The last thing anybody can say about President Mohammadu Buhari is that he is a gifted writer, or speaker for that matter. There is a pained inarticulacy about his public speeches which occasionally resolves itself into a mournful grimace. But bless his heart, the Daura-born general is a scrupulously honest if profoundly flawed being. And because of this very quality, the historic moment often chooses him as the vehicle for signal reflections on the state of the nation.

  For historic comparisons one must recall good old Abe Lincoln who detested small talk and smaller chit-chat. After he was dragged to watch a play, the old Kentucky born barrister was asked for a summary of the proceedings. “You see, those who like this sort of thing will find that this is the sort of thing they like”, came the miserable summation from Lincoln.

   A parting evaluation of President Buhari’s tenure as a civilian ruler of the nation will have to wait until his departure from office in a matter of months. But there are already give-away signs that the obviously mixed legacy of his civilian administration is beginning to concentrate the mind of the former infantry officer.

  In one of the gatherings to celebrate his eightieth birthday anniversary recently, Buhari noted that although he had tried his best for his nation, it was his personal feeling that his best may not be good enough. It was an absolutely magical moment and in that terse summary, the general might have delivered the epitaph of military rule in and out of uniform in Nigeria. To be sure, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine might have compounded the crisis, but the underlying image problem remains.

That notwithstanding, nobody can deny that the former infantry general has kept his oft repeated pledge to preserve the nation as one single, indivisible unit no matter the cost. The cost has been truly horrendous. But Nigeria is still standing. Baring a historic occurrence of catastrophic magnitude, it is safe to assume that Nigeria will remain one under the watch of the general from Daura.

 This mantra of going on with one Nigeria (GOWON) is perhaps the greatest achievement of a successive run of military rulers in Nigeria. The messianic delusion which underpinned their war-cry of a rapid economic development and structural political transformation of the nation has long been dead on arrival. General Buhari’s political tenure has provided the nunc dimittis of that delusion. You cannot give what you don’t have. Our military rulers were simply not equipped to deliver on that project.

  Apart from the nation which has had its economic and political transformation stunted and stymied, the military itself as a corporate and cohesive institution has been the single most visible casualty of that messianic debacle. It has occasioned a terrible bloodletting within its rank and a savage decimation of a whole generation of its officer-corps.

  But as we are witnessing, it has also devastated the esprit de corps among its surviving titans which has allowed them to determine who rules Nigeria and at what point even after the cessation of formal military rule. It is useful to note that General Buhari will be leaving office with members of the club of military selectorate, or what has been famously described as the owners of Nigeria, going in different directions.

 The ascendancy of Buhari himself may be seen in retrospect as a catalyst for the creative destruction which has upended the old power arrangement in post-military Nigeria. Having driven him round the bend on three occasions ( 2003, 2007, 2011), the old selectorate might be ruing the hour they ever allowed the crusty contrarian to access the levers of power. Nigeria will never be the same again.

In retrospect, military rule might seem a political aberration. But in Africa and the Third World, it was a fashionable aberration which has become an integral part a certain developmental trajectory or historical phase.

  Many denizens of the Third World and a certain breed of developmental theorists following the example of Latin American caudillos, particularly Simon Bolivar, aka the liberator and Mustapha Kemal of Turkey , saw military rule as a developmental shortcut away from the inanities and chicaneries of liberal democracy.

  Ataturk forged a new country from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and saw to a programme of westernization and modernization which transformed his country into an economic and military power to reckon with. General Sukarno did very much the same thing in his native Indonesia. Gamal Abdel Nasser tried very much to repeat the same miracle in Egypt.

  African countries emerging from the horrors of colonization took note and began to copy in droves. But they did not reckon with the contradictions of multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies which made them very vulnerable to colonial occupation in the first instance. In all the countries we have mentioned, the societies are largely homogenous and culturally cohesive. They also shared the same religious affiliations in the main.

  In the event, sub-Saharan Africa ended up with tribal and religious tin-gods in military uniforms. Mobutu, Bokassa, Eyadema, Idi Amin, Nguema and Idris Deby became the dismal reality of the military conquest of Black Africa. Neither economic transformation nor rapid political development was possible. In their wake, Africa witnessed momentous bloodbath, civil wars, coups, ethnic and religious upheavals.

  Military rule did not just happen upon Nigeria. There might have been some dress rehearsal and notes-comparison among members of the officer-corps who interacted with colleagues from other countries in various military institutions abroad and later in Nigeria itself. Decolonization as a project of emancipation from the clutches of colonization had seized the fancy and imagination of many young and educated Africans. The University College, Ibadan became the hotbed of anticolonial exertions.

  The idea of a military intervention in Nigeria’s political process first gained traction in 1964 during the brief constitutional impasse that attended to the federal elections of that year. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s titular Head of State, had been initially reluctant to call on the Prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, to form a new government as a result of his displeasure and dissatisfaction with the conduct of the election. But after protracted legal consultations, reason eventually prevailed.

 It is believed in informed circles that in the heat of the constitutional crisis, a coterie of senior military officers approached Zik to canvas the possibility of a coup to break the political logjam arising from the widely discredited elections. It was their own idea of terminating the misery of the nation and ending the endemic instability that had plagued it since independence. Zik obviously declined the offer and the conspirators disappeared under the dark silhouette of nightfall.

  But if this was a respite, it proved a very short one indeed. A year and a few months after, the real thing landed on the nation. A mutiny among mid-ranking officers decapitated the ranks of the civilian leadership paving the way for the Army leadership under Major General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi to mount a full blown coup d’etat on January 15, 1966.

  The mutiny of the majors who were predominantly of the Igbo ethnic stock decimated the military and political leadership of the hegemonic northern establishment in a vicious bloodbath which shook the nation to its foundation. Six months later, northern officers staged a counter coup which made the earlier bloodletting look like a child’s play. This time around, the savage bloodfest in the barracks was accompanied by widespread elimination of people from a particular ethnic stock.

  As a direct consequence, the country was plunged into a civil war which lasted for almost three years and which accounted for the souls of three million Nigerians. The immediate fall-out of this epic tragedy was the amputation of the third leg of the tripod on which post-independence Nigeria had stood, the forcible re-imposition of northern political and military hegemony and an endless cycle of instability from which Nigeria is to fully recover almost sixty years after.

   In retrospect, it can be seen that if a determined military challenge was going to be mounted against the dominant northern establishment, it was always going to come from the mid-ranking Igbo officers’ corps that dominated the bulk of the middle level Nigerian officers’ hierarchy at that point in time.

  Radically independent-minded, fiercely republican in outlook, heaving and seething with resentful ambition and a determination to ignore any glass ceiling based on the accidents of birth or royal dominion, their dynamic view of the world and their place in it was bound to come into a fatal contradiction with the conservative, feudal and hierarchical notion of society favoured by the northern establishment.

   It was an inevitable collision of cultural temples, ideological templates and countervailing worldviews whose mismanaged outcome still echoes and resonates in the unresolved aspects of the National Question. But it is now obvious in retrospect that in mounting their challenge to the dominant order, the  majors did not factor into their calculations the subsisting balance of force and the hobbling contradictions of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. The result was a decisive rout.   

       Five decades after and seemingly undaunted by historic setbacks and unfazed by political miscalculations, it would appear that a significant fraction of the Igbo elite formation using Peter Obi as a proxy and leitmotif have decided to have a go at the auld enemy once again. Anybody who has closely studied the turbulent dynamics of events that led to the upending of the First Republic will not fail to find similarities with the disruptive possibilities of the Peter Obi phenomenon.

  As usual, the Yoruba people find themselves trapped between two colliding altars. If this permanent, in-between nature of their precarious existence makes them vulnerable to countervailing forces, it also positions them as the ideal go-between to broker a historic truce between the warring factions even if this makes them appear to hawks on both sides as weak, vacillating, unreliable and untrustworthy.

  As a progressive, forward-looking people sworn to their own version of modernity and the democratic emancipation of their populace, the Yoruba nationality finds a lot of commonalities with the fierce republicanism and unyielding independent nature of the Igbo worldview. But the reality of their own history as people of empire and a certain fidelity to its feudal antecedents make them privilege evolutionary stability and order over revolutionary hell-raising that only results in anarchy and chaos.

  Like everyone else, the Yoruba people have paid a terrible price in the seething postcolonial cauldron that is Nigeria. From the Ademuleguns, the Shodeindes and the Fajuyis and on to the Abiolas and Iges, the toll on their most illustrious children has been most prohibitive. Whether we like it or not, we will all have to sit down at some point to reexamine the strengths of the constituting units and how they can impact positively towards the rapid reinvention of an ailing colonial behemoth.

  General Mohammadu Buhari has returned a damning verdict on military rule in and out of uniform. It is an integral part of our national experience and traumatic transition to political and economic modernity which cannot be wished away. What is now important is how to move the nation away from the precipice in the most creative and visionary manner possible.

In the field of soccer, the year 2022 was full of powerful symmetries and wonderful ironies. It was the year a Third World country hosted what has been adjudged as arguably the most spectacular and the best organized World Cup Tournament in the history of the game. It was also the year the greatest exponent of the magical art, its global poster boy and wizard of spellbinding dribbling, took his exit from the scene.

  What else can be said of this man that has not been said in the past four days as torrents of homages, eulogies and encomiums poured in from all corners of the globe? It has been a departure befitting of royalties and avatars. It is just as well that this soccer prodigy was a Black person. His glittering career epitomizes how far talent and determination could carry a person in a bitterly polarized and badly divided nation.

Edson Arantes do Nasimento, otherwise known as Pele, was a wonderful specimen of humanity, a rare breed that transcended the parlous and straitened circumstances of birth and racial origins to dazzle and illuminate the world stage with his extraordinary gifts. Brazil will never forget its favourite son and talisman for transcending its deep divides.

 Pele was born only fifty two years after Brazil abolished slavery. The scars are still too evident, but his soccer exploits provided wonderful balm for the soul of stricken compatriots. The three days of national mourning and the extraordinary outpouring of grief mixed with affection shows just how much this mammoth country appreciates its national treasure. 

  On and off the field, Pele was an exemplar of the gentleman genius. He wore his remarkable talents lightly, and there was never a hint of stuffiness or self-importance about his bearing and pleasant demeanor. For a man of his lowly origins, Pele was impeccably well bred and well comported. In a world perpetually in search of heroes, Pele’s combination of humanity and humility was a winning formula which endeared him to millions across the globe.

It is said in these climes that no matter the parlous circumstances, a certain grace and royal equanimity never desert a true prince. Perhaps deep down his remote African ancestry Pele could have descended from a royal lineage of some long forgotten genealogy. We will never be able to find out. But the grace and equanimity he brought to bear on this magical game speak volumes for the persistence of precious genes that had survived the middle passage.

   There was always going to be a problem with Portuguese colonization in Africa. The fact that it was of early European modernity provenance led to a civilizational fiasco in the deep jungles of the Amazon River. There was only a marginal difference between the enslaved and their enslavers in terms of technological superiority and organizational nous. Poverty and immiseration on an industrial scale became the lot of many of the colonizers and those they colonized.

  The lottery fell on gifted individuals such as Pele and a whole generation of tantalizing soccer maestros to provide the binding glue for a bitterly divided and badly polarized nation. Today, Brazil is better known for its soccer than its industrial magnitude. Pele had played his part for his nation with such brilliance and élan. The whole world took note.

  It was said that the first time Pele saw his father weep was after Uruguay trounced his soccer crazed nation in the 1950 final. Eight years later, his seventeen year old son was the star of the Brazilian team that prevailed in the thrilling 1958 World Cup Final. If Pele Pere had been alive to witness the grand national spectacle laid out in honour of his beloved son, he would have shed tears of joy. Adieu Pele, the king of soccer.  

This morning, and in keeping with the Christmas season of charity and goodwill, we focus on a project of hope and restitution for the good people of Lagos, Nigeria and the entire Black race. We are talking about the inauguration of the Blue Rail Line this past week by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

   It is not unlikely that hardened cynics will dismiss this landmark project as too little too late. There is already some underground grumbling about the humungous bill. But hope springs eternal in the human heart. Without hope, humanity is lost. Without longing for a better existence, there is no basis for projects of further civilization. The dream of a better society of the future is what drives human beings to extremes of heroism and political idealism.

 There would have been no modern civilization if humans had sat back in the idyllic splendor of their ancient huts. Not even derailments, failures and catastrophic tolls could abort the dream. There will always be people with the strength and energy to push on. Dreaming is the genesis of human advancement.

  Lagos, or Eko in native parlance, is a much storied African city. It has suffered several setbacks in its evolution from a mere pepper plantation to a modern metropolis. The only fate that has spared Lagos is a catastrophic earthquake. But human earthquakes abound. First was the 1861 naval bombardment from a British frigate which obliterated the old city centre.

  Second was the deliberate derailment of its metro line project which set the place back by several decades. Third was the inability to envisage that a demographically exploding human conurbation like this historic city will require an arterial network of roads rather than a single feeder express road as its population expands and as the outlying towns and villages empty their economically unviable into the city.

  This is what has turned the city into the ticking time bomb it has become in recent years in sharp contrast with the picturesque and idyllic city it was in the early post-independence period. But there are many who believe that the developmental setbacks notwithstanding, the city has been blessed with visionary and compassionate leadership in recent decades. Otherwise, the anarchic jungle of Kinshasa, the capital of Old Congo, would have been a child’s play.

  There are many others who have taken to cautionary pragmatism. These things take time, they contend. It takes quite some time, some ceaseless experimentation, some trials and errors, for a city to get into its full stride. This is not an open sesame.

  For example, when yours sincerely first journeyed to Lagos over sixty years ago even as the colonial era was winding up, it was through the old road from Abeokuta. At Agege, a distraught woman wailed endlessly upon discovery that most of the chicken she was taking to Lagos had quietly expired as a result of the massive heat emanating from the engine box of the ancient lorry on which she placed her avian ware.

  Shortly thereafter, the route through Ipara and Ijebu land unto the Majidun Bridge after Ikorodu opened up and was considered by many as a marvel of a short cut. After that, the Itoikin Road opened up a back alley route to Ijebu territory which linked up with Ore and Benin. The first time one took the new Lagos/Ibadan Express road in December 1975 in a Renault 12 TL car driven by a suicidal fresh graduate from Unilag, the whole journey took fifty five minutes. It felt like being in a space shuttle.

  And it is all in a lifetime. This is why one must learn to appreciate these incremental developmental strides however miniscule they may appear to ordinary eyes. As one was trying to access the Court of Appeal in Igbosere on Wednesday afternoon, it occurred to one that to get to Sura Market in those days, you had to go through the Carter Bridge. But the Third Mainland Bridge and its feeder access through Simpson Street has halved the journey time.

  The heart warmed immensely at that very point in time as one saw the early pictures of Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu as he undertook the maiden ride on the Blue Rail Line. The entire ride from Iganmu to the National Theatre took about fifteen minutes. It was a short hop for a historic individual but a giant leap for Lagosians.

Lagos is the nation’s economic nerve-centre. It already accounts for thirty per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP). One can then imagine the impact on growth and development when the line is extended to other parts of Lagos, particularly the besieged Lekki corridor. Lagos would have been rescued from the infamy of developmental regression thus liberating the tremendous energies currently invested in hunting for petrol and the needless hustle for daily transportation.

   Simply because no one appreciates what they already have, many Nigerians tend to underestimate and underappreciate the importance of Lagos to the Black psyche and general well-being.  Lagos is the preeminent megalopolis of the Black people; a potential cultural and economic Mecca for millions of Black souls tottering on the edge of despair and despondency. The fate of Black people after the epoch of physical slavery remains very concerning.

 The original competitors of Lagos in the race for the preeminent African megalopolis have since taken different developmental routes.  Only by the most generous leap of imagination can one describe the heavily Arabized population of Cairo as Black people. Despite the political triumph of the ANC which raised hope all over the Black world, Johannesburg, its miniscule sprinkling of Black elite notwithstanding, remains a predominantly Caucasian emporium.

  As for Kinshasa, the capital of the old Congo, a story, possibly apocryphal, tells it all. It was said that shortly before the epic slugfest with George Foreman in the then Zaire in 1974, Mohammed Ali asked to be taken to downtown Kinshasa. Upon beholding the seething, heaving and pulsating human jungle bristling with sheer anarchic energy, the great pugilist knelt down and profusely thanked his stars that his ancestors did not miss the slave boat.

  That was almost fifty years ago. Since then, a series of civil wars in adjoining and outlying territories have made the situation in Kinshasa even worse. No metropolis can develop or expand on its possibilities in such circumstances. War and related atrocities are not city developers. Rather they lead to a contraction of all human settlements. Nigeria’s endemic political volatility notwithstanding, the relative peace enjoyed by Lagos in the decades after the civil war has made all the difference.

  Although started by visionary predecessors, Babajide Sanwo-Olu deserves full commendation for pushing the Blue Rail Line forward towards its completion. In a developing country, there is a lot to be said for political stability and continuity which allows succeeding administrations to build on the legacies of their predecessors without any witch-hunting or hostile backlash.

  This writer has been studying and watching Lagos state governors since the advent of the post-military dispensation. Sanwo-Olu has mastered the beat effortlessly and with unobtrusive brilliance. A master of political ice-skating, the Lagos State Governor has managed to avoid the perilous banana peels which upended his equally brilliant but whimsically self-willed predecessor. Something must be said for the consummate political skills of a man who appears so diligently and studiously apolitical.

  Babatunde Raji Fashola was in the engine room of the system. Even at that point in time, he had earned a well-deserved reputation for painstaking diligence and fastidious attention to details. Having mastered the arcane rituals of governance as an understudy, he was able to leverage his visionary impetus with political common sense when and where it mattered most.

  In the case of Akinwunmi Ambode, the circumstances of his ascendancy made him to develop messianic instincts of his own which ultimately proved fatal. Normally kind-hearted and affable, he had forgotten that there could only be one grand visioner in an unfolding power project which had benefited him beyond his wildest dream. Babajide Sanwo-Olu is proving to be the ultimate Teflon technocrat.

For defrauding snooper during his last trip to Papa’s Land, we have been thinking of a suitable punishment for the wayward  rogue. We decided to send him on a mission impossible, the type that Yoruba people normally send naughty children. He has been in an upbeat mood of late, wearing a superior smile and a new suit from the proceeds of his swindling racket. When snooper asked him the source of his new found affluence, he crowed, “Oga, man pikin be man pikin oo”. We decided we could no longer take his impish insolence.

   “Okon,” I called out to him one morning. “I want you to go and interview Soja Idumota for me”.

    “I sabi the yeye man”, Okon replied promptly.

    “You do indeed?” I asked in quiet amusement and amazement.

     “Abi no be dat general wey im head no correct again, wey dey talk to himself and wey dey piss for road?”

      “Yes indeed”, I replied.

      “Oga, make I ask the yeye man about  Dele Giwa becos dem say na im people come put juju for him stout?”

      “Yes, but…” I began but the excitable crook cut me short.

      On the appointed day, Okon came in with breezy confidence wearing his new suit and looking very dandy. He was also carrying something that looked like a pair of military binoculars. Before I could ask what it was meant for Okon started shooting his mouth.

      “Oga, this one na military operation. Dem assault go commence at 2pm sharp from dem Five Cowries Bridge”.

      After twelve hours of waiting and giving up Okon for dead, the rogue finally limped home without his suit and tie, looking as if he had just survived a Molue accident.

     “Okon, what happened?” I asked as I surveyed the human wreckage.

     “Oga, katakata come burst for Idumota “, he groaned through swollen lips.

      “What?” I screamed.

       “I come reach Maryland and I wan board bus for Lagos. All the bus dem dey say so te, Oyingbo, Oyingbo, Anthony ma wole oo (Anthony, don’t enter). So, I think say dem dey refer to me since my Christian name na Anthony. After three hours I come ask one Yoruba man wetin I do for dem becos dem say make I no enter. The man come look at me and come shake im head. Na im he stopped the next bus and told the conductor, “take him to Oyingbo, but I think his head don knock”.

    Snooper was by now convulsing with laughter, but had to stop himself.

        “So what happened?”

      “Na im I come reach Lagos. I ask one Yoruba man, where Soja Idumota dey and he come ask me, before or now, so I come tell him off say which kind foolish question be that one. Then he come tell me say my head don pafuka. I come waka so te I reach Idumota. Oga the man com use Yoruba juju, he come turn to stone. So as I dey talk to am to behave six area boys come grab me from behind”.

     “ What did they say?” I asked excitedly.

     “One huge funny man com roar “Ma wo ee. Ofe koni won  nwo soja Idumota” (Look you, you think you can watch Soja Idumota for free?)

   “And what did you say?” I asked now laughing freely.

    “Oga, dis thin no funny oo. I come think quickly, so I tell them I only watched for five minutes.”

    “Owo e one thousand (your fee is a thousand quid)”, the funny man come boom at me. As I paid them that one, another bunch of Yoruba crooks surfaced and demanded for my walking permit. Those one beat the Edika Ekong out of me. I come escape without my coat and shoes. Oga, wetin be digbolugi?”

     “Mad dog”, I replied.

    “Chei that’s what dem dey scream at me. Na God go punish these Yoruba people”

First published in 2008.