The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Pestilential Sheikh Gumi on Wike

    Pestilential Sheikh Gumi on Wike

    Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi is used to incendiary comments designed to provoke religious and ethnic conflict, and he has repeatedly got away with murder as it were. It was not surprising that in August he stoked another controversy about the appointment of former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike as Federal Capital City (FCT) minister. He had described the former governor as a hater of the North, and insinuated that his Christianity weakened his competence to manage Abuja. The cleric was then assailed by many groups in the North, Middle Belt and South-South, while the rest of the country watched in bemusement.

    Read Also: Sheikh Gumi’s attack on Tinubu, Wike malicious, inciting, says Northern Elders

    Undeterred, the sheikh again launched a tirade against Mr Wike for receiving the Israeli ambassador, Michael Freeman, in his office on October 3 during which a request to partner with Israel on security, agriculture and information technology was presented. Sheikh Gumi will have none of these, however, preferring to keep the populace ignorant, superstitious and poor. “The Minister of the FCT is a satanic person,” roared Sheikh Gumi; “I said it before when he was appointed and some people were grumbling. He has gone and brought the Israeli Ambassador, that’s what someone sent, and I am yet to watch it. But what is confirmed is he said they will collaborate with the Israelis on Abuja’s security issues. Abuja will now become an extension of Tel Aviv and when they see anyone with a beard like us, they will say it is Bin Laden and we will be killed.” Sheikh Gumi will say worse until he is arrested and prosecuted for hate speech and incitement.

  • Remember the poor

    Remember the poor

    Lawmakers in the National Assembly are obviously not representing the people

    If our National Assembly (NASS) legislators are interested in learning any lesson, we would not be at this juncture again where we would be talking about the kind of vehicles they should be using, whether as official or personal vehicles. Unfortunately, as many of us have always argued, our politicians are largely taught nothing, learnt nothing.

    The House of Representatives had on Sunday, last week, admitted that each of the 360 lawmakers in the NASS would get a brand new Prado SUV worth N130m, totaling N57.6 billion. They claimed the cars are not personal gifts but the property of the National Assembly.

    They should go tell that to the marines! Where are the cars bought for their predecessors? This is a familiar story; a familiar excuse. One unfortunate thing about this insensitive and ungodly decision is that it is coming at a time the country’s economy is under very serious stress.

    Nigerians have always complained about our lawmakers living like oil sheikhs in a country reputed to be the poverty capital of the world, even when the economy was far better than it is today. How on earth can one explain a situation where our present lawmakers insist almost on the affluent lifestyle lived by their predecessors at a time like this, when the country’s currency is trading for over N1,000 to an American dollar?

    What makes the decision of the legislators the more shocking is that these vehicles are imported. Meaning we have to cough up huge forex to get them for our over-pampered lawmakers.

    Meanwhile, we have local vehicle makers in the country who even made representations to the NASS on the imperative of buying made-in-Nigeria vehicles. As if they needed that prompting.

    The founder of Nord Motors, a local vehicle manufacturing company, Ajayi Oluwatobi, put the matter succinctly, even if some of us may see it as self-serving.

    “The National Assembly buying foreign built vehicles at this time is dispiriting, especially when you consider that we are all trying to promote buy Nigeria to grow the Naira.

    “How can you represent Nigeria but refuse Nigeria, especially when some of us have shown you that we would offer similar top quality at a better price? Why do you want to be seen driving a foreign brand when a Nigerian brand can offer you the same quality at a better price?”

    Then, the clincher: “No automotive sector can become successful without the support of the government. The Tesla we see today is the result of years of support from the US government. We want to create jobs but export the opportunities to create jobs to other countries at every chance we get,” he said.

    Meanwhile, it is these same lawmakers that would also tell us tomorrow that they are working in the interest of Nigerians. Just last Thursday, both the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, and Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, spoke glowingly at a retreat for members of the Senate on fiscal policy and tax reforms in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. They both pledged to work with the executive arm towards making laws that would promote economic development. I deliberately looked out for whether they would mention patronage of made-in-Nigeria goods as part of how they intend to restructure and grow the economy. There was nothing of the sort.

    Meaning they both understood the economic implications of their buying foreign SUVs.

    In the light of a decision like this, the government must understand why Nigerians would most times support Labour when they reject government’s excuses that the country has economic challenges, so, Labour should bear with the government. There is little to show that on the part of the people in the country’s leadership positions, particularly the NASS.

    Yet, it was not like this before. I remember some years back when I wrote a similar piece on the NASS, someone who was a legislator from either the old Ondo or Ekiti State wrote a piece in support of my position. If I was a kid in the First Republic, at least I wasn’t in the second, being an undergraduate then. Lawmaking as we knew it, even in spite of the imperfections of that era which eventually culminated in the overthrow of that republic, was by far more diligent  and godly compared with what we have been having, especially since 1999. Even the then National Party of Nigeria (NPN) that most Nigerians considered a den of robbers has proved to be more saintly than the political parties that we now have. That is why politicians can jump boat anyhow. Today they are in this party, tomorrow they are in that other party. And they are received with fanfare. The line of demarcation in terms of ideology is not even clear.

    When some of our older citizens that some of us have the privilege of rubbing minds with tell us the el dorado that Nigeria was in their time and keep lamenting and wondering how the country suddenly became this sorry pass, those of us the relatively younger generation keep wondering, ‘what are these people talking about. How can they be wondering’? But we now know better because those of us who also enjoyed the remnants of the el dorado that they bequeathed to us are also wondering how the little enjoyment we met evaporated before our very eyes. That is the Nigerian wonder for you.

    But we should not wonder far. Things became this bad because we stomached a lot of things like this aberration of exotic cars for NASS members. One question I always ask when writing on this vexatious topic is what are the NASS members producing that qualifies them for this affluence in the midst of grinding poverty?

    To say they need SUVs to function is bunkum, absolute rubbish. Those who occupied the seats they are occupying today before produced by far better laws for good governance. What Nigerians have been witnessing since this nonsense began with furniture allowance for NASS members in the Obasanjo era cannot qualify for law making to better the lots of Nigerians. And the only proof we need is the continued decline in the quality of life of the vast majority of Nigerians, in spite of the fabulous pay and pampering of the country’s lawmakers.

    It is better for our politicians, particularly the NASS members, to retrace their steps. Nigerians are no fools and even if they appear to be, it only seems so.

    How in this age will some people be justifying this kind of expenditure just because they have no one to call them to order? To try to justify this by saying Nigerians should look in the direction of other arms of government for the same extravagance and misapplication of public funds is vexatious. While it is true that government officials as a whole must live by example, it is not an acceptable alibi that because there is fiscal indispline in one arm, other arms must emulate that bad example.

    At any rate, I hope the legislators are not looking in the area of the judiciary because to compare that arm with the other two arms is analogous to comparing apple with oranges. We cannot compare our judges and other judicial officers with politicians holding public offices. The judicial officers are long-term or permanent public employees, with many of them serving for decades before attaining their present statuses. They cannot be compared with political appointees who in several cases start enjoying extraordinary privileges almost as soon as they assume duties. Like the NASS members, for instance. They are to get these SUVs even when they have not served for six months.  Where else are their counterparts so pampered?

    Read Also: Kogi guber poll: No room for ethnicity, says Bello

    Even in the executive, some of us are already feeling the impact of some of them who are barely three months in office.

    Meanwhile, these same lawmakers are among those shedding crocodile tears that the Naira is sinking. How does the national currency of people who cannot patronise their own home-made products have value? Value does not fall from the sky. Countries whose currencies have value worked at it. Their leaders lead by example and not by the do-as-I-say attitude of our NASS members.

    Meanwhile, it is the same people who are buying multi-million naira vehicles for themselves that would start pinching money and spending sleepless nights on calculators when it comes to paying minimum wage that cannot even take workers home.

    If there is to be any law making properly so-called, it should start with stipulating the kind of vehicles Nigerians public officials must use. After all, a time there was in this country when public officials could not use anything beyond Peugeot products by Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN). They did not die. That is where promotion of locally made products should begin.

     If our lawmakers say they need rugged vehicles apparently because our roads are generally bad, that is an indictment on their part. If they need bullet-proof cars for themselves, it is still self-indictment. Where then are the effects of the laws they have been making, even since 1999? These are all indications that Nigerians have been wasting money on unproductive money guzzlers called lawmakers. If they had made good laws, especially since 1999, our lot as a people would have been far better than it is today.

    As our elders used to say, a gourd without a neck is the one that will tell where to put a rope on its body (keregbe ti ko lorun, lo maa so ibi ti won ma sokun mo lara oun). This NASS should stop provoking Nigerians. Otherwise, a time would come when the people would remind them that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I am not aware there is any member of the NASS that their people went to beg to represent them. People who cannot feel what their constituents feel have no business being in the NASS. It is because of ungodly privileges like this that the battle to get to the place has become do- or-die. Not because they want to serve the people. People who genuinely want to serve would not be running after exotic vanities when those who voted them into office cannot afford one meal a day.

  • Better use of civil servants

    Better use of civil servants

    Appointments of political office holders and other aides are usually the much-anticipated follow-up of the inauguration of a new administration at various levels.

     Among party members and others who played one role or the other in the election of the officeholders, expectations are high that they will get compensated with appointments commensurate with their contributions.

     Like past administrations, President Bola Tinubu and new and re-elected governors and legislators have made various appointments, including ministers,  commissioners, special advisers and assistants. Many of the appointees are eminent personalities and qualified professionals who will no doubt ensure that their principals fulfil their electoral promises and live up to the expectations of the electorates.

     However, while the appointments are necessary, there is the worrisome dimension of too many advisers and assistants being appointed at the federal and state levels. Roles that can be played by one or two persons now have a crowd of appointees assigned for various bits.

    The governors especially seem to be competing for who can appoint more assistants than the other.

    Governor Umo Eno has as many as 372 Personal Assistants from each ward of the state apart from other appointees.

    Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State also has 138 media aides, while Ahamadu Fintiri of Adamawa appointed 47 media aides.

     Instead of cutting down on the number of persons the government needs to pay salaries and other entitlements considering the economic situation of the country, the governors and other office holders are adding some many.

     It’s necessary to note that for most of the jobs, special advisers and assistants are appointed, and there are enough qualified persons in the various government ministries, establishments and institutions who can effectively perform them if properly deployed.

     Some years ago, some state government information officers participated in training during which I challenged them to justify their high qualifications and experience by utilizing their skills better to serve the government.

     I told them that one of the reasons politicians appoint their aides who are not sometimes not as qualified as they are is because they are not doing enough and I urged them to utilise lessons learnt from the training to prove their capabilities.

    Read Also: Kogi guber poll: No room for ethnicity, says Bello

     One of them accepted the challenge and started contributing reports and opinions about government activities to national newspapers. Within a short period, his articles were being published by many papers to the extent that the then-governor took note of his outstanding performance and sought to meet him.

    Instead of indiscriminately appointing advisers and assistants, it’s necessary to utilise as much as possible available staff who may end up being rendered redundant despite their salaries. It’s economically not wise to have a pool of civil servants who are not utilized while political office holders prefer to create no jobs for their supporters.

    I’m aware of the lackadaisical attitude of many civil servants to work which may be too slow for elected officials who may want to make a quick impact, but there should be a way of getting them to perform optimally to avoid duplicating their positions high cost to the government.

     If civil servants who make up a large chunk of the labour union membership can be quick to demand increased payment and allowances they should not be allowed to remain idle when there are important tasks to be performed.

     More than ever before there is a need to reduce the bloated workforce of the government to minimize how much is spent on paying salaries instead of capital projects that are in high demand given the dilapidated infrastructure across the country.

     A few special advisers and assistants, yes, but not the bazaar of appointments we are presently witnessing.

  • The curse

    The curse

    It is difficult to believe that human civilisation does not go back much more than ten thousand years ago. But that bald statement is true. And yet our earth has been spinning on its axis and moving around our sun for more than four billion years now.  Indeed, only fifty million years ago, there was not a trace of the creatures which evolved to give rise to our species. We should be humbled by the fact for example that some species such as crocodiles and turtles with which we inhabit the earth have been around for millions of years when we can only measure our years in a few hundred thousand years. True, we have traced our earliest hominid ancestors to a little over three million years ago, our evolutionary journey did not bring us to the glorious present until around three hundred thousand years ago when man having acquired enough brain power to become human, was let loose upon a totally unsuspecting earth. We have given the name Homo sapiens (wise man) to our species to separate us from all the hominids which came before us and to show that our species is endowed with wisdom. How wise we really are is however still open to speculation.

    The newly minted man took his place alongside millions of other plants and animals species. By this time he had  worked his way up the food chain to sit on top of it. Since then, he has displayed a dominance the quality of  which has not been seen anywhere on earth since the days of the largest dinosaurs more than fifty million years ago.

    The dinosaurs dominated the earth with their sheer bulk, the most dominant of them like T. Rex tipping the scale at several tons. Man, new rulers of the earth, were in comparison puny creatures not more than sixty kilogrammes in weight but with a brain many times the size of what passed for a brain which, for want of a better word, powered the various activities of the dinosaurs. Unlike other species, mankind added the power of thought to all his natural instincts and began a career of anthropogenic activities with which he created a new world. But, this did not happen spontaneously as it took no less than three hundred thousand years for man to learn how to make the earth fruitful enough to satisfy mankind’s basic requirements for food and shelter.

    It was the fortuitous discovery of agriculture that made the phenomenon which has been described as the ascent of man possible. Before mankind learnt to till the soil profitably, he had to struggle against the natural elements in order to wring a precarious existence out of the many bounties of nature. All his energies were devoted to wringing out food from his environment, one which he shared with other species some of which were better adapted to the prevailing circumstances. For example, the big cats were better physically endowed to exploit their environment and it took many generations for man to learn how to survive but survive they did and more. In time, man began to extricate himself from the fears which marked their encounters with other animals so effectively that other species began to be wary of the new Lord of the jungle who was master of all he surveyed. The result of a recent experiment showed that man was the most feared predator in the jungle. They elicited more fear from other animals than the fabled lion, the so called king of the jungle. In the course of this experiment other animals including the mighty elephant took evasive action and sought out a safe haven more quickly when they heard human voices than when they were bombarded with the roar of a lion. In other words, for all the denizens of the global jungle, the fear of that physically insignificant creature called Man, is the beginning of wisdom. Man is without doubt the global apex predator and the major determinant of the future direction of all other species on earth. Unfortunately, man has not used his powers with any sense of responsibility, which is why it is expected that human activity will, in course of time precipitate, the eighth and most extensive major extinction process with which the earth has been confronted. After all, humans have now caused the extinction of many thousands of other species and the extinction rate is accelerating alarmingly. The point is, man, by his activities chooses those other species with which to share the earth. All those which do not make muster are invariably bound for extinction.

    Margaret Mead, one of the most influential anthropologists that ever lived, was once asked what was the most important early sign of a civilised human community. Her immediate response was, the presence of a skeleton with a fractured femur that had healed a considerable length of time before death.

    The femur is the largest bone in the body and takes a long time to heal once it is fractured. All throughout that extended period of healing, the sufferer is a complete invalid and must be looked after by other persons at a time when he is useless to the community. A group of people who have developed the empathy required to accommodate such a burden is one that has earned the tag of civilisation as it has demonstrated unequivocally, the most potent sign of true human civilization. It is not encountered in other species. A lion with a thorn in its paw is not likely to survive for very long as being incapable of hunting, it has become a prime candidate for starvation. Any more serious incapacitation means death within a short while.

    Man arrived on top of the pile because of his ability to harness the power of  every member of the group for a cooperative existence and anything that breaks this mode of existence however slightly is a serious challenge to the continued existence of every member of the group. For this reason any overt acts of individualism spells danger for the  community as a whole.

    Before the fortuitous discovery of agriculture, man lived in small mobile bands which foraged for food and other essentials such as shelter and security. Man was a hunter of other animals and gatherer of plants for consumption. He had to move around in order to do his hunting and gathering in the most effective manner. Therefore, it was only common sense for communities to share whatever they had in a fair and equitable manner if the community was going to survive, let alone prosper and grow. That is a proper definition of socialism which today exists only in the imagination or in Utopia, that mythical and totally imaginary land of human happiness and satisfaction.

    Read Also: DESOPADEC: tackling unemployment, youth restiveness one trainee a time

    Just over ten thousand years ago, mankind stumbled on the science of agriculture and started domesticating both plants and animals other than himself and began to use them as food. Birds, especially the humble chicken have made the most generous contribution to human nutrition in the last few thousand years. Given the ready availability of food crops and domesticated animals, man no longer needed to move around in a relentless search for food and so, he began to build settled communities within which to grow. Those communities grew by producing an excess of food thereby reducing the fear of starvation which had preyed on the collective minds of men throughout their existence up till that point. True, famines have tormented man from time to time these episodes have been caused by unforeseen  circumstances in the manner of accidents in nature. As man advanced on the path of civilization, it is becoming more unlikely that people anywhere will be exposed to suffer the pangs of hunger leading to death on a massive scale in any part of the world. Hunger is now a personal tragedy from which people suffer in times of economic depression and war.

    The scale of social  evolution which has occurred in human communities over the last ten thousand years has been massively impressive. As with the typical chemical reaction, there was a need to overcome an initial inertia which meant that for a few thousand years, progress was hardly discernible but when it took off finally it went off with a big bang.

    Starting from Egypt, civilization went round the Mediterranean rim and enlightenment went before it. The rule of law as shown by the Code of Hammurabi established the relations between the citizen and the state, a situation that was further developed by the Greeks and then the Romans. Mankind rose above the dross of his earlier existence and took his place among the stars. Even when civilization was dimmed in the West, the forces of Islam arrived on the scene to first of all defend the intellectual inheritance of Greek scholars and then delivered it to the West to spark the Renaissance. Human development in science followed and the investigation of natural law was harnessed to civil law to give the impression that happiness could be the lot of the human race.

    Unfortunately, under all the glitter of human achievement, there was a darkness at the heart of it all and the achievement of genuine happiness appeared to be consistently at least one step away, standing tantalisingly out of reach.

    There is only one human race, all of us originating in Africa. Some human subspecies such as the Neanderthals who encountered Homo sapiens in Europe had developed as others had in some other parts of the world but none of them have survived. Only Homo sapiens has stood the test of time. Even then, mankind has preyed on itself, separating themselves into competing clans on the bases of skin colour and other physical differences. They have even gone on to enslave each other in the spurious belief that some are superior to others. Even within the artificial groups created, the desire to dominate has given rise to oppressors and the oppressed, with some having far too much of the share of available communal wealth. Some are called kings and are accorded titles and privileges even though they are not immune to the iron laws of nature. They cry and bleed on occasions just like their subjects and just like them look in vain for happiness or even fulfilment. The ascent of man was based on cooperation and the promotion of empathy. These have since been replaced by unhealthy rivalry brought about by plain greed. Now that mankind is at the peak of physical achievement, it is time to start looking for genuine psychological satisfaction.

    When Adam delved and Eve spun

    Who then was a gentleman?

    (Who indeed?)

    Question posed by revolting peasants to King Richard II of England in 1381.

  • On the Israeli-Arab Conflict

    On the Israeli-Arab Conflict

    Apocalypse in Gaza

    The civilized world is benumbed by the horrific carnage and the scale of wanton destruction going on in the Gaza Strip. The conflict, a byproduct of colonial haymaking without much altruistic vision or social intelligence, has created a violent conundrum for the civilized world which should now concentrate the mind of those who care about what it means to be human.

     For one, this conflict has been going on in one form or the other and one historical template and another for far too long, stretching beyond recorded history to mythical times. Second is the fact that if care is not taken, the conflict this time around may lead to a nuclear conflagration the like of which has not been seen in human history.

      Human conflicts, at their most bloody and aggravating, are terrible to behold and to experience. They exact a severe toll on the human psyche, leaving many marred for life. But they are an integral part of the human condition. They set the template for future advances. Out of the rubble of human destruction arise new edifices of civilization if humanity will learn new lessons.

      As the rest of humanity recoil in horror at the apocalyptic terror and mass entombment unfurling in Gaza Strip, it is even clearer as Walter Benjamin avers that there is no record of civilization which is not at the same time a record of barbarity.

      Benjamin was a disruptive philosopher of the human condition who met a gruesome end at the French-German border as Hitler bared his fangs in September, 1940. Of Jewish extraction, he chose to take his own life rather than being forced back to Germany to face definite death. Now, eighty three years after, the shoe is on the other foot and it is the persecuted Jews who are delivering the killer blows.

    At its most sophisticated and devious summit, there is no difference between political artistry and global gaming on the one hand and certified sociopathy on the other. As flies are to wanton boys, so are we to the new political gods of humanity. They kill us for their sports, to appropriate the bard of Stratford -on- Avon.

       The pool is now so murky and bloodied that one is now longer sure whether the strike on the Gaza hospital was from an Israeli rocket or a rogue Hamas unit trying to prevent a greater Israeli inferno by setting off its own “small fire”.

       Whatever it is, unless the rest of the human race, irrespective of religion, race, creed, ideology and nation, come together to say a collective no to this brutish savagery, this creeping animalization of humanity, the world may be walking wide-eyed to a new global conflict which has never been seen before in its asymmetrical barbarities and sheer horrific butchery.

        The human race has never walked this path before. We are in totally uncharted territory. With murderous conflicts brewing simultaneously in many parts of the world, with the nation-state paradigm itself frazzled and showing signs of having exhausted its political and historical possibilities, it will take only an exhausted despot in Tel Aviv, Pyongyang, Teheran, Islamabad or in Washington to lit the fuse of a nuclear holocaust which will put paid to civilization as we know it.

      It is possible that a new civilization will arise from the ashes of horrendous devastations. But it is also possible that there will be no come-back kid this time around. The dire consequences might be too overwhelming. It is known that the casualties from subsequent nuclear irradiation from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki outstrip death from actual bombing. Till date, there are people believed to be suffering from the fallout of the Covid-19 incubus.

      It is said by those who should know that the dreaded pandemic was itself the consequences of virus-harvesting for offensive purposes that went awry. When Claude Levi-Strauss, the great French Structuralist anthropologist, noted tersely that the world began without the human race and will end without it, many thought he was being unduly despondent.

      But whenever anybody drew his attention to the fact that the human race was simply too big to fail, Sigismund Freud, the great Jewish-German psychoanalyst, always pointed at the dinosaurs and their horrid fate. It was simply a case of too big to survive.

       It is difficult to believe that the Americans, with their various listening posts in the Middle East, were blissfully unaware that something big was brewing in the Gaza Strip and its Hamas-saturated denizens. There is ample evidence that Egyptian intelligence alerted the Tel Aviv authorities of unusual restiveness within the Hamas group. But in all likelihood, the Israeli military saw in this an opportunity for a massive sucker punch or even a Final Solution to the heedless and troublesome Arabs.                                                     

      There are echoes of the Pearl Harbour decoy when it would appear that the Americans deliberately encouraged the Japanese to attack their lonely outpost in the Pacific so that an end can be put to Japanese militarism and imperialist fantasies. Way back during the First World War, it is alleged that British submarines were painted in German colours to attack American vessels in order to encourage the Americans to join the war efforts.

      America duly did and the Germans suffered a catastrophic drubbing. The resulting Treaty of Versailles humiliated the Germans so much that it set the stage for a return match which eventuated in the first deployment of nuclear weapon in the history of humanity.  

       Back to the conflict at hand, what is the civilized world to do about the Arabs and their Israeli cousins, two gifted and testy races who have affected the course of human civilization in a profound manner and who have bequeathed to the modern world either directly or by transformative derivation its two most successful but combustible religions?

      Certainly not by the kind of rabid partisanship that has erupted in many capitals all over the world, urging the combatants to duel on to death. The kind of mayhem and murder that we have witnessed in the Gaza Strip is a weighty reproach and rebuke to humanity and the pretensions to being on a higher scale of evolution. It questions our right to rationality and superior reason. Not even animals slaughter themselves on such a scale and scope. They will never acquire the capacity in the first instance.

       Neither is the resort to primitive identity politics and amoral confraternity so beloved by the west and its principal leadership which allows them to overlook and quietly condone Israel’s hubristic excesses in the pursuit of its right to self-determination. It is obvious that the west is still haunted by the debt of atavistic obligation to the Israeli people after centuries of persecution which culminated in Hitler’s genocide.

    Read Also: Rivers lawmaker slams Gumi over attack on Wike

      That debt was substantially redeemed by the forcible resettlement of the Jewish race in a place they left over two thousand years ago. The forcibly displaced also have a right to continued existence. In the imperialist manual of peaceful coexistence among conquered and subdued races, order is superior to justice.

       The doctrine of a master-nationality has been replicated on a larger scale. In a Middle East bristling with disorder and chaos after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire just get a master race to impose order and rationality and let the natives get on with it. A few heads will be broken and that is that. They will calm down. It is post-empire imperialism by whatever name.

      But judging from the current apocalypse on the Gaza Strip, it is obvious that it will not work. In Shakespeare’s famous Merchant of Venice, Shylock the Jew, demanded to know what made his race so different and inferior to the master-race. If you hit them, do they not cry, and if you wound them, do they not bleed?

       Centuries after, it is the Arabs who are demanding an answer to the selfsame questions from the descendants of Shylock. Their shrill cries are been heard all over the world. Arab women are wailing over the dismembered remains of their children. Voices were heard all over Gaza this past week, it is not the voice of the biblical Rachael but of Arab women wailing over their children because they were no more.

      The west and Israel must put on their thinking cap once again, or hope for the advent of visionary leaders who must think through the millennial impasse in the Middle East. The dual-state solution was a classic fudge. It was dead on arrival. In the meantime, let Gaza Strip become a UN Protectorate with authority vested in moderate and forward-looking Palestinians.

      African nations must learn the correct lessons from this tragic entanglement. It will not do to just file blindly behind the combatants without reason or rhyme. Suffering ennobles and brings the most unusually insightful perspective to human tragedy. As the most persecuted race on earth, Black people have the most developed capacity to bring a fresh perspective to the evolving world order.

       The example of a leading Nigerian cleric urging Israel on and asking the people of Israel to bring more results from the battlefield is the most startling instance of spiritual retardation ever witnessed in post-colonial Africa. Africans have nothing to gain from this syrupy self-abasement.

       Neither the Jews nor Arabs care very much about Black people. There is documented evidence that Israel and the Arab nations hold their minority African populace in extreme contempt and utter disregard. You cannot blame them. Until Africans learn to lift themselves up by their own God-given ontological ballast, that will be the fate reserved for them.

       Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity, if the correct lesson can be learnt. Israel has taught the modern world a memorable lesson, that it is possible to create a powerful and prosperous modern nation from scratch and from nothing, using nothing but prodigious mental endowment, fierce national discipline and militant self-belief. Having done that, the nation of Golda Meir should now lead in the search for peace and a new world order, hubris and the Masada Complex permitting.

  • The Grass cutter is not cutting grass

    The Grass cutter is not cutting grass

    Why is the grass cutter not cutting grass? At least this is what those in correctional facilities are supposed to do. This is what is meant by being sentenced with hard labour. But we live in a world of semantic somersault and elaborate assault on reality. The sentence may well be past tense. Hard labour may just mean the exact opposite: self-indulgent pleasure and national security nightmare.

    Otherwise, how does a man whose trial for corrupt self-enrichment and sundry malfeasance ought to have been long concluded and who ought to be doing time in jail find time to constitute himself to a national nuisance and a grave threat to security? Having gone to grass for some time after the political debacle that met his high-profile whoring and serial infidelity, the grass cutter from the plains of Adamawa has decided to stir things up once again.

    Oh dear, dear, judging from the sledgehammer response of the APC publicity machine to the latest diatribe and offensive personal slurs from David Babachir Lawal, the former Secretary to Federal Government and ranking party insider until his exit from government and party in untidy and controversial circumstances, it is clear that the current APC hierarchs will no longer take his contumely lying low and soaking it up with the indulgence reserved for political prodigals.

    Let us cut to the chase. This is nothing personal. It is an attempt to help Babachir redeem his honour and regain his political bearing, if that is still possible. In the early heady day of the Buhari administration, this writer asked a top ranking leader of the APC who on earth was the David Babachir Lawal who had just been appointed the Secretary to the Government. “Ah, he is our man, and a very loyal and dependable ally at that”, the person responded.

    But not long afterwards, the bottom fell off the cooking jar and the centre could no longer hold. In fairness to him, Babachir took his dismissal in the chin, despite its controversial and cloudy circumstances only permitting himself to ask the question about what the fabled presidency was all about when the agents of defenestration arrived to demand for his scalp.

    Thereafter, the Socratic equanimity seemed to have deserted him yielding to wild intemperate outbursts, irrational tantrums, sinister gaming with his party’s choice of presidential candidate and an outright attempt to destabilize the political process through fanning  the embers of ethnic and religious discord in an already dangerously polarized polity.

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       To be sure, the dark furies of resentment fuelling Lawal’s misgivings and which have turned the poor fellow into a seething volcano of political malediction is not without some logic or justification. He was certainly not the most corrupt member of the Buhari administration. To have singled him out for judicial retribution smacked of favouritism and double-dealing.

     But everybody knows that the general from Daura has his strange ways and is not above ethnic and religious fiddling where sensitive national issues are concerned. Being aware of his status as an endangered species, Lawal ought to have  conducted himself with exemplary integrity and be like Caesar’s wife.

    Lawal’s subsequent conduct out of office shows that he lacks the moral and constitutional fibre as well as the statesmanlike rectitude expected of the holder of one of the highest offices in the land. The fact that he has escaped justice so far shows that at least he remains a beneficiary of that wider solidarity in aberration which is the prerogative of all endangered ruling classes.

    His latest political gambit, which is to openly question the validity and legitimacy of the last presidential election just as the process is about to reach its judicial completion shows just how far gone in political perfidy and treachery the Adamawa-born politician has become and how much lower he has sunken in self-esteem. His political obituary will not be more underwhelming.

  • Tinubu’s first tentative steps

    Tinubu’s first tentative steps

    Last week, President Bola Tinubu stepped down the nomination of 24-year-old Imam Kashim Imam as board chairman of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA). The administration should have foreseen the controversy certain to trail the appointment, even though the first-class mechanical engineering graduate, and son of the president’s associate, was believed to have been nominated by Works minister Dave Umahi. In early August, Kano State nominee Maryam Shetty was also dramatically dropped from the ministerial list hours before senatorial screening, perhaps on account of her dogged and enthusiastic support on social media for the doomed Yemi Osinbajo presidential bid. Former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai was also controversially dropped from the ministerial list when the senate declined to screen him until security reports cleared him. The suspicion is that the administration is neither consulting enough nor doing adequate homework.

    But just as the Tinubu administration suffered some notable hiccups in appointments, nearly all of them avoidable with a little more spadework, some of the administration’s policies and programmes, suffering from lack of consultations and research, have also suffered unpleasant reversals. Its negotiations with striking Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) were, to put it mildly, inexpert and hesitant, punctuated by embarrassing and sometimes quick reversals. It has doubled down on its brusque removal of fuel subsidy, a policy it anchored on creative verbal engineering, but probably wished with the wisdom of hindsight it executed that fine policy much cleverer than it managed. The naira float, too, has been problematic, not because it is a bad policy, but because its execution was akin to a peremptory decree. The administration is in fact still trying to rein in the consequences of naira depreciation. Last Friday, it granted university teachers and resident doctors waivers over the no-work, no-pay policy which had led to the withholding of their salaries. It was kind of the administration; but by paying ASUU half of their withheld wages, and wringing a signed concession from them, the administration exhibited grudging regard for the issues at play. It refused to admit that lecturers do so much more in the universities than just teach.

    Apart from the lack of surefootedness in a few of the appointments made by the administration, including the mistiming of the EFCC and ICPC appointments, President Tinubu may be signaling anxiety in the minds of his fanatical supporters while triggering exultation in the camps of his enemies. He has spent over four months in office, probably enough time to calm down and settle into a far more solid and less seismic method of doing business. Outside the administration, there are questions about whether he is overwhelmed by the newness of his surrounding and the unprecedentedness of his assumption of the presidency. As far as human calculations go, he was indeed nearly not elected. Succumbing to malignant campaigns against the person, health, and behavior of Senator Tinubu when he was an aspirant and candidate, his predecessor, ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, did his best, including deploying state power and resources, to prevent the ascension of the former Lagos State governor. The plots would have worked had the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), not snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by splintering into four irreconcilable parts.

    Read Also: Prophet seeks patience with Tinubu for peaceful, prosperous nation

    But if President Tinubu is not surefooted in some of his policies and appointments on account of the sheer remarkability of his election and the suspicion that it is yet to dawn on him that he is indeed the president, might the reason then be because of the unresolved PDP and Labour Party (LP) suits against his election? It is unlikely. President Tinubu is an intuitive and perceptive leader. If he is unable to accurately assess the substance of the suits against him, his lawyers, who are among the country’s finest, must have educated him that his defence is ironclad for the simple reason that neither the PDP candidate nor the LP candidate led evidence to show that they won the February 25 presidential poll. Their pleadings were simply gaseous air, with scant evidentiary value, insignificant enough to create doubt in the mind of any jurist, let alone merit victory. Whatever ails the Tinubu administration can simply not be because he is mesmerised by his new status or because he entertains any fear about the Supreme Court deciding against him. Nevertheless, whatever factors are causing the hiccups seem potent enough to chip away, slowly and insidiously, at his reputation as a can-do leader. He will need to deal with those factors and neutralise them both for the sake of his reputation and in order to have an easier run at a second term should he choose to take that option when the time comes. He has proved a courageous leader, and it has advanced the cause of national stability that he was elected as president not beholden to any private and powerful interest. What is more, merely looking at his general cabinet, it is evident he seems a great recruiter of talents.

    The suspicion overall is that he has simply not got his kitchen cabinet right. No, the problem is not his health, regardless of whatever anyone thinks, and certainly not any demons pursuing him. Until he puts together a far better and more competent and gifted team to constitute his immediate circle, he will continue to experience needless hiccups and find it cumbersome forging a winning formula out of the rich talents he has assembled. His cabinet may be a bit bloated and a mockery of the prevailing national economic mood, but it is redeemed by the many brilliant and eager technocrats and politicians among the number. When he decides on a kitchen cabinet, it will advise him on periodic meetings with men and women of substance, intellect and heft who would look the president in the face and caution him against some of his rambunctious and spontaneous policies over which he is proving adept at flip-flopping. He does not lack such elder statesmen whom he had known for decades. But there is nothing to indicate that he meets with them monthly. There is also nothing in his policies and programmes to suggest that he has already put in place secret and alternative means of getting honest feedbacks from the public, so that he does not get used to hearing himself and those around him saying and reinforcing virtually the same orthodoxies of their fancy. President Tinubu should change tack as he begins to recognise and grapple with the complexities and intensities of a culturally and politically variegated Nigeria. He knows he is surrounded by too many enemies who want him to fail.

  • Ondo crisis symptomatic of Southwest leadership decline

    Ondo crisis symptomatic of Southwest leadership decline

    Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s attempt to impeach his luckless deputy governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, has stalled legally, procedurally and politically. It will now require a lot of concentration, daring and persistence to unhorse the disfavoured politician and controversial husband. It is doubtful Mr Akeredolu can summon that persistence and concentration, considering how enfeebled by illness he has become. For more than three months, he was away in Germany treating an undisclosed illness. While on medical leave, reports of his deputy’s disloyalty deafened and incensed him. It is not known whether those alarming reports were responsible for his premature return home, or whether he really feared Mr Aiyedatiwa was capable of getting him declared incapacitated. But shortly after he arrived in Nigeria and took ‘refuge’ in Ibadan, Oyo State, the irate governor kick-started impeachment moves against his deputy by first stripping him of all his aides.

    That impeachment effort, which has dragged on uncharacteristically for more than a month, has now become snarled in the legislature, All Progressives Congress (APC) national headquarters, and the Federal High Court in Abuja. When the impeachment moves began, this column argued that it would take a miracle to save Mr Aiyedatiwa, especially because both the governor and the legislature were on the same page on the matter. The two are still on the same page. It is not clear how the courts will adjudicate the matter, but it can be safely assumed that the APC, which in recent years has proved less calculating and prescient than it pretends to be, will set store by its ability to perform the role of a fire brigade and peacemaker. Clearly, if the impeachment effort drags on for a little more than the governor’s liver can take, he will be distracted, if not lose interest altogether.

    The Federal High Court, Abuja will rule on the matter on October 30; for that was where Mr Aiyedatiwa took refuge to forestall his impeachment. The APC reconciliation committee headed by the level-headed former Katsina State governor Aminu Masari will probably do its best to ensure that the Ondo boat is not rocked too much as to jeopardise next year’s governorship election. It will lean on the governor to embrace peace and reconcile with his deputy. The legislature will toe the line of the governor: if he forecloses impeachment, the lawmakers will follow suit. But if the governor and the legislature cannot throw out the deputy governor, for his sins are actually grievous, they will do their best to neutralise him politically speaking. Mr Aiyedatiwa desperately wants to succeed his boss, and was evidently impatient and unfeeling in birthing his ambition while Mr Akeredolu was writhing in pain in Germany. Indeed, he has been largely tactless, amoral and reckless. He may now actually get his first wish, if things align fortuitously for him; it is, however, hard seeing him win the primary ticket, let alone win the main governorship poll in 2024.

    Mr Aiyedatiwa is privately and publicly unfit for a position of responsibility. His home front is unflattering, and his public office is marked by series of poor judgements and shocking calls. Unable to give loyalty or exude camaraderie, he is even more disabled from attracting or soliciting any kind of deep affection. On the surface, he is debonair, confident and soft-spoken. But at bottom, he has neither depth nor gravitas, at least nothing to qualify or recommend him for high office. However, he only bears secondary responsibility for the political morass swirling around Ondo. Mr Akeredolu in fact bears the greater responsibility for the unnecessary crisis enveloping the state, including its lack of inspiring example to the region. He fell out with his former deputy, Agboola Ajayi, and ensured he did not return with him for a second term, and was perhaps partly responsibility for his defeat in the last senatorial race. No one was certain that in his relationship and dispute with Mr Ajayi, he was not guilty of poor judgement in nominating him, in the first place, as running mate. In the nomination of Mr Aiyedatiwa, the governor was solely responsible, a selection now clearly based on poor judgement.

    It is not easy blaming Mr Akeredolu for anything, seeing how hobbled by illness he is. But this is politics and governance, not sentiments. He made the wrong call when he nominated Mr Aiyedatiwa as his running mate, and was a poorer judge of character by failing to vet his proposed deputy in all possible ways, including whether the nominee had the character and capacity to succeed him should anything unforeseen happen. There is little to suggest he carried out the necessary vetting. His failure may not be surprising. Even his leadership of the state, particularly in terms of innovativeness, leaves much to be desired. Far more than the human and economic resources available to the state, Mr Akeredolu had proved inadequate and unexampled. He seemed, therefore, quite the kind of politician capable of nominating flawed and incompetent deputies.

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    But mediocrity and lack of inspiration and innovativeness are not limited to Ondo State. The problems are regionwide, with Ondo merely symptomatic of the region’s worst. Shockingly, perhaps with the exception of Oyo State – but only just – the Southwest under both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and APC has entered a period of leadership decline so enervating that there is no period in history to compare with it. The Southwest has managed to trundle along in comparison, but not quite in competition, with the rest of the country. Its rich history has become unsustainable, while it has also become less ideological, less profound, less visionary, less secular, and increasingly more average and superstitious. Nothing distinguishes or differentiates the Southwest from the rest of the country, though it manifests a semblance of peace and stability. Lagos is corrupted by influx of migrants, its strength and soul and identity vitiated by a strange miscegenation of hostile and insidious cultures. And while Osun has lost pretence to administrative rationality, Ogun dithers in paralysis.

    If Mr Akeredolu is unable to get rid of his deputy, he will bide his time, waylay his victim during the primary, and punish him before the governorship poll. The deputy governor will, however, hope to outlast the ailing governor whom he had not spared kind or sympathetic thoughts. But no matter how things shape out for the governor, his political family is strong enough to make a difference in endorsements, and indeed powerful enough to make the difference in the next governorship election. He may not have been exemplary as many thought he would be on account of his training, exposure and experience; and he may even have lacked the capacity to make a lasting impact on Ondo, but he has had a significant rule sufficient in the short term to punish his enemies and reward his friends. Whether Mr Aiyedatiwa survives the Akeredolu barrage or not, he will be number one on the guillotine.

  • Lagos environmental sanitation nostalgia

    Lagos environmental sanitation nostalgia

    On September 22, while touring the state to assess adherence to environmental laws, Lagos State governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu reportedly mulled the reintroduction of the state’s monthly environmental sanitation practice. He was said to be unhappy about how the state’s environmental laws were being flouted. Obviously he believes that conducting a three-hour clean-up once a month would do the trick. Did it solve the problem before? He seems to suggest that it is only those three hours on that one day in the month that the state’s environmental laws could be enforced. In other words, the state lacks the wherewithal to enforce environmental laws on other days of the month. There can be no worse admission of a state’s impotence in the face of violations of the law, or of a state’s lack of innovation and imaginativeness.

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    Reintroducing the monthly environmental practice is nothing but a feeble and unimaginative surrender to nostalgia. For a megacity and commercial capital of a country of 200 million people, and a state with an estimated population of over 20 million people, it is worrisome that it appears to put so much premium on a one-day, three-hour clean-up measure to remedy the abhorrent environmental practice of lawbreakers. Has the state government calculated the economic cost of arresting commerce for three hours? In a world that has become highly sophisticated, where environmental issues and other societal challenges are dealt with at the highest technologically innovative level, it is disturbing that the state is attempting to return to a primeval era. Mr Sanwo-Olu should enforce the law and put a team together that can innovate Lagos out of its environmental quagmire, rather than look for simplistic ways out.

  • SHORT TAKES  (2)

    SHORT TAKES  (2)

    The ber ber ber months are here again

    When overcrowded cars fly like rockets

    And roads run red like slaughter slabs

    Drums sound so loud till their membranes forget their memory

    Revelers dance till they lose their legs

    The owambe madness is well in season

                 **

    “Lend me your ears”,

    Pleads the glib-tongued crowd-pleaser

    But what if I do

    And you never return them?

                **

    Read Also: Police arrest Principal, vice over beating of student to death in Zaria

    Oh how short

    The journey from

    Influencer to Influenza

    Two viral impositions

    One by cyber “lifestyle”  pundits

    The other by a deadly bug

               **

    Flight over

    A grateful me

    Joshed with the pleasant Pilot

    Asking if he could lend me

    A few feathers from his wings

              **

    Muses the Social Studies sage:

         ‘Underdevelopment is not an accident’

    ‘Happiness is earned; many times, achieved’

         Retorts  his Psychology  colleague