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Category: Sunday

  • Oshiomhole’s reminiscences whet appetite

    Oshiomhole’s reminiscences whet appetite

    Senator Adams Oshiomhole (Edo North, APC) a former party chairman and governor, has always been bold and candid. Forged between the hammer of trade unionism and the anvil of politics, he has grown from a nondescript and unexposed trade unionist to an almost permanent and salutary fixture in Nigerian public life. Speaking at a book launch in Abuja last Tuesday, the Edo senator erupted in the perplexed faces of his audience with candid expositions on the roles some of those present at the occasion played in his dethronement as party chairman in 2020. Former national vice chairman (Northwest) of the party, Salihu Lukman, author of the book titled “APC and Transition Politics”, was himself not spared from the boiling oil ladled out by the senator who is famous countrywide for thinking on his feet.  

    Sen Oshiomhole should be working on his political memoir. If so, his eruptions last Tuesday should whet public appetite about impending and more incendiary disclosures relating to overrated Nigerian politicians and their foibles. On Tuesday, the principal targets were former governors Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti and Sen Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun, both Yoruba politicians who benefited from President Bola Tinubu’s help in their political careers but did their worst to undermine his presidential bid many years later. The Edo senator was unsparing. Speaking for over 50 minutes, according to some estimates, the senator spoke about how the two Southwest politicians conspired with other persons and forces, including the author of the book himself, the mercurial Mr Lukman, to displace the Edo senator from party leadership. According to him, they had suggested, without evidence, that as party chairman between 2018 and 2020, he was preoccupied with facilitating the emergence of former governor Tinubu as APC presidential candidate in 2022. They were probably right that he was more loyal to Asiwaju Tinubu than they were, a very unflattering revelation that has finally come to light; but the Edo senator argued that his preoccupation then was the restoration of party supremacy since the presidential primary was still years away.

    Dr Fayemi has not responded to Sen Oshiomhole’s diatribe, and it is doubtful whether any response from him would not open a can of worms. But Sen Amosun has refused to let bad enough alone. The Ogun senator’s response was cheeky, fiery but empty. He abused Sen Oshiomhole, describing him as poorly educated and dangerous to party politics in Nigeria for organising the worst primaries ever. Yet, he said absolutely nothing about how, despite being Yoruba, he allegedly turned coat and joined forces against Asiwaju Tinubu. More than that, said the Edo senator, the former Lagos governor facilitated Sen Amosun’s return to the dominant party in the Southwest. Indeed, at the book launch, it turned out that Sen Oshiomhole said only little about how both Dr Fayemi and Sen Amosun orchestrated his removal as chairman, and virtually nothing about how they ensured that the APC candidate Osagie Ize-Iyamu lost the 2020 governorship election to Governor Godwin Obaseki. Neither Dr Fayemi nor Sen Amosun appears prepared to talk about how they influenced the election in Edo State, especially since Sen Oshiomhole himself did not delve into that topic. Nor will they talk about how they dominated and tyrannise the ruling party in their states, with the former Ogun governor riding roughshod over the 2019 party primaries and daring aggrieved aspirants to head to Abuja to lodge complaints. It was an inglorious era exemplified by so-called progressive governors who betrayed the party and scandalised its rules and regulations, an era the Edo senator tried valiantly to reform.

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    Indeed, the value of Sen Oshiomhole’s reminiscences is not so much about who played what ignoble role in the 2019 general election and onwards, but about his own candour and the unspoken conclusion that Dr Fayemi and Sen Amosun typified the short-sightedness and haughtiness bedeviling Nigerian politics. His phrasing of the role played by some political personalities in that period remains fascinating and revelatory. Here is one example: “Lukman was there when I wrote a letter inviting the governors for a meeting to discuss the guidelines for conducting primaries; this was to help me know the thinking of the various interest groups. I had discussed it with the president; and I needed to discuss it with the governors so that once the guidelines were out, the party could claim ownership of it because it had been debated. I wrote to the governors for a meeting. The governors said no, I should come to Imo House, not the APC office. He (Lukman, author of the book) was in there where they were holding the meeting. He did not see anything wrong with that. It felt as though I was in a military barrack.” The senator noted that the governors were combative and rebellious, thus prompting him to also lose his cool. In his words, he had shot back: “None of you can lecture me about the power of a governor, because I have been governor twice. Eight years uninterrupted. At a point, I told Fayemi, ‘You did a resit. You were elected, and by the second term, you lost. That means you failed.’ I did not do a resit, and you are lecturing me about power…”

    In contrast to the misjudgement of the two Yoruba politicians and their fading influence, Sen Oshiomhole has improved his moral and intellectual substance and kept his verve and relevance. It is not clear whether he deliberately plotted that relevance beforehand, or whether providence lent him a helping hand. What is undisputed is that since his trade union days, and notwithstanding his modest and unassuming background, Sen Oshiomhole has become an exemplification of grass to grace story, a politician whom heaven enthusiastically paved his road to fame and relevance. That road was undoubtedly full of thorns; but it was also festooned on both sides with white and red roses. No one can explain why Sen Amosun could not resist making jest of Sen Oshiomhole’s modest beginnings, but by his perspicacity, humility, sound judgement, and generally equanimous disposition to intrigues and wicked schemings, the Edo senator has demonstrated far more enduring strength of character, moral superiority and purer appreciation of politics in the most quintessential sense than the former Ogun governor and the other traducers.  

  • The tragedy in Rivers

    The tragedy in Rivers

    Apart from the reckless and profligate demolition of the iconic Rivers State House of Assembly building, much of last week was taken up by the furore over the resignation of some seven commissioners on the cabinet of Governor Siminalayi Fubara. The governor has come of age and has decided that whatever the cost, he is determined to be his own man and will not be a leader who cannot call his soul his own. He will, it seems, forcibly wean himself off his dependence on ex-governor Nyesom Wike‘s breast milk. The resignees were all the former governor’s men anyway, and had all been foisted on the new governor, it was alleged. The iconic legislative building too was nothing more than a victim of collateral damage, a memento of the war between a feisty mentor and his lugubrious mentee. Built during the Peter Odili administration, only one chamber out of six was burnt in the early days of the war between Mr Wike and the governor. But seizing upon that arson, and declaring that the entire building no longer had structural integrity, the governor brought the whole edifice down over days, a herculean and costly and foolish effort. Only in Nigeria, and of course in the name of democracy.

     It was not until last week that Mr Fubara’s side of the story began to waft out into the poisoned atmosphere in Port Harcourt. Mr Wike is allegedly high-handed, grasping, uncouth, vindictive and rambunctious, they say. He was, they add, virtually having a third term in office by single-handedly nominating nearly all the commissioners, gets reports of the government’s financial dealings, has hemmed in the governor with all sorts of fail-safe measures and tools and handymen, leaving the governor straitjacketed. Stifled and scorned, Mr Fubara has reached out to his Ijaw brothers and sisters for support, unconcerned about the consequential ethnic bifurcation of the state. He is relived that the burdensome and prying commissioners are resigning, regardless of whether it seemed like they were protesting his lack of principles and recklessness. And he has finally put his hands to the plough and will be loth to look back. More, he imitates the Edo example of transposing minority and majority lawmakers, and has done his arithmetic well to be satisfied that four lawmakers passing his budget in less than 24 hours means nothing to either democracy or his image. He blames his resort to legal legerdemain, burning of the ‘Reichstag’, lack of regard for democratic principles, marching of the ‘black shirts’ on Port Harcourt, and if care is not taken, Kristallnacht, all on Mr Wike.

    In the days ahead, the controversy about the power of 27 lawmakers versus the effrontery of four lawmakers might land in the courts and be probably resolved or litigated for extended period of time until it becomes a fait accompli. The defections of the 27 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the improbable ex parte injunction upon which Mr Fubara based his provocative budget presentation and immediate accent will also come into sharp focus. In addition, the commissioners will of course be replaced, and the nominees given express vetting and approval. Against these alarming and tragic happenings, the people of Rivers State know very well the antecedents of Mr Wike, how he ruled the roost during his governorship without anyone breathing down his neck, and how he has waxed lyrical about Mr Fubara’s betrayal and ingratitude. The devil is in the detail. Perhaps many analysts are perplexed by the rapid disintegration of the relationship between the governor and his predecessor; perhaps they are also stupefied by Mr Fubara’s embrace of patently anti-democrat methods to win his freedom from the former governor, and is indifferent to the repercussions on the state’s democratic practices, finances, and relationship between ethnic groups. But what they will find more difficult to explain is how the governor hid his sinister longings for so long before exploding in a paroxysm of rage.

    It is not time for Mr Fubara to regret any method and weapon he has deployed so far in the fight against his predecessor. But it is time for Mr Wike to be full of regrets. He was said to have been warned about ceding power to Mr Fubara’s part of the state, but he brushed aside any misgivings. No one it seems counseled him about his undue expectations from the governor, but he has undoubtedly now realised that his ability to measure competence and capacity as well as produce the next generation of leaders were deeply flawed. He chose the wrong man, possibly because his own democratic credentials and leadership acuity were deeply and perhaps indubitably wrong. Not only did he apply the wrong principles and yardsticks in measuring competence and capacity, but by not having a great understanding of what leadership means, and by not anchoring leadership on any philosophy and ideology, it was also difficult for him to identify the right man for the job. He chose Mr Fubara, not because the latter shared his worldview and philosophy, and can thus defend the party’s structure and ideas in the years ahead; he chose him for his loyalty, an appalling and meretricious yardstick that easily wilts at the first contact with half a joule of political heat energy.

    Read Also: Fubara takes Rivers to the brink

    Mr Wike is deeply flawed and not quite as altruistic as he presents himself; he will be fortunate to understand how to manage, overcome or reconcile with his successor. Mr Fubara, notwithstanding the panegyrics of his fellow Ijaw men and women, is definitely not what he is cracked up to be. Indeed, if Mr Wike is flawed, Mr Fubara is a tragedy. By ignoring the arson in the legislature and then proceeding, despite the humongous costs involved, to pull down the entire structure, he has proved to be a total and unquestionable misfit. It is doubtful whether the cost he has approved for his inexpiable methods can be defended. It is even more shocking that the people of Rivers could stand grimly aside and see their legislative building pulled down with out a whimper. Perhaps they imprudently see the matter as ‘two fighting’. The worst shock is the federal government and its police force that should have done something major and calculating about getting to the bottom of the arson in the House of Assembly. Petrified of being seen to be taking sides, they allowed themselves to be paralysed from doing their law enforcement job, and have even provided security for the state executive branch to pull down the legislative building housing an independent arm of government. Have they all lost their minds in Port Harcourt?

    There are calls for President Bola Tinubu to intervene before things get out of hand. Earlier, he had intervened to no avail. It is not clear, as the judiciary displays their proficiency to complicate things in the state with ex parte injunctions, that any intervention now to forge a truce will amount to anything. What the federal government should do – indeed should have done – is to apply the law. They should have got to the bottom of the arson in the House of Assembly, and prevented the demolition of the building until the forensic examination of the burnt part was completed. It was a crime scene which they are now complicit in obliterating. The investigations should, however, still be done. The federal government should make it clear to the dithering police and quiescent Department of State Service (DSS) that their job is not to take sides, regardless of how patronising the state government has been to them, but to protect and enforce the law and the constitution. Tragedy and farce of unimaginable proportions are unfolding upon the state, and the people who should defend democracy and good governance suffer from inexplicable inertia. It is not too late for Abuja to quit their passivity. They have the constitution to guide and enliven them.

  • At last, Ondo’s Aiyedatiwa gets his wish

    At last, Ondo’s Aiyedatiwa gets his wish

    After many months of stonewalling by supporters of ailing Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu and pushfulness by the ambitious and impatient deputy governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, the political imbroglio that had stymied development in the state has been finally put to some rest. It is not the kind of solution stakeholders longed for, nor the kind of truce that would conduce to long-running peace in both the state and the All Progressives Congress (APC) ruling party, but everyone involved in the crisis since it began early this year will for now heave a tentative sigh of relief. Whether he likes it or not, the governor is for now out of the immediate picture. He will stay fairly numbed on hospital beds in Germany or any other place he chooses. But for the ambitious deputy governor, who will now act as governor in line with his desire, he will call the shots as extravagantly as his fiery nature is accustomed. To the chagrin of the Akeredolu crowd, the new acting governor has the constitution fully and unsentimentally on his side.

    The story of Ondo State since Mr Akeredolu fell ill early this year has been a very uninspiring one – not for him, of course, but for his deputy. The governor had had a culture of transmitting power to Mr Aiyedatiwa whenever he left for extended periods, and had done so when his ordeal with health challenges became public. But things quickly soured and his last medical trip abroad was cut short in September reportedly to checkmate the ambition, irreverence and iconoclasm of his deputy. But hobbled by failing health, the governor was clearly and humiliatingly unable to mount the kind of challenge to his deputy he would have loved to muster. It was at that point that his longsuffering cabinet and animated legislators came to his defence by denouncing Mr Aiyedatiwa and describing him as culturally uncouth and even fetishistic. It was not clear how they came to the latter conclusion, but being naturally superstitious, they had little trouble in psychoanalysing the rampaging deputy governor’s methods and motivations.

    Once the die was cast in September, the state legislature moved against the deputy governor, tried to inveigle the courts to do their bidding, and hoped they could make a short work of the entire process in impeaching him. They did not count on a finicky judiciary, nor waited to form an opinion on how they would proceed should the intransigent Mr Aiyedatiwa stand pat. In the event, their quarry stood like an aurochs, met them measure for countermeasure, scorned their legislative and judicial efforts, and survived long enough to hurl his own stones and boulders at their unprotected heads. President Bola Tinubu tried to break the stalemate, but the animosity had festered for far too long in those dangerous few months that the deputy governor became emboldened enough to unleash a fearsome undertow of plots against his enemies. The legislature was transfixed.

    Finally, either because he had stayed away too long from his hospital bed in Germany or because his deputy governor’s bitter rivalry had put too much pressure on his organs, the governor, while still hibernating in Ibadan, Oyo State, had begun to decline in health precipitously. The deputy governor sensed he would outlast the governor and he turned on the screw a little bit more. The governor’s minders finally knew the game was up and capitulated. If they didn’t evacuate him to Germany quickly enough, all hope would be lost, for already questions were being asked as to the integrity of his signatures on official documents, not to say rumours about his health. If they waited a little more, rumours about his death would begin to circulate. They thus threw in the towel, got him to transmit power by any means – and no questions would be asked about whether the signature was his or not – and the legislature accented to the deputy governor’s leadership in acting capacity. That was all Mr Aiyedatiwa wanted anyway.

    It is unknown whether nature would requite the deputy governor’s effrontery. Should that happen, Mr Akeredolu would return at an appropriate moment to scupper his deputy’s ambition. If not, the immoderate acting governor will probably bludgeon the cabinet, seduce the party to his side or neutralise its apparatchiks, amputate or decapitate those who might wish to contest against him next year in the governorship primary, and prepare himself for an epic showdown with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He may be uncouth and witless, but he knows enough to understand that just as it happened in Kogi State in the last APC governorship primary, all he needs to do is present his party with a fait accompli, and neither the Ondo APC nor the unphilosophical big guns in the APC in Abuja would have any option but to endorse him. Sadly, in whatever way it is considered, Ondo State, like Kogi State, will next year sail between Scylla and Charybdis. Their more predictable governor is ailing, with little hope of recovery on time enough to relieve them of their great moral burden, and they may be forced to endorse and even embrace wholeheartedly the political pantomime in the State House if they are not to be skinned alive and eviscerated by the more ruthless PDP.

    Ondo has tragically come to a pretty pass. Yes, it may not be on the tragicomic scale of Rivers State, where the boisterous ex-governor Nyesom Wike also endorsed the astonishing misfit Siminalayi Fubara, but Mr Akeredolu’s poor judgement in selecting a deputy and casting him as his successor is also being requited very badly. At his resumption of office as acting governor last Thursday, Mr Aiyedatiwa, as ruefully as his little talent could carry him, said: “It is in this regard that we admit with all sense of responsibility that the intrigues that ensued due to Mr. Governor’s health challenges were indeed avoidable distractions. We ought to have done better to keep giving Ondo State the seamless and solid governance which Oluwarotimi Akeredolu had established in the state in the last six-and-a-half years. I cannot but specially appreciate the third arm of government, the Judiciary through the honourable Chief Judge, for its courage, commitment and dedication to protecting democracy and the constitution of the nation.”

    Read Also: Discordant tunes as Aiyedatiwa consolidates power

    Ignore Mr Aiyedatiwa’s triumphalism. What he didn’t say is that he was the progenitor of the intrigues. His cynical praise of the judiciary was triggered by the extremely cautious state’s chief judge who was too finicky to decide one way or the other whether to accede to the legislature’s objective of impeaching the unruly Mr Aiyedatiwa. Historians have always wondered what the world would look like had Adolf Hitler been killed during the Munich putsch of 1923, or if Gen Hindenburg had not appointed him as Chancellor in 1933, or if, after everything had seemed to fail, the plot anchored by Col Claus von Stauffenberg in 1944 had succeeded in blasting off the Fuhrer at Wolf’s Lair in Poland during World War II. What if Mr Aiyedatiwa had been impeached?

  • Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji’s paradigm shift in Ekiti

    Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji’s paradigm shift in Ekiti

    He breaks the existentialist neurosis of political disorder that forces fanatical support for partisan platform that offers no prospect for life’s enhancement”.

    “He shatters the historical animosity of the past to create a fresh momentum for a political culture that emphasises the mobilisation of divergent tendencies for a collective aspiration. He knocks the doors of erstwhile foes at dawn and comes back home cackling in his spirits, waking a new riveting consciousness that compels erstwhile worst enemies to drink from the same cup of unity”.

    “A political surgeon of deft moral assay, he, like in the miracle in Cana of Galilee, rips the manacles, and turns Ekiti State hate-infested waters to the sacramental wine of love and amity.

    That is Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji (BAO), the innovative governor of Ekiti State who is everyday turning the sod for peace, to build a new state that thrives on communal fraternity for a virile and prosperous society”.

    Through his virtues of ingenuity, such as imagination, adaptability, creativity, flexibility, and the ability to respond rapidly to unexpected situations, Oyebanji drew up imaginative new approaches to problems that have ailed the state over the years” –

    I have quoted at this length from Wole Olujobi’s recent ‘Ekiti Council Poll As Litmus Test For Oyebanji’s Acceptability’ for two reasons.

    Apart from being such a fascinating writer, the author of ‘Pen In The Furnance’, a copy of which sits resplendent in my library, Wole is unarguably an authority on Ekiti political evolution in the 21st century and, having held key positions in the state’s government, he writes from an unimpeachable knowlege of his subject; the reason he talks about “the problems that have ailed the state over the years”. Chief of those problems – political bitterness – is what engages us here today.

    More germane to the instant, however, which is the second reason is the fact that Wole stepped straight into my former role  as about the most consistent, and regular, chronicler of contemporary Ekiti politics. That fact needs further elucidation.

    This column – for the first two years in the COMET – coincided with the second coming of the rambunctious, former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he, hand in hand with the Nigerian judiciary,  thoroughly peppered Ekiti people, and turned our peaceful state to one of ‘one day governors’ and inchoate impeachments.

    That was when the column emerged as a beacon of hope for our beleaguered people. However, because my colleagues in The Nation on Sunday did not know what salutary role the column was playing in the lives of Ekiti people, they branded me ‘ the ‘Ekiti Columnist’ since at least two out of three weeks, my article would be  on political developments in the state.

    So timely was it, especially in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, and at Igbara-Odo – Ekiti, in the house of our recently departed leader, Chief Akosile, throngs of Ekiti people would gather, after Sunday service, to have the column read aloud to them. Following morning, copies of the newspaper would be despatched to various parts of the state from the party headquarters in Ado -Ekiti, the state capital, to enable our people know that there was still hope in the courts despite PDP and President Obasanjo’s almost complete capture of the judiciary. That was a time when a slew of judges of Northern extraction  were intentionally empanelled on all Election Tribunals in the Southwest to do President Obasanjo’s bidding. The period slightly predated Mama Iyabo’s ( a tribunal Chairman) disappearing abracadabra in Ekiti.

    The column bravely and admirably gave succour to our people, by stoutly defending the people’s cause, and stood up to our opponents’ machinations, until the Appeal Court Ilorin, Kwara state, declared Fayemi winner on 15 October, 2010.

    That judgment gladdened me a great deal because On  Sunday, 23 May, 2010, I had written the article: “Why Justice Salami must assume jurisdiction in the Ekiti case” because he was obviously one of the few judges who could still stand up to President Obasanjo.

        I digress.                   

    For us in Ekiti, it was just as well that Abiodun Abayomi Oyebanji won the Ekiti governorship election of 18 June 2022 in which many of the other candidates were key perpetrators of, or victims of political bitterness; both inter and intra party, as friends were known to have serially turned on friends. I personally inter- mediated some of these, but sorry to say,  there still were some who did not exchange greetings in years.

    The bitterness, indeed enmity,  which Governor Oyebanji  has hopefully ended was so deep and entrenched, supporters of some of the  leaders could have killed for their principals without batting an eyelid if asked to do so.

    He appears to me to have, a priori, that is,  before becoming governor, personally, decided never to inherit anybody’s enmity; an enmity that  has torn apart the friendship, and mutual respect which had subsisted within the Ekiti young political elite, nearly all of who were members of Club E – 11, until politics scattered that very impactful association.

    In consequence, a political elite on which Ekiti  had invested great hopes soon became so splintered that for a very long time, mutual bitterness became the defining element in the  state’s politics with huge negative consequences.

    It will, however, be a lie from the pit of hell to say there were no development in the state in those years but even the most impactful of our governors would confess that he could have done much more were the atmosphere conducive.

    What the governor has done, as  captured by Olujobi above, and how he has, almost miraculouslly healed the land by extending a hand of friendship to all, across political divides, unarguably proves more than my thesis that he is only a synthesis of the two governors with whom he worked the most, namely:   governors Otunba Niyi Adebayo, easy going and too focussed to waste any time holding grudges against anybody, and the pragmatic Dr Kayode Fayemi, who is busy trying to extend the frontiers of knowlege and its application to society’s development via his multi – sectoral engagements, home and abroad.

    I concluded the article – ‘BAO: An Apple Does Not Fall Far From The Tree’ of 15, October, 2023 writing as follows: “In conclusion, I commend the governor for internalising, not only his good home upbringing, but for also bringing to bear on governance, everything he learnt at the feet of his two remarkable bosses. Indeed, of a truth, an apple does not fall far from the tree”.

    Read Also: Governor Oyebanji’s one year in office

    I  also wrote in the same article: “For Ekiti state as a whole today, there is unbelievable peace; a state of affairs for which we Ekitis are all  obligated to the gentleman governor in the saddle. Completely across board, and irrespective of political party, BAO has extended a hand of not just fellowship, but  of distinct respect to all Ekiti and, in particular, to many Ekiti titans who, for decades, were bitter political enemies”.

    Rather than see him then simply as a synthesis of two bosses, I will slightly modify that and offer the following as the factors  that dictated his path.

    Having been long involved in the affairs of the state, indeed straight from  it’s very creation, the governor must have watched, in awe, as to  how a total lack of unity among our young political leaders  negatively impacted the state; especially its overall development,  and (he) must  have promised that he would do everything to change that trajectory of mutual hatred if he ever had the opportunity God has now given him. Also in order to fundamentally effect that change, he must have equally promised to inherit no negative political vibes from any quarters, and to do that effectively, he must have drawn from his home Christian upbringing, honed on  what Christ described as the second great commandment in Matt. 22:v 39:  “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”.

    In my view, it is on that solid basis that he must have permitted himself to be further impacted by Governor Ayo Fayose’s love for all, without malice or any pretensions, whatever, as well as Governor Oni’s  humility, without any airs at all,  because, in and out of office, Governor Oni remains his quintessential self – a gentleman.

    A combination of all these attributes is what I believe that Governor Oyebanji has brought to the table, complete with his own now, well known, quiet disposition, and strong determination, to see Ekiti  develop during his own administration.

    Just as well, then, because Ekiti could barely have survived another 8 years of the meretricious experiences it has endured, especially, since the return to democracy in 1999 when our political leaders did not find it possible to  agree on single subject across party lines.

    It was more like a generational curse because everything was, unfortunately,  reduced to politics, bitter politics and much more bitterness.

    Concluding , therefore, as we inch towards Christmas, I urge all of us Ekiti, to approach the throne of mercy pleading, that He, in whose memory we celebrate the season, will grant  us our innermost wishes chief of which is that the present all – round peace  pervading our state will endure. Also, that the good Lord will continue to  give our governor, his family, our people and Nigerians in general, good health, and the wherewithal, to survive these very hard, and harsh times, which the President, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is doing everything to turn around for the better.

    Amen.

  • Aftermath of the Great War

    Aftermath of the Great War

    Long before the referee blew the final whistle on the Great war, it was clear that the war was at a stalemate. Each of the combatant nations was barely hanging on for dear life even as the carnage escalated as each army devised ever more sophisticated means of killing each other. Over in the Eastern front, the Germans had routed the Russians in a series of brilliant offensives but their victory was hollow as the Russian empire collapsed upon itself in a bloody revolution which marked the emergence of the Soviet Union, a motley collection of ‘socialist’ republics which for seventy years constituted a thorn in the side of Europe. In the meantime, all parties were bogged down on the soggy fields of the Western front as they killed each other with single minded purpose and alarming efficiency. There is no knowing what would have happened to the armies huddled in their trenches but for the fact that the USA entered the fray on the side of Britain and France in 1917 holding out the excuse that  German submarines were attacking and sinking ships on the Northern Atlantic route.  It has since been suggested however that the Americans were simply defending their investments. The allies were so heavily indebted to the USA that a German victory which could not be ruled out at that point in time could not be sustained by the Americans. With the entry of the Americans into the war, the bloody European war was transformed into a proper world war, with soldiers drawn from French and British empires which of course spanned the world in any case.

    At the time the USA  entered the war, she did not, unlike the Europeans, have many men to throw into the conflict but she had a great deal of war material which was quickly deployed and ultimately used to break the stalemate on the Western front. In any case, American intervention proved critical and the Germans and their allies were not able to mount a credible response and the road to Berlin was open. Given the number of men already lost, the Germans had no choice but to surrender to save themselves from annihilation, a fate with which the allied armies, who were not in much better shape were quite willing to oblige them with. And so the war came to a swift but weary end and the next step was to win the peace.

    At the end of the war, the victorious European powers were determined to crush Germany completely, to make it impossible for any German army to ever threaten the peace of Europe ever again. The Germans knew that they had been well beaten and knew that they were at the mercy of their conquerors who were in no mood to be magnanimous. The Americans on their own side were open to some reason, after all there were millions of ethnic Germans who lived in the USA and were full blooded Americans. Woodrow  Wilson, the American President also fancied himself to be something of a world statesman and wanted to make a substantial contribution to winning the peace. For example, it was his idea that a League of Nations, the precursor body to the United Nations be formed with the expressed purpose of preventing any future war. That his initiative in this direction was bound to fail was shown when the US Senate refused to ratify that aspect of the treaty which brought the war to an end officially. Although the League of Nations was formed, the USA was not a member. When later on and push came to shove, the League of Nations failed dismally to prevent the outbreak of the dangerous skirmishes which led to the outbreak of World War ll.

    At the end of the Great war, all sides met in Versailles to beat out a treaty which was to end the war. In the end, the victors, in no mood to be magnanimous, extracted more than their pound of flesh from their prostrate erstwhile enemies. Germany was to be defanged, made impotent and inconsequential and so they restricted the strength of the German army to one hundred thousand men and fifteen thousand in the navy. After all, as far as those short sighted men were concerned, the Great war had shown that you needed millions of men to fight a modern war with any expectation of victory. Besides they created a demilitarised zone to protect the French from any form of cross border aggression and for good measure regained the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which had been annexed by Germany after the Franco-German war of 1870. Still paranoid about war at sea, the British forced the Germans to surrender what was left of their navy, the ships of which were interred at Scapa Flow off the coast of Scotland. In one final act of defiance, the commander of the Imperial German Navy ordered his men to scuttle all the ships in service and they all sank into the sea. In addition, hefty reparations were inflicted and all German overseas territories were distributed between the British and the French with Cameroon divided between the two colonial powers. Both the German and Austro- Hungarian empires were dismembered and the Ottoman Empire simply disappeared. New countries emerged and Europe appeared to be changed forever.

    The Great war can be said to have been qualified to have the title of a World War because all the extant European empires were involved with it on one side or the other. It is interesting that of all the empires involved in it only the British and the French empires survived the war. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires all expired by the end of the war. The Germans lost all their overseas territories and the Ottomans lost all their territories in the Middle East including Palestine to both France and Britain. During the war, both countries used their colonial subjects to bolster their armies. Britain not only recruited soldiers from the so called dominions; Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand but were able to throw nearly a million Indians into the war in Europe and also in the Middle East to confront the forces of the Ottoman Empire. They were however wary of recruiting and arming soldiers from their new colony of Nigeria and although a few soldiers from Nigeria took part in the fighting in the German colonies of Cameroon, Togo and Tanganyika, it was not until the Second World War that a large number of Nigerians were involved mainly in fighting in the jungles of Burma. The cenotaph sited at the Carter bridge head at Idumota in 1948 was therefore more in commemoration of Nigerians who fought in Burma than those who fought in the Great war. Not being comfortable with permanence, that statue has been uprooted by Nigerian authorities and transferred across country far away from the multitude of eyes which feasted on Soja Idumota when it welcomed all comers to Lagos island in the days of it’s pomp and glory.

    Read Also: Reflections on the Great War

    As for the French, they have never been wary of using their colonial troops in their wars from far back as 1853 when they mobilised troops from Senegal and North Africa to fight in the Crimea War. As many as two hundred Senegalese troops fought from the trenches in Verdun and other areas around the Western front where all those bloody battles were fought in WW I.

    Both Britain and France not only held on to their colonies but gained new territories after the war. However, whatever satisfaction they gained from this was short lived. All those soldiers who fought in the war went home knowing that their colonial masters were ordinary human beings after all. They bled when they were shot, cried for their mothers when they were dying and ran away from danger, real or merely perceived. Knowing that those godlike masters were human after all, their colonial lackeys went back home to put some fire under the nascent agitation for independence nowhere more so than in India, the jewel in the British crown. Within a year of the end of the war, the British were calling out their troops to discourage the Indians from  setting the country on fire as they fought to throw off the yoke of colonialism. Their effort in this direction led on to one truly tragic occasion in what has come to be known as the Amritsar massacre in which hundreds of Indians were wantonly slaughtered in the city of Amritsar during a demonstration against the arrest of two Indian nationalists. If this was an attempt at heading the Indians away from the fight for independence, it failed and did so miserably. It only became the impetus which was needed to put the fight for independence on the front burner. It may however have convinced the Indians of the futility of confronting the British in armed combat after all, the British had all those powerful weapons which they had tested out to such devastating effect in several theatres of a shooting war.  No wonder they were receptive to the non-violent principle enunciated by Mahatma Ghandi. However, it took another destructive war before the colonialists were convinced to let our people go. The Great war prepared the ground for the Second World War at the end of which only the rather backward Portuguese held on tenaciously to their colonial possessions. But, even they were forced to see the error of their ways and the age of colonialism was brought to an end.

  • The time of Henry the K

    The time of Henry the K

    The human community is like a huge broomstick. The sticks keep falling off no matter what you do. And no matter how long you hang around, it will be your turn to fall off one day. A fortnight ago, it was the turn of Henry Kissinger, the foremost American diplomat/statesman who bade us farewell this week at the ripe old age of one hundred years.

     It is a mark of his brilliance, prodigious intellect and sheer staying power that Kissinger was churning out books well past his nineties, long after the academic demise of those of his petty and jealous former colleagues who prevented him from resuming his academic career after his distinguished service to his nation ended in 1976 with the defeat of Henry Ford by Jimmy Carter. Thereafter, the Bavarian-born former refugee fleeing Hitler’s imminent holocaust with his parents re-established himself as a writer, consultant and freelance international trouble shooter.

    Read Also: Henry Kissinger (1923 – 2023)

      Detested and deified in equal measure, Kissinger was a figure of international controversy and contention. Many hailed him as the most consequential American diplomat and statesman of the epoch, while many more dismiss him as a divisive and polarizing figure; a Zionist war-monger who never lived down the formative trauma of Nazi Germany.

      The truth must lie between the two. Kissinger himself once famously said that international diplomacy is often a choice between two contending evils. The third evil are those making the choice.  But for a man to rise from the seedy slums of Bavaria to the pinnacle of American statehood all in one generation is an  epic slog through adversity which is nothing short of heroic. Adieu, Henry.  

  • An evening with music masterminds

    An evening with music masterminds

    If music be the food of love, play on, says the great bard of Stratford Upon Avon. And we say, in supporting and supplementary melody, that if music be the fruit of life, please croon on. Do not wake me from the sweet and mellifluous lullaby. Let me stir, among maids, maidens and mermaids, to the sound of music and merriment. Then hell itself can go to hell.

     Music washes away all crimes against humanity, shrouding the sinner with the toga of sainthood. William Shakespeare himself was not a perfect person. He had his own grave defects of character. Apart from the well-known vagrancy of his youth, he was also fingered as a deer poacher, pincher of other people’s meat, or a merchant of venison, if you like. But he gave the world his beautiful sonnets and great plays. And that is that.

      There is something soothing and redeeming of humanity about music. It cleanses the system and washes the soul of poisonous accretions. It sooths and becalms the temperamental and gives hope to the hopelessly despondent. One day scientists and researchers will discover how and why music connects so well with the human psyche and how hominids aspiring to humanity discovered the link between musicality and growing refinement. It is one of the secrets of civilization.

      Great and profound music is not the exclusive preserve of one people, or race or nation. You cannot judge the cultural production of another society by your own output. Marx and Engels, the modern masters of dialectical reasoning, often rumbled endlessly about why it should be the lot and lucky lottery of some “undeveloped” people to produce works of stunning beauty and profundity.

       Engels came up with the terse summation that economically backward nations can play first violin. It was as patronizing and avuncular as it could get. No wonder they stripped the “dark” continent of its cultural artifacts and stole the place blind upon reestablishing contact with the cradle of civilization, their own civilization. The son of a thief who is anxious to contribute to the communal saving scheme is merely in a hurry, after all, it is his father that will eventually empty the entire coffer.

       But this is not before us this morning. What unites and binds us as humanity is far more than what divides us. As Christmas and its festivities got underway, yours sincerely has been in a musical state of mind. Despite the trying times and the terrifying conditions of the ordinary people of this country, music has been in the air.

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      Everywhere you turn, it booms; every side you turn, it blows its mighty horns. At some point in the not too distant future, when full peace and prosperity have returned to the country, every school pupil will return to the habit of keeping a musical notebook filled with the latest lyrical sensation from home and abroad. And there shall be music again.

       And so on this cool and pleasant evening of penultimate Sunday when the harmattan weather seemed to have borrowed some wintry tropes from abroad, yours sincerely headed for the Fadeyi upper market enclave of the Alakija clan for the annual reunion of the group known as Music Minds. It turned out to be a musical extravaganza and a moveable feast of superb taste and cultural refinement.

      Yinka Alakija, as personable as he is pleasantly eccentric, is a scion of the illustrious Alakija family. A multi-talented cultural entrepreneur and notable Highlife musician in his own right, Yinka, or Alakay as he is known among friends and musical acolytes, is one of the moving spirits behind the group. He has hosted the annual gathering of the association ever since its inception.

    This evening was going to be a reunion of some sorts, yours sincerely having been unavoidably absent for almost four years due to engagements abroad around this period. Gently nudged on by our delightful and ever amiable friend, Chief Muyiwa Runsewe, who had surfaced all the way from his Ogbogbo-Ijebu redoubt, it was not an occasion to miss.

    The party, and the carousing that went with it, were well underway by the time yours sincerely found his way into the gathering. Food and fodder flowed freely. As one made one’s way through the forest of august and distinguished Nigerians, a familiar figure suddenly emerged from the shadow gently berating snooper for not instantly recognizing him. It was Ayo Iginla, quiet, self-effacing and accomplished technocrat, former Rector of LAPOSTECH and one of the greatest aficionados of the finest music around.

       Ayo is also the headmaster and Iron Chancellor of the musical forum of the group, an elite gathering of the luminaries of musical enlightenment whose knowledge of the history and current developments in the trade is a tad short of confounding. Nothing escapes his eagle eyes, and no infraction or infringement can elude his benevolent visage.

    This is an iconic gathering of the cultivated and the cultured where one learns something new on a daily basis. The quartet of Obong Dee, Iginla , Akin Fatunke and the calm and retiring Josef Bel-Molokwu and one or two others  can easily double as professors of Musical Diversity in any serious university anywhere in the world. This is where the professor becomes an apprentice journeyman quaffing endlessly from the fountain of musical wisdom.

       As one made to sit with them in the shadow, Ayo Iginla and Gboyega Adelaja, aka General Lobito, old Grammarian and multi-talented musician, politely declined pointing one in the direction of the directing table. Good evening, Aremo Segun Osoba, elder statesman and one of the most distinguished musical buffs the country has thrown up. Good evening, Obong Dele Adetiba, refined and exquisitely well-bred gentleman and impossible connoisseur of fine music.

        Yours sincerely respectfully call Dele Atiba, Ajiferuke, a name taken from the timeless inscription on the very house his father resided in snooper’s homestead back in the fifties while he was the Education Officer for the entire district. And how are you, Muyiwa Adetiba, his younger brother, popularly known as the quiet one, famed columnist and publisher and his matronly wife and ever present companion?

       It was a star-studded table. There was also Prince Yemisi Shyllon, philanthropist, cultural enthusiast, master collector of indigenous art and a friend since our Kaduna days in the mid-seventies. Akin Fatunke, renowned publicist and multinational technocrat, arguably the moving spirit behind the musical fantasia was darting here and there. Finally, there was the lady of the evening, our own screen diva, role model and ageless cultural dowager, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett ever winsomely winking at one with conspiratorial relish.

             Nestling at the intersection of three streets in the upper market tail end of Fadeyi where it abuts into old colonial Yaba, the Alakija Villa remains a monument to class and understated elegance over sixty years after it was built at the turn of the sixties.

      Straight down the street from the other end  and across Ikorodu Road, you are in Idioro, an iconic site of the cultural battles between Fela and the federal authorities in the seventies and eighties. Behind that is the proletarian paradise of Mushin where yours sincerely and other able-bodied artisans swung to the counter-hegemonic lyrics of Ayinla Omo-Wura in the late sixties and seventies.

      If you are wondering what the Alakijas were doing stranded among the hoi polloi, you must also remember that a stone’s throw away was the Yaba upper class dominion of the Bensons, the Magnum-Williams, Bode Thomas, Murray, Pearce etc. 

       As a body of music lovers and active musical talents, Music Minds is geared towards a legacy of genius harvesting and talent discovery. The array of talents gathered here tonight will make the authorities blush. The mastery of key musical instruments is a tad short of the miraculous. An amazing nine year old Adetomiwa Omololu played classical tunes on the saxophone. Oladejo Caleb, visually impaired, dazzled with his mastery of the drum set while Oyebanire Nifemi demonstrated precocious excellence with the sax.

      It is said that youth is a stuff that will not endure. But if you are bowled over by the excellent outing of  youth this beautiful evening, you would have to wait until the oldies stormed the stage. A fully kitted Highlife band began dishing out timeless classics of the genre sending the soul to ecstasies of nostalgia. Something definitely went wrong here. There was surely a country.

     As the group moved seamlessly into Fela’s pre-revolution music, when the great man was still an upper class Bohemian maestro of Afro-Caribbean medley, my friend, Chief Muyiwa Runsewe, rued mournfully that Fela would have been a greater musician had he not dabbled into radical politics. Well, well, the jury is still out on that one. The fact remains that Fela would not be Fela had he not consciously and adamantly inserted himself into the matrix of radical politics.

    The night wore on pleasantly and it was time to give the awards and commendations. The chairman of the Music Minds Legacy Project, Prince Yemisi Shyllon was ably assisted by Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, a woman whose own life is a tribute to indomitable courage and uncommon bravery. The winner of the talent hunt was Alaba Praise. Adetomiwa Omololu went home with the keyboard prize while 10 year old Victor Oyedokun will be strumming on a guitar donated by Taiwo Adelaja.

      It has been a wonderful evening with the masters of music.  

  • Two sharp exchanges on the hoof

    Two sharp exchanges on the hoof

    Sir, I understand that you will be delivering the Ife Convocation lecture next Saturday. I’m sure it will be earthshaking.

    Snooper:  I do not intend to unless the earth moves first.

    Sir, but it is said that the earth is in constant motion.

    Snooper: So, earthshaking is surplus to requirement then.

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    And from the same impudent contrarian

    Greetings sir: I just received information that Okon was sighted at the site of the demolished Rivers State House of Assembly.

     Snooper: Then it has become an oconic site of madness and mayhem.  

  • Fubara takes Rivers to the brink

    Fubara takes Rivers to the brink

    A few activists suggest that last Tuesday’s attack in Rivers State that led to the killing of four soldiers and two drivers, and the abduction of two South Korean Daewoo construction workers, is symptomatic of the old Rivers State when militants ruled the roost. They blame the rising spate of kidnappings and militancy in the state on the disagreement between ex-governor Nyesom Wike and Governor Siminalayi Fubara. Some of the activists argue that the disagreement between the two political leaders is due to the governor resisting the former governor’s control. The past two weeks have seen relations between the two, which had been simmering with discord for months, plummet to a new low, leading to acrimonious debates in the House of Assembly and open discord between legislative officers. In the melee, a part of the legislative building was put to the torch in October.

    There is clearly tension in the state. What began as an executive kerfuffle has obviously snowballed into a political maelstrom threatening to consume the state. There is no consensus on the exact causes of the disagreement between the two leaders, but there is general agreement on its course, if not its consequences. First the legislature, which is largely pro-Wike, attempted to douse the crisis by threatening to impeach the governor. Mr Fubara, who appears unpopular with the lawmakers, responded by splitting the legislature. He, however, only managed to win over to his side four lawmakers. To prevent the impeachment process from taking roots, someone torched a part of the assembly and threw the state into bedlam. Since then, the state has known no peace.

    Drawing a connection between the political crisis and insecurity flare-ups may be stretching the issue too far. But whatever connections exist are, however, probably tenuous. It is of course disturbing to murder soldiers and others on a routine escort assignment. What many analysts fear is that the eyes of the governor may have been taken off the security ball on account of his fixation with the political logjam in the state, though he is expected to multitask. Not only is he failing to multitask, his handling of the political crisis has been largely bewildering. He showed no interest in apprehending the culprits who torched the House of Assembly, and in counteracting the threatened impeachment against him, he behaved without the characteristic maturity and dexterity expected of him. If insecurity is rising in the state, it may be partly because miscreants sensed the loopholes in his overall approach to the difficult and complex issues of governance.

    Read Also: Group condemns Fubara’s demolition of Rivers Assembly, says it’s executive rascality

    Activists should be careful in drawing connections and conclusions between the state’s political crisis and the killings and abductions returning to the hitherto volatile state. Even if a state or country is at war, it does not prevent the enunciation and execution of measures to curb insecurity. If such measures are not forthcoming, it is not just a reflection of political crisis as it is an indication of the chief executive’s inattentiveness and dilatoriness. It may be expedient to excuse insecurity on political disagreements, especially when that disagreement is attributed to external provocation, but in reality the governor should be expected to have zero-tolerance policy against arson, not to say bloodcurdling killings of security agents on escort duties.

    Rivers people have been strangely somnolent on the crisis. They can’t afford to be. More, they can’t afford to be as facile in their appreciation of the ongoing crisis as activists who attribute the whole problem to Mr Wike’s intolerance and obtrusion. Mr Fubara is also partly to blame. If the state is not to degenerate into worse chaos, the governor must now take the bull by the horns. He has a responsibility for the safety and security of the people. His nemesis, Mr Wike, has not kept administration of the FCT in abeyance; Mr Fubara cannot excuse the new wave of insecurity threatening to break out in his state. He must assume urgent responsibility in getting the two kidnapped South Koreans freed and the killers apprehended and brought to justice. To shrug the shoulders and see the abductions as routine is to give criminals the signal that they could get away with murder. And to kick-start his renewed interest in combating insecurity, let Mr Fubara apprehend those who torched the House of Assembly in October.

  • Disturbing political parallels

    Disturbing political parallels

    Ondo, Rivers and Edo States are examples of disturbing parallels. While Ondo ran full tilt into trouble even before the 2024 governorship succession had been consummated, Rivers is currently deeply enmeshed in succession crisis already consummated, with the governor battling his predecessor through proxies. Edo on the other hand is taking a more subtle, but nevertheless similar, approach by allegedly covertly designating a successor. But if Ondo could come to grief even before a succession is consummated and Rivers is enflamed by succession battles, it is unclear why Edo should think its tailored succession politics would lead to a peaceful, happy-ever-after outcome.

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    Two states have demonstrated skillful succession politics: Lagos and Borno. Rather than funnel favoured candidates through sentimental sieves, the two states simply projected fairly competent politicians with demonstrable skills in managing men and materiel. It is unclear whether Edo is flying that chute. Rivers has taken a kamikaze plunge into the void, as events are showing. No one is certain just how many fingers must be burnt before a better and more tested approach to succession politics is adopted. Ekiti is maintaining a tentative truce. And as Kaduna State is showing, with Governor Uba Sani reversing some key decisions of his predecessor thereby drawing his ire, succession politics is replete with heartaches and uncertainties. Is it really worth it?

    Despite the uncertainties surrounding governorship succession politics, however, it will obviously take a cataclysm to deter outgoing governors from handpicking their successors and ramming them down the throats of their parties and electorate.