The Nation Newspaper

Category: UnderTow

  • African diplomats upbraid China on COVID-19 excesses

    African diplomats upbraid China on COVID-19 excesses

    Undertow

     

    IN their reaction to printed and video evidence of how Chinese authorities discriminated against and stigmatised African expatriate communities in China over COVID-19, African diplomats in China fired a strongly-worded letter to the Foreign Office in China a few days ago. The envoys referenced the complaints of their citizens which were widely disseminated on traditional and social media, and denounced the manner Chinese authorities in Guangzhou, a city in Guangdong Province, dehumanised Africans who were being unfairly blamed for fresh outbreaks of coronavirus disease in the province. According to some reports, nearly 1000 new COVID-19 cases were said to have been imported. But what is not fully disclosed is that 90 percent of those new cases were attributed to returning Chinese, not African, travellers.

    But disregarding what the statistics of the pandemic in China’s Guangdong Province say, and because a few Africans had tested positive to the disease after China thought it had got rid of it in a matter of months, local authorities have tended to focus primarily on African migrants who were consequently subjected to repeated testing, barred from public restaurants, forcefully evicted from their residences or hotels, forced into repeated quarantines, and harassed by the police. In their letter to the Chinese government, African diplomats insist such measures are discriminatory and racist. “The Group of African Ambassadors in Beijing immediately demands the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments meted out to Africans,” the diplomatic note suggested.

    A few African countries such as Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, among others, have in fact gone ahead to invite Chinese ambassadors in their countries in order to officially serve them protest notes, including presenting them video evidence of the discriminatory and racist tactics deployed by China in Guangzhou city during China’s bid to halt new COVID-19 flare-ups. South Africa, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the African Union, spoke of being “deeply concerned” about the racist profiling and mistreatment of Africans, while Kenya complained of “unfair responses” against Africans in Guangzhou, and Ugandan resented how its citizens were being subjected to “harassment and mistreatment.” On its own, Ghana denounced the “inhuman treatment” and “racial discrimination” which Ghanaians, not to say many Africans in China, were subjected to. It demanded that state officials responsible for such atrocious attacks and harassment be brought to book. Opportunistically, especially having noted that some African-Americans were being subjected to the same treatment as Africans, the United States has not only waded in, it has also identified with the position of African diplomats as well as slammed the discriminatory treatment being meted out to Africans in Guangzhou.

    It is curious that according to a report, China recorded some 108 new cases on Sunday, most of them imported, involving more 50 Chinese citizens returning from Russia. Records also show that some 111 African nationals living in Guangzhou tested positive for coronavirus when the disease first flared. But officials have also disclosed that 4,553 Africans, out of a black population of about the same figure, had undergone testing in Guangzhou since April 3. This was partly why African diplomats concluded that the focus on the African population in the city was discriminatory, if not racist. Just two days ago, China, which has found it hard to be truthful about the coronavirus outbreak, has revised its fatalities figure by 50 percent in Hubei Province, the epicentre of the outbreak, to a new national total of 4,600 deaths.

    After first sounding defensive, Chinese officials later responded to the protesting African diplomats by promising to check the manner the disease was being tackled with respect to the African population in China. They knew that their defences were not tenable, and that in the era of social media, they had been shown to overreach themselves. But whether the promise will lead to substantial changes is, however, not clear, especially given the fact that the Chinese have a history of such discriminatory and racist practices. However, responding to the African diplomats’ concern, a Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said last Sunday that “The Guangdong authorities attach great importance to some African countries’ concerns and are working promptly to improve their (Chinese officials’) working method… African friends can count on getting fair, just, cordial and friendly reception in China.”

    Even if the promised non-discriminatory changes are implemented, it is not certain that China’s condescending attitude towards Africans in China will lead to the fair and just practices indicated by the Foreign ministry spokesman. With the more than quadruple expansion in economic relations between China and African countries, much of it controversially underscored by loans, rapaciousness and subtle political influences, there will continue to be concerns about how China is treating Africans in China and even on the African continent, as demonstrated by protests against inimical labour practices, job losses and unfair union practices fostered by Chinese companies in some African countries.

    China, Russia, France and a few other powerful economies and economic blocs have become accustomed to summoning African leaders for economic summits, sometimes treating them like royalty, and at other times like dependent, slavish and unthinking minions. Having felt short-changed by the industrialised West for decades after independence, Africa, now almost completely inured to the strangulating forces of neo-colonialism, has appeared to entrust their economic and developmental destinies to an ascendant and increasingly powerful China. African leaders are all the more beguiled by China which continues to feign lack of interest in meddling in their domestic affairs. The continent’s leaders were always exasperated by the moral scruples and business ethics of the West. Now they have a new lender and developmental mentor who shows no inclination to judge or censure them.

    African leaders can protest all they like against the mistreatment of their citizens everywhere, but they must earn respect rather than going cap in hand to developed economies of the East and West for succour. China and other Asian Tigers pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. It is unimaginable that African leaders would continue to rely supinely on aides and loans from outsiders to ameliorate short-sighted and contradictory economic policies, some of them, like leasing of mining rights to foreign entities, so offensive as to constitute treason. The depth, initiative and independence which leaders need to succeed in office are sadly lacking in much of Africa, leading to their continuous and unrelenting reliance on foreign economic, social and even political sure cures.

    Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is entirely of Chinese origin. Instead of being remorseful or empathetic, especially going by the global impact of the disease, it is shocking that Africans in China, particularly in Guangdong Province, are being victimised, ridiculed and humiliated. Racism in China is real and has become cancerous. China must deal with it rather than gloss over it. If not, there is little hope that a cancer that has become systemic, and which has seemed to ossify, can be cured by bitter African complaints and casual Chinese promises.

    On their own, African leaders need to rediscover their sense of self-worth. They need to appreciate the urgency of the task needed to remould the continent. Africa has become the errand boy of the world, and is despised, misused, and expropriated. Its children, weakened by centuries of slavery and colonialism, are submitting themselves again, but this time willingly, to a second slavery. The continent’s leaders should use the Chinese denigration of African migrants as the impetus they need to come to terms with and repudiate their paralysis and submission in favour of radical and fundamental changes capable of delivering the kind of reforms and transformation that have served Europe, Asia and North America well for centuries.

  • Trump, COVID-19 and future of US

    Trump, COVID-19 and future of US

    By UnderTow

    When COVID-19 berthed in the United States on February 26, only a few people were infected. Days later, in early March, the figure rose slowly to a paltry 70. But one month later, the coronavirus disease had infected nearly half a million people. It is cataclysmic and apocalyptic. Deaths, too, have risen from a few in early March to well over 14,000 people. US experts have predicted, alarmingly, that, in light of President Donald Trump’s shambolic approach to the health crisis, the disease was yet to plateau. Some 15 years earlier, former president George W. Bush had warned of future pandemics, urging the US to adequately prepare for it. Unfortunately, the country paid half-hearted attention to any preparation.

    After the Ebola crisis of 2014-2016, the Barack Obama administration notched up national readiness to combat pandemics by setting up the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefence. That agency was still revving up into a rhythm when in 2018, the Trump administration scrapped it, failed to appoint officials into agencies designed to anticipate epidemics and pandemics outbreaks, resisted taking extraordinary steps to recover years of stasis in that delicate field, and began defunding agencies whose sole responsibility was to anticipate pandemics and prepare defences against them.

    The outcome, as the coronovirus disease of 2019 has shown, is not surprising. It is also not surprising that as the death rate rises astronomically, Mr Trump has felt beleaguered, focusing more on the consequences such morbid figures might portend for his re-election chances than stemming the tide of the disease. He is expected to focus on slowing and defeating the pandemic, and has indeed appeared to do just that. But alarmingly he has also unabashedly kept a wary eye on politics.

    He has embraced the form of great leadership by conducting daily press briefings, and appearing to show passion and commitment; but he has denied the substance of great leadership, exemplified by his lack of sophistication, restraint and noblesse oblige. Mr Trump’s inexpert handling of the Covid-19 crisis, despite being surrounded by a host of brilliant crisis managers and health experts, is thus altogether a reflection of his essence as a person and leader. Failure in managing the crisis may accentuate his controversial essence; but success is unlikely to ameliorate his idiosyncratic dysfunction.

    The first cases of Covid-19 in the US were noticed only towards the end of February. By early March there were in fact fewer than 100 cases. In January, experts had forwarded a memo to Mr Trump urging drastic and urgent steps to avert catastrophe. He downplayed the problem, and indicated that his hunch said the projected casualty figure from the pandemic would be much lower than anticipated, and even described public anxiety about the virus as an exaggeration and a hoax.

    Mr Trump has stood in the way of his experts facing up to the virus, and has often shown himself to be irritable when confronted with inconvenient truths about the rampaging disease. As the death rate continues to mount, and despite the improvement in testing and treatment, some public affairs analysts in the US fear that their president could unravel. Nobody can guess what that threshold is. But given the rate of infection and deaths, it is not clear just how much Mr Trump can take without making constant recourse to his customary nastiness, or whether his essential self is actually wired to take as much punishment as the most stoic of men.

    This is probably the first major and consequential crisis President Trump is facing. How he tackles it, and if he is successful, will determine his position in American history. He has posed as a wartime leader. Well, then, he has furnished himself a war in the most unorthodox of ways, far beyond his most optimistic predictions — but he has procured a needless war that is more appropriately the product of his naive and romantic notions of power and leadership. While his men — most of them competent, it might be added — have braced up boldly and scientifically to the plague, Mr Trump has often rested his assumptions and strategies on mere instincts. Thus lacking depth and proving incapable of the nuanced comprehension of the future implications of the crisis, it is not clear that either now or in the near future Mr Trump can be trusted to appreciate the global dimension of a crisis already weakening the US.

    Of course, the world will get over this modern plague. In a matter of months, not the weeks Mr Trump predicted, the US will overcome the crisis. But whether the country will remain the same is a different thing altogether. And, more critically, whether he will emerge politically unscathed is another thing. Contrary to the idea Mr Trump has sold Americans since his assumption of office more than three years ago, the US is not an island entire of itself, as John Donne puts it. It is part of an intricate network of global social, political and economic manifestations, very ruthless, very unsparing and very unforgiving.

    In about three years, Mr Trump has led the US down the garden path of isolation, or what he called rejuvenation or making America great again. That path has future consequences quite unobvious to him, partly because they are so complex and not easily discernible. That path is one of unforced errors and mortal self-delusion that have whittled down the power and prestige of the US. The Covid-19 crisis may just hasten the process of decline. Many of the men around him perceive this danger; but there is no persuading Mr Trump to alter his worldview. Indeed, he seems incapable of envisioning a different outcome and power trajectory for the US other than his romantic, if not deluded, notions.

    Few can hazard a guess where the crisis would leave the US in the months ahead, or just how damaged politically the president would be before the elections. Job losses have spiralled. By the end of March, some 10 million US workers had lost their jobs, and nearly seven million have filed for benefits. The situation could get much worse if the virus persists in ravaging the society and harvesting deaths. Unlike in early March, in April more Americans have started to feel that Mr Trump was inexpert in handling the crisis, and his style and manners are unhelpful and have begun to slightly rankle with the American people. If the effects of the crisis should linger into the November elections, there is no telling what kind of electoral consequences it might presage. What is clear is that the greatness the president repeatedly trumpets for the US is in fact antithetical to the greatness that had been integral to the US psyche for generations. This concept of greatness is probably too deep for Mr Trump to grasp.

    Covid-19 has probably put China at an advantage, no matter how short-lived. There are also a number of conspiracy theories being bandied about regarding the origin and purpose of the virus, including one involving the ambition of China to upstage the power and influence of the industrialised West, particularly the US. It is not certain that those theories are accurate, or that China is driven by that kind of ambition, or that Mr Trump is completely ignorant of those designs. It seems clear, however, that all things considered, especially given the manner China emerged from the coronavirus crisis, and given the way the US and the West have proved spectacularly slothful in managing it, the world may be starting to witness the beginnings of global power realignments, the dying embers of a past era, and the budding of a new one.

    These changes may not occur overnight or even in a few years time. But the rise of Mr Trump and the incalculable damage he has done to American power and prestige by his politics and ideas, notwithstanding his popularity, may have triggered new concerns about American fault lines, the socio-economic and political weaknesses of the West, and the seemingly unending possibilities of the East, particularly China. The years ahead will be very interesting, if not tumultuous.

    The competition for power will heighten, and humanity will find newer ways of grappling with changes and challenges certain to test their resolve and know-how to the limit. The changes themselves — whether technological, such as the much maligned 5G (fifth generation wireless communications technologies), or biological, such as malignant viruses, or even political — are certain to be accompanied by profound tectonic shifts that may leave the world gasping for breath and searching for new meanings. The world system, as it is known today, may in fact be ebbing away, and this generation of humans may be witnessing an epochal change.

  • Covid-19, contact tracing and social distancing

    Covid-19, contact tracing and social distancing

    Emmanuel Oladosun

     

    SIX thousand contacts were on ‘Covid-19 Wanted List,’ as it were, at the beginning of the week. That was the figure given by the health authorities on Monday. It is huge and frightening. If one quarter of the number are carriers, the gravity of the situation is better imagined.

    Yesterday there was a relief as the media reported that 3,550 had been traced. The remaining 2,450 still underscore an awful figure. The apprehension can hardly subside.

    Where are they now? How can they be traced, or motivated to voluntary submit themselves for medical test?

    Is it even in their own interest to deliberately disappear and intensify the spread of the dreaded Coronavirus pandemic?

    Definitely, the number would have increased since then. It could even double within few weeks, to the detriment of the bewildered  country. Not finding them in time has negative multiplier effects.

    The present gloom; the daily rise in the number of infected persons; experts warn, may  be the baseline for unmitigated doom, unless reason prevails. Prevention is better than cure.

    Had Nigeria learned from the Ebola challenge, perhaps, it would have prepared better for the current  problem. During the Ebola outbreak, states were asked to set up isolation centres. Where are they now?

    Coronavirus fills the consciousness of humanity. It is a global disaster; the greatest public health concern at the moment, The rich and poor are not insulated. It appears no country has any time for another as it fights to conquer the disease, or limit the horrors it unleashes on citizens, the economy and the entire social order.

    The least countries can do is to compare notes on the degrees of devastation and learn from management, or bad management, of their intervention strategies.

    It is relatively easier for the government and its agencies to learn fast now and mount interventions. But, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people who are targets of the interventions to give maximum cooperation.

    In a largely subsistent country, where people have to struggle to get their daily bread, they misunderstand the stay-at-home appeal and the ‘strange’ directive on social distancing. Thus, many Nigerians still ignore the preventive measures to their peril.

    The government is rising to the occasion in tackling three challenges-containment, treatment or care and prevention. If precautionary steps were taken when the virus was still exclusively domiciled in Asia, perhaps, the story would have been different. But, there was a shortfall in scenario building.

    There is a relationship between the herculean contact tracing and spread of the virus. Statistics is now difficult to arrive at. Nigerians boarded aircrafts to their country. Unlike Europeans, Americans and Asians who demonstrated patriotism by submitting themselves for testing, they started dodging the authorities after they were requested to come for the initial medical check up.

    To the consternation of the authorities, they submitted fake addresses and phone numbers, making it difficult for the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Centre for Disease Control to track them. They went home, or other locations to continue with their normal businesses in an abnormal way. Not all of them would be carriers of the virus.  But, their refusal to show up for medical scrutiny is a great disservice to the anti-covid war. It has sparked national anxiety.

    Similar to this scenario are cases of big men, who after returning from Europe, decided to self-isolate, without prior information to the Ministry of Health, NCDC and other relevant agencies.

    Self-isolation, which is the first critical stage in assessment, is for 14 days. It is challenging. Do these categories of people have the training and skills required for self-isolation? Would it have been out of place for these laymen in medics to inform the relevant authorities about their travel history before embarking on “self-hiding,” which they have uncritically confused with “self-isolation?”

    What is the assurance that they will not infect few aides and family members who minister to their needs in the corners of their rooms where they are self-isolating? Don’t they need medical advice in their self-imposed solitary confinement?

    Also, despite concerted efforts by governments at disseminating information to the populace about social distancing, many have continued to flout the directive.

    On the first day of temporary lockdown in Lagos, many youths converted the expressway into free football fields, shouting, hailing one another and sweating. Markets in rural areas remained opened and traders and customers carried on trading activities as if all was well.

    In Katsina State, there were reports about restless youths who burnt down police stations and other public buildings. They were protesting that they were not allowed access to mosques by security agents.

    Also, at Agege Central Mosque, some worshippers attacked officials of the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) and Lagos State Safety Commission, who were monitoring and enforcing the lockdown order.

    Some lawyers and rights activists, grossly demonstrated the curious ignorance of the wise  as they criticised the federal and state governments for imposing lockdown, or curfew, without consulting with lawmakers, some of who are in self-isolation. They know the law, which cannot translate into vaccines to halt the spread of the disease  or drugs that can cure the ailment. They were playing to the gallery.

    Read Also: COVID-19: Supermarkets ‘ban couples’ from shopping together

     

    Many Nigerians have continued to trivialise the pandemic. It is because the mortality rate is still low in Nigeria, unlike United Kingdom, United States,  Italy, Iran and China, the cradle of the disease.

    In the social media, there is an information overdose that is counter-productive. Quacks are prescribing self-medication without test. Many jesters have turned themselves into emergency medical experts and analysts.

    In their ignorance, they spread falsehood, saying that Coronavirus cannot withstand the African or Nigerian weather, and that the black man has a thick skin, and hence, a natural immunity, to conquer the dreaded virus.

    Despite government’s concerted efforts in this moment of emergency, the rot in the health sector has remained a major obstacle. If the viruses hit the communities, as Information Minister Lai Mohammed had warned, the primary health centres can hardly play any supportive role. They are in shambles.

    To underscore the challenge in the health sector, the President of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr Francis Faduyile, lamented that 80 percent of General Hospitals in the country lacked pipe borne water.

    Senate President Ahmad Lawan broke into tears when he saw the condition of patients in Gwagwalada Hospital, Abuja. Government is planning about 2,000 daily test capacity. How far can it go in a country of almost 200 million?

    The onus is on government and other stakeholders to sustain the enlightenment and sensitisation programme. It is because prevention is better than cure. Unfortunately, despite the awareness programmes, the distance between the information and people is still wide, unlike what happened during the global anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns and the Ebola epidemic. There is need for more pamphlets and billboards, radio and television jingles in local languages.

    In the rural areas, traditional and community leaders can spread the message in the languages and dialects understood by locals. The various Community Development Associations (CDAs) can also assist in disseminating the information about prevention.

    The long term measure should also be considered. The surveillance system should be sustained, particularly at the primary health centres.

    Social distancing is hard, but possible. Lockdown is burdensome,  but t could be temporary. So far, there is no known cure for coronavirus. Nigerians have two choices; follow the ‘stay safe’ directive and prevent it, or ignore the advice and face the consequence. To embrace the latter is greater wisdom.

  • Coronavirus and speculations on paradigm shifts

    Coronavirus and speculations on paradigm shifts

    By UnderTow

    Even before the outbreak and intensification of coronavirus, the modern plague currently wasting hundreds of cities and whole countries; even before its cause and course had been properly understood and mapped, many analysts had leisurely begun to theorise about its long-term effects, particularly the revolutionary shifts the disease was bound to trigger in the global economy and national social and political structures. For now, much of their theorising is a little far-fetched; but at least the theories have drawn the attention of many critical thinkers to the fact that things are going to change, and that those changes, some of them fundamental, are bound to be upsetting in some respects. However, some of those conjectured changes are not complicated or controversial.

    Chief among the non-controversial changes suspected to be one of the aftermaths of coronavirus is how society celebrates itself in weddings and entertainments such as musical jamborees and sporting fiestas. All three social pastimes had until now been celebrated with profligate excesses. Not only has it now been shown that a wedding can be celebrated cheap, perhaps it is also an eye-opener to many who had been deterred by its costs that indeed it can be done without printed invitation cards, feeding hundreds of people at one sitting, with all the attendant decorations, and paying for a large retinue of musical artistes and masters of ceremonies. After the virus is caged, there will of course be some form of restoration of old habits, but like the place of radio in mass communications before the advent of television, the dominance of one over the other will likely become indisputable. Many weddings are often anchored on financial lockdown of some kind; celebrators will see a fresh and affordable angle to the whole exercise.

    Even though it is still jarring to the senses, the world is beginning to see that musical jamborees are overrated and sporting events are neither the oxygen of life, which they are thought to be, nor the indispensable leisure unthinkingly romanticised and accepted. Again, like weddings, there will also be some restoration, with perhaps coronavirus even becoming policy fodder for enterprising entertainers. Then, again, there is sports, long thought to be a sine qua none to modern living. Coronavirus has rendered many sportsmen idle, and stakeholders as well as spectators have begun to query whether funding that sector and paying outlandish wages are not after all so unrealistic as to be even offensive. Sports, in large measure, is a weekly fix for many people without which they can’t imagine any other existence. For weeks on end, they will now have to contend with an existence shorn of sports. After the virus has dissipated, managers and spectators of sports will likely take a second look at the undergirding paradigms, including the endless bidding for players and payment of huge wages, upon which their sporting traditions are built.

    The world may in fact be witnessing changes that are fundamental to existence, changes very disproportionate to the size and inanimateness of the causative virus. No one can claim an accurate measurement of the impending changes, but the changes seem ineluctable. Sports, weddings and entertainments — but even these three are likely to be unable to hold the candle to the changes afoot in religion. Faiths of all kind, perhaps without exception, looked on in disbelief as a tiny, non-living virus sacked their congregations with disdain and annoying brusqueness. Faiths upon which slaughter of whole communities and races had for millenniums been predicated have proved impotent in raising a finger against coronavirus. The virus will eventually abate, perhaps in a few months, for even at its ferocious worst, it will not match the scale of other pandemics in human history. But religious organisations, many of which have meted extreme brutality to one another in the name of God, have shown how powerless they are in their confrontation with a virus that stole in on them while they snoozed in complacency.

    But no paradigm shift attributable  to the virus is likely to match that which is likely to take place in politics. Having massed weapons of all grades and capabilities, and still threatening to wipe one another off the map, developed countries and superpowers have not only been embarrassed by the march of the disease, they have also been shown to be helpless and, for brief tantalising moments, hopeless. Those powerful countries may possess great economies and indomitable militaries, but they have lost thousands of their citizens to the virus, have panicked, and their leaders, when they are not infected, have scurried for cover. They have discovered not only the limits of their own powers as vouchsafed them by their constitutions, they have also discovered the limits of their national power, particularly as projected by their national militaries. Italy has been humbled, Britain has groaned under the virus, with its prime minister, Boris Johnson now afflicted, France is croaking, Russia incandescent, and the United States foaming with rage and prostrate with horror and anxiety. The helplessness of the great powers is accentuated by the fact that they must be wondering what other pathogen lies hidden somewhere that may eventually take down their civilisations, as the Inca Empire was terminated by disease, civil war and Spanish conquest in the 15th Century.

    The great powers are likely to engage in deep reflections on their vulnerabilities, particularly spurred by coronavirus. Even if their economies do not cave in to the disease, they are unlikely to stick adamantly to their underlying and propelling paradigms. Technology had before now triggered deep and sometimes disturbing changes in the way businesses are done and offices run. Before the advance of great technologies, much of it developed in the 20th Century, pandemics were unable to inspire revolutionary changes in economies. The story is bound to change, spurring further development in technology and birthing new principles and practices in office cultures. Huge office complexes are likely to give way to virtual offices, and companies may embrace radically redefined working relations. All said, changes are afoot.

    For those not averse to a little science, here is a definition of coronovirus, as contained in a medical microbiology book by David A.J. Tyrrell and Steven H. Myint: “Coronoviruses  are spherical or pleomorphic enveloped particles containing single-stranded (positive-sense) RNA associated with a nucleoprotein within a capsid comprised of matrix protein. The envelope bears club-shaped glycoprotein projections. Coronaviruses (and toroviruses) are classified together on the basis of the crown or halo-like appearance of the envelope glycoproteins, and on characteristic features of chemistry and replication. Most human coronaviruses fall into one of two serotypes: OC43-like and 229E-like. The virus enters the host cell, and the uncoated genome is transcribed and translated. The mRNAs form a unique “nested set” sharing a common 3′ end. New virions form by budding from host cell membranes. Transmission is usually via airborne droplets to the nasal mucosa. Virus replicates locally in cells of the ciliated epithelium, causing cell damage and inflammation.”

    It is this small virus that is threatening civilisations, locking down whole cities and countries, and paralysing economies, religions, social interactions, and many more. The world will eventually find a way to deal with it, but the virus and its rampage open up a whole range of possibilities for global power contests and domination. Weakening societies may eventually proceed beyond deploying weapons and technological innovations. As many conspiracy theorists are beginning to imagine, and far beyond the capabilities of cyber warfare specialists, just one virus may be all it takes to master the enemy or influence his behaviour, or even, in worst case scenarios, provoke a civil war. At least this generation will remember that nothing has so paralysed them in the past 70 or 80 years as coronavirus. The virus has had the capacity of concentrating their minds and consternating them. More than before, this generation will rue the fragility of human existence and ponder whether anything at all makes sense, especially seeing how one virus has levelled everybody, from kings to presidents, and from the rich to the poor.

  • Segun Oni damns the political consequences

    Segun Oni damns the political consequences

    Undertow

    Ekiti State, one of the country’s smallest in size and revenue allocation from the central government, is to the surprise of many Nigerians tremendously endowed in human and economic resources. It has produced colourful politicians like Ayo Fayose, Olusegun Oni, and Kayode Fayemi, but with all three so different in temperament, style and worldview. Mr Fayose has lived all his life in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at one time even cloaking himself as the godson of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, but has acted and spoken as if he was forever poised to defect to the camp of the progressives, whether Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) or the All Progressives Congress (APC). Dr Fayemi started out with a preference for the PDP, but was finally persuaded, or persuaded himself, to camp with the progressives in the ACN. And Mr Oni, an engineer, was essentially a pragmatist in the PDP who was never averse to the camp of the progressives, but in fact until a few days ago a leading but much mistreated member of that illustrious camp.

    But like Nigeria’s 35 other states, Ekiti’s politics and politicians are not quite cast in granite. They operate on very fluid tectonics, defecting and aligning with political parties as their emotions drive them. Mr Fayose had feigned defection, particularly during his fight against Mr Oni and in the closing months of his second term as governor, when, it was believed, he sought means of evading harassment by anti-graft agencies. At least he romanced the APC, even if he never really thought of concretising his disguised political flightiness. Since setting up camp with the progressives, and being a natural progressive himself, though of the grainy variety, Dr Fayemi has stayed put, determined to fight his way through or plot his way to the peak of the party. Mr Oni, on the other hand, though a pragmatic with an unmistakeable hue of progressivism, has shown himself more fleet-footed in defection, first moving from the PDP to the APC, and now from the APC back to the PDP. As always, there are reasons for defections. In the case of Mr Oni, it is on account of what he now describes as mistreatment.

    Mr Oni rose to an enviable peak in the APC, after defecting from the PDP due to Mr Fayose’s errant and capricious ways. A gentleman par excellence, the engineer could simply not stomach the atrocious and disrespectful manner Mr Fayose ran the PDP, riding roughshod over the legislature and the judiciary. No gentleman could accommodate such tactics and manners. And since he came with a lot of political capital, having ruled the state from 2007 to 2010, some three years and about six months, it was natural that if the APC wanted victory subsequently, they would have to reckon with Mr Oni, preferably with him on their side. They managed to entice him into their ranks, fought the governorship race together in 2014 but lost, and eventually retook it in 2018. But between 2014 and 2018, a bitter struggle had ensued between the troika of Mr Oni, Dr Fayemi and Opeyemi Bamidele, now a senator but previously a House of Representatives member. Mr Oni in fact rose to become the APC’s deputy national chairman (South), but was curiously and unfairly treated like a leader without a base and a pariah. The 2018 governorship poll merely finalised his disenchantment and hastened his exit from the party.

    Mr Oni’s exit was rumoured for months. He had been left holding the short end of the stick, principally because he questioned and litigated the victory of Dr Fayemi in the 2018 poll. What was not acknowledged before Mr Oni took the extreme measures attributed to him was that the APC crowd and leaders in Ekiti State made no substantial overtures to him worthy of his rank and standing, at least not to his estimation. But having lost all the cases he brought against Dr Fayemi, it was clear to the APC leaders in the state, and to himself as well, that a place could no longer be found for him. Hence his proposed exit, a measure he says will be finalised in a couple of months. He justifies his proposal, and pinpoints the reasons for the exit, thereby erasing any ambiguities about his political direction. However, his support within the state has remained solid and largely unaffected by his peregrinations and alienation. He will cause a nightmare for the APC in the months leading to the next governorship poll, and he will be heard from in a way that should trouble and consternate his enemies.

    Here is how he rationalises his impending exit: “It is true that I am leaving the APC for the PDP. I actually planned to address the Press on the issue later this week, but now you have made me touch on some of the issues that informed our decision. It is not about me, but about my political family, most of whom have their own lives to live and a political future they must protect. They are not been treated well in the APC in terms of appointments. Is that how to run a party? You leave out some people when you are giving out appointments all just because they belong to the Segun Oni political family? When I was the APC deputy national chairman, some of them said they suspended me from the party. Up till this moment, the issues surrounding the so-called suspension have not been attended to. We have to fight against the tyranny of the minority that is existing in the party.” And to erase all doubt as to what has led him to that avoidable pass, he continues: “How can some people, who are not even party excos at the ward level gather together to announce the suspension of a party leader? When I was the APC deputy national chairman, some people gathered and said they have suspended Clement Ebiri, a former governor, from the party. But I told them to apologise to Ebiri who became a governor when most of them were nobody. I can assure you that we are definitely pulling out of the APC. It is not about consulting to take a decision. We have decided on that and it is about the political future of my political group.”

    Mr Oni’s exit was not inevitable. Despite litigating Dr Fayemi’s 2018 poll victory, the party should still have made definite and substantial overtures to him. But neither the party nor Dr Fayemi is made in that accommodating, liberal and empathetic mould. Mr Oni’s complaints were genuine and indisputable. The ruling party in the state, which as Mr Bamidele can attest to is very often not inclusive, should have done its best to win Mr Oni over. They have not, partly because they made up their minds to call his bluff. They must hope for the sake of the next governorship election that they can fill the vacuum that will be left by Mr Oni. Dr Fayemi nearly did not win the last governorship election despite the atrocities and incompetence of Mr Fayose. It required an alliance with Dayo Adeyeye, a prince and until recently a senator, to clinch the poll. Had that alliance not been formulated, Mr Fayose’s foolish style would still have been rewarded. Sen Adeyeye, it is learnt, has regretted the alliance he entered into with the leaders of the APC, especially seeing how they have acted mala fide after their slim victory.

    The last has not been heard from Mr Oni. He is probably the steadiest hand and most even-tempered governor that has ruled Ekiti State since 1999. The state remembers him for his sense of moderation and openness, not to say his abjuration of any form of political grandiosity. They recall with fondness how he carried his party and the state along, and how he treated the council of chiefs deferentially. Should he attempt again to run for the governorship seat on the platform of his new party, he will complicate matters for the APC, and it will require herculean efforts to best him. But of course, Mr Oni himself has a herculean task ahead to overcome Mr Fayose who is still making trouble in the PDP, not to say neutralise the only senator whom the PDP controversially produced in the 2019 National Assembly polls, Abiodun Olujimi, a vocal and sometimes cantankerous woman and politician. Nothing is guaranteed for anyone or party in the coming years in Ekiti. It would indeed have been far better had APC leaders in the state not been as hotheaded as they postured, and irreconcilable as they seem determined to be.

  • Finding false virtue in the virus

    Finding false virtue in the virus

    IF one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, then one man’s curse could be another man’s cure. While much of humanity shudders with fear of the deadly coronavirus, not everyone is. That’s because a pandemic that slows civilization’s activities means less damage to the global climate. For some environmental extremists, events that visit tragedy upon human beings are viewed as propitious for the planet. It doesn’t take a doctor to conclude that looking for the bright side of suffering is itself a sickness.

    Radical climate-change doctrine that venerates the natural world above human life has drifted from the commune into the mainstream, taking root among some of humanity’s most respected institutions. Former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres, who now heads the climate-action organization Mission 2020, suggests that COVID-19 isn’t all bad. Asked by the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 whether economic slowdown caused by coronavirus is “actually good for the climate,” she replied: “Well, that is, ironically, of course, the other side of this, right? It may be good for climate because there is less trade, there’s less travel, there’s less commerce.”

    The climate is everyone’s best friend forever. And it’s self-evident that when people are prevented — by disease or otherwise — from engaging in the activities of modern life, the planet’s climate is spared some of the effects. The closer the climate comes to an original state of nature, though, the rougher things can get for Homo sapiens. Without the advances of the modern world, life would be, as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

    The “nasty, brutish and short” part must ring true to those unfortunate enough to catch a fatal dose of the coronavirus, despite the best preventative measures of modern medicine. Thus far, nearly 4,000 persons worldwide have lost their lives. If the World Health Organization’s death rate figure of 3.4 percent proves accurate, the virus could kill 15 million worldwide, according to the Australian National University. Human suffering on a massive scale has a numbing effect — Joseph Stalin’s point when he said: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

    Ms. Figueres is not alone in looking for the sunny side of catastrophe. Prefacing his cutting remarks with the Band-Aid, “I do not wish sickness on anybody,” Climate activist Martin Lopez Corredoira wrote at the website Science 2.0: “As said by the proverb, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’. Neither Greenpeace, nor Greta Thunberg, nor any other individual or collective organization have achieved so much in favor of the health of the planet in such a short time.”

    It’s unclear whether the venerable environmental organization or the young Swedish finger-wagger would prescribe pandemic as a remedy for what ails the planet. Mass death was a thing for the Nazis, though, during the 20th century. And for those grieving over the unfortunate victims of the spreading virus, the only “silver lining” they are likely to behold is the one inside the open casket containing the body of their loved one.

    Then there is writer Madhvi Ramani opining in The Week magazine: “Where scientists and popular movements have thus far failed to convince the world to act, it seems that Mother Earth may have succeeded, with the never-before-seen COVID-19 virus. The novel coronavirus is estimated to have curbed carbon-dioxide emissions in China by a quarter.”

    Pardon us if we don’t join in kissing the hem of the goddess’ flower-bedecked gown while she decimates the human family. There are better methods for reducing man-made greenhouse gases than Mother Nature smothering her own flesh and blood.

    The International Energy Agency reported last month that global emissions flatlined in 2019 even while economic activity rose 2.9 percent. The technologically advanced United States led the way, cutting its emissions by 140 million tons last year and nearly a billion tons since 2000. The 27 nations of the European Union chipped in a reduction of 165 million tons and Japan chopped another 45 million. U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette called the report “proof positive that innovation and technology are the solution to the world’s climate challenges.”

    There is no bright side of suffering. Ideologues who extol the environmental benefits of contagion have lost touch with their humanity. Hopefully, they’re not beyond cure.

     

    • Source: ashingtontimes.com
  • El-Rufai and fresh Kaduna attacks

    El-Rufai and fresh Kaduna attacks

    By Undertow

    Whether the distraught people of Igabi and Giwa local government areas of Kaduna State attacked by bandits on Sunday would be reassured by Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s promise that security agencies would take the battle to the bandits is not certain. They were in mourning on Monday when the governor visited, and by their accounts, were deeply traumatised by the loss of over 50 of their compatriots to the bandits’ killing spree. Kaduna is of course not alone in experiencing and enduring the murderous rampage of bandits and other itinerant killers who have turned a wide swath of the North into a killing field, but last week’s killings made the front pages of national newspapers and stirred deep antipathy toward the killers as well as impotent governments. The governor’s response, unprecedented in its resoluteness, also made the gory news of the attacks, which were spread over some six communities, somewhat unusual.

    Kaduna State has had a depressingly sizable share of the killings ravaging the North. Bandits, kidnappers, herdsmen and ethnic clashes have sucked the state into the red gullet of skirmishes and low-scale war. In his various responses to the bloodletting, Mallam el-Rufai sometimes became very controversial. For instance, addressing killings in the southern Kaduna part of the state years ago during his first term, the governor told newsmen that he had identified some of the attackers, whom he described as Fulani, and negotiated with them. More, he said to his incredulous compatriots, he had paid them to avert future attacks. Purchasing peace with money was an unusual thing until that time, and Mallam el-Rufai’s policy of financial appeasement was understandably met with derision and incredulity, not to talk of being repulsed by his clandestine gloating of sharing ethnic affiliation with the attackers. That he knew the killers, even if they were justified to claim retaliation as their motive, was, to many, deeply wounding.

    It is unclear whether Mallam el-Rufai’s response to last Sunday’s fresh wave of killings was informed by the futility of his previous appeasement measures or by the ethnic identity of last Sunday’s attackers. But it is significant, and it may indeed be the high point of his condolence visits to the besieged communities, that he has sworn that there would be no negotiations with or amnesty for the attackers who have turned some parts of the state into war zones. He had been an apostle of negotiations, having himself proudly but disreputably practiced it at least once, though with dubious outcomes. It is thus a relief to many Kaduna indigenes that their governor has experienced an epiphany about the sterility of negotiating with bloodthirsty bandits. It may also be inadvertent, but when he spoke of denying amnesty to the bandits, he was probably alluding to some states in the North which short-sightedly offered amnesty to bandits and criminals.

    Many northern states ravaged by bandits, rustlers and herdsmen have desperately reposed hopes in a solution that seeks to mollify the rage of the attackers. The states’ responses have been largely desultory, unscientific and even provocative. Indeed, overall, those responses have been foolish and futile. They betray an appalling lack of understanding of the cultural, political and socio-economic dynamics that fuel the low-scale revolt being witnessed in many states in the North. Even Mallam el-Rufai himself has, despite his vaunted analytical prowess, spoken sometimes crassly of the nature of the revolts and embraced panaceas that betray his panic and desperation. During his condolence visits last Monday to Igabi and Giwa LGAs, he spoke of wiping out the bandits, without correspondingly speaking to the predisposing factors fuelling the revolt and what could be done to manage or stifle them.

    In Katsina and Zamfara, for instance, two states also reeling from bandit attacks, their governors have spoken glibly of negotiating with the bandits, offering them amnesty, and of course backing the exercise with financial inducements. These are counterintuitive measures steeped in brazen fallacies and intellectual laziness. There is of course a place for police or military action, to make criminals pay for their sins, but by negotiating with bandits and offering them amnesty, the governors seem to give the impression that banditry is nothing more than social deviancy. But it is in fact much deeper and wider than that. Until the governors appreciate the reasons that have seemed suddenly to trigger the conflagration being witnessed in the North, they will be unsuccessful in managing a crisis that is also worsening and becoming mystifying. If anyone should be incapable of understanding the crisis, it was not thought that Mallam el-Rufai would number among them.

    But on Monday, newspapers quoted and paraphrased him as saying the following to the stricken communities which he visited: “If not for the security agencies prompt intervention, they would have wiped out the villages. I also came to apologise for our failure to protect you fully, we are doing our best to minimise such incidents, you should continue to forgive us. But we are doing the best we can and we are hoping that this banditry issue will be addressed because security personnel are on ground to manage the situation. In Kaduna we have a vast land, if the security agents close one area,  they attack another area. But it is our duty to wipe them out and until we send them to their maker, the security agencies are taking the war to the forest and we are  eliminating them gradually. The security agencies are doing the best they can, but they find it difficult to get to remote areas in good time due to poor access roads. The natives on the other hand also find it difficult to get to the security personnel due to poor GSM network.”

    The Kaduna governor seems to set great store by military and police actions. He thinks the bandits can be wiped out. Yes, they should be wiped out. But they can’t be extirpated until the factors that encouraged them to take up arms against the state have been dealt with. Mallam el-Rufai should have at least acknowledged those factors; but perhaps, for a politician, the occasion was not the best to philosophise about the socio-economic, political, religious and ethnic underpinnings of the revolt that is enveloping much of the North and may yet prove catastrophic to the rest of the country. The federal government, particularly the presidency, has also lent weight to the orthodoxy of acquiring weapons and troops to deal a crushing blow to banditry which have made the highways and vast expanses of land unsafe for living and economic activities.

    During his condolence visit, the governor also apologised for the government’s inability to protect the villagers. He said it was the duty of the government to send the terrorists to their maker. Mallam el-Rufai is an emotional man, often carried away by the smallest triggers and provocations. And despite his rhetorical gifts as a notable and sometimes excitable polemicist, he is also often inconsistent in his approach to grave issues. His allusion to sending bandits to their maker and wiping them out should be understood from those idiosyncratic perspectives. Can the governor be trusted to do something substantial about the bandits? It is unlikely. He can lean on the government for more troops to be deployed in his state, and more firepower and airpower. But the hard task of identifying the factors that triggered the revolt all over the North, and the still harder task of cobbling together measures to curb the madness and rebellion of dispossessed and angry youths will very likely elude him and put an inordinate strain on the state’s lean resources. His vicarious apology is also both inappropriate and insufficient.

    Rather than the glib talk of wiping out the so-called terrorists from Kaduna or, like the presidency is wont to do, paying frequent condolence visits, perhaps it is time Mallam el-Rufai acknowledged the barrenness of his panaceas, when he unwisely negotiated with and paid terrorists who subjected Southern Kaduna to mayhem. After all, those so-called foreign terrorists he claimed to have paid off have not proved any different from the local terrorists who have continued to subject the same areas to attacks, significantly for the same reasons. It is also time he saw the wider dimensions of the revolt unnerving the North, a revolt whose causes are neither limited to Kaduna State nor triggered by the state’s peculiar and intractable dynamics. The causes of the revolt are extensive, complex and rapidly becoming exacerbated. Northern governors must, therefore, come together to find radical and comprehensive solutions to the problems ravaging the region. And the solutions must involve urgently jettisoning age-old cultural, religious and economic paradigms and stereotypes. It is hoped that they have the courage to embrace the appropriate measures, and that the problem is not already too ossified and too resistant to respond to their weak and half-hearted palliatives.

  • Oshiomhole and his enemies fight on relentlessly

    By UnderTow

    The next election cycle is closer than many top All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders think. It is on the surface about three years away; but in reality, given what the party needs to do and put in place, they barely have two years. Yet, the party apparatchiks have fought like Kilkenny cats, and oblivious of the dangers they face should the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) become truly resurgent, they seem unable to grasp that they face an existential threat. There are greater issues to fight over, such as their ideological standing and platform, or salient national issues that need their attention and clarification, but they have chosen to fight one another, brutally, bloodily and obscenely. Alas, the nation has become their vast and curious spectators.

    Their party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, has become their lightning rod. Having bifurcated the party by his provocative opinions and administrative resolve, members and leaders of the APC have ranged themselves into two platoons or brigades: one with him, if not necessarily for him, and the other against him. He is fortunate that his ideas and person, not to say his style, do not leave anyone indifferent to him. To that extent, his victory, or that of his enemies, would probably leave the party more wholesome, more compact, and truly energised to fight the next election cycle. This column thrice focused on him and the battles confronting him in the APC. Quite clearly, the war has not ended. It has not ended because one side has not been defeated. However, it does not seem like the war will continue for much longer, probably not later than this year or early next year.

    Unfortunately for the ruling party, the war between Mr Oshiomhole and his enemies is not one of ideology, administration, style or even any substance properly so called. It is a war over 2023, the year of the next election cycle culmination, a war in which one side to the conflict has presumed the party chairman to have taken sides. Armed with that summation, the aggrieved side has sworn to dethrone the chairman before 2023, and has increasingly fought more confidently, openly and without gloves, regardless of whose ox is gored. A significant percentage of the APC Governors’ Forum is against him, many of them embittered by the pre-election intraparty politics of 2019, and the fear of what role he might yet play in subsequent governorship elections. Another group is against him for the way he made them lose face when he thwarted their succession politics and plots in 2019.

    Yet another group is taking on him after coalescing around diverse objectives, some of those reasons so far-flung that it is hard to judge their coherence. What is significant is that Mr Oshimohole’s enemies will be relentless, unsparing and fanatical about dethroning him. They have summed up his ideas, person and style, and have concluded that it is fruitless pacifying him or reaching some accommodation with him. They think he is so unpredictable that leaving him in office as chairman of the party would do a lot of damage to their present and future interests. What is more, the chairman’s enemies are spread all over the country’s expedient geopolitical zones, though some are more truculent in their opposition than others.

    Mr Oshiomhole has tried to pacify some of his enemies by composing dithyrambs in their honour, but they have remained unyielding. He has also tried to browbeat some of them, but they have become even fiercer. Yet he has very solid support in the party, particularly among those he helped to rise into prominence either in the party hierarchy or in past elections. But neither his new converts nor himself, nor yet his backers can tell how long or how far he can keep his enemies at bay.

    He is optimistic, and so are his main backers; but it is not clear whether optimism alone can swing the battle. However, he and his backers hope that in the final analysis, the crucial veto power of the presidency would either not be cast on time and decisively, or if cast, that it would be cast in his favour. Overall, they hope for a third option: that the presidential veto would, as it has become customarily and idiosyncratically aloof, not be cast at all.

    As this column noted a few weeks ago, the Edo and Ondo governorship polls in September and October will go a long way in determining the fate of Mr Oshiomhole. He is unlikely to have much headache in Ondo, despite the ongoing schisms in the party and the initial feelings that the governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, might be averse to his chairmanship. Party leaders are fairly confident that the situation in Ondo has not deteriorated beyond remedy. They think they can reconcile the combatants and coax the governor to make concessions.

    But in Edo, the jousting in that politically febrile state has probably gone beyond the point of no return, given the undiplomatic and somewhat coarse manner the governor, Godwin Obaseki, has dug his heels in and thrown barbs at Mr Oshiomhole. The state, even though one-sidedly APC, has functioned without a legislature for many years on account of the curious political arithmetic projected by the governor, not to say his quaint and unusual definition of democracy. The APC chairman is more politically savvy than Mr Obaseki; should he find the formulae to thwart Mr Obaseki and still go on to win Edo for his party, he will become both indomitable and invincible going forward to 2023.

    But Mr Oshiomhole is being fought from the APC Governors’ Forum, as emblematised by the group’s director general, Salihu Lukeman, who penned a caustic message against the chairman to the Bisi Akande-led reconciliation committee. And he is being fought from Edo State, as epitomised by Mr Obaseki’s intransigent opposition.

    Then, there are stragglers and ambitious politicians in the wider APC who have the capacity to do tremendous damage to Mr Oshiomhole. So far, the opposition to the APC chairman, though sever and acerbic, has been largely desultory. Should they manage to coalesce for one reason or the other in the coming months, particularly after the September and October governorship polls, Mr Oshiomhole will have to reassess his chances and contemplate his future. He is not yet encompassed by enemies, but there is nothing to suggest his enemies are not trying to outflank him.

    The APC chairman is himself a stout-hearted and combative politician. Even though many of the battles he has fought and won were needless, considering that they are the products of unforced errors and unnecessary boisterousness, he possesses an effervescence that endears him to party rank and file.

    He is powerless to find a clean and clear solution to the intraparty conflicts that have dogged the APC from inception, for many of the problems are foundational, but he must slowly begin to realise that there must be an end to conflict in the party if it is to regain its composure and present a good fight in 2023. Chief Akande has been saddled with the task of finding a solution to the conflicts that have ravaged the party, but though he is a man of very even temper and is avuncular to boot, it is doubtful whether even he can find the magic wand to quieten the raging storms within the party.

    The APC is fortunate to have an even more fractious PDP to contend with, not only this year in the Edo and Ondo polls, but in the near future in other polls and in 2023. Had the PDP been better led than it is and more inspired with the right leaders and philosophies, perhaps the fear of diminution or even extinction might have persuaded the ruling party to still their own storms. Indeed, in a way, the storms in the APC are a disincentive to the PDP, and vice versa.

    Since there is no third force to give the two leading parties a run for their money, both the APC and PDP can afford to be fairly complacent. Nigerian politics has become increasingly conservative; and so the chances of a radical resolution of the country’s political ferment are not very high. A third force does not, therefore, look imminent. Indeed, given the revolutionary pressures observed in the past one decade or so, the chances of an all-out revolt seems more likely than the radical but measured resolution of the national paralysis by a third force.

    Mr Oshiomhole must be in a quandary at the moment. He knows his position is not terribly threatened, but he also fears that he does not have much time left. He has tried being on the offensive without much success, considering his own failings and weaknesses; but he has done just enough on the defensive without actually vanquishing his enemies.

    He will hope that fortune will smile on him, and his enemies will make a mortal mistake from which they cannot recover. If he drives home his advantage at that point, if he becomes more diplomatic and less antagonistic, he might get the breather he has pined for since assuming office. How long that breather will last is, however, anybody’s guess.

  • Ogunyemi, IPPIS, ASUU and sexual harassment bill

    By Undertow

    THESE are not the best of times for the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Buffeted from the inside by sex scandals, assailed on the outside by federal pressures over the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), and distracted by a proposed bill on sexual harassment targeting the universities, the union is reeling under crushing weights. Irrespective of whether they are right or wrong in their perspectives over these matters, ASUU is lucky to have a self-willed, erudite and eloquent national president, Biodun Ogunyemi, who has stood resolute in the face of all kinds of attacks from various quarters.

    Years ago, ASUU’s main war was against poor conditions of service in the universities, poorly equipped laboratories, overcrowded and dilapidated hostels, abysmal teacher-student ratios, half-hearted autonomy, and hopelessly low funding of education. While that war was still ongoing, and did not even look like it would ever be won, and while ASUU itself was still under a tremendous pressure to find new ways of fighting an ancient and seemingly invincible enemy, the government has changed gear, shifted the goalpost, and deflected the battle in a different and unanticipated direction and terrain that disfavour the union. Now the frontlines are poorly defined, and the battlefield is greatly muddled up.

    Last year, almost out of the blue, the federal government directed ASUU to be enrolled in the new payroll system. Instead of a better defined and more expansive autonomy, ASUU is to be sucked in deeper into the civil service system. The union, of course, immediately kicked against this new insolence through an orchestrated campaign definitely not lacking in suavity. But it is a campaign for which it has received very scant support from the media and the public. Go and enrol, they, and indeed the entire country, chorused to ASUU.  It has not helped ASUU that this new battle is coming not too long after a splinter union, Congress of University Academics (CONUA), arose in the universities threatening the general cohesion that had stood them in good stead for decades, making them one of the most lethal unions in the country. In fact, given the total annihilation of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS, as amended by its decades of metamorphosis), and the ingenious disembowelling of the fractured labour unions of the country, ASUU was the nearest thing to a credible unionised monolith.

    Not anymore. Nigerians, unable to grasp the dynamics of IPPIS or the atmospherics of what ASUU represents and embodies, are wary of queuing behind the union. But they really should queue behind them, for the universities have become a caricature, with the government projecting no viable or sensible idea on how to reinvigorate it. The government is more preoccupied with controlling the universities than empowering them. Nigerians have not really interrogated why the government is dragging the universities into IPPIS while exempting other government agencies such as that unaccountable behemoth, the petroleum corporation NNPC, the equally humongous Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the scarecrow tax collectors, the FIRS, and the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), among others. Officials of the IPPIS insist that eventually these other agencies will be enrolled, but for now, because they are revenue-generating agencies, they will be exempted. The devil is, of course, in the detail.

    Here is the argument of IPPIS: “The government knows that all agencies cannot be brought on board at the same time. But for those who draw their salaries and personnel costs from the consolidate revenue account of the Federal Government, they must come on board. For the CBN, FIRS and NNPC, they are revenue agencies and they live on the cost of collection. They are revenue-generating agencies and they don’t draw from the consolidated revenue fund. So, it is left to the government on what to do next, but it is a journey that just started.”

    But here is the argument of ASUU: “There is massive corruption in IPPIS. Did government care to investigate IPPIS itself? We are saying why is CBN not in IPPIS? Why is NDIC not in IPPIS? Why is Federal Inland Revenue not in IPPIS? But the lecturers who are just collecting stipends are to be pulled into IPPIS so that our legal entitlement will not be paid.

    “We are not going to allow it. We are not going to be part of the staff that are going to be enrolled in IPPIS. We took a resolution and we are reaffirming … that we are not going to get enrolled into IPPIS and you know what our union is actually against is that the university has an autonomy and if you look at it clearly, this autonomy we are saying is enshrined in Section 2AA of the University Miscellaneous Provision Amendment Act of 2003 which clearly explained the role of the Governing Council.

    “Even the Miscellaneous Act we are saying clearly stated that the power of the council shall be exercised as in the law and that status of each university. So it is clear we have autonomy. Again, university is the peculiar nature of the appointment of university as academics. Our 2009 agreement which was negotiated by the federal government and our union is also there. So many issues are there and that is why our union is saying we should be allowed to produce a template which will have all these series of issues but not to have a centre point of payment.”

    Put differently, the government gives the indication that enrolling in IPPIS will curb the following anomalies and atrocities, to wit, ghost workers, salary padding, multiple salary payments, illegal recruitment, and corrupt employment, among other evils. But do these evils not exist even in greater dimensions in the exempted agencies? Of course they do. So why the exemption? So far, the government has made arguments in favour of the exemptions, but the arguments do not hold water. Not only have funding of universities been grossly inadequate, the government has shown neither commitment to university education nor produced an inspiring vision of what tertiary education should be. Nigerian universities rank very low globally. Instead of declaring a genuine state of emergency in the sector to rectify the problems militating against university education, and lessening or altogether extirpating overcrowding, the government is pursuing a red herring. Like all levels of education in the country, the university system has virtually collapsed. ASUU has made valiant efforts to reverse the decline, but its efforts have become enfeebled by lack of public support and government’s unwillingness to envision something great, befitting and ennobling. The situation is much more dire than the government is admitting; yet that situation will not be ameliorated by IPPIS.

    Now, ASUU’s dilemma and troubles are set to multiply, regardless of the persistence and fortitude of their national president, Prof Ogunyemi. Sexual harassment is eating up the innards of the universities. Unfortunately, it is a vice neither ASUU nor the universities have shown brilliance or sagacity in tackling. Consequently, a few rather embarrassing public cases of harassment of female students have gripped the imagination of the country and ended up in the courts. The cases have also unfortunately tended to portray university teachers as rapacious and predatory, and the university authorities more intent on protecting their image than giving succour to mistreated students. Even more unfortunately, the problem has now drawn the attention of the country’s parliament in the form of a bill on sexual harassment designed to protect, most especially, female students. The bill recommends very stiff punishment for offenders.

    The ASUU president came under fire last Monday during a parliamentary public hearing when he attempted to draw the attention of the country to extant provisions of the law regarding sexual harassment, while at the same time arguing that the universities, in consonance with the law, can tackle the problem of sexual harassment. Unimpressed, stakeholders jeered at his presentation, and insisted that the bill was timely because the universities had proved woefully incompetent to rein in the problem. But argued Prof Ogunyemi: “Every university has structures through which disciplinary procedures are handled. If we follow the procedure that we have in place at the universities and we link with our existing laws,  we can address the same problem without necessarily coming up with a law.”

    Given the mood of the country, and in the face of highly publicised sexual harassment cases in the universities, it required enormous courage for Prof Ogunyemi to publicly argue against the parliamentary bill. But he did, a tribute to his character and his intellect. Not only that, he is right. All that the problem of sexual harassment requires is to find ways of ensuring that university authorities live up to their responsibilities. Sadly, neither Prof Ogunyemi nor ASUU is likely to sway the public which has tasted blood. The public will most likely get their bill passed, and the universities will be further weakened and dispirited. Both the public and the ASUU, not to say the universities themselves, cannot be absolved of guilt. And the government which should champion the cause of reviving the university system is too caught up in the morass and too bereft of great ideas that it will continue to fail the country and the universities until everything reaches a dead end.

  • Bayelsa governorship: Diri, Lyon and the quirk of fate

    By UnderTow

    Just when Nigerians and Bayelsans were beginning to ready themselves for David Lyon, erstwhile governor-elect, to unleash his lexical gymnastics on the state immediately after taking the oath of office, the flip-flopping Nigerian courts played the wet blanket on Thursday by sacking him on the eve of his enthronement. His running mate and deputy governor-elect, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, according to the courts, had submitted false information to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and appeared to have infected the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket in the November 16, 2019 governorship election with a fraudulent hue. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Douye Diri, who came second in the election, instituted the case as a pre-election matter.

    The Federal High Court gave judgement in favour of Mr Diri, while the Court of Appeal last December reversed the judgement. On Thursday, the Supreme Court finally restored the Federal High Court decision and upturned the election of Mr Lyon who won in six of Bayelsa State’s eight local government areas. Before this piece was written, INEC was to decide whether the interpretation of the Supreme Court verdict meant the voiding of all the votes of the APC, in which case, Mr Diri had become the clear winner, or whether the APC votes still counted and Mr Diri would have to be weighed on whether the 25 percent of the votes he won in five local governments satisfied the provision of winning 25 percent in two-thirds of the local government, and whether the two-thirds of the state’s LGs is about 5.3 or 6.0.

    While Mr Diri’s case is not the only quirk of fate in Nigeria’s recent electoral history, his is exemplary and evocative. The PDP’s Mr Lyon had just attended the rehearsal for his inauguration when the news of the Supreme Court decision hit him like a ton of bricks. The outgoing Governor Seriake Dickson had, a few days ago, also endured ridicule when PDP diehards, not knowing what the courts had in store for their party, assailed him, blaming him for undermining the party in the state. The PDP had kept its stranglehold on the state for decades, they wailed, and Mr Dickson, a veritable spoilsport, had come to upset the applecart. The outgoing governor was so pilloried at the entrance of the State House that his convoy had a tough time driving out. Now that the table has turned, what would the diehards say? Would they apologise?

    Alas, Mr Dickson was not the only one on tenterhooks a few weeks ago. But he is the happiest man in Bayelsa today, if not in Nigeria, with his candidate finally declared winner and sworn in yesterday evening. It is, however, sadly now the time for former president Goodluck Jonathan to be on tenterhooks. Having sulked badly when his favourite, Timi Alaibe, lost the PDP governorship primary, he was believed to have angrily but surreptitiously thrown in his lot with the APC candidate in the November poll, though he was and remains a PDP bulwark. The support the former president extended to the APC candidate, said some analysts, was so undisguised that when Mr Lyon won, Dr Jonathan’s Otuoke, Bayelsa State residence was one of the earliest places visited by the triumphant opposition politicians.

    With the Supreme Court turning the table so unpredictably in favour of the PDP’s Mr Diri, how would Dr Jonathan comport himself in the next four years? Would he continue to sulk? Would he be scorned? Would he keep aloof? If the PDP bigwigs in the state are wise, they will ask Mr Dickson and Mr Diri, in company with some party leaders, and immediately after the swearing in of the new governor on Friday pay a courtesy visit to the former president and seek genuine and lasting reconciliation with him by incorporating all factions in the PDP into their big family. They should leave no one out. If they are wise, they should make the former president their father. His flip-flop in the November poll, when he backed the losing horse, is enough punishment, enough poetic justice. But politics is unpredictable, and no one can really say whether vengeance is not often too tempting for politicians to want to demand their pound of flesh.

    The intertwining of Bayelsa poll with Mr Diri may be the most remarkable touchstone of electoral or political quirk in these parts. But, there are many more such quirks. The Imo poll also produced something quite close to the Bayelsa anomaly. Dethroned former governor Emeka Ihedioha had been pronounced winner by INEC last March. But by mid-January, after winning at both the election petition tribunal and the Court of Appeal, Mr Ihedioha was shown the door barely eight months into his short reign. But that was not the quirk. The quirk was that the Supreme Court declared the candidate who came fourth in that controversial and heady poll as winner. The victory, moaned many puzzled and frazzled analysts, seemed to come against the run of play. How could the fourth-ranked come first? The PDP has since returned to the same Supreme Court asking them to reconsider that which they took from the party a little while ago when the justices declared Hope Uzodinma winner. In short, the party has returned to the apex court asking them to, with the benefit of hindsight, reconsider the convoluted arithmetic upon which they apparently drew inspiration to author the legal conundrum that has baffled and needled many an idealist and patriot across partisan divides.

    That same strange quirk of fate also caused tremors through the Rivers State political firmament in 2007 when former president Olusegun Obasanjo foisted an unusual primary outcome on the state PDP, an outcome that was so whimsical and paradoxical that it beggars belief. That outcome brushed aside the winner of the primary, Rotimi Amaechi, and enthroned Celestine Omehia. Quirkily, the PDP won the April poll of that year, having built its victory on the nothingness of an alien and foisted party primary. But the courts examined the Rivers State trajectory and, against all expectations, in October restored the normality which the party’s constitution envisioned. Votes were cast for the party, said the apex court impatiently, and when by whatever means the true and right candidate of a party primary was identified, even after the poll, justice had to prevail, and Mr Amaechi became governor.

    Quirkiness was also visible as it plowed its way relentlessly through the warrens and sandy terrains of Zamfara State, uprooting an uproarious APC victory that numbered over 500,000 votes but which were smothered by rancorous party regulations, and delivering victory to the PDP governorship candidate who corralled far fewer votes of less than 200,000. It did not take the courts any discomfort or juridical confusion to unseat the APC’s Mukhtar Idris and plant PDP’s Bello Matawalle, another electoral quirk that will endure in Nigeria’s political memory. It may yet be that a reflection on these quirks, particularly the cost they often impose on political parties consequent upon their arbitrary conduct of primaries, may lead to far healthier politicking and far more robust primary elections in future.

    Less than three months after boisterously celebrating victory in the Bayelsa poll, the APC has again lost its foothold in the Niger Delta, and the iconoclasm that has been read into its electoral battles has suddenly turned a gloomy foreboding of apocalypse. Far beyond losing their toehold in the Niger Delta, the APC must find the courage to re-examine the politics and values they so inspiringly spoke about and propagated at their founding in April 2013. Rather than brood over the Bayelsa setback, or pace frantically over an uncertain fate in Imo, it may be time for them to energise a renewal of their party if they can find and give free rein to enterprising leaders who will personify their dreams.