goons. He shunned bribes or seductions. Not for him a big car, or a holiday in Honolulu, or a mansion in southern France. He wanted peace and food and representation with the people. He wanted the military to vacate power and hand the mandate to democracy’s jewel: the people.

    He did not want Abiola’s ballot to yield to the bullet. He won the election. The people had spoken. They wanted him as president.

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     The country was to shut down unless they bowed to the popular will or what Jean Jacque Rouseau called the “collective will.” If the military would not, he would not. Kokori became a vagabond for the people. He moved from place to place, hotel to hotel.

     He never saw wife or family. He never attended parties or funerals. He never had oxygen outside an enclosed place except when he was on the run.

    But he never surrendered until he was betrayed. That is the quintessence of a union leader.

    Today, the folks who control PENGASSAN and NUPENG are money men, so, it is not a billionaire versus the masses, but a big rich man versus a cartel of rich men who masquerade as the people’s conscience.

    The men had the guts to stop our spigot of life, our economic jugular, and yet they claim they love us.

    That is the story of black beauty. It is a dangerous beauty like Marquez’s Remedios the Beauty. It provokes ire and turbulence like the Trojan War that  Helen of Troy gave us, the beauty in the telling of Homer’s epic The Iliad.

     But we can make our black beauty a sublime one, of grace and prosperity like the black beauty Shakespeare serenaded in his Sonnet.

     The bard laments, though, that black beauty has been profaned, just like our crude oil. For him black “beauty (is) slandered with a bastard shame.” He adds that “Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, but is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.”

    PENGASSAN and NUPENG have cast a shame on black gold as crude beauty.

  • Atiku’s Janus-faced politics

    Atiku’s Janus-faced politics

    Apart from loving to sell dummies to his audiences everywhere, former vice president Atiku Abubakar also likes to dissemble. In the months ahead, he will be badgered by questions on the 2027 presidential elections. Speaking in an interview with BBC Hausa last week, he insisted he would not leave the newly adopted coalition party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), for any other party should he be defeated in the coming presidential primary. He has jumped ship many times in the past, but at 79 next year, when the primary will be conducted, no one expects him to go anywhere again if he loses the primary. He will stay put. What they cannot confidently say is whether he would also remain committed should someone else be nominated for the 2027 presidential race.

    When he gave the BBC Hausa the controversial interview, the media initially reported him as saying that his ultimate wish was to ensure that his new party had a solid footing to engage in the coming electoral battle rather than the primacy of his candidacy. But the traditional media accurately reported Alhaji Atiku’s words in the proper context. He was not ambiguous about his intention to contest the next election, said the press, only that he would remain loyal and committed to the party in the event of a younger fellow taking the nomination. He appeared to have carefully rehearsed his answers this time before engaging the BBC Hausa, a firm departure from the ambiguities of the past when his spokesmen engaged in brickbats over his words and their intended meanings.

    However, it is still obvious that the former vice president is selling a dummy to the nation. When he spoke about the theoretical possibility of a younger politician defeating him in the nomination race next year, he knew it was practically impossible. No politician in the ADC with any interest in the presidency can muster his reach and resources, let alone square up to him or defeat him in the fight for the nomination. He is yet to announce his membership of the party, of course, but so, too, are the other likely contenders for the ticket: Peter Obi, a former Anambra State governor, and to a little extent Rotimi Amaechi, the overhyped former Rivers State governor. Those are the only younger elements in the party, and neither of them is capable of taking on Alhaji Atiku. While it appears guaranteed that the former vice president will soon announce his membership of the ADC, Mr Obi may still continue to pussyfoot for a little longer.

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    Indeed, what agitates the public is not that Alhaji Atiku is besotted to selling dummies; they are upset by his frequent doublespeak and his general disdain for altruism. It is true he mentioned and even praised his role in joining hands with others to build the ADC to a solid and enviable level, but that seeming selflessness proceeded only from his confidence in having cornered, if not outrightly embody, the soul of the party. In the interview, he spoke fondly and glowingly of how the party had been finally structured at the national level, and of how it was being structured at the local levels. Without saying it, his financial muscle had begun to speak, take and occupy territories for him.

    It is instructive that the same former vice president who denounced a certain Prof Ola Olateju for imbuing him with the altruism of being more concerned with building the party than advancing his presidential interest has suddenly begun to make a song and dance of his efforts to build the party or even step aside should he lose the nomination. More ‘inspiringly’ he even spoke about mentoring a younger candidate should such a person win the nomination. As this column reflected on Alhaji Atiku’s vacillations in the September 21 edition of this newspaper, there is nothing solemn or sacred about the former vice president’s words or positions.

    Here is how Barometer put it on September 21: “In late August, speaking through his representative Ola Olateju, a professor, Alhaji Atiku declared that he was not as desperate to be president as he was in midwifing a new and prosperous Nigeria. The genial professor spoke on behalf of the former vice president at a ceremony in Lagos while welcoming defectors into the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the special purpose vehicle the coalition of opposition forces plan to use to unseat President Tinubu. The ink had not dried on that ascription of altruism before Alhaji Atiku denounced the ascription and self-immolated…Another of the former vice president’s spokesmen, Tunde Olusunle, issued a swift rebuttal on facebook a day or two later, insisting that his principal would vie for the presidency in 2027. Quoting Alhaji Atiku, Dr Olusunle posted: ‘I did not issue that statement. When people stand in for me at events, we preview my thoughts on the instant subject and what my contribution or intervention will be, so that we are on the same page. In this particular instance, there was no engagement with me to distill my thoughts. Prof. Olateju was not speaking for me. I will run in 2027.’”

    Make no mistake about it, Alhaji Atiku is determined to vie for the party’s nomination, and to win, and to contest the 2027 poll. But whether he acknowledges it or not, he ran his last real race in 2023. His fellow party men will bring unbearable pressure on him to abandon the race and to restrict himself to revelling only in the joy of unseating their archenemy, President Bola Tinubu. But the former vice president would be repudiating all he stands for and who he really is by succumbing to those illicit pressures. His world revolves around him; nothing else will satisfy.

  • NYSC just got more cumbersome

    NYSC just got more cumbersome

    The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme is overdue for rejigging to make it less cumbersome, safer, and more attractive to potential corps members. About 650,000 of them are projected to be mobilised next year. But a perusal of Nigeria’s political development casts doubt on whether some of the key objectives of the scheme are even realisable. It is unclear, therefore, whether the federal government’s proposal to qualify a corps member is really the appropriate measure to embark on at the moment, not to talk of stampeding the process to commence on October 6.

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    To be mobilised for the scheme, a graduate is expected to attach comprehensive proof of his dissertation in compliance with the national policy for the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD). The government’s logic is that the NERD requirements could not be satisfied by other means, and that the measure would help raise educational standards. Again, the government presupposes that high standard is an abstraction uncorrelated with Nigeria’s abysmally poor educational infrastructure. However, the government includes some reward scheme for students and lecturers alike in the NERD policy. But is the government saying the reward schemes couldn’t be secured by other means, except by the NYSC route?

    Potential corps members already apprehensive about being posted to danger zones will be reluctant to complain against this extra layer of bureaucracy; but it will certainly add to their frustrations about the country, not to say the frustrations of parents who have always subsidised a scheme that can no longer pay for corpers’ upkeep.

  • SNAPSONG 269

    SNAPSONG 269

    (For Nigeria at 65)

    Another first day of another tenth month

    Of yet another long year

    The sun rose, wearily

     From a sober corner of the sky

    The rain this season

     Is full and furiously free

    The pampered lawns are glad

    The battered roofs are sour

    In other lands far,  yet not-so-far

    The sky rains red

    From the cannibal carnival of ‘smart bombs’

    By those who claim they own the world  

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    In this long-suffering country we call our own

    Awash with pledges, submerged in prayers

    For sixty years and five we have asked many questions

    Waiting for their vital answers

    The rich still too rich

     The poor too poor

    Our schools  still un-schooled

    Our hospitals  are horse-spittles

    Our country,  nonetheless

    With blessings so abundant

    Waiting, still waiting, for

    The Promise which succeeds the Pain

  • Discourses on Gen Irabor’s Boko Haram conundrum

    Discourses on Gen Irabor’s Boko Haram conundrum

    This is not a review of former Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Lucky Irabor‘s book, ‘Scars: Nigeria’s journey and the Boko Haram Conundrum’. In the next one or two weeks, if not more, discussions on the book will in the meantime centre on the discourses of about four notable Nigerians who addressed issues in  the book presented in Abuja last Friday. The review itself will come a little later, after Nigerians must have exhausted themselves examining the pontifications of the eminent quartet who declaimed on the Boko Haram menace. By inviting such high-profile personalities to the launching, the author probably suspected that he could be overshadowed, and some of the things the invitees said might be given more weight than the conundrums he tried to raise in his book. Authors are usually more finicky about facts and logic when writing books, probably because of their permanence, but flippant commentators often grandstand.

    As he is accustomed at public functions which he has attended over the years since he left office, former president Olusegun Obasanjo is either the keynote speaker or chairman. He does not settle for less. Sometimes, he even combines the two roles by making ponderous assertions in both capacities, not because he plans it that way, but because the media end up attaching more significance to his statements. Fortunately for Gen. Irabor, though Chief Obasanjo chaired the public presentation, what he had to say, while significant and even weighty, did not overshadow the contributions of other notable speakers like former president Goodluck Jonathan, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, and the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar. Each of these eminent persons gave a good account of himself, dissecting Boko Haram and its leadership and objectives as well as taking potshots at succeeding administrations characterised as incapable of resolving the crisis which began in 2009 during the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency.

    Chief Obasanjo’s opinion was predictably didactic. Though his view was not the most eloquent, paling by comparison with those of Dr Jonathan and the crossfire between Bishop Kukah and Sultan Abubakar, it merited significant attention for casting doubt on the competence and thoroughness of successive administrations, starting with the late President Yar-Adua. Recounting his trip to Maiduguri to interrogate the Boko Haram issue, he told his audience in Abuja on Friday that he established the existence of the group and all its attendant menaces, but wondered whether successive governments had taken pains to study and decode the phenomenon or whether they were active and proactive about tackling or smothering it. He concluded that he was uncertain Boko Haram was anything more than a socio-economic revolt instead of the long-held belief of its politico-religious beginnings. He also added that he was appalled by the fatalism of successive administrations, especially how they had resigned themselves to accommodating or coexisting with the terror group. The former president’s views are undoubtedly succinct, but it is doubtful whether his audience thought those views were also incontrovertible.

    Despite not been the most convincing or salient, Dr Jonathan’s perspective seemed to have dominated the Saturday papers and even the social media. He insisted his administration did everything possible, both kinetic and non-kinetic, to defeat the rebellion, including setting up fact-finding teams and negotiating committees. All efforts, he said, went up in smoke. But it was when he made a passing remark about his successor’s lack of breakthrough in the counterinsurgency efforts that he stirred up a hornets’ nest. He whispered that he had thought ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, whom Boko Haram once nominated as their negotiator, would be more successful in tackling the rebellion because he presumably had their confidence. His successor’s lack of success, he concluded with some relief, if not self-justification, explained why he himself failed in resolving the crisis, adding that it all showed the intricacies and complexities of Boko Haram. Critics immediately lashed out at Dr Jonathan, accusing him of embracing and peddling falsehoods, when in fact, according to a former spokesman of the late president, Garba Shehu, Boko Haram leaders refuted their appointment of any negotiator.

    The most interesting and probably spontaneous exchange took place between Bishop Kukah, the book reviewer, and Sultan Abubakar. The bishop had drawn a nexus between the Boko Haram rebellion and the opportunistic action of some northern elite who hid under the rebellion’s cover to advance political objectives. He insisted that regardless of whatever anyone says Boko Haram leaders knew their religious fundamentals and went warring under that flag. Without necessarily spelling it out clearly, the bishop subscribed to the well-known conclusion that a section of the northern elite did not seem to mind the ethnic and religious cleansing perpetrated by Boko Haram in its initial years. They in fact engaged in far-reaching conspiracy by embracing the rebellion and describing the insurgents as their sons who should not be massacred. But the sultan stoutly rose against both the nexus between the rebellion and political power as well as the insinuation that the North resented the Jonathan presidency. Islam or even jihad, the sultan argued, was not about killing others or violence, but about being better citizens, first and foremost. His view was almost coterminous with that of Chief Obasanjo who had downplayed the religious factor in the rebellion.

    Both Bishop Kukah and Sultan Abubakar may ironically be right. What Boko Haram leaders did, particularly in its first five or so years, was to prosecute their cause under the banner of Islam. That exercise may be right or wrong, and the sultan has insisted it was wrong; but they did it anyway. So, when the sultan debunked the notion that Islam had a political side to it, especially in rousing the faithful to seize political power, he was theoretically right. And when the bishop also argued that Boko Haram used Islam as a pretext to make a bid for power, or caliphate as they called it, he was also right, regardless of the insurgents’ flawed interpretation of the Quran, and even regardless of the falsehoods they had promoted under the banner of Islam. It is indeed interesting that the mask is now off, as no Boko Haram leader continues to fight under the banner of Islam. After being massively degraded over the years, Boko Haram, together with its more violent, well-funded, and ideological cousin, ISWAP, is now all about caliphate.

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    What is incontestable, as the book presentation reflected, is that the rebellion was difficult to categorise in its early years, just as a section of the northern elite also seemed to have misjudged the rebellion and reposed hope in its violent methods which they erroneously but privily thought would help birth the theocracy of their boyish fancies. The deception went on for years until the rebellion began to consume its own children, while the commentators also agreed that till today the country has not yet understood the dynamic of the rebellion. They are right. To assume that poverty alone could generate the uprising witnessed in Boko Haram, as Chief Obasanjo seemed to suggest, may be inaccurate. Yes, there is alienation in the country, and indeed Nigeria, by the actions of successive administrations, has proved alienating. But far more than poverty, the chief cause of alienation is arguably the misshapen structure of the federation which promotes inefficiency, disconnection, and ethnic and religious conflicts that keep morphing hideously. As a matter of fact, just as Boko Haram rebellion in the Northeast seemed to be weakening, banditry in the Northwest began gathering momentum; and worse, that second rebellion is slowly spreading southward.

    In the coming weeks, it will be clear whether Gen. Irabor did a fine job of capturing the major issues surrounding the Boko Haram rebellion, and whether his prognosis stands any chance of convincing anyone. But judging from the four or so discourses the newspapers copiously reported yesterday, it is unclear that the four speakers or successive administrations have fully understood the hows and the whys of the rebellion. They are just beating around the bush. Dichotomising the approaches to dealing with the rebellion to kinetic and non-kinetic measures, in addition to the questionable prognoses of forgiving and rehabilitating so-called former militants at extraordinary costs to the public, show that no rigour has gone into formulating the responses to Boko Haram or banditry, or any of the urgent security challenges the country has faced in recent years.

  • ADC’s unending rigmarole

    ADC’s unending rigmarole

    Former vice president Atiku Abubakar was at the African Democratic Congress (ADC) national caucus meeting where it was decided that those who publicly claimed to be members of the party must resign from their previous parties and officially join the ADC. Bolaji Abdullahi, the party’s spokesman, did not give any indication the decision was rancorous. It was, as far as the public knew, unanimous. But more than one week after that decision was taken, Alhaji Atiku was yet to take his own medicine. He is too versed in politics not to recognise an ambiguity when he sees one. He understands that since no deadline was given to take the medication, and since the virus the decision sought to cure remained attenuated, he and other fence sitters were at liberty to malleate the order.

    The ADC has engaged in unending rigmarole since last July when the party burst on the national scene as the preferred, though overused, vehicle of the opposition coalition being cobbled together to challenge the All Progressives Congress (APC), and in particular President Bola Tinubu. It was not until last week or two that party chieftains, nearly all of them external forces who wormed their way into the party and overthrew or compromised its lethargic national leaders, began having confidence that they now had a party they could deploy into action in 2027. The fail-safe All Democratic Alliance (ADA) whose creation they halfheartedly tried to inspire months ago may have finally been abandoned. So, to all intents and purposes, the ADC is the Goliath they will hide behind to fight in 2027.

    But of all those the order to officially register with the ADC was meant to cajole into action, Alhaji Atiku appeared to be the main target. Most of the party’s prominent leaders are already members, including the voluble former Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who straddles the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the ADC. Repudiated by the SDP, and certain that no big name would follow him when he tempestuously defected to the fringe party, he speaks the language of the ADC more than any other person, including its putative owner, Alhaji Atiku. By remaining unflappable in the face of the order to openly register with the ADC, the former vice president seems to understand something the other leaders in the party don’t. He knows that no creature can be bigger than its creator.

    By last week, no one was left in doubt who the real owners of the party were, or who stood any chance of winning a nomination battle. Alhaji Atiku has allowed and enabled an unending rigmarole in the ADC. He has teased party leaders into making nugatory orders, such as insisting on everybody registering with the party. He has, from the background or incognito, permitted all sorts of orders and regulations to be issued in order to give the impression that the party was not being run dictatorially, but democratically. And he has given everyone in the party a very long rope to hang themselves. He may lack the ultimate strategy to win elections, but he does not lack the strategy to hold a party in thrall and win nominations. He has done it over and over again, and will continue to do it regardless of the reservations many party leaders entertain concerning his suitability for the 2027 presidential poll.

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    In their heart of hearts, and even though they are galled by how they have become a spectacle, most ADC leaders know that they are working for Alhaji Atiku. He has cast his net far and wide in the ADC, and no fish, no matter how smart or big, can escape being snared. The fish themselves know it, and are transfixed by the tactical and financial dexterity of the former vice president. It, therefore, beggared belief that former president Goodluck Jonathan sleepwalked into the ADC waters to explore the possibility of running on their platform. Just one decade of staying out of power since 2015 seems to have inoculated the former president against perceiving the brutal reality of Alhaji Atiku’s make-believe detachment from the ADC’s decision echelon. No one else in the party, not Mallam el-Rufai, not River’s Rotimi Amaechi, nor even the wary and overcautious Peter Obi of the Labour Party, nor still the defiant Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, nor the increasingly tame Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto has let themselves be lured into foolish traps. They know how politically deadly Alhaji Atiku is.One thing is clear, as Alhaji Atiku’s vigorous refutation of the inaccurate reporting of his BBC Hausa interview of last Wednesday indicated, he will vie for the ADC nomination, for he is desperate enough to ignore every tug of conscience and every political sign arrayed against him. If he has engaged in pointless and endless rigmarole, it is because he thinks it serves some short-term purpose, indeed any purpose primed to deliver the presidency to him, his life’s singular obsession. No matter how much the media buffet him with tendentious or sponsored reports, the former vice president will stick to his guns and run for president. And no matter how much his party chieftains cajole him, they are unlikely to ski off-piste without crashing over the cliff. He has charted the path ADC party leaders must follow; and they are caught in a straitjacket. They imperil one another to think they can be extricated from the logjam that undid them in 2023 when they found themselves in the peculiar circumstances of seeing in Alhaji Atiku their only plausible chance to win.

  • Jonathan and Jerry Gana’s categorical imperative

    Jonathan and Jerry Gana’s categorical imperative

    Two Saturdays ago, while exulting over the successful election of new officials for the Niger State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jerry Gana, a party chieftain and former Information minister, issued the categorical imperative that Nigerians were disillusioned with the APC and wanted ex-president Goodluck Jonathan back. He didn’t make it a hypothetical imperative. He simply announced to the whole world and his party that the former president would be contesting the 2027 presidential poll on the PDP platform.

    Prof. Gana put it elegantly but provocatively: “I can confirm that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will contest the presidential election in 2027 as PDP candidate and you will vote for him to return as President again…PDP has tremendous opportunity in 2027 because it is truly a grassroots party. The people of Nigeria love the PDP because it came with programmes that were people-oriented. That is why they remember PDP immensely, and they are urging us to come back.”

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    Not only did his party issue a rebuttal the following day through its publicity secretary Debo Ologunagba, they also confirmed that Dr Jonathan was nothing more than one of the options they were contemplating. They may, however, be chasing a chimera, since the footloose Dr Jonathan may in fact be exploring other options. It is unclear that party chieftains who have spent so much to keep the party afloat would casually surrender the nomination to Dr Jonathan who had for years detached himself from the party. To reap where he did not sow would not only violate natural law, it would also fly in the face of Kant’s categorical imperative.

  • Still in search of an authentic national consensus

    Still in search of an authentic national consensus

    The actuality has turned out to be more dire than the auguries. The sixty fifth anniversary of Nigeria has now come and gone. As it has been predicted, the national mood was sombre and subdued. As the day approached, the discerning could feel a thick pall of despondency in the air and an atmosphere of generalized desperation. It was as if the dispensing machines had run out of vending hope and optimism after a run on them. This is the staple fare of pain-killing morphine on which an embattled and embittered populace had depended on in sixty five years of trial and tribulation. But addiction to pain-killers, like the pain-killers themselves, often have their expiry date and time.

    Given the general state of perturbation and widespread anxiety in the land, one was not unduly surprised when the announcement came cancelling the Independence Day parade, thus stripping the occasion of its pomp and pageantry. Whenever you have this kind of unusual announcement, the airwaves are rife with rumours and unsettling speculations that something nasty was in the offing. In the event, rather than glad-handing and iron-pumping in Abuja, the president chose to remain in his Lagos residence from where he rallied the nation in an Independence speech of rousing bravery and exceptional tough-mindedness. But if the truth must be told, it was of little avail, for it was at this particular point that the PENGASSAN versus Dangote Refinery faceoff snowballed into a full-blown downing of tools by the oil-sector workers. As long queues resurfaced at the petrol station and as commuters and motorists alike began hunting for the rare stuff like primitive hunter-gatherers, the downbeat mood became even more sullied and unappeasable.

       Cashing in on the unfortunate situation, some of the leaders who have led the nation up this ruinous path began calling for drastic reform or revolution. The veteran roadrunner among them, without any sense of momentous irony, insisted that the time had come to smash the moribund system. Why he thinks he himself and his vast retinue will escape the fury of the revolutionary mob in the event of an upheaval remains a source of profound mystery. Even more worrisome is the possibility that the nation is being set up for a catastrophic descent into anarchy as a prelude or dress rehearsal for the voting year of 2027 and all its magical possibilities.

       But why the year 2025 in its ember phase and the occasion of its sixty fifth anniversary should cast such an ominous pall of magical possibilities on the nation deserve more scrutiny. It may well be that just as humans suffer anxiety neurosis so do nations. In the modern bureaucratic calendar that we have adopted, the age of sixty five is the ultimate and terminal retirement age, the sharp cut-off point of all elongated shenanigans, extensions, multiple additions and covert adjustments. The retiree must go into compulsory retirement to embrace the dark shadows of old age, senescence or senility as the case may be, if they are not recalled by their maker. This is the age in which the patients worry themselves to death about missed deadlines, missed opportunities, vanished timelines and datelines.

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       There is a time for everything. You cannot be fretting about interview schedules or frantic about fresh job opportunities when you are already at the departure lounge waiting for the final call. The dominance of oral culture in Africa allows us to take a bitter jig at our colonially imposed modern calendar with its mechanical and mechanistic framework which does not allow or permit creative laxity or imaginative evasions. Due to lack of public records, it is only in Africa that the same person could hold on to multiple birthdates on the ground that he was born several moons ago on a market day with birds singing and goats bleating furiously, or where a centenarian can often pass as a sprightly septuagenarian. But that too must end at some point, like the Egungun Festival which must terminate at some point no matter the associated merriments and festivities. Time is the ultimate leveler which must bring together all the contending classes including children of loafers and the scions of loaf-masters.

        History is the master of allegory or allegorized reality. History, in its actual lived experience and confounding perplexities, often simplifies reality for us and resolves its own conundrums as it unfolds and expands thrusting its heady contradictions at us as we struggle to make sense of its awesome imponderables. Only last week in this column, we narrated how this columnist was invited in 1985 by the duo of Dele Giwa and Ray Ekpu to contribute to a publication to commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of the nation. As it was explained last Sunday, the columnist latched on to the image of a master paradox to explain away the strange combination of magnificent strengths and gargantuan weaknesses which seem to have defined the existence of the nation since amalgamation. For many people the idea of a roiling paradox has since entered the national imagination as a general password for unlocking the Nigerian predicament.

        Ten years after this landmark publication, Dele Giwa has been bombed out of existence about a year after on October 19th 1986. But in a strange twist of grueling irony, it was the turn of Kayode Soyinka, Dele Giwa’s golden boy and favourite newshound, to invite this columnist to ruminate on the circumstances of Nigeria on its thirty fifth anniversary commemoration. In the intervening decade, Soyinka, who only miraculously escaped being brutally dispatched like his boss, had transited from being an intrepid reporter to becoming the publisher of the respectable and influential magazine, Africa Today. That October, the nation’s reputation was in tatters having plumbed the depth of disrepute to become a pariah in the comity of nations. General Sani Abacha had bared his steely fangs and the entire nation lay cowering under the hammer of his brutal despotism. The mood of the nation darkened and there was a foul distemper about reminiscent of the goggled tyrant himself. Nobody ever believed that politically speaking, things could turn that foul and nasty.

       This time around, this writer fastened on the image of a giant toddler at thirty five trundling about the bare floor unable to get up and go. A toddler at thirty five is a genetic monstrosity; a victim of irreversible retardation and arrested development. It recalls the figure of, Aboliga, the man-child ,Ayi Kwei Armah’s haunting creation in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.  The one-day wonder grew to manhood and full maturity the same day he was born only to perish that same day. Nothing grows or endures for long in the sultry tropics, certainly not people, nations and institutions,  and the equatorial torpor has claimed its own once again.

    That was thirty years ago after a presidential election that promised to unite and unify the nation produced a hapless civilian interloper and the most monstrous despot ever seen in the history of the nation. The caustic severity of the framing referent of an earth-hugging adolescent toddler was an accurate reflection of the national trauma as Nigeria cascaded over the cliff to the bottomless pit of self-eradication once again. If any substantial damage has been done to the national fabric, the nation has had the intervening three decades to heal and to repair the damage. First was the heroic struggle against military absolutism which has since entered the universal folklore of the struggle of a people for self-emancipation. The upheaval against military eruption which sent the soldiers back to the barracks can be regarded as the golden moment of Nigeria’s post-independence history.

       Unfortunately, and by universal consensus, the post-military civilian restoration has, in the main, been underwhelming in its performance, particularly in the areas of the economy, national cohesion and the scourge of corruption and mismanagement. To be sure, there have been a few bright spots at both the national and subnational levels such as the brilliant demilitarization programme of the Obasanjo regime  and the sterling performance at the state levels particularly in Lagos and in emerging stars such as Ekiti, Enugu, Abia and perhaps entrepreneurially driven Akwa Ibo. But all these are too few and far between to make a dent on the fortunes of the nation.

       So what is the verdict on Nigeria at sixty five as the nation marked a gloomy anniversary this past week? The answers came in torrents and they could not be gloomier than the mood of the nation itself. This time around and in a startling development which hints at a global revolution in the knowledge industry and a change in demographic reflecting the growing predominance of youth in the power equation, it was Nigerians themselves who supplied the answers. This time around, Nigerians did not need “specialists” to explain away the antics of “madmen”; neither do they need their celebrated intellectuals and writers to explain the plight of the nation. They dismissed the nation as akin to a sixty five year old retiree without any further hope of redemption or restitution; a nation with a great future firmly behind it.

        Fortunately, the timeline of a nation’s existence is completely different from the lifespan of a human organism. Unlike human life, the nation is an infinite continuum with an oceanic plenitude of time. Nation’s do not succumb to sudden death or peremptory cardiac seizure. Even where breakup is a definite possibility, the warning signals are almost elastic in their sheer permissiveness. This is why Nigeria still has a lot to play for. It is not over until it is over. But a lot still needs to be done to halt the drift to Golgotha. This is a great country. But like all violently heterogeneous entities it is taking quite some time to come together and the human toll, the collateral damages, have been quite prohibitive. The coming decade will be quite critical in our quest for that elusive and authentic national consensus.

  • Baba Lekki takes Independence Day yabis to new heights

    Baba Lekki takes Independence Day yabis to new heights

    To the modish and moodily confrontational Gbedegbeyo Television Station, an equal opportunity bastion of ethnic irredentism on the outskirts of the Ajisegiri Canal, as the aging but irrepressible contrarian, Lambert Alekuso, aka Baba Lekki, fielded questions on the state of the nation on the occasion of the sixty fifth independence anniversary. Like most die-hard Yoruba progressives of the old school, a pattern of wary engagement with the ruling party has emerged since the coming to power of the greatest political disruptor of the age: strategic silence when everything is going well and the government appears to be on top of its brief and intense commotion coupled with rearguard revanchist rhetoric about the need to revisit the amalgamation of the country when the nation is on edge. Baba Lekki seems to have mastered this double-edged brief beyond the call of normal duty.

    This morning, the mournful drizzle that commenced around midnight had resumed duty after a brief respite as vast pools of murky water gathered on the sidewalks with angry commuters cursing careless motorists as they drove through the rivulets splashing and splattering everything in sight with foul effluents. As a result of the faceoff between PENGASSAN and Dangote Refinery, the few stations still dispensing fuel were besieged by irate citizens screaming to get on the rowdy queues and off-duty miscreants heaving heavy-duty jerry cans. Public distemper was palpable and the atmosphere was pregnant with foul foreboding and imminent combustion.

      Inside the hall, Baba Lekki sat on a lone chair rocking precariously from side to side and eyeing everybody in the hall with sullen contempt. He was approached by one of the female hostesses to find out if he needed some water to cool down and he snarled at the lady with such severity that the poor soul back-heeled quickly to the control room. He was obviously still smarting from the hostile reception he got at the security gate earlier. The rickety jalopy bringing him was flagged to a full stop by security people including a most impertinent woman. He was asked to alight and submit himself to a security search. After a thorough frisking, he was asked to remove a massive amulet dangling ominously from his breast pocket. The old man declined on the ground that it was an item of dressing.

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    “If you are not a fool, will you ask Basorun Ogunmola to remove his isura or insurance?”the old man screamed at them. When the security people insisted, the he offered to go in naked whereupon he started removing his trousers. The lady fled just as their supervisor who had been monitoring from a control room jumped out.

      “Let baba go, just let him go, we don’t want any trouble”, he screamed at his subordinates as the old man sauntered away.

     The lead interviewer thought he should begin by humouring the old codger who was as recalcitrant and truculent as ever.

    “Baba, despite everything, we must give thanks. At least the nation has survived”, he opened with syrupy smiles.

     “I don’t understand that kind of survival. It is the survival of an ayorunbo”, the old man snorted with his malignant humour resurfacing. The audience was stunned into total silence.

    “Baba, what is an ayorunbo?” the second interviewer inquired.

        “He who has escaped from heaven”, the old man replied, deadpan.

         “Kai, kai dis Yariba baba na shege !” one man dressed in babanriga hollered from the back of the hall.

        “So baba, what is the state of the Nigerian state?” the lead interviewer demanded.

     “ The Nigerian state is in quite a state, which means the state is pregnant. But let me tell you this, we will not allow all the nonsense you are planning. No matter what happens the man there must spend his eight years, sam, sam. If anything happens, you can say goodbye to Nigeria”, the old man submitted.

     “Haba!”, the man in babanriga shouted.

    “You can haba till eternity. When you people were running the ruining the country and mismanaging everything, we didn’t disturb you, or did we?” the old man queried.

    “So, it is now turn by turn mismanagement, abi?” a well -dressed young man sitting in the front row demanded, his diction suggesting class and affluence.

     “Call it anything. Na you sabi dat one”, Baba Lekki retorted.

     “Dem Yoruba people don bring dem wuruwuru and magomago into dis matter again.” One chap with an eastern accent screamed.

    “Thunder fire your mother. If you say another word, I will send akalamagbo to seal your mouth. Where was your mother when I was carrying poun-poun in Agodi Prisons because of Azikiwe in the fifties?” the old man exploded. Pandemonium almost set in at this point. But things calmed down quickly.

    “Baba what is your view of the rumoured Jonathan entry to the presidential race?” the lead man asked as he cast furtive glances around.

      “Call no man lucky until good luck has followed him till the end. Goodluck is Sigidi who wants to test his luck by demanding for a bath. Nothing must stop a small child from climbing the hill of Langbodo, ” the old man scoffed with apocalyptic relish. It was at this point that some well-armed militants rushed in through the backdoor and sent everybody scampering for safety.

    •This column is proceeding on annual leave.