Last week’s piece titled “On the Code of Royalty” drew many interesting responses. Unfortunately, two words critical to the elucidation, odu and Olodumare, were miscast by the computer in transmission and then allowed to go through by less than diligent proofreading. They turned up as edz and olydQmarP respectively. The corrections were immediately effected online, but too late for the hard copy. Once again, we offered our apologies to the elderly citizen, an avid reader of this column and one of Nigeria’s most respected surveyors ever, who wrote back wondering about the mystery code language. Sir, be rest assured that hieroglyphics, the ancient writing art of the early Egyptians, is not making a comeback via Nigeria.
Category: Sunday
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PSC, IGP: grudge match continues
NIGERIANS wait to see whether the confirmation of Solomon Arase, a past Inspector General of Police (IGP), as the chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) will resolve the turf war between the police and the PSC. The turf war of course predates the current IGP, Usman Alkali Baba, and Mr Arase. It is a needless war, especially because the PSC is empowered to carry out oversight functions on the police. Inspired by the 1957 Constitutional Conference/Willink Minorities Commission Report, the PSC, as constituted, is expected to help ensure that the Police Force does not become an instrument of oppression by a tribe or political party. There is, however, no consensus that the Force is as neutral and professional as its Act envisions.
The turf war between the police and its supervisory organ became pronounced in recent years under the leaderships of former chairman Musiliu Smith, himself a former IGP, and Clara Bata Ogunbiyi, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court and the most senior commissioner on the PSC. If a former IGP and a jurist could both not resolve the dispute between the police and the PSC, not much hope can be reposed in the sterling records of Mr Arase, who is already accused of being a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sympathiser. The crux of the matter is who controls or supervises whom? The Police Force, speaking through its IGP, claims that by virtue of the Police Act 2020, the police could appoint constables and post commissioners of police to states. Quoting the same Act and the 1999 Constitution, the PSC insists the police do not have the leeway they have carved for themselves.
This divergent interpretation of laws has led to a prolonged dispute between the two bodies over the appointment of constables in 2020 and 2021, and particularly over their enrolment on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information system (IPPIS). The dispute was particularly fierce during the tenure of Mr Smith who stepped down last year. The disagreement is also being litigated, with the Court of Appeal delivering judgement in favour of the PSC’s interpretation of its constitutional powers. The court judgement enabled Justice Ogunbiyi to stay the course of his predecessor by drawing the attention of the relevant organs of government, such as the Head of Service of the Federation as well as the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) to the illegality of enrolling newly recruited policemen on the IPPIS without the approval of the PSC. The case is now at the Supreme Court.
That Nigeria is poorly policed, both in terms of personnel and equipment, is not in doubt. Therefore, holding in limbo the appointment of about 20,000 policemen because of turf wars has become an unwise exacerbation of the policing quandary the country has found itself. The Police Force and the PSC should be able to resolve their differences, perhaps by involving past PSC chairmen and former IGPs. After all, the two organs were not always at war in the past. Unfortunately, they have so far been incapable of finding peace. But much more indicting is the shocking inability of the federal government to call the two combatant groups to order. The laws governing the establishment and operations of the Police Force and the PSC seem unambiguous. The problem is either conflicting interpretations or, as the PSC alleges, nefarious and ulterior interests. Whatever the problems are, especially after litigating the matter to the Court of Appeal, the federal government should be able to intervene through the office of the Attorney General in order to forge an administratively binding resolution. The government should not be paralysed.
One thing is obvious: the PSC will not back down and watch, as it claims, its powers eroded. For the Police Force, the misunderstanding has been escalated to the point that the police leadership sees the disagreement from the prism of professional law enforcement pride. Public admonitions will not work. It is indeed strange that two federal organs could escalate their disputes to the point of litigation and the federal government acts as if its reputation is not on the line. For the umpteenth time, the public should call on the presidency to seek legal advice, in case one is needed, and bring the messy turf battles to an end. Litigations are a waste of public funds and they question the administration’s philosophy of letting the law take its course. For a country which should have gone beyond petty power squabbles to the higher issues of how to procure state policing and devolution of power, it is a reflection of the mediocrity that has overtaken Nigeria that law enforcement organs get embroiled in power games to the detriment of fighting crimes escalating and modernising at a rate that has left the people insecure and breathless.
Naja’atu Mohammed’s APC reminiscences
NAJA’ATU Mohammed, 67, a former member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council and Director, Civil Society Liaison, claimed two Saturdays ago to have resigned her position and was not sacked. She will continue to be controversial, given her background, her claims of being poisoned by the Department of State Service (DSS) in 2013, and the seven surgeries she said she underwent, including a reconstructed colon. Such adversities sometime bring out the dyspeptic worst in a person. Her colourful accounts of what she endured in the hands of enemies have indeed not seemed to temper her vigour and activism but to instigate her into daring and malignant explosions. She married into activism, and despite many setbacks, including the murder of her husband, has remained immersed in it, conducting her campaigns in ways that are sometimes befuddling and sometimes self-serving.
Though media reports did not indicate the date on her resignation letter, what is significant is not the debate over her acrimonious exit, but the entirely scurrilous attacks she has leveled on APC leaders, including President Muhammadu Buhari who appointed her a commissioner in the Police Service Commission (PSC) in 2018, and APC presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu. She described President Buhari as too self-centred to be capable of any altruism, and Asiwaju Tinubu as phlegmatic and given to money politics. Shortly before she jumped ship and berthed in PDP three days later, Mrs Mohammed donned the garb of a medical practitioner and went on to describe the medical condition of the APC candidate. Perhaps soon, Mrs Mohammed, having acquired diagnostic expertise, can also be trusted to broadcast the medical condition of the 76 years old PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, her new political dalliance.
Mrs Mohammed is cocksure of everything, and believes she is progressive and ethical. Some of her former friends and traducers, whoever they are, are nothing but corrupt, insensitive and irredeemable people. She didn’t start her sanctimonious politics yesterday; she won’t stop it tomorrow. She will keep at it till her dying day, permanently kept grumpy by her many surgeries. What is even more significant is how APC-baiting newspapers latched on to the straw that Mrs Mohammed provided. In an interview with ThisDay published on January 25, the interviewer, unable to resist gloating over the controversy between Mrs Mohammed and Asiwaju Tinubu, asked leading, abusive and pejorative questions.
In one, the interviewer asked: “Recently, Governor Ayade said Asiwaju is the best that can fix Nigeria and that he’s generous. But does Tinubu being generous qualify him to be Nigeria’s president?” Not repulsive enough a question? Take this, then: “You’re the first person to give the public a glimpse of how things are because he (Tinubu) has avoided debates. He has avoided granting interviews to the media and successfully avoided scrutiny.” Shocked? Wait for this: “Some people have said Tinubu is the first presidential candidate in Nigeria to have a direct link to agberos on the street. Your thoughts?” And finally this piece of exquisite editorialising: “But why will a deeply flawed man want to be president?”
If Mrs Mohammed, who gives the impression of being an ethicist, still does not feel used, then, despite her self-professed love for political morality, she must be completely inured to reality.
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For Jahman Oladejo Anikulapo: the music never stops
Jahman Oladejo Anikulapo one of Nigeria’s most assiduous art-and-culture activists and curators, turned 60 today. Below, with minor amendments, is my tribute to him 10 years ago upon his attainment of the age of 50.
NIGERIA’S Arts and Culture community has literally declared January 2013 as The Jahman Anikulapo Month. January 16 is his birthday, and we have decided to ensure that every bird in the tree, every speck of the roadside dust, and every drop of the teeming lagoon sing with us as we troop out to mark the first 50 years of one of the most committed culture activists in our country’s history. And the past sixteen days of the month have witnessed a real cornucopia of compliments: from writers and readers, play-writers and play-goers, drummers and dancers, song-composers and singers, creative artists and art connoisseurs, music hall stars and street crooners, culture-policy wonks and culture-practice wags, fervent dreamers and flat-out realists, friends and foes of the arts. When I look at the young man for whom the bell has chimed fifty memorable times, and for whom the drums rumble so thunderously from street to street; when I wade through the flood of gists, jests, anecdotes, reminiscences, fabus of Jahman’s colleagues and contemporaries in his Baba Confuse days at the Theatre Arts Department of the University of Ibadan in the 1980’s; when I put all these side by side with the generous encomiums pouring forth from those whose cultural lives have been so vitally touched by this passionately engaged maverick of a man, I cannot help wondering what exactly must be going on in his mind right now.
For the Jahman (or Oladejo as I’ve grown accustomed to calling him, teasingly) we have come to know is a culture warrior – no, a warrior for culture – an intensely motivated, doggedly driven, relentlessly inventive, remorselessly tenacious fighter with, ironically, a sometimes self-deprecating, self-effacing disposition. A true man of the theatre with an uproariously humorous mien and gravely serious inclination mixed in equal proportions, he has learnt to make us laugh at some of our grievous flaws and get deadly serious about what we have come to regard as mere trifles. Honesty of purpose; the readiness to serve without seeking immediate reward; humility – genuine, elevating humility; that refusal to take oneself too seriously which is one of the hallmarks of virtue – these are some of the attributes that have endeared Jahman to his throng of admirers. I still remember the day I introduced him to one of my students at the University of Ibadan, and the way young man exclaimed with a jaw-dropping curiosity: ‘Waow, so this is the same Jahman Anikulapo of The Guardian?!’ This admirer couldn’t believe that the editor of one of Nigeria’s leading Sunday papers could be so simple, so effortlessly accessible, so non-self-announcing.
Jahman is also blessed with the capacity for seeing (at times, detecting) the best and most enviable in others and going ahead to showcase it for the world to see. This is why that throng of admirers has decided to pay him back in his own coins, in a manner of speaking, by using his 50th birthday as a grand excuse for the celebration of that tirelessly gracious celebrator of other people.
But the word ‘celebration’ runs the risk of sounding showy, vain, even self-indulgent, especially in a country like ours that is so fraught with purchased adulation and vacuous veneration, a place in which a chunky part of stolen public funds is spent on prodigal laundering of the image of thieving public functionaries, with the mass media dripping with purloined publicity, and praise-singers berserk with flattery. It is precisely the attempt to find new ways of celebrating excellence, by seeking out, foregrounding, cherishing, and promoting the hidden nuggets of Nigeria’s art and culture that powers much of Jahman’s vision and numerous activities. These were also the motivating factors for the birth of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) that powerful art and culture advocacy organization that is, without doubt, the most purposive, most consistent initiative of its kind in Nigeria today.
Yes, CORA (endowed with multiple strings just like the kora, its time-hallowed musical homophone, memory tonic in the hands of the griot). Born June 2, 1991 under the pioneering chairmanship of the enterprising Yomi Layinka, and nurtured into vigorous maturity in the past two decades by a group of highly talented professionals, its two most visible faces are Jahman, our current celebratee, and Toyin Akinosho, a petroleum geologist by training and profession, a culture organiser and public intellectual who has committed professional apostasy and given his life to the arts. Astoundingly literate, cerebral, and cosmopolitan, Akinosho brings to cultural and literary journalism an insight, sure-footed elan, and magisterial panache that would make a professor of literary studies go green with envy. With Anikulapo and Akinosho, professional association has morphed into personal friendship (or vice versa!), and the result is as beneficial to culture activism in Nigeria as the companionship between Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe is to print journalism.
The last 20 years have seen CORA throb us into sound and sense with its magic strings. Virtually every living Nigerian writer and artist has been guest at or subject of its Quarterly Art Stampede, that decidedly unorthodox ‘parliamentary event’ in which burning issues in art and culture are foregrounded for fertile deliberation while notable workers in the culture vineyard are fielded for combative interrogation and regenerative criticism. For the past two decades, CORA has stampeded lethargy and silence from the vital chambers of Nigeria’s arthouse.
The young organization has also blossomed into fertile branches and diverse forums. Three of its many babies or off-shoots have been particularly effective. First is the Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF), an annual event whose goal is the aggressive promotion of a steady reading culture by bringing the book, the writer and the reading public together in a way that makes the book both attractive and desirable; and by intelligently highlighting those books whose ideas are too seminal and too purposive to be allowed to pass without illuminating deliberation. There is also the Arthouse Forum, organized on the platform of the Friends of the Arts Lagos, (FOAL, another CORA baby) deliberately focused on culture administrators and culture policy-shapers in Nigeria. And then, The Great Highlife Party held monthly in collaboration with the O’Jez Nightclub at Surulere, Lagos, with the twin goals of restoring the significance and vitality of Highlife, ‘West Africa’s most important contribution to world music’, while celebrating ‘landmark achievements of the best on the Nigerian cultural scene’. True to its goal, this forum has brought back the inimitable melodies of Highlife, facilitated the restoration of its historic dignity and rehabilitation of some of its old, abandoned, and impoverished practitioners.
Youthful vigour, a strong, well modulated dissent, a restlessly inventive spirit, a voracious hunger for knowledge and ideas, an almost missionary capability for bringing people together, a keen ear for the music of the soul and the melody of the mind, an uncanny capacity to dream and dare – these have been CORA’s hallmark achievements in the past two decades, with the likes of Toyin Akinosho and Jahman Anikulapo at its helm. CORA has been nothing less than the Star of Nigeria’s Enlightenment; the living instance of the power of art to challenge, to connect, to restore, to conserve, to keep.
To be sure, my ‘celebration’ of Jahman Anikulapo has literally turned into a festschrift on CORA. Just as well. For there is so much mirror-imaging between this organization and this man. Like CORA, Jahman is always looking for new ways of doing old things and old ways of doing new things. Like CORA, Jahman is always on the lookout for viable alternatives. Like CORA, Jahman is, in the manner of Bynum in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a People-Finder and People–Binder. Like CORA, Jahman is an avowed devotee of hard work and that uncompromisable thoroughness that should be its enabling companion.
Who could have forgotten the striking quality of Jahman’s articles even in his rookie days as a journalist in The Guardian? Whether they were book reviews or theatre criticism, reports on cultural events, or general commentaries on arts and culture, his writings demonstrated the stimulating streak of scholarly journalism so characteristic of the efforts of the likes of Ben Tomoloju, Kole Ade-Odutola, Seun Ogunseitan (in those days), and Toni Kan, Molara Wood, Akeem Lasisi, Sumaila Umaisha, Edozie Udeze, Sola Balogun, Henry Akubuiro, Layiwola Adeniji, Akintayo Abodunrin (today). On account of the thoroughness of their research, the depth of their contents, their cogitative capability, and felicity of expression, many of Jahman’s newspaper articles sometimes found their way into my literary stylistics class at the university. (I often teased him and Tomoloju with the joke that if one strung their sentences together end to end, they would span the distance between Lagos and Ikere Ekiti!).
The scrupulousness and fidelity to detail which characterised Jahman’s own writing also ruled his habit as editor. In my many years of professional dealing with him, I have come to realise that nothing gives Jahman more pain and concern than a complaint about an error in any of the publications produced under his watch. In such circumstances, Jahman would fret and agonize, take personal responsibility for the error, apologise wholeheartedly, and make sure that the lapse at issue is duly rectified. I have seen him re-publish a whole article as a result of ‘unforgivable’ errors in the first run. When I witness such conscientiousness, such meticulousness, such aversion to mediocrity, I come away with the feeling that the pursuit of excellence has not completely disappeared from this beleaguered country; but then I ask somewhat rhetorically, ‘But why don’t they make them like Jahman any more?’.
But those who see only the art-and-culture part of Jahman behold but only a segment of the man. Behind the mask-and-magic of the performer is a humanely political animal: dissident, angry, even revolutionary, brimming with alternative visions and viable possibilities. ‘Life is short, but Art is long’, brags the old dictum. Very consoling, eloquently soothing in its soporific certitude. But we are also wakeful enough to know that art can only be as ‘long’ as the politics of life allow it to be. And there are few places in our contemporary world where the possibilities of art are so cruelly thwarted by the barbarisms of the socio-economic and political system as they are in Nigeria. I have yet to meet another journalist of Jahman’s standing in Nigeria today with a clearer apprehension of Nigeria’s socio-political dysfunctionality, and its consequent frustration of our creative potential and decimation of our dreams. Like Matthew Arnold, the noted Victorian poet and literary theorist, Anikulapo discerned pretty early in his career the intimate, inevitable connection between culture and civilization, enlightenment and the science of being. A personal conversation with him reveals his seething, patriotic anger at the criminals in power who stand between Nigeria and her dreams – those who have replaced genuine, creative culture with venal barbarism and allied philistinism. Every chat with Jahman leaves me in no doubt about his belief in the curability of Nigeria’s pathological underdevelopment. Thus he has grown to acquire the moral strength and psychological equipoise which have prevented him from tipping over into the hell-hole of rank opportunism and conscienceless sell-out that have become the standard practice of most Nigerian elite. Just consider this: Ten long years as editor of Nigeria’s most authoritative Sunday newspaper, Jahman is bowing out without bulging bank accounts, a fleet of cars, a cluster of landed property in the choicest parts of Lagos and Abuja; without ‘thank-you’ packages from the banks and the rest of the business world; without a nifty oil block gift from a ‘grateful’ Presidency, that would ease him into the nirvana of a gross, indolent billionaire for the rest of his life. . . .
Conscience over commerce; mind over money; policy not politics; justice, not just-as-it-is: Jahman Anikulapo, like the late Czech President Vaclav Havel (who, incidentally, was also a man of the theatre), has taught all of us new ways of being human. A stupendously gifted, conscientious, and productive human being, he has, by his example, demonstrated that integrity is not a taboo word even in our hellishly debauched country. In the past two decades we have seen an uncommonly principled professional devote his enormous talent and energy to the defence, protection, and promotion of culture and the generation and dissemination of ideas. In celebrating him, therefore, we are celebrating the best in ourselves and calling attention to the infinite possibilities of this lavishly endowed but sadly misgoverned country. Jahman Anikulapo has shown us that Hope, though distant, is not an unreachable goal.
Thank you, Oladdejo, for all you have been doing to stampede us into sense. As Teju Kareem and Segun Ojewuyi have most aptly and most poetically put it, ‘You have built a repertoire of good deeds that go beyond your years’. Welcome to the second half of your century!
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IPOB’s Kanu and Soludo’s surety
Anambra State governor Charles Soludo is not just a first-class economist, he is also oratorically fecund and not averse to idiomatic expressions when he comes upon one that tickles his fancy. Despite his many endowments, he should proceed with caution, and, as this column wrote about him shortly after he assumed office and set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, learn to surround himself with thinkers, diplomats, administration gurus and people who can look him in the face and tell him what he might be loth to hear. He has a duty to his state, having taken office at a delicate but violent time in its history, but he also owes himself an even huger responsibility to lay a solid foundation for his politics, with an eye on the future.
Prof. Soludo is desperate for peace, especially because his Anambra State is wracked by violence perpetrated, many Nigerians suspect, chiefly by the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The governor knows that without peace, his developmental projects could flounder or even entirely founder. He has, therefore, settled on the logic of locating the restive Mr Kanu at the centre of his efforts to procure peace for the state. However, neither the governor nor anyone else can be sure that the IPOB leader is on the same page with the governor. Mr Kanu is flamboyant, mercurial, opinionated and immensely self-willed. He is unlikely to be as amenable as the governor romanticises. Nevertheless, Prof. Soludo has called for his unconditional release; but failing that, he has shown readiness to stand surety for him if that is what it would take to get him free and make him contribute to the search for peace.
The concern of the governor is explicable. IPOB has been fingered in many violent skirmishes turning the state and some other Southeast states into a little Somalia. In addition, despite denials sometimes muffled and at other times spoken tongue-in-cheek, the militant group has been blamed for the weekly Monday sit-at-home protests in the region, thus paralysing business and social activities as well as traumatising the region and compromising its politics and standing in Nigeria. According to the governor, every week, the state loses an estimated N20bn over the futile Monday protests, a cost it can ill afford. It doesn’t matter whether his statistics is accurate or not, the point is that the protests cost the state huge losses in revenue. If Mr Kanu can be persuaded to join the peace train, the governor reasons, there is chance normality can be restored.
“I’m very serious about the release of Kanu and it is about the security, peace and prosperity of the South East,” the governor had said last week. “You need the stakeholders around the table to achieve this. There is someone who is critical in this conversation so we need him on this table. That’s why we need him on this table. That’s why I continue to push for this. My request is two-fold: grant him unconditional release as the court has said, or if there are other things he is being held for, grant him administrative bail and I am ready to stand surety for him.” The week before that, around the same time former Abia State governor Orji Kalu was offering himself as surety for Mr Kanu’s bail, Prof Soludo had also made the same offer. “I am making a passionate appeal to the Federal Government to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu unconditionally,” the governor had said plaintively. “If he cannot be released unconditionally, I want him released to me and I will stand surety for him. We need Nnamdi Kanu in the roundtable conversation to discuss the insecurity in the South East. We must end insecurity in the South East and we need Nnamdi Kanu to be around.” Prof. Soludo’s knight errantry may yet put him in trouble. He means well for his state, and he will do anything, including stooping to conquer, to achieve his noble intentions. But to wager such huge bets on Mr Kanu whose devilry is now legendary may bring incalculable losses to the state. Mr Kanu was first arraigned in 2016 for offences bordering on treasonable felony, and was bailed in April 2017, with Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe being one of four people who stood surety for him. But the IPOB leader jumped bail, citing military provocations when troops invaded his country home. The bail was subsequently revoked in 2019, and in June 2021 he was extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya. His lawyers have engaged in some sophistry, insisting that he doesn’t need bail, let alone anyone standing surety for him. But Prof. Soludo and others are smart enough to know that given Mr Kanu’s antecedents, it would take some legal derring-do or executive magnanimity to get the IPOB leader off the hook.
But here chivalry ends. Even if the government hearkens to the Southeast leaders and Prof. Soludo, and decides to release Mr Kanu, there is nothing to suggest that the irrepressible IPOB leader possesses the judgement and the restraint to abide by the terms. He is voluble, bombastic and pugnacious. Remaining in jail feeds his popularity for reasons every revolutionary knows; gagging him or constraining his regular rebel convocations outside jail is like quenching his spirit and burying him alive, that is assuming his extreme self-centredness does not propel him to leap over bail again. Indeed, he will find the bail conditions intolerable or vitiating. Prof. Soludo must therefore weigh the costs, as against the benefits, of standing surety for the abrasive Mr Kanu before throwing himself rashly into an enterprise that could complicate, if not stymie his politics. After all, given the reasons for the IPOB revolt, there are no guarantees that admitting him to bail would stanch the flow of blood in the region.
It is enough that the governor genuinely wants Mr Kanu released, and has consistently campaigned for that outcome. Despite the grandstanding of Labour Party’s Peter Obi, the presidential candidate who hopes to take a populist short cut to Aso Villa, the Southeast’s best chance for the Nigerian presidency, at least for now, is in fact the eminent Prof. Soludo, that is if he plays his politics right. He needs to build or rebuild Anambra; he needs to begin reaching out to other regional power elite to cultivate their trust and friendship; and he needs to avoid encumbrances that may afford him only short-term benefits. Unlike the meretricious Mr Obi who frittered away eight years as governor scratching the surface of issues and mouthing platitudes, Prof Soludo has infinitely more depth and more staying power. But he will need to scrupulously avoid entanglements, both legal and political. By all means let him campaign for the release, conditional or unconditional, of Mr Kanu. But by all greater means, let him never stand surety. Such bravado will fail him, for it is neither good for his person nor for his office, let alone his politics.
It’s a reflection of the appalling politics of the Southeast that misguided youths in the Southeast, perhaps egged on by rustic patrons in the region, are giving nightmares to the eminent professor because of his hardheaded appraisal of the chances of the populist Mr Obi. The region’s embrace of political short-termism, evidenced by their disorderly and opportunistic quest for the presidency, preclude the tested approach to winning the ultimate diadem. Mr Obi cannot hold the candle to Prof. Soludo, not by a mile, not even by a yard. The region’s power brokers should either coax the governor or at least not place needless hurdles before their best option for the presidency. Sadly both youths and elders in the Southeast are frothing in the mouth against the Anambra governor, all but saying he is a traitor. No matter how loudly and vilely they play their politics in respect of next month’s presidential election, Mr Obi cannot win, not alone, and not in alliance with anyone. But years down the line, if Prof. Soludo stays the course, if he does what is expected of a man with his intellect and confidence, and if he develops the open-mindedness and gregarious and disarming style needed to win to his side other regions’ power elites, he will be unstoppable. He is beginning to build political capital; he should not waste the little he has accumulated on charlatans and megalomaniacs.
Nyesom Wike’s ploy
For much of last week, Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike was quoted as saying on behalf of the group of five Peoples Democratic Party governors (G-5) at odds with the party’s presidential candidate that time for reconciliation was ebbing away. Few analysts are certain that the other four governors are in lockstep with him in their internal rebellion against presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, nor is it entirely clear that, given his colourful and enjoyable way of addressing issues, he speaks for them. However, it is evident that the governors have not officially revealed which presidential candidate they plan to back.
Mr Wike’s constant iteration of closing windows has, however, become jaded. Alhaji Atiku has in fact moved on and shut every window and door against the G-5. The rebellious governors must have discovered by now that returning to the PDP camp empty handed would be a humiliation they cannot live with. They know that the PDP candidate has moved on, and the G-5 has also put its hand to the plough, shutting all doors and windows, contrary to what the Rivers governor said. All that remains is to disclose which candidate they will support, regardless of whether they would still be able to hold their ranks together.The politics of ECWA Church
The Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) got a taste of the murkiness of politics last week when a few newspapers attributed to the church’s president, Stephen Baba Panya, a statement indicating that ECWA was on the verge of taking a decision on whom to support among the presidential contenders for the February poll. The church was livid. No such statement was issued during or after the Extraordinary General Church Council held in Jos, Plateau State, nor was any contemplated, said ECWA Public Relations Officer, Rev. Romanus Ebenwokodi. Reporters now suspect that politicians who attended the meeting, including former House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara, might have inspired the tendentious news feed. So peeved was the church that it demanded an apology from the newspapers which misrepresented the Council meeting. It is not clear whether they will get an apology, nor does anyone know whether, failing an apology, the church would litigate the defamation.
Mr Dogara attended the General Council as the representative of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, read a strongly-worded speech condemning the All Progressives Congress (APC) same-faith presidential ticket, and also spoke for himself reiterating the Atiku perspective and presuming to know the minds of northern Christians. Clearly, Mr Dogara knew a thing or two about the composition of the Atiku speech, and was also probably satisfied with how at least two newspapers reported and interpreted the ECWA General Council communiqué. It was after all only a few weeks ago that he parted ways with former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir David Lawal with whom he had campaign acerbically, supposedly in the name of Christianity, to get the country to repudiate the APC on account of its Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. Though Messrs Lawal and Dogara claimed to be working for the same cause, and were inspired by the same spirit, they could find no common ground in adopting one candidate. Mr Lawal has opted for Labour Party’s Peter Obi, and Mr Dogara has embraced Alhaji Atiku.
ECWA Church has itself to blame for the misrepresentation. It has refrained from blaming anyone for the fallacious publications, but by inviting politicians to its gathering and giving them a podium to market their views, the church unwittingly lent credence to whatever the politicians said on the dais. Mr Dogara’s opinion, the only one reported by the offending newspapers, raged furiously against the APC in particular. He gave no quarters, as he fulminated and moralised all through his speech. He pretended his remarks, read on behalf of Alhaji Atiku, were designed to advance the goals of the church, but in reality, they were primed to burnish his own image and politics, and only secondarily advance the cause of the PDP and its presidential candidate. Seeing the peculiar manner he joined forces with Mr Lawal, and the ill-tempered and unchristian manner they ostensibly crusaded for the church, ECWA should have been more wary about inviting any candidate to its General Council, let alone giving them the podium to make their declamations.
So angry was ECWA about the tendentious publications suggesting that the church would soon determine whom to support that its leadership caused a refutation to be issued the same day demanding the withdrawal of the publications and issuance of public apologies. It remains to be seen whether the church is not merely tilting at windmills. But here is the church’s statement: “In the course of its Extraordinary General Church Council, which started January 17, 2023, the attention of ECWA General Church Council has been drawn to mischievous and malicious publications by certain sections of the media…The General Church Council wishes to state that at no time did it make the alluded resolution, neither did the president, at any time during the proceedings of the Council, make the statement credited to him by the newspapers in question. ECWA, as a denomination, has its members across all political parties and the leadership of ECWA respects that. Therefore, we need the teeming members of ECWA, the Church in Nigeria, and the general public to understand that the said publications are absolute falsehood that have been contemplated, and are meant to cause unnecessary tension, that is capable of dragging the good name of ECWA in the mud. ECWA, therefore, strongly demands the newspapers, herewith, publicly withdraw the said publications and tender public apologies to ECWA within 24 hours beginning 12:00 p.m., January 18.”
In the past few weeks, Messrs Lawal and Dogara have frenetically and irrationally tried to frame the presidential political narratives in terms of religion only. The more they sensed they were being ignored or diminished, the more hysterical and desperate they became. Their crusades may be petering out, but that does not rule out the danger of trying to exploit every schism and loophole they can lay their hands upon. ECWA played into the hands of Mr Dogara, just as the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and many evangelical churches are playing into the hands of the insular and sometimes apostate Peter Obi of the Labour Party. ECWA was, however, prompt and sensible enough to counter Mr Dogara’s nefarious politics and the antics of the PDP which indecently used the church podium to feather their political nests. It is not certain that the evangelicals will be as discriminating as the ECWA purists.
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2023: The omens are not too good
GENERAL election in Nigeria, especially the make or mar presidential election that is presently convulsing the country, is only five weeks away but goings-on in various parts of the country call for a lot of caution if the prediction of Nigeria breaking up, which thankfully did not materialise in 2015, is not to come upon us like a thief in the night in 2023.
Post election events in both the U S and Brazil, two countries that are economically far ahead of Nigeria, and with no obvious religious altercations further complicating their circumstances, should serve to remind us of all the possibilities.
I refer here to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in the US, and its repeat in Brazil a few days ago by supporters of former President Jar Bolsonaro who was defeated in that country’s presidential election in 2022.
Nor can we forget, nearer home in Africa, the fact that Kenya’s presidential election of August 8, 2017 was marred by violence, including killings, arson and beatings by police during protests and house-to-house operations especially in Western Kenya. And if recalling those examples seem like Afghanistanising, then we certainly could not have forgotten the deadly post – election violence which followed the April 2011 presidential election in Nigeria and left more than 800 people dead in 12 Northern states. The dead, unfortunately, included young Nigerian youths who committed no offence besides serving their fatherland by observing their National Youth Corps service year in that part of the country.
A direct consequence of how that event was handled, with government agencies turning a blind eye, and ensuring that none of the killers was made to face the legal consequences, as has always been the case in Northern Nigeria, is the emergence, and virulence, of the various killing gangs that have literally overtaken the entire North, resulting in daily kidnappings, as well as the killing, even of several school children.
Things are, of course, far worse in Nigeria today than they were in 2011 and if the colossal disaster of that election year had been attributed, by some people, to loose talk by politicians, it can only get far worse now that some elders, in order to, forever, remain politically relevant in Nigeria, nay the world, are deliberately stoking the fire, needlessly haranguing Nigerian youths, and trying to lure them into supporting a political party that only they cannot see, has no path, clear or not, to victory in an election in which the winner will not emerge simply by having the highest number of votes, even if all Nigerian youths were to vote only for its presidential candidate.
As I wrote last week, these elders must, for the sake of Nigeria, learn to briddle their mouth.
That’s all we plead.
In their abstract on:
Failed State 2030: Nigeria – A Case Study, Christopher Kinnan of the University of Southern Mississippi (USA), and his co- authors, wrote as follows: “This monograph describes how a failed state in 2030 may impact the United States and the global economy. It also identifies critical capabilities and technologies the US Air Force should have to respond to a failed state, especially one of vital interest to the United States and one on the cusp of a civil war. Nation-states can fail for a myriad of reasons: cultural or religious conflict, a broken social contract between the government and the governed, a catastrophic natural disaster, financial collapse, war and so forth. Nigeria with its vast oil wealth, large population, and strategic position in Africa and the global economy can, if it fails disproportionately affect the United States and the global economy. Nigeria, like many nations in Africa, gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. It is the most populous country in Africa and will have nearly 250 million people by 2030. In its relatively short modern history, Nigeria has survived five military coups as well as separatist and religious wars, it is mired in an active armed insurgency, is suffering from disastrous ecological conditions in its Niger Delta region, and is fighting one of the modern world’s worst legacies of political and economic corruption. A nation with more than 350 ethnic groups, 250 languages, and three distinct religious affiliations–Christian, Islamic, and animist, Nigeria’s 135, now 200M plus , are anything but homogenous. Of Nigeria’s 36 states, 12 are Islamic and under the strong and growing influence of the Sokoto caliphate. While religious and ethnic violence are commonplace, the federal government has managed to strike a tenuous balance among the disparate religious and ethnic factions. With such demographics, Nigeria’s failure would be akin to a piece of fine china dropped on a tile floor–it would simply shatter into potentially hundreds of pieces.”
No lover of Nigeria can seriously dispute any of the existential challenges listed above because they as true today as they were when those troubling words were written in 2011.
What we should all do, therefore, is not to further imperil Nigeria by exacerbating its problems.
Therefore, politicians, their spokespersons and surrogates, as well as the do- gooders, especially those who frittered away several opportunities of leaving Nigeria far better than they did, but are are yet presenting like they are the best thing to have happened to Nigeria since sliced bread must be put under special watch.
President Obasanjo, having stoked unnecessary anxiety by his epistemology where he should have merely endorsed Peter Obi, especially in a particularly anxious environment, security agencies must prepare specially for how the Southeast and the Southsouth will react to the result, no matter who wins.
Yet these militarists, and their civilian co- conspirators are Nigeria’s worst enemies. Government, especially its security forces, must pay close attention to these people just like they must up the ante in their effort to stymie those individuals, groups, politicians and non – state actors in general, who do not want the 2023 elections to hold.
While we all, as Nigerians, duly recognise the enervating, multi- faceted dimension of insecurity in most parts of the country, the North in particular, the tenacity and ferocity of the anti 2023 election elements in the Southeast demands that the security forces must think completely out of the box.
A recent Premier Times report put this in proper perspective when it said as follows: “Although INEC facilities have been targets of attacks across the country in the past few years, attacks in the South East and South-south accounts for over 70 per cent”.
“The commission’s analysis of the incidents showed that between 2019 and 2022, it recorded 26 attacks in the South-east (Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo), ten in the South-south (Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Cross River). “INEC also revealed that it recorded ten attacks in the South-west (Ogun, Lagos and Ondo), three attacks in the North-east (Taraba and Borno), one in the North-west (Kaduna), within the period”. According to the commission, 20 of the total of 50 incidents were by unknown gunmen and hoodlums, 18 during the EndSARS protest, six by political thugs during elections, four as a result of post-election violence and one each as a result of a bandit and Boko Haram attacks”.
With particular emphasis on the Southeast, these anti social elements have shown that nobody, not politicians, businessmen, not government officials, security personnel nor their own impoverished kinsmen, surprisingly, are spared from being gruesomely murdered, with the body decapitated, hung or completely incinerated.
All these we have seen.
The security agencies must, however, be extremely careful, indeed, professional so as not to give the impression they are deliberately, and unnecessarily, targeting the region.
Indeed, the fact that the front runners among the presidential candidates are from each of the major ethnic groups, must further direct the security agencies in the way of transparent professionalism, lest they worsen an already very bad situation.
Nigeria must be salvaged, come rain, come shine.
MY SINCERE APOLOGIES
The printer’s devil crept in last week and ensured that my piece for the week was ‘headless’, that is, had no caption.
For this I am most sorry.
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Battling fake news
Although Arise Television has since retracted the story and paid the N2 million fine by the National Broadcasting Commission over the fake report of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) investigating the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu over alleged criminal forfeiture of money on offences bordering on narcotics and illicit drugs, I still don’t understand how the station allowed itself to be shamed in the avoidance circumstance.
I find it curious that a national television of repute like Arise was not able to know that the supposed press statement it relied on for publishing its report was fake. Considering the weight of the claim in the press statement and the personality involved, a simple cross-checking with INEC by the correspondent of the station would have prevented the publication of a disinformation plot by those who initiated it.
Apart from Arise, some other traditional media houses have also been guilty of publishing false reports which some have been honourable enough to retract, while others did not. Until recently, the impression has always been given that random bloggers and some other online platforms are the main purveyors of fake news because they don’t have the required professional training, but the Arise broadcast and others by supposedly trained professionals have shown that there is need for every media organisation- print, broadcast and online – to be more thorough in confirming the information they disseminate.
More than ever before, there is so much false information being disseminated by authorized and unauthorized persons and organizations that any media organization that wants to be trusted should adopt more editing quality control processes to verify its content.
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Ahead of the election particularly, there will be more false information by officials and supporters of candidates to discredit some others which media platforms should avoid disseminating in order not to mislead their audience.
While non-professional journalists and the public need more education on the danger of sharing false information on various platforms, including Whatsapp, journalists have no tenable excuse for allowing themselves to be used to amplify fake news.
Journalists should take advantage of various Fact-Checking training and imbibe best practices for verifying text, pictures, audio and videos.
Virtually any information in whatever format can be doctored now and only skilful digital-savvy media professionals can effectively spot false content.
Apart from digital knowledge, media organizations need to have quality control processes and personnel instead of the present situation where most media houses don’t have enough trained staff to enforce standard editorial procedures for processing reports for publication and broadcast.
Instead of being in a hurry to publish or broadcast reports due to stiff competition to break news, the old journalism principle of when in doubt leave out should be applied until every detail in any report is confirmed.
In accordance with the preamble of the code of ethics for Nigerian journalists, “Truth is the cornerstone of journalism and every journalist should strive diligently to ascertain the truth of every event.”
“Journalism entails a high degree of public trust. To earn and maintain this trust, it is morally imperative for every journalist and every news medium to observe the highest professional and ethical standards. In the exercise of these duties, a journalist should always have a healthy regard for the public interest.”
Anyone is free to disseminate information in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, but not anyone can claim to be a journalist or be regarded as one. Whoever chooses to disseminate false information should however know that there are consequences.
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Countdown 2027: Confronting Church’s Conundrum? (Part 1)
“Characteristic of this columnist, there was an episode that my son, Dr. Samuel Ekundayo, shared with me while we were both residing in Singapore. He was studying then. It goes thus: there was this family that had a golden rule that while eating on the dining table, there should be no talking of any type. On a particular day, the first son observed something very vital. In not wanting to offend his disciplinarian father whilst not intending to break the family tradition, kept mute. Alas, a dead fly was in the family bowl of soup! The family shares one bowl of soup from which members take their portions. It was at the end of the dinner, Tim spoke out. The father was angry and shouted: Tim, why did you not sound the red alert before we tasted the soup?”
SOUNDING a caveat from the outset, this columnist will like readers who know his persona, profile and pedigree to read and reflect this edition of the “Followership Challenge” with the appropriate lens. In essence, I will be writing as a followership researcher and scholar. It will be worth stating simply and squarely from the start that one thing researchers are taught early, is that there is no particularly right or wrong answer to an inquiry: it is basically a matter of individual’s perception! In essence, it is like the popular Yoruba talking drum, Gangan; to a follower, the face he is perceiving as the front is what another follower dignifies as the back; and in a sense, both of them are right depending on where each of them stands. Why not commence with the countdown to 2023? Why are we already talking about 2027? Who knows whether there will be a Nigeria in 2027? Even if there is a country, not a nation, existing as Nigeria, will she still be operating this type of democracy, and running with this atavistic constitution? There could be so many questions that are mind boggling. In the meantime, let us gloss over all the anticipated questions and move on.
Is the Church really at crossroads regarding the choice before her taking cognizance of the 25th February 2023 presidential election? Can this context be really connoted as a conundrum? This columnist perceives it as so. Again, there is no right and wrong answer. Read along as a researcher seeking for new knowledge to add to yours: that is the essence of a PhD research study culminating in a thesis anyway! Characteristic of this columnist, there was an episode that my son, Dr. Samuel Ekundayo, shared with me while we were both residing in Singapore. He was studying then. It goes thus: there was this family that had a golden rule that while eating on the dining table, there should be no talking of any type. On a particular day, the first son observed something very vital. In not wanting to offend his disciplinarian father whilst not intending to break the family tradition, kept mute. Alas, a dead fly was in the family bowl of soup! The family shares one bowl of soup from which members take their portions. At the end of the dinner, Tim spoke out. The father was angry and shouted: Tim, why did you not sound the red alert before we tasted the soup? The import of this story is to allow free expression within a team, unit, group, family, organization, etc. as no individual has a monopoly of wisdom in any context.
2023: Church Consequential Conundrum
This columnist having followed and participated in politics, though not holding a title, at the grassroots dating back to the June 2014 gubernatorial elections in Ekiti State, has some things to share with the Church as an ethnographic researcher. I was elated when in a unique church gathering with other people in attendance in the year 2018, before the 2019 elections, the revered man of God, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, made a passionate appeal to all attendees to please go and register as party members at the ward level in any political party of their choices. At that instant, I cast a furtive glance at my wife because before that time I have been bemused with pastors castigating politics and politicians, only after winning elections, this same set of pastors welcome such politicians who are now holders of higher offices in government with high honour qualifying them to sit in exalted seats that even some senior ministers of God cannot sit! However, I would have wished that the statement was made at a larger forum, and possibly repeatedly. More on this in the second edition of this series. However, unfortunately, most did not get the drift as there was a perceived laidback and lackadaisical leaning towards heeding the sagacious counsel of the man of God. It is instructive to note that the counsel was given in 2018. In essence, the RCCG setting up the Directorate of Politics and Governance in 2022, was not only a right step in the right direction; the organ of the church is overtly overdue! This columnist vividly remembers meeting a member of the National Assembly in a large gathering of Christians towards the end of the year. I was still residing in Singapore then. It was in 2009. As guests, we were lodged in the same building and so conveyed in the same bus to the venue of the meeting. He was lamenting the absence of the church not even deeming it fit to have a forum for political appointees to share ideas, concerns and possibly mentor up and coming politicians within the Church who sense the call in the marketplace to the mountain of politics (government). Or, has the church not taught her youths that there are seven distinct mountains of influence, out of which politics (government) is one? How much are those who are called to government within the church schooled in the art and science of politics within Nigeria’s context? How much does the Church knows about the art of followership in leadership studies within the market place, apart from discipleship doctrine of the Church? The questions can go on ad infinitum.
Presently, there are church members who are vested or entrenched adherents and admirers of varying political parties. In essence, they belong to these associations. What would be the feelings of these, who are part and parcel of the Church, in the event of their denomination or assembly pointedly pricking them to side with another political party or candidate other than their own. This is what is currently playing out from some pulpits, even with some men of God seemingly spitting fire over an election that will come and go whilst the Church of God, an immovable Rock remains forever! Has the Church learnt any valuable lessons from previous elections? I doubt it as a follower, analyst and researcher. Internet does not forget is a common refrain. Clicking on Google for prophecies relating to 2015 and 2019 presidential elections, a committed disciple of Christ, who understands the doctrine of prophecy, will be piqued at the apparent obtuse and awkward predictions from some men of God. It is high time the Church learnt lessons!
2023: The Train Has Left The Station!
This article is appropriately titled: Countdown 2027: Confronting Church’s Conundrum? Why not 2023? As a followership researcher that engages politicians at the grassroots, for 2023, the train has left the station. In essence, the voice of one crying: do not join or look for another train, is belated. It is said in Ekiti common parlance: “Oni ka’jo ti muru” (meaning: the one that is desiring to dance to the tune of the music has taken the decorated horse tail). The presidential election is only 32 days away. One month and two days. I watched a video clip counseling members of a local assembly to give a shout out on phone to relatives in the villages dictating the direction of voting, and I laughed. The people we are told to counsel in the villages are even more tutored politically (courtesy of local politicians) than we elites in the cities and towns. Many of these villagers celebrated Christmas and New Year courtesy of some political bigwigs within their locality or state. These politicians were there for them at the naming of their babes or paying their wards’ school fees. This is basic politics Nigeria’s context! The day of the election will declare it. There was a statement made by another revered man of God, Pastor W. F. Kumuyi, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church. In the Daily Post edition of 22nd June 2022, he posited: “… Politicians should know that they are not there for themselves. They are there for all of us. They should ask and make their researches about what the nation wants. They should ask and make their researches on what the country wants, what the people want; if they listen to the people, we will be confident that they will listen to us when they get there …,” It is gladdening and elating that Pastor Kumuyi is calling for research studies to be conducted in this context. Equally, the Church should, in this digital age, not talk cognitively but express her feelings, yearnings and thoughts through empirical findings after conducting independent inquiry. This should be the way going forward as the window opens regarding politicking towards 2027.
Conclusively, the Church, of which this columnist strongly belongs to, needs to imbibe some lessons going forward to 2027 if Nigeria survives and operates same constitution. The Church must start to learn, unlearn and relearn to escape the nasty and naughty conundrum she found herself in 2022. The Church should be well prepared for any antics the politicians may want to depict or display: be it at local government, state or federal level. It is the portion of the Church to teach the world wisdom as contained in the Holy Writ. and not the other way round. In the second part of this series, more will be pinpointed and presented taking cognizance of the Church’s preparation and packaging towards 2027. Are we truly our brothers’ keeper as enjoined and enshrined in the Bible, the Christian’s constitution? Is the Church concerned with the youths who have genuine calling relating to that vital mountain of influence – politics (government)? Do the leaders of the Church still see politics as dirty and dangerous? Till next week, keep up the interest in the column. Grateful indeed.
John Ekundayo, Ph.D. – Harvard-Certified Leadership Strategist, and also a Development Consultant, can be reached via +2348030598267 (WhatsApp only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com
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Booby traps for next president
On February 25, the next president will be elected, not by a run-off election as many third-party hopefuls who despise and suspect the two leading parties expect, but by a healthy majority. Moments after that election, the incumbent president will become a lame duck, unable to take far-reaching decisions or make impactful, as opposed to peripheral, appointments. In May, the president-elect, again contrary to apocalyptic predictions, will take office. These three events will goosestep one after another in the months ahead. However, before the February 25 election, the president will have a breather of about four weeks and a few days. But the Muhammadu Buhari administration has viewed the few weeks left of his presidency as anything but a breather. He is proceeding with full steam, mysteriously catalysed by an invisible force.
The administration has pressed on with a blitzkrieg of appointments and radical policy initiatives. Destitute of a visionary inner core of policy advisers and gifted administrators, the role inexpertly played by former Chief of Staff to the president Abba Kyari, the administration has been unable to calibrate its actions or recognise when to pull the brakes and how to do it. It takes judgement to measure an administration’s responses to the challenges facing a country. While it is true that the government is in office till the last day, commonsense dictates that some of its policies and appointments, taken late as it were, will have consequences far beyond the lifespan of the administration. For a new administration to attempt reversing those tangled skein of harmful consequences is to open itself to criticism and unpleasant political blowback.
There is little anyone can say to dissuade the Buhari administration from pressing ahead with changes and policies and appointments. They will probably sustain their fecund approach and keep churning out things to the last two or three weeks of the administration, if no one challenges them, and especially if, as expected, APC wins the presidency. The administration does not possess the gift of moderation or a democratic ethos, so they are unlikely to listen to contrary opinion with any seriousness. And with many ministers and advisers around the president working at cross-purposes, partly because they belong to different and sometimes countervailing cabals, there will be no one to coordinate and calibrate the administration’s actions. In all this, it is unlikely President Buhari will do wrong deliberately; his problem is that he is even more unlikely to do right by mistake.
It will, therefore, be uncharitable to blame him for the booby traps his administration seems to be erecting in the path of the incoming government. He is determined to leave office and retire into the anonymity he has craved for years, and he has no appetite for the kind of last-minute aggrandisement that subvert the ethos of many governors and local government chairmen. But many of his men will put their shoulders to the wheel to funnel humongous advantages into their private holes. Start with the loan booby trap, for instance, where the president is asking the National Assembly to give controversial cover to nearly a decade of extra-budgetary spending.
Hear the president: “As I stated, the balance (about N24trn) has accumulated over several years and represents funding provided by the CBN as lender of last resort to the government to enable it to meet obligations to lenders, as well as cover budgetary shortfalls in projected revenues and/or borrowings. I have no intention to fetter the right of the national assembly to interrogate the composition of this balance, which can still be done even after granting the requested approval. Failure to grant the securitisation approval will however cost the government about N1.8 trillion in additional interest in 2023 given the differential between the applicable interest rates which is currently MPR plus three percent and the negotiated interest rate of nine percent and a 40-year repayment period on the securitised debt of the Ways and Means.” Despite their grandstanding, this National Assembly, as they are accustomed, will do the president’s bidding and kick the debt nuisance down the road to the doorstep of the next president.
Another booby trap? This one is perhaps uncharacteristic of the Buhari administration. It has scheduled a national census for March/April, yes, after the election, and yes, about a month before handover. What if the census miscarries? Why, of course, the president will croak that he had done his best, and the fault lay with Nigerians who are unappeasable. For all the hard-nosed analyses of experts, census is Nigeria’s least concern. It has naturally and predictably been contentious in Nigeria because of its connection with revenue allocation, and because it is an anti-federalism economic arrangement that has promoted instability and wreaked havoc on the economy. For Nigeria, the priority is to restructure the country politically and economically, before considering census; but who cares? However, at least the administration will not be around to contend with the nasty and messy fallout certain to follow the headcount.
A final example, but by no means the last. The administration now projects to begin phased removal of fuel subsidy, yes, the same subsidy it had sworn to bequeath the next administration to deal with. How the administration hopes to tackle the implications of the policy, or whether in fact it has a well-thought-out policy to mitigate its effects is anybody’s guess, especially going by previous ad hoc and hastily conceived palliatives that miscarried. Nearly all the leading contenders for the presidency, including the APC candidate, have indicated that they will remove subsidy, though it is not clear how they hope to do it and whether they have rational macroeconomic plans to alleviate the fallout. The APC was the first to say boldly that it would deal with the subsidy issue frontally, and had mapped out plans to that effect. Seeing that a consensus had developed around the issue, and fearing that it would go down in history as too weak to deal with the issue, the Buhari administration has suddenly acquired the courage to tackle the cankerworm. But it won’t do it well. And why do it in April anyway, months after the election and just one month to handover?
The Buhari administration should restrict itself to delivering a great election. It must also begin to wind down gradually. It cannot compensate for years of doing haphazardly little with weeks of radical and boisterous panaceas in the evening of its reign. Those radical panaceas will do little to affect the people’s judgement of the administration, for they know it has accomplished much in certain areas, and posterity will take cognisance of those achievements. But nothing it does now will matter much; so it should not try.
Tinubu at NESG dialogue
TWO Fridays ago, the APC presidential candidate presented his economic plan before the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG). The presentation was two-pronged: one was a paper setting out the plan; and the other involved questions and answers. His opponents, working through the social media, tried to circumscribe the presentation as both flawed and contrived, modulated by a teleprompter because the candidate had no mastery of the subject. It took news clips from the regular broadcast media to show that the candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, did not need a teleprompter to answer the questions, nor did he assign the questions to his team.
Not only was the presentation masterful, his unscripted answers to the questions showed that the candidate had grown exponentially in confidence. He knew his facts, handled them adroitly, showed clearly that economic issues were not the arcanum they had become to the other three leading presidential contenders, and his enthusiasm to do the job of running Nigeria and retooling its economy was evidently boundless. It was so easily twisted that at Chatham House he assigned some four questions to his team members, forgetting that 10 questions were thrown at him, and he answered six. At NESG, Asiwaju Tinubu grew in confidence, intellect and mastery. Should he win the presidency, there will be no doubt how he will perform; and this is much more than can be said for his challengers.
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On the code of royalty
To the ornate and magnificently draped banquet hall of the exquisite Marriot Hotel, Ikeja, last Monday for the launch of the book, Code of Kings by the Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi, (Telu 1). It was a beautiful mid-January morning.
One had never met his royal majesty before, but after a formal letter of invitation, deputations by mutual acquaintances and a personal phone call from the Iwo palace, one knew that one had walked into the equivalent of a royal ambush cryptically coded as a summons.
The last time one was here a little over a year earlier, it was for an intellectual engagement. Yours sincerely had been invited by the Federal Ministry of Finance to thrash out some pressing national issues on policy, finance and security. It turned out to be quite a robust interactive session; a moveable feast of rare insights and patriotic concern for the fate of the nation.
This early afternoon as the mammoth hall filled with people from all walks of life, particularly royalties from different sections of the country in their magnificent plumes and contrasting fineries, one knew that one was in for a different kind of engagement. Perhaps this was the last snapshot; a peep into the royal soul of the nation at a particularly turbulent and combustible intersection of our pre-colonial culture with post-military politics.
The man of the moment, the Oluwo of Iwo, was already well-seated looking regal and resplendent as he soaked in the plaudits and royal homages from his subjects, admirers and well-wishers alike. He was as dignified and dandified as they ever came. Contrary to a reputation for combustible exertions, the youthful monarch wore a calm and demure visage. A royal public relations coup appeared to be underway before all.
A caveat would be in order at this point. The Oluwo has been embroiled in too many controversies in the past. To many of his harsh and adamant critics, the idea of an Oluwo Book launch is an impossible anomaly, in fact a grand oxymoron. What has he got to say, they would sneer. Or perhaps he was offering a royal manual on the latest technique of boxing. The Oluwo they think they know will be handy in the coliseum of pugilistic contentions rather in the refined realm of intellectual exertion.
But there was the royal enigma last Monday offering an impressively researched, finely wrought and deeply illuminating history of his Iwo people, a tome that weighs in at three hundred and fifty eight pages. This is a labour of love and affection for his Iwo people. Drawing on the work of the iconic Johnson brothers, notable professors of History and up and coming researchers, the Iwo monarch has offered his people a rich an unique excursion into their origins and modern evolution.
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Perhaps the key to the enigmatic puzzle of the Oba Akanbi persona can be located in what he himself has called the codes of kings. The code, or odu in Yoruba semiotics, is the special divination by which Yoruba royalty, and its spiritual aristocracy alike, decode and unravel confounding signs, signals and signifiers which may not be apparent to the uninitiated. It enables them to deal with difficult situations and even more with difficult but gifted scions. It is the shortened version for the longer word Olodumare.
In his epic history of the Yoruba people, Johnson narrated how the later Basorun Ogunmola, as at that point a minor but promising warrior who had relocated to Ibadan from a hamlet near Iwo, was in the habit of cocking a snook at Balogun Ibikunle, his war commander, by asking his solitary drummers to sing his praises to the high heavens and daring Ibikunle to do his worst.
But the genial and humane Ibikunle, a consummate warrior who was even a more accomplished statesman, rather than ordering the rudimentary homestead of the impish upstart to be fired and leveled would order that rams and yams should be sent to him. (Ebi lonpa). “He is hungry”, the great warrior would chuckle to himself. By so doing, Ibikunle saved the young fellow from court-martial and made it possible for him to fulfill his destiny as arguably the greatest warrior thrown up by the Ibadan army.
If his rambunctious nature is finally tempered, and that is if it does not get him into terminal trouble, there is every possibility that Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi may yet serve his people and nation in an even more productive capacity.
It is useful to remember that as a youthful monarch, the late Alaafin also had the itching fists of a former trained boxer. But by the time he exited the scene to join his illustrious ancestors, his Imperial Highness had transited to a highly revered scholar-monarch and repository of Yoruba history and contemporary politics.
From what can be gleaned from the book, the scholarly review punctuated by sonorous rendition of the Oluwo’s panegyric by the reviewer, snippets of gossip from the floor and the insightful remarks on behalf of the publishers by Honourable Femi Kehinde, a publisher, writer and founding member of the first house of the Fourth Republic, it became clear that the Iwo monarch has led a charmed and storied life guided by the divine hand of immutable destiny.
His grandfather had been prevailed upon to reconsider his decision to relocate to Ilorin on the ground that one of his grandchildren was likely to become the sovereign of the place in the not too distant future. Guided by an inner voice, the Oluwo himself had arrived penniless from Canada to vie and fight for the stool of his ancestors. Before then, the future king had been caught up in the Liberian civil war, where he fought on the opposing side with the nom de guerre of Major Wallace.
It was now time to formally acquaint the old major, now a major traditional ruler of his people, of one’s presence in the hall. As one made to introduce himself, yours sincerely was greeted with rapturous approval by the monarch who insisted that one must be seated not far away from his royal majesty.
As one made his way back to his seat, one found himself sandwiched between the duo of Femi Kehinde and Dele Momodu, the irrepressible Ovation publisher. They had demanded a group photograph but not before Dele, as cheeky as ever, noted that the professor of Literature and Cultural Theory had made a seamless transition to traditional ennoblement judging by the size of his drooping bead and preternaturally youthful looks which he ascribed to some satanic native concoctions.
Both men had been snooper’s wards in their early life and Femi Kehinde is a nephew, the son of one’s beloved sister, the late Iyalode. But both have now carved a niche for themselves in their respective fields of human endeavor. How time flies, yours sincerely rued. It was a little over forty years in 1980 when after teaching Dele’s part three class, the young man had slipped a note in snooper’s pocket to inform his lecturer that he got the spelling of anthropology wrong! Such is the stuff of life.
It was now time for launching. The representative of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Kassim Imam, led the way in purposeful and value-oriented donation when he ordered copies of the book for Kings College, his alma mater, and all secondary schools in Bornu and Yobe.
A man of infectious bonhomie and irrepressible zest for life, it was clear that Oba Akanbi has a capacity for friendship and bridge-building judging from the quality of the crowd he was able to attract. The royal ensemble was an arresting show-stopper.
There were burly and heavily beaded Benin nobility who took up a whole section of the place. There was the Oshile of Oke Ona, Oba Adedapo Tejuosho, and his triumvirate of fetching olori. As stylish and as fit-looking as ever, the famed monarch sat in a quietly reflective pose even as Ebenezer Obey’s son, Tolu Obey, dished out his father’s classic rendition in honour of the Oshile.
The traditional rulers from Iwo and environs were not left out. They all came to honour the supreme monarch of the area. There was the Olupo of Oluponna, the Akire of Ikire-Ile and the Olowu of Owu-Ile. Finally there was the big masquerade that must pick the rear in the jungle of masquerades, the Etsu Nupe himself, who had journeyed all the way from Bida to grace the occasion.
It has been an engrossing afternoon with the colourful and convivial monarch of Iwoland.
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A brief encounter with Etsu Nupe
And whilst we are still on the subject of the book presentation by the Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Rasheed Adewale Akanbi at the Marriot Hotel, Ikeja, last Monday, it is meet to report on an intriguing encounter with the paramount ruler of the Nupe people, the Etsu Nupe, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar Saganuwar Nakordi GCFR, Chairman of the Niger State Council of Traditional Rulers.
Described as a rare gift to humanity, the Etsu Nupe is a committed bridge-builder, a detribalized cosmopolitan monarch and staunch apostle of pan-Nigerian elite consensus. The last time one spoke to the revered ruler was about two and half years ago. He had jolted one with a transatlantic phone call in the early hours of the morning as one struggled to settle down in New York after a long haul from Lagos.
“This is the Etsu”, the caller at the other hand announced. Groggy and assailed by sleeplessness, one at first struggled to establish the true identity of the mystery caller. The permutations ranged from the most ridiculous to the most alarming, Esu being the Yoruba cognomen for the devil itself. But as he revealed his full identity, it turned out that this was no hoax. Alertness quickly returned.
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A sophisticated citizen of the world and a former top military officer, the ring tones must have alerted the highly regarded traditional ruler that his quarry must have absconded from the shores of Nigeria. After copiously apologizing for conflating time zones, he revealed that he wanted to pass on an urgent message to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in connection with an upcoming Nupe festival of recognition and historic commemoration. After a further exchange of pleasantries for about two minutes, he was gone.
Last Monday as his name was repeatedly announced as one of the royal dignitaries gracing the occasion, one had dismissed it as a publicity stunt or at best a public relation prank. But as the proceeding wore on, one accosted one of the hosts to find out if the northern-looking, quietly self-possessed gentleman seating very close by was the representative of the Nupe monarch.
To one’s astonishment, the launch official revealed that the monarch was not only in the hall but had insisted on taking yours sincerely to him to pay his compliments. The monarch’s face glowered in immediate recognition as one’s name was mentioned. We exchanged cordialities. Of course, he remembered the transatlantic conversation. Here is wishing the supreme sovereign of the Nupe people many more years of service to the fatherland.