The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Boko Haram: Nigeria turns East

    Boko Haram: Nigeria turns East

    After complaining that Europe and the United States were unwilling to help Nigeria combat terrorism, with government apologists even suggesting that Western powers were aiding and abetting the terror war against Nigeria, the President Goodluck Jonathan government has turned to China and Russia for help and arms. The East turn will not last, though it is underscored by low oil export to the West and higher oil export to the East. But the problem is not that the West is unwilling to help; the problem is that they ask too many unsettling questions and also insist on certain political and moral minimums. They worry about corruption in the Nigerian military, marvel at graft in the arms procurement processes, and are miffed by the unwillingness of Nigerian troops to engage Boko Haram militants. They also complain that Nigerian soldiers were adopting the brutal methods of the terrorists.

    Neither Russia nor China will ask questions of Nigeria, nor cavil at our methods, no matter how repressive. Apparently Nigeria prefers its friends to wink at its foibles. As historians know, however, Russia under both Lenin and Stalin, and to a little extent under their successors, projected certain cultural and political values pertaining to workers’ welfare and also international socialism. Modern China does not project such values or see them as priorities. But Central Asia and ancient China under the Mongoloid ruler Genghis Khan projected values and precepts strong enough to underscore his empire’s drive for territorial expansion and dominance. Modern history suggests that countries and powers that do not have a philosophical or civilizing core, and do not project great and ennobling values, are unlikely to exercise too much influence beyond their immediate borders and neighbours.

    This will not be the first time Nigeria would turn East. It did so during the 1967-70 civil war; but the friendship with the East soon cooled. History will repeat itself, for not only is the East now substantially shorn of the enticing political, social and economic values Nigerians instinctively identify with, even Nigeria’s leaders are too suspicious of the superficial ascetism that Eastern values vaguely denote to lend it long-term support and affinity.

  • 2015: time to confront our demons

    2015: time to confront our demons

    Analysts can’t resist the temptation to award victory or defeat in the 2015 presidential poll to political parties and their candidates based mostly on geopolitical dynamics. It is not hard to see why. President Goodluck Jonathan hails from the South-South, so, he’ll probably take that zone, including perhaps Rivers State, they suggest. The Southeast has completely eschewed any reasoned discussions of the poll; therefore, according to the zone, if not Dr Jonathan, then nobody else will get the great prize. On mainly religious grounds, too, a sizable part of the Middle Belt and a fair portion of the Southwest are believed to have concluded plans to vote unthinkingly for Dr Jonathan since every other contestant, they conclude, is an agent of the devil. As for the other parts of the country, argue some of the analysts, Dr Jonathan will find it tough going.

    But basing the outcome of the 2015 presidential race on essentially technical and zonal permutations rather than on candidates’ ideas and competence, and on religion rather than on issues and candidates’ track records, is to unwittingly lay the foundation for Nigeria’s disintegration. The country is today largely divided between North and South, and between Christians and Muslims. These divisions have been exacerbated by the Jonathan presidency, by his supporters and aides whose fanatical zeal to win the presidential election has become truly numbing, and by his paranoid kinsmen who have blurred the lines between decency and indecency, between democracy and tyranny, and between sense and nonsense. Indeed, we all seem to ignore the unsettling questions about the potential of these divisions, these scorched earth policies and politics, to promote crises in the near future.

    Since the contest has appeared to us to boil down to a struggle between Christians and Muslims, and having irrationally described the opposition party as Islamic and the ruling party as Christian, we fail to ponder what the repercussions would be if the other religion we paranoiacally abhor were to win. To be sure, the exploitation of ethnic and religious sentiments predates the Jonathan presidency. Under past military regimes, religion and ethnicity played an unwelcoming and pernicious role in the formulation of national policies and the conduct of politics. Many years back, it was in fact unavoidable to conclude that rulers of northern extraction deliberately and unwisely skewed postings and promotions in key ministries and the security services in favour of northern officers, even as they thoughtlessly appeared to promote Islamic trappings in governance, such as the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). So the excesses we are seeing today have their antecedents, with some Jonathan supporters even asserting that today’s politics and policies must be dedicated to breaking the North’s ethnic and religious stranglehold on the polity.

    There can be no doubt that past rulers, many of them so schizoid that it is difficult to gauge how messed up their moral compasses were, made too many mistakes. They had the opportunity to create a stable, fair and just society, but either because of incompetence and ignorance, or because of their fundamental disposition to fanaticism, they simply enthroned ad hocism in governance and ruled with the immature instinct of neophytes. Sadly, the consequences of years of favouritism are today manifesting in Dr Jonathan’s presidency’s reverse discrimination and favouritism. The pressing danger is that if we go into the 2015 presidential poll with these implacable divisions anchored on ethnic and religious discrimination, Nigeria’s future could become blighted. Confronting our demons is therefore the urgent need of the moment.

    Under the military, those who climbed to leadership positions were neither gifted nor really disciplined, nor yet deep or ideological. In those days, politicised officers wormed their way into national leadership. But under civilian rule, it is even more scandalous that since the time of Olusegun Obasanjo, through the reign of Umaru Yar’Adu, and now the subversive rule of Dr Jonathan, leadership recruitment has been so flawed and polluted that only the worst have been able to claim Aso Villa. Chief Obasanjo was a megalomaniac without the redeeming feature of ideological or moral conviction. Former President Yar’Adua was somewhat more honest and altruistic than his predecessor, but he was entirely lethargic, superficial and permissive. Dr Jonathan has blended in himself the worst qualities of his two predecessors. In him pedantry, egotism, superficiality and despotism reach their sublime worst.

    In 2015, Nigeria must therefore make a clean break from the past, both in terms of the quality and disposition of the president and the issues and values that shape that choice. The present trend and methods are simply untenable if the country is not to fragment. The first place to begin is to consciously and firmly redirect politics away from the ethnic and religious cocoons in which Nigerians are ensconced or are retreating. The talk of where Dr Jonathan hails from, or how the country has survived on oil from the Niger Delta to justify inflicting an unprepared and emotionally distraught president on the country, must be resisted. In fact, having recognised his limitations, and knowing full well he is unlikely to achieve any amelioration of his weaknesses any time soon, Dr Jonathan has mastered a lethal and enervating cocktail of disinformation, propaganda and tyrannical use of power to sustain his hold on power. He is succeeding because his methods and proclivities are anchored on the exploitation of elite greed.

    One of the issues that should influence the choice of who becomes president next year is the Jonathan presidency’s relentless and remorseless thirst for scandals. While his Petroleum ministry was yet to account for about $12bn the former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, accused it of squandering, and while billions of naira are filched from various pension funds, other more aggravating scandals have erupted. His government illegally hauled $9.3m cash to South Africa to, as they put it incredulously, buy arms. And among other malfeasances, enough to cause any other president to be impeached in a decent society, Dr Jonathan has actively promoted or connived at the wholesale subversion of democratic principles and practice in Nigeria. Ekiti is in turmoil, Rivers was and is still in turmoil because the president shirks his responsibility as the most potent defender of the constitution, Adamawa has been laid prostrate, Nasarawa tethers on the brink, and Osun and Edo, not to talk of Ogun and Lagos, are under his party’s radar for destabilisation and, if necessary, destruction by an army of well-funded vagrants.

    Nigerians may not be enlightened enough to appreciate that a dictator is emerging; but after acquiring confidence in his war of attrition with Chief Obasanjo, having lured the Judicial Council into surrendering its powers in the Justice Ayo Salami case, and having compromised, subjugated and tyrannised the elite everywhere, Dr Jonathan has concocted a series of stratagems to transform his party into the most potent weapon of oppression ever seen in these parts, and the country into a one-party dictatorship. The electorate must be made to understand that full-blown dictatorship will flourish once Dr Jonathan is re-elected.

    Indeed, it is an indication of the country’s moral health that all the scandals swirling around Dr Jonathan have neither bothered him nor lowered his stock among the stragglers that hoof the Niger Delta, Southeast and now surprisingly the Southwest. He fully expects to win the poll next year, partly because of the many endorsements he has received. But the politics of local elections at the local government and state levels are quite different from the politics of presidential election. And though the 2015 presidential poll has been scheduled first, with the sinister anticipation of triggering a bandwagon effect, it is expected that in a tight race, it is still possible to defeat Dr Jonathan, notwithstanding his resort to acrimonious politics, his embrace of ethnic and parochial schemes, and his promotion and exploitation of religious differences.

    The second issue that should lead the electorate to reject Dr Jonathan is the case of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants on April 14. For the past 167 days or so that the abductions have lasted, the president has handled the matter with utter incompetence and lethargy, so bad that the whole world is appalled by his seeming indifference. The world, it will be recalled, rose up in solidarity with us when the abductions created global tremors. But arriving in Nigeria, and seeing how the Jonathan presidency handled the matter, and recognising that even our troops were unwilling to fight, the foreign helpers quietly left in frustration and disgust. They are even more stupefied that the Nigerian government has tried to blackmail them with silly allegations that the West is conspiring to bar Nigeria from procuring arms. For the nearly six months that the abductions have lasted, Dr Jonathan has been unable to articulate a coherent strategy for rescuing the girls, in addition to initially doubting Boko Haram’s criminal act. Moreover, his wife, Dame Patience, outrightly scorned and derided reports of the abductions. There was therefore no strategy to negotiate the girls’ release, and there was no will to fight.

    The third issue that should influence the repudiation of Dr Jonathan is the worldwide scorn reserved for him. Many African leaders are aghast that Nigeria could tolerate him for almost six years. They would be dumbfounded if we gave him a hearing during this coming election, and would be indignant should we elect him for another four years. They would ask how four more years of Dr Jonathan would profit us. If African countries such as Zimbabwe and Uganda could snort at Dr Jonathan heartily, what of the developed democracies? While diplomatic refinements may not allow Western leaders to say what they think of Nigeria and its leaders, they have acted it and taken it out on Nigerian travellers. Once the Nigerian steps out of his country, he is held in absolute contempt. It is transferred aggression, an aggression activated by the disdain they have for our leaders. No other country’s citizens are held in so much contempt anywhere as Nigerians; not even Haitians, Colombians or Albanians; and minus ebola disease, not even Liberians or Sierra Leoneans.

    Conventional opinion indicates that the opposition would have a tough chance beating Dr Jonathan. The truth, however, is that he is vulnerable at all levels and on all fronts. Dr Jonathan and his aides recognise these vulnerabilities, and will try desperately to focus their campaign on religion, ethnicity and the North-South divide. They will do everything to bribe everyone, creating more states if necessary. If the opposition gets the right candidate and sensibly focuses their campaign on those areas where Dr Jonathan simply has no answer, he can be beaten fair and square. It would be a tragedy should he return to office for another four years, for we would be unlikely to survive the gargantuan social, political and economic damage that his re-election would entail.

     

  • PDP’s endorsement of Jonathan

    PDP’s endorsement of Jonathan

    On the day President Goodluck Jonathan was endorsed as the sole candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for next year’s presidential election, party heavyweights behaved so surreally it was difficult to tell what we were witnessing: a tragedy, a comedy, or a tragicomedy. The party has a right to adopt whomever they wish, and in whatever fashion that tickles their fancy. As expected, and in spite of the rigmarole of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) — that raucous assemblage of merrymakers — the party has let the other shoe fall. In the eyes of the PDP, Dr Jonathan is incomparable, irreplaceable and indefatigable. He is their messiah, their magician, their avatar. So surreal were their statements and actions during the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja last Thursday that some observers half expected that by a metaphysical sleight of hand, they were poised to get the rest of us — other political parties, the millions uncommitted, and the naysayers — to endorse the president. Certainly, PDP leaders looked like they would have been delighted to make Dr Jonathan the first democratically elected Nigerian president to be unanimously adopted by all of us as the sole candidate.

    The ridiculousness of their actions did not strike them. By the last count, the party’s TAN rallies had collected over eight million signatures asking Dr Jonathan to contest, with the fecund South-South indescribably coming up with over four million of those signatures. But while rallies were yet to hold in the Northwest and the restive Northeast, party leaders impatiently ramped up the play. First was the party’s Governors Forum led by Dr Jonathan’s hatchet man, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State, who announced excitedly last Tuesday that the governors had adopted the president as sole candidate. Hard on his heels was the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), which animatedly followed suit. And then came the ageless terracotta warriors of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT), whose fevered brows had been burrowed by years of apostasy and betrayal, also concurring. The icing on the cake was the said NEC endorsement which was solid enough to draw the president out of his shell in contrived amusement and feigned bewilderment.

    Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State was spectacular on that day. Having been called upon to speak on behalf of PDP governors by the remorseless Olisa Metuh, the party’s publicity secretary who could defend any side of an argument with equal and detached plausibility, the didactic Dr Aliyu ribbed his comrade-in-squirming, Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, to signify his presence and apparent concurrence. He seemed to be saying that if the upstart Mr metuh would put him (as a governor) on the spot, he was determined not to be left on the hot stove alone with unshod feet. A nuanced game was on; but it was not immediately clear the president and others at the meeting appreciated its delicate shades of joke and mischief. Recall that shortly before some PDP governors defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in November last year, Dr Aliyu was the leader of the subversives, and the polemicist and theorist, Alhaji Lamido, manned the ideological rampart. But on the day the rebellion matured, both Dr Aliyu and Alhaji Lamido cited some extenuating circumstances and abandoned their defecting PDP comrades at the barricades.

    Last Thursday, both men were put on the spot, and they had the distinguished honour, not to say anguish, of assenting Dr Jonathan’s endorsement, the former by his comic overkill, and the latter by his discomfiting silence. But by any colour, apostasy is apostasy. PDP BoT’s Chief Anenih, perhaps the most unprincipled politician in the country, a man for whom party and ideological differentiation is nothing but rank stupidity, was there to fix his cadaverous gaze on the PDP top brass, as if whipping them into servitude and rebellion. Reporters wrote that the PDP convention in December would be expected to confirm these endorsements. That is an understatement. The convention will confirm the endorsements, not be expected to. No one who loves his life in the PDP will attempt to oppose Dr Jonathan, either as a practical democratic joke or out of conviction. He will be crushed. And even if Dr Jonathan were to ask someone to pretend to oppose him in order to give a semblance of internal democracy in the party, the hapless fellow would still resist the temptation, for he would not be sure he was not been set up for destruction.

    Were the endorsements to be limited to the PDP, we could take consolation in the fact that the party really never had a soul, nor that even if it did, it still could not call it its own. The Southeast, as if the zone had inhaled some kind of esoteric gas, has chorused their loud endorsement. Indeed, an uproarious celebration is on in that region of forbidden republicanism to validate Dr Jonathan. Surprisingly too, a large but quite misguided section of the Yoruba elite has also endorsed Dr Jonathan, citing their distrust for and distaste of northern feudalism, and a fear of the invasion of religious dervishes from the North. The Yoruba have a talent for projecting their internal struggles onto the national plane, even as some of them, for economic reasons, such as pipeline protection contracts, are prepared to sell their souls to the devil. In the few months before the great plebiscite, there will be many more endorsements and betrayals, for it seems as if the country has lost its mind.

    The Dr Jonathan endorsement and the way it has been procured reflect a dispiriting and unnerving fact about his government and Nigerian politics. The culture had been building since the unethical and anti-intellectual years of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. The processes are now maturing. No one, not even Chief Obasanjo, has compromised the political elite as adeptly and with much devilry as Dr Jonathan. The Southeast is tamed and disembowelled by economic and bureaucratic baits. The South-South has reached the apogee of selfishness and errantry, with the region a virtually lawless economic ‘free trade’ zone of stolen oil worth some $8bn annually. The Southwest is laid prostrate by greed and powermongering, its long-lasting culture of race suicide reactivated. And a large swathe of the North tired of the rot, having itself promoted humungous rot during their ascendancy, have begun to sell their consciences.

    As the country under Dr Jonathan takes firm and deliberate steps towards tyranny, what we see in the mirror is a reflection of the president’s mental picture of what kind of country he prefers to govern, and a mental picture of himself. To him, and under him, Nigeria has become an eclectic pastiche with no purpose, drive or direction. And he himself has become, whether deliberately or accidentally, a dangerous, budding dictator determined to herd the country into one suffocating pen —  a country speaking with one voice, looking in the same direction, thinking the same way, regimented, devoid of soul, and unable to savour the modern joys and accomplishments of life. Between the Governors Forum, TAN rallies, PDP endorsement, and the national conference, among others, the betrayal of the country appears complete. Now, more than at any time in our history, we need a miracle to make Nigeria snap out of its self-induced stupor.

  • South Africa, Nigeria’s $9.3m arms deal and Oritsejafor

    South Africa, Nigeria’s $9.3m arms deal and Oritsejafor

    Both the Nigerian government and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) president, Ayo Oritsejafor, have struggled to wriggle out of the scandalous arms deal involving the smuggling of $9.3m to South Africa. So far, they have not succeeded. But given the fact that the President Goodluck Jonathan government was also unsuccessful in wriggling out of the $10bn or $12bn unaccounted oil money, it is not clear both the government and Pastor Oritsejafor will care what anyone thinks. The smuggled money was flown into a small airport Northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in a chartered jet by two Nigerians and an Israeli on September 5.

    The scandal of flying $9.3m undeclared into a foreign land is bad enough even without the other smaller but no less potent scandals associated with the smuggled dollars. The plane used to ferry the undeclared money into South Africa was said to be owned by the CAN president, who is also President of the Word of Life Bible Church, Warri, Delta State. He however tactically denied ownership. The plane, he says, is owned by Eagle Air Company in which he has residual interest. But, more, he added, the plane had since last month (only last month!) been leased to Green Coast Produce Limited, which operated the plane at the time of the scandal. Using the platform of CAN, Pastor Oritsejafor then accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) duo of Lai Mohammed and Nasir El-Rufai of smearing his reputation, insinuating also that the attack on his reputation had religious and political undertones.

    The bad-tempered CAN release defending Pastor Oritsejafor contains elements that sadly showed that CAN has become politicised and indefensibly entangled with the world system. Said the press release signed by Sunny Oibe, CAN’s Director of National Issues: “ Our attention has been drawn to the desperation of some elements working for a particular political party within our society to tarnish the image of the President of Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. They are working for the All Progressives Congress and they are not unknown to us. Let Nigerians have this background for them to judge themselves. These shameless characters including a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and National Publicity Secretary of All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, went to UK to embark on an image laundering for their political party, the APC…”

    More brazenly, the intemperate CAN statement also concluded: “ The report (that both Dr Jonathan and Pastor Oritsejafor encourage Boko Haram) is a well organised orchestrated plan, all because of their desperation for the 2015 general elections. If not for the blindness and intellectual myopia of some Nigerians, people of the calibre of El-Rufai shouldn’t be taken seriously and should not be walking on the streets….El-Rufai is more of a Street Boy whose history and antecedents are very much known. He has been the person defending Boko Haram…We are waiting and we can assure you that at the appropriate time, he and his allies will pay dearly for it. The international community sees APC as an Islamic party; instead of El-Rufai to deny that, he was busy orchestrating spurious propaganda against Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.” In short, CAN is saying PDP is Christian, and APC is Muslim.

    However, neither the Jonathan presidency’s clumsy response to the $9.3m arms deal scandal nor Pastor Oritsejafor’s side of the story, nor yet CAN’s statement, has detracted from the scandalous maze. The undeclared money was obviously not sourced from a grocery store; it passed through the banking system one way or the other. The messengers were also representing the government, not themselves. In addition, the huge sum passed through the airport, and the supposedly eagle eyes of the relevant border agencies, which intercepts much smaller funds, could not detect it. And both Pastor Oritsejafor’s defence and CAN statement also showed what slippery slopes the clergy tread when they walk on Caesar’s highway, conducting secular business in the typically Caesarian fashion Pergamos made famous in Revelation 2, and in the ethical and idolatrous quicksand that today entraps church doctrines, church politics and church business, making them indistinguishable from the world system.

    Quite apart from the facts and fiction surrounding the $9.3m scandal, it is indeed curious that Pastor Oritsejafor little appreciates how unhealthily politicised CAN has become under him, and how dangerously parochial he and the body have become in throwing their lot with Dr Jonathan, thereby promoting schism in the church and in the body politic, and disavowing and polluting the doctrinal purity that have sanctified, promoted and defended their faith over the centuries.

  • Ebola: Nigeria forfeits regional leadership

    In the past few decades, and particularly under the Goodluck Jonathan government, Nigeria has yielded its strategic position in regional leadership to others. Nothing exemplifies this surrender as the Jonathan presidency’s attitude to combating Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa. When the Liberian Patrick Sawyer unwisely exported Ebola to Nigeria in late July and infected some Nigerians, an angry President Jonathan described him in very harsh language. The president was justifiably angry, but whether he acted right by using unflattering language, given Nigeria’s position in Africa, is another thing entirely.

    At an Interfaith Conference held in Abuja in August, Dr Jonathan, ever insensitive to Nigeria’s continental and regional standing, had described Mr sawyer as a ‘crazy’ man. Having thus described the dead Mr sawyer in unpresidential language, Dr Jonathan had no chance to establish and affirm Nigeria’s regional leadership in combating the epidemic. The lot fell on foreigners.

    First to rise up to the occasion was Cuba which sent 165 health workers to Sierra Leone to help in the control of the disease. Next was the United States, which is deploying 3,000 soldiers to Liberia to help the desperate country build medical facilities and train health workers to combat the disease. Sulking Nigeria is immobilised by fear and poor leadership. We ought to have condemned Mr Sawyer in civil language, and then rather than being churlish, ought to have proceeded diligently to marshal every effort in Nigeria to lead a regional attack against the epidemic. Other countries have now sadly supplanted us while we wallow in self-pity and leadership mediocrity.

  • For Benjamin Adekunle (1936-2014)

    For Benjamin Adekunle (1936-2014)

    Benjamin Adekunle, more popularly known as the Black Scorpion, died yesterday at 78. In spite of the self-aggrandissing books written on the Nigerian Civil War by Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president and the officer who took over command of the Third Marine Commando in 1969 from the then Col. Adekunle, the Black Scorpion was and still probably remains the most acknowledged and applauded hero of the war. He was doubtless controversial, hated by the Igbo against whom he fought brutally and arguably unconventionally, and respected and distrusted in equal measure by the Nigerian side for which he gave his all. But no one, including officers who fought under him and were often made to squirm by his abrasive style and imperious manner, doubted his brilliance, courage, passion for the military, war, and Nigerian unity. His accomplishments were bound to cause him plenty of problems, heartaches and, as it turned out, early retirement. Unfortunately, he found no way to elude fate’s cruel and unrelenting pangs.

    His views during and after the war were unsparing, irreverent and pungent. They all point to his high intelligence and focus, assuming they could be purged of every hint of insubordination. He knew where he was going early in his life, and he virtually accomplished his goals. His views on the military and the country as a whole should in retrospect be of great use to us in these troubled times, if we are sensible enough to revisit them. Indeed, it is embarrassing that the same military nurtured by officers like Brig Adekunle has proved ineffective and disoriented in the face of the ongoing Boko Haram challenge. Had he not been weighed down by illness in his later years, it would have been interesting to find out what he thought of the Nigerian response to Boko Haram.

    I do not of course wish to join the unending controversy over Black Scorpion’s years in the Nigerian Army, and especially his command of the Third Marine Commando, a name he coined irreverently in place of the official 3rd Infantry Division. The controversy may never end, even as historians will continue to revisit the subject. Instead, I wish to recount the brief encounter I had with this officer whom I have come to respect and admire very profoundly, far beyond his civil war exploits, far beyond his famous temper, and far beyond his courage, brusqueness , ruthlessness and even recklessness. Apart from being namesakes in a limited way, as a few of my readers would know, I share with him a much more profound admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, whose life and war tactics I have studied. I have no doubt that had Brig Adekunle lived in Napoleonic times or in the formative years of empires anywhere, he would have been an empire builder himself. He had the courage, the vision, and the skill. But I admire him for far more than these.

    In 1996, as an editor, I had asked a colleague to go an interview him for a special civil war anniversary edition we were planning. My colleague took along with him a few past issues of our magazine as complimentary copies. He received the reporter well, but declined to give an interview. Rather, he chose to exchange banter with the reporter over a few drinks, spoke somewhat of the civil war years, and tongues and tension loosened by wine, showed the reporter bullet wounds on his body in order to put the lie to what some had glamorously described as his magical powers during the war. If your tactics were stupid, he pointed out sarcastically to the reporter, you would be ruined together with your troops. We of course went ahead with the civil war anniversary edition, even though Black Scorpion was of little help.

    But a few days later, after having read and digested some of the complimentary copies of the magazine given him, he gave me an unexpected phone call. “I have just read copies of your magazine,” he began tersely, perhaps not even knowing the identity of the person he was speaking with, “and I am shocked by the attention you guys give to language. It is mature and of a high quality, and I am impressed and proud that a Nigerian paper could pay such scrupulous attention to the use of English.” I wanted to cut in and ask who was on the line, but he gave no room, as perhaps was his style. His diction was solid, and it didn’t appear to me affected. He used words as frugally and appropriately as the US general, Douglas MacArthur, and his progression, cadence and erudition were truly striking. After saying a few more things, all complimentary and deeply analytical of the magazine, including its visuals and range of subjects, he summed up that the production of the magazine was exemplary, and he would be disposed perhaps next time to give us an interview if we gave him notice. Sensing a pause at last, I quickly asked him who was on the line. “Benjamin,” he said with a firmness and economy that gave insight into his character, and hung up, disallowing me the joy of appreciating his compliments . He was apparently not waiting to receive one, and would probably not have been touched by whatever I had to say.

    I have never ceased to be amazed. I knew he was intelligent to have, as it were, assembled the 35,000-strong Third Marine Commando from one or two battalions, and led it with aplomb and exampled doggedness, but I had no idea he was a well-read and well-spoken man, or that he paid such exquisite attention to the ornaments and fragrance of language. I confess that before then I had had the funny and unsubstantiated impression of soldiers in these parts as rakes and rambling men, an impression foolishly formed in spite of my study of great generals in history like Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and a host of others.

    Notwithstanding the controversy that dogged his time in the army, I believe Brig Benjamin Adekunle was an authentic hero, perhaps as entertaining and unorthodox as MacArthur, a great officer, a brilliant soldier and cultured man. It is a pity that the politics that surrounded his exit from the army, which politics is still undermining many otherwise brilliant careers and subverting the cohesion and fighting ability of the Nigerian Army, was allowed to affect the recognition the country he fought so bravely to preserve should have given him.

    It is however doubtful whether most Nigerians under 30 years of age knew the Black Scorpion, let alone situate his achievements within the context of Nigerian unity and Nigeria’s military history, especially in the light of our desultory response to Boko Haram and the continuing ineffectiveness, if not impotence, of our national leadership . Sadly, even my own children have no recollection of the fiery general.

  • Civilian JTF, Boko Haram and the Michika/Madagali battles

    Civilian JTF, Boko Haram and the Michika/Madagali battles

    A disturbing indication of the crisis bedeviling the Nigerian military in the ongoing war in the north-eastern part of the country is the involvement in the war of the so-called Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) assisting soldiers in combating Boko Haram insurgency. Had their involvement been limited to scouting activities, serving as guides to troops in finding their bearing in the warren that a large part of the Northeast has become, both the reputation of the military and the scouts themselves could have been left untainted. But, out of desperation and without a thought for the implications, the federal and state governments have either encouraged the CJTF to raise the tempo of their involvement in the war to include bearing and using arms or to turn a blind eye to the now armed civilians who have neither been trained in warfare and its complex and variegated doctrines nor schooled in its rules of engagement. Now, alarmingly, the CJTF recruits have tasted blood; it will be difficult henceforth to determine just how far they will go during future challenges, be it in politics or war.

    At a point last week during the battles for Michika and Madagali, border towns between Borno and Adamawa States, Boko Haram insurgents reportedly ran out of ammunition. Curiously, said the reports, soldiers neither pursued the invaders nor arrested them on any significant scale. Instead, the CJTF pursued the insurgents and slaughtered between 80 to 100 Boko Haram militants. If the insurgents ran out of ammunition, then they were most likely killed in cold blood. Did soldiers knowingly turn a blind eye? Or did they think it an inconvenience to pursue and arrest the militants, thereby conveniently leaving the reprisal killings, the crimes against humanity, the violation of the Geneva Convention squarely on the heads of the CJTF? Whatever the answers, a threshold has been reached, and notwithstanding the inordinate pressures under which Nigerian troops fight this war that threatens to embarrass them, answers must be provided and efforts made to tidy up what already looks like a messy war in the Northeast.

    What sets us apart as a country from insurgents and terrorists is our submission to and enamouredness of the rule of law in both peacetime and wartime, a virtue that was nearly undermined by uncoordinated military responses in a number of testy battlegrounds such as Baga, Borno State. The apparently undiscriminating CJTF, who do not appear to owe allegiance to any modern laws of war, and have operated openly in such big towns as Maiduguri itself, must not be allowed to carry out the kind of reprisal killings attributed to them in Madagali and Michika. The military must not give the impression they do not mind the CJTF carrying out the kind of unlawful killings international and domestic laws frown at. Either through CJTF or by any other intermediary, unlawful killings reduce us to the standards and abysmal records of terrorists and extremists.

    But the greatest fear is not just the breaching of the laws of war, or of the excesses battlefield successes against Boko Haram insurgents might lead the CJTF to perpetrate, but how to cope with the future predilections of the vigilance groups who have now tasted blood. There will definitely be consequences for security, law enforcement and stability in the near future as a large body of young men seemed certain to be unleashed on the country after the war, men and vigilance groups for whom killing has become demystified but without any restraining leash of rules and regulations of war. The kind of killings that reportedly took place in Michika and Madagali by vigilance groups early last week must never be countenanced. It was a mistake to arm the civilian scouts; it will be a more egregious mistake to turn a blind eye to their atrocities, irrespective of how Boko Haram insurgents behave or whatever successes the insurgents might achieve.

    The tragedy of war in the Northeast is daunting enough in terms of its dislocating effects, killings and economic devastation; it will be catastrophic to complicate it with untrained and armed groups unleashed into the country’s uncertain future simply because they are invaluable now. And yes, we do have a choice, even the luxury, to determine how this war should be fought, and what standards we must uphold. Our humanity, not to say civilization, demands it.

  • Bode George’s hyperbole

    There will be no end to the silly and infantile ascription of divinity to President Goodluck Jonathan, even from unexpected quarters. A few days ago, a mawkish and inebriated Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, former Governor of Bayelsa State, thinking himself deep and philosophical enough, advised Governor Rotimi Amaechi to grovel before the president in order to propitiate him and his wife. After God, cooed Chief Alamieyeseigha, the president is next, and must not be provoked. It was apparent that, given the way public officials in Nigeria genuflect before the president, governors and other elected officials, the cult of worship and the shrine of political idolatry are flourishing in these parts.

    Though it is admittedly not out of character, Bode George, the fawning and fantasising former governor and top PDP chieftain, has described the name of the president as divine. Goodluck, he concluded in a newspaper interview, was doubtless a divine name on account of the successful completion of the national conference. There are probably many more top politicians and elected governors and councillors who ascribe divinity to their bosses, and consequently plant and water heretical thoughts in their leaders’ minds. There is apparently no telling just how low Nigerians will sink in subjugating themselves, or how far they will go in encouraging their leaders to act like God.

  • 2015: PDP’s Jonathan versus APC’s whom

    2015: PDP’s Jonathan versus APC’s whom

    There is probably no one left in Nigeria who thinks President Goodluck Jonathan will not be running for president in 2015. Not only will he run with flourish irrespective of the rigmarole enacted by the sycophantic Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), he will do so with damnable indifference to  the devastations caused by the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, and with complete contempt for the manner the sect exhibits his leadership failings. There will be no contest for the PDP’s presidential ticket, at least not a contest properly describable as a dignified joust. If anyone would be courageous enough to compete against Dr Jonathan for the coveted party ticket, it would be mimic jousting designed to create the false impression of internal democracy within the self-styled biggest party in Africa.

    With TAN rallies in full swing all over the country, signing up millions of people whom the organizers describe extravagantly as converts to the Jonathan cause, it is already taken for granted that within the PDP, Dr Jonathan is unassailable, and his campaign already in full blast. No one will dare oppose him except to mimic democratic reality, and no one in civil society, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or Nigeria’s servile law enforcement agencies will dare caution him or draw his magisterial attention to how ignobly he subverts the law. The country, in other words, quiescently acknowledges Dr Jonathan as the PDP presidential candidate and his campaign a trifling, inconsequential infraction.

    In the next few weeks, however, all attention will be focused on the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) as it begins its complex permutations to produce a winning presidential ticket. Given Dr Jonathan’s head start, not to say Nigerians’ sniveling propensity to venerate a sitting president, the APC will have the most unenviable task in the world to demolish the cultural strictures that promote sycophantic adulation of those in office. The party will be challenged to hammer out a platform that resonates with hostile or undecided voters, to outfox subservient and compromised law enforcement agencies determined to thwart common sense and humiliate the constitution, and to rein in rebellious regional political warlords whose regicidal instincts lead them to the most atrocious murder of principles and values ever. The APC will not find its task easy at all, nor, given their tendency to fight to the death whenever they disagree, do I envy the short, brutal and merciless uphill journey they must make in less than five months before the next polls.

    Compared with the conservative PDP, which appeared to have been born into power, and whose leading apparatchiks seem to think it is born to rule, the less obsequious APC, now increasingly looking like an outsider in the national political war, will want to ride upon a revolutionary manifesto to overthrow the old order. The party will not be discomfited by the discordance with which of many of its conservative but leading lights uncharacteristically flaunt a radical manifesto, nor will it allow the fratricide going on within its ranks to slow it down. It will expect that its hope of achieving victory in any coming encounter with the ruling party will triumph over its feeling of massive political incapacitation. The PDP is united by its long stay in office, and the spoils of office that cement that unity. On the other hand, the APC’s long stay out of office has become demoralizing, causing its leaders to fret endlessly and to fritter away its strength in meaningless, persistent and debilitating quarrels.

    Indeed, the most pressing task before the APC will be how to select a winning ticket from a political milieu that has morphed considerably into an unrecognizable form. Tom Ikimi, the chairmanship aspirant who recently left the opposition party, reveals that the APC anchors its hope of taking the presidency on winning the Southwest and Northwest votes in 2015. But contrary to his sinister and cynical tone, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that calculation, especially if the party thinks the votes from those zones are sufficient for victory. However, the calculation may be based on a wrong assessment of the character and cultures of the country’s geopolitical zones. The Southwest, for instance, used to be single-mindedly progressive, and its definition of progressivism not contentious. Today, the Southwest’s political culture, which used to be fairly distinguishable from the rest of the country both for its idiosyncratic progressivism and the firm values and principles that sustain it, has moved much closer to the national mean of general and enervating pragmatism.

    Worse, even the Southwest political elite is now fractured into contentious parts by internal schisms, some of them caused by nothing more than an insular struggle for regional dominance. Shorn of the principles and ennobling values that had defined its politics, religion and culture, nay its very existence, for more than a century, the region has become distressingly susceptible to the riotous application of religious parochialism. More alarmingly, a sizable faction of the region’s power elite, as demonstrated by Olu Falae, Yinka Odumakin, Ayo Adebanjo, among others, remains dangerously trapped in the bitter, vengeful and anachronistic politics of the past, especially their dichotomous view of northern feudalism versus southern liberalism. Yet, the iconic Obafemi Awolowo made a last ditch attempt in the closing years of his political life to bridge the so-called ideological divide between the North and the Southwest, to find a common ground between the so-called northern feudalism and south western liberalism.

    If the APC is to make progress and unite the Southwest behind the opposition party’s worldview, it will have to appeal to the voters directly, over the heads of the scaremongering and parochial factional elite that now holds the region in thrall. The party will also have to draw attention to the region’s culture of accommodation, its liberal spirit of tolerating other perspectives — be it religious, political or cultural — and then advertise the existence of a richer, better future outside the dogmas and insularity of the past. There are indeed shared affinities between the Northwest and the Southwest, and these affinities are not only shared with other regions; they in fact do not preclude either accommodation or rapprochement with those other regions. Going by the outcome of the national conference, and the insistence of some members of the Southwest elite that the recommendations be peremptorily implemented without recourse to either an enabling law or the National Assembly, it is feared that even the jurisprudential legacy .of the region has been corroded by emotions and long interactions with the lawless propensity of the Jonathan government.

    In picking Dr Jonathan’s opponent, the APC will have to ensure it carries along a sizable part of the Southwest, almost the entire Northeast and Northwest, in spite of the ongoing insurgency in parts of the North, and a healthy share of the North-Central. The South-South is largely out of reach, except a part of the ticket comes from there, and the Southeast seems all but lost on account of its emotive commitment to the patronizing Dr Jonathan. These permutations, as well as a clear appreciation of the changing political culture of the Southwest and an accurate sense of what needs to be done, will closely influence the APC’s choice of presidential candidate and running mate.

    Indeed, by now, the APC must have realized that it cannot hope to fight the ineffective but paradoxically entrenched Dr Jonathan without a more than disproportionate application of unorthodox politics. Its choice of standard-bearer must be revolutionary, unexpected, forward-looking, and transcendental. The party has only a few weeks to do this, and correspondingly fewer weeks to sell him. That candidate must, therefore, have no baggage to tie down the party’s resources, and must suffer no handicap to make the party fritter away its time and goodwill.  The APC may have a few leaders enamoured of brinkmanship; now they must draw upon that facility in a chess move certain to determine whether the party survives or dies, whether it succeeds or fails, whether it has a future or is crushed by the weight of its incandescent past. Now more than ever, it must take a bold and radical step, perhaps the most remarkable ever, to make a solid political statement. Will it? Can it?

    I think the party is faced with two main choices: to play safe by hugging the past, or to take a gamble with futuristic daring. Either choice is certain to have implications for Nigeria’s political future: whether we would slip into one-party rule and fascism projected deliberately or inadvertently by the Jonathan government; or whether we would begin the process of national renewal. The choice, I believe, lies between former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, the taciturn, principled and doughty retired army general, who is sadly misperceived and misunderstood by a large swathe of the South and North-Central; and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, who is not even yet a member of the party, but could, should he join the party, represent its future and hope. If the APC honestly recognizes that most of the factors expected to shape national politics and influence the electorate’s voting pattern in 2015 have been concocted by Dr Jonathan and the PDP, such as religion and ethnicity, then it will have no illusion what its responses must be. Gen Buhari is probably the best man for these trying times, but best men seldom win elections anywhere except in dire, unusual circumstances. In Nigeria, where voters lack the competence to read the signs of the times, it is even worse. The APC will have to gauge whether the fanatical support Gen Buhari attracts from parts of the North is worth the risk of alienating the untrusting remainder of the country.

    On the other hand, everyone knows Hon Tambuwal’s heart and soul are in the APC. If he can overcome the frightful parliamentary fallout of defecting to the opposition, he will probably open the eyes of the APC to more tantalizing political possibilities. Not only is he unencumbered by ethnic and religious baggage, he is modern, intelligent, a consensus builder with cross-over appeal, has a mind of his own, and is principled and loyal to causes, and much more. For its sake and the sake of the country, I hope the APC does not rule out Hon Tambuwal. This is the time for the party to do a strategic rethinking of its methods and ideas; a time to abandon the staid and stultifying formalism of the past; a time to let former Vice President Abubakar Atiku exit the presidential race with all the maturity and dignity commensurate with his political stature; and a time to let Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano bide his time for a future when his stature and exposure would stand him in good stead.

    This indeed is time for a miracle; APC had better furnish the country one. For every democrat, every Nigerian, every patriot who has the instinctive feel of the danger Nigeria faces with a government heading towards tyranny, one-party rule and unexampled impotence and incompetence knows it is of capital importance to deny Dr Jonathan four more years of misrule.

  • Boko Haram, ISIS caliphates a continuation of history

    he world is stupefied by the declaration of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria by extremist Sunni militants. The Islamic State (IS), as it is now called, is headed by the self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who has triggered one of the most brutal modern day repressions over a territory that spans portions of northern Syria and northern Iraq. Perhaps inspired by the IS, and nostalgic over the numerous caliphates that had made waves throughout history, leaders of Nigeria’s militant Boko Haram sect have also declared a caliphate covering towns in Borno State, and still expanding.

    Starting essentially from the Umayyads and right through the Abbasids, Fatimids and down to perhaps the most extensive of them all, the Ottomans (1453-1924), the caliphate idea has since the seventh century remained an inherent part of the Muslim world. IS and Boko Haram caliphates are a mere recrudescence of an enduring idea. The Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903) is the Nigerian equivalent of the caliphates that swept through the Middle East and Europe between 661 and 1924. It is recalled that the setting up of a caliphate was the primary goal of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. Though it is not certain IS and Boko Haram would be allowed to take root, their formation, no matter how brief, is a reminder of the nostalgia that accompanies the idea. More importantly, it reminds us that that idea is unlikely to die for a long time. Modern caliphates reiterate the continuation of history.

    But more spectacularly, the fragile Boko Haram Caliphate, which some have described as incipient Kanuri nationalism, and the more expansive IS should remind public officials, state actors and statesmen, not to say Nigerian leaders who insist Nigerian unity is non-negotiable, that no national border is either inviolate or permanent. In time, and as a historical inevitability, borders will still be redrawn, and states, whether in Europe, America or Asia and elsewhere, are doubtless still in formation. If Nigeria is to last as a country, its leaders must act with the highest degree of responsibility required to sustain and stabilize the polity, as well as demonstrate knowledge of statecraft. The Jonathan presidency demonstrates clearly how horribly remiss Nigerian leaders have become in their responsibilities, and how in particular, by his actions, Dr Jonathan endangers everyone, including his predecessors.