The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • The courts are not to blame

    Segun Ayobolu

     

    IN the aftermath particularly of the Supreme Court’s upturning of the outcome of the governorship elections in Imo and Bayelsa states resulting in the enthroning of candidates and parties, which won a minority of the votes in elections, the judiciary has been blamed by several analysts for allegedly undermining democratic governance in the country. The judicial decisions in these two cases mirrored the situation earlier in Zamfara and Rivers states where, following alleged violation of credible and transparent intra-party electoral processes, the apex court legally incapacitated candidates of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) enabling the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to either assume power or continue in office irrespective of the expressed will of the electorate.

    While some have accused the judiciary of resorting to legal technicalities to arrive at pre-determined conclusions in these cases for crassly partisan reasons, others have leveled grave but unsubstantiated charges of grand corruption against members of the respective election petition panels. That the overturned elections in Imo and Bayelsa substantially reflected the will of the electorate in reasonably free and fair elections seems incontrovertible. In Imo, the desire of a power-intoxicated incumbent to foist a dynasty on the state by installing his son-in-law as successor was stoutly resisted within the APC causing the party to contest the 2019 elections with a badly fragmented house.

    The beneficiary was the PDP and Emeka Ihedioha, a formidable politician in his own right, who coasted home to victory to the delight of a not insignificant number of Imolites who were greatly relieved that the state was at least not reduced to humiliating servitude to one family. In his approximately eight months in office, Ihedioha won popular admiration even from those who do not necessarily support him politically because of his scientific, systematic and serious minded approach to governance. This was reflected not only in the quality of those he appointed into public office, but also in the gradual restoration of respect for stipulated processes and institutions, which had been reportedly grossly undermined during Rochas Okorocha’s eight year tenure. The result was that in Ihedioha’s short tenure, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in conjunction with the UNDP, rated Imo State as the best improved in the country as regards the institution of transparency and accountability in governance.

    Can Uzodinma’s government sustain this reformist tempo or will the Supreme Court decision have unwittingly helped build a bridge back to a discredited and better forgotten past in Imo? Only time will tell. In the case of Bayelsa, Lyon’s electoral victory was likewise aided by the antics of a strong-willed incumbent who sought to foist a successor on the state at all costs utilizing the power of incumbency. Governor Seriake Dickson in the process alienated key stakeholders in the state including ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, thus paving the way for APC’s emphatic victory in a state that had been the traditional stronghold of the PDP since 1999. In both cases, therefore, the court verdicts appear difficult to differentiate from judicial coups through which electoral minorities have been able to become governing majorities.

    A number of analysts have pointed out what appear to be imponderable incongruities and inconsistencies in the Supreme Court decisions in Imo and Bayelsa. In the Imo case, questions have been raised as regards the origin, procedural regularity and normalcy as well as integrity of the large number of allegedly ‘excluded votes’ that were legitimated by the court and the addition of which swung victory in favour of Senator Hope Uzodinma who came fourth in the election!  Could any other party apart from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) claim credibly to have been the custodian of the votes in question? Yet, did Ihedioha’s counsel do enough to discredit the integrity of these allegedly excluded votes particularly during cross examination? Only legal minds can authoritatively answer the question.

    In the Bayelsa case, the Supreme Court has been criticized for voiding Mr. David Lyon’s election on the basis of the infractions of his deputy thus implying that members of a governorship ticket are inseparable Siamese twins that must rise or sink together. Yet, the same court had in 2015 allowed the Kogi State governor, Mr. Yahaya Bello, to contest the election without a running mate signifying that the deputy is not of critical import to the joint ticket after all. What then are we to believe now? We can only hope that the apex court will utilize the opportunity of the appeals for the review of its judgments sought by the affected parties in Imo and Bayelsa, to give a rational justification for its decisions.

    Even then, no matter what may be their own foibles and failings, are the courts to blame for the frequent vulnerability of electoral outcomes to judicial erasure? I do not think so. The problem has to do rather with the overvaluation of state power primarily as a source of primitive accumulation of wealth and the attendant vicious and unstructured struggle of contestants for public office at all levels to win elections at all costs and by all means. Parties and candidates vote funds to compromise intra-party primaries; they spare no effort to bribe the electorate and perpetrate outright violence to win general elections; they make provision to pocket security agencies and buy the support of the electoral umpires and above all they vote munificent funds to procure favourable verdicts from the Election Petition Tribunals through the Appeal Court to the Supreme Court. Practically every electoral outcome becomes a matter of litigation putting the courts under unimaginable pressure.

    How many of those who castigate the courts for some of their seemingly compromised decisions on election petitions would rise to a higher level of moral integrity were they to find themselves in such positions with the attendant political pressure from desperate political actors?  Not many in my view. The problem is thus not with individual judges but with the political system as a whole. How then, the question should be, do we make political offices less attractive as a source of wealth acquisition and thus reduce the intensity of the competition for public office and the consequent pressure on judges to give politically tainted and pecuniary-induced decisions on election petitions?

    On their part, the courts seem to be only too eager in many cases to substitute their choices for the expressed will of the electorate based on technicalities. This is unhealthy and has huge destabilizing potentials. In the aftermath of the 1979 elections, for instance, the Supreme Court could easily have upheld Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN)’s petition that Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) did not score the required spread of 25% of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the states to be declared President despite scoring the highest number of votes in the election.

    The UPN was technically correct. But what would have been the consequence had the apex court upheld Awolowo’s petition? There would have been the strong possibility of Awolowo emerging President at a runoff against Shagari in the Electoral College especially if he won the support of the other political parties opposed to the NPN. But then, Awolowo’s UPN had won the election only in five states all in the South West region. The NPN won in seven states with better geographical spread. Furthermore, the UPN had 25% of the votes in not more than 7 states while the NPN met the requirement in 12 states and scored a substantial number of votes in a 13th state, Kano, which was won by the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).

    It would have been a travesty of justice for Awolowo to have emerged President in the circumstances largely through judicial pronouncement. The Supreme Court controversially but wisely upheld Shagari’s victory ruling that the NPN satisfied the constitutional requirement of winning the highest number of votes as well as 25% of votes cast in 12 and two-thirds of the then 19 states in the country. The jurists were no doubt sensitive to the fact that their opinion based on legal technicalities could not be made to supersede the will of the Nigerian electorate.

    It is unfortunate that the courts in Nigeria today are losing this kind of sensitivity. It should matter to the jurists that in Bayelsa, Senator Douye Diri was sworn in not only amidst tight security and tension akin to a war situation but a dusk to dawn curfew is still in place in the state even after he has assumed office. It has become imperative for the National Assembly to urgently pass the necessary legislation to make it impossible for courts to declare anyone as the winner of an election even after such polls have been nullified. Rather, where elections are voided, the electorate must always be given the opportunity to have the final say through fresh elections.

    The obverse side of the judicial decisions in Imo, Bayelsa, Rivers and Zamfara states, however, is that it will force political parties to adhere to stipulated rules in conducting intra party electoral processes and also ensure that they are more rigorous in screening the credentials and other records of candidates they sponsor for office. This is good for the polity. Finally, there has been so much ado about Justice Mary Odili being chairman of the judicial panel that sat on the Bayelsa case. But was she not just one among a panel of five members? Again, was the panel not constituted by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, alleged in some quarters to be a stooge of the Buhari administration? Enough of conspiracy theories please.

     

  • Farida Waziri: Just as she is

    By  Segun Ayobolu

     

    ‘Just as I am’. That is the title of the engrossing autobiography by world renowned evangelist, Billy Graham, who simply, honestly, frankly and in a down to earth manner tells the story of his epic life from his childhood through to the height of his fame as perhaps the world’s most prominent and widely travelled preacher of the gospel of Christ.

    Billy Graham’s unforgettable anecdotes, his sense of humour and his sincere self portrayal came to my mind as I  read Mrs Farida Waziri’s gripping memoir, titled ‘One Step Ahead: Life as a spy, detective and anti-graft Czar’.

    This unpretentious narrative is a portrait of the essential Farida Waziri; the young, innocent and fervent Catholic girl who yearned to become a reverend sister but was destined for an eventful career in policing and crime fighting, legal practice and also playing a frontline role in the country’s war against crippling corruption at a critical point in the evolution of this political dispensation.

    Of course, there is all too much to whet the appetite, excite the senses and titillate the imagination in this superbly narrated book.

    It is thus not surprising that the intrigues that characterized her tenure as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), her nerve wracking and superlative exploits as pioneer Commissioner of Police in charge of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) or her fascinating and deeply emotional rendering of her recollections of and roles in the aftermath of the 1976 Colonel B.S. Dimka  coup as well as the 1995 phantom coup that purportedly sought to overthrow the regime of General Sani Abacha, for instance, have made the headlines and dominated the very effective pre-launch publicity of the book.

    What I, however, found most enjoyable about the book are the many lessons it offers about life and living drawn from the very personal and most intimate stories of Mrs Waziri – her childhood, education, marriage, career trajectory, faith and even painful encounters with death when she lost loved ones.

    There is so much wisdom woven into every facet of this book, all distilled from the invaluable life experiences of the author.

    Mrs. Waziri nostalgically captures her love-suffused upbringing as a child in Gboko, Benue state, and how her parents inculcated in her a healthy sense of self esteem that guaranteed her psychological stability and emotional security later in life.

    In her words, “Father’s words tide me over in my human odyssey. He blessed me with his declarations. His parenting style, as embodied in his love for me, taught me valuable lessons. Call your children good names. Speak good words into their lives. Advise them wisely.

    Then your prayers over them will come to pass. I have seen people who rebuked their offspring with vain and vulgar names – and not surprisingly, the children chose accursed paths…

    There are better ways of correcting a child. Correct them, if you must, and firmly too. But, also talk to them softly. Counsel them with positive examples”.

    The young Farida’s early dreams of becoming a medical doctor was quickly jettisoned due to the unpleasant emotions she experienced on her first sighting of a corpse.

    Rather, her young imagination was fuelled by a desire to become a lawyer; an ambition partly influenced by a fictional character, Perry Mason, a brilliant investigative lawyer, she encountered in a detective novel series she read avidly. She was determined to obtain a university education and train to be a lawyer.

    However, as a result of subtle, albeit well meaning pressure, from one of her Uncles, the young Farida found herself enlisting in the Nigeria Police Force and pursuing a different career trajectory altogether.

    And this was despite her passing the entrance examination into the Catholic-owned Sacred Heart College, Kaduna, from where she could have pursued her dream of going to university and studying law.

    Did she give in to discouragement and disappointment when she had to discontinue her education at Sacred Heart College? Not on your life.

    In her words, “I missed my opportunity to continue my education at Sacred Heart College. But I did not waste my time wallowing in recrimination and resentment. The same singular dedication I had devoted to education was redirected to the training at the Police College in Kaduna”.

    Not surprisingly, she won the Baton for Best Recruit at the Police College and was among the ten best graduating police recruits to be moved to Lagos and given specialized training as an informant, intelligence officer and police spy.

    She gives an interesting insight into the life of a police spy when she writes, “An interesting part of the job involved operating incognito.

    To be a spy, you have got to be good at disguising. You had to be adept at dressing to be inconspicuous. I could easily transform into a rich woman if the occasion was for prominent people and I had to blend into the backdrop.

    I could also, if the situation warranted, transform into an anonymous woman on the street, modestly clad, wearing bathroom slippers and not any different from groundnut sellers on the street”.

    Read Also: Farida Waziri was simply hired to attack me, says Jonathan

     

    The author regales us with her invaluable experiences as a detective with the then famous intelligence arm of the police more popularly known as the “E” Department, a name which I first encountered in Wole Soyinka’s prison memoirs, ‘The man Died’.

    Perhaps the most touching parts of the book are when she writes with such candour and disarming innocence about her first meeting with her future husband and her falling in love, getting married and building a home.

    Her first encounter as a young girl with the man she later married, Senator Adamu Ajuji Waziri makes interesting reading. In her words, “One day, my uncle, Asaa, took me to the Police Officers’ Mess for my first experience of the Tombola.

    I sat close to him at his table. Across from us was a young man that openly ogled at me. His gaze was intense and it made me uncomfortable. Why was he staring at me? I was sure that I did not know him from anywhere.

    I was seeing him for the first time, yet, he kept his eyes on me. A few minutes later, he made his way to our table, greeted my uncle, and greeted my uncle, and tried to borrow a pen from him. “You are not serious.

    If I give you mine, what will I use?” retorted Uncle Asaa. I gave him the biro I had with me. He thanked me and went back to his seat’.

    Mrs Waziri tells in a vivid and moving manner the story of her falling love and marrying her husband and the mutually fulfilling life they shared until his death; an experience that elicits deep sadness not only in the narrator but which the reader cannot but share.

    Out of her profound love for him, Mrs Waziri later converted to Islam even though her husband gave her utter freedom to continue to practice her Catholic religion.

    She movingly tells the story of their life together, her deft combination of marriage and career and the bringing up of their five children with love and compassion combined with discipline and firmness.

    It is testimony to the author’s tenacity and diligence that after bearing and raising her children, she later pursued her dream of studying law at the University of Lagos and graduated with a Second Class Upper honours degree before proceeding to the Nigerian law school from where she also successfully graduated. She was also later to obtain a Masters Degree in Strategic Studies from the University of Ibadan.

    Mrs Waziri’s effective discharge of her responsibilities as the pioneer Commissioner of Police in charge of the Special Fraud Unit at the height of the infamous ‘419’ menace in Nigeria no doubt recommended her much later for appointment as Chairman of the EFCC.

    Although constantly faced with danger including assassination attempts as Head of the SFU, she undertook her assignment with courage and resilience. Under her leadership, the SFU recorded 11 convictions in two years in addition to making significant recoveries.

    Before her appointment as EFCC Chairman, Mrs. Waziri had retired meritoriously from the Nigeria Police Force after a 35 year career in which she served variously as Commissioner in Charge of Administration at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Commissioner of Police for General Investigations, Commissioner in charge of X-Squad and Commissioner in charge of SFU. She reports, remarkably, that she did not receive a single query throughout her career.

    Easily the most vilified and traduced Chairman of the EFCC, the undeniable record of her achievements in that office are documented for posterity in this book.

    It is certainly impossible to efface the over three and a half decades of dedicated service to her fatherland in different roles in the police prior to her appointment as EFCC Czar.

    It is certainly noteworthy that one of the country’s most highly respected former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Aliyu Ibrahim Atta (RTD) testifies eloquently about Mrs. Waziri’s competence and character in his foreword to the book.

    In his words, “I am pleased to write the forward to this masterpiece. Mrs Farida Waziri was an extraordinarily intelligent officer and being invited to write the forward to her book is an honour to me. I feel confident because I have interacted with her throughout her professional career.

    I knew her from the start of her police career, watched her progress up to her retirement, and followed her post-retirement activities at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    She towers in intelligence and character amongst her contemporaries. Her remarkable story is of benefit to our country now and in the future”.

  • Valentine: The Leah Sharibu kind of love

    By Segun Ayobolu

    Yesterday was the celebration of the  annual Valentine’s Day – a commemoration of love in a world so badly enmeshed in the darkness of hate, greed, selfishness, envy, intolerance, bigotry and the assorted kinds of evil, unimaginable violence and bloodshed these negative passions give birth to. Researching the origins of Valentine’s Day, I found out that the now heavily commercialized yearly commemoration of love actually had its roots in pain, sacrifice, agony and martyrdom.

    According to Wikipedia, “…Valentine’s Day is recognized as a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and romantic love in many regions around the world. There are numerous martyrdom stories associated with various Valentines connected to February 14, including a written account of Saint Valentine of Rome’s imprisonment for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire”.

    The online dictionary continues, “According to legend, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his judge, and he wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell before his execution. The feast of Saint Valentine was established by Pope Gelasius 1 in AD 496 to be celebrated on February 14 in honor of the Christian martyr, Saint Valentine, of Rome, who died on that date in AD 269″.

    It is thus only natural that on this year’s celebration of Valentine’s Day, my mind went to Leah Sharibu, the only one of the 110 Dapchi Government Girls’ Science and Technical College school girls aged between 11 and 19 years old abducted by Boko Haram on February, 18, 2018, who remains in the custody of her brutish captors. Leah was not released along with her other school mates by the religious extremists because she refused to renounce her Christian faith and embrace the terrorist’s perverse brand of Islam. Would Leah miss past celebrations of Valentine with her loved ones, which must now be for her a fading memory? Most likely.
    Would she regret having made her choice to stand fast by her faith rather than recant for freedom? I don’t think so. The kind of option Leah chose could not have been lightly made. Even though still very young, Christianity for Leah was certainly not just a cold code of doctrines, a set of religious traditions she was obliged to submit to in conformity with the conventional religious orthodoxy she was brought up on. It Is unlikely that anyone, least of all a promising young girl with great hopes and dreams for the future, would have given up so much for what would be no better that a lifeless religion.

    No, the only rationale I can find for Leah Sharibu’s firmness of will and fearlessness in defying her captors is that she has a strong, unshakeable conviction in a personal savior, Jesus Christ. She must have the deep rooted belief that losing freedom and even life for fidelity to her Lord cannot ultimately be in vain viewed from the perspective of eternity. Leah was prepared to demonstrate love and faithfulness unto death to a Saviour who loved her enough not to shrink from being crucified on the cross to give her life.

    But couldn’t Leah have recanted, some have asked, denounced her faith and embraced another just to gain her freedom? That is earthly Machiavellian counsel. Leah acted apparently out of fidelity to a higher, nobler spiritual wisdom. What if she had renounced her faith, for instance, adopted another and yet her abductors, habitually unprincipled and unreliable, refused to release her claiming she now belonged to them by virtue of her ‘voluntary’ conversion? Surely, she would be worth much more to them as a captive trophy to their triumphant zealotry than all the other girls, Muslim by birth, put together.

    If that happened, Leah would have neither liberty nor the deep seated inner peace that her faithfulness to her conviction even in adversity must have brought her. There are others who contend that the kind of injustice suffered by Leah and indeed the existence of all forms of evil in the world prove that either God does not exist or that he is not omnipotent. Luckily, Leah is not of such a shallow cast of mind.

    She must have reasoned that there is a reason why her Savior, Jesus, whom she would not deny before Boko Haram zealots, did not avoid a painful death on the cross to redeem all who trust in him. Of course, as he himself said, Jesus could have summoned a battalion of angels from heaven to come to his rescue from his calumniators and murderers. But he knew that the path to the glorious resurrection could only pass through the humiliating pain of the crucifixion.

    Incidentally, Satan offered Jesus a far easier path to glory as an alternative to a painful death on a Roman cross when he tempted the Lord in the wilderness. Why not turn stones to bread, for instance, and win the instant adulation of the hungry, teeming multitude, Satan subtly suggested? Surely, that would convince the world that he was the son of God? Would the world not marvel at the power of this Messiah who would banish hunger forever from the face of the earth?

    Or better still, why not jump down, the devil suggested, from the highest pinnacle of the temple and prove your deity to an astonished world? Imagine if that suggested feat had been performed in today’s world of global television or Facebook? The whole world would have celebrated the great Messiah performing his powerful acrobatics to the heroic adulation of man rather than to the glory of his father who had ordained a different, pain-strewn path for his son to achieve the mission of salvation for mankind.

    Even more alluringly, Satan showed Christ in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and promised to hand them all over to Jesus if he would only bow down, even if surreptitiously, and worship him. Just as Leah has done in obvious imitation of her Lord, Jesus said no. “Get thou behind me satan”‘ he said “For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only”.

    “Deny your Lord and Bow down to our faith” Leah’s tormentors told her “and thou shall regain your liberty and all its attendant joys”. But she must have heard echoes of the master’s timeless words, “broad is the way that leads to death and many are they who walk through it but narrow is the way that leads to life and few are they who choose it”.

    Leah remains in captivity because she chose the narrow path. Another amazing example is that of Rev. Lawan Andimi, Northern Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) who embraced gruesome death rather than convert to Islam as demanded by his Boko Haram captors.

    How many of us, if in Leah’s shoes, would have embraced the choice she made? Would I, for instance? I cannot confidently say so. But it would appear to me that many in the church today have exuberantly embraced a Christ who promises them the broad highway of boundless prosperity, ever growing and magnificent congregations and edifices, televangelist populism and popularity, effortless ease and world acclaiming success. These are the glories of the world that Satan offered to Christ without success in the wilderness temptation.

    But there are too many examples in the Bible and across history where Christ chose the path of pain, deprivation, loneliness, obscurity, torture, hardship and even death for his most committed and ardent followers. How many of us brought up on the broth of the currently dominant dubious theology of materialism and the easy life, if given the choice before Leah, would not have swiftly denied Christ and embraced the “life is all merry and rosy” spiritual opium of much of contemporary Christianity particularly of the Pentecostal variety?

    There was a recent report that Leah Sharibu had given birth to a child for a Boko Haram commander. If true, that was definitely not her will. But as some members of her family have said, they are at least glad that she is alive if there is any veracity to the story. Will her captors not be justified to feel a triumphal satisfaction at such a turn of events? It can only be a Pyrrhic victory. After all, those who crucified him rejoiced wildly at the death of Christ. They never imagined that was only a precursor to the resurrection and the current worldwide influence of the humble carpenter from the obscure village of Nazareth in Judah?

    Can these deluded extremists be too sure that, if she has truly given birth, Leah’s child may not indeed be a seed for the future blossoming and triumph of the irresistible love of Christ planted right in their midst? After all, does God not work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform? Even in adversity, I join your teeming admirers in wishing you divine peace and joy that passes human understanding, dear Leah Sharibu, Christ’s Val.

  • To the only one I love

    By Segun Ayobolu

    (First published in the Daily Times newspaper of Friday, 7th March, 1997)

    If this piece had been written to coincide with Valentine’s Day as originally intended, the message would most likely have gone unnoticed. It would have been drowned by the fast-paced, seductive tempo of Shina Peter’s Afro juju music, which, to mark this year’s Valentine anniversary, blared ever so loudly at the Lagos Airport Hotel. As they danced at various venues to the sonorous, soothing tunes of Lagbaja, the relentless, irrepressible rhythm of Kwam 1’s brand of Fuji or the rather sexually explicit stage vibrations of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, very few would have bothered to read an article which seeks to explore the mystery of this phenomenon called love in these troubled times. Now that most of us have almost recovered from the heady wine of the Valentine celebration, we should be sober enough to examine more closely a yearly ritual that gulps so much of our time, energy and scarce financial resources.

    What exactly is this thing called love that plays such a prominent role in the lives of men? It is the theme of books ranging from the holy scriptures of various religions to the unabashedly sexually vivid novels of a Harold Robbins or a Nick Carter. It is the focus of films that span uplifting romantic documentaries through amorous home videos to those blue films that reduce human beings to panting animals on screen. It provided the inspiration for the soulful lyrics of the gifted Christian singer, Mary Mckee and the late Marvin Gaye’s timeless ode to the goddess of love – ‘sexual healing’. A friend of mine who is of an unrepentantly religious disposition contends that Mavin Gaye’s masterpiece has mortally wounded more souls than it has healed. I may not be qualified to comment on that.

    But what, I ask again, is this phenomenon that sustains the flourishing industry which Valentine has become? Love for nation plunged the world into major wars that destroyed million of human lives and has been responsible for countless minor but no less devastating conflicts. Love for tribe has often fertilized the soil of hatred and bitterness resulting in the break- up of nations and the bestiality of war. Even love for God has often inspired crusades and jihads meant to terminate the perceived worthless lives of fellow human beings on planet earth. Love for partner has often bred jealousies resulting in the most despicably tragic acts of human wickedness.

    Have jealous lovers not been known to bathe their rivals or unfaithful partners in bucketfuls of corrosive acid? We have read of apparently momentarily deranged husbands who beheaded some unfortunate man for cavorting with their irresponsible wives? Did the prophet, Samson, not reveal his secret and truncate his mission on the altar of love to Delilah? Can we forget in a hurry a former chief of our drug-fighting agency whose career was cut short on the platform of revealed love notes to his own Delilah? What about the great King David, who, in a moment of uncontrolled passion, was lured to commit adultery and compounded his sin with murder? Who indeed can penetrate the intricacies of this mysterious emotive force?

    However we see it, what is undeniable is that love is a viable commercial enterprise. Nothing demonstrates this better than Valentine’s Day. Valentine has become big business. And the reason for this is not far-fetched. As someone recently noted and rightly too: “Industry and media have made an art of sexual seduction. We are surrounded by those who know that they can make a living by stirring up and fanning the flames of sexual desire. Television, radio, music, video, movie, publishing, advertising and clothing industries are all exploiting our misunderstood and misdirected longings for intimacy”.

    Seedy houses of vice where fornicating couples can wish each other happy Valentine without the slightest pangs of conscience, five-star hotels, pepper-soup joints, local Bukas, cinema houses, theatres, and so on especially enjoy a tremendous boom in the season of Valentine. It is also one of the peak periods for musicians, especially those inclined to singing songs of salacious variety. Perhaps those who profit most from Valentine are the producers of valentine cards. There is an infinite variety in the market at ever rising prices. There are the cards expressing love to father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, grandparents, grandchildren, employer, colleague, fiancé, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife and husband.

    Married couples disposed to adultery can even buy two sets of cards – one for the legitimate partner and another for the unofficial one outside the home. Our irresistible in-house cartoonist, Yomi Ola, sometime ago captured the irony of Valentine in a characteristically brilliant portrait: Pointing to a particular card that caught her fancy, a love-struck woman said to a road side card seller: “Can I have FIVE of that card with the caption, TO THE ONLY ONE I love?” No, there is no adultery or unfaithfulness in the wonderful, fantasy world of Valentine. As it was in the beginning, so it is, so shall it be, love without end. Amen.

    I am sure that on Valentine Day, the victimizing lecturer found an appropriate card for his vulnerable student val who, knowing of the knife of threatened failure pointing at her neck, plays ball. Oh yes, the randy boss surely found a card for his frightened and submissive secretary who well aware of the sword of stalled promotion dangling over her head plays along. The calculating female subordinate, systematically sleeping her way to the top in the workplace, certainly got suitable cards for her male bosses at critical points on the promotion route. Ah, how fortunate we are: there are cards for all at valentine!

    But why are we so blessed with a version of love that breeds unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual abuse and broken homes? Is the seed of unwanted pregnancy not sown in a vanishing moment of heated passion? How about the marriage institution which should be the greatest model of love? Think of Winnie and Mandela or Charles and Diana. Think of the littered trail of broken marriages, which trump the number of successful ones. Think of the even more crowded arena of unhappy marriages full of suspicion, hostility and tension? Will the marriage institution survive the pervasive lack of love in today’s world especially in this age of democratized and liberalized values?

    Yet there are those who insist that what we celebrate at valentine is not love but its perversion – lust. Genuine love, they say, can be found in the teaching of the man of Galilee. Love your enemies. Pray for those who hate you. Turn the other cheek when slapped. Keep no record of wrongs. Think and expect the best of all. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you do, you won’t seduce his wife, covet his property or exploit his or her body for your selfish pleasure. Others see this as an unattainable ideal. Long live, then, the spirit of Valentine?

  • ‘Gbelegbo’ and the mystery of Shina Peter’s ‘ACE’

    By Segun Ayobolu

     

    My Mondays are not complete now without my having read the week’s edition of the new soar away Yoruba tabloid, ‘Gbelegbo’, from the stable of The Nation newspapers. Its production is rich and attractive. Its gifted writers bring out the luscious richness and mellifluousness of the Yoruba language. Its columnists Akara Ogun, Femi Abulude and the mysteriously anonymous ‘Mista Kampari’ are witty, and engaging. I find its editorials in particular as they articulate the news paper’s opinions on critical issues of the day pungent and informative. Shortly before Gbelegbo hit the market, I had borrowed and reread a copy of the late Professor Isola Akinwunmi’s classic Yoruba drama ‘Efunsetan Aniwura’ in preparation for a public lecture I was to deliver in Lagos. The audience was rapturous when I recited some of the truly enchanting Yoruba Ifa incantations in the book from memory.  But I am far from being an Ifa acolyte.

    Yet, in rereading Efunsetan Aniwura, I discovered that my ability to read the Yoruba language fluidly had badly diminished. This was a play about the epic life of the 19th century Iyalode of Ibadan, Efunsetan – a powerful, immensely wealthy, politically connected, spiritually fortified, authoritarian and mercilessly ruthless woman which I watched performed live on stage by the Ishola Ogunsola’s travelling Yoruba theatre, as a form three student in Ilorin. This is apart from watching the play several times on the inimitable Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Ibadan, in the late 70s and early 80s. Gbelegbo thus offers me an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Yoruba language and nourish my intellect with its imaginative idioms and fascinating linguistic nuances.

    It is instructive that some of the best writers of the English language are deeply steeped in their indigenous languages, cultures and traditions. The great novelist, Chinua Achebe, for instance vividly portrays in his works the incredible beauty and philosophical depth of Igbo language and culture. And our own literature Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka’s poetry and drama are incredibly enriched by his not inconsiderable immersion in the traditions, cultures, religion and language of the Yoruba. Parents, many experts believe, can actually enhance the intellectual capability of their children by acquainting them with their indigenous languages and literatures rather than alienating them from their roots. This is why I believe Gbelegbo is a great idea deserving support.

    But then this piece is about a lead story of Gbelegbo in December last year, which revealed something previously not publicly stated to the best of my knowledge about the juju musician, Shina Peter’s, monster hit album ‘Ace’, which took the nation  by storm in 1989. The frenzy with which teeming fans of music even beyond lovers of juju embraced ‘Ace’ and its pulsating staccato drum beats, stirring guitar works and salaciously delirious lyrics can best be imagined. A friend of mine told me a story of his experience with ‘Ace’ aboard a crowded Molue bus (44 sitting 99 standing, apologies to Fela’) somewhere on Ikorodu Road in Lagos in 1990. The bus was stuck in traffic and a music store was blaring the music of Shina Peter’s ‘Ace’ from a loudspeaker.

    To his amazement, practically every passenger got down from the Molue and started gyrating right on the highway to Shina Peter’s seductive beats and alluring lyrics:

    “Ijo Shina, Ere Shina,

    Emi le jo, Iwo le jo

    Wa jo o

    Ka jo jo

    Ijo Shina yi

    O ga ju…”

     

    The album sold like wildfire. It won the highest number of awards in that year’s Performance Musicians of Nigeria (PMAN) music awards. If they were to tell the truth, King Sunny Ade and Commander Ebenezer Obey who had dominated the juju music scene for decades were shaken to their foundations. Had the juju music scene been dramatically changed for good and a new juju monarch emerged to claim the throne? Shina seemed to imply so. He sang tauntingly:

     

    “E jawo lapon  ti o yo

    E lo gbomi ila kana

    Orin Shina gbode.”

     

    This roughly translates into :

    “Do away with the watery ‘apon’ draw soup,

    Put on fire water for original okra soup,

    Shina’s music is the latest thing in town”.

    What then is the gist of the sensational Gebelegbo story on ‘Ace’? In an interview with another well known juju musician, Professor Y.K. Ajao, who described himself as a bosom friend of Shina Peters, right from when the latter was a guitar band boy with the late General  Prince Adekunle’s juju band. Ajao said he admired Shina’s dexterity on the guitar and used to attend shows where his band played while Shina also used to attend shows by Ajao’s band.

    The Iseyin, Oyo State, born Ajao told the newspaper that as young men seeking to attain fame in music, he and Shina sought many spiritual means to achieve a breakthrough in their careers. Ajao then stunningly revealed that on one occasion he had just come back home from a babalawo (herbalist) who had prepared a delicious charmed meal for him to eat; a concoction, which the herbalist said would bring him fame. On returning to his room, he said, he placed the food under the bed before he was ready to eat when Shina burst in and said he was hungry. Perceiving the aroma of the meal, Shina looked under the bed, brought out the food and asked that they eat together – they were that close.

    “But do you know if this food is prepared for two persons to share?”, Y.K. Ajao claims  to have asked his friend trying to diplomatically dissuade him from eating the specially prepared meal. However, Shina went on to devour the charmed meal that Ajao was supposed to have eaten and it was a while after this that he released his incredible ‘Ace’ album that blew across Nigeria like a hurricane. Was this concoction eaten by Shina responsible for the fame of Shina after the roaring success of ‘Ace’, Ajao was asked. His response: “Leyin to je aseje yii lo se rekoodu ti oruko e bu yo, mi o so pe aseje to je lodo mi lo je ki okiki e yo, Olorun ni, oun naa si maa n gbadura daadaa”. (It was after he eat this charmed meal that he produced the album that brought him to fame. I am not saying that it was the specially prepared meal he ate in my place that brought him fame, it is God because Shina also used to pray a lot”.

     

    Hmmm. One can understand Y.K. Ajao’s rather paradoxical hesitancy. But then, Ajao told his story on tape. Shina Peters has neither confirmed nor denied it. But then he had found it necessary to respond to what must then have been a strong rumour then in part of his lyrics in ‘Ace’. He sang:

     

    “Won so pe ogun ni mo se

    Ogun ko o, ogun ogun abenu gongo

    Shina Peters o sogun

    Igba lo de o

    Irawo lagba”.

     

    (They said I made juju

    All talk about juju is nonsense

    Shina Peter did not make any juju

    It is his time that has come

    His star is the master).

     

    Now is all this nothing but superstitious nonsense? I don’t know. However, I have always found something mysterious about Shina Peter’s ‘Ace’. I had ardently followed his musical career. As a young man, Shina was a gifted guitarist in the band of General Prince Adekunle & his Western Brothers. However, when years later he set up his own band, it was obvious that Shina’s instrumental dexterity was not matched by a gift in composition and singing.  Between 1980 and 1986, the about six albums that he released flopped. Apparently realizing his limitation, Shina Peters teamed up with another former member of General Prince Adekunle’s band, Segun Adewale to form a band with the brand name, Sir Shina Adewale & the Superstars international. While Segun was blessed with a sonorous voice and sang soulfully, Shina was the band’s master guitarist. They made reasonable success until they split.

    Shortly before the release of ‘Ace’ in 1989, I listened to a radio interview in which Shina Peters boasted that he was set to storm the music scene with a hit album to be released with his new band, Sir Shina Peters & his International Stars. He was exceedingly confident that the album would create a storm. How would he do it I wondered? His answer was the sensational ‘Ace’. But ‘Shinamania’ released after that was nowhere near ‘Ace’ in accomplishment. Shina Peter’s reputation is built solely around ‘Ace’. Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade have released scores of hit albums sustainably over five decades. That seems to be original talent. What is the mystery of Shina Peter’s momentarirly sensational ‘Ace’? I don’t know.

  • Justice also matters

     By Segun Ayobolu

     

    One truly remarkable feature of President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership style is his studied reluctance to rashly dispense with the services of his appointees without irrefutable proof of serious wrong doing or over allegations of perceived non performance even in the face of severe pressure of public opinion. There seems to be a linkage between the time PMB takes to make his appointments – his Cabinet was formed after about six months in his first term and three months in his second term – and his unwillingness to make changes cavalierly. After painstakingly shopping for those he trusts can meet his performance expectations, he is also is in no hurry to do away with their services. This shows a steady, stable and reflective mind not easily susceptible to the all too flimsily shifting currents of public opinion. The appointee is also the best assessor of performance. But beneficiaries of the supposed services rendered by an appointee should also have a say in the matter.

    Of course, this trust and confidence in the competence and integrity of his appointees by PMB can be a motivation to hard work, fidelity to duty, boost to performance and thus a positive leadership attribute. But it can also breed complacency, overconfidence and a sense of indispensability on the part of others and thus a liability to the government. It is this total loyalty to his appointees as well as trust in their best intentions and performance in different circumstances that has kept PMB’s Service Chiefs in office long beyond the statutory expiration of their tenures. And this is despite intense pressure from a wide section of the public for their replacement given the undeniable escalation of insecurity and unbelievable devaluation of human life across the length and breadth of Nigeria.

    While the raging Boko Haram insurgency in the North East that the PMB administration inherited has been significantly degraded with the terrorists no more controlling vast swathes of territory, the latter seem to have smartly adjusted their tactics to the fierce onslaught of the military and thus remain as deadly effective as ever with their unpredictable and unorthodox solitary strikes. On the other hand, the military seems to exhibit an operational rigidity against a highly flexible enemy as well as no demonstrable superiority in intelligence capability, which is the actual key to victory in any battle. Thus, life in the North East remains a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ nightmare.

    Unfortunately, the horizon of violence has expanded. The entire country has become one vast theatre of banditry, kidnapping, rape, communal conflagration, religious terrorism, militancy, cattle rustling, armed robbery, herdsmen barbarity, cultism and sundry other violent atrocities. This apparently was the context within which PMB recently expressed his surprise at the dimension the problem has taken, a view unfortunately misinterpreted. The gross devaluation of human lives has also spurred a concomitant inflation in mutual mistrust between diverse groups as well as a near total loss of confidence in the capacity of the government to effectively perform, even minimally, the primary responsibility of the state to guarantee the safety of lives and property within its territorial jurisdiction.

    Two recent developments underscore the seriousness of the current security degeneracy. First, the 9th National Assembly- not the preceding 8th legislative assemblage mind you with its anti-PMB leadership – has unanimously joined the call for the removal of the Service Chiefs. Secondly, the highly revered Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) led his church in participating in the ‘prayer walk’ protest called by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to protest the unending harvest of gruesome deaths in the bountiful killing fields that the country has become. Pa Adeboye brought class, maturity, restraint and dignity to protest.

    Can PMB continue to ignore the call for injection of new blood into his military high command? He has the powers. But it would be unwise.  PMB may have a point for his stance as regards the Service Chiefs. It would be wrong to brand them a failure as far as the war against insecurity and the maintaining of the country’s territorial integrity as concerned. There is no guarantee that the situation would not have been much worse, indeed that the country would still continue to exist as a cohesive entity today had the wanton, almost lunatic looting of the country pre-2015 had continued.

    For, at the root of the ethno-regional disharmony, religious bigotry, political intolerance and violence, herdsmen barbarity and host farmer communities’ hostility ailing the polity is the pervasive poverty co-existing with criminal inequality which is a manifestation of persistent, protracted and ever deepening underdevelopment. Curbing the culture of massive looting of the treasury is thus a necessary condition for releasing resources for the radical modernization of infrastructure and accelerated socio-economic development that can constrict current rampant sources of national instability. PMB has taken fundamental steps in this direction through his anti-corruption war and aggressive infrastructure renewal programme.

    But why should the administration now self disruptively distract attention from its sterling achievements in the socio-economic development sphere by avoidable and unnecessary insular personnel recruitment policies that make it credibly vulnerable to charges of nepotism? One criticism against the PMB administration is that the majority of the Service Chiefs and indeed heads of virtually all security and para-military agencies are from the Hausa/Fulani north and they are Muslims just like the President. No matter how well meaning PMB may be, this is open naturally to misinterpretation in a complex, plural polity like ours where there is a high degree of mutual inter-group suspicion and distrust. Surely, it is possible to meet the necessity of reasonable ethno-regional balance in the appointment of the Service Chiefs and heads of security and paramilitary agencies without compromising the requirement of competence and character.

    Let us take PMB’s recent comment in an article published in ‘Christianity Today’ magazine that 90% of victims of Boko Haram killings are Muslims as an example. He has been widely criticized in some quarters for this. But did he lie? The answer is no. The main theatre of the Boko Haram insurgency and thus the area where the highest number of fatalities have been recorded is the North East. Majority of the residents of this region are Muslims and they have suffered the highest casualties even if we may not have accurate statistics to cite. Yet, this innocent comment by PMB was misread because of perception, which is oftentimes stronger than reality. This is just as it is as regards the issue of the Service Chiefs. It is a perception question, which a responsive presidency in a fragile polity like ours cannot ignore.

    Apparently stating the presidency’s position after the leadership of the National Assembly met with PMB at the presidential Villa, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, told the press that “Many of us identify that something drastic has to be done, there’s also the school of thought that says since we are talking about banditry, kidnapping and murders, what have the armed forces got to do with that, anywhere in the world? So the question then arises that if he changes the service chiefs, does that address the issues of kidnapping and banditry? The army, navy and air force are outfits set up to tackle external aggression”. This argument cannot be faulted. But the issue is more complex.

    Hardly anyone questions the competence of the Service Chiefs. It cannot be rationally argued that they have not served the nation creditably on their watch. But they reportedly have statutorily stipulated tenures of two years, which can be extended for another two years at the discretion of the President as stated in the revised Armed Forces of Nigeria Harmonized Terms and Conditions of Service (HTACOS).   PMB exercised this discretion in favour of the Service Chiefs in 2017 implying that their tenures lapsed in 2019.

    Is another extension justified? Well, the President is in the best position to say but there should certainly be other no less tested and competent candidates worthy of occupying these positions. Again, given his pedigree no one can know better than PMB how richly blessed the Nigerian military is in terms of qualitative human resources. No matter how brilliant an officer may be on his beat, diminishing returns are bound to set in after a period and this is not just in the military.

    Organizational regeneration and sustained vitality requires that competent fresh hands be given a chance to exercise leadership when stipulated tenures of incumbents expire. Fresh ideas, energies and strategies will surely rejuvenate the overall institutional efficacy of the military. It is so sad that many officers competent to occupy the position of Service Chiefs are being forced to retire without the privilege of doing so not because they are not qualified but that the incumbents are probably considered indispensable. Nothing can be more frustrating and de-motivating. Surely, justice also matters.

  • The US and the rest of us

    By Segun Ayobolu

    Should countries like North Korea and Iran, for instance, somehow get obliterated from the face of the earth, would the world become a safer, more secure and stable place? The answer would be yes if the fundamental principles of the foreign policy of successive governments of the United States – Republican or Democrats – are taken as gospel truth. But nothing could be more false. The reality is that the United States, which has the greatest capacity to do the greatest good and promote the cause of peace in today’s world, is also the most lethal and unpredictable threat to the continued existence of humanity. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers in New York, President George Bush fingered Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the ‘axis of evil’ and declared the commencement of what he christened the war against terror. US troops have since been bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq in what is turning out to be an unwinnable war despite the asymmetry in power disparity by the combatant parties in those distraught territories.

    The insatiable US greed to control the vast oil resources of the middle east is fundamentally at the root of the blood drenched, killing fields that formerly stable, even if undemocratic, countries like Syria, Iraq and Libya have become. These are countries where the US championed regime change without strategically thinking through on what would replace the dislodged extant stable order. After the terror attack of September 11, 2001, President Bush said “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world”. Of course, the renowned linguist, philosopher and social analyst at MIT, Boston, Professor Noam Chomsky, incisively debunked any such platitudinous nonsense.

    In Chomsky’s words in 2003, “A lead analysis in the New York Times stated that the perpetrators had acted “out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage”. Glaringly missing from the U.S. media’s coverage was a full and realistic account of U.S. foreign policy and its effects around the world. It was hard to find anything but a passing mention of the immense slaughter of Iraqi civilians during the Gulf War, the devastation of Iraq’s population by U.S -instigated sanctions throughout the past decade, the U.S.’s crucial role in supporting Israel’s 35-year occupation of Palestinian territories, its support for brutal dictatorships throughout the Middle East that repress local populations, and on and on. Similarly absent was any suggestion that U.S. foreign policy should in fundamental ways be changed”.

    It is instructive that Saddam Hussein was once a good boy of the U.S., which amply equipped and strengthened his Iraq army considerably. Yet, the same U.S. was to turn against Saddam and heavily armed Iran in that country’s long drawn eight-year war with Iraq. Similarly, the Taliban was trained and armed by the U.S. to resist the then Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban was later to turn those same arms and skills against what it perceived as American imperialism just like Osama Bin Laden, another one time good boy of the U.S. turned ‘traitor’ to his former benefactor. Under President Donald Trump, the diplomatic finesse, which gloved the iron fist of the U.S.’s foreign policy, has been removed. Trump trumpets America’s military might with boyish enthusiasm. In the U.S.’s latest face off with Iran for instance, Trump gloated about his eagerness to test some of his country’s $3 billion worth of new ‘beautiful toys’ – deadly sophisticated weapons – on that country.

    Not content with tearing to shreds the nuclear arms deal between Iran, the U.S. and a coalition of other countries and imposing punishing economic sanctions against that country, President Trump ordered the recent killing of one of Iran’s top Generals, Qasem Soleimani, for reportedly plotting an attack against Americans. Anyone who remembers how President George Bush and Tony Blair of the United Kingdom manufactured the lie that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction as justification to attack the country for no tenable cause, would naturally take the U.S.’s claim in this case with a pinch of salt. The more probable truth is that Trump simply utilized the lawless state murder of Soleimani as a diversion from his impeachment travails at home. Most American Presidents have often resorted to foreign military adventures against disproportionately weak countries to buoy up sagging domestic support.

    I find it disconcerting that many Nigerian analysts simply lap up as gospel truth what the mainstream western media churns out as justification for the U.S.’s all too frequent acts of international outlawry over decades. Many analyses of contemporary global terrorism, for instance, hardly refer to the U.S.’s history of lawless military adventurism that has made her an object of intense hatred in many parts of the world. For instance, the book, ‘Anti-imperialism: A guide for the movement’, lists no less than 40 acts of military aggression against other countries by the U.S. between 1898 when she seized the Philippines from Spain to its war against Iraq in 2003″. How can anyone analyze meaningfully contemporary Iranian politics without reference to the overthrow of democracy in the country by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1953 and how the country was nothing but the foot-mat of western imperialism before the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the slavish and servile Shah dictatorship? Is Iranian democracy, as imperfect as it may be today, not better than the brutal monarchical dictatorship in Saudi Arabia that enjoys the Trump administration’s unalloyed support?

    The U.S. is best placed today to champion the cause of the total abolition of nuclear weapons in today’s world. Yet, it prefers the clearly unrealistic and unsustainable policy of the few countries that currently possess these weapons to retain them while preventing others from joining the elite club. It cannot work. Indeed, if Nigeria had the right kind of post-independence leadership, she should today have developed nuclear capability on behalf of the black race. For, with the rise of illiberal, right wing governments across the economically, technologically and militarily advanced countries today, the attempted re-colonization in future of a continually weak and vulnerable Africa cannot be ruled out. The acquisition of nuclear capability by a black African country must be a future deterrent desideratum.

    Given the hardly bridgeable gap, at least in the imaginable future, between the U.S. and other countries in the arsenal of conventional weaponry, America will retain her considerable global military superiority even without nuclear weapons. She thus ought to provide moral leadership to the rest of the world in the direction of totally abolishing the latter category of weapons from the face of the earth. In the words of the historian, Professor Niall Ferguson, in his book, ‘Colossus: The rise and fall of the American Empire’, published in 2005, “On land the United States has 9,000 M1 Abrams tanks. The rest of the world has nothing that can compare. At sea the United States possesses nine “supercarrier” battle groups. The rest of the world has none. And in the air the United States has three different kinds of undetectable stealth aircraft. The rest of the world has none. The United States is also far ahead in the production of “smart” missiles and pilotless high-altitude “drones”. The British Empire never enjoyed this kind of military lead over the competition”.

    Yet, as Professor Chomsky has argued in several of his writings, so critical has the military-industrial complex become to the health of the United State’s economy that she has no choice but to be perpetually at war for one reason or the other. He describes this as America’s ‘Permanent War Economy’. According to him, at the end of the Second World War, there was the fear among economists and policy makers in the U.S. that the country would slip back into the depression of the 1930s because an end had come to the “big period of government stimulation of the economy” that the war afforded. In his words, “See, the truth of the matter, and it’s very well supported by declassified documents and other evidence, is that military spending is our method of industrial management – it’s our way of keeping the economy profitable for business. So just take a look at the major declassified documents on military spending, they’re pretty frank about it. For example, N.S.C. 68 (National Security Council Memorandum 68) is the major Cold War document, as everybody agrees, and one of the things it says very clearly is that without military spending, there’s going to be an economic decline both in the United States and worldwide – so consistently it calls for a vast increase in military spending in the United States…”.

    Thus, every President of the United States, Republican or Democrat, has expanded military expenditures and sought one reason or the other to engage in foreign military adventures. America makes good business selling military equipment to other countries, including poor and impoverished ones, while investment in military research through the Pentagon also aids innovation and breakthroughs in other areas of advanced science and high technology. According to the late Professor Howard Zinn in his book, ‘A Peoples History of the United States’, “Randall Forsberg, an expert on military expenditures, had suggested during the presidential campaign of 1992 that “a military budget of $60 billion to be achieved over a number of years, would support a demilitarized U.S. foreign policy, appropriate to the needs and opportunities of the post-Cold War world”. However, the military budget kept increasing, even after the fall of the supposed target of the military buildup, and by the end of Clinton’s term was about $300 billion a year”.

    What would it take to fundamentally shift public expenditure in the U.S. from destructive military to productive social spending? Professor Zinn’s answer: “A radical reduction of military budget would require a renunciation of war, a withdrawal of military bases from around the world, an acceptance, finally, of the principle enunciated in the UN Charter that the world should renounce “the scourge of war”. It would speak to the fundamental human desire (overwhelmed too often by barrages of super-patriotic slogans) to live at peace with others”. Can the U.S. change herself fundamentally enough to lead the world in this morally ennobling direction? It is not impossible under the leadership of a person like Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential aspirant, who categorically describes himself as a socialist. But that seems a far from realistic possibility.

  • Amotekun and Biafra

    By Segun Ayobolu

    IS it just merely fortuitous that the utterly unnecessary Amotekun controversy in the South West is coming at exactly the same time as Nigeria is commemorating 50 years to the end of the county’s three-year fratricidal conflagration – one of the bloodiest and deadliest civil wars in Africa? That was a largely ethno-regional inspired conflict among supposed brothers in which no less than two million lives were estimated to have been lost. This was in addition to the colossal loss in properties, businesses and infrastructure on a humongous scale. The absolutely avoidable arrogance and total lack of humanness in the response of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami, to the decision of the South West governors to set up the Western Nigeria Security Network popularly known as ‘Operation Amotekun’ shows vividly that the mindset that led the country down the ruinous path of war is still alive and well in some quarters in today’s Nigeria.

    In his brusque and uncharitable reaction to the Amotekun initiative the AGF, Malami, failed to acknowledge that the governors were responding to serious existential threats to their people throughout the length and breadth of the region largely by an assortment of heavily armed criminals.

    Anybody reading Malami’s position with little information about happenings in contemporary Nigeria could be forgiven for believing that the governors just woke up one day to engage in a fantastical enterprise just to flex muscles with the Federal Government and threaten the security of the nation. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Thousands of lives have been lost, maimed, raped and denuded of their humanity by these elements operating with impunity in the South West.

    However, Malami opts for a rigidly and narrowly legalistic position on the matter. As far as he is concerned, the relevant sections of the extant 1999 constitution place the responsibility for the defense of the country’s territorial jurisdiction and maintenance of security solely in the hands of the military, security and police agencies all controlled by the Federal Government. If these laws are patently not working thus endangering lives and property across the country, Malami does not see it as his responsibility, given the sensitive office he occupies, to help strengthen and reshape the laws as well as adjust them to the realities that confront millions of Nigerians daily. Nigerians he seems to believe are made for the laws and not the laws for Nigerians.

    In displaying an utterly discreditable deficit in emotional intelligence and a capacity for human empathy, the AGF does not even refer in a fleeting sentence to the huge scale of loss of lives and property in the South West, which prompted the governors’ action. He gives the impression that the laws as they exist are working quite efficiently and need no tinkering with. It is, of course, not impossible that he is on permanent mental vacation on some exotic resort while residing physically in Nigeria. Were Malami to face the reality, he would admit that in most states of the country today, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is virtually entirely dependent on the state governments for funding, equipment and operational costs. So much, then, for his deification and mummification of sections of the constitution that have outlived their usefulness; such would have since attracted the urgent remedial intervention of a more brilliant, objective and proactive AGF.

    A few weeks ago, the military high command gave the indication that soldiers will soon be withdrawn from the diverse operations in which they are involved across the country. In taking this decision, they argued that many of these areas have been stabilized and the police can now revert to their constitutional role of maintaining internal security while the military concentrates on its stipulated institutional role of defending the country’s territorial integrity. The bottom line is that those Unitarian sections of the constitution so gleefully cited by the AGF to thwart the Amotekun initiative have become worse than useless. It is dangerous at a time like this to have an AGF with a unitary mindset that seeks, against all canons of rationality, to impose a monist and monolithic security structure on a plural polity like Nigeria.

    It is unfortunate that revered elder statesman and former governor of Kaduna State in the Second Republic, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, could have inexplicably come to the conclusion that the establishment of the Amotekun initiative was a forerunner to the creation of an Oduduwa Republic in the South West. Nothing could be more preposterous as he offers no empirical or logical basis for this kind of assertion. The South West has been consistent in making a case for the re-federalization of Nigeria rather than giving any inkling of wanting to break away from the country.   It is indeed the rather reckless and extremist posturing of the likes of Balarabe Musa, Dr. Junaid Muhammed, Meyitti Allah spokesmen and other hot heads from the North that play into the hands of those who habour separatist designs for the country.

    When certain incredibly irresponsible voices from the North, contend that the retention of Operation Amotekun will cost the South West the presidency in 2023, they create the impression that they are a set of first class Nigerians who have the prerogative of handing out the presidency at their will to second hand citizens of their choice. This is brazenly unintelligent and counterproductive in maintaining the country’s cohesion and harmony. It is indeed the unidirectional thinking and excessively centralizing mind set of the likes of Malami, Junaid Muhammed, Balarabe Musa, Meyitti Allah and others that enable groups like the banned Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) to win converts and sympathizers to their secessionist causes. Nobody wants to be accorded inferior second class status in a country where we are all supposed to enjoy equal citizenship.

    Responding to the misgivings of many in the South East on the perceived marginalization of the region in terms of appointments after the 2015 elections, for instance, some members of the ruling party publicly stated that positions would be filled based on the electoral performance of the party in the different zones of the country. That was unnecessary and insensitive. Again, the strong armed response of the administration to IPOB’s largely ineffectual Biafra agitations only helped to further its cause in the minds of many people of the region. You can forcefully drive an organization underground; it is more difficult to eradicate the imprints of an idea from the minds of men.

    Instead of approaching the whole Biafra issue from an essentially hostile and uncompromising perspective, for instance, is it not possible to perceive Biafra as a national asset? Just as the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr is now a public holiday in the United States, is it out of place for Nigeria to have an annual National Biafra Day owned by all Nigerians? There would, in my view be two aspects to such an annual Biafra remembrance day. First, will be symposia, conferences and other activities nationwide that will apply the lessons of Biafra to contemporary experiences such that we will annually renew our commitment to ensuring that ‘Never Again’ would such a tragedy of colossal proportions be allowed to happen in our country ever again.

    On the more positive side, we would also celebrate annually the example of Biafra, which demonstrated the capacity of the black man to rise to the demands of scientific and technological development when faced with acute existential challenges. To demonstrate my point, let me quote extensively from a presentation by the late Professor Pius Okigbo at the First Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Dialogue in February, 1993. In his pungent words, “Why do I seem so confident that the Nigerian is capable of producing the technological change required to propel the country into the next century? I am heartened by the fact that it has been done before. The Nigerian civil war proved beyond doubt that with determination and a conducive environment, the Nigerian can be induced to recreate a technological civilization. The ‘Biafran’ scientific community was able to develop entirely out of purely local materials, weaponry that included anti-aircraft rockets, mortar bombs, land mines, tanks and armoured troop carriers, food substitutes involving the use of hitherto unused plants and crops”.

    Continuing, Professor Okigbo said, “They succeeded in building out of entirely locally fabricated materials, a giant petroleum refining facility and thereby made the technology so diffuse and more universally understood and applied than anywhere else in the world. They installed an air traffic control on wheels for use in an airport utilized only in the hours of darkness. Yet, save the airport of Johannesburg, that airport was able to handle more flights in those few dark hours per night than any other airport in Africa operating twenty four hours a day. These are solid technological achievements started and learned in less than three years of wartime. It gave at once to the blacks anywhere the confidence that here at last, since the iron age, it has been possible to create in black Africa a truly indigenous technological civilization”.

    To fully liberate the potentials of Nigeria for rapid socio-economic advancement including ensuring maximum security for her people, the likes of AGF Malami and his fellow travelers must find a quick way of escape from the unitary mindset that inhibits creative intellectual exertions.

  • Awo, Tam David West’s perspectives on African juju (2)

    By Segun Ayobolu

    Awo’s perspectives on a wide variety of issues including African juju, traditional African medicine, witchcraft, and the phenomenon of magun i.e. the belief among the Yoruba that a man who has sex with a woman laced with certain types of juju would die during the act are contained in a wide ranging intellectual discussion/ conversation between the late sage and the late renowned academic philosopher, Professor Moses Makinde, which took place at Awolowo’s residence in Apapa, Lagos, on Saturday, 4th April, 1987.

    The session which lasted over three and a half hours covered diverse subjects ranging from the ideas of the great philosophers, the existence or otherwise of God, the nature of good and evil, politics, corruption, development and underdevelopment and much more. It was an intellectual tour de force between two most remarkable men. The text of the interview is published as chapter 7 of the book, ‘Awo as a philosopher’ by Professor Makinde. It is really difficult for me to capture the essence of this interview succinctly by paraphrasing the discourses of the two men. To maximally enjoy and benefit from the book, there is no alternative to actually reading it through particularly the chapter 7 referred to.

    I will thus largely be quoting from Awo’s responses to Professor Makinde on the aforementioned issues relevant to this piece. For example, on the question of whether or not something called African science exists, Awo is categorical in his response. In his words: “African science? African science? There is nothing like that. If you look at the definition, you may want to say that this particular branch of science was first founded in Africa, that is quite a different matter, but science is science and must not be related to any region of the world as American science, British science, Chinese science, or African science. Science is simply science, a universal knowledge”.

    Not satisfied, the professor probed Awo further pointing out that African science can be likened to what is known as metaphysical science.  Awo responded: “Metaphysical science is science, but not at all in the class of empirical science…Metaphysics is science. For instance, Aristotle calls metaphysics science of first principles. Metaphysics is beyond experience, and that is the meaning. The problem is that nobody talks about metaphysical science nowadays, only empirical science. So if African science is metaphysical science, then nobody should talk about African science. That is the point. So we have to follow the modern, universal conception of science”.

    After dilating on a diverse number of subjects, Professor Makinde brings Awo to the question of traditional medicine. Pointing out that people like the Chinese and Indians, for instance, had developed their own forms of traditional medicine; he also related his own experience with his father who was a traditional medicine healer as he grew up as a child. Again, revealing his strongly scientific cast of mind, Awo while agreeing with much of what the professor said, stressed the need for caution saying that “I am interested in medicine and I am interested in traditional medicine, but the latter has not been scientifically verified in terms of cause and effect.

    But I know that plants, herbs, have some potency because they are grown in the tropics (tropical countries like Nigeria). Some of the potency comes from energy. Number two, if the herbs are blended in correct proportion in the course of experiment, they can be more effective than a set of plants from Britain or a set of synthesized medicine. So that is my view…In traditional medicine, you can never tell when you will be given concocted medicine of incompatible ingredients that will constitute a poison. Please know that I am not against the use of herbs and herbal medicine. I have already told you that our herbs are very potent. So plants or herbs are alright but they must be mixed in certain proportion, correct proportion”.

    On the question of magun that can purportedly kill a man that has sexual relations with a woman laced with the charm, the two men had an extensive and very lively exchange. Again, demonstrating his strong belief in scientific principles of testing phenomena and seeking empirical validity as a basis for belief, Awolowo believed that what was attributed to magun could indeed be the result of natural causes such as heart attack or exhaustion. Professor Makinde disagrees. He avers that “My point, therefore, is that for anybody to say that magun is not efficacious, without scientific proof through tests or experiments, is not to behave like a scientist. And to simply say that magun is not efficacious without having tested it is to me a very unscientific statement. It is at best an opinion that should be ignored for want of scientific proof. That is to say that our medical doctors have not been able to guarantee, with proof, that magun does not work so that we should not be afraid of the magun phenomenon anymore”.

    But in Awo’s view, “The truth about magun is this. When a man has heart trouble, he can die while making love with any woman. I have known two cases for certain of those who were reported to have died of magun when, in actual fact, they died of heart attack right on top of women, having sex. A late Mr. X had heart trouble and the doctors advised him (you won’t hear this in public but I happen to know because I was close to him, to go and rest. So he went to Agege, the family had a farm there, and a house.

    He went there to rest according to the doctor’s instruction. And he allowed one of his concubines to see him there. He had intercourse, and that was it he died on his concubine. Now, that will look like magun, but it was heart attack…Of course, that was what he loved, and that was killed him. The doctor asked him to rest, and he died working on his concubine. And the woman decided not to run away because she was known to be his confidant and the matter was just hushed up. But that was it. The man died of heart attack. He did not tumble three times, as people say, he just died”.

    After further exchange of views on the subject, Awo submitted thus, “…but in the case of magun, because we don’t experiment over it, I don’t trust what people say about it. You yourself have said that nobody has provided a proof as to whether magun is efficacious or not. You have made your point on the basis of uncertainty of what will happen to you if you sleep with a woman laid with magun, but my own position is based on the fact that until scientific experiment shows that magun kills, I cannot be reasonably challenged if I say that what people call magun is probably heart attack. So, because people don’t experiment much in traditional medicine, I don’t trust the thing”.

    On the issue of juju, native charms and witches, Awo surprisingly comes to the same conclusion as that of Professor Tam David-West, which we examined last week. But while David-West’s views seem to be predicated on his training as a scientist in the western tradition and a degree of abstract and logical reasoning, Awo came to his own position through practical experimentation and experience. Admitting freely that he dabbled into native juju practice as a young man to protect himself and defend his trading business, Awo said he later came to the conclusion that there was no reality to all claims about the efficacy of native charms and juju.

    In his words, “As a young trader I had the best of people to help me defend myself against the kind of policeman Josiah was. Later, very much later, I discovered that it was all lies (Iro ni gbogbo e). At that time I was living in Ogunpa, Ibadan. There was a refuse dump near my house. I dumped all my medicine one night in that refuse dump – iwo (horn), igbadi, agadagodo, orisisrisi – and nobody dumped refuse there for two weeks as people were afraid of the various kinds of juju they saw there. They were afraid of juju and ran away. Iro ni gbogbo e patapata, ko si nkan nkan nibe. (It is all lies, there is nothing there in the juju to warrant running away from them). There is nothing there, even aje, oso (withces and wizards) that people talk about. It is all sakara. Nothing”.

    For those like the scholars who attended the recent scientific conference on the phenomenon of witchcraft at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Appendix 111 to this book will make interesting and useful reading. It is the reprint of an article written by Chief Obafemi Awolowo and published in The West African Review, Liverpool, on 30th December, 1939, (pp30-32). In it he gives suggestions on how the field of African juju can become a terrain of useful scientific inquiry to discover its developmental potentials if any.

  • And this too shall pass

    By Segun Ayobolu

    There are those who had predicted that once he won re-election for a second term, President Muhammadu Buhari would show little interest in the affairs of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its fortunes in future polls. Those who held this view saw the President as a reluctant politician, an essential soloist who was more interested in etching his own personal ethical imprint on the political landscape than bequeathing to the party and the country an enduring legacy. That has turned out to be a profound misreading of Buhari’s politics. At the first meeting of the APC National Executive Committee after his re-election, for instance, President Buhari passionately pleaded that the party must not be allowed to disintegrate after his tenure as some cynics have prognosticated. And in his quite thoughtful and detailed new year message to the nation, the President looked beyond 2020 to explicate how the coming into fruition of his administration’s policies will herald the ‘Nigerian decade’ of socio-economic and political renaissance.

    Here is a President, then, who indeed cares about the future of the country beyond his tenancy in power.  And as he correctly articulated in the New Year message, his administration’s near revolutionary initiatives in diverse sectors have very bright prospects of helping to lay the foundation for liberating and unleashing the hitherto trapped potentials and latent developmental energies of Nigeria for the peace, progress and prosperity of her people. In agriculture, food import dependency is being systematically reduced and local production boosted. The textile industry is being revitalized through the creative strategies of an activist Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as part of comprehensive plans to diversify the economy away from debilitating oil dependency.

    There is the tactical management of the value of the Naira to achieve a delicate balance between its complete abandonment to market forces and dictates of the national interest. Difficult to ignore too is the ongoing aggressive radical modernization and expansion of roads, bridges and rail transportation across the country. The benefits of the courageous temporary closure of our borders with our neighbors clearly outweigh its negative effects. And if the administration continues to aggressively pursue the implementation of its policies and numerous projects in the power sector, there will be a remarkable improvement in electricity supply in the near future.

    And whatever may be the ethical deficiencies of some of its own officials (there can be no perfect government run by angels anywhere), the impact of its anti corruption war cannot be denied. Trillions of stolen assets in cash and properties at home and abroad have been recovered; many indicted corrupt public officers are undergoing trial and a number of high profile convictions have been recorded despite our cumbersome judicial process. This is definitely why the Buhari administration is being able to do much more particularly as regards rehabilitation and construction of critical infrastructure in five years than the Peoples Democratic Party was able to do in 16 years despite the latter earning considerably higher revenue from oil sales.

    Yet, if the ascetic General from Daura is not careful, these remarkable achievements will not be the defining legacy of his eight year tenure as President of Nigeria. Rather, what he will be most remembered for are the serial unforced errors committed by some of the most trusted members of his inner caucus who, in the performance of their duties, evince the most despicable and detestable arrogance, insensitivity to public opinion and a degree of sheer buffoonery and extravagant incompetence that beggars belief.

    One of the most prominent in this respect is the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of justice, Mallam Abubakar Malami (SAN). Either as a result of his hubris or sheer negligence on his beat, he has contributed significantly in casting the Buhari administration as essentially dictatorial and authoritarian and having the greatest disdain for democracy and the rule of law. The unfortunate cases of the exuberantly misguided activist, Mr. Omoyele Sowore, as well as former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd), who were detained for long periods despite court orders that they be released was a public relations catastrophe for the administration. It was entirely avoidable.

    One trait of President Buhari’s governance style is his profound respect for the professional competence and advice of his appointees. Furthermore, he is a systems man who scarcely likes to interfere with his aides in the performance of their duties once they act in perceived good conscience. Again, President Buhari has implicit trust in and demonstrates complete loyalty to those aides who were constant in their fidelity to his cause during his long years in the political wilderness before his electoral triumph of 2015. This is only human. That is an asset but it can also be a weakness particularly when you have aides who seek to exploit such dispositions to manifest a kind of arrogance that the President himself abhors by his evident self effacing style.

    As renowned human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) has instructively pointed out, even as a military Head of State between 1983 and 1985, the then Major-General  Muhammadu Buhari’s regime never flouted court orders. This was probably because he had a competent Attorney General and Minister of Justice in the late Chief Chike Ofodile (SAN) OFR who gave him sound advice. But what do you make of an AGF like Malami who advises his boss to rate national security above the rule of law as if the two are mutually exclusive? What kind of legal or jurisprudential philosophy does he espouse and articulate to his principal?

    Was it not because of this kind of Malami’s philosophy that the legendary Nelson Mandela, for instance, was incarcerated for close to three decades as a threat to the national security of an iniquitous social order in apartheid South Africa? Was it not for being perceived as a threat to national security that President Buhari himself was detained for a prolonged period by a Babangida regime that was afraid of its own shadows?

    When eventually Malami ordered the release of Sowore and Dasuki, the government received no plaudits. It was seen as bowing to local and international pressure. And again demonstrating his ineptness, Malami caused a statement to be issued to the effect that their release was out of government’s compassion and not in deference to court orders. He gave some juvenile justifications for this bizarre position that is not worth the attention of even a legal layman like this columnist. Even as he continues to refuse to do the needful and authorize the release of detained leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), Mallam Ibrahim el-Zakzaky and his wife, as ordered by the courts, let Malami know that he and not President Buhari bears the responsibility and in today’s world there may be consequences after he leaves power. As ace columnist and lawyer, Mobolaji Sanusi, once famously declared in a highly polemical piece in this newspaper, ‘Today is not forever’.

    Let Malami know that one of his predecessors, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, was once stripped of his prestigious SAN rank after he left office in 2010 because of actions he took while on the hot seat. Although the rank was later restored to him on magnanimous grounds, the point is that there can be legal sanctions after his inevitable exit one day from transient power. Let today’s all powerful AGF reflect on the fact that another of his predecessors, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN) is today in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and will shortly undergo trial for alleged crimes he committed in office. Adoke’s claim that he was carrying out presidential directives is unlikely to avail him in court.

    In the same way, on the day of reckoning when today’s power illusion evaporates, it is Malami that will give account for his actions and not Buhari. The AGF will be found doubly derelict in not having advised his boss, a retired soldier, appropriately as a senior officer in the temple of justice. In today’s globalized world, there can even be international sanctions for errant officers after they leave office. Let Malami and his Department of State Services (DSS) enforcers take note of events unfolding in Algeria, Pakistan and Sudan, for instance, where yesterday’s powerful public office holders are today petrified and penitent convicts regretting their empty arrogance in power.

    Perhaps Malami is aware of this possibly apocryphal but powerful story. The famous king David of Israel once had an exquisite gold ring wrought for him by some of the kingdom’s most accomplished craftsmen. The King charged his advisers and wise men to help find a phrase of not more than five words that would comfort him in times of sorrow and distress as well as caution and restrain him in times of joy and triumph and glory to be inscribed on the ring. At last the young Prince Solomon came up with an acceptable phrase that was inscribed on the ring. It was: ‘AND THIS TOO SHALL PASS’. The great Dr Nnamdi Azikwe was to put it differently years later in Nigeria when he declared to an upstart power holder, ‘NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT’.  Do the needful Mr. AGF, sir, in accordance with the constitution you swore to uphold. For, in the final analysis, TODAY IS NOT FOREVER.