The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • All Progressives Congress steals Jonathan’s thunder in Maiduguri

    All Progressives Congress steals Jonathan’s thunder in Maiduguri

    It may be too early to begin to speak in superlatives about the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party still in formation but comprising some four political parties determined to challenge the dominance of the PDP. Last Thursday, nine governors and one deputy governor belonging to the four parties in the APC met in Maiduguri, Borno State, the hotbed of Boko Haram fundamentalist violence, for talks on their proposed merger. The meeting, which was third in the series of meetings being held for the special purpose of unification, was successful. The APC probably shifted the venue to Maiduguri because President Goodluck Jonathan was yet to visit the unsettled state. It was a deft political move. In fact, it was a move that stole the thunders of both Jonathan and the PDP.

    The APC governors pressed home their advantage by moving round some parts of the city to soak in the adulation of the wearied but grateful Borno people. They also very significantly donated N200m to succor victims of Boko Haram violence. And with an eye on the main chance, they told the press at the end of their meeting that they came to Maiduguri to show solidarity with the people and to prove that leaders needed to show courage in the face of danger. The message was not lost on Jonathan’s government. Cut to the quick, presidential aides quickly announced that the president had planned to visit the state on March 7, and that the APC leaders merely preempted the president.

    Planning to visit is unfortunately not the same as actually visiting. By meeting in a city wracked by sectarian and socio-economic uprising, APC has indicated it is capable of thinking on its feet. In addition, the party, even before it is registered, is exhibiting the advantages of nurturing another party to shake the PDP out of its complacency. It will no longer be business as usual. Not only is the polity gradually transiting into a two-party system, it is also evident that the race to 2015 has really begun. Many elements favour the APC already, including dominance in critical regions. If the party can overcome its teething problem, get its zoning arrangement right without the constraints that shackle the PDP, and conducts rancor-free primaries to produce credible and popular candidates, it is hard to see them losing the next polls, or winning by a margin that is less than assertive.

    But far beyond whooping for a political party, Nigerians must begin to think less partisan by ensuring that real democracy is enthroned through the availability of credible choices. The way to begin is to defeat the rather incestuous PDP in the coming polls, give a new party with a different set of developmental and socio-political paradigms the opportunity to preside over the country, and let the people have the satisfaction of knowing that waiting in the wings every election year is another beautiful bride in a brilliant, lawful and luxuriant polygamy.

  • The return of Anenih

    The return of Anenih

    The return of Chief Tony Anenih as PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) chairman is the most potent indication of the torment and crisis of confidence facing the ruling party. It was a terrible act of desperation to exhume the Edo dinosaur. But it is even more shocking to expect that the mothballed dreadnought, this Samson shorn of his hair, can return to service and dazzle like before. His assignment, it seems, is to ensure that Jonathan returns as PDP candidate for the 2015 presidential election. They must be encouraged to make that dream come true. For, given the extraordinary conjunction of political events in the country today, the opposition will find it more rewarding battle Jonathan than any other candidate. I think it is in vain that the president and his party chairman romanticise the exhumation of Anenih and repose abundant hope in his talisman.

     

  • Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)

    Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)

    Dr Doyin Okupe, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, lit a fire under the buttocks of squirming Yoruba leaders about 10 days ago when he blamed them for engendering the marginalisation of their region. It was a beguiling view that upset this column last week. On the surface, he was right to blame the Yoruba for authoring their own woes, but a thorough examination would show the foundation of his argument to be absolutely weak. Let me quote him again: “The issue of marginalisation of the Southwest was a political misadventure and political accident brought about by the Yoruba themselves. If you would recollect, the Yoruba were supposed to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the number four position in Nigeria. Due to political mishandling of the leadership of the Yoruba and also the sabotage of the Yoruba people by Yoruba leadership elsewhere, I am talking of the ACN now, the Yoruba leadership in the ACN conspired against the Yoruba people and allowed that position to be taken away. That was the beginning of the marginalisation. You see, when people sit down to share what is not enough and you don’t have anybody to speak for you, there is a problem.”

    Of course, every political observer is sensible enough to know that Okupe was wrong to have located the genesis of Yoruba marginalisation in the controversial election of Hon Aminu Tambuwal as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Marginalisation of the Southwest, which appears orchestrated under President Goodluck Jonathan, quite clearly predated the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) support for Tambuwal or the repudiation of Hon Mulikat Akande-Adeola. Okupe’s conclusion also glossed over the political complexities that convulsed the House of Representatives’ leadership election in 2011, and unthinkingly simplified the intrigues and motivations integral to the appointment and placement of public and security officials in Nigeria. Even if Hon Mulikat had been elected Speaker, and assuming that by some deft machinations she held on to that post for as long as Tambuwal has, few would be convinced she could blunt the factors that have led to the marginalisation of the Yoruba, which factors the Yoruba themselves apparently misunderstand and mishandle.

    Okupe is not the first to polemicise the Yoruba marginalisation claim, even though his observation, on the surface, appears irreproachable. The YUF and the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), both of which broadly speaking represent two contradistinctively ideological pressure groups in the Southwest, have also made similar observations. That the Southwest is deeply marginalised is, therefore, not in doubt. What is in dispute is the cause of the problem. Okupe’s arguments foundered badly when he placed the blame on the ACN’s repudiation of Hon Mulikat. The YUF took a different point of departure in identifying the factors responsible for the problem. Both by the speeches of some their leaders and the communique issued at the end of their Thursday meeting, YUF suggested that lack of unity was responsible for the region’s marginalisation. Perhaps this partly accounts for why the group has Unity embedded in its name.

    But YUF also insinuated that in view of the political realignments going on in the country, Southwest politicians needed to avoid deceit in acquiescing to mergers. We can only guess what YUF meant when it talked of unity. For reasons quite unrelated to the objectives of cooperation, the Forum is generally unenthusiastic about Southwest regional integration, which would have been a solid basis for the kind of unity they envision, assuming they truly think unity is a driving force in checkmating marginalisation. And since it is only the ACN from the Southwest that is in the process of merging with other parties, the warning issued by YUF could only have been meant for that party. However, both by its warning against merger and its lack of enthusiasm for integration, the YUF unwittingly lends credence to the existence of political and, maybe, too, ideological divisions in the region, which divisions it perhaps unknowingly exacerbates, if not endorses. YUF may in fact see Yoruba unity as one in which leading Yoruba political and business elites queue behind the Forum or at least pay allegiance to Ikenne, the home of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    But as I have argued in this place many times, that kind of unity is nothing but a chimera. It was never existent even in Awolowo’s time, and it may never happen. Moreover, it is doubtful whether it is desirable. Stripped to the bones, it is hard to see how lack of unity could have fostered marginalisation if other factors were not at play, or if the national political leadership had not been deliberately manipulative, mischievous, insensitive and even incompetent. If the presidency knew its onions, and had taken to heart lessons about how conflicts predispose countries to disintegration, it would have been proactive in promoting power balance, fair play and justice among ethnic and regional groupings in the country. Must Abuja be told what grave consequences often follow deliberately orchestrated power asymmetry, especially when power is skewed for purely parochial reasons or as a punitive exercise to undermine troublesome and exuberant opposition?

    Let me state it once again that there will never be unity in the Southwest whether demographically, ideologically, religiously or politically in the sense being advanced by YUF. It is enough that the Yoruba are culturally united, and as a result, and to a large extent, are generally progressive. But their progressivism does not even rise to the level of ideology, and need not, for they are a people at bottom fractious, disputatious, and made up in many disturbing parts of pockets of unprincipled and subversive individuals and entities. They are the only people capable of producing a winner in Chief MKO Abiola, and creating the counteracting forces of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s enviousness and Chief Ernest Shonekan’s betrayal. They are the only people capable of producing the insightful and gifted Awolowo, and nurturing the equally gifted but contumacious Chief Ladoke Akintola. Indeed, as the living Awolowos will recall, the opposition to their patriarch was so insidious at a point that it seemed the whole Yoruba political and judicial elite united against him. I fear that YUF is tilting at windmills. They speak of unity and warn of treacherous mergers; but they had attempted to prop up Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State as the counterforce to the prevailing political leadership in the Southwest, in spite of his formless political and developmental visions, general lack of fidelity to noble ideas and principles, and lack of foresight.

    If the marginalisation of the Yoruba is to be understood, it is certainly not in terms of unity or the lack of it of the people, and not in terms of their ideologies and political affiliations. There is no part of the country that is united, whether Southeast, South-South, or even the seemingly monolithic North. Yes, the Yoruba are to a large extent responsible for the marginalisation of their region, but it is not in the sense Okupe argued, nor in the sense proposed by YUF, nor yet in the sense analysed by most commentators. After all, if we must talk of political unity, it is only Ondo State that is out of the ACN column in the Southwest. Surely no one expects that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) must merge with the ACN in the region for unity to exist or for the region to escape marginalisation.

    The single most important factor in the marginalisation of the Southwest is probably the image of itself projected by the region. That image, though a little complex, is actually unflattering. Many observers have suggested, with good reason, that if Abiola had hailed from the North, and the head of state at the time of the 1993 elections had been an army general from the Southwest instead of Gen Ibrahim Babangida, not only would it have been difficult to annul the presidential election of that year, it would have been even more difficult to appoint an interim replacement. This logic may be simplistic and far-fetched, but it was easy to undermine Awolowo in 1963, easy to replace Abiola in 1993, and even easier to recruit those who connived at their replacements and colluded with the national leadership of the day to thwart their political victories.

    Pursuant to this observation, I think the Southwest projects the image of an irresolute and long-suffering people in the face of external oppression and machinations. Just as they produce brilliant non-conformists and political juggernauts, they also produce enterprising reactionaries and subversive heavyweights. Babangida had on many occasions insinuated that the annulment of the 1993 presidential election was at the instance of highly placed personalities, some of them from the Southwest. He also added that we would be shocked if we knew the identities of the conspirators. Before then, as if troubled by his conscience, Obasanjo had said the heavens would not fall as a result of the 1993 poll cancellation. And for effect, he added that Abiola was not the messiah we longed for. Conspiracy and treachery are not the exclusive preserve of the Yoruba. But they have managed to turn both into an art. This was why it was not difficult to find Southwest judges to put Awolowo away and stymie his political ambitions. This was also why Obasanjo actively endorsed the infamy of 1993. And this is why Nigerian leaders always find ready accomplices among the Yoruba to subvert the aspirations and principles that have ennobled the Southwest for many generations.

    But the image of group envy, group subversion and fractiousness projected by the Yoruba to the outside world is not a recent phenomenon. It predates colonialism. It manifested in Afonja’s rebellion when he took Ilorin out of the orbit and protection of the Oyo Empire in 1817; and when Ibadan for economic and political reasons attempted to address that historical anomaly, it took fellow Yoruba states working in concert to undermine that effort in the late 19th century. The talent to undermine one another is evergreen in the region. YUF, I think, sees unity in terms of its own goals and ambitions. If Mimiko resists friendship with ACN, it is not because he really fears that the progressive party’s hegemony would be destructive, but because his horizon is limited and is therefore unable to key in to wider regional economic and political aspirations. It should not surprise anyone that the much-ballyhooed Southwest regional integration effort is stalling. The region’s governors are not operating on the same wavelength, do not share the lofty vision of integration equally, do not have the capacity to clearly see the shape of the future, and cast wary glances at one another, fearing to be outdone or to be outshone.

    In all this, the Yoruba, in spite of their principles, progressivism and civilisation unfortunately give the impression of a weak and exploitable people who crave for unity on the surface but are at bottom committed to undermining their own leaders, regional goals and survival. President Goodluck Jonathan simply does not feel threatened by them as he feels threatened by, say, the North. If he attempts to appoint a few more Yoruba into key offices, it will be nothing more than sheer tokenism designed for electoral gains, or a belated attempt to correct his own leadership shortcomings for having presided over such indefensible lopsidedness.

    There are some countries you will think twice before attacking; and there are ethnic groups a leader will think twice before marginalising. The Yoruba do not project that deterrence, that implacable force and power that would make it unattractive for anyone to marginalise them. They are marginalised because their enemies sense their weaknesses, their isolation, their instinctive ethnocide. In their plaintive cry of marginalisation, they cut a pitiable figure of a people burdened by centuries of character flaw, of a people unable to subordinate their individual ambitions beneath their transcendental group objectives, and of a people so terribly buffeted by enemies that in the past few decades they have begun to doubt their own strengths, compromise their own foresightedness, and for the first time actually face a dilemma so cruel that their leaders have to seem to disavow their ‘Yorubanness,’ like Abiola and Obasanjo did, to win a major election.

    Concluded

  • Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (1)

    Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (1)

    The elders of the Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF), and before them the Young Turks of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), have stridently complained about the indefensible marginalisation of the Southwest. The YUF has even gone ahead to publish a two-page advertorial in the newspapers spelling out precisely some of the areas in which the Yoruba in the Southwest are marginalised. The details are very disturbing. The advertorial indicates that no Yoruba is represented in the first 12 top positions that constitute the country’s power hierarchy, yet other powers in the country flow from these 12 positions. It also says that the Yoruba head only three of the 36 MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies), yet these MDAs constitute the principal economic and financial agencies in the country. In addition, says the publication, no Yoruba is represented in the controlling echelons of the judiciary and anti-corruption agencies, and many more, including alarmingly the security agencies. On top of these, says YUF, some ministers, such as that of Aviation, have specialised in sacking the Yoruba from agencies under their control and replacing them with favourites from their preferred ethnic groups.

    The question of Southwest marginalisation became a debatable issue last year, and the presidency cannot claim to be ignorant. When eventually the President Goodluck Jonathan government deigned to respond, it chose the unlikely agency of the melodramatic Dr Doyin Okupe to speak on the issue. But in the context of allegations of unhealthy deployment and recruitment in the Army and Immigration, it was expected that when these complaints began to come to light, the presidency would take urgent steps to study and, if required, remedy the problems. Instead, the problems and the controversies have been left to fester, and the government now unfortunately comes across as parochial, insensitive and divisive.

    And so, instead of indicating that the Jonathan government is determined to take targeted and responsive steps to tackle the alleged marginalisation of the Yoruba, Okupe prefers to lay the blame on the Yoruba themselves. Hear Okupe’s warped logic: “The issue of marginalisation of the South-West was a political misadventure and political accident, brought about by the Yoruba themselves. If you would recollect, the Yoruba were supposed to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the number four position in Nigeria. Due to political mishandling of the leadership of the Yoruba and also the sabotage of the Yoruba people by Yoruba leadership elsewhere, I am talking of the ACN now, the Yoruba leadership in the ACN conspired against the Yoruba people and allowed that position to be taken away. That was the beginning of the marginalisation. You see, when people sit down to share what is not enough and you don’t have anybody to speak for you, there is a problem.”

    Okupe also suggested that the marginalisation of the Yoruba could not be blamed on Jonathan. As he put it: “It is not President Goodluck Jonathan’s problem. I am not saying it is not his problem; the President is sympathetic towards the Yoruba people. It is not true that the president hates the Yoruba people; that is not correct. It is our (Yoruba) own making that the election of the House of Representatives was badly handled by the leadership of the Yoruba in the PDP. And also the conspiracy of the Yoruba in the ACN for personal interest and wickedness and evil plotted against their own men. This was the beginning of our problem.” Not being a judicious man, Okupe is of course never given to moderation in speech or thought. As I have noted in this place more than once, the eminent medical practitioner and politician can defend the two sides of the same coin with perfect equanimity, conviction and subversive joy. His conclusion that the Yoruba brought this misfortune on themselves is both crassly political and an indication of deeper underlying malaise in the Southwest. Indeed, because there are many like him running riot with that heresy, Okupe’s statements deserve closer examination.

    In presenting their petitions before the president and the public, neither the ARG nor the YUF argued that the Yoruba were responsible for the orchestrated discrimination against the Southwest. In this first part, this column will limit itself to Okupe’s injudicious conclusion. The statistical proof presented by the two Yoruba organisations is of course unimpeachable. If it had been riddled with errors or demagoguery, the Jonathan presidency does not lack attack dogs to punch holes in them and to present a suitable counterpoise. It says a lot about the temper and disposition of the president himself that such shocking discriminatory practices go on unchallenged under him. Even if he didn’t know that the Southwest was so discriminated against in his government, it calls to question his own competence, the diligence of his aides who should keep a tab on things, and the bureaucratic perverseness of many of his appointees who have become indifferent to the factors that predispose the country to crisis and disunity.

    Dr Okupe says Jonathan does not hate the Yoruba, in spite of the glaring evidence to the contrary. Well, there is no evidence that he loves them either, or that he harbours no malice against them. During the 2011 governorship campaign, the president was in Lagos to bolster the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chances of winning the state. On the soapbox, he said a few things that should have cost him even the presidency itself. He told the crowd of supporters that if the other ethnic groups (that is, the non-Yoruba) came together, their electoral weight would be of such significance that they could unhorse the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) candidate. That was not just a puerile play of the ethnic card; it opened a window into the ethnically-prejudiced mind of the president. In addition, during the fuel subsidy protests of January 2012, the president was unsparing in condemning those he described as the arrogant elite of Lagos who owned three or more cars and whose pampered underage children cruised around in luxury cars. Again, this was not just a harmless opposition to Lagos’ protest culture; it was an exhibition of unadulterated bitterness against a people.

    In spite of Jonathan affording us a peep into his closed mind, many people still thought his statements had no disturbing implications, or perhaps they put them down to both his desperation to help PDP take Lagos State and his discomfort with the unrest that threatened his shaky government. I saw more than that, however. His statements were obviously a Freudian slip that helped us measure the level of his statesmanship and competence. When he made those insensitive statements, I immediately concluded that the country was unlikely to prosper or unite under him. I have been proved right. The country is in turmoil today.

    More, there is no element of veracity in Okupe’s opinion that Jonathan does not have a grudge against the Southwest. Not only does the president nurse a grudge, he has pretended not to notice the discrimination his government is promoting against the Yoruba. Moreover, he seems embittered by the criticalness of the zone, its holier-than-thou attitude, and the insufferableness of its business and political elites, including the region’s untameable and effervescent press. I go as far as saying that the president’s main headache is not even the ongoing insurrection in the North, but the censoriousness of the Southwest.

    If the president is afflicted by lack of insight into how a modern and complex society should be governed, and also lacks the temperament to bring groups together and forge a harmonious whole out of them, Okupe is even much worse and infinitely more mischievous. He argues that the Yoruba are responsible for their own marginalisation. The only proof he tenders is that a faction of the PDP in the Southwest and the entirety of the ACN voted for Hon. Aminu Tambuwal for the position of Speaker House of Representatives, when in fact the position had been zoned to the Southwest, and one Hon Mulikat Akande-Adeola had offered herself for the position. Okupe argued that this amounted to betrayal and wickedness. He glossed over the fact that the Reps were in a fever to checkmate the influence of the executive and its undisguised attempt to impose a candidate on the lower chamber. Jonathan’s candidate, as well as Obasanjo’s, was Hon Mulikat. Not only did the lower chamber feel insulted that the executive wanted to manipulate and control the legislature, many of them also felt Obasanjo was too narrow-minded and unpopular to impose anyone on the Reps. To vote Hon Mulikat was to give in to the malfeasances of the executive and Obasanjo.

    But it is even needless defending the Reps’ choice of Tambuwal, notwithstanding Okupe’s obfuscatory arguments. As far as the marginalisation of the Southwest goes, and as far as the observable bias against the zone is concerned, the position of Speaker is just one tiny block in the Jonathan government’s architecture of discrimination. If Okupe is promising presidential action to redress this major wrong, he is only trying to help the president against what is certain to be electoral debacle in 2015. But no matter what the president does between now and the next election, it will be too little too late. The zone is competent to tell the difference between righting a wrong for electoral reasons and knowing Jonathan for who he really is. I do not think the zone can be fooled. From start to finish, they know Jonathan has not done any major work in the zone. Instead, he has caused more division, displayed unmanageable temper and made incendiary statements when the subject is the Southwest, insulted the zone’s elites, and on top of these, refused to appoint anyone from the zone into notable or sensitive office.

    Yet, Okupe gives the impression the president may be unaware of the marginalisation of the Southwest. Does Jonathan not meet with his men? What faces does he see? Who are the people in his inner caucus, and what amperage of insularity do they display? Is he apprised of the country’s history, and does he have a comprehensive and holistic grasp of the issues troubling the people he pretends to govern? I suspect the president is mixed up with the wrong aides who can’t offer him qualitative or educated advice. Yet he needs a qualitative crowd around him to mitigate the damaging effects of his obvious shortcomings, nay, his provincialism.

    But why is it always easy to discriminate against the Southwest, marginalise it, or as the YUF sentimentally alleged, purge the Yoruba from key positions in government without fear of repercussions? I will attempt some explanations next week, for these explanations are even more relevant to understanding the current pressures the Yoruba face than the seemingly nugatory exercise of merely drawing attention to any perceived discrimination against them or debating who is or who is not responsible for the marginalisation.

    To be concluded next week

  • All Progressives Congress and the battles to come

    All Progressives Congress and the battles to come

    I do not envy the All Progressives Congress (APC) at all. Founded, as it were, a few days ago, and full of secret hopes for a future it is certain to approach with utmost trepidation, it is likely to need the daring, speed and subtlety of a David to confront the electoral rapacity, executive brutism and general apathy of the ageing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Goliath. All patriots, irrespective of political leanings, will yearn for the new party to acquit itself well, make a huge mark politically, and possibly win the mandate to remake and redirect the country. The ultimate indicator of these possibilities will be when the four political parties, which have merged to form the APC, bury their individual structures and differences under the ultimate goal of a party determined to win the presidency and offer the Black man the leadership he has craved for since W.E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey inspired Pan-Africanism.

    The APC is a four-in-one political party, at least for now. Among that desperate quartet – Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – there will be some elements who cherish isolation, even if it means risking being destroyed separately. So the new party must not have any illusion it is a tightknit party with a single-mindedness that generally conduces to instant electoral victory. Nor should the party ever assume that by merely announcing a merger there would be no teething problems, no ego posturing, no ideological conflicts, and no struggle for general relevance and dominance within the party. The party will be tested to its very core with such severity that it will be forced to decide what things motivate it: the mere acquisition of power, such as is propelling the PDP into increasing mediocrity and ruin, or the beneficial uses of power, such as often inspire leading political parties in developed democracies to boundless patriotism, excellence and innovations.

    A merger of political parties was always required to take on the monolithic PDP. But for about 14 years, the opposition simply could not find the good sense and courage to unite against a common and implacable foe. In retrospect, if a makeshift unity had been procured for the 2011 poll, the opportunity to resolve the contradictions that naturally restrict or even stymie the progress of a new party would have been glossed over or lost irretrievably. The APC must therefore anticipate and welcome the initial struggles and confusions that are certain to dot its difficult beginnings, and not trifle with the indispensability of building consensus and compromises. These processes are required to stabilise the party, give it a hard inner core, and make it a force to be reckoned with.

    It will not be enough that the party has seemed to inspire the public with its quaint and philosophical rationalisation for merger. Chief Tom Ikimi, chairman of the merger committee of the ACN, puts it succinctly: “At no time in our national life has radical change become more urgent. And to meet the challenge, we the following political parties namely ACN, ANPP, APGA and CPC have resolved to merge forthwith and become All Progressives Congress and offer to our beleaguered people a recipe for peace and prosperity. We resolve to form a political party committed to the principles of internal democracy, focused on serious issues of concern to our people, determined to bring corruption and insecurity to an end, determined to grow our economy and create jobs in their millions through education, housing, agriculture, industrial growth etc., and stop the increasing mood of despair and hopelessness among our people. The resolution of these issues, the restoration of hope, and the enthronement of true democratic values for peace, democracy and justice are those concerns which propel us. We believe that by these measures only shall we restore our dignity and position of pre-eminence in the comity of nations. This is our pledge.” Inspiring a people, a party, and an electorate, however, goes beyond fair words. Many other elements are involved.

    Much more than the big and financially well-endowed PDP, the APC can be trusted to draw on a huge reserve of intellectuals, for the new party seems to set great store by intellectualism, and real intellectuals, by training and experience, can instinctively tell where their expertise is needed. Nigerian political parties often draw a line between their parties’ guiding documents and party activities and policies. So it is one thing for the new party to write a beautiful manifesto and constitution, which I think they will manage to concoct even admirably; and it is another thing to anchor its programmes and party administration on those documents. For a party anxious to minimise differences and disagreements, would it not be tempted to indulge in the idiosyncratic pragmatism that has made Nigerian political parties both weak and colourless? If the new party is to resonate with the electorate, and is to stand a chance of doing spectacularly well in the next set of elections, it must be different in more ways than one. Indeed it must be truly remarkable. But does it have the stamina to be different? Would its leaders not feel the urgency and desperation of embracing expediency over principles, especially because in the crassly monetised politics of Nigeria, principles may sometimes appear like an abstraction and an expensive and annoying excursion into rarified environments?

    I do not know whether the main reason for the merger of the four parties is to snatch power from the hands of the PDP. If it is, the agglomeration will adopt fierce short-term tactics designed to deliver the most impact in the shortest possible time. The risk, however, is that if they fail, the disemboweling logic of short-termism and the contradictions of merchandising politics will undermine future prospects of growth and success, and possibly even fragment the party. A better approach will be to structure, run and inspire the new party for the long term. That approach, as cautious and exploratory as it may seem, is not antagonistic to short term electoral gains, and it even predisposes the APC to greater stability, purposefulness and enduring exceptionalism. The PDP is united not by ideas or vision but by a sickening affection for power acquisition. The APC must strive to be different. It must make it clear that the country would profit from the noble principles that should drive a serious political party, and that nothing is too small or too big to be sacrificed for those principles. Here, alas, is a difficult dilemma. The PDP’s lengthy stay in office has brought nothing but unremitting poverty and social dislocations; and to allow the party another four years in office after 2015 would be suicidal for the country. Yet the APC would appear indistinguishable from the PDP if it should appear to be desperate and in indecent haste to acquire power.

    It is too early in the day for any analyst to accurately weigh the new party’s chances. We must, therefore, concentrate on those factors the party must pay attention to in order to be a credible opposition to the ruling behemoth. The first task is for the APC to cobble together a common ideological platform from the suspect ideologies of its four constituent parts. The CPC, as everyone knows, is more pragmatic than ideological. It depends for its lifeblood on the honesty and enigmatic disposition of its main inspirer, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who is not any more ideological now than he was in 1984 when he was military head of state. The ANPP on its own is even openly less ideological. If it has any progressive hue at all, it is to the extent that the PDP has seemed to crowd out any other serious party from Nigeria’s conservative habitat. To avoid a fate worse than ostracism, the ANPP needed to exude anything else other than conservatism; hence the merger. By embracing a very mild form of progressivism, no matter how insignificant, the party is merely being practical and adaptable.

    If APGA holds any progressive credential worth considering, it is the word ‘progressives’ in its original name. There is entirely nothing else binding the party to the ideology. It has in fact neither proclaimed progressivism at any time, even feebly, nor does it care to defend or define it, carefully or casually. The party reminds one of a road interchange: every road leads to it and out of it. Either by design or by accident, the ACN aggressively proclaimed its ideological tigritude to the point that its theoretical inconsistencies and suspect democratic credentials simply faded into thin air. The party is thus rightly or wrongly considered as the only truly ideological party, almost as if progressivism is intrinsically and conceptually more virtuous than conservatism. In fact the disagreement between the party and its Southwest opponents centres on its claim to be the only progressive party in Nigeria. But a disaggregation of ACN’s progressivism will reveal its cultural roots, entitling just about any political journeyman in the zone to claim progressivism, and the signal importance of the actions, words and dispositions of its officials, particularly its governors.

    Since the four constituent parties in the APC are actually clustered not too far apart on the ideological spectrum, they stand a better chance of arriving at workable and harmless compromises. They are likely to agree on external relations, even though Nigeria’s foreign policy is symptomatic of the anti-intellectual, reactive and lazy approach of Nigerian leaders to the external world. They are also likely to fashion an agreeable economic plan that is pragmatic, gently progressive, and far superior to the PDP’s, of course, on account of both the grinding poverty 14 years of the ruling party have sentenced the country and the justifiable impatience of the suffering majority praying for the application of radical anodynes. No other issue, not even religion, nor Boko Haram, will be capable of threatening the anticipated consensus. If the PDP is united by greed and intolerance, and is paranoid about holding on to power, the APC should be unified by its common detestation of the PDP, and be fanatically committed to unhorsing the clumsy giant.

    Though it is at the moment preoccupied with putting down the rebellion in its fold, the PDP is not unaware of the dangers constituted by what some writers have exaggeratedly described as the APC mega party. The ruling party will very likely respond with disgruntled alliances of its own to further bloat its bigness. It will lure grumpy fence sitters in the ACN, make offers to the Labour Party which the small and ideologically unresponsive party can’t resist, and adopt measures hostile to the opposition, including abuse of judicial and legislative processes. It will also attempt to promote discord among the leading lights of the APC in order to prevent peaceful selection of candidates. The ruling party’s success in these unwholesome enterprises will depend on the unpreparedness of the APC leaders to bury their differences and recognise that the spoils of war are almost limitless beyond the plum jobs and positions of the presidency and other top posts.

    The PDP is inured to the danger of fragmentation facing the country. But if the APC recognises that 2015 is probably the last chance for this generation to save the union, and to comprehensively restructure the polity and free the energies of industrious Nigerians bottled up for decades by incompetent leadership, it will sacrifice anything to win power at the centre. As this newspaper’s Hardball column said on Friday, “The country is ready for APC; what no one is sure of, but which only the party can answer, is whether the party is ready for the country.” For without doubt, except the earth shifts from its orbit, it is inconceivable that the unprecedentedly marginalised Southwest would vote for the PDP; nor would most parts of the North vote for the ruling party at the presidential level at least. And in a few parts of the Southeast and South-South, it’s a toss-up; for the voters in those eroded lands and mangrove swamps are not anybody’s fools. Indeed, given the heavy feeling of change in the air, the APC will have to be extraordinarily imprudent and pigheaded to lose the 2015 battle.

  • Boko Haram’s controversial ceasefire/peace offer

    Both the federal government and Borno State have reacted with tentative unease to the offer by Boko Haram to declare unilateral ceasefire and engage in dialogue for lasting peace. On the part of Borno State, they are desperate to have any kind of deal as long as it would lead to cessation of hostility, but are not sure whether the sect’s proposal will fly, especially in view of the federal government’s newfound bellicosity. Abuja on the other hand is exasperated by the sect’s obduracy and refusal in the past months to enter into dialogue without preconditions. And in the face of the Mali campaign, which the government says may have disrupted Boko Haram’s command structure and safe haven, Abuja appears to think the sect is cornered and desperate. There is, therefore, brinkmanship on both sides.

    There has never been a consensus on dialogue with the Islamist sect. There will never be. But it is also understandable why Borno State, which has borne the brunt of the sect’s activities, is desperate to secure peace in order for economic and social activities to be restored. For both federal and state governments, the issue of setting a sound and principled precedent for leaders to follow in the face of anarchical groups levying war against the state is not urgent at all. This was why they pussyfooted for a long time over whether to dialogue with the sect or not. But just when the vacillating Jonathan government had made up its mind to fight until victory was achieved, the sect threw a hard bone into the mix, which Borno State seems resolved to chew with its milk teeth.

    In making up their minds on the sect’s proposal, especially the demand for N26bn compensation, it is important for both Borno and Abuja to know that the innocent dead, especially those whose lives were shattered for no reason other than either their religion or refusal to cooperate with the sect, cannot be part of that negotiation. The federal and state governments must also struggle with the deeply troubling irony of making a deal with the sect to reward its living and dead members for having levied war against the state and destroyed other people’s lives while purportedly fighting either social or economic injustice.

    Boko Haram militants, some state governments in the Northeast, and many of the sect’s sympathisers argue that since the federal government could spend hundreds of billions of naira to end Niger Delta militancy, it should be prepared to spend a decent fraction of that to end militancy in the North. Such arguments deliberately fail to take cognisance of the striking dissimilarities between the two types of militancy. While the Niger Delta campaigns were first and foremost directed at economic sabotage for years of indefensible neglect of the region, the Boko Haram campaigns were first and foremost an unconscionable human tragedy enacted wilfully by a misguided group that has now spawned more violently adventurous splinter groups. It is a disservice to intellectualism and to the country to excuse the destructions wreaked by the sect, or to monetise peace.

    Boko Haram sympathisers should be advised to limit their campaigns to pleading for amnesty for the sect’s foot soldiers. They should also limit themselves to suing the government for all the documented cases of extra-judicial killings carried out by security agents. Perhaps the courts may even compel the government to pay substantially more than the arbitrary N26bn the sect is asking for. But for the Republic to be saved and the law and constitution preserved, the sect’s leaders must be apprehended, tried and punished according to the laws of the land. In addition, security agents who engaged in extrajudicial killings should be brought to book, and the point made that Nigeria is not a lawless jungle filled with maniacal and uncontrollable killers in uniform. And then finally, the innocent dead and wounded must receive adequate compensation for peace to reign.

  • Maina, Elumelu, Lawan: The haunted hunters

    Maina, Elumelu, Lawan: The haunted hunters

    Panels in Nigeria do not just help the government to distract, entomb or procrastinate; they also consume virtually everyone who has had the misfortune of heading them. The examples of Abdulrasheed Maina (Presidential Task Team on Pension Reform (PTTPR), Ndudi Elumelu (House of Representatives Committee on Power Sector Reforms), and Farouk Lawan (House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee on Monitoring of Fuel Subsidy Regime) are pointers to the contradictions that afflict the body politic. There are a few less significant cases, and many more near misses. The recent Mallam Nuhu Ribadu panel (Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force), a red herring, escaped the fate of the first three panels by the skin of its teeth and probably by the combustible nature of the panel chairman’s personality.

    After many months of controversial manoeuvrings, Maina was last week declared wanted by the police on the instigation of the Senate which had summoned him to shed light on missing pension funds totalling some N195bn. The Maina Presidential Task Team was constituted about two years ago to investigate pension funds mismanagement and to sanitise and modernise the procedure for pension administration in the military, police, Department of State Security (DSS), customs, immigration, prison and pension office (CIPPO) and the Head of Service Pension Offices. However, presenting the Senate’s case against Maina, Senator Kabiru Gaya said: “…N195 billion pension fund is unaccounted for. In the head of service alone, N139 billion was released but N100 billion was paid out to pensioners. In the police service, N131 billion was paid in five years but only N88 billion was paid out, N44 billion is yet to be accounted for. This money belongs to the masses and it is expected that it should be accounted for.”

    Why Maina avoided the summons has not been fully explained by any official in the Task Team. But he was quite enthusiastic in declaiming late last year that the team had discovered earth-shaking facts on pension maladministration. As he put it exuberantly and perhaps exaggeratedly: “I want to tell you that what we have uncovered will surprise Nigerians. We have found that pension fund up to N3.3 trillion was stolen by the cabal and we are going to recover all the money…we have recovered about N221 billion and deleted 71,135 ghost pensioners from the civil service list…In addition N74 billion of the N181 billion discovered has been mopped up for utilization in the 2012 budget…We have conducted biometrics for 170,000 pensioners, established e-pension management system, pioneered the payment of pensioners in the Diaspora and introduced smart cards to eliminate physical verification of pensioners.” By the time he began to lyricise his team’s achievements, he had become a hunted and haunted man.

    But a national reputation is not secured upon the basis of one aberration. While the Senate was engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Maina, with the latter still avoiding either arrest or imprisonment, Mr Ndudi Elumelu, a member of the House of Representatives, was left bewildered by how rapidly he transformed from hunter to hunted. It began with the late President Umaru Yar’Adua suggesting that his predecessor, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had spent some $10bn dollars on power projects without result. Soon, the House of Representatives also declared alarmingly that the Obasanjo government actually spent $16bn on power projects with little to show for it. No one knew nor bothered to verify how the legislators did their calculations. But the sound of $16bn was enough to send the country, which was asphyxiating under a minuscule 3000MW generation of electricity, into a deafening uproar.

    In 2008, Elumelu was put at the head of the national consensus to get its pound of flesh from the enraged power sector (not fuel subsidy) cabal, not minding the collateral damage. But before the panel was through with its assignment, an assignment that saw it stepping on giant toes and engaging in acerbic exchange with Obasanjo, stories alleging bribery and corruption against the panel and its chairman became rife. Words of encouragement from governors and sympathisers were sadly insufficient to exculpate Elumelu. He was not even allowed to present his report, having barely managed to complete the assignment without being hounded into jail. He eventually went to jail for about a month, and was tried for allegedly misappropriating some N5.2bn Rural Electrification Agency (REA) contracts. It was only last year that he was discharged and acquitted. As for the panel’s recommendations, a total of some 88, most were thrown out, and the surviving few inoculated against causing damage to anyone’s reputation. The shell-shocked Elumelu is today quietly chewing the cud in the legislature.

    If Maina is scurrying animatedly from one rathole to another to evade what his pursuers call capture, and Elumelu has become almost phlegmatic, swearing never again to be lured into any national assignment where he would step on toes, Farouk Lawan, another House of Representatives member, is dismayed by how quickly he has fallen and how numbed he has become. If Maina is as clever as his words and visage indicate, he will humour the furious legislators probing the pension scam and get away with nothing but fierce censure. Elumelu has become a safe ruminant and legislative wonk. He was badly beaten and bruised, but he is still perching on what looks like the moral high ground. This is not the case with Lawan. The petit legislator has been beaten insensate by sickening, short-range blows from the executive branch and one of its men Friday, the illustrious and undiscriminating Mr Femi Otedola.

    Lawan’s story is probably the most dramatic and pathetic since Nigeria began its troubling experimentation with parliamentary practices. Member of the House of Representatives since 1999, his star rising with each passing year, and his elocution, like his rich voice, deliberate, endearing and near as oratorical as anyone who is not an orator can get, Lawan seemed made for parliamentary jousting and destined for parliamentary glory. Not only was he leader of the so-called Integrity Group in the Reps, a label he and others in his group acquired when they battled former Speaker Patricia Etteh over corruption allegations, he inspired confidence in many Nigerians about his bona fides, and evoked an unquenchable ability to strive for his country’s glory. In April 2012, according to the prosecutor, he solicited for a $3m bribe from businessman Femi Otedola, and only managed to collect $620,000 of the sum before his luck ran out. The state will try to make the accusation stick; but Lawan will try his best to wriggle out of the net. There is little hope, however, that he will succeed.

    But Lawan’s troubles began when he was named chairman of the panel on fuel subsidy payments. The panel did the job with such public daring and flourish that Nigerians were glued to what they dubbed the subsidy opera. In the din, Lawan’s mellifluous voice and characteristic surefootedness, both of which belied his size, could be heard and seen distinctly, soothing wounded hearts and lifting broken spirits. But with the Otedola accusation, the once confident Lawan voice has given way to a hoary, feeble baritone, slower than usual, and many of his statements contradictory and clearly illogical. A court has remanded him in prison until his bail application can be heard later this week. After stalling for many months Lawan now probably feels subdued, disconsolate and haunted, broken in spirit as he is in body, and perhaps with not the faintest idea of a way out.

    Of the three gentlemen, Lawan is probably the worst hit. While the courts will be procedurally restrained by legal exigencies to assume his guilt, the public is less troubled by any consideration of conscience. Once Otedola went public, they had concluded there was no conceivable way of escape for the petit PDP legislator from Kano. More, the public sighs in frustration at the paradoxical jinx afflicting panels in these parts, and the seeming impossibility of finding one good man in government by whom we could swear, or failing that, one good man anywhere to probe the failure of government.

  • A most beguiling centenary

    A most beguiling centenary

    “The SGF is lucky to be working for the equally mystifying and sometimes opaque Jonathan. If he had the tough luck of working for someone else of exceptional administrative and ideological competence, his arguments, which can’t persuade a college boy of average ability, should earn him a brusque dismissal from the cabinet. And not just dismissal, but with a caveat attached to his ample frame warning future governments never to patronise his soaring gifts for rodomontade or indulge his mystical genius for inaccuracies. For a man so apparently incapable of the most elementary syllogism is only gifted in one thing and one thing only: purveying historical fallacies with style and flourish”

    Given the avidness with which the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, is promoting Nigeria’s centenary, his office may have played a major role in conceiving the warped project. It is of course baffling that the office of the SGF seems joyously preoccupied with the project. But whether we are baffled or not, it is expected that Anyim will drive the project stubbornly to the very end, and after that, as is usual with everything Nigerian, he will forget such a project ever existed. In 2010, former Information minister, Professor Dora Akunyili, excitedly promoted what she and other government officials labelled Nigeria’s Golden Jubilee. After so much hue and cry of such grand scale as to be capable of shifting the earth from its orbit, the project ended expensively and anticlimactically with nothing to show for it but an awful taste in the mouth. We were not better materially, our opinion of our country did not improve a jot, and we made no special effort, real or pretentious, to rededicate ourselves to the Nigerian project. So much for the jubilee.

    Somehow, for a centenary project of such manifold falsity, indeed elevated to the level of magical unrealism by Anyim and his helpers, we seem to be preparing for another bout of misdirected energy, for a misdirected objective, and by a misdirected organ of government. Nobody remembers when this genie left the bottle, but it obviously predated President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to Trinidad and Tobago last year. That Caribbean country’s leaders had invited the Nigerian president to join them in celebrating their Emancipation Day anniversary. In a reciprocal gesture, Jonathan took the opportunity to invite the Trinidadian prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, to Nigeria’s celebration of 100 years of the amalgamation of Southern and Northern protectorates by Sir Frederick Lugard. Nigerians were aghast to hear that of all the memorable things in our history, the government felt the most appropriate to celebrate was amalgamation, which, like the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 partitioning Africa among colonising powers, was a humiliating part of our history in which we had no say whatsoever, and which aborted or stultified our political evolution, stymied the quest for nationhood, and almost irreparably damaged our self-esteem.

    Whatever psychological satisfaction anyone may derive from amalgamation, it will be intellectually dishonest to assume that this Lugardian fait accompli is not deserving of both analysis and probable revision. Like an alloy with different linear expansivity, amalgamation probably created the template for the dissonance that has undermined and distorted, not reinforced, the efforts to achieve Nigerian unity. If anything, therefore, any appreciation of amalgamation, which by the way was opposed by the political elite in Lagos at the time, ought sensibly to be directed towards designing a national project for its critical examination, not its uncritical acceptance, let alone its celebration. For the same reason that it would be counter-productive to celebrate slavery instead of its abolition, and colonialism instead of independence, it makes little sense to celebrate amalgamation, as if that in itself constitutes a historical or political virtue.

    The centenary project shows why the Jonathan cabinet has not been rated among the most cerebral the nation has ever had. Indeed, it is probably the least reflective, the least responsive, the least patriotic, the least disciplined, and the least studious and scientific. This government’s understanding of the grand ideas of democracy, national unity, and social reforms oscillates between the jaded and the whimsical, and between the unforgivably perverse and the uncritically amateurish. It considers all opposition to its ideas, policies and projects as playing politics. Whether it is criticism of its ineffective handling of the Boko Haram revolt, or the renaming of the University of Lagos, or even the fuel subsidy removal controversy, among other things, the Jonathan government sees the opposition as playing politics every step of the way. It does not see criticism as a second opportunity to reflect on the issues of the day. Burdened by such paranoia, it is little wonder that Anyim has been junketing between Abuja and Lagos selling a project the Jonathan government had no business conceiving in the first place.

    In concrete terms, hereunder, according to some newspaper accounts, are Anyim’s three major elements undergirding the centenary project:

    1) The initiation of legacy projects such as the erection of a new City Gate in Abuja; Centenary City also in Abuja that will attract investments of about $15 billion from the private sector and generate over 15,000 jobs; a unity square in every state capital; medical diagnostic centres in each of the six geo-political zones of the country; ICT centres in all the universities that are yet to have one; a modern library in a university in each of the zones; police crime laboratories, one in each of the zones; building and renovation of sports facilities in each of the federal universities as well as renovation, naming or renaming of colonial sites in the country; renovation/upgrade of the National War Museum in Umuahia, Colonial History museums in Lokoja and Aba, the National Museum inside the Old Residency in Calabar and establishment of a dialysis centre in each of the zones.

    2) Pursuant to 1 above, Anyim told the media that the projects – more like hoodwink – would be private sector-driven. Said he in the typically fuzzy language Nigerian governments have become adepts at using: “Being a private sector-driven project, government will not put any money into it. It is also not a concession arrangement since government will outsource the project to a company that has secured land allocation in accordance with FCT land swap programme.” He adds that the legacy city will “provide strongest social, political and economic tool for securing foreign investment, promoting positive international attention and indeed signalling a new national economic awakening.”

    3) Anyim was also quoted as adding: “At our age and experience as a people, we know that there is no country like Nigeria… If we cannot celebrate Nigeria, then it means that we are not proud of Nigeria….We must use the occasion of our centenary celebration to affirm to ourselves that Nigeria is not an accident. Indeed, in the words of Lord Lugard on the occasion of the amalgamation, ‘Nigeria is the product of a long and mature consideration.’ We must celebrate because our unity is the common symbol of our collective existence that has put the nation on the path of development and potential global ascendancy. We must celebrate because without Nigeria, we will not have the largest and most vibrant parliament in Africa, in tandem with other maturing political institutions with deep and rich traditions. We must celebrate because if not Nigeria, we would not be the largest black nation and the seventh most populous nation in the world. We must celebrate Nigeria because if we cannot underscore the essence and advantages of our unity, it means we plan to promote disintegration.”

    Now, let us consider briefly some of the facetious and exaggerated remarks of the SGF. First, it is not clear how the Jonathan government hopes its arm-twisting tactics could compel the private sector to embrace what may be to them superfluous projects. Apart from making annoying guesswork about the number of people to be employed in the legacy projects, is it not even more vexatious that projects which the government should routinely be engaged in, sans any celebration, have been herded into the so-called legacy projects? Do we need a celebration of the amalgamation to build new cities, establish forensic labs, IT centres and industries?

    Second, Anyim muttered under his breath that the government would only spend money to cater for that component of the legacy projects that concerned it. And what, may we ask, are those ghostly components that cannot be clearly spelt out, and what amount of money do they hope to spend without sounding like the Aviation minister, Stella Oduah, on the new national carrier? Indeed, item 2 is an infernal lie through and through. With the disreputable manner the government runs the affairs of the country, and having become a captive of vested interests and money power, the private sector has become coterminous with the public sector. There is no line separating the two. Worse, Anyim absentmindedly adds that the legacy city will become a tool for “attracting foreign investment, promoting positive international attention and indeed signalling a new national economic awakening.” Readers should ignore this vexatious untruth. How much foreign investment have they attracted in the past two decades, and especially in the past few years with the rising level of insecurity? As for positive international attention, it is, as the media often say, a figment of his imagination. What is more, to suggest that the legacy city will signal economic reawakening is an abuse of language and a calculated attempt to cruelly mislead the people.

    Third, while, for Anyim, the legacy projects in item 1 above serve as incentives to coax approval from us, item 3, with its strange reasoning and absolute non sequitur, is supposed to serve as justification. How on earth could a top official of a government presiding over the affairs of more than 160m people, many of them intelligent, suggest that celebrating Nigeria is an indication of pride in the country? Absolute nonsense. Unchecked by his own indefensible exaggerations, Anyim proceeds rather absurdly to quote Lugard who described Nigeria as the product of “a long and mature consideration.” In what way was amalgamation well thought out, especially by a man who deprecated the ‘natives’? Was it in the sense of administrative expediency for the British and their economically exploitative tendency? Or was it a carefully considered amalgamation of cultures, religions, political development stages, and social predilections of the peoples of the Southern and Northern protectorates? Let Anyim answer that, if he can.

    Then, finally, and still under item 3, consider this unremitting Anyim trifle: “We must celebrate because without Nigeria, we will not have the largest and most vibrant parliament in Africa, in tandem with other maturing political institutions with deep and rich traditions.” Is Anyim really speaking about Nigeria or some other chimera of his boyish phantasy? Then, this one also: “We must celebrate because if not Nigeria, we would not be the largest black nation and the seventh most populous nation in the world.” When, in Anyim’s meaningless theology, did big or size become a virtue in itself? And then the most outlandish reasoning ever: “We must celebrate Nigeria because if we cannot underscore the essence and advantages of our unity, it means we plan to promote disintegration.” In other words, centenary celebration, an indirect celebration of Lugard, underscores unity, and those not persuaded by the gibberish plan to promote disintegration. Grrrr!

    The SGF is lucky to be working for the equally mystifying and sometimes opaque Jonathan. If he had the tough luck of working for someone else of exceptional administrative and ideological competence, his arguments, which can’t persuade a college boy of average ability, should earn him a brusque dismissal from the cabinet. And not just dismissal, but with a caveat attached to his ample frame warning future governments never to patronise his soaring gifts for rodomontade or indulge his mystical genius for inaccuracies. For a man so apparently incapable of the most elementary syllogism is only gifted in one thing and one thing only: purveying historical fallacies with style and flourish.

  • Sanusi talks shop

    Sanusi talks shop

    On January 15, at a dinner organised by the Northern Reawakening Forum (NRF) in Abuja, the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, once again managed to shock Nigerians out of their wits with his high-octane denunciations of societal foibles. Demonstrating the constancy of spirit and viewpoint that has made him even more famous than his sometimes puzzling financial panaceas ever attempted, Sanusi piquantly suggested that all socio-cultural and religious organisations, which he believed impacted society wrongly, should be banned. He stopped just short of calling for the abrogation of religions altogether. It was probably apparent to him that even for a radical, calling for the scrapping of a religion would have been every whit suicidal.

    In the words of this puritan hater of societal quirks: “When I was approached to speak on the economy at the forum called the Northern Reawakening Forum, my initial reaction was that I don’t go to these regional and ethnic groups because I have very strong views against Arewa, Afenifere, Ohaneze and other regional and ethnic groups. And I think these regional and ethnic groups should be banned; including, by the way, Ja’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI), and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). They should be banned because they are not religious organisations; they are not cultural organisations; they are political associations in disguise of religion and region.”

    Sanusi, it is evident to every Nigerian now, is an iconoclast. He is as fond of demolishing reputations, when he thinks they are built on shallow foundations, as he is eager to destroy symbols of our childish fancies, be it in religion, in politics or in the economy. No one is too high or too low for his shrill attacks. All he asks of himself is whether the object of his scorn is deserving of attack. Once convinced, he does not shirk a fight, and he gives it his impudent all. But by calling for the scrapping of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Ja’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI), two of Nigeria’s leading religious umbrella associations, he seems to take his iconoclasm to new heights. And by adding into the mix his abjuration of ethnic groups such as Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Afenifere, and Ohaneze Ndigbo, which he disdainfully dismissed as noisome masquerades for pestilential political interests, he climbs what his detractors describe as monomaniacal fondness for self-preserving posturing.

    But while it is true that Sanusi’s fiery denunciations have increased in amperage over the years, he makes his enemies squirm even the more because he is seldom misguided. For instance, his description of invitees to Aso Villa as effete champions of dishonest causes can hardly be faulted, for this is as true of Niger Delta militants as it is true of northern and southwest leaders, many of whom have risen to prominence by dint of their capacity for mischief, betrayal and general villainy. His observation that religious leaders perennially engage in the most opprobrious romance with power is so apt that he even seems to underestimate public revulsion against the alliance between religion and politics.

    Sanusi’s observations offer an opportunity for a reconsideration of the place and role of religion in national life, that is, if we are capable of such introspection. And though the CBN governor doubtless sounds stiff and sanctimonious in his denunciation of umbrella religious associations, like all his other pithy remarks on the economy, National Assembly profligacy, malodorous aviation policies, and banking malfeasance, he still makes more sense than most public officers.

    Rather than take on Sanusi for his daring and irreverence, it may be time for religious leaders to ponder whether in fact they have not become overly political in their dealings among themselves and with the people in power. Religious leaders seem to us to exult when the powerful worship with them and sit in the front rows, and lend personal and state support to multi-million naira religious projects. There is today less emphasis on the content of a man’s character than on whom he portrays himself to be. It is indeed very apparent that our society is laid waste by the scale of our wrongdoings and the sanctimoniousness of our religious observances, with neither religious nor political leaders, nor yet cultural paragons, anxious to bell the cat for change.

    Nigeria is one of the most religious societies in the world today. But religion has profited it little, though some cynics point out it could have been worse had there not being at least a public gesture towards some religiosity. The country’s civil service is weak, mediocre and corrupt. The country’s leadership itself, though it revels in the appurtenances of a mosque and a chapel at the State House complex, is increasingly felonious, overtly compromised, and subverted by special interests and overweening cabals. There is no altruism anywhere, and no patriotism left in anyone’s bosom. With depravity elongated and held so high, it is no wonder that the society is wracked both by guilt and by violence.

    Sanusi rightly frets that the evil compromises ethnic and religious groups have entered into with the men in power have sunk the country. But the answer may not be in their proscription. If they are proscribed – and this is not possible anyway, no matter what the letter and spirit of the constitution say – other perhaps more insidious groups would simply take their places. Nature abhors vacuum, it is said. What has the country offered in place of socio-cultural organisations? Do we have a sense of nationhood? Contrary to the Lugardian ratiocination suggesting that unity is a physical, geographic thing, the fact is that it is a psychological and spiritual thing. Any deep thinker knows the ethereal rules the real in the same way the spiritual rules the physical and the intangible rules the tangible. Until the nation becomes the mathematical locus of attention and the steely core and substance of our being and existence, ethnic nationalities will continue to offer cultural and psychosocial affinities for groups to bond and coalesce.

    Sanusi and many northern leaders, including the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, have suggested corrupt leadership and poverty predisposed the North to the violence and lawlessness it is witnessing today. The real problem is much more nuanced, as this column has sought many times to clarify. A leadership is first weak before it is corrupt. More, the breakdown being witnessed in the North is a function of the weakness of its binding symbols. Politics no longer offers that bond around which a sense of northern identity could coalesce; nor, sadly, does religion offer safe anchor, for this too has been deeply corrupted and its sinews corroded by years of abysmal politicisation and reckless exploitation.

    No society can cohere without a substance or a person around which to coalesce. Once a society loses its inner core, its soul or its mind, it will begin to fracture badly. The remnant sense of northernerness which the people of the North still have today was partly a creation of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, as it was a creation, in a different sense and under a different era, of Uthman dan Fodio. There must always be something or someone to give a society its sense of being or drive. Modern analysts, like US President Barack Obama during his visit to Ghana, talk of creating strong institutions rather than strong personalities in order for stability and peace to be engendered. This is only true when that society is already driven by persons or sets of values that propel it into greatness and competitiveness. Except during occasional periods in their histories when they require strong personalities, many Western societies have sets of values and lodestars to propel them into greatness. Nigeria does not have either a set of lofty values or even the strongmen to give the country form and substance.

    Since amalgamation, the Sardauna was the first and the last to play that role for the North; Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the West; and Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, more than the great Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, as I have argued in this place before, for the East. In the absence of these eminent men, their societies will need a set of values, religious codes, and cultural templates to make their societies cohere. The denudation of these values and codes and templates, which in the case of Nigeria are at different stages, much more than poverty, predispose societies to anomie. Indeed, what make Nigeria to maintain a semblance of stability are the socio-cultural organisations which Sanusi deprecates. The groups have been corrupted, as the CBN governor notes, and religions attenuated by the anthropomorphism of our various cultural antecedents, but they still have their uses.

    We can discern from the imprecise thoughts of Mallam Sanusi the salient message that our society is endangered by many factors. My opinion is that that danger comes principally from a lack of knowledge. We must strive to understand what ails us first before we find the panaceas. There is no competent national leadership that understands what must be done, and the regions are decaying into anarchy and unraveling into fragments depending on what stages of leadership failure or value attenuation they are. Mr Obama speaks of strong institutions. But he speaks only about a minute part of the truth. After all, Richard Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-conservatives could not have designed the failed New American Century project if they did not have a sense of America’s manifest destiny (Global leadership anchored on military strength and moral clarity). What is ours? Through their prisms, the Southwest was reminded of its sense of being by Awo, the North by Sardauna, and the East by Zik/Ojukwu. Who has tried to define for Nigerians who they are, what the Nigerian dream is, and what its manifest destiny should look like? If this definition had been made, it is doubtful whether any rational leader, let alone a sensible historian, would suggest that, of all things, we should be celebrating the centenary of Lugard’s amalgamation.

  • Jonathan’s shocking comments after visit to Police College, Lagos

    Jonathan’s shocking comments after visit to Police College, Lagos

    After Channels Television broadcast the incredible rot that has overtaken the premier police training facility in Nigeria, the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, an enraged President Goodluck Jonathan paid a flying visit to the institution. Reports indicate he was deeply moved by the sorry state of the facility. However, the reaction of the president to the rot must have truly baffled every Nigerian. Rather than wonder how the rot escaped the attention of the government and police authorities for so long, or even marvel at the incompetence of senior police officers in allowing the rot to graduate to that magnitude, the president turned his rage on the people he suspected connived at the television documentary. In his view, the broadcast was meant to embarrass his government. This president is truly baffling.

    According to newspapers, the president paid an unscheduled visit to the police training college. And after he toured the college’s decrepit facilities, he asked the flustered commandant of the college, Police Commissioner I.F.Yerima, three questions. Read the account of this newspaper: As the president made to enter his car, he suddenly paused and faced CP Yerima to ask him a few questions.Then came the first question for the College Commandant: How was Channels TV able to penetrate and record the mess without detection? The CP had no answer.

    The second question followed: When was the recording done. Again there was no answer.

    The Commandant turned to his deputy and other senior officers to assist him in answering the President’s questions, but none was able to help him out.

    The President then quipped: “This is a calculated attempt to damage the image of the government, as the college is not the only training institution in the country.”

    He soon entered his car and left.

    It does not require clairvoyance to know that the presidency will wield the big axe. As far as the trainee policemen are concerned, as long as the situation is remedied, they couldn’t care less whose head was taken to the guillotine. But given the rot in the police facility, quite like most barracks have fallen into near disuse, is it any wonder that on graduation the law enforcement agencies, particularly the police which had complained bitterly of neglect, adopt brutal and unfeeling methods in tackling crime and suspects? In all, let us hope that the president’s anger would spur him into taking measures to renovate police training facilities all over the country rather than punishing those he feels are complicit in the television broadcast.