The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • When is a nation?

    (Over two decades ago, 1996 specifically, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, published his book, ‘The Open Sore of A Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis’, which was a trenchant response to the protracted crisis into which the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election had plunged the country. Today, I reproduce my review of the book published in issue number 1, 1997, edition of the Glendora magazine Book Supplement since many of the issues raised by the celebrated writer are still relevant to ongoing conversations on the present and future of Nigeria).

     

    In his celebrated 1974 interview with the journalist, John Agetua after the publication of The Man Died, Wole Soyinka gave poignant expression to his perception of the social utility of literature. ‘For me’, he declared ‘a book is a hand grenade which you detonate under a stagnant way of looking at the world’. Two and a half decades after that encounter, Africa’s first Nobel literature prize winner has certainly not changed his view. His latest literary offering, characteristically provocative and captivating, is a veritable time bomb which is bound to explode indolent, self-serving assumptions as regards the parameters of the national question, the character of the State and the foundations of nationhood in contemporary Nigeria.

    Spurred primarily by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, widely believed to have been won by detained Chief MKO Abiola, The Open sore of a Continent is perhaps the most penetrating and disturbing contribution to ongoing debate on the future of Nigeria. Along with the June 12 debacle, the Ogoni struggle and the subsequent execution of its foremost symbol, writer and environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa, echoes throughout the book.

    It is obvious that the two occurrences are, for Soyinka, functions of those factors he identifies as negating the realization of the potentials of a nation endowed for greatness. These include the perpetuation and the endless circulation in office of ‘a visionless cabal’, the domination of other sections by a hegemonic ethno-regional entity determined to exercise political power in perpetuity and the lack of democracy as exemplified by pervasive militarism.

    The author perceives on the one hand, the outcome of the June 12 election as symbolizing the rebirth of a promising nation, and its annulment on the other, as signalizing the decapitation of that very nation-idea. In his graphic and succinct coinage on page 143: ‘the hands of the nation-clock were stopped on a day that, ironically, recorded its birth’. Soyinka then establishes the link between the annulment of the June 1993 election (the expression of the nation’s will) and the national question. ‘If the nation’s will has become so tainted that it cannot be implemented, then the nation itself has become so contaminated that it cannot begin to claim the recognition of a nation’. Extending the boundaries of the concept of annulment to press home the point, he declares: ‘a dictatorship does not, as we have seen merely annul the process of choice and participation, which might take the form of an election, it annuls effectively the nation itself.’

    In spite of the pessimism that underlies his analyses, Soyinka cannot be said to have lost faith in the idea of Nigeria. In many ways this book can be perceived as a labour of love, a last ditch effort to save the ship of state seemingly determined on a course of self-destruction. As far as he is concerned Nigeria, for now is an unfulfilled promise which must be accepted simply as a duty and responsibility. It is a space whose inhabitants are ‘bound to collaborate with fellow occupants in the pursuit of justice and ethical life, to establish a guaranteed access for all to the resources it produces, and to thwart every tendency in any group to act against that determined common denominator of a rational social existence’. It is significant that he reiterates that that geographical space is one best kept intact to, among others, enable its resources to be efficiently harnessed as well as ‘conserve and mutually cross-pollinate its cultural hoards.’

    It is to the author’s credit that the analyses do not degenerate into the crude sectionalism with which we are all too familiar. What we have is not a crude Devilish North versus Angelic South divide. In exposing villains from the South, he readily lauds the redeeming virtues of progressives from the North. Northerners put on the platform for bashing include Alhaji Maitama Sule, a former federal minister who recently declared that the Hausa-Fulani are divinely ordained to rule the country. Several leading figures from the South are also pilloried as collaborators either with the military or the Hausa-Fulani ruling class.

    From the viewpoint of political analysis the second chapter, The Spoils of Power: the Buhari-Shagari Casebook, is clearly the most adventurous. It offers interesting insights into the politics of the second republic, its eventual collapse and the emergence in December 1983 of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime. Particularly intriguing is the distinction made between the spoils of office and the spoils of power. In his words: “The spoils that accompany power are not often recognized because they are not as particularized as those of office. But they nonetheless constitute a brutal exaction from a populace, savaging their psyche and intimating to them a kind of essential worthlessness’.This distinction enables us to understand why some former leaders, particularly from a section of the country, continue to enjoy tremendous influence, patronage and prestige irrespective of their track record in office. Even when these are no longer in office they belong to a group that is perpetually in power.

    Equally compelling especially for the ‘Games theorist’ is Soyinka’s description of the military putsch that overthrew the Second Republic as a ‘coup against the opposition’. He argues persuasively that the real motive of the coup was to save the NPN controlled federal government, in the aftermath of a fatally flawed elections, from either a mass uprising or a coup mounted by radical junior officers. To buttress this point he notes the mysterious escape into exile after the coup of prominent NPN figures like Umaru Dikko and Uba Ahmed and the ceaseless harassment and detention of leading opposition figures including governors and party activists. Another concept devised by Soyinka for understanding the utilization of power in post-colonial Nigeria is the ‘politics of revenge’. This refers to vengeful policies pf sadism unleashed by a tiny ‘sit-tight cabal’ frustrated by the glaring inadequacies of its flagbearers, their numerous failures in governance and the exposure and rejection of its hitherto carefully concealed plan to hold perpetually onto power.

    In chapter 3 is an exhaustive x-ray on the idea of nationhood, dilemma of the national question and the conditions of harmonious national co-existence. He dismisses the nation in Africa as ‘a gambling space for the opportunism and adventurism of power which has little meaning for the ordinary African confronted daily by gross material deprivations. For him, the imposing Saint Peter’s Basilica in Yamoussoukro, the grand mosque in Casablanca or the desperate bid by an economically insecure, politically unstable country to host the junior world cup are graphic illustrations of the absurdity of the idea of national sovereign in contemporary Africa.

    This book will no doubt generate considerable controversy here in Nigeria. While it may be lavishly praised by some, it will be roundly condemned by others especially those who stand diametrically opposed to the values represented in it. There will also be genuine misunderstanding of some of the issues raised due partly to the complexity of the polity and the tendency of contending social forces to view political reality from different, often contradictory, perspectives. For instance, the author may be taken to task for his lack of detachment and objectivity. In discussing the Second Republic he dwells on the shortcomings of the NPN while largely silent on those of the other parties. Also the validity of his insistence on the reinstatement of the June 12 mandate will be challenged on the grounds that the normally vigorous media in Nigeria and intelligentsia were silent on an earlier cancellation of the 1993 intra-party primaries. A school of thought is of the view that that accounted for the lukewarmness in the north towards the annulment of the ultimate election.

    Finally, the views contained in this engaging work will be considered excessively idealistic and Utopian with the insistence on the actualization of June 12 despite the opportunism of the political class and the permissiveness and ruthlessness of state power. But so can we by no means lightly esteem the words of Paul Baran, the late American economist and revolutionary who said, ‘each idea not yet realized, curiously resembles a Utopia. One would never do anything if one thought that nothing is possible except that which exists already.’

  • Awo and the Ibadan declaration (2)

    Awo and the Ibadan declaration (2)

    In the first part of this piece, we examined the implications of the call in the ‘Ibadan Declaration’ for a return to the 1963 constitution with regard to the parliamentary form of government under which the country was governed during the First Republic (1960-1966). Reflecting on the issue through the intellectual prism of the great statesman, lawyer, politician and first Premier of Western Nigeria in the First Republic, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, we recalled the sage’s clinical dissection of the parliamentary form of government as well as the very strong reasons he advanced for jettisoning the British model on which the 1963 constitution was based. As far back as 1966, Awo had been a strong advocate of the adoption by Nigeria of the American-type presidential system with creative adaptations of some aspects of the French model of executive authority.

    Another key plank of the ‘Ibadan Declaration’, certainly its central thrust, is the proposal that the country revert to a region-based federal constitutional structure as obtained in the 1963 constitution. Specifically, proponents of the ‘Ibadan Declaration’ canvass that Nigeria should become a federation of six regions with each of the regions having its own constitution and the power to create its own states and local governments within its sphere of jurisdiction. The Declaration proposes a new revenue allocation formula with states allocated 50% of tax revenues, the proposed regions 35% and the Federal Government 15%.

    Under this proposed arrangement, local governments are not abolished but they are deprived of constitutional recognition and are totally subordinated to the states. Thus, the states and regional governments are liberated from the suffocating grip of the central government on one hand while, on the other hand, local governments are pushed further into the stultifying stranglehold of overbearing state governments, a situation which will now be further worsened by the interposition of a new layer of government at the regional level.

    One of the assumptions and often cited factors for the advocacy of a return to regionalism is the rapid pace of development witnessed in the regions in the first republic, particularly in the pace-setting Western Region under the leadership of Awolowo. Was the impressive rate of development in the immediate post-independence era solely a function of the existence of healthily competitive regions? Most certainly not. As we have argued in this space in the past, no less critical to the developmental successes recorded in the Western region, for instance, were the personal discipline, vision and exemplary leadership qualities of Awolowo; the astuteness, industry and competence of his Ministerial team; the restraining influence of a strong, ideologically-driven political party with clearly stipulated aims and objectives; the accountability of the government to the party that provided it an electoral platform as well as the careful and continuous nurturing of a development oriented and thoroughly professional civil service as the engine room of governance.

    Yes, the revenue allocation formula that enabled the regions to retain a substantial chunk of revenues derived from their jurisdictional territories at a time when agriculture was the mainstay of the economy was critical to the laudable progress of the regions. But this can easily be exaggerated. It is trite that the profusion of resources does not automatically translate into the judicious utilization of such for impactful developmental purposes. That, after all, is the enduring story of the reckless squandering of Nigeria’s munificent oil bounties at all levels of government for the better part of Nigeria’s post-independence history.

    In any case the much derided extant 1999 constitution does not enshrine a revenue allocation formula cast in marble. No constitution can realistically do so and enact a revenue sharing formula that is valid and unchanging across time and space. The 1999 constitution makes provision for a continuous revision of the revenue allocation mechanism every five years obviously to take account of changing dynamics and circumstances. If the political actors refuse to continuously adjust the revenue allocation formula  as constitutionally stipulated and the electorate is impotent to elect into office those who will do so, is the constitution to blame?

    It is instructive that Awolowo performed with the same distinction and record of excellence he exhibited as Premier of the West in the regional, federalist dispensation of the First Republic when he served as Federal Commissioner of Finance and Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) under military rule during the civil war. That was after the regions had been abolished and 12 states created.  In the same vein, the governors of Awo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), particularly Alhaji Lateef Jakande of Lagos State, acquitted themselves most creditably in terms of quality and impact of governance in the Second Republic. As the story of remarkable positive change and progress in Lagos State since the commencement of this dispensation in 1999 undeniably demonstrates, where there is the requisite leadership quality, programmatic vision and political will, the present constitution does not pose an insurmountable obstacle to meaningful development.

    There are those who propose a reversion to regionalism as a way of regaining the relative autonomy of the federating units and liberating the sub-national governments from the perceived tyranny of the centre. From this perspective, the prevalent state structure attendant on the abolition of the regions is the product of a conscious conspiracy to enhance the influence and power dominance of a section of the country, specifically an often nebulous and ill-defined north, to the detriment of other parts of the country. This may not necessarily be so. A more historically accurate reason for the pressures that resulted in the splitting of the regions into states was the strong determination of the minority ethnic groups to be freed from what they perceived to be the oppression and unjust hegemony of the major ethnic groups that dominated the various regions.

    As a notable student of Nigerian history and politics, Professor Richard Sklar, aptly puts it “The lessons of Nigerian political history teach that political regionalism is not compatible with the empowerment of a multiplicity of politicized ethnic groups. Once regions are established and endowed with political power, ethnic interests are routinely sacrificed for regional interests, which often prove to be interests articulated by the leaders of large ethnic groups. Smaller ethnic groups then look to the centre for protection against their overbearing neighbours within the region”.

    Interestingly, Chief Awolowo was himself one of the strongest advocates of the breaking up of the regions of the First Republic into smaller states. Although only the Mid-West Region was eventually carved out of the West in the First Republic to weaken and spite the ruling party in the region, the Action Group (AG), Awolowo relentlessly canvassed that smaller states be created to accommodate the demands of the minority ethnic groups in the Eastern and Northern regions. Again, to quote Professor Sklar in another article, ‘Nigerian Politics in Perspective’, “After independence, the anti-regionalist cause was espoused by Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group…”.

    In his book ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’, written in prison after a rigorous study of virtually every existing constitution in the world at the time, Awolowo made a vigorous case for the splitting up of the polity into eleven states based on what he described as the ‘linguistic principle’ while also canvassing the creation of an additional seven states made up of ethno-lingual groups, which were too small at the time to stand alone as separate states, thus bringing the states to a total of 18. Even then, he proposed that provision be made in the constitution for the creation of more states in the future. In Awo’s words, “…the constitution should provide that a linguistic unit could, under specified conditions, have its own separate state at any future time. Such conditions would include the viability both of the new state and the residual state…”

    True, the number of states mushroomed under the military with many of them being created arbitrarily with little or no concern for their economic viability. But it would appear to me that the structural challenges that confront the polity today do not necessarily stem from the number of states. The problem is that we have a so-called federal structure that emphasizes the sharing of largely oil-derived revenues rather than ensuring that the component states of the polity are economically viable and productive entities. Do we need to create an additional layer of government at the regional level to address this problem as advocated by the ‘Ibadan Declaration thus significantly escalating the cost of governance in an already over-administered polity? I don’t think so. The present multi state structure is not inherently incompatible with the practice of true federalism. No one doubts the imperative, indeed inevitability, of fundamental constitutional changes if Nigeria’s trapped potentials are to be unleashed for the benefit of her people. It is my view, however, that exploiting the opportunities provided by the current constitution to eliminate identified shortcomings and introduce necessary structural changes in accordance with stipulated procedures is far more preferable to embarking de novo on a constitutional journey of uncertain destination thus rendering the experiences of the past 18 years – good and bad – an utter and regrettable waste.

  • Awo and the Ibadan declaration (1)

    Awo and the Ibadan declaration (1)

    On Thursday, 7th September, a cross sec
    tion of Yoruba leaders and representa
    tives of diverse groups and interests from the region including the Yoruba in Kogi and Kwara states converged on the Lekan Salami Stadium, Adamasingba, Ibadan, to deliberate on and ratify a charter proposed as the position of the South-West on the path to the widely advocated restructuring of Nigeria. Whether or not one agrees with the proposals of the charter known as ‘The Ibadan Declaration’, there is no doubt that it constitutes an important document, which cannot be disregarded in any meaningful discussion on the path forward towards actualizing the Nigeria of our dreams. Some have questioned the legitimacy of the group’s claim to speak on behalf of the South-West since they do not have any mandate from the people. That is beside the point.

    The critical thing is that the conveners of the forum have demonstrated sufficient conviction in their beliefs to canvass their ideas and mobilize far and wide towards galvanizing popular support for their cause. Others with alternative views are equally free to propagate their position and organize for support around their vision of Nigeria. It is unlikely that a region as politically sophisticated and vibrant as the South-west can have a monolithic political position on restructuring. The beauty of democracy is for divergent ideas to contend for ultimate legitimation and the approval of the vast majority of the people through free, fair, credible and generally acceptable processes.

    Others have sought to fault the validity and credibility of the ‘The Ibadan Declaration’ by reference to the ‘questionable’ motives and political antecedents of some of the key actors who attended or sent representatives to the Adamasingba event. The chairman of the occasion, respected legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), to cite one instance, is said to be a ‘unitarist’ who kept his peace with and was completely at home with the centralist status quo during the 16 years that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in power. Well, to impugn or question the motives behind an idea, proposal or recommendation is not to credibly disprove its validity or desirability. Rather, the ‘Ibadan Declaration’ must be examined with reference to its contextual historical adequacy, logical coherence and its internal analytic consistency.

    I intend in this piece to briefly interrogate some of the recommendations of the ‘Ibadan Declaration’ within the framework of the political and constitutional thought of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of Western Nigeria in the First Republic and one of Nigeria’s most astute and foresighted statesmen ever. For one, many of the key figures in support of the ‘Ibadan Declaration’ swear by the late sage’s name. They claim that their vision of a restructured Nigeria based on a return to regionalism is inspired by Awolowo’s path-breaking and still unequalled performance as Premier of the Western Region; a period when the West was the indisputable pacesetter in the country in virtually every sphere of governance and development. Beyond this, it is exceedingly difficult to find anyone who had studied Nigeria’s constitutional problems as meticulously and rigorously as Awolowo, which enabled him to proffer solutions to the country’s socio-political and economic problems that still resonate today in terms of relevance, foresight and enduring efficacy.

    What then would have been Awolowo’s views on the key planks of the ‘Ibadan Declaration’, which include a return to the 1963 constitution, a reversion to a region-based federalism predicated on a six-zonal structure with each region having its own constitution and the adoption of a revenue allocation formula in which 50% of national revenues will go to states, 35% to the proposed regions and 12% to the Federal Government? Awolowo’s rigorously articulated positions on these issues can be found in his immortal books, ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’ (1966) and ‘The People’s Republic’ (1968).

    It would appear to me that a return to the 1963 constitution necessarily implies the adoption of the parliamentary form of government which obtained in Nigeria under that constitution. Some have advocated a return to the parliamentary system on the ground that it substantially reduces the cost of governance, which is unnecessarily prohibitive and counterproductive under the presidential system currently in practice. On pages 255 to 263 of ‘The People’s Republic’ Awolowo undertakes a scathing critique of the parliamentary system contending that “Hitherto, we have, all of us, indiscriminatingly and unscientifically followed the British democratic practice, as if it was the best method…But we now know better. From the exposition which we have made, it is quite clear that the American method is better than the British, and that the French method under de Gaulle is better than the American…In the proposals which follow, we will try to adapt the best in the French and American methods and introduce our own innovations”.

    Thus, Awolowo advocated that the position of Head of State to perform purely ceremonial functions and play a ‘Father-of-the-Nation’ role to be separate from that of Head of Government, who would wield effective executive authority as provided for in the 1963 constitution. However, he canvassed that, just as in the American system, and contrary to what obtained under the 1963 constitution, the Head of Government “should be directly elected by an absolute majority of the registered electors of the Federation and of the Region respectively, voting at the election”.

    Continuing his penetrating critique of the form of government under the 1963 constitution, Awolowo writes, “The defects inherent in the former system are serious and harmful. It automatically gives rise to a situation in which the Head of Government looks upon his constituency as the only ladder by which he climbs to power, and regards his party together with his colleagues in Parliament or Legislature as constituting the only solid ground on which the ladder is based. Three things, therefore, matter to him above all else: his constituency, his party, and his parliamentary colleagues. It is these three, in the Nigerian experience, which he most sedulously cultivates and nurtures, to the comparative neglect of the people under his rule with the result that he commits acts or lays himself vulnerable to charges of parochialism, nepotism, and narrow-minded partisanship”.

    With the entire country or region as the constituency of the Head of Government at the different levels of government as the case may be, Awolowo contends, occupants of that office would be more inclined to be broad minded and less parochial in their worldview, political outlook and approach to governance. And if the Head of Government had any “tendencies towards parochialism or sectionalism”, Awolowo argues, he would have to “kill or curb them” if he still wanted to continue in business i.e. win future elections requiring that he enjoys broad, nationwide electoral support. One hopes that the ‘Buharists’ who defend a 95/5% appointment ratio into public offices that marginalizes entire sections of the polity take note of this.

    Another advantage of the American system noted by Awolowo is that, unlike the provisions of the 1963 parliamentary constitution, it does not compel the Head of Government to pick his ministers from among the legislature thus helping to encourage and strengthen the separation of powers between the executive and legislature. Furthermore, under the presidential system, the Head of Government is free to nominate his ministers from outside his party’s membership thus enabling him, as Awolowo put it “to assemble the best team of ministers which his party or region can offer”. It was in the light of this, among others, that Awolowo claimed that the 1979 constitution had largely incorporated ideas he had canvassed in his books and numerous public lectures over a decade earlier despite his declining to serve as a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee set up by the Murtala/Obasanjo administration under the chairmanship of the late Chief Rotimi Williams (SAN).

    If the 1963 parliamentary constitution is believed to be more cost effective than the presidential constitution currently in operation, what explains the Ibadan Declaration’s proposal of another layer of government at the regional level that would gulp 35% of national revenues according to the suggested new revenue allocation formula? Will this not unwarrantably increase the cost of governance? And in advocating a revenue allocation of 15% to the Federal Government, does the Ibadan Declaration take into consideration Awolowo’s sound advice in his address as Federal Minister of Finance to the Conference of Finance Commissioners in Kano on 23rd February, 1970, that one of the seven factors he identifies as critical to determining an appropriate revenue allocation formula for the country is the need “to put the Federal Government in sufficient funds to enable it not only perform its allotted functions in the national interest, but also to come readily to the aid of any state in need”.

    Expatiating on this point, the sage averred that “…if perchance, any state fell on an evil day, it should be the duty of the Federal Government, acting as the accredited agent of all the other states, to come to the aid of such a needy state, without delay. To this end, the Federal Government should be provided with sufficient funds. It will not be easy in the beginning to estimate how much this will be. But as time goes on, experience will guide us”.

  • Kanu’s needless lionization

    Kanu’s needless lionization

    This column has been consistent in insisting that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration should call the bluff of the leader and members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnmadi Kanu, and firmly assert its authority to defend, protect and preserve the territorial integrity of the country as the custodian of a legitimate electoral mandate until the expiration of its tenure and the next elections are held. Ever since his release from jail on bail, Kanu has violated with impunity the stringent terms he agreed to in order to regain his liberty. His incendiary rhetoric against the Nigerian state and vituperative provocations against other ethno-cultural groups in the country have only worsened to the point of delusive megalomania with the Igbo leadership elite making feeble efforts to rein him in.

    Perhaps buoyed by the godlike adoration of his apparently no less misguided and ill-informed followers, Kanu has acquired an exaggerated and inflated sense of self-importance in which he sees himself as being above the law. His photographs have been posted online seated on a monarchical ‘throne’ of dubious provenance. Pictures of his disciples scrambling to kiss his feet have gone viral on social media. If his admirers’ choose to transmogrify him into deity, it is their business and their right.  The truth, however, is that until he succeeds in actualizing the creation of his idyllic state of Biafra, Kanu is fated to live within the stipulated legal limits and boundaries of the Nigeria he contemptuously dismisses as a Zoo.

    Not only has Kanu’s IPOB vowed to prevent the governorship elections in Anambra State scheduled for November from holding, he has openly incited his members to violence against Christian leaders of Yoruba origin who dare step on Igbo soil. He has launched what he describes as a Biafra secret service. Daring the Nigerian state to re-arrest him, Kanu has called on his supporters to burn down the Nigerian ‘Zoo’ if any such attempt is made. No government will fold its arms and allow its authority and the stability of the polity under its jurisdiction to be so cavalierly and recklessly undermined. That obviously informed the decision of the Attorney General of the Federation, Mallam Abubakar Malami (SAN) to seek a court order for the re-arrest and detention of Kanu for violating his bail conditions.

    It is, however, unfortunate that rather than keep its cool and continue the process of bringing Kanu to book within the framework of the law as the AGF has so commendably begun, the Nigerian State has allowed itself to be provoked into overreacting to the sheer idiocy and buffoonery of Kanu and his supporters. I find it difficult to understand the rationale behind the ongoing show of force in the restive South-East region ominously codenamed ‘Operation Python Dance II’ by the Nigerian military.

    Yes, the armed forces have the right to undertake military exercises in any part of Nigeria in the pursuit of its constitutional responsibility to protect and defend the country’s territorial integrity and cohesion. They have a duty to demonstrate their capacity to contain and neutralize any contestants of the legitimate monopoly of the instruments and techniques of coercion within a stipulated territorial jurisdiction, which is the distinguishing characteristic of the state.

    However, has IPOB become such a potent military threat as to necessitate an exercise on the region-wide scale of ‘Operation Python Dance II’? It is doubtful. Kanu’s empty posturing and baseless boasting really constitute no more than what the late Chuba Okadigbo would readily dismiss as the ‘ranting of an ant’. He must be feeling on top of the world to have the Nigerian army taking him so seriously. IPOB ought to have been at best treated as an irritant by the Nigerian State and contemptuously left to the Nigeria Police to deal with while the professionally furtive, and thus more dangerous, secret intelligence services deploy their training in stealthy operations to insidiously penetrate, monitor and ultimately neutralize the belligerent group.

    As it is, ‘Operation Python Dance II’ has conferred on Kanu an importance and status he does not deserve. It creates the impression that Kanu’s significance encompasses the entire South-East, which it does not. Yes, his exuberant supporters may be more vocal and active than the silent majority. There is hardly proof that IPOB enjoys the support of a substantial stratum of Igbo land in the group’s quest for secession and the violent implications of its methods. Millions of enterprising Igbos not just in the South-East but across the country are working very hard daily to earn a living and many of them are doing very well against all odds. Resort to war must be the last thing on the minds of such industrious Igbos. But exercises like ‘Operation Python Dance II’ can only stir up emotions and drive otherwise indifferent and uncommitted Igbos into the welcome embrace of IPOB.

    Without meaning to disrespect the professionalism of the military high command, it is doubtful that the implications of ‘Operation Python Dance’ were rigorously thought through before the exercise was embarked upon. IPOB has naturally responded by playing the victim and underdog to whip up sentiments in its favour. It has sent unarmed hoodlums to senselessly hurl stones and other missiles at fully armed soldiers knowing well that the latter are more likely to respond disproportionately no matter their theoretical rules of engagement thus eliciting popular outrage locally and globally. On the propaganda front, Kanu’s IPOB has thoroughly outwitted the military effectively utilizing social media for the purposes of disinformation and propaganda towards the achievement of its objectives.

    In Abia state, where the military show of force was flagged off, the impending breakdown of law and order that ensued, resulting in the burning down of a police station, attacks on military posts, vandalization of a hospital, random fatal shootings by unidentified gunmen, throwing of petrol bombs, setting up of bonfires on major highways and the threat to the lives of northerners resident in the state, forced the governor, Mr. Okezie Ikpeazu, to impose a three day dusk to dawn curfew in the first instance. The deteriorating situation obviously compelled the military to accede to the withdrawal of soldiers from the streets of Aba and Umuahia even though it maintained that ‘Operation Python Dance II’ would continue across the region as planned.

    Meanwhile, the Abia state security crisis triggered a reaction in Plateau State where the state governor, Mr. Simon Lalong, on Thursday imposed a dusk to dawn curfew on the Jos metropolis following fears of possible ethnic violence by elements angry at the rumoured harassment of northerners in Abia. This demonstrates how easily combustible the entire country is at present and why wise statesmanship rather than unthinking display of brainless brawn is Nigeria’s most critical need of the moment.

    Even if ‘Operation Python Dance II’ was necessary and justifiable, was there any need for the soldiers to carry their fiery dance right on to the street where Nnamdi Kanu lives at Afara Ukwu in Abia State? This, of course, only provided IPOB with ammunition to fuel its propaganda to the disadvantage of the military. The indirect Lionization of Nnmadi Kanu through the ongoing ‘Operation Python Dance II’ is absolutely needless. Kanu and his IPOB are not synonymous with the Igbo and the South-East. If he has so brazenly violated the terms of his bail and contemptuously threatens the peace, stability and unity of the country, the IPOB leader should simply be picked up with minimum fuss and made to face the law without the current unnecessary and wasteful military razzmatazz.

    And yesterday’s purported proscription of IPOB by the South-East Governors Forum can only complicate matters and be ultimately counter-productive.

  • Tunji Olaopa and the joys of purposeful learning (2)

    Our founding fathers, particularly Chief Obafemi Awolowo, placed premium on the role of western education in development and enunciated and implemented policies designed to liberate large numbers of their people from the strangle hold of illiteracy and ignorance. The Western Regional government’s free education programme, under the inspiration and leadership of Awolowo as Premier of the region in the First Republic, was the most audacious and path-breaking initiative to make affordable education available to the vast majority of the people. Not only did this vision of democratizing education lay the foundation for the perceived edge enjoyed by the South West in the socio-economic and political development of the country, it spurred the Northern and Eastern regions to strive for competitiveness in this critical sphere. But free education, for Awolowo, was not just a campaign slogan or a tool for political propaganda. Giving his rationale for prioritizing mass education, Awolowo once declared with characteristic pungency: “The crucial point, which I want our rulers, planners and official advisers to bear in mind, is that man is the sole dynamic in nature, and that accordingly, every individual Nigerian constitutes the supreme economic potential which this country possesses…Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient and economical he becomes as a producer and consumer”. Unfortunately, this rather overly materialist and instrumentalist notion of education in Awolowo’s political philosophy has overshadowed his other insights on the subject, which reflect and demonstrate an appreciation of Dr. Tunji Olaopa’s adumbration of purposeful education as an all round, lifelong process that transcend the narrow boundaries of formal learning and instruction. In a lecture delivered at the Centenary Hall, Ake, Abeokuta, on Monday, 22nd January, 1973, titled ‘As a man thinketh’, Awolowo advocated not just the proper nourishment and nurturing of the physical body but also the continuous cultivation, through formal and informal learning, of the objective and subjective or conscious and unconscious phases of the human mind.

    While Awolowo recognizes the indispensability of the relationship between a living pupil or student and a living teacher in a formal, structured learning process, he also stresses the importance of informal learning by the individual both through the observation of nature as well as in interaction with other fellow human beings in society. In the statesman’s words, “The motto of a school of practical psychology in Britain is ‘mens sana in corpora sano’ – a sound mind in a sound body. This maxim, in my view, epitomizes the essential and cardinal purpose of education, and should be the fundamental basis of any educational policy that can be regarded as sound and utilitarian”. One of the definitions of education accepted by Awolowo is helping the individual “to evolve an integrated personality”.

    But then, what constitutes a sound mind or an integrated personality? Here, Awolowo and Olaopa are on the same page. Indeed, Awolowo’s insights help us to apprehend better Olaopa’s articulation of the imperative of consciously and deliberately encouraging learning as a lifelong process that includes formal training in a specialized discipline but also encompasses the sustained cultivation of ethical consciousness, broadness of perspective and horizon, tolerance, compassion and a high sense of individual and moral responsibility. As Awolowo explains, “All the functional attributes of the subjective mind can be summed up in one word – THINKING. In other words, any scheme for the instruction, cultivation and development of the subjective mind must be designed to make the pupil or student THINK – to think constructively, rigorously, scientifically and morally on objects and subjects which are, in every respect, beneficial both to himself and others.

    This is to say that all the attributes of the subjective mind must be developed with the aim of employing them not for self-regarding ends alone, but for ends that are certain to benefit the thinker and others as well. ‘Love thy neighbor as yourself’ is, therefore, not just a religious tenet; it is also one of the laws of the development of a morally constructive subjective mind”. Awolowo, in my view, concisely encapsulates Olaopa’s thesis of joyful, healthy and productive learning in one word – love, which is the very antithesis of the greed and self-centeredness that undergirds the ‘excessive materialism, nepotism, corruption and aggressive selfishness’, the prevalent ills of our contemporary society that provoked Dr. Olaopa’s book. If you learn to truly love your neighbor, you will not covet or steal his or her property or loot society’s common patrimony to the detriment of the public good.

    You are unlikely, motivated by love, to want to criminally accumulate billions in cash and physical assets thus retarding the development of the society of which you are a component part. The thinking, morally conscious and sensitive individual that Awolowo believes will be the product of the right type of education, will continually ask himself four critical questions outlined by Olaopa that can empower him to reconnect with the human essence, “Who am I? What is my purpose in life? What is my role in society? How should I relate to others?” The ‘educated’ individual who does not constantly engage in this kind of lifelong introspection cannot involve into what Olaopa describes as “the TOTAL PERSON – that is a person who not only knows but is also able to act well; someone who combines knowledge with virtue…a person whose knowledge and skill are infused with moral and social dimensions”. There is no doubt that our educational institutions understand this very well because the certificates for which their graduates qualify are awarded purportedly for ‘learning and character’.

    Given the state of moral decadence and ethical famishment in our society, a condition of collective putrescence which even most first class products of our educational institutions have been unable to transcend, the character side of the equation is certainly grossly deficient. It is obvious that the acquisition of specialized skills for professional practice must only be complementary, not an alternative to, the cultivation throughout life of the requisite wisdom for healthy, useful and constructive citizenship. The author aptly quotes Dr. Waziri Junaidu who avers that “I cannot see how being experts in say geography or physics or a given language alone can produce an honest, disciplined and considerate good citizen, if the expert has received no injection of noble and lofty ideas pertaining to his duties to his fellow countrymen and to humanity at large and to his self criticism, his accountability, etc”. Dr. Olaopa identifies five factors that militate against the institutionalization of the kind of all embracing education he advocates in our society.

    These are the practice of politics as the no holds barred pursuit of power devoid of moral purpose; the persistence of underdevelopment and the associated pervasive poverty that helps to magnify crass materialism; declining social values that diminish the possibility of civilized living; religious bigotry that promotes human degradation and exploitation to the denigration of true spirituality and, lastly, the crisis of values in our education that discourages “the balanced growth of the total personality of man through the training of man’s spirit, intellect, rational self, feeling and bodily sense”. To confront and transcend this debilitating condition, Dr. Olaopa argues that a leadership re-orientation that de-emphasizes material accumulation as the measure of achievement and self-worth and elevates more ennobling and enduring values is imperative.

    This can, however, not be achieved, he contends without the emergence of a critical mass of the citizenry determined to organize and actively work towards reclaiming and liberating our country from the flourishing ills that obstruct the actualization of the country’s caged potentials. In a no less insightful and educative foreword to the book, Professor Tony Ghaye, Director, Reflective Learning – UK, offers useful tips, citing his own personal experiences, on how the individual can move from the perception of learning as a painful experience that involves laboriously cramming the head with facts to be regurgitated at examinations, to embrace learning as a fulfilling and joyful enterprise indispensable for a truly successful and maximally productive life. As he put it, “I remember feeling I had to cram everything into my head. It was painful! And then, when the exam was over, I felt the relief of deleting it. What I had learned was disposable. I could get rid of it”. Ruminating on such issues as learning as emotional labour, why some people learn better than others, how to learn with others and learning to trust, Professor Ghaye prepares the reader to enthusiastically embrace Dr Olaopa’s vision of becoming ‘a reflective lifelong learner’.

  • The arrogance of power

    The arrogance of power

    Beyond superficialities, is there really any fundamental difference in the attitudinal dispositions and behavioural orientations of Donald Trump, President of the world’s pre-eminent democratic, economic and military superpower and that of Kim Jong-un, absolutist leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)? They seem to be both pathetically infantile in their mindsets even though Trump is over 70 and Kim in his thirties. Both men exhibit the impulsiveness, lack of restraint and seeming obliviousness to danger characteristic of juveniles despite the immense power they wield in their respective countries and the severe consequences their actions could have for global peace and security.

    There can be no doubt that nuclear weapons in the hands of a brutal, capricious dictator like Kim Jong-un, who rules without any form of checks and balances is undesirable and portends grave danger for the world. Yet, Trump is daily proving Hillary Clinton right when, during the campaign, she warned that a man who resorts to tweeting at the slightest provocation could not be entrusted with custody of the country’s nuclear buttons. He is pugnacious, abrasive, temperamental and unpredictable. Despite the restraining influence on him of America’s deeply entrenched democratic institutions that guarantee effective checks and balances among the various arms of government, Trump still poses a serious threat to international order, harmony and stability.

    During the campaign, Trump had promised a less militarily adventurous US foreign policy if elected pointing out that his opponent, Hillary, from her record as Secretary of State in President Barak Obama’s first term, would be a trigger happy President. He has, however, discovered, like many of his predecessors, that the exhibition of America’s fearsome military might, mostly against disproportionately weaker targets, is a sure way to boost an incumbent’s sagging popularity at home. Thus, Trump’s authorization of the launching of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles, each conveying over 1,000 pounds of explosives, against targets in Syria in April for the most spurious of reasons helped to divert attention from his many domestic troubles as he was widely applauded even by his fiercest political adversaries as a strong and no-nonsense President.

    It is thus not surprising that under Trump, the relationship between Washington and Pyongyang, always edgy at the best of times, has degenerated badly with the world confronted with the real possibility of nuclear conflagration on the easily combustible Korean Peninsula. Obviously echoing President Truman’s grim warning to Japan before the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, Trump has casually warned Pyongyang that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” adding, for emphasis, that the US military is “locked and loaded”.

    The diminutive North Korean dictator and his people have, however, remained unruffled and obstinate. The Pyongyang regime has continued to carry out nuclear tests to the consternation of the international community particularly with its latest claim of capability to deploy hydrogen bombs against targets in South Korea, Japan and even the US mainland. In return, Trump has responded not only with incendiary rhetoric, but the US has intensified joint military exercises with South Korea while mobilizing the deadly warship, USS Michigan, a Trident submarine and some of its most lethal nuclear weapons in the peninsula.

    If one relies for information solely on mediums like CNN or, to a lesser extent, Skynews and BBC, the impression would be that Kim Jong-un is nothing but a crazy dictator simply obsessed with possessing nuclear capability or that North Koreans unaccountably harbor hatred and bitterness against the US. However, a free US-based progressive online magazine, truthout, has been running a series of objective and highly educative articles on US-North Korea relations that facilitate better understanding of what is all often simplistically dismissed as Kim Jong-un’s erratic and eccentric behavior.

    It is impossible to understand North Korea’s seemingly suicidal obsession with acquiring nuclear capability, even against the wish of America with the latter’s awesome military might without situating it within the proper historical context, which the mainstream American media, truthout laments, hardly does. For three and a half decades, the Korean people had suffered under and fought fiercely against Japanese colonial rule.  However, with the defeat of Japan by the US and the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War in 1945, the two super powers simply divided the Korean Peninsula into two with the US taking Seoul and the Soviet Union, Pyongyang. From servitude to the Japanese, the Korean people now faced domination by two military powers and became a frontline theatre of the post World War II Cold War between the two superpowers.

    This led in 1948 to the creation of two separate states in the territory – the Republic of Korea (South Korea) under US dominion and the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (North Korea) under the control of the communist bloc. The situation soon degenerated into war between North and South Korea between 1950 and 1953. Although all sides in the war committed terrible atrocities, North Korea, even by US military accounts, suffered horribly.

    According to a report on the war published in ‘truthout’ by Robert Cokoehher, “The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. ‘Over a period of three years or so, we killed off – what – 20 percent of the population’, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later Secretary of State, said the US bombed ‘everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another’. After running low on urban targets, US bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stage of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops”.

    At least three million North Koreans died in the war. If General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the US troops had his way, many more would have perished as he had proposed that dropping “between 30 and 50 bombs” over North Korea under cover of darkness could end the war in ten days. ‘truthout’ quotes Historian, Charles K. Armstrong, who, writing in the Asia Pacific Journal, states: “The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea government never forgot the lesson of North Korea’s vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice, continued to strengthen anti-aircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again. The long term psychological effect of the war on the whole of North Korean society cannot be overestimated”.

    North Koreans are said to be deeply nationalistic and fiercely believe in their country’s right to independence and self determination. This has nothing to do with whether they like Kim Jong-un and his government or not. Rather, they have strongly entrenched memories of how much they suffered under the Americans in the Korean War.

    Of course, Trump lives in his own world blissfully oblivious of reality. He speaks cavalierly of raining fire and fury on North Korea. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama before him all contemplated pre-emptive strikes against North Korea but heeded wise counsel that the cost would be too high. According to an expert “Such a conflict would threaten not only 22 million North Koreans and the 44 million South Koreans, but could also engulf the US, Japan, China and Russia in a nuclear war”. Although a staunch ally of the US, South Korea, under its progressive President, Moon Jae-in, has explicitly rejected any war on the Korean peninsula. The country would be in the direct line of North Korean offensive if war breaks out.

    ‘truthout’ quotes Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican- South Carolina) as saying that “If there’s going to be a war to stop Kim Jung-Un, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And (Trump) has told me that to my face”. It is a pity that America’s democratic process allowed the ascension of a man capable of such shallow thinking to the apex of authority in the world’s most powerful country. Apart from rejecting direct diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang, which the latter is not averse to, and actually achieved a degree of success when tried in 1994 and 2000, the Trump administration has dismissed as an insult the suggestion by Russia and China of a “freeze-for-freeze” strategy.

    This would entail North Korea freezing its nuclear and missile testing while the US and South Korea would end their annual joint military exercise. Nothing would appear to me more sensible and pragmatic towards de-escalating the tension in the region. Contrary to the assertion by the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, that North Korea is ‘begging for war’, it appears to be the US that is ‘lusting for blood’. Despite her awesome military arsenal, the US will not be immune to the severe consequences of the Korean Peninsula slipping into war. It is critical that America wields her power with wisdom, not arrogance.

  • Calling Nnamdi Kanu’s bluff

    Calling Nnamdi Kanu’s bluff

    Nigeria has serious security challenges like virtually every other country, even the most prosperous and powerful, in our troubled world. Africa’s fabled ‘crippled giant’ contends with severe developmental debilities that are inexcusable given her human and resource endowment. Existential conditions for the vast majority of Nigerians are among the most dire and dismal on earth even though a minuscule number of her citizenry number among the world’s most opulent global citizens. But is Nigeria a failed state? Has the territorial space she occupies been declared an ungoverned and lawless jungle? Has the Nigerian state, in Marxian terms, ‘withered away’? The last time I checked, there is a legitimate government currently in power in Nigeria. There is a legally constituted authority that holds the sovereign mandate of the majority of the electorate in polls held in accordance with the country’s extant constitution.

    Of course, it is only natural that her diverse constituents will hold divergent views of Nigeria depending on their peculiarities, proclivities and inclinations. For some, she is a country whose extant structure is cast in granite, non-negotiable and eternally immune to any form of change. This is an unrealistic perspective. There are those like Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), and emergent imperial monarch of Igboland, who dismisses Nigeria as a vast zoo. For him, Nigeria is a barbarous terrain from which he desperately seeks to extricate his people via secession. Unfortunately for him, the extant Nigerian State, which for now has the legitimate monopoly of force and cohesion within its territorial jurisdiction, says no. In his post medical-vacation national broadcast to the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari effectively told those with secessionist aspirations that he has no mandate to oblige their wish.

    Although his speech may not have been as profound, tightly reasoned and logical, Buhari’s message to his ‘dear citizens’ was akin to Abraham Lincoln’s to the aspiring secessionist Southern slave-owning States in his March 4, 1861, inaugural address as President: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered under heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend it”. Lincoln urged the secessionists to consider the very real possibility that “the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from”.

    An active participant in the Nigerian civil war, Buhari is of the cast of mind that that conflict resolved Nigeria’s national conflict for all time. He is wrong in the sense that cohesive and viable nationhood can only be sustained by never ending dialogue among the diverse peoples of a complex polity like Nigeria that allows for continuous necessary structural and behavioural adjustments. He is right, however, in the sense that the current constitution makes provisions for changes in our governance institutions, structures and processes in accordance with the will of the majority and following clearly stipulated procedures. There are those who attribute our current socio- political and economic tribulations to the deficiencies of the extant 1999 presidential constitution. But that was the same way our errant political class abused and perverted the 1963 parliamentary constitution leading to the collapse of democracy and the descent to civil war. The fault lies not in our constitution but in our selves.

    Adopting a no nonsense approach to the Biafra secessionist advocacy, the Buhari administration charged Kanu to court and clamped him in jail for alleged conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony and other related offences. Among other activities, Kanu  whose IPOB upstaged the earlier Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign Republic of Biafra (MASSOB) led by the now sidelined Ralph Uwazurike, was behind the clandestine Radio Biafra illegally broadcasting incendiary and divisive messages across Nigeria. There are those who contend that the Buhari administration should simply have ignored Kanu; that it was his perceived ill- advised prolonged incarceration that has turned him into a folk hero in Igboland.

    But then, this is a controversial view. Ignoring Kanu’s combustible vituperations could also have unsavoury consequences for national unity, peace and stability. Without the extremist activities and provocative xenophobic vituperations of IPOB, for instance, it is unlikely that the misguided groups of Arewa youths would have given the criminal and illegal ultimatum for Igbos to quit the North further worsening national tension and trepidation. We can learn from history here. The genocide against the Igbo in the north following the January 15, 1966, coup was indefensible. It was illogical and irrational to hold an entire ethnic group responsible for the actions of a few coup plotters even if the key leaders of the putsch were Igbo and majority of their victims’ non-Igbo. But there was a background to this.

    According to the pre-eminent political scientist, Professor Billy Dudley who was then teaching at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), for instance, in his classic, ‘Instability and Political Order in Nigeria’, “Outside the university, the practice of Ibo men holding up Northerners to ridicule had become a common enough experience. Pictures of Nzeogu with one foot over the corpse of the slain Premier of the North, Sir Ahmadu Bello, symbolic of the downfall of the North and the ascendancy of the East and the Ibo, were to be found on sale in the markets in the North”. That is why it would be extremely unwise to allow characters like Kanu a free hand to pursue their dangerously destabilizing antics even though that is no excuse for the impunity of the so called Arewa youth groups against whom no action has inexplicably been taken.

    Ever since he was granted bail on stringent conditions on April 25, Kanu has violated his bail conditions as if the Nigerian state is non-existent. He has attended rallies consisting of crowds of more than ten people contrary to his bail terms. He has granted countless press interviews again in utter contempt of his bail conditions. This has prompted the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation (HAGF), Alhaji Abubakar Malami, to approach the Federal High Court, Abuja, seeking an order revoking Kanu’s bail as well as directing his being arrested and committed to custody pending trial.

    Condemning the HAGF’s action, the President-General of Ohanaze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, said “I am amazed that the distinguished attorney is prepared to contest the superiority of the provisions of the constitution on fundamental human rights of movement and freedom of association over an erroneous judicial proclamation violating those rights”. I am not aware that Chief Nwodo has become a duly constituted court of law to pronounce magisterially on the erroneousness or otherwise of a judicial proclamation. Until a court of law voids the IPOB leader’s bail terms, he is bound by the law and cannot be allowed to get away with impunity. Kanu himself has publicly threatened that anyone who dares re-arrest him will die. What informs such delusionary arrogance?

    But then, does the Buhari administration have the moral authority to call Kanu’s bluff? Does it have the ethical integrity to assert its ‘stateness’ against such lawlessness? I doubt it. If today, President Buhari calls a meeting of his security chiefs, the majority of those in attendance – the Minister of Defence, Chief of Army Staff, IG of Police, Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Chief of Air Staff and National Security Adviser will be all northerners. The only exceptions will be the Chief of Defence Staff and Chief of Naval Staff who are the only non-northerners in the security leadership hierarchy? How can anyone expect fairness and objectivity from such an ethno-regionally skewed security structure in a plural federal polity like ours?

    Furthermore, the same HAGF, who wants Kanu re-arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony has embarrassingly said that the Arewa youths who gave Igbos an ultimatum to quit the North before retracting their threat cannot be arrested and made to face the law because of ‘security implications’. Beyond this, Fulani herdsmen continue to commit genocidal acts against farmers and host communities across the country without the slightest reaction from the security agencies. Where is fairness? Where is justice? Where is equity? How can anyone credibly call the impetuous Nnamdi Kanu’s bluff?

  • Oshiomhole’s home truths

    Oshiomhole’s home truths

    Those who insist like President   Muhammadu Buhari did in his address to   the nation on his return from his 103-day medical vacation in the United Kingdom that Nigeria’s unity is settled and nonnegotiable are as intolerant, given to hubris and misguided as those who contend that there is no alternative to their own variants of scores of suggested strands proffered for restructuring the country. Of course, one understands where Buhari is coming from. He not only witnessed but fought in the civil war.

    He witnessed the wastage of over two million lives in an ultimately senseless civil war. As elected President of the Federal Republic Nigeria in the 2015 general elections, this column has always insisted that Buhari was not given a mandate to dismember Nigeria. Rather, he swore to an oath to preserve the territorial integrity of Nigeria as the Head of Sate and Chief of its armed forces.

    It is sheer unrealistic idealism to argue that the Federal Government must go into negotiation with every group claiming the right to agitate for secession on behalf of their people. If that were the case, the government would have little or no time to govern in the interest of progress, prosperity and development. Of course, the threat of forcible separatism has become a veritable source of primitive accumulation of wealth for some brave and clever youths in this political dispensation. Many of those whose pastime was to destroy oil assets and extractive facilities in the Niger Delta at the height of that region’s militant insurgency against the Nigerian state’s perceived marginalization have today become quiet billionaires.

    This has been courtesy of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s Amnesty Programme and former President Goodluck Jonathan’s strategy of buying out the insurgents through the most scandalous and outlandish contract awards and cash handouts to the militants. Yet, the creation of a minuscule of exceedingly rich ex-militants by the Jonathan administration did very little to dent, even minimally, the deplorable depth of poverty in the Niger Delta not to talk of even beginning to repair and restore the long suffering region’s broken infrastructure and blighted environment. Given increased agitations from diverse quarters in recent times for the restructuring of the country, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) must be commended for organizing a one-day colloquium with the theme “The Labour movement and the future of united Nigeria: What role for restructuring”.

    It is symptomatic of the erosion of our capacity for restrained discourse; our ability to legitimately disagree without being disagreeable that a former NLC President and two-term governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was reportedly heckled by some members of the audience and prevented from marshalling his points for about five minutes before order was restored. Oshiomhole’s crime was his insistence that most of those clamouring for restructuring were doing so because they found themselves on the losing side in the 2015 election. Oshomhole may perhaps have been guilty of some measure of indiscretion on the occasion. It would probably have been more politically correct for him to say what he perceived the audience would want to hear and cheer.

    But it is difficult to fault his submission that separatist agitations, some masquerading as advocacy for restructuring, intensified and assumed more dangerous dimensions, in strongholds of the hitherto ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had lost out to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 elections. The South-South and the South-East certainly had never had it better especially in terms of influential and juicy positions during the 16 years that the PDP was in power.

    Yet, in spite of the critical positions they held during the period, some of the quite brilliant minds of the South-South and South-East had negligible impact on the development of the regions. Who then is really marginalizing who? Ever since the assumption of office of the Buhari administration, we have daily been assailed by stunning revelations of the industrial scale theft of public property by public officers of the immediate past administration. Even where cases have crawled on sluggishly in courts across the land because of the inbuilt deficiencies of our justice administration system, we have learnt of hundreds of billions of Naira in cash and physical assets that have either been voluntarily returned to the coffers of government through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or forcibly forfeited by thieving public officers on orders of courts. As alluded to by Comrade Oshiomhole, the amounts of funds and property traced to a powerful female Minister of Petroleum in the Jonathan administration and much of it already confiscated on court orders is simply mind boggling.

    You can just imagine what the money allegedly stolen so brazenly could have done towards raising the bar of development in the Niger Delta. According to the comrade governor: “Look at yesterday’s pictures; Over the last few days, they have been mind boggling. If those ethnic champions, when they steal the money, they do not invest the money in their states. How did she get the money that built how many storey buildings in Banana Island? And just before I entered a lady was interrogating me about women. When they say whatever a man can do, women can do better. We have seen both the good and the bad. Never in our history have we had a minister, who has taken as much as a woman minister took from NNPC. So we must speak to character”.

    Those who are today the most vocal voices in the Separation or nothing orchestra were thunderously silent even as the nation was being mindlessly bled to death by Jonathan’s corrupt cabal. Even as Ministers Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iwealla and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Anyim Pius Anyim, brazenly and blatantly picked their kinsmen to head virtually all agencies under them, the rest of the country could go to hell for all they cared. Most of those who, today stung by the displacement of the PDP-controlled Federal Government call for either secession or a restructuring that remains ill-defined, did not call for a boycott of the 2015 election.

    Many of them even participated in the election believing confidently that their party and candidate would win as usual no matter how desultory their governmental performance. In doing so, they have legitimated Buhari’s election and cannot cursorily truncate an elected government midway because of an outcome they are dissatisfied with. The PDP won massively in the South-South and South-East but were comprehensively outvoted in other parts of the country. For the minority to seek, directly or indirectly, to bring down a government or thwart its continued existence because it cannot live with the decision of the majority is the very essence of treason.

    That was probably what President Abraham Lincoln meant when in his first inaugural address, he vowed to resist the secession of states that wished to preserve the institution of slavery and emphasized the essence of majority rule. In his words, “Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.  Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or despotism.

    Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism is all that is left”. None of this, of course, is to excuse the cavalier and utterly unserious manner with which the ruling APC has approached the whole issue of restructuring, which incidentally was a cardinal principle of its campaign. It is embarrassing that even a matter as simple as reviewing the revenue allocation formula every five years has, just like the PDP did for 16 years, has been left unaddressed for the over two years that the APC has been in power at the centre.

    The same thing applies to moving items better pursued by the states and local governments from the exclusive to the concurrent and residual lists thus relieving the Federal Government of the burden and enhancing the prospects of better service delivery to the people through the lower levels of government that are closer to the grassroots.  However, greater devolution of powers, responsibilities and resources to the lower levels of government thereby weakening the current suffocating stranglehold of the centre on the polity may be necessary but is certainly not a sufficient condition for accelerated national development.

    Devolution to achieve its desired objectives must also be accompanied by greater de-concentration of powers at the states and local government levels to allow for greater democracy, legislative autonomy, transparency, accountability and productivity at those critical levels of governance. The President’s speech writers must also strive to be nuanced, gracious and solicitous in their use of language so that they don’t portray their boss as an uncompromising garrison commander issuing orders to his troops and utterly lacking in compassion or an impatient boss talking down and gruffly brushing aside what may be misguided but genuine grievances of whole regions or ethnic groups.  It is not impossible for Nigerians to be held together by force but the cost, if too many parts of the country are pushed to the wall, may become unbearable and unsustainable.

    There are so many simple things that can be done to win back the confidence of disaffected sections of the country. For instance, nothing stops the President from reconsidering his key appointments to critical offices to allow for greater inclusivity. There is absolutely no reason why he cannot take as hard line a stance as he has taken against Biafra agitators, Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram insurgents, for instance, against marauding Fulani cattle herdsmen. Buhari’s integrity and austere worldview remain his greatest assets and he no doubt still enjoys significant goodwill. The responsibility that such goodwill is not needlessly squandered rests entirely on his shoulders.

  • Looters’ paradise?

    Looters’ paradise?

    So much obloquy, resentment and outright anger has the National Assembly  attracted to itself from the public since the commencement of this dispensation in 1999 that a sizable number of Nigerians have come to believe strongly that no good can come from either chamber of the national legislature. Even as the recession takes a heavy toll on millions of underprivileged Nigerians, for instance, the legislators are acquiring brand new official vehicles at humongous amounts of otherwise scarce funds. Again, despite the widespread and vehement clamour for members of the Senate and House of Representatives to make public their salaries and allowances, the figures remain a top secret. Indeed, the national law makers gave former President Olusegun Obasanjo, an opportunity to, in his characteristically ebullient and hypocritical manner, lob devastating verbal cruise missiles in their direction. At an event this week, the Ota farmer described members of the two chambers of the National Assembly as ‘unarmed robbers’ given the gargantuan salaries and emoluments they collect, which is said to be about the highest for any legislature in the world. The issue of budget padding and the abuse of constituency projects, both in terms of funding and actual execution, are other issues that have tainted the image of the National Assembly in the public consciousness.

    Against this background, the honourable member representing Ebonyi State in the House of Representatives on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party,  (PDP), Mr. Linus Okere,  deserves plaudits for summing the courage to initiate a bill in the House seeking to provide legal amnesty for those who have looted the treasury if they willingly submit themselves to the authorities, disclose the amount they illegally acquired, forfeit a percentage of the loot to the Federal Government, as well as being compelled to invest the rest of their ill gotten funds in the Nigerian economy. As Honourable Linus Okere, sponsor of the bill explained “the bill seeks to allow all Nigerians and residents who may have any money or assets outside or have acquired such money or assets illegally (looted or any myriad of cliches) to come forward within a set time frame, to declare same, pay tax/surcharge and compulsorily invest the funds in any sector of the Nigerian economy; and be granted full amnesty from inquiry or persecution”.

    The draft bill reportedly covers all assets held both within and outside Nigeria. It provides for 30% of such voluntarily relinquished funds to be released to the Federal Government as tax and an additional surcharge of 25% of the recovered sum. The proposed tax will be remitted to the Federation Account for distribution to all tiers of government; the sub charge will be channeled directly to critical agencies such as National Agricultural Research Fund and the Nigerian Infrastructure Fund. It will be managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria while the declaration would be made to the Chairman of the Federal Internal Revenue Service.

    Of course many people particularly civil society groups have condemned the proposed bill on the grounds that it will encourage and embolden treasury looters while also protecting their identities. Some others have said this is another instance of corruption fighting back. I do not know Honourable Linus  Okere and I am completely oblivious as regards his antecedents. But what is of concern to me for now are not his motives, whatever they may be, for sponsoring the bill. It would appear to me that the legislator had keenly observed the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s largely lackluster fight against corruption and has proposed legislation to help the country achieve the aim of repatriating its lost funds through alternative systems to the established ones so firmly entrenched in support of the status quo.

    It is obvious from the anti-corruption war so far that we have had more noise than meaningful action. A number of high profile cases have been lost some in rather embarrassing and inexplicable circumstances. Despite the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, for instance, cases continue to be unduly prolonged due to the antics of clever senior lawyers and with the connivance of some indulgent judges. It would be interesting for some scholar to undertake research on the costs in terms of time, energy and resources of the endless rigmarole of prosecuting corrupt persons from one level of adjudication to another that constitutes our complex and complicated legal system.

    And this is where I find the proposed bill most useful. In many jurisdictions, we have alternative dispute resolution mechanisms that help resolve cases among aggrieved parties without going through the rigours of full legal trial. Have the results obtained so far in terms of actual convictions justified the amounts of funds expended by the anti-corruption agencies in prosecuting these cases? Indeed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has obtained seizure through the courts of huge amounts of ill acquired money. It appears to me that the Linus Okere Bill is already partially at work. Most of the looted funds received by the EFCC, are from sources that have not been publicly identified. Thus, those who criticize the proposed bill on the ground that the looters will not be named and shamed as future deterrence to others are greatly mistaken’

    In the first place, President Buhari had promised shortly after assuming office in 2015 that the identities of all those from whom illegal money had been retrieved would be named. The APC administration has so far gone back on its words in this regard. The truth of the matter is that we glibly talk about fighting corruption in an emotive manner without trying to unravel the root causes of the problem. Thus, the many people who have been indicted for corruption or even spent time in jail for corrupt practices are still champions and heroes of their communities. It is the duty of the government to bridge the current huge communication gap with the people as regards the anti-corruption war. Until that is done and the people take ownership of the anti-corruption war, then judicial officers will be careful on the kinds of judgements they deliver and legislators the kinds of laws they propose.

    For now, the anti-corruption war is widely perceived as President Buhari;s personal battle. The fear of Buhari, some say, is the beginning of wisdom. But that is not a route to take – a way to lead our country to new ethical and moral terrain. Linus Okere’s proposed bill, in my view, offers a systematic way of dealing and possibly avoiding as much as is possible the byzantine maze that is the country’s judicial process. No matter how much we loathe the National Assembly, this is one of its proposals that should be studied carefully rather than tossing it aside in a cavalier manner.  However, on a personal note I would want the amnesty for corrupt persons who voluntarily acquired ill-gotten wealth proposed in the law to be reduced from three years to one year. And anyone who doesn’t seize the amnesty period of grace to quietly return their loot, should face stiffer penalties like the death sentence, for instance, as reportedly is the case in China.

  • Tunde Olusunle’s fingermarks on the trail of history

    It was a most exciting and exacting period at the Daily Times of the mid-eighties as the then new Managing Director, the dynamic, energetic and resourceful Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, sought to restore the newspaper to the dizzying heights it had attained under the leadership of the inimitable Alhaji Babatunde Jose in the seventies. Along with his team of outstanding Editors and senior managers – Chief Onyeama Ugochukwu, Mallam Farouk Mohammed, the late Dr Femi Sonaike, Mr. John Araka, Mr Ndu Ughamadu, Mr. Dapo Aderionola, Mr. Kunle Elegbede and Dr Chidi Amuta among others, Ogunbiyi recruited and inspired a team of talented young men and women who were burning with a desire to make a mark in the profession. One of those young Turks of the time was none other than Tunde Olusunle (now a double chief) who was easily one of the most proficient wordsmiths and indeed a shining star in the Editorial Department of the newspaper.

    Tunde’s career over the years was to take him, among several other endeavours to serve as Director of Press Affairs/Chief Press Secretary to two chief helmsmen of Kogi State and later Special Assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo for eight years. In the past few weeks, I have been perusing two books of poetry and a collection of essays written by Tunde Olusunle principally to find out if there had been any contradictions between the values he espoused as a journalist and artiste and his disposition and outlook as a public officer in a position of great influence given his proximity to power at the very apex of political authority in the country for nearly a decade.

    Olusunle’s first poetic offering ‘Fingermarks’, published in 1996 by Kraft Books Limited, Ibadan, showcases the poet’s linguistic dexterity, his eye for detail, and his passion for social justice. I remember that as a Senior Staff Writer and later Assistant Editor at the Daily Times, Tunde Olusunle travelled extensively throughout the country working on several stories for the newspaper. What struck me at the time was that in addition to whatever assignment he was asked to work on, Olusunle would also write detailed travelogues or eyewitness accounts of life in the various towns and cities he traversed. Thus, under his practiced hands and aided by his vivid artistic imagination, places such as Kaduna, Ibadan Kano, Enugu, Minna, Jos, Ilorin, Port Harcourt etc came palpably alive before the reader complete with names and descriptions of the major streets and attractions of these locations. This facility is evident in Olusunle’s ‘Fingermarks’ particularly in poems like ‘Lagos’, ‘Benin revisited’ and “Lokoja”. The bard sings of Lagos as the: “Album of oddities/The good and bad/The absurd and bizarre/Catalogue of contrasts/The fair and foul/the funny and furious/ Encyclopedia of opposites/The grand, the squalid/The chic, the chequered”. In ‘Benin revisited’, the poet makes allusions not only to the city’s glorious past brought to a humiliating end by the British conquest but also the notorious robber Anini whose gang ravaged the city at will in the mid eighties till the law caught up with them. He writes: “So sadly now tonight/Within the wink of seventeen seasons/You stare, dumb like an earthen image,/ Awed by the reign of Anini’s scions,/The throat of your mirth stifled to ghostly quiet/By rattling rifles and the frightened bark/Of a thousand Alsatians/While the xylophonic music of crickets and toads/Seizes by installments the tympanum of night”

      And of Lokoja, the poet waxes lyrical: “Come with me to Lokoja/Confluence of culture, terminus of tongues/Hedged by hills, robed by rocks”. In the poem ‘City life’, Olusunle skillfully depicts the inflationary spiral engendered by the Structural Adjustment Programme of the period when he writes “Prices are horses/Perpetually galloping;/Pay-packet snails/Permanently lagging”. Echoes of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) also redound in the poem “Epitaph for the Naira”. Here the poet laments the fate that has befallen the country’s national currency due to massive devaluation. In his words “Memories of your past/So virile and so vivacious/ Rise now and becloud my skull,/Deepening my bewilderment/About your premature rupture/Your sunset at noon”.

    He continues in this melancholic mood of mourning for the badly humbled Naira: “They drained your blood with profligate fangs/Till you lay lifeless and limp/a cadaver for jobless flies/Alas! All your glitter and gloss/Is withered and worn/ All that satin sleekness/is rot and rust. And in ‘Prophecy’, Olusunle comes nearest to predicting a revolutionary response to the economic recession and unbearable poverty engendered by SAP. Warning that Mansions, Villas, Government Reserved Areas may be turned into Ghost ridden Areas; bedrooms into blood-pools; cosy cars into comfy coffins; silk suits into silk shrouds; club houses into cemeteries, the poet roars “For the time is near/When the underdogs suddenly shall rouse/From their depressed slumber and deathly nap/Hewing recklessly the harbingers of their calamities”.

    Most of the 25 poems in Tunde Olusunle’s second collection, ‘Rhythm of the mortar’ also published by Kraft books and running into 68 pages have to do with nature, love and sundry features of human existence. Thus, he writes about the grassroots in a rustic village in ‘Grassroots’, a rural people gradually shrugging off the sleep of the night and awakening slowly to the reality of a new dawn in ‘Dawnscape’, the rhythm of a million pestles turning ‘sky-white yam slices’ in mortars  into ‘doughs of luscious promise’ in his native Yagba to be enjoyed with ‘efo and iru, oya and akika’ when ‘They are joined in their culinary matrimony of the seaming simmering pot/when a thousand savoury soups/ Escort balls of iyan/Down the salivating thoroughfare of a million throaty aisles”.

    Yet, even in this collection, the author writes about the danger of poverty and injustice in a poem like ‘The prisoner’s chant’. In this poem, the prisoners lament their pathetic situation but with the poignant warning that “We swerved into sin in despair/When bleak hopes of surviving tomorrow/Stared starkly in our pupils /At the dawn of our lives”. The prisoners warn ominously that “But sinners whose outshine our crimes/Eat no sapagiri, munch no grass/They perch safely on the pulpit/With saints and pastors…Time will judge”.

    In ‘The King’s visit’, Olusunle addresses the issue of those who wield positions of power without responsibility, sensitivity to the plight of the people or a sense of decency. The King visits his people amidst pomp and pageantry and while displaying all the splendor and power of his position. Yet he was absolutely uninterested in the plight of “Diseased babies and disheveled mothers,/Hungry urchins, school-less youngsters,/Unpaid teachers, despairing fathers/Whose farms have seen no fertilizer in several seasons. Although he is seemingly and deceptively enthusiastically received by the people, the poet warns that “A caressing moon/Always succeeds the tyranny/Of a brutish sun….A King will come/Who knows, the same blood runs through/In the arteries of the palace and the people/ A King will come with a steel-resolve/To soothe the pangs of our pains. Thus, even in this seemingly politically innocuous collection, Tunde still speaks truth to and warns about the ever present danger of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

    While in the two poetry collections referred to above, Olusunle deploys his skills as a creative writer of no mean distinction, in the third book, ‘On the Trail of History – A Reporter’s Notebook on Olusegun Obasanjo’ Tunde writes as a consummate newsman who combines the capacity for in-depth reporting with an eye for detail. Also published by Kraft Books, this book runs into 247 pages divided into five sections, namely The Man, The Statesman, The Politician, The Pragmatist and The Legend. There is hardly anybody better placed than Tunde Olusunle to comment authoritatively on the Obasanjo presidency because he worked at very close quarters with the tempestuous Ota farmer right from the commencement of his campaigns and throughout the eight years of his presidency.

    This book thus offers authoritative glimpses into the former President’s personal style and idiosyncrasies and offers useful insights into his extensive diplomatic forays abroad most of which he was accompanied on  by Tunde Olusunle. It is unlikely that anyone can write a definitive history of the Obasanjo presidency without this book as an indispensable reference point and critical secondary source material.

    But what  I find most intriguing is that, given the sensitive roles Olusunle played at various times in the Obasanjo presidency serving at various times as Special Assistant on National Orientation, Public Affairs, Press Liaison, Special Services and Special Duties, he went about his job unobtrusively without any airs. He never for once descended into the gutter to engage his boss’s opponents or traducers in unhealthy verbal brickbats. He saw no dignity in playing the role of attack dog against anybody and refrained from doing so. Even more importantly, in a country always swirling with allegations and counter allegations of scandals and corrupt enrichment, Olusunle left office with his banner of integrity untainted. A detached and dignified sense of professionalism, a meticulous recorder of his boss’s words and actions behind the scenes and a reputation of incorruptibility in the notoriously kleptocracy-ridden wasteland of Nigeria’s public life may yet be Tunde Olunsunle’s indelible fingermarks on the trail of history.