The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

Crimean crisis as a modern anachronism

It is difficult not to contemplate Ukraine’s Crimean crisis with an eerie sense of déjà vu. Jostling for strategic or religious influence in the Holy Land, Crimea and the Black Sea in the mid-19th century, Western powers in alliance with the weakened Ottoman Empire took on Russia in a bitter war that caused the death of more than 350,000 people and stymied Russia’s 200 years attempt to expand southwards towards the warm water trading and naval ports of the Black Sea around the Crimea. The Western powers alliance of Britain, France and Sardinia achieved the aim of halting Russian territorial expansion, securing Britain’s ambition in the eastern Mediterranean as well as gaining for France the control of the rights of Catholics in the Holy Land. Christened the Crimean War or the Eastern War, it was fought between 1853 and 1856, and was hallmarked by tactical and logistical incompetence memorialised in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s narrative poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Today, borders may have been redrawn, and the reasons for disagreement may have changed considerably from religious to strategic and ethnic/nationalist, the general outlook of the conflict between the West and Russia on that peninsula has, however, ossified, in spite of the intervening variables of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s inroads into Eastern Europe. Crimea itself, the reason for the dangerous flexing of muscles going on between Russia on one hand and the West and Ukraine on the other hand, has the unenviable history of being occupied by many powers, and its ethnic pastiche altered often catastrophically, as the 1944 wholesale deportation of the Crimean Tatars showed. By the time the Tatars returned in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians had become the dominant ethnic group in Crimea, constituting about 60 percent of the population. Tatar- and Ukrainian-speaking peoples constitute about 13 and 24 percent respectively.

Russia, however, never really stopped coveting Crimea principally because of the warm ports of the Black Sea where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based. It also has a declared policy of defending Russian-speaking people wherever they are, as it claimed to have done in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 during the Russo-Georgian War. It was against this background that the Ukrainian revolution was set, a revolution primarily designed to bring the country into the orbit of the European Union (EU), economically and politically. The revolution however, had the unintended consequence of accentuating the dichotomy between the Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking parts of the country. So, when on February 23, the Ukrainian parliament abolished the law of languages of minorities, which Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Russia itself felt was provocative, the stage for intervention was set. It no longer mattered that in 1953, the Ukrainian-born Soviet Leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had ceded Crimea to Ukraine, nor did it matter that Russia’s intervention violated international law. Nor, still, did it matter that the intervention was certain to draw the ire of the European Union, attract sanctions and engender a massive boycott of the G-8 summit expected to hold in the Winter Olympic city of Sochi on June 4.

While Russia has legitimate military concerns in the Crimea, it is difficult to excuse the invasion of the peninsula, or connive at the desperate intervention in Ukraine. Though the trigger for the February revolution was the EU deal the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, refused to sign due to Russian pressure, it is unproductive to analyse the Crimean crisis from the standpoint of one’s geopolitical preferences. Whether one supports or opposes Western powers and their values hardly matters as much as the legal, moral and political interpretation of international law, particularly the principle of non-intervention. Russia doubtless made efforts to influence Ukraine to remain within its orbit by offering juicy economic deals and loans, but the efforts failed to bear fruit. Hence the resort to force. But In the long run, force is more likely to poison relationships between the two countries than create atmosphere for friendship and trust. Given the ethnic composition of Crimea, the chances of future destabilisation and violent resistance cannot be ruled out should Russia annex the peninsula. Importantly, too, Russian insistence that it reserved the right to intervene wherever Russians outside of Russia faced a bad deal is a throwback to the destabilising nationalism that pushed the world into wars and conflicts in the 20th century. It will be recalled that Germany under Adolf Hitler used the pretext of the maltreatment of Germans in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to invade that Eastern European country. That fateful step pushed the world into war and cost the more than three million Germans living there to be whittled down to less than 160,000 after the war. It would be strange to use the German-speaking peoples of Switzerland and Austria as pretext for an invasion in this modern era.

There is, however, the possibility that Russia may be using the occupation of Crimea as a bargaining tool to win more concessions and gain firmer assurances of the neutrality of Ukraine. In other words, if Ukraine does not love Russia, it must not love the EU. And in the face of expanding NATO influence and incursion in Eastern Europe, Russia is determined that the line be drawn in the sands of Ukraine, as it drew the line in South Ossetia by balkanising Georgia during the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. But overall, for Russia to achieve enduring foreign policy goals and rebuild itself into a more durable superpower, it may have to find ways of concocting a worldview infinitely more appealing to its neighbours than it has been for centuries. This it can do by either designing an attractive ethical core for its foreign and domestic policies or by coaxing neighbouring and far-flung entities into its orbit through economic, social, cultural and other relations. In the long run, as history shows, including the history of Crimea itself, force does not prove as capable and adequate as more novel and indirect measures in creating lasting impressions, attraction and love in weaker or vassal states.

March 16, 2014
Boko Haram: have we learnt any lesson to end the war?

Like most other policies, including the flip-flop on rice import ban and the automotive policy, there is little debate, not to talk of deep, intellectual introspection accompanying the Goodluck Jonathan approach to fighting Boko Haram and terrorism in general. We are conversant with the endless presidential dithering on the menace, but finally, it seems, events and circumstances have compelled the government to stand and fight, instead of yielding, as its natural instincts always dictated. Horrifyingly, however, the government and the populace have decided to do nothing but fanatically fight the terrorist sect almost to the total exclusion of other measures. There is no discussion going on with the sect, as now seems obvious. And there is nothing beyond the trashed panel reports on the sect to show that both the government and the military have a minimal understanding of the sect’s social, political and ideological underpinnings.

This column has always maintained that the sect should be fought with single-minded resolve. But it has also always reminded the government of the need to address the factors that predisposed the Northeast in particular to the revolt, and urged the military to appreciate the kind of tactics required to defeat the sect and other revolts like it. I once reminded the military after the Baga, Borno State debacle that it must begin to furnish itself with the requisite knowledge needed to combat the multifarious challenges to stability and peace in the modern era. The country’s military doctrine, not to say our foreign policy doctrine, should be thoroughly revamped and modernised to take care of modern exigencies.

But given Dr Jonathan’s often inexplicable silence on the war and his reluctance to empathise with the victims, as well as the military’s sometimes exaggerated opinion of its understanding of the sect’s methods and what should constitute the rights and liberties of enemy combatants and victims of the war, it appears nothing is being done to ensure that when the war ends, the right lessons have been learnt and future reoccurrence made nearly impossible. There are a number of elements that show no lesson has been learnt. First, is the all-important matter of justice. Not only has the trial of the policemen who extra-judicially murdered the sect’s former leader, Mohammed Yusuf, been clumsily handled, even the trial judge recently threatened to discharge the suspects on account of state/prosecution apathy. The government is truly apathetic to justice.

Second, all those who contributed to the impoverishment of the region and other parts of the country continue to underplay their guilt and complicity. To show how distracted the federal government is, it managed to allocate two billion naira to address the devastation in the Boko Haram region. And third, and of course very significantly, the Northern political class that inherited the political mantle of the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, without his wisdom, restraint and accommodation, have shown absolutely no contrition for perpetrating decades of religious discrimination that fostered the fanaticism being witnessed today. It was obvious to most Nigerians that they were at first silent over the sect’s bestiality, before waking up to the reality that extremism of any kind and within or outside any faith is absolutely intolerable. Do Northern leaders now have this clear understanding, learning, as it were, from the experiences of Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, among others?

The military has appeared to find its teeth in facing up to the Boko Haram madness. Hopefully the cessation of hostilities will not morph into scattered and intermittent suicide attacks on selected targets such as take place in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and now China. However, the factors that sparked and now feed the war can only be denied fuel if the injustices and short-sightedness that serve as its lifeblood are eliminated. Could we trust the federal government and the political elite to take the revolutionary steps needed to remake the northern society and build it into a beautiful tapestry of heterogeneousness, the kind conceived and administered by the late Sardauna of Sokoto? Could we, indeed, trust those saddled with the onerous responsibility of ruling a large and complex society like Nigeria to embrace reason rather than emotions in administering the affairs of the country?

I have my doubts. For, even after Boko Haram is defeated, the absence of a remade and re-engineered society, one anchored on the right mix of liberal values, could yet trigger sporadic outbreaks of sectarian and ethnic wars that may ultimately doom the polity. This is the time for the philosopher-king, if we can find one.

March 16, 2014
Is anyone inciting the military?

Last week, the Director of Defence Information , Maj Gen Chris Olukolade, accused politicians of making remarks capable of inciting troops battling the Boko Haram insurgency to mutiny. He did not expatiate. But he threatened that the authorities could invoke relevant provisions in the State of Emergency Act to bring offenders to book.

Even if it is true that anyone is inciting troops, the job of cautioning or prosecuting offenders should be left to the Minister of Defence to handle. The way he spoke and the content of his speech, however, show that the military rule mindset has not left the officers.

If the military is frustrated about its inability to quell the revolt, so are we. We are even more frustrated and worried, and fear that the military has not found the right mix of strategies and tactics to deal the insurgency an effective blow. Had we not criticised the military in its relationship with civilians in Baga, for instance, the improvement in psychological operations (Psy-Ops) that followed and won the populace over to their side would not have occurred.

The military top brass must appreciate public worries and find ways of reassuring and conciliating them. Threats are counter-productive. The army general should know that threatening or arresting the so-called inciters is like opening another major, needless and unwinnable front in the war against terror. Gen Olukolade should brief the public on the progress of the war and leave the minister the task of winning over the public and muffling criticisms and complaints.

March 16, 2014
APC road map: brilliant piece of politicking, but…

All of a sudden, politics has become cerebral. With the unveiling on Thursday of the All Progressives Congress’ social contract with Nigeria, in which the leading opposition party spells out in detail how it would govern the country and what the fundamental underpinnings of that government would be, it is hard not to acknowledge that we have finally reached a political watershed. No matter what anybody does now, and notwithstanding the bellyaching and proclivities of the ruling party, political platforms and campaigns must henceforth acquire sophistication and depth. I confess that the APC surprised me. It was well publicised that the party would make some kind of public presentation of a Code of Ethics and what can be properly described as a manifesto, but few expected the exercise to rise above the routine and stultifying level the country had become accustomed to in the past few decades or so.

Divided into many segments, the presentation showed coherence, class, style and consistency. The organisers’ sense of timing was fluidly dynamic and business-like, accompanied by the sort of discipline seldom realised in these parts, no matter how hard the effort. There were a few transgressions to be sure, like the poetic rendition the organisers, not the lady who did the presentation, didn’t manage with maturity, but on the whole, I was shocked by the modernity of the entire exercise. The segments were in fact so finely synchronised and showed depth and undisputed grasp of issues that I thought the whole thing ventured so daringly into uncharted and unsustainable territories. I half expected them to flounder at any moment, but they didn’t.

The speakers were themselves quite exceptional, to a man. When the founders of the party spoke, they did so with gravitas, absolutely shorn of the overbearing carriage and grammatical lunacy that sullied and undid the politics of the past. The progressives had been accused of one-man show, both in the distant and recent past. But on Thursday, the APC carried out a dress rehearsal of the egalitarianism, fraternity and equality they promised would be the credo of their party. No one dominated proceedings; and no one was an underdog. Tom Ikimi wandered a bit in his contribution, struggling for the rousing snobbery that lathered his Third Republic politics, but in general he made his point stoically. Audu Ogbeh, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Bisi Akande and Atiku Abubakar spoke firmly and precisely of the foundations of the party and their hopes for Nigeria. And the laconic Mohammadu Buhari spoke tersely of what APC hoped to accomplish.

There was quite some excitement when the 16 progressive governors addressed the audience. Rochas Okorocha of Imo spiritedly set the tone. Some of the governors addressed the cortex of the audience, and others spoke to their midriff. But they never lost sight of the need to inspire and, in a quaint way, even to rouse. It is hard not to imagine what great things the lot could do if the leadership of the country fortuitously passed into their hands. I doubt whether any other party for now can surpass them intellectually and in political drama. Somehow, too, the party managed to pull off the segment on the 10-point programme presentation. Not only was the content coherent and remarkable, even by international standards, the impassioned discussants, including the boisterously lovable rascal Dino Melaye and the implacable Nasir el-Rufai were classical in their performances.

I thought the keynote lecture ought to have been delivered by a politician of great standing and rhetorical flamboyance, someone with a Clintonian flourish or the mesmerising profundity of the lawyerly Obama. But the APC gave the assignment to the dour and gritty Oby Ezekwesili, who though was brilliant and courageous, did not deliver her excellent ideas with an eye on politics or the excitement of a soapbox artist. Dr Ezekwesili needed to be patient with her audience and carry them along with the sufferance of an mesmerising politician. But when she appeared to be heckled at a point during her lecture she gestured and snapped, and was even impatient and reproachful, thereby creating an anticlimactic dissonance on the APC’s great moment.

What is, however, most remarkable about the APC presentation last Thursday is not even the content of the party’s 10-point road map, as innovative, comprehensive and daring as it is, or the calibre and depth of the party’s leading functionaries. What is most remarkable is the party’s overall show of political iconoclasm, its exemplification, if not embodiment, of new political dynamics anchored on clear, coherent thinking, energetic perspectives and great hopes for the future. The party’s presentation is also indicative of the new politics that is afoot, one in which a truly pan-Nigerian party not encumbered by ethnic and sectional bigotry can be formed and efficiently run. The greatest challenge they will face, however, is how such a party without a strongman as it were, a party whose strength is both its diversity and new egalitarian foundation, can deploy its new-found democratic apparatus to elect candidates capable of winning elections, especially at the presidential level. The APC must be prepared to resolve the conundrum of how to combine its remarkable manifesto and new identity with the ability to elect a winning ticket. The outcome is not always inevitable.

Given the party’s new form, it is no longer possible for it to engage in candidate selections, at least not substantially, nor visibly. It has a new life, a new enthusiasm, a new conviction about politics and about democracy in particular. It is already soaring in its own fancies, determined to replicate the best attributes of Western democracies. It is therefore expected to submit itself to the rigours of the quintessential democratic processes, from ward level to the convention floor, complete with signature campaign frills and lofty speeches, far better than what it displayed last week in Abuja. But when they subject themselves to the demands and strictures of the democratic process, would they have the assurance that the process can adapt to and accommodate the shifting mores of the land, which mores have ethnic, geopolitical and religious configurations and implications?

If APC leaders will be honest, and if they are as eager as some of us to see a new party in power, they must be entertaining some doubts already about the competence of the new processes they have triggered to produce such outcomes as would take the party into Aso Villa. I myself entertain some doubts, for as the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States sometimes show, not to talk of the Conservative and Labour parties in the United Kingdom, parties at times fail woefully in cobbling together the right platform for victory or producing the right candidates. No matter how brilliant the APC’s manifesto, and no matter how suave and democratic its intra-party processes, it is not guaranteed that it can elect a winning ticket; nor that its proboscises are sharp and sensitive enough to read the country’s mood correctly.

One thing that emerged from Thursday’s event in Abuja, however, is that the party has deftly wrong-footed the PDP and showed it up as a political dinosaur. But I have confidence that the PDP will respond forcefully and perhaps violently, for it appears to me to be a party which, in structure and philosophy, is dedicated to strong-arm tactics and is absolutely incapable of the dynamism, intellectualism and exhibitionism so positively and entertainingly displayed by the opposition party last Thursday.

March 9, 2014
No surprise Nigeria stagnated for decades

Much more than the mileage the Jonathan presidency hoped to achieve with the emblazoning photograph of past Nigerian rulers wearing their medals and displaying their centennial award certificates late last month, the picture actually tells a far more poignant and iconic story. There were seven of them: Abdulsalami Abubakar, Muhammadu Buhari, Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida and Ernest Shonekan. Smack in the middle was, of course, President Goodluck Jonathan himself. Given his predilection for sham celebrations, it is surprising he did not seize upon the same argument of the centenary to award himself a certificate of honour. In any case, Dr Jonathan was the only one in the pictures published on March 1 newspapers not brandishing a certificate. Others dutifully wore their medals and/or displayed their certificates, thereby indicating their concurrence with the queer and questionable philosophy behind the centenary as well as the disgraceful rational for picking the honourees.

The photograph, though powerful and resonating, nevertheless tells the very depressing story of futile uniformity and lack of rigour. It tells the story of former rulers whose unquestioning perspective and fondness for the meretricious led them to embrace a project as wasteful as it is truly and totally mendacious. None of the seven questioned the ideological basis for the centenary, nor joined issues with the financially oblique accounting system that made the celebrations possible. None of them was politically conscious enough to appreciate the centenary’s distortionary effects on our history and identities. There was none of them with enough sagacity to disprove the base and conflicting logic that underlined the compilation of the list of honourees, thus indicating that the former rulers were insensitive to their own individual legacies and unable to disambiguate legacy as a word and concept.

The group photograph of former rulers should illustrate the power and glory of Nigeria, of our best men and leaders, of the rich custodians of our politics, culture and essence. Instead, the group photograph illustrated something so surrealistic it is a miracle the country has not collapsed under the weight of their collective obscurantism. They had no idea what our history says, of how we were humiliated and traumatised with a lasting injury by colonialism, of how Lugard’s foundational rule and years of self-misrule combined to misshape our values and enthrone a vicious form of mental and economic slavery. It was therefore okay by them to celebrate, and to carry out that sickening exercise in company with one another, the liar with the perjurer, the tyrant with the murderer, the inept with the experimentalist.

The photograph inferentially tells the numbing story of how and why the country decayed so badly for decades, and by their admission, now needs revolutionary work to salvage, if indeed, as one of them said, it can still be salvaged. If they could not question Dr Jonathan’s frivolity and rebuff it, if they did not understand the history of the country they led for decades, and if they were unable to share its pains and sorrows, how indeed could they fashion brilliant and workable plans for its development and greatness? How could they make it the pride of the black race? To participate in Dr Jonathan’s revelry, they must have gone to extraordinary lengths to muffle their consciences, and to shut the tap of remorse which a clear mind and ample soul sometimes lead a decent man and patriot to demonstrate.

The photograph of the eight men reminds us how our country was ruined. Gowon dishonoured his word and rendered it impotent; Shagari’s stolidity and indulgence clogged the national arteries until we choked; Buhari had little or no appreciation of the rights and freedoms of man, and how man is ennobled by these attributes; Babangida was the inappropriate watershed between the age of innocence and the age of vice, as he gave birth to the worst in us; and Shonekan was the bemused and amoral inheritor of a stolen legacy. Abubakar’s misguided and messianic reign produced the highly schizoid Obasanjo who had, and still has, no capacity for differentiating between truth and falsehood. And Obasanjo archetypically begat meddlesomeness in such a manner that the country’s ruin was complete under his predecessors.

Yes, it was just one simple photograph published in newspapers. But, alas, it told a million sad stories, unknown to the former rulers who lined up quizzically for the photograph on February 28, and perhaps unfeeling.

March 9, 2014
Sham honours and centenary

In a lengthy but uninspiring speech last Wednesday to mark Nigeria’s centenary celebrations, President Goodluck Jonathan indulged one of his curious and often contradictory theological explanations for the country’s nationhood. According to him, “I have often expressed the conviction that our amalgamation was not a mistake. While our union may have been inspired by considerations external to our people; I have no doubt that we are destined by God Almighty to live together as one big nation, united in diversity.” It is an incredible claim to make, an unfounded and annoying political theology and falsehood. Historians will be aghast that in this modern era, when time and space no longer circumscribe knowledge, any leader could still make spurious and anti-intellectual claims about the dynamics of history.

Had Dr Jonathan been president of the Soviet Union before its breakup in 1991, he would have sworn to the country’s destiny, attributed it to God, and threatened campaigners of separatism with death and destruction. Whoever wrote the speech for Dr Jonathan must suffer from an acute lack of rigour and understanding in the distasteful attempt to imbue Nigeria with an implacable and false messianic destiny. If God destined the existence of Czechoslovakia in 1918, who then destined its breakup in 1993? And when the country was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who destined the existence of that empire in 1867, the excision of Czechoslovakia from the empire in 1918, and the split of the Central European country into Czech and Slovakia?

As far as theology goes, the Book of Daniel in Chapter 2 discusses the fearsome dynamics of world history through Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue of four metals representing the morphing of major powers from one kingdom to another over centuries. Babylon fell, Medes and Persia also fell; so did Greece and Rome. Nigeria, which comprised many kingdoms and empires, was put together in 1914. Any historian of modest understanding knows it will not remain so forever. Borders will change, powers will change, indeed everything will change. Dr Jonathan quotes God casually without understanding Him or the forces of nature and history, as if God Himself is opposed to change.

But beyond Dr Jonathan’s poor understanding of history and his sometimes superficial analysis of theological doctrines, there is also the matter of his poor grasp of general issues. When the idea of celebrating Nigeria’s centenary was first mooted, this column took the government to task, denouncing the effort as a poor misreading of Nigerian history and a lack of political consciousness. We may not be able to rewrite history, Palladium argued, but neither the selfish motive behind the amalgamation, which Dr Jonathan cursorily glossed over in his Wednesday address, nor the even crueller story of colonialism that led to appalling mistreatment of our peoples and distortion of our values and society deserved celebration.

However, to demonstrate the irredeemable vacuity of the Jonathan presidency, its frivolity and waste, and its appalling lack of a sense of proportion, it produced a list of 100 people, living or dead, saint or sinner, tyrant and murderers on whom to confer centenary honours. And horror of all horrors, leading the list are our former overlords, the Queen of England, Lord Lugard and Lady Lugard; the first a representative of the thieving and conniving metropole; the second a highly contemptuous and quite cynical colonial master whose deplorable objectives ignored our pride and feelings; and the third, the idle consort of the field-based colonial master. On the occasion of Nigeria’s centenary, the largest black nation on earth deemed it appropriate to honour those who raped it. Such lack of a sense of history is nowhere to seek. Imagine the United States in 1876 honouring the British monarch of the day and, say, General Thomas Gage who commanded the colonial army in the American War of Independence.

It is depressing to live in these times, especially under the Jonathan presidency. The world laughs at us, ridicules us, and shakes their heads. I wonder what will be going on in the mind of the Queen of England herself, an intelligent woman who should naturally expect us to painfully endure the mocking vestiges of colonialism, such as the Commonwealth, rather than celebrate them, not to talk of conferring honours on their perpetrators. When did we decay intellectually to the point of producing a list of honorees that included our tormentors?

Contained in the list are our own homegrown tyrants and tormentors, including the hedonistic Gen Sani Abachja, and a host of other truce breakers and constitution destroyers, people who ordinarily should be completely ostracised from civilised society and polite circles. Knowing that Nigerians will stare at them in disbelief, the government has offered the incredulous argument that Gen Abacha merited top honours because he did wonders with the economy at a time of great scarcity. The statistics of general economic improvements cannot be controverted, I admit. But the general also murdered, stole, schemed madly, needlessly and ferociously to feed his paranoia, and also destroyed values on a scale that beggars belief. Whatever good he did with the economy is more than counterbalanced and vitiated by the huge scale of his enduring malfeasances.

Like all other honours Nigeria dishes out periodically, many of which have now become completely meaningless, the Jonathan presidency perfunctorily included in the list all past heads of state, three-quarters of whom undermined the constitution to seize power, and nearly all of whom recorded no meaningful industrial and political advancement for us to remember them by. Yet, Dr Jonathan last Friday even moaned that he found it arduous to pick the 100 honorees from a list of 500 candidates thrust under his nose. The 100 is disputed, let alone the 500. Much worse, the idea of a centenary itself could only have been conceived by usurpers with house negro mentality.

Dr Jonathan’s pathetic list of course included eminent sons and daughters of Nigeria. Unfortunately for him, however, were they to be alive, they would have violently declined to be listed among so many villains, not to talk of being honoured by a government that is unenlightened, misdirected, autocratic and clearly unpatriotic. Would a Chinua Achebe who all his life spurned their honour, and a Fela Anikulapo Kuti who rebelled against the suffocating madness that afflicted and still afflicts the country have welcomed the wasteful and inappropriate centenary honours? Would a Gani Fawehinmi in his grave not curse any family member purporting to represent him in collecting the honours? And what of the paradox of this needless mafficking at a time of great national mourning and angst represented by the mass murder embarked upon by Boko Haram and aggravated by religious, ethnic and political bigots of all shapes and sizes?

It is not lost on this columnist that scions of some famous families gladly and heedlessly accepted the honours. They are entitled to their imprudence. The sensible among us must, however, understand that those scions accepted the honours more as a consolation to themselves than to their illustrious forebears, and perhaps because they needed to nurture their political and economic interests at a time when ideological lines have become dangerously blurred. Their behaviour is in fact a reflection of how precariously those scions have stopped representing the values and principles their famous fathers and mothers stood for, and how far they have veered away from the struggles those patriarchs and matriarchs waged for a better society.

I note, of course, that the Soyinkas and Achebes simply ignored the charlatans, and the Fawehinmis and Kutis viciously lampooned the freak show artists and political contortionists. Alive, they proved it was not worth dignifying the nonsensical celebration with even a rejection of the honours. And dead, they proved that their legatees not only inherited the genes of their departed patriarchs, but that they have also imbibed the values that shaped and ennobled their struggles over the decades. Nigerians must thank this defiant set for giving us hope that all is not lost, and that whether by gentle deliberateness or by brutal accident, perhaps even a mutation, this country will someday fall under the hypnosis and influence of sensible leaders and people.

The Jonathan presidency is stubborn and imperious. Once their impressionable minds were set on that needless centenary distraction, there was nothing anyone could do to persuade them they were embarking on a foolish adventure. They have had their way, after voting taxpayers’ money to indulge themselves. They have refused to tell us how much they spent, and the National Assembly couldn’t be bothered. However, were our image as a people and our race as blacks not involved in that atrocious display of wealth and folly by this government, why, of course, it would not have mattered one bit whether they celebrated the transatlantic slave trade and conferred honours on the leading slave-holding and slave-torturing families of that era. For no matter how much you proved to this insensitive government that slave trade presaged the colonialism they now celebrate 100 years after and that colonialism in turn helped foster a racist ideology from which the continent still suffers, they are too hard of hearing to care.

March 2, 2014
Senate comes out of their reactionary closet

Last week, I indicated in this place that the Nigerian Senate had unashamedly become a unit of the Jonathan presidency. I was led to that conclusion by the way senators spoke and behaved over the controversial removal of the CBN governor, not because any of them openly confessed to loving the unparliamentary tactics of hanging Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. But since I made what I at first feared was a sweeping conclusion, ranking senators have openly and proudly acknowledged their attachments to the Jonathan presidency, an identification they have neither bothered to conceal nor explain nor even anchor on any reasonable foundation.

We have both Senators Enyinnaya Abaribe and Victor Ndoma-Egba to thank for opening our eyes. If anyone should say Jonathan did not act within his powers in suspending Mallam Sanusi, argued Senator Abaribe disdainfully, they are making ‘spurious and self-serving’ arguments. Quite right, deadpanned Senator Ndoma-Egba combatively and with a barely disguised hint of exasperation. “Senator Abaribe is the official spokesman of the Senate,” he summed up. He obviously offered this reiteration for effect, in case anyone thought the jaunty senator spoke only his mind and not that of the majority of the Senate. Now that we know where the Senate stands, and how self-assuredly they array themselves against common sense and the people, it is up to us in the next polls to throw them out or watch our democracy get sucked into the autocratic vortex being created by the likes of Dr Jonathan.

The Sanusi affair is of course not the first time the Senate has acted with reactionary zeal and insouciance. They worked hand in glove with the president on the budget and confirmation controversy, and they angrily endorsed the president’s position on the Rivers State affair, even to the extent of turning a blind eye on the indignity meted out to one of their own, Senator Magnus Ibe. At first I thought there was no end to the Senate’s conservatism; now I think there is no end to its reactionary proclivity.

March 2, 2014
Museveni on homosexuals

Both President Goodluck Jonathan and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda are generally classed as homophobic. But while the former has tended to avoid being pinned down openly on the issue, which both countries’ parliaments have passed laws on, the latter has been eager to place himself dialectically on record. And, boy, was he articulate on CNN last week! It does not matter which side of the divide you are, as far as polemics go, Mr Museveni put his arguments together cogently, logically and fearlessly. I admire such people, who whether they are wrong or right always have the courage of their convictions. We already know where he stands, but could the much less intrepid and less eloquent Dr Jonathan please put himself on record verbally in the noisome controversy?

March 2, 2014
Jonathan’s impunity

For the duration of his hyperactive and fairly controversial tenure, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi never quite won my unalloyed support for some of his critical policies as Central Bank of Nigeria governor. Under him, for instance, the CBN’s acts of charity rankled in many regards. His banking reform measures were also implemented with a flamboyance and uppityness that left me wondering whether his unduly feisty approach to banks and banking regulations was not more appropriate for tinseltown than for apex banking. Then he often talked nineteen to the dozen, when restraint and reticence would do, and projected himself as the ultimate Nigerian iconoclast, a sort of business and class egalitarian indifferent to the accoutrements of the wealthy as he was not incommoded by the lowliness of the classless.

Indeed, as some elements of the report prepared against him by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) indicated, Mallam Sanusi, who was brusquely suspended a few days ago by President Goodluck Jonathan, might be inadequate in some respects and needed to painstakingly convince his traducers his integrity was not sullied by any identifiable form of financial and regulatory brashness. Perhaps he still will. But whatever might be said of the suspended CBN governor, no one could accuse of him of a lack of dignity and character. I had reservations about some of his policies as CBN governor, but I never stopped respecting him for what he stood for and how pluckily he fought for what he believed. He called his soul his own and displayed a robustness of principles seldom seen in public office in these parts.

In contrast to the dour integrity shown by Mallam Sanusi in public office, Dr Jonathan has handled power most obliquely and impiously, if not with the irritating absolutism of a monarch. The president claims to have suspended Mallam Sanusi and describes the process as innocuously routine, but everything surrounding the suspension indicated the dismissive finality of a sack. Not only was the former CBN boss removed, his temporary and permanent replacements were hastily named with a temerity that reeked of political insensitivity and unconstitutionality, and with such absolute lack of grace and class that leaves one wondering how it was possible for Dr Jonathan to demean the Nigerian presidency to such level of pettiness.

Again, in contrast to his dithering over the proven allegations against former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, and in consonance with the subterfuge evident in the suspension of former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, Dr Jonathan has choked and undermined the constitution by removing Mallam Sanusi in contemptuous disregard for the law. The excuse he gave for sacking the former CBN boss is that he breached some financial rules. But in reality, the removal was probably due to the president’s exasperation with Mallam Sanusi’s volubility and irreverence. The suspended CBN boss had complained bitterly at least twice about the NNPC’s unorthodox bookkeeping methods and financial malfeasance. And the complaints had elicited intense controversies and triggered insinuations that the Jonathan presidency condoned corruption, body language and all. But the snag is that the oil agency reports to the Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, one of Dr Jonathan’s favourite cabinet members, if not the most favoured minister. Two attempts to reconcile the books of the NNPC merely reduced the gaps, not eliminated them, and gave impression the agency was nothing but a sinkhole and a conduit for funding the politics of the ruling party.

By peremptorily sacking Mallam Sanusi, Dr Jonathan has finally given indication he will henceforth not be distracted by the constitution in the pursuit of his ambition to govern Nigeria along absolutist lines. Though he was careful not to cite any constitutional provision in sacking Mallam Sanusi, perhaps knowing full well that no such provisions existed to back him, it was nonetheless clear that he gave indication his action was lawful. But there is no conceivable way of reading or interpreting the CBN Act, as amended, particularly the applicable Section 11, to back the president’s action. It is intriguing that any lawyer, not to talk of any rational person, could suggest that the said provision could be construed any other way. Section 11 is not only clear and direct; it is not ambiguous at all. The president himself knew this.

The CBN Act doubtless empowers the president to remove a CBN governor if necessary, but that power is circumscribed by and contingent upon the approval of two-thirds of the members of the Senate. The president completely discountenanced this provision and went ahead to do the unthinkable. We may not like Mallam Sanusi, but if executive, legislative and judicial actions are to be based on whom we like or dislike, we would have complete chaos. Dr Jonathan, it is clear, is besotted to some of his ministers. Anyone that challenges his favourites pokes a finger in his eyes. When Dr Jonathan suspended Justice Salami and we failed to get him to reverse himself, we unwittingly approved the president’s resort to self-help. If we fail in checking this new impeachable breach of the constitution, we should ready ourselves for more flagrant breaches of the constitution in a tension-soaked election year.

The sacking of Mallam Sanusi is not just a case of the president getting rid of a headache; it is an indication of the underlying methodology of the Jonathan presidency and an example of his dreadful unease and impatience with the restraining and civilising leashes of the constitution. Dr Jonathan, I have said repeatedly, lacks the depth and idiosyncratic understanding to appreciate the kind of democracy Nigeria should run, and the kind of country we should have, one that should serve as example and provide leadership to the rest of Africa, and one that should challenge even the most democratic country in the world. Lacking such understanding and discipline, Dr Jonathan has constituted himself and his government into a tyranny run by a camorra of friends, avaricious aides and petulant family members. We are in far worse trouble than we imagine, especially in an election year, for the president has more dangerous concoctions on tap.

If we look forward to any salvation, it will certainly not come from the presidency. Those characters in the presidency are too far gone to be redeemable. If we look to the legislature, we would have to ponder which direction to go: is it to the House of Representatives or to the Senate? If it is to the House, it is satisfying to note that that assembly of men is fairly radical and of some use. But the constitution does not give them the kind of powers that would make them tame the president in the face of a grovelling and ingratiating Senate. And if it is to the Senate we look, we would be seeing nothing but a chimera. The Nigerian Senate is a party to the conspiracy to undermine the constitution, blissfully unaware that they are in effect undermining their own very existence. They see themselves more like an arm of the ruling party, nay, a department in the Jonathan presidency. They will do nothing radical or altruistic; and they will not lift a finger in the defence of the people or the constitution.

Might the judiciary be of any help? Mallam Sanusi has already indicated he would be seeking help in its hallowed precincts. But litigation produces its own paradoxes. By going to court, Mallam Sanusi will be denying us a confirmation of the Senate’s infamy and conspiracy with the Jonathan presidency. The Senate will cite the case in court and decline discussions on the unlawful act of suspending the CBN governor. And since there is already an acting CBN governor, as it were, it would not matter whether the Senate declined to confirm the president’s nominee, Godwin Emefiele. The president can afford to wait it out. So, too, disingenuously, can the conniving Senate. In June, after Mallam Sanusi’s natural tenure expires, Emefiele’s confirmation will be done, and it will seem natural and unimpeachable.

I restate once again that the problem is not Mallam Sanusi’s competence or style. The problem is that he raised fundamental and disquieting concerns about financial disparities in that most disturbing of arcana, the NNPC, and the fact that the president in sacking Sanusi acted most precipitately and brutishly by assaulting the constitution. If we condone these infringements, we will not only be exhibiting our powerlessness in the face of intense financial impropriety on the part of government agencies, we would also be signalling to Dr Jonathan that his monarchical tendencies, his contempt for the constitution, his demeaning attachment to a few of his cabinet members and his lawless predilections will be winked at. Dr Jonathan has taken the first awful steps in the direction of Somalia, Central African Republic, Sudan/South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo. It is no exaggeration to say he has thus taken us closer to the precipice than at any other time in our anguished and chequered history, including the civil war era. Should we indeed be compelled to endure four more years of Dr Jonathan and his lawlessness, as some pundits are projecting, there is no telling what horrifying fate the country would meet.

February 23, 2014
Gov Shettima, Boko Haram and Nigeria’s future

When Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State hurried to Aso Villa last week to warn the president and country what terrible dangers his state and the entire Northeast confronted in the Boko Haram menace, he said a number of things that gave the impression of a paranoid speaking in hyperboles. The Boko Haram insurgents, he said plaintively but with a lot of deliberate and calculated animation, wielded more sophisticated arms than those issued to our soldiers. In addition, he wailed, the insurgents were more motivated than our troops. He was an incurable optimist, he summed up, but that didn’t make him so stupid as to deny the reality on the ground in the Northeast. And that reality, he added, was deathly and ominous.

The governor’s frantic visits stand in contrast to the unimaginative, if not lackadaisical, approach of President Goodluck Jonathan to the anti-terror war. In the early months of the insurgency, the president had shown considerable ambivalence. He vacillated between strong-arm tactics one day and conciliation another day. On some occasions, he described the insurgents in flattering but quizzical terms, and on other occasions he painted them in petrifying colours. When sufficiently inspired, he promised to fight them with all he had, but in the face of the sect’s sanguinary determination to plunge the country down the red gullet of war, he cowered behind his Aso Villa redoubt to celebrate the country’s Independence Day.

No president ever gave such ambiguous, embarrassing and cowardly signals. And no president ever failed so disastrously to ready and inspire his people for a noble war. The consequence is what the country is facing today. Not only is the insurgency raging fiercely, the presidency and even a majority of Nigerians have failed to appreciate the urgency of the threats the country is contending with and the roots of the revolt. It is true that the Northeast is the poorest part of Nigeria, but it is a cumulation of years of neglect by regional and federal governments, a neglect they will have to combine to combat. However, it is even truer that the insurgency is given fillip by the government’s longstanding and dangerous neglect of justice in all its ramifications.

Shockingly, regional and federal governments have not learnt any lesson regarding the denial of criminal, social and political justice. They have not learnt any lesson on equity and fairness between religions and between peoples. The society is riven by conflicts and by deliberately sponsored bigotry. Hearing Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau declaim on religion and society recently, it became clear just how woefully leaders in those parts had failed to build a responsible society with the right values. With his governance style and now abrasive manners, Dr Jonathan is even doing much worse, nurturing and promoting a society completely shorn of justice, equity and fairness. How could his troops feel motivated to fight Boko Haram with as much dedication and decorum as Governor Shettima hopes, when they are not part of a society we all have reasons to sacrifice our lives for, a society where to serve as an example a Stella Oduah is promptly punished for infractions, and a Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is not unfairly cudgelled for stepping on powerful toes?

February 23, 2014