The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • What Jonathan said when he visited Borno, Yobe (March 7-8, 2013)

    “…Let me be very frank, because the analogy that oh, when one soldier is killed the soldiers come and kill scores of people, we have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security job that ordinarily soldiers are supposed not to be involved in. But because of the calibre of weapons the militants are using, the police alone cannot stand. And government will never sit down quietly and wait for insurgents, for some people to take up arms and take a part of this country. Never.

    “Whether it is in the Niger Delta, and I have given the directive to security services, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in the Niger Delta, I don’t want to hear that one security officer is killed in the South East kidnapping, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno State or any part of this country. I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. This people leave their families, stay on the roads and the bush so that we will sleep, and I will not want to hear that one of them is killed.

    “We will not allow it and I will not celebrate death of one security officer anywhere in this country, whether it is in Bayelsa State, whether it is in the Niger Delta, Anambra State, South East, South West, North West, North Central, anywhere. We will not, and I repeat, will not accommodate it…”

  • Boston Marathon bombings: Another family tragedy

    Boston Marathon bombings: Another family tragedy

    After what seemed like eternity, the two brothers alleged to have planted the bombs that killed three people and injured more than 180 others at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday have been apprehended. The older of the two, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, reportedly died in a shoot-out on Friday morning, while the younger, Dzhokhar, 19, was arrested in the evening after a manhunt that shut down the Watertown section of the city. Though the two brothers hailed from Dagestan, a Russian republic that shares borders and, to some extent, religious ideology and militancy with Chechnya, they had migrated to the United States more than 10 years ago and lived there legally. This fact was probably responsible for why President Barack Obama said the government would be seeking answers to a lot of questions concerning the background of the two brothers and why they suddenly took to militancy. The US will get all the answers it wants if the severely injured Dzhokhar survives.

    Though Anzor Tsarnaev, father of the two brothers, believed his sons were framed, there is no doubt that for him and his wider family this is both a family and generational tragedy. In fact, their home country and fellow Dagestanis are already primed to disown the bombers. When it first appeared that the Boston bombers were linked to Chechnya, that country’s President was quick to disclaim the fact. He suggested that American investigators should look into the Tsarnaev brothers’ upbringing in the US for explanations on their radicalism. Said the Chechnya President, Ramzan Kadyrov: “Any attempts to draw the link between Tsarnaevs (even if they are guilty) and Chechnya are in vain. They grew up in USA and their views and beliefs were formed there. One needs to seek the roots of evil in America. All the world should be fighting terrorism together. We know it better than anyone else. We wish all those who suffered to get well soon and we share the feeling of sorrow with Americans.”

    But if Dagestan and Chechnya could promptly disown the Tsarnaev brothers, their anguished family would not find it easy to do same. Not only have the brothers brought the family name to national and international opprobrium, the scale of the brutal assault in Boston is bound to make many seek explanations for the two brothers’ radicalisation both in their family and in the US as a whole. In addition, the impact of the bombings and the many lives they have wrecked, not to talk of the novelty of the attacks, are certain to keep the unfortunate incident in public memory for a long time. Nigeria and the Abdulmutallab family face the same humiliation every time there is a mention of the Christmas Day bomber.

    It will be recalled that under the influence of Yemeni members of al-Qaeda terror group, a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, with plastic explosives strapped to his underwear, attempted to blow up an American aeroplane over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

    Shortly after, on January 10, 2010, this column attempted an explanation of the Abdulmutallab problem. The analysis raised a number of issues that are today even more pertinent as the world ponders the tragedy that has just befallen the Tsarnaev family. An excerpt of that piece is reproduced below, and though it was published before the northern part of Nigeria exploded in violence, it anticipated Boko Haram militancy. If only the North had listened.

    AbdulMutallab meets Gavrilo Princip,

    January 10, 2010

    “…Notwithstanding our defiant posture and wounded pride, the fact is that we have been foolish and hypocritical in our approach to urgent national issues such as religion, culture, ethnicity and politics. Unfortunately, all these issues have impacted negatively on the country to the point of producing monstrosities like Farouk. Terrorism is not exclusive to any religion, just as there is no single cause of terrorism. But in the case of Farouk we must go beyond the fact of his schooling in Togo, London, Dubai and Yemen to find out what predisposed him to acute explosion of rage and violence. There are many like him who schooled abroad even at a tender age and who shunned hateful ideologies. American psychologists may be able to piece together the jigsaw and come out with answers to what went wrong with the young bomber…

    “When he was 19 years old, Farouk had expressed the frightening and myopic opinion that he fantasised the waging of another major Jihad in which Islam would achieve victory and establish a world empire. It never occurred to him that even if that happened, that victory could not be sustained for all time. But with such foundational belief that forceful proselytisation was permissible, which sadly many clerics in Nigeria hold to be true, it was a matter of time before he became a tool in the hands of demagogues. It is a fact of our recent history that many violent proselytisers, many of them quite ignorant of Islam, and some of them hiding behind politics attempt to create an immiscible broth of religion and politics. Conventional explanations that suggest fanaticism and violence result from poverty must be examined again in the light of Farouk’s wealthy background so that the North can begin to rebuild confidence and establish an atmosphere where peace and harmony reign.

    “Given our past experiences the wise political option should have been for Nigeria to move in the direction of robust secularism in which the state would hands off religion. This has not happened partly because many states cannot seem to make up their minds over the instinctive theocracy of their fantasy, as Farouk indicated, and the stability and realism that secularism offers in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Except we deceive ourselves, Middle East is in turmoil because countries in the region are locked in a battle between secularism and theocracy, and between contending factions of theocratic sects. Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, among others should serve as examples of the dangers an increasingly vulnerable Nigeria faces. We must not assume that these problems will vanish automatically.

    “Disturbing as the backlash against Nigerians abroad is, the answer is not in the hysteria that has gripped the country, nor in the clumsy attempt to distance ourselves from our young compatriot. Whether we like it or not, Farouk is our son, and though by his education he is a citizen of the world, he is still our son. His family values might have failed to tether him to reality, but we must not ignore the fact that those values served his other 13 siblings well. Most families often have one black sheep anyway. It is the poor luck and personal tragedy of the urbane senior Mutallab that his errant son chose the world stage to display his waywardness. We must also not ignore the fact that the unhealthy mix of politics and religion in the North has engendered more religious violence in that region than anywhere else. And we must not downplay the danger of disintegration which our refusal to do something urgent and drastic about the unhealthy mixture could precipitate.

    “We may not have all the answers regarding the transformation of Farouk from a gentle and pious boy into a suicidal and venomously spiteful man, nor it seems does he himself. But we must begin the search. The magnitude of his fantasy and the sheer scale of his ignorance should tell us something about ourselves, our family values, our politics and the long years of pussyfooting over religion…”

    Anzor Tsarnaev, father of the two Boston bombers, said his children were framed, pointing out in particular that his younger son “is a true angel.” According to him, “Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the US. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here.” That may be the much he knew about his sons. The question parents must ask themselves is how much they know their children, or whether in fact they know them at all, given the penchant of the young ones to always spring a surprise. This column also examined this treatise on April 1, 2012 when it responded in this place to the deplorable tweets written by Liam Stacey to the huge consternation of his distraught mother. Hereunder is an excerpt of that column to help instigate a fresh appreciation of the subject in the light of the incredulity and grief of the Boston bombers’ father.

    Liam Stacey’s racist tweets and the dilemma of parenting, April 1, 2012

    “…Recall also that I once wrote about the Abdulmutallabs here. Except you are a parent, you may never fully appreciate that family’s sadness and horror as their son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to bomb an airline over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009. The tragedy of realising that they had raised a son who embraced terrorism was bad enough in a worrisome way, for the eyes of the whole world, and the even more censorious and withering look of their countrymen was truly damning. But much worse is the continuing tragedy of watching helplessly as that son stays in the limelight for the wrong reasons, tormented by the destructive finality of long years in prison, his life completely wasted, as are the hopes and investments of the family on him. It is impossible not to feel the family’s pain.

    “Imagine, therefore, what horror befell the British family of the Staceys last week, as their son, Liam, hugged the Twitter limelight for the wrong reason, trolling the tweeting public with deeply nauseating racist remarks on Fabrice Muamba, the Bolton footballer who collapsed on pitch during a soccer match with Spurs. Liam, a Swansea University biology student, explained in court that he trolled under the influence of alcohol, but he did not quite convince anyone his racist tweets did not reflect what he harboured secretly in his heart. As he was being tried and sentenced to 56 days in jail, reports indicated his mother wept bitterly, ashamed of the negative publicity her otherwise mild-mannered son had attracted to himself, and the fact that he had achieved notoriety that would haunt his present and future, truncate his education and career, and ostracise him in civilised communities everywhere for a long time.

    “No family is so strong and so cohesive as to be immune to the consequences of the obnoxious behaviour of its member. Increasingly, as the Twitter generation is showing, younger people are coming under the inordinate strains of modernity. Such strains sometimes manifest in the digital and communications revolution, in music, particularly rap and hip-hop, and in many other modern trends such as the shifting concepts of family, parenting, urbanisation, and the ideology of culture, economy (business) and politics. The problem is of such magnitude that families now depend on miracles and happenstances to keep themselves together and establish some semblance of order and harmony…

    “But the greatest challenge facing parents is not how to obviate the stupidities of their children, but how to raise children whose view of society is balanced, children who are neither misanthropic, like petty criminals, sadists and serial murderers, nor moral monsters who grow up unable to differentiate between the healthy predilections of a political and religious ideologue and the antinomian excesses of terrorists and extremists who espouse ethnic or racial genocide…

    “The challenge of any parent is to develop a continuum of coherent and relevant worldviews anchored on the key elements of lofty principles, great character and unimpeachable morality. That template of ethical continuums must, however, be such that members of the family, particularly the children, can express and fulfil their individualisms in ways that do not threaten the family or the society. It is never easy, especially because generational shifts and conflicts often periodically impose new and sometimes taxing realities upon families. But the danger of not establishing a family paradigm upon which children could anchor their lives and ideas is to create a vacuum in which all manner of ideas and cultures would thrive, many of them anti-social, and others inimical to the image of the family and the wider society.

    “To prevent the sort of tragedies Liam Stacey and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab brought upon their families, the first priority for any family is to set a tough code of ethics for themselves. Top on the list of that code, of course, is character, that most difficult and yet most beautiful of all virtues that inculcates a sound philosophy regarding the sanctity of human life, courage in the face of adversity, intelligent appreciation of issues, and a sound knowledge of one’s purpose in life. If a parent does not set this code for his children, and does not do it in such a way as to make the code adaptable to the present and the future, strangers, perhaps with malicious intent, will do it for them. After all, it is the sum of positive family values that determines how stable and prosperous a society becomes…”

    In the next few days or weeks, we may get a better insight into what radicalised the Tsarnaev brothers and motivated them into becoming mass murderers. Does it have to do with their conversion to Islam? If so what kind of preaching were they listening to, and who were influencing them? Or does it have anything to do with Dagestan’s campaign for independence or the sufferings of Chechnya? Whatever the reasons, the Boston bombings place greater urgency on the need for more realistic, adequate and intelligent parenting.

     

  • Three long goodbyes

    Three long goodbyes

    First published on December 30, 2012, this essay is reprinted today as a reminder of the salient contributions made to national and world affairs by Mandela, Bush and Thatcher. The three leaders, one of whom has just honoured the last call, bade us long goodbyes when they were hospitalised about the same time late last year. With the passing of Baroness Thatcher, it is time to remind ourselves once again what the three stood for, good or bad, and how their transformative and charismatic administrations underscored the salience of strong leadership, especially one imbued with sound judgment and unexampled patriotism

     

     

    It was an unplanned but remarkable coincidence around the Christmas holiday period. Nelson Mandela, 94, Margaret Thatcher, 87, George H. Bush, 88 all found themselves in hospital to receive medical attention. Mandela went in to treat a stubborn lung infection, Bush the Elder to treat a fever and other associated ailments that kept popping up one after the other, as his doctors ruefully observed, and Thatcher to remove a growth on her bladder. The Iron Lady, as Thatcher was nicknamed by a Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper in 1976 even before she became prime minister, had in 2001 and 2002 suffered mild strokes. Even though all three leaders are alive and may yet live on for many more years, they are, however, enfeebled by age and are facing a countdown in the closing chapters of their lives. I therefore find it hard to resist the temptation of making a few observations on these iconic leaders whose idiosyncratic rule exemplified the leadership panache and resilience of the last century.

    In a way, however, and no matter how much we still want the three leaders with us, I think they have started to say their long goodbyes. They left power a long time ago, and so their final departure may not have the same dramatic impact their exit from office had, but there is no doubt that much more than their countries, the world will be sad to see them go. They were not just iconic, brilliant, prescient and charismatic – Mandela and Thatcher more so – the breadth and content of their leadership, the visionary quality of their administration, and the continuing relevance of their policies, ideas and styles have combined to imbue them with a freshness and permanence that belie their age and health. Thatcher vacated office 22 years ago, Bush Snr 19 years ago, and Mandela 13 years ago. But it seemed like only yesterday.

    The health of the three leaders will be monitored closely and carefully by both analysts and doctors: by the former because of the relevance of the leaders to the health of their countries; and by the latter because of the personal health of the three leaders themselves. Clearly, the more important of the two types of health conditions is the relevance of the leaders to their countries’ wellbeing. Leaders are seldom measured by their personal longevity, but by either longevity on the throne or, more appropriately, the quality and impact of their policies, and sometimes, too, their ideas. As a former US President, Richard M. Nixon, succinctly observed many years ago, “When the curtain goes down on a play, members of the audience file out of the theatre and go home to resume their normal lives. When the curtain comes down on a leader’s career, the very lives of the audience have been changed, and the course of history may have been profoundly altered.” This observation is true of Mandela, Thatcher and Bush the Elder.

    But I am drawn into writing about the three ailing leaders today in the hope that serving Nigerian leaders would learn a thing or two about leadership mystique and relevance from those who have personified the two attributes so inimitably and so daringly. Mandela’s successors obviously do not take after the great man, perhaps because by having him so close to them, they have taken him and his qualities for granted. Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s immediate successor, for instance, could hold himself anywhere in the world intellectually, but he exhibited none of the charisma, joie de vivre and general humanism that hallmarked his predecessor’s leadership. In addition, his detached and sometimes woolly style, his seemingly non-partisan politics of expressive sombreness that grated on the ears of the South African rabble contrasted with the welcoming, lively and eccentric style of his successor, Jacob Zuma.

    Mandela in office sometimes seemed a paradox, with a half of him oozing gravitas, and the other half skirting close to an inscrutable form of libertinism that made him contradistinctively sociable and prudish. But the real paradox of South African politics is the unexampled fashion Mbeki took Mandela’s cerebral endowment without the redeeming and tempering influence of the great man’s sociableness; and Zuma took and embellished Mandela’s love for life without the catalysing and uplifting influence of Madiba’s deep longing and respect for knowledge. But much worse are the Nigerian parallels. Had ex-President Umaru Yar’Adua not been hobbled by illness, he in fact seemed the only Nigerian leader since independence capable of grasping the weight and content of the challenges the country faced. Either because of his nature or poor health, even he proved absolutely destitute of the high principles and nobility that underscored Mandela’s life and politics. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, it will be recalled, was advised or indirectly encouraged by those who installed him in office to embrace the Mandela option of serving for only one term. If he had the good sense to do that, we would not have known how unprincipled he was and still is. But at least, he would have become a statesman par excellence and a reference point for continental and regional leadership. Instead, he chose to amass wealth and to open himself to the corrosive influence constitutional subversion naturally denotes.

    Of the three great leaders, Mandela is probably the most solid and respected, Thatcher the most impactful and iconoclastic, and Bush the most measured and influential. Thatcher was not just the longest serving British prime minister of the 20th century, she remains the first and only woman to have occupied that office. Neither of the two achievements can be belittled. Like Churchill, she understood very quickly the ideological temper and irredentist proclivities of the Soviet Union, and from day one cobbled together a foreign policy designed to respond harshly to the menace she believed the Russians represented. More than that, it is doubtful whether since Churchill any prime minister had projected British confidence and power as brilliantly as she did. Recall the Falklands War of 1982, barely three years after she assumed office, and the surefootedness with which she approached the disagreement between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Faced with the prospect of fighting a war thousands of kilometres away against an enemy fighting next door, she retained admirable sang-froid throughout the period the dispute lasted and even confidently declared that the possibility of defeat for British arms did not exist.

    With the exception of former head of state, Gen Murtala Mohammed, no Nigerian leader has projected Thatcherite confidence of any significance. However, Thatcherite policies were underlined by incredible astuteness, sensible economic policies that remoulded British industry and enterprise, and sound judgement, particularly in politics and foreign policies, that yielded fruit without dissipating British power. Compared with most of his successors, Murtala was indeed a detribalised and unfettered patriot, and a confident leader who would probably have achieved a different and better outcome had he seen his transition programme through. But his appreciation of external responses to his domestic and foreign policies was fairly idealistic. That poor judgement cost him his life and handed over the rest of the transition programme to the far less ethically resolute Obasanjo.

    Bush the Elder gives us a signal lesson in restraint, which habitually meddlesome Nigerians may be culturally unsuited to appreciate. By making no public attempt to influence George W. Bush’s government on the question of Iraq, the senior Bush was merely underscoring the advancement of the American constitution and system. Indeed, as we gleaned from the statements made by the recently deceased General Norman Schwarzkopf, the US allied commander during Gulf War I, the presidency of Bush the Elder was unsure of the propriety of overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein, unsure whether the implications of such an overthrow had been fully studied or whether such an overthrow would not create a chain reaction that would be difficult to manage. This was why during Gulf War II, Schwarzkopf declined to support the regime change Bush the Younger had enunciated. He and Bush the Elder have been proved right.

    Nigerian leaders rarely appreciate that their country is like a political, economic and cultural smorgasbord so complex and variegated that it requires a deep grounding in logic and history to decipher. Obasanjo made an unpardonable mistake by failing to lay a solid and ethical foundation for the Fourth Republic. And though Ibrahim Babangida did the country so much harm by failing to seize the opportunities offered by the 1993 general election, the wobbly foundation of the Fourth Republic is the sole responsibility of Obasanjo. Like South Africa’s Zuma, Obasanjo was so entranced by the frills of office that he could not gauge its responsibilities, and too fixated with the scaffold to pay attention to the creaky building. Even the more sensible Yar’Adua surrendered to base passions and allowed the country to drift and be held hostage as a result of his poor health. As incompetent as Nigerian leaders have been over the decades, nearly all of whom cite extenuating circumstances to justify their lack of administrative acumen and futuristic thinking, that ineptitude has worsened over the years, unmitigated by the passage of time or the advancement of science and knowledge.

    Going by the remarkable conjunction of three ailing leaders around the Christmas holiday season, Mandela, Thatcher and Bush may already be saying their long goodbyes. This fact gives the world an opportunity to begin reflecting on the unremitting leadership failure confronting us today. By American standards, one-term presidents seldom rise to greatness, but Bush the Elder provided leadership at a time Americans needed it, even if for economic reasons, and exercised restraint at the right moment and place. Two-term President Bill Clinton made the world to love America as Bush senior and junior could not manage, but it is a matter of debate whether he has been as impactful on the world as Bush the Elder. Since 1990, Britain has struggled with leadership. Thatcher’s immediate successor, John Major, proved middlingly insecure, and both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in spite of their best efforts, neither rose to inspiring level nor were they able to hold the candle to the Iron Lady.

    With each passing day, Mandela has seemed to loom even larger than most world leaders, becoming an example of a statesman growing in stature and relevance, like a good wine, as his years out of power increase. He embodies the aphorism popularised by the US Army General, Douglas MacArthur, that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. More and more, as Africa produces mediocre leaders by the dozen, the power and nobility of Mandela are reinforced by his canniness in foreshadowing the problems of multiculturalism in a way even Europe has not come to terms with. Imagine if the superficial Zuma had taken over from F.W. de Klerk! Indeed, the long goodbyes of the three statesmen speak more to the leadership tragedy faced by Africa in general and more poignantly to the appalling refusal, not to say criminal negligence, of Nigerian leaders to learn both from the ancient history of their country and the modern history of the world in relation to the issues and phenomena that drive, sustain and shape great leadership.

  • Retrogression and paralysis in Africa and Nigeria

    Retrogression and paralysis in Africa and Nigeria

    Less than a decade after most African countries got their flag independence, some of their leaders became acutely aware of the corrosive effects of neocolonialism. To counter this problem, they attempted a cocktail of cultural, economic and political policies to neutralise the negative effects of colonialism up to as far back as the curse of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. Leaders of Africa’s independence movements knew, and to some extent accepted, their limitations in trying to redraw the debilitating maps drawn arbitrarily by the Berlin conferees, but they didn’t entirely give up. They were not only passionate about their countries; they were also largely well-educated, cerebral and innovative. To supplant the destructive impact of colonialism on the African mind, these leaders promoted the ideals of pan-Africanism in order to give the continent an identity, instil confidence in young Africans, and give them a reason to look forward to a greater tomorrow where they could stand tall and equal with the young of any other continent, especially Europe and America.

    Barely half a century after independence, however, all hope of a greater tomorrow has virtually evaporated. Not only are the continent’s current leaders half-educated daydreamers and cannot, therefore, tell the difference between colonialism on one hand and neocolonialism on the other hand, they are simply too desensitised to the dangers of harmful external influences to care what happens to the continent or how its peoples are regarded by the rest of the world. It wasn’t too long ago that great minds walked on the continent, minds like Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Tom Mboya, Amilcar Cabral, Kenneth Kaunda et al, but their walk was both too brief and sometimes inexpert to help create enduring ideological and institutional legacies for Africa’s freedom and economic independence. Yet, for all their faults, it was never said of them that they were too stupid not to comprehend the denigrating impact of foreign influences.

    In contrast today, there is hardly any African leader with the depth of understanding, political ingenuity and moral fortitude needed to galvanise the continent away from the looming apocalyptic path of recolonisation. West Africa has become a barren landscape of short-sighted leaders who can’t tell the difference between leadership and feudalism. Even when a few honest leaders come along, they lack the rigour to reclaim and promote the visions of past continental leaders. Ghana’s present leaders, for instance, are the beacon for the sub-region, but beyond offering their country technocratic competence, there is precious little else. Whatever they call vision today can’t hold the candle to Nkrumah’s vision. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia fought senseless civil wars, in spite of their poverty, and Cote d’Ivoire and Mali needed their former colonial master, France, to restore stability and order. And self-destructive Nigeria is, of course, boiling with largely self-inflicted and man-made sectarian cum socioeconomic revolt.

    Southern Africa was a hotbed of apartheid, but when they finally emerged from servitude one after another, only Nelson Mandela exhibited the character of a leader. Sam Nujoma had to be pressured not to amend Namibia’s constitution to serve tenure extension, and geriatric Robert Mugabe has become a burden greater than apartheid upon his people. Successive leaders of Angola and Mozambique have also not been too inspiring, while Central Africa is probably the worst served by incompetent leaders. Since Britain’s MI6 plotted the death of Patrice Lumumba using the façade of Belgian, French and local forces, the hapless country has grappled with a succession of inept rulers, including the two Kabilas, Laurent and Joseph. Central African Republic (CAR), which is embroiled in non-ideological, distasteful and interminable rebellions, has not fared better.

    While ethnic groups in Rwanda nearly exterminated one another, and Uganda reels under rebel attacks, and Burundi stagnates, it took spectacular incompetence, as Mo Ibrahim observed, for Sudanese leaders to infuse religious dogmas into their country’s body politic thereby destabilising and fragmenting it. East Africa is also entrapped in rebellions and poverty. Ethnically and religiously homogenous Somalia is just emerging from state failure begun in 1991 and orchestrated by local rebels, Ethiopia and Libya working in concert. And Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti at the horn of Africa oscillate between pointless wars and horrifying famine.

    The retrogression in Africa is so numbing and so nearly complete that whispers are beginning to be heard in many European capitals that what is needed is a complete takeover, a recolonisation. (See Box, and note the factual inaccuracies). The consequence of the massive retrogression is that future generations of Africans will become humiliatingly less globally competitive than their European, American and Asian counterparts. The gap is widening into a chasm, and it is only a question of time, if things are left unchecked, before active calls for recolonisation receive favourable attention in many key world capitals. Except the continent puts behind it the effects of the trans-Saharan slave trade (which are factors in the Mali turmoil), the even greater evil of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the most crippling effects of colonialism that virtually distorted the economy, culture and thinking of the colonies, the continent’s problems will worsen and predispose it to recolonisation.

    Indirect rule made it difficult for Britain to retain a strangulating hold on its former colonies. It consequently could not actively pursue the establishment of military bases in Africa as successfully as France has done in more than half a dozen of its former colonies. But it nevertheless has advisory presence in Kenya and Sierra Leone. France’s colonial policy of assimilation facilitated the insidious subjection of its former colonies. From Central Africa to West Africa and even to the Horn of Africa and the Maghreb, France has sustained its military presence and bases, and intervenes when the need arises. The relationship between France and its former colonies goes beyond military, however. In foreign policy and the economy, the former colonies still look up to France. China is doubtless elbowing its way in. But many analysts suggest that the disturbances in Mali, CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and especially the promptness and assertiveness of France in those trouble spots, could not be detached from the rising economic profile of China in many African countries.

    During the Cold War era, many African countries were cajoled into taking sides with the Eastern or Western bloc. In the Berlin Conference, which was chiefly triggered by the quest for raw materials to feed European industries, Africa had no say on how its internal borders were drawn. The fresh campaigns for the recolonisation of Africa can also not be detached from economic reasons. For instance, all seven French West African countries are connected to the French Central Bank. The fall of former Ivorian leader, Laurent Gbagbo, was partly a consequence of his dispute with France over Cote d’Ivoire’s external reserve. Niger is as important to France economically (supply of uranium) as Nigeria is important (oil) to the United States. France, Britain and the US are now engaged in strategic military cooperation involving deployment of drones. On another side, China is also steadily and aggressively pushing in into Africa for raw materials to feed its massive industrial complexes and huge population. To facilitate this push, China deploys financial and other kinds of assistance to needy African countries. It may not be too far-fetched to say that China and the West have begun a new scramble for Africa, as the September 2011 election in Zambia proved, and as the creation of the US African Command (AFRICOM) is also indicating.

    If the creeping recolonisation of Africa is not to become a fait accompli, Nigeria must experience revolutionary changes in order to offer the leadership necessary to reclaim Africa from its local and foreign oppressors and reposition its peoples for greater competitiveness in the coming decades. If things remain as they are for much longer, the image of the continent will be battered and its chances of securing a glorious future compromised. Fundamental changes must come to Nigeria, for it is the only country with the potential to offer that leadership, not South Africa, not Ghana, and not Egypt. Sadly, in spite of the momentous events happening around it, Nigeria has remained silent, phlegmatic, inept and docile. It lost confidence in handling the Mali conundrum, ignored the CAR troubles, and has said little on DRC. It is high time visionary and ideological African leaders emerged, leaders who have the depth, intellect and passion to create and drive technological advancement, cultural renaissance and new and sustainable democratic paradigms.

    The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cannot midwife the necessary fundamental changes Nigeria and Africa need. On its part, it is anticipated the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) will whittle down its ideological purity and political idealism to stand a chance of birthing a new party (say, the All Progressives Congress) capable of beating the PDP. I am, however, not too optimistic that within the existing Nigerian political structure and given the nature of party politics, the changes the continent desires and deserves can be achieved.

     

  • Achebe departs in a blaze of controversy

    Achebe departs in a blaze of controversy

    I see Chinua Achebe differently from how others see him. Some see him rightly as the grandfather of African fiction, and others simply but also accurately see him as the father of African literature. Yet others remember him as the hard-hitting literary critic that in 1975 disembowelled Joseph Conrad for his book, Heart of Darkness. But most people, whether critics or plain connoisseurs of great books, remember him as the delightful author of Things Fall Apart, an incomparable book that has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into more than 50 languages. Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) lived well and died at a ripe old age after bidding his country goodbye with a rousing, controversial book, There Was a Country. In a literary career spanning more than 50 years, Achebe churned out scores of works in nearly all areas of literature.

    Achebe’s death on Friday morning is of course bound to elicit great obituaries from gifted editorial writers, many of them enchanted by the literary giant’s life and times. The death will also unleash a cornucopia of reviews and criticisms of his works, complete with projections of how relevant he would be in the decades and centuries to come. Most of the reviews will of course focus on his five novels, some of his essays, and his controversial non-fiction memoir on the Nigerian civil war viewed from the Biafran perspective. A few may attempt comparisons with contemporary writers, and others will unearth salient themes from his works to enrich future generations and provide cultural and political anodynes for a country in distress. Of course, too, most of the analyses and tributes will attempt a balanced examination of the writer, his on the one hand weighed against his on the other hand. Indeed, barely hours after his departure, tons of essays on the legend, many of them probably prepared beforehand, have been broadcast or published.

    Shortly before There Was a Country was released, I had written a short but questioning review of the controversial book. The review was limited, as it concentrated on a small aspect of the book released by the publishers to tease the public. It turned out in the end that that teaser was central to considerations of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. In my limited review, I was careful not to use it as a measure of Achebe’s literary endowment, whether that endowment is constricted or expansive, or use it as an indication of his life and times. That would have been most inappropriate, for a man of such copious output and prodigious talent could not be sensibly dismissed or characterised by one book, let alone a section of that book. I am not also going to pretend to use all or nearly all his works to define his essence, for that would also be a presumptuous endeavour. Nor would I attempt to compare one of his books with another, say, the gentle accessibility and simplicity of Things Fall Apart with the brilliance and complexity of Arrow of God.

    Whatever anyone may say of Achebe’s learning and worldview, whether he was deep or needed to be deeper, or whether he was thematically narrow in range or breathtaking, or whether he was controversial and disagreeable as a person or open-minded, gregarious, agreeable and universalist as an author, the important thing for me is that he had character and, needless to say, a curious and familiarly exciting point of view. There is no point trying to examine his literary competence. By every yardstick, he was an exquisite and exceptional writer, and he contributed immeasurably in birthing and giving fillip to the African perspective of literature. There are many fine writers the world has forgotten, or with time will forget. But there are a few who, regardless of the classicalness or mundaneness of their works, will be remembered for a long time. Like politicians and conquering generals, there are always a few additional and indescribable intangibles that qualify a man for greatness. Once these intangibles are absent, there is no amount of genius that can redeem the situation. And once they are present, there is no amount of ordinariness or lesser qualification that can attenuate it.

    Achebe’s character can thus be viewed from two perspectives. One is in terms of his character as a person, and the other is in terms of his character as a writer. What I find impressive about Achebe is how passionately he exuded both characters, as a person and as a writer, shorn of contrivances. Indeed, it seems to me that the leitmotif of his life and work could not be divorced from his Igbo identity. However, embracing that identity was a matter of choice for him, not compulsion. It coloured some of his works, just as his politics could not transcend it. It may be too early to determine what influence that identity would have on his legacy now or in the future, but it made Achebe the enigmatic and mercurial person he was. It didn’t matter to him that critics pointed out the dissonance between his lofty image as a great writer and the limiting parochialism of some of his pet views; all that mattered was that he summoned the fortitude to stick to his views. He had an unquenchable zeal to be himself, and he had the talent to nurture and sustain that zeal.

    As a writer, he cared even less what reservations anyone might have about the messages he furnished in his works or how trenchantly he projected his point of view. He belonged to the old school of great writers who despised taking refuge behind harmless, defanged words and imageries. His criticism of Conrad, for instance, was strident and, in some parts, downright abusive. In the same manner, his characterisation of some of the key political players during the Nigerian civil war was sweeping, exuberant and pugnacious. You may not agree with him, but you could not ignore him, for he had a poignant way of conveying his views. You may disagree vehemently with him, but you had a sense of his presence, his convictions, and his character. After all, I disagree with the American poet and critic, Ezra Pound’s impressionable theory of economics, and find his admiration for fascism shocking, but who could deny or resist the exquisiteness and brilliance of his poetry, particularly the Pisan Cantos, notwithstanding the circumstances in which the poem was penned shortly after World War II?

    Achebe was a pathfinder, and, as I indicated in this place when I wrote a short review of his latest work, his reputation as a writer is secure, notwithstanding the multiple indiscretions of indulging in historical fallacies. As much as the inimitable Mark Twain tried to philosophise in some of his works, notably The Mysterious Stranger, and as classical and supremely engaging as many of his works were, such as Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Old Times on The Mississippi, and Innocents Abroad, he never rose to the level of a philosopher of any appreciable talent. Achebe, too, never quite made it as an original thinker, nor perhaps ever tried. But he achieved greatness as a writer of immense ability, as the general editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, and as a mentor, literature teacher and trailblazer.

    His books did not win as many prizes as he probably coveted or merited. But those books are with us for all of eternity to help sustain his huge legacy. His aspirations for Nigeria were left unfulfilled, and he even spurned the half-hearted attempt by the Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan governments to honour him, but he departed these shores with the consolation that he repudiated his country’s maladies as vigorously as he could manage and as cathartically as he felt he needed to mitigate the injury occasioned in his mind by widespread leadership incompetence.

    It is no mean achievement that Achebe departed at 82, the second of the famous literary quartet God bestowed on Nigeria, Christopher Okigbo having achieved immortality ahead of the rest. As the many panegyrics written in honour of Okigbo have proved, absence really does make the heart grow fonder. From now on, many panegyrics will be written to the departed Achebe. Britain may no longer have its Dickenses, nor Russia its Dostoyevskys, nor France its Molieres, nor Ireland its Shaws, for the world has become a parched or at best middling literary landscape, but at least we still have our Wole Soyinka and J.P Clark, the two surviving members of the quartet. What we do with them is up to us.

    Achebe’s life and death symbolise the continuing mockery of our inexistent national identity. There is no poet’s corner in Abuja to bury the legend, or any other legend for that matter, for neither do we have a national identity to subdue individual ethnic identities, nor do we have leaders with a sense of history to conjure symbols that could underscore that identity. Achebe will probably be buried in his hometown, the final act in his repudiation of a country that has neither proved itself worthy of its great sons nor risen to an enviable height by the cumulative and stirring effects of the accomplishments of its great daughters.

  • The Alamieyeseigha pardon

    The Alamieyeseigha pardon

    I do not expect President Goodluck Jonathan to reverse or revisit the executive clemency he granted his former boss, former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, last week. He will ride out the storm of controversies generated by the pardon and other pardons; and he will likely grant a few more, equally or surpassingly controversial, before his time in office is over. So, let us ignore the controversies surrounding the pardons, such as the presidency’s poor recordkeeping that led to the late Gen Shehu Yar’Adua being pardoned twice, or the controversies swirling around the list of the pardoned, which we all know was expanded probably as an afterthought to legitimise the main beneficiary of the Jonathan pardons. Let us instead focus our attention on the pardon granted the former Bayelsa governor and the undue emotionalism surrounding the issue.

    It is a given, as former United States president Bill Clinton argued in 2001 when he tried to defend the 140 pardons he granted on his last day in office, that “The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial.” I, therefore, do not expect that Jonathan would grant pardons without eliciting some controversies or attracting attacks, some of them vicious. Nor do I expect that considering the general nature of pardons, they would be extended only to less grievous offences or less recognisable individuals. I have no problem with the lawfulness of the pardons Jonathan has granted, though it is a different matter altogether whether he adhered to the rules and regulations governing the exercise. But whether the president followed established procedures or not, he has the constitutional right to grant pardon, irrespective of the nature of the crime, and whether it is murder or fraud.

    Unlike the United States that has a copious history of controversial pardons and commutations, Nigerian leaders have been fairly laid-back, even stingy like Preisdent Barack Obama, in granting pardons. Surprisingly, it is the same US that first took potshot at Jonathan’s pardons. According to a twitter posting by a US embassy spokeswoman in Nigeria, Deb Maclean, the US was deeply disappointed by the pardon granted Alamieyeseigha. This was followed by another terse statement from a US State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, who warned ominously that the pardons could cause the US to reassess the kind of assistance it granted Nigeria in the latter’s anti-corruption war. She, however, stressed that no sanctions or punitive measures were being undertaken against Nigeria. However, Nigeria has in turn deplored the meddlesomeness of the US in its internal affairs and even invited the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Abuja to receive the Nigerian protest.

    Interestingly, the Alamieyeseigha pardon is not even half as controversial as some of the pardons and commutations granted by Clinton. In the case of Clinton, and with references to the clemency granted the oil mogul, Marc Rich, and the commutation of the sentences of 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist organisation, FALN, who set off bombs in New York and Chicago leading to the death of six people and maiming of dozens of others, a bitter US Congress investigated the pardons but found no wrongdoing. Marc Rich had been jailed for tax evasion to the tune of $48m and 51 counts of tax fraud. Like the Marc Rich case, the Alamieyeseigha pardon is without prejudice to any ongoing investigations or future fraud cases the authorities might bring against him.

    But as Clinton wrote in 2001 in his defence of the pardons he granted, “The reason the framers of our Constitution vested this broad power in the Executive Branch was to assure that the president would have the freedom to do what he deemed to be the right thing, regardless of how unpopular a decision might be. Some of the uses of the power have been extremely controversial, such as President Washington’s pardons of leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, President Harding’s commutation of the sentence of Eugene Debs, President Nixon’s commutation of the sentence of James Hoffa, President Ford’s pardon of former President Nixon, President Carter’s pardon of Vietnam War draft resisters, and President Bush’s 1992 pardon of six Iran-contra defendants, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger, which assured the end of that investigation.”

    I have no doubt that Jonathan acted within his powers. However, he was not as altruistic as his aides seemed to suggest. His prime objective, it seems to me, is driven by both political calculations for 2015 and the fact that Bayelsa and a large swathe of the South-South are covered by an ethical fog influenced by Niger Delta militancy and decades of appalling degradation of the oil regions. Both the ethical fog and the environmental degradation suffered by the oil regions, as well as the contumaciousness that these have unleashed, all but guarantee that the definition of financial cum political morality in Nigeria will vary from one region to another. Expectedly, Jonathan is not immune to the influences of his background, nor has he been able to extricate himself from the sometimes narrow and short-sighted uses of presidential powers and the even narrower cultural confines and prejudices of his adolescent years.

    Critics have slammed the president for pardoning Alamieyeseigha, thereby jeopardising his government’s anti-corruption war. But the criticisms ignore two important facts. One is that the former Bayelsa governor, who is sometimes referred to as governor-general of the Ijaw, is immensely popular in his region. Jonathan is not unmindful of that popularity, and he apparently seeks to take political advantage of it. Even in the days when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo troubled Alamieyeseigha, militants came to his rescue by denouncing the rest of the country and the media for singling out their hero for abuse. He had not done a fraction of what others did, his supporters grumbled.

    Second is that, except I err gravely, the Jonathan government has never really embarked on any anti-corruption war, whether in part or in whole. He has not even verbally campaigned against corruption, partly because he is not as hypocritical as the Obasanjo government that either selectively campaigned against corruption, using his enemies as case studies, or believed that corruption was something others, particularly non-PDP members, indulged in. Unlike Obasanjo who could defend good and bad with equal passion and plausibility, Jonathan is realistic enough to appreciate that the present configuration of Nigerian politics does not conduce to a corruption-free society or any high-sounding moralising campaign. His boyish innocence makes him fundamentally uncomfortable with any anti-corruption sloganeering.

    Neither the political uproar nor the moral outrage that has visited the Alamieyeseigha pardon will produce presidential contrition. The reason is not because the constitution is defective or that it grants more powers to the president than he can judiciously use. Indeed, it is for people like Alamieyeseigha that the clemency provision is interred in our constitution. If not Jonathan, then some other president will use the provision on a hypothetical tomorrow to achieve some controversial ends. The reason the president will not be contrite is also not because his natural tendency is to underpin his policies and actions with questionable ethics, for he seems altogether shorn of any ethics, preferring instead to moralise on the minor political and constitutional issues of the day while dodging the great issues capable of defining his presidency.

    Rather than seethe with anger on an anti-corruption war the president has shown absolutely no inclination to fight, seeing that no one could imbue an inexistent war with a grand notional purpose, the country should instead concentrate on the more nuanced national crisis that the pardons have seemed to underscore. That national crisis centres on the poor judgement Nigerian presidents have exhibited over the decades. Jonathan could have waited until the closing days of his presidency, whether he wins reelection or not, to grant as many controversial pardons as pleases him, but he chose to do it now perhaps because of political desperation or pressure. The 2015 polls will show whether he has shot himself in the foot or not. He has been accused of half-heartedly waging war on corruption; but by pardoning his former boss, he goes beyond half-heartedness to confirming he has no interest in any war except one that would furnish him victory in the polls at all cost.

    I see no point in all the uproar over the pardons, except to note the depressing fact that it manifests the president’s poor judgement and perhaps incapacity to take great decisions. In this controversy of state pardons, Jonathan will conveniently and excusably hide behind the constitution. It is in fact those who rail against the president’s pardons that inadvertently give the impression they are vengeful and unforgiving, and confirm why Nigeria’s penal system and penal institutions pursue a criminal to his grave rather than reform him. The uproar also shows that Nigerians have only one view of a criminal: that once he is crucified by the law or by public emotions, his soul is forever damned. If the president has good PR managers, he will turn the table against his critics. But if the critics emphasise the point that the president’s choices are nearly always fallible, they may not be saying anything new, but they will be reiterating the sombre view that whenever Jonathan displays firmness and shows initiative, he unalterably fails to rise to the occasion.

     

  • Ahmadu Ali’s fulminatory portrayal of the Southwest

    Ahmadu Ali’s fulminatory portrayal of the Southwest

    It is easy to miss the Saturday Sun’s interview with Col Ahmadu Ali (retd), a former chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and also former Minister of Education. Often, no wisdom is gained by reading some interviews, not to talk of the flagrant manner the interviewees sometimes concoct approbation for themselves. But thankfully, I saw the Ali interview and read it. As expected, Ali said many things about himself and the great work he did as a three-time cabinet minister and resilient party chairman. If his brilliance did not endure or was not recognised, he blamed the iconoclasts that succeeded him, and the ungrateful barbarians that undid the country with their narcissism.

    But for such an eminent self-confessed tactician and public servant, it is surprising that Ali didn’t notice his views, as harsh on others as they might seem, gave an unflattering impression of himself as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s zany. Now, he probably is not such a person, only that he gave that impression of himself. However, he thinks the world of Obasanjo, and describes him in superlative terms. “Obasanjo is sitting down there,” he began with a fulsomeness that matches his political obscurantism. “He is a bundle of knowledge for this country. If you have any difficulty and you cannot go to him and say come, how did you do it? This is my problem. You are wasting your time. All the people hanging around all these people (in public office) are just bootlickers. They are not advising properly. Obasanjo is the only person who has been Head of State three times in this country.” Ali’s depiction of Obasanjo reminds me of Nebuchadnezzar.

    The high point of the interview was when Ali portrayed the Yoruba as a totally ungrateful people on account of their rejection of Obasanjo both as a leader and as an icon. “This man, (Obasanjo) kept faith and voluntarily handed over to civilians,” Ali gushed. “He could have said he wasn’t going. What can anybody do? After all, it is the gun that got them there. And you people still don’t recognise him, especially the Yoruba people who are totally ungrateful kind of people in this country.” That may be a very sweeping dismissal of the Yoruba, but Ali is entitled to his views, even if it indirectly underscored his idolatrous fondness for someone the Yoruba are unlikely to ever respect, let alone embrace.

    Ali took his worship of Obasanjo to dizzying heights when he brutally eviscerated the Yoruba in terms that should make a sober man wince. Ali’s interviewer had suggested that the Yoruba could not forgive Obasanjo for robbing a fellow Yoruba, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, of the presidency in the 1979 election. Ali was incensed, and thundered in response: “Don’t talk rubbish. You are talking rubbish. That is the stupidity of the press and the self-appointed Yoruba leaders who are failures in their various fields of endeavour. They are just a total failure. How can you say, in an election where one candidate scored 12 million and showed presence in more than 12 states out of 19 and another candidate scored five million and showed presence in only five states, you then give it to the second person? What is democracy about?…Yoruba are another character.”

    The problem is not that Ali harbours such a disconcerting view of the Yoruba, and was not wary of going public with it. The problem, as the malevolently discriminatory Goodluck Jonathan presidency is showing, is that there are many more people in high places who entertain such horrendous prejudices against the Southwest, perhaps angered by the region’s sanctimoniousness, crusading disposition on civil liberties, including press freedom and activism, and their irritating superior airs. Do the Yoruba themselves know how rampant these sentiments against them are in other ethnic quarters? If they do, why do they not moderate their internal schisms to enhance their survivability?

    Ali’s fulminatory portrayal shows very clearly why most Yoruba politicians are apologetic about their Yorubaness: like Obasanjo, they believe they must be ethnically masochistic to be relevant in national politics. In a country brimming with perverse deductions and analyses of political behavior, it is not enough for a politician to be an exponent of fairness and justice; for the Southwest in particular, he must also deny his background and culture to be electable. Yet, what we need are not politicians who deny their Hausaness, Igboness or Ijawness, but those who in spite of their ethnic affiliations can be relied upon to be uncompromisingly fair and just, no matter whose ox is gored.

  • President Jonathan’s extemporaneous love note to Borno, Yobe

    From what I gathered from the governor of Yobe during my visit, the problem is coming down (abating). It is coming down in Adamawa, in Gombe, in Bauchi and in Niger. But in Borno, we still have some problems. So, if you elders will not condemn it, you will continue to suffer under the terror of Boko Haram, because without peace, we cannot develop Borno. Myself and any head of the security agencies do not want to pay one day allowance to anybody… We need that money to do other important things that will change the economy of this country. We need that money to fund agriculture and to create wealth across this country, including Borno State.

    “We are not happy to be spending so much money in the Niger Delta, keeping the JTF there. We are not happy to be spending so much money keeping the JTF in Borno State and other places. Definitely, we are not. In fact, if the elders agree now to come and sign agreement with me that I should move out all the JTF, but if anybody dies in Borno State, I will hold them responsible, I will sign and I will move, and I will do it. If somebody dies, yes, I will take you. I am going to remove the JTF, but come and sign and I will remove the JTF and you guarantee the safety of life and property of individuals. When you do that today, as I am going, the JTF will start moving to their barracks. But you must guarantee, if anything happens to anybody that you must be held responsible. If the circumstances that brought the soldiers are no longer there, that day, they will all leave.

    “Let me be very frank, because the analogy that oh, when one soldier is killed the soldiers come and kill scores of people, we have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security job that ordinarily soldiers are supposed not to be involved in. But because of the calibre of weapons the militants are using, the police alone cannot stand. And government will never sit down quietly and wait for insurgents, for some people to take up arms and take a part of this country. Never.

    “Whether it is in the Niger Delta, and I have given the directive to security services, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in the Niger Delta, I don’t want to hear that one security officer is killed in the South East kidnapping, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno State or any part of this country. I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. This people leave their families, stay on the roads and the bush so that we will sleep and I will not want to hear that one of them is killed.

    “We will not allow it and I will not celebrate death of one security officer anywhere in this country, whether it is in Bayelsa State, whether it is in the Niger Delta, Anambra State, South East, South West, North West, North Central, anywhere. We will not, and I repeat, will not accommodate it. So, if we the elders of Borno State will not condemn it, we will continue to suffer under the terror of Boko Haram, and without stopping Boko Haram, without peace in Borno State, we cannot develop Borno State. Who will come and invest in Borno State? You award road contracts, who will come and work? Nobody! So, let us not play to the gallery.”

     

  • Jonathan infuriates Northeast the more

    Jonathan infuriates Northeast the more

    Given the central position the Northeast occupies in Nigeria’s insecurity map, it was expected that once the crown settled over his ears, President Goodluck Jonathan would dash to the region unsettled by Boko Haram insurgency to pacify it, or at least meet minds with stakeholders to devise a way out of the seething cauldron. He did nothing of such, preferring apparently to live in denial of the problem and its horrendous effects. He had wearied himself sending condolences to the dead and dying, and issuing ‘strongly-worded statements’ promising to ‘bring to book’ those instigating the killings in the affected states. It got to a point that even words seemed to fail. Then, finally, he appeared to resign himself only to ruminative contemplation of the scale and scope of the killings, waiting for the day in which both the killers and the killed in the Boko Haram states would exhaust themselves and foreswear both violence and victimhood.

    But just when living in denial seemed the perfect strategy for the president to engage the Northeast drama, out came nine ‘meddlesome’ and ‘politicking’ All Progressives Congress (APC) governors embarking on a daring and timely visit to the hot spots of the Boko Haram insurgency. The visit, which came amidst bomb explosions, was conducted with some defiant pageantry. The governors strolled through Maiduguri’s main square and market, waved to crowds of beleaguered north easterners who thought the rest of the country had forgotten about them, and issued mocking statements deploring presidential paralysis in the face of crippling insecurity. Cut to the quick, the presidency replied with unexampled insolence, equally denouncing the governors it claimed had specialised in enunciating policies and actions that were nothing but caviar to the general. It was clear that for the presidency, and given the intensity of the fight in the Northeast, discretion was the better part of valour.

    And so, after almost two years of issuing boring press releases and tepid, repetitive condolences, the president finally stirred himself and visited Borno and Yobe States, the epicentres of the Boko Haram insurgency. The APC governors had, according to a columnist with this newspaper, stolen the president’s thunder, but not to visit the region at all would have been even more provocative and indefensible than the poor judgement of visiting after the nine governors prompted a rethink of presidential tactics. For two days last week, therefore, the president shuffled around the two states, promising nothing and getting no commitments in return. If his recent manoeuvres within the ruling party, which led to the enthronement of dinosaurs like Chief Tony Anenih, presaged his interest in 2015, his utterances during his Northeast visit all but indicated he had given up on that entire region. The region had given him the worst headache, such that some of his aides and Niger Delta supporters believed an ethnic conspiracy was afoot to deny him the ‘enjoyment’ of his presidency. If the headache graduated from secret plots to open loathing, the president probably reasoned, it was merely a reflection of the region’s violent character.

    Jonathan’s visit was expected to trump the visit of the nine APC governors in financial and material succour, soothing words, empathy, and peace initiatives. He needed to speak peaceably with them. Instead, perhaps because of the said sour relationship between the president and the region, Jonathan unapologetically exchanged diatribe with the zone’s elders. There were no peace initiatives, and there was scant empathy. Indeed, he left the region so infuriated by his brusque remarks and dismissive, if not sardonic, characterisation of their requests that the states’ elders would have preferred he didn’t come. On the real reason the Borno Elders asked for the withdrawal of the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) from Borno and Yobe streets, which is connected with the alleged indiscriminate reprisal killings by soldiers, the president feigned ignorance. All the president deigned to say (See Box) was this: “Let me be very frank, because the analogy that oh, when one soldier is killed the soldiers come and kill scores of people, we have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security job that ordinarily soldiers are supposed not to be involved in.” What about promising investigation into the actions of soldiers who breached the rules of engagement? Nothing. How about sparing a thought and a modicum of human feeling for those extra-judicially murdered? Also, nothing. Sadly – and the president should know better – he seemed to have given the JTF carte blanche to rewrite the rules of engagement. He gave the impression that he felt more for soldiers who died in combat than civilians caught in the crossfire, as if one was any less a Nigerian than the other. Worse, he appallingly and scornfully downplayed the allegation that JTF carried out unlawful killings.

    More humiliating to the elders was the president’s direct response to the request for JTF’s withdrawal from Borno State. He incredulously wanted the elders to indemnify him against any loss of life once the JTF was withdrawn. The president puts it very inelegantly in his convoluted lexical fashion: “If the elders agree now to come and sign agreement with me that I should move out all the JTF, but if anybody dies in Borno State, I will hold them responsible. I will sign and I will move, and I will do it. If somebody dies, yes, I will take you. I am going to remove the JTF, but come and sign and I will remove the JTF and you guarantee the safety of life and property of individuals. When you do that today, as I am going, the JTF will start moving to their barracks. But you must guarantee, if anything happens to anybody, that you must be held responsible.” Not only did the president imply that the elders had the power to guarantee peace, he also gave the impression that he could cavalierly withdraw security agents from Borno simply because a few elders gave their word. Were this the way the world fought crime and governed their people, anarchy would have since taken over.

    Perhaps the most ominous statement the president made was his reaction to the killing of security agents. Why and how he thought anybody believed he celebrated the death of a security agent by showing restraint is hard to fathom. This is what he had to say on the subject: “I have given the directive to security services, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in the Niger Delta; I don’t want to hear that one security officer is killed in the South East kidnapping; I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno State or any part of this country. I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. This people leave their families, stay on the roads and the bush so that we will sleep and I will not want to hear that one of them is killed. We will not allow it and I will not celebrate death of one security officer anywhere in this country…We will not, and I repeat, will not accommodate it.”

    Now, Borno Elders probably understand why the president delayed his visit. He was obviously too angry to visit before now; and the visit when it finally came was to read the riot act, not only to the Boko Haram states, but to any other state where security agents are killed. His priority is, by implication, to guarantee the lives of security agents. So, now, will the president begin applying the Odi method perfected by Chief Olusgeun Obasanjo, and which he himself condemned as ineffective? If anyone still holds out hope that Jonathan has the depth and judgement to rule a complex nation, especially one facing dire ethnic and religious challenges, I offer to the optimist the president’s view on the consequences of killing security agents. And if anyone thinks we are not in even deeper trouble than we imagine, I offer the same presidential remark as an example. Let every community in the country beware; even their deviants cannot afford to bite a soldier, protest against police tyranny, or fight a security official to the death.

    After the president’s visit, Borno and other states oppressed by Boko Haram terror now know where they stand. They stand alone; and the peace overtures they faintly hoped the president would bring, consequent upon the salutary visit of the APC governors, has become a chimera. Dr Jonathan has all but abdicated his responsibility as a president. He thinks that that responsibility lies with the people and leaders of the states groaning under Boko Haram terror. He probably believes that if the elders tell the fundamentalists to sheathe their swords, the militants would instantly do so. Nigeria would be a paradise the day a few elders had such sweeping moral and political force to command obedience from the populace. What is indeed clear from the president’s visit is that he has absolutely no idea left on how to solve the Boko Haram menace. Worse, he has served notice that state application of terror as a response to fundamentalist terror would henceforth serve as effective deterrence. God help Nigeria as Jonathan embraces Lord Lugard’s Indirect Rule and prepares the ground for fascism.

    Considering all these troubling things, it is tempting to ask who the president’s advisers are, and what kind of advice they give him. In fact, more appropriately, we should ask who Jonathan really is; what his mind is made of; and whether in 2011 we didn’t after all buy a pig in a poke.

     

  • Turmoil in Governors’ Forum

    Turmoil in Governors’ Forum

    After the vicious cut and thrust of the past 10 days in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), few within and without the association now expect it to remain the same, either as influential as it was before, or as cohesive as it had hoped when it was founded. It may be premature to write it off, considering that the convulsion tearing it apart is essentially trivial and limited to disagreements within the ruling party, but in the long run it is really hard to see it retaining the kind of relevance that thrust it to the forefront of national politics. Indeed, with the creation of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors’ Forum (PDP-GF), after the Governor Amaechi-led NGF refused to yield to the entreaties of the President Goodluck Jonathan government, it will take some doing to bring the governors back to the sort of unity they were accustomed to. For in fracturing, the governors did not just go their separate ways, they went about it acrimoniously using words that neither dignified their offices nor showed the kind of character many naively thought inhered in state executive mansions.

    For NGF, fame has become a double-edged sword. Founded in 1999, the Forum only became notable when it played prominent role in abating the constitutional crisis triggered by the illness of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Since then, the body has flexed its muscles on a number of exigent national or party issues including the election of party chairmen, excess crude account, constitutional reform, and electoral reform, among other things. Until now, it had also been fairly stable, with no overt leadership squabbles. So far, too, it has been chaired by five governors, including the long-serving former Governors Abdullahi Adamu and Bukola Saraki of Nasarawa and Kwara States respectively. Before the presidency took the Forum apart using the willing hands of a few governors, in particular, Governors Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom and Ibrahim Shema of Katsina, the public thought governors reasoned more expansively and with admirable depth. Their supposedly copious rationality was thought to be a bulwark against the meddlesomeness of higher powers, including the presidency.

    The reason given by the presidency for undermining the unity of NGF is that the association had become a trade union. According to the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, “The leadership of Amaechi in that forum has completely gone contrary to what PDP expects a PDP governor to do. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum has really become a trade union. Some elder statesmen have really come out to explain things in that perspective. For instance, about three weeks ago, Prof. Jubril Aminu came out publicly to say the NGF was not supposed to be a trade union. It is supposed to be an association of governors coming together to discuss common challenges in the country, not to hold the country to ransom.”

    While it is true the NGF has been forceful in championing certain causes, even appearing to act as an opposition party to the ruling party, dismissing the Forum as a trade union masks the imperceptible undercurrents in the PDP and in the polity. First, there is a general feeling of dismay that the Jonathan presidency, with its sometimes baffling pronouncements, its mystifyingly uninformed policies, its general lethargy and incompetence, its wastefulness, and its gross inability to inspire the country into innovation and greatness, is unable to rise to the occasion the times demand. The NGF is not inoculated against these frustrations, nor, even if it sympathised with the ruling party, could it pretend to be indifferent to the country’s massive drift towards aimlessness. There is also a limit to how the NGF could promote the interest of the PDP or pull its punches when the ruling party is overreaching itself. After all, the NGF is an umbrella body of 36 governors, not a PDP creation for PDP governors.

    Second, much more than merely reacting to what the presidency described as Amaechi’s boisterousness and opposition politics, one of the chief reasons for the president’s hostility is Poll 2015, an ambition that would be endangered if the NGF consistently wrong-foots the presidency. In addition, presidency officials rightly or wrongly believed Amaechi himself nursed presidential ambition, and was probably using the NGF platform to boost both his leadership credentials and countrywide appeal. Amaechi in fact did not help matters by playing the revolutionary. He had a highly publicised disagreement with the president’s wife in Rivers State in 2010, and openly disagreed with the president on a number of issues including disputed oil wells situated between the borders of Rivers, his state, and Bayelsa, the president’s home state. The Rivers governor in fact began to come across as Amaechi the Just, or even Amaechi the Revolutionary. And if left alone, perhaps, he could, in the secret opinion of the Jonathan presidency, start to come across as Amaechi the Great.

    But having created those heresies and infused them into Amaechi, the PDP leadership and the presidency committed themselves to burning the new wizard at the stakes. It is no small matter that the Rivers governor himself provided the fuel for the lynch mob. He often spoke candidly when circumspection would have been sufficient. He thought aloud instead of silently, though his thoughts were nothing but alarming revolutionary heresies. And he seemed incapable of stopping at simply playing David to the presidency’s Goliath; but must paint by his words, connotatively or denotatively, a Goliath that is clumsy, vacuous and intemperate. Worse, he seemed to enjoy the new role circumstances thrust upon his shoulders, for he was trusted by his colleagues in the Forum, and they knew he was earnest and honest in his utterances and predilections. Everything about Amaechi, however, drove Jonathan and his aides up the wall.

    At any time, there will always be many governors in Nigeria and in the NGF (if it survives) who think rationally and patriotically. They will resist the coercive and corrosive influences of the presidency, and their pride, as well as their natural inclinations, will make them abjure the tendency by the presidency to corral the entire country into one lobotomized whole. Unfortunately, however, there will also be a few governors who think rather obtusely, whose convoluted patriotism is interpreted in terms of the private yearnings of the president, and whose definition of unity and example of duty are rooted in monarchism and focus primarily on a servile relationship between the president and his subjects.

    Last week, in the final hours of the collapse of NGF resolve, it was thought only six or seven governors believed Amaechi led the association improperly or imperially. Suddenly after a meeting with the president on Tuesday, and for reasons reporters only speculated, about 16 governors had been persuaded to vote for partisanship over common sense. Thereafter, Akwa Ibom’s Akpabio exuberantly rationalised the creation of PDP-GF and talked of kicking out the Judases within the PDP governors’ ranks. The PDP national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, also exulted about a new spirit sweeping through the party, which spirit he believed would engender greater things and open a limitless vista of achievements for the party. It wasn’t apparent to both gentlemen that their newfound enthusiasm could in fact be a reflection of puerile politicking or of betrayal of general and party principles, values and virtues.

    It was expected of Tukur, as party chairman, to grandstand unscrupulously before the country in favour of the president, for the president had provoked an earthquake in order to crown and canonise him. On the other hand, the same ingratiation was not expected of Akpabio, for he is legally recognised as chief executive of a state, with rights and immunity vouchsafed to him by the constitution almost as powerfully as the same constitution has done for the president. That he chose to forswear those powers and instead read the politicking in the NGF through the president’s prism was a matter of choice to him. More, however, they were also an indication of a major flaw in his character. By speaking gutsily and with striking imperturbability against Amaechi, Akpabio gave notice of his capacity to listen to his heart rather than his head. That single embrace of the presidency, and the risible justification he lent his action, has probably defined and tarred his politics for all time. It is an action he may not be able to live down.

    The turbulence in the NGF was inevitable. The association was indeed becoming more powerful than even opposition parties, and its leadership, when it was personified by a Saraki or an Amaechi, had bigger halo than both party and national leadership. Its strength and ascendancy were underscored by the corresponding weakness and decline of a mediocre presidency. A clash was, therefore, unavoidable. And such a clash, thankfully, always helps to sharpen contradictions and expose leaders and politicians overrated by their accomplishments rather than rated by their lack of virtue and character. This is why I think that while NGF’s future is in doubt, the dismal future and political retrogression of both Akpabio and Shema are not. All it takes sometimes is just one wrong turn to consign a politician to the dustbin of history.