The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Government Tompolo’s return

    Government Tompolo’s return

    Is the real government now in charge, with the ex-militant leader getting back his monthly pipeline surveillance contract?

    Terrible. Bad. Sad. Discomfiting. Ominous. All of these and many more, better describe the news, last week, that the Federal Government has resumed the cancelled pipeline surveillance contract to Tompolo, a former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo. His brief appears simple: end illegal bunkering, illegal refining and oil theft in Niger-Delta communities. These are nuts that the country’s security agencies have been unable to crack in years.

    Tompolo’s new honey pot is said to be the brainchild of the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, and Nigerian National Petroleum Company’s (NNPC) top officials, including the Group Executive Director, Upstream, Adokiye Tombomelye.

    Hardly had this contract been made public than some northern youths protested, asking the Federal Government to rescind the decision or face their wrath. Indeed, the Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups, on Monday, last week, gave the Federal Government and the NNPC a seven-day ultimatum to revoke the contract or it would be forced to either protest or take legal action on the matter. I share the group’s concern that Tompolo’s resumption as protector-in-chief of our pipelines is a serious indictment of not just Nigeria’s Armed Forces but the government as a whole. It is an abdication of responsibilities. But this is not the first of such abdication of responsibilities on the part of the Buhari government. Again, that is where my sympathy with the coalition of about 225 youth groups from the northern part of the country ends.

    We cannot discountenance the political angle to the opposition of these groups to Tompolo’s ‘divine favour’. I am an apostle of resource control. I believe every part of Nigeria, whether the north, east, south or west, must be able to fend for itself rather than waiting on the Federal Government for handouts from the Niger Delta. So, it is unlikely to find me in the company of anyone or group that may be staging a political protest over a matter that may, at best, be political economy. The political tone of the Arewa youths protest is clear from their spokesman’s speech. A statement signed by Victor Duniya, and issued in Kaduna on Saturday read in part, “The Amalgamated Arewa Youth Groups, a coalition of 225 youth groups mainly of northern Nigeria extraction that operates both at home and in the diaspora, has received the news of the award of pipeline surveillance contract worth over N4bn monthly by NNPC Limited to Mr Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, a former leader of the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta with rude shock.” It added that “we are particularly concerned that in the early days of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration when Tompolo was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, there was uncontrolled bombing of oil facilities in Niger Delta, which contributed in no small measure in dragging Nigeria into recession.

    Read Also: Row deepens over Tompolo’s N48b pipeline surveillance contract

    “Our group sees the awarded contract as empowerment scheme for Niger Delta youths and nothing more. This is in addition to the billions of naira that is being spent on the failed Amnesty Programme that is exclusively reserved for them.” Then, the bad belle proper: “This is against the spirit and letters of our constitution that advocates for federal character in all government dealings.” And, as if to remove the veil over the political undertone of their protest, some of them have sarcastically asked President Buhari to sack the service chiefs and replace them with Tompolo! But, is the present arrangement working? The answer is a capital NO. Whether the recourse to Tompolo is  the way out is however a different matter entirely.

    But, opposition to Tompolo’s contract is not just from without. Already, and expectedly, the contract has elicited protest even within the Niger Delta. A group of armed men who described themselves as the ‘Creek Men’ has expressed dissatisfaction with the arrangement. The group told Arise TV that they want a piece of the action, too. We should expect more groups to register their displeasure given the sheer size of the pork in Tompolo’s hands.

    At any rate, one man’s meat is another man’s fish. Elsewhere in the region, particularly in Tompolo’s Oporoza home in Gbaramatu Kingdom, Delta State, it is happiness all the way. The ex-militant leader reportedly chaired a meeting of his ‘troops’ after signing the contract with the government.

    The return, by the Federal Government to its vomit (because that is what the volte face actually is), should convince even the most incurable optimists, of the helplessness of the Nigerian state on the massive crude theft that has become a permanent feature in the country’s oil sector for years. When President Buhari revoked the earlier contract, he had said he intended to use the proceeds to boost the capacity of the Nigerian Navy.

    So, who is still saying there is nothing in a name, now that Tompolo has returned to sanitise the crude industry? Whether Tompolo was christened by his parents as Government Ekpemupolo, or it was a name he acquired at a stage in his life,  the fact is; the name is working for him. Tompolo is not the only militant in the Niger Delta. No doubt he is a prominent figure among other militants. But it must take something for at least two successive Nigerian governments to believe in Tompolo’s ‘government’, and thus place on his shoulders the onerous responsibility of protecting the country ‘s oil pipelines.

    Tompolo’s boys said he recorded some successes at his first coming during the Jonathan administration. As a matter of fact, they are upbeat that the ex-militant leader would repeat the feat now that he has a second chance. This newspaper quotes one of the sources close to him as saying, rather nostalgically, that “before the cancellation of his contract, the arrangements he put in place tackled illegal bunkering and increased production quota to over two million barrels per day.

    “But the new government cancelled the contract, declared him wanted and he was later exonerated of all wrongdoings.

    “They have realised the need to bring him back because currently, the country is losing over 500,000 barrels per day to illegal bunkering”, the source added.

    Crude theft has indeed dealt severe blows to the country’s economy. Early this month, Sylva said Nigeria loses about 400,000 barrels of crude daily to oil theft. He told Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State during a visit to the governor, as part of government’s efforts to secure the cooperation of communities on the anti-crude theft efforts that “It is a national emergency because the theft has grown wings and reached a very bad crescendo. This is because the thefts are taking place in the communities that host the oil pipelines. As a result, it has become necessary to involve the stakeholders, especially the host communities…”, the minister said.

    A serious implication of the theft is that we are unable to meet our OPEC daily quota of 1.8 million barrels per day. At a conservative $100 per barrel, the loss translates to about $40 million daily. I do not know how many economies in the world can be as unperturbed as we have been over this matter for this long. Not even the very strong countries can withstand such haemorrhage. Beyond rhetoric, the government does not seem to care that the country is losing so much to some unscrupulous elites. This was what someone like former President Ibrahim Babangida referred to as ‘resilience’ of the Nigerian economy. It is such misapplication of concepts that has brought us to where we are, and our country that is so richly endowed is now derided as poverty capital of the world. A single country losing as much as $40 million daily and we are all still going about our daily activities as if there is nothing unusual in what is happening? We are losing $40 million daily and the government says there is no money? We are losing this much daily and our youths, our future, have been left idle at home for months by the same people who are eating up their future today?

    But the difference between us and those countries that can’t wait to absorb that much loss forever like we have, is that they earn their revenues. We don’t. Here, everybody waits on the Niger Delta for handouts. That is one reason why, for some of us, it  would be resource control forever. When individual states begin to earn what they spend, such lukewarm attitude to massive theft of the common patrimony, whether on the part of the government or the governed, would not be condoned.

    All said, now that the government has outsourced pipeline surveillance contract to Tompolo, we can only pray and hope that Government Tompolo will do what the Buhari government and its preceding governments could not do: rein in crude thieves however they chose to be reined in.

    That is the situation we are now in Nigeria. No matter how bad things are, it is taboo for a father to leave his problems in the hands of his dead child in heaven. But that now seems the situation in Nigeria. Things are now so bad that fathers no longer find it shameful to ask their dead children in heaven to come to their rescue.

    Perhaps the only question begging for answer now in this arrangement is whether anyone would be sanctioned for failing to do their job, now that Tompolo is taking over again, a serious embarrassment to the government and the country at large. My take is that, as usual, mum would be the word from the government on this matter. It is hardly in its character to sanction persons for such incompetence or dereliction of duty.

  • An afternoon with Yoruba Savants

    An afternoon with Yoruba Savants

    The nation-state project is arguably the most ambitious human self-propulsion since the discovery of religion. Most successful nations are invested with a mystical aura and the myth of exceptionality.  This is why for such countries the god of the nation replaces the nation of gods with nationalism often supplanting religion as a deity to be worshipped, supplicated to and placated. This is why in most successful countries religion as a formal proposition is an embattled idea. 

     But in bitterly divided nations riven by ethnic, religious and political animosities, mutual hatred and loathing is the order of the day. There is no national narrative to expand and build upon, no golden myth to sustain it in times of trouble, no shared values or common creed to summon in national distress and no evocative memories of national heroes to whip the errant political elite into line. 

       Even the notion of history and civilization are being fiercely contested. Progress is a savage battle ground. While many look back to a pristine el-dorado for salvation, others prefer to inch their way forward, away from the present dis-order, to a future salvaged from the prevailing mismanaged modernity. 

      In such circumstances, “national” politics is driven to its primeval roots. All politics become local as an existential and psychic necessity. In order to recuperate the future and its rosy possibilities, we must go back to the past to see what can still be retrieved from the murderous mess we have made of Nigeria. 

      Last week, we promised to bring our readers, the kernel of our intervention at the last and concluding segment of the Apero gathering that took place Saturday last week. Here are excerpts. 

    A Catalan conundrum 

    Protocols. It is a great pleasure to participant in the final round of Apero. As we have noted, blessed are those who are yet to give up on Nigeria. It is easy to give up on the nation. There is something frustrating, even infinitely infuriating about a country so scandalously blessed in natural and human resources only to end up as the poverty capital of the modern world. This bizarre anomaly is without any precedent since the beginning of recorded history. 

      Apero is coming at a very interesting conjuncture in the history of the nation. It is a time when the pessimism unleashed by all the stark indices of virtual state failure combines with the optimism of many who believe that the coming elections might just halt the drift towards national collapse. There many who insist that this is nothing but a promiscuous dream based on fantasies rather a honest engagement with the facts on ground. 

       It reminds one of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, a great French hero of the First World War, who famously insisted that although his left and right flanks are collapsing and the centre giving way, he was nevertheless advancing. Before coming to the main issues, it is pertinent to make some preliminary observations. 

      One has read all the recommendations of the participants of the Apero gathering. Needless to add that one has been very impressed by the depth, versatility and originality of the proposals. It is a moveable feast of intellectual production. One must congratulate the organisers for the feat of logistics and painstaking efforts that has brought together an incredible array of Yoruba thinkers, philosophers, scholars, military policy wonks, traditional savants and political crusaders to such an event. 

      The common theme that runs through all the presentations is how to secure the Yoruba nation, enhance its prosperity, boost its production capacity, reinvent its old cottage industry and bring back the embattled omoluabi ethos in the context of a besieged and embattled Nigerian nationhood. 

      It is axiomatic that paradise cannot be surrounded by hell. Something has to give eventually. As it is, the Yoruba nation is in a state of normative and ethical free fall. Let us not deceive ourselves. Yoruba sons and daughters have also contributed to the moral, spiritual, economic and political collapse of the nation. Many of us are in the habit of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare. 

       One cannot but notice that all the efforts and energies expended on this gathering are geared towards evading or bypassing the Nigerian postcolonial state. This is the product of perfectly rational thinking. As it is noted, if an inferno is consuming people together with their offspring, they must deal with the enveloping flames around themselves first. 

      As it is at the moment, the Nigerian state resembles a monster killer-whale thrashing about the vast waters ready to devour or destroy anything across its path in sheer predatory malice. The Nigerian state will not ignore or evade us in as much as we pretend to ignore it or we delude ourselves that we are evading it.         

       The Nigerian postcolonial state is driven by the logic of its own nation-alienating necessity. Our history has shown that what it cannot build, it must seek to destroy; what it cannot appropriate, it must seek to misappropriate. The evidence of this litters our post-independence history. Yoruba folk wisdom suggests that you must prepare an extra dish for he who will not allow you to feed to your satisfaction. 

      So the question is this: What happens if the state refuses to ignore or evade us? What if it decides to come after what it considers a constitutionally overreaching section of the federation as it happened in 1962, 1963 and 1965? 

      In 1962, a federally engineered plot led to the implosion of the Action Group and the declaration of a state of emergency. The following year in 1963 Awo was jailed in another engineered conspiracy which was a flagrant breach of the constitution and a unitary assault on a federating unit. In 1965, a forcible takeover of the old west through electoral shenanigans led to the collapse of order and the termination of the First Republic through a military uprising. 

      The contradictions we are tracking create what we propose as a Catalan conundrum for the Yoruba people within the Nigerian federation. What is a Catalan conundrum? It occurs when the most stable, the most prosperous and the best economically organized section of a federating nation decides that it has had enough and decides to leave with the federal authorities taking military umbrage  at what they see as a violent constitutional infraction. We will elaborate on this later.  

    I have been asked to compare political life in the run up to independence and the few years after to what was to happen subsequently. This is like comparing an apple to an orange. They are both fruits. But they taste different. This is because they have different historical trajectories and are powered by divergent dynamics of power appropriation. 

     To restate what is often stated nowadays with increasing vehemence. It is obvious with the benefit of hindsight that the colonial powers were not interested in the cohesion or organic unity of the territories they have subjugated beyond protecting their own economic interests. The elite of the different ethnic groups were separated from each other with interaction forbidden and in fact virtually criminalised. 

      This was the situation that obtained in the early decades after the amalgamation of different entities. You cannot give what you don’t have. The British masters were showing fidelity to the logic of their own colonial history which was to let the new nation congeal and cohere around a master-nationality that has shown superior discipline and organizational ability and let them get on with it in a brutal war of all against all. For them, order and stability are superior to political equity and social justice. 

       It took the equivalent of a civil war among colonial officers to make the authorities realise what a hot potato they had on their hand. In a seminal policy rethink, they came to the conclusion that based on recalcitrant realities the cultural, spiritual and political differences among the regions were of such mutually antagonistic dimensions, that it would be better to allow the people to develop along their own individual trajectories.  

      As such they changed the modus operandi if not the fundamental logic of the colonising impetus. The immediate fruits of this policy rethink were obvious. It led to a thaw in the policy which foreclosed interaction between the new Southern elite group and the emergent northern powerbrokers. It also altered the power equations in favour of the indigenous political class spawned by the advent of colonization. 

       Self-rule for the three regions unlocked the visionary capacity of the colonized to preside over their own affairs and to chart an independent course. With the three regions in dynamic competition, production capacity was boosted beyond what was thought possible and the three regions experienced accelerated growth and development which led to a dramatic rise in living standards. 

      This was arguably the finest moment of the trio of founding statesmen who pushed their people to the limits of their ability and capability in order not to appear to have been left behind. It was the new spirit of give and take which led to the miracle of the Lancaster House conference held in 1957 which led to the adoption of an authentic and workable constitution based on federating units. 

      But this was not destined to last for long. The old demons of hegemonic domination suddenly reared their head effectively scuppering Nigeria’s chances of post-independence prosperity and stability. While Awolowo and Azikiwe were actively gaming to take over the government at the centre, Ahmadu Bello suddenly rumbled that Nigeria was his great grandfather’s estate and that he would soon resume the aborted mission to dip the Quran in the ocean. 

    And he made good his word. First, they came for the west. After that, it was the turn of the east to bite the bullet. It is useful at this point to be reminded that General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Unification Decree of 1966 which was the original leitmotif for the northern-inspired violent military uprising which toppled his regime was never really repealed. Rather, its spirit was boosted and bolstered by succeeding military dictatorships until Nigeria became a unitary autocracy per excellence. 

      The journey of the nation to a berserk and misbegotten autocracy can be seen in two significant developments. Whereas in the Second Republic the transition to civilian rule from military dictatorship was marked by a cautious interference with the recommendations of the Constitution drafting body by the military authorities, the gloves seemed to have come off in the aborted Third Republic and the current post-military Fourth Republic. 

    The military, having domesticated its rule, appeared bent on imposing its will on the nation by resorting to an awful manipulation of the process when it appeared its tinkering with the constitutional document might not be enough.  

      In the document bequeathed to their compatriots as the Fourth Republic constitution, the military simply appropriated the people as if they are an inert mass to be moulded into desired shape. This vaporization of the citizenry has dire consequences and it forms the basis for comparing the First Republic with what obtains in the current epoch. 

       First, the relentless militarization of politics and the polity has turned Nigeria into a vast civilian garrison without an authentic democratic ethos. Second, the militarization of the political class has led to the homogenization of Nigeria’s political culture in a way that was thought impossible in the First Republic. 

    Third, it has led to the collapse of party discipline with influential party members behaving like local war-lords ready to cock a snook at their party or flout its rules and conventions. Third, the mode of leadership recruitment has become so absurd as to be eerily sinister. Finally, this has led to the abandonment of ideology-based politics with the evaporation of rational choice and reason based evaluation of party policies. 

      The net effect of all this is that a predominantly urbanized, forward-looking, intrinsically progressive ethnic group that has seen better days and whose people enjoy holding the feet of their leaders to fire even in the pre-colonial times find themselves roiling with rank disaffection and acute discomfort in the besetting political normlessness that Nigeria has become. Consequently, it is no surprise that a sizeable proportion of Yoruba sons and daughters want out from the stifling unitarist hell of Nigeria. 

      But this is not going to happen, if it happens at all, in the way and manner expected or following the pattern of predictable and conventional agitation. The region known as Catalonia with the alluring city of Barcelona as its jewel is without any doubt the most prosperous, the most advanced and the most enchanting region of Spain. This is partially due to the accidents of geography and its proximity to the advanced nations of northern Europe. 

       By all the acknowledged indices of nationhood, Catalonia is impressively credentialed: shared language, shared history and destiny and a homogenous culture to boot. But each time the Catalans have tried to raise the banner of rebellion and secession they have always been suppressed with brutal ferocity by their Spanish overlords down South. They will just not let them go. Their leader was publicly executed during the Second World War. 

      To be fair, the central authorities in Madrid have always shown the willingness to grant the restive region a great measure of autonomy and some trappings of independence. But outright separation is not part of the combo.  

     You cannot bluff your way with bullets and superior armoury. It would appear that while the Catalans were developing their region in relative peace and safety, it is the Castilians whose military muscle has held Spain together against sundry invaders. You cannot eat your cake and have it. In every human situation, there is always a trade-off. 

      Despite the charter of self-determination enshrined in its founding principles, the United Nations does not grant independence just like that and a la carte. The Yoruba nation has not shown the appetite or the wherewithal for a violent military confrontation. Neither have its denizens shown an aptitude for the precipitation of a violent disintegration of the nation beyond mere appeals and letter writing. Secession is made of sterner stuff. 

      In such circumstances, the situation requires tact, diplomacy and painstaking capacity for negotiation and the clarity of graduated objectives rather than Boys Brigade stratagems. We must not endanger our own people. There is time for pragmatic heroism and there is time for heroic pragmatism. 

      Rather than cutting our nose to spite our face out of sheer spite and folly, elementary wisdom and strategic acumen suggest we should let the Buhari transition run its course while not complicating things or muddying the pool for our political sons who are well-schooled and well-practised in the high- octane art of political intrigues and the cloak and dagger manoeuvres of the Nigerian postcolonial coliseum. They may be there for a divine purpose. 

      To this end, our humble advice to the leadership of the Apero gathering whatever their bitter regrets and disappointments with the events of the last seven years is to fully engage with the current dominant Yoruba leadership without foreclosing their own options for the inevitable renegotiation of the Nigerian union.  I thank you all. 

  • Dogara, Babachir and unremitting hysteria

    Dogara, Babachir and unremitting hysteria

    Former House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal, have taken it as their mission to campaign against their party’s presidential ticket, which they regard as heretical for promoting a Muslim-Muslim candidacy. Weeks before the All Progressives Congress (APC) organised their presidential primary in June, and it seemed obvious that former Lagos State governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu would win and pick a Muslim running mate, Messrs Dogara and Lawal had been up in arms against the anticipated ticket and the ruling party itself. They had thundered and hollered, promising that should the APC attempt that same-faith gambit, they would bring Armageddon down upon the party and work against the ticket. It would amount to belittling the North’s Christian population, they fumed, to ignore them on the ticket.

    In the intervening period between Asiwaju Tinubu winning the ticket and picking a running mate about a month later, Messrs Dogara and Lawal stormed through the media and a few states to protest what they anticipated as the APC plan to present a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential race. The duo’s fiery denunciation of the anticipated ticket was anchored on the fact that Asiwaju Tinubu had, a few days after the primary, picked Ibrahim Masari, a Muslim, as placeholder in lieu of the real running mate, former Borno State governor Kashim Shettima, who was to be unveiled a month later. Messrs Dogara and Lawal crisscrossed the country campaigning against a Muslim running mate on the APC ticket, arguing that it was unethical and inequitable for the presidential standard-bearer, a Muslim, to pick another Muslim. Despite the agitations, the APC remained unmoved. Not only was a Muslim running mate selected, the ruling party defended the choice on strategic grounds.

    Unimpressed, however, both Hon. Dogara and Mr Lawal have sworn that they would do everything to defeat the ticket, winning in the process a significant section of the Christian, particularly Pentecostal, community. It boded ill for northern Christians, the two eminent gentlemen wailed, for a Christian not to be on the ticket, ignoring whatever strategic electoral input a Muslim, contrary to a Christian, might bring to the ticket and the race. Mr Lawal had in particular penned two acerbic essays on the audacious Muslim-Muslim ticket. And he had continued to pour vitriol on the APC and its presidential candidate, despite paradoxically confessing his friendship with Asiwaju Tinubu. When it came to the Christian experience and community, he said exasperatingly, he neither considered friendship nor saw any political strategy.

    More than a month after the APC had settled its presidential ticket and had given reasons party members found to be persuasive, Messrs Dogara and Lawal have continued to rail against the party for, as they put it apocalyptically, taking the Christian community in the country for granted. How they reached the conclusion that they spoke for either the whole or a significant portion of the nation’s Christians is baffling. They discounted any ethnic consideration in the race for the presidency, and refused to appreciate that ethnicity could in fact bifurcate and deplete the Christian phalanx which they both had in mind. By pursuing their campaign against a Muslim running mate, they also seem to have precluded that in their political career, assuming they still nurse one, they will have no reason to appeal to Muslim electorate. They then went ahead to convene the APC Northern Christian Forum to deliberate on the same-faith ticket issue and produce a damning communiqué.

    Dissatisfied that their communiqué garnered little attention, and perhaps suspecting that the controversy was not gaining traction, they have sought ways to keep it alive in the public consciousness. Last week, taking a few northern politicians in tow, they organised a visit to former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida, and planned another one to former military head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar, pursuant to their intention to create a groundswell against the APC presidential ticket. They claim they are consulting with principal stakeholders, while in fact, their campaign has become hysterical. It is not immediately clear what they hope to achieve with visits to the two former military leaders, both of whom are Muslims. Do they hope to appeal to their sense of fairness and political astuteness as former heads of state by drafting them to discriminate against or disavow a Muslim running mate?

    Whatever objectives Messrs Dogara and Lawal hope to achieve will in the circumstance have to be accomplished outside the APC. Their party has made up its mind on the 2023 presidential ticket. That decision will not be rescinded. Since the two agitators already insinuated that they were left with no choice but to pick between the remaining three parties that seem like credible alternatives, they may have to actively consider those alternatives: the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), and the Labour Party (LP). Many Pentecostal churches gravitate towards Peter Obi’s LP, but they are in fact chasing a chimera. Rabiu Kwankwaso’s NNPP has sunk under its own levity, unable to fly or even crawl. And the PDP of Abubakar Atiku, should Christians support it, will be enthroning not only another Muslim but another Fulani. Clearly, the choices before Messrs Dogara and Lawal are stark and complicated.

    After the shock of the primaries and the presidential tickets have receded, and after emotions have died down, Northern Christians are likely to take more rational decisions regarding whom to back and which party to support. The Dogara and Lawal campaigns are also likely to peter out into nothingness: it will be of little consequence after the campaigns begin and attention has shifted to the limited choice between keeping the reins of power in the North for another hypothetical eight years or experimenting with the untested and hyperbolic Mr Obi. It is surprising that the experienced Hon Dogara and Mr Lawal seem unable to do their mathematics well, and fail so flagrantly to recognise that they will advance their interests and agenda more assertively while being voices of reason and moderation within the APC. Now they are campaigning themselves out of relevance and influence.

    Ebubeagu as ominous precursors

    Advocates of state police, among whom this column is numbered, will find the reported excesses of Ebubeagu, the Southeast’s security outfit, in Ebonyi State two Saturdays ago distasteful. Seventeen women groups from 13 local government areas of the state had gathered in Abakaliki, the state capital, for their Annual General Meeting; but citing security reports about a supposed gathering of separatist groups, the government deployed the security outfit to disperse the meeting. According to the women, Governor David Umahi had orchestrated two such disruptions in the past, and this time, using Ebubeagu, ‘abducted’ 10 attendees and stripped them naked.

    If, as the government, insisted, separatist groups had convened the meeting, it should provide evidence. No convincing evidence has so far been provided. Last month, Ebubeagu allegedly masterminded the murder of seven wedding guests at Awomama, Oru West, Imo State. The killings were not denied. Instead, Ebubeagu insisted it fought and killed militiamen of the so-called unknown gunmen who were on rampage in the state. The controversy is yet to die down. Clearly, Ebubeagu, though devolved in state chapters without central control, is poorly conceived, structured or run. Given the careless and sometimes political deployment of the security outfit, there are doubts many states are capable of running law enforcement agencies, or are immune to the murderous mistakes the country’s centralised law enforcement agencies had consistently made.

    Ebubeagu indicates the poor quality of political leadership in some Southeast states. Given the criticisms leveled against the Nigeria Police, it is embarrassing that the affected states are proving themselves incapable of doing any better. They do a disservice to the quest for devolved policing. If state police is to be legalised, the country will have to put in place stringent rules to ensure that abuses do not derail the new constitutional order.

  • LET’S DO THE SING-ALONG 12

    LET’S DO THE SING-ALONG 12

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

     

    A kind little prayer

    Is bigger than a mighty curse

    Mighty mighty curse

    Mighty mighty curse

    A kind little prayer

    Is bigger than a mighty curse

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    One bowl of rice friendlier

    To the teeth than a barrel of sand

    Barrel of sand

    Barrel of sand

    One bowl of rice is friendlier

    To the teeth than a barrel of sand

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    Their hatred for the rain

    Has brought our season of drought

    Season of drought

    Season of drought

    Their hatred for the rain

    Has brought our season of drought

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

     

    Life’s drum has many tongues

    Let the dancer mind his ears

    Dancer, mind your ears

    Dancer, mind your ears

    Life’s drum is full of tongues

    Let the dancer mind his legs

     

    Tere pampa tere pampa

    Tere minnan minnan tere

  • The Gen Dambazau affair

    The Gen Dambazau affair

    Last week, at a public lecture organized by Blueprint Newspapers in Abuja, former spokesman of the Nigerian Army, Brig.-Gen. Kukasheka Usman (retd.) disclosed that former army chief Lt.-Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazau was pressured to organise a coup against the Goodluck Jonathan presidency at its infancy in 2010. To the former army chief’s credit, explained Gen. Usman, he resisted the pressure, helped in no small measure by the intervention of the international community, perhaps Western powers. Gen. Danbazau was also at the same Blueprint Newspapers annual lecture series. He did not debunk the former army spokesman’s statements. Indeed, it is unlikely he didn’t have a hint of what the former army spokesman would say. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt the veracity of Gen. Usman’s weighty revelation. As a matter of fact, the former army spokesman had added, Gen. Danbazau would do well to include in his memoir details, including names, of those who pressured him to do a coup. It is uncertain whether he would yield, or even acknowledge the pressures. But there seems no doubt that in those days of flux, when opposition mounted against Dr Jonathan’s assumption of office, quite a number of backroom manoeuvres were in play.

    Except Gen. Danbazau, who was Chief of Army Staff between 2008 and September 2010, divulges the details referenced by the former army spokesman, Nigerians are unlikely to know what informed the pressures: ethnic, religious or political/power considerations. It would be helpful should the public be availed the opportunity of knowing what went down in those days. Perhaps it will guide the future. It is possible those who applied pressures on the former army chief did so because they felt that former president Umaru Yar’Adua’s death would rob the North of its slot on the presidential queue. Losing that slot, when it was yet to be fully consummated, was anathema. It is also possible that they reasoned more nobly and were thus unsure of the competence of the generally untested Dr. Jonathan, a South-South politician who in those early days neither inspired confidence in his leadership ability, including even striking the pose, nor gave any indication he would not be overwhelmed with the affairs of state once the crown settled around his ears. In retrospect, the fears, assuming those were the reasons for the animosity towards his infant presidency at the time, proved somewhat prescient.

    When Gen. Danbazau is through with his memoir, he should be kind enough to let Nigerians know the real reasons he turned down the coup request. He is of course expected to burnish his image, especially considering that as a one-time Internal Affairs minister he was also not exemplary; but hopefully he will resist the pressure to colour the truth and tell the country why he really declined the offer to seize the reins of power. Gen. Usman recollects that for failing to do the coup the former army chief and his close associates who could have joined hands with him in insurrection against the constitution were described in uncomplimentary terms as effeminate. It is a label the former army spokesman thinks is unjustified. In his view, the former army chief was indeed a patriot and democrat at heart. Having given his word to the international community, he kept it, a behaviour, Gen. Usman sneered, contrasted the execrable request of treasonous politicians still strutting their stuff all over the place around the nation. Gen. Danbazau will be enormously courageous to name names in his memoir, should he get to it. Given the fact that the putative coup promoters are still around, it would be his word against theirs. Gen. Usman alludes to some sort of record keeping. It is not clear how infallible those records are, or whether they are as explicit as he imagines. There will always be a lot of grey areas.

    What is even more striking in the whole sordid affair of the muted coup affair is the continuing fascination of Nigerians with that abominable weapon of changing governments. Clearly, not much has been learnt from Nigeria’s tormented years under the military, particularly regarding how coups solved nothing, complicated everything, fouled trust in the military, begat more coups, and generally underdeveloped the country. More than thrice in recent years under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, military chiefs had warned soldiers of the consequences of mutiny and disloyalty, probably in response to speculations that some soldiers might be contemplating that horrendous option. But every time military chiefs warned against coup, this columnist had been stupefied. Why would any rational person consider that option, let alone embrace it? What would it solve? Would it give as much free speech as civil rule has permitted? Or would it enable the rule of law, even in its leprous form as experienced under the current administration?

    Had the Jonathan government been overthrown, it would have been impossible to predict the consequences of such a rash move or how it would have ended. Had a coup been done, it would have been clear it was not as a result of disaffection with the Jonathan administration, which just got underway, but a hubristic attempt to retain power in the North. In the end, after more than six years of Dr. Jonathan, power returned to the North, and is being sustained, for good or bad, for eight years. Surely, those six years took little away from the North. Instead, other than the side attraction of self-abnegating massage of the Southeast and South-South, as many watchers of the Jonathan presidency have alleged, the rest was wholesale capitulation to the North, virtually to the total exclusion of the Southwest. Imagine if former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida had defended the electoral victory of Moshood Abiola in 1993, would that presidency not have expired in 2001, with the office returning to the North and democracy strengthened? Much more, with a Muslim-Muslim ticket in 1993, sectarian colouration noisily politicised today would have gradually and quietly ebbed into irrelevance nearly three decades ago. And with religion and ethnicity diminished in national politics, Nigeria would probably have become a better place to live and play politics. It is surprising that these opportunities and advantages escaped the supposedly clever general in 1993; or perhaps he lacked the courage to defend the electoral outcome, assuming he did not himself harbour closet and insular ethnical ties.

    Nigerians may not have heard it directly from the mouth of Gen. Danbazau, but by bringing the coup story to the public, particularly the pressures brought upon the former army chief, Gen. Usman has done the country a world of good. Whatever the motivations of the former army chief, it is important that in the end he resisted the pressures, and has become a better man for it. Had he succumbed, there is no telling what would have become of him or the country. There are suggestions he should name the treacherous politicians who urged him to inspire the derailment of democracy in 2010, so that they could be brought to trial. It is not clear what that would achieve, assuming the coup allegation is provable. Exhuming political and military corpses in an election year may end up complicating the ongoing transition. Let sleeping dogs lie. It is sufficient that Gen. Danbazau did the right thing at the time, and it is to his eternal credit. However, it is a warning to the political class and all other political journeymen who still retain residual interest in coup d’etat simply because the country’s political dynamics run counter to their interests.

     

    Economic unease and unexplored alternatives

    Any cursory examination of the Nigerian economy will reveal clearly that the country is in a state of suspended animation. The federal government borrows frantically from the Central Bank of Nigeria at an obscene and indefensible rate: some N2.5trn already this year, and over N19trn since the Muhammadu Buhari administration was inaugurated in 2015, 25 times higher than its predecessor. Worsening inflation and currency depreciation have stoked fears of imminent economic disaster. If foreign borrowing had not declined on its own, as Chinese lenders exemplified by their sudden parsimoniousness, partly because of global economic challenges, the federal government had become obsessed with borrowing from anywhere it could find funds at a rate that is unquestionably ghoulish. With oil earnings about 61 percent below estimates in four months up to April, debt service cost in the same period shot up to N1.94trn as against retained earnings of about N1.63trn. It is not surprising that virtually all Nigeria’s economic indicators are showing red, with Global Hunger Index (GHI) particularly disturbing, if not apocalyptic.

    Hopes of significant amelioration between now and the end of the year are slim. The reason is not simply because the country’s economic indicators are woeful, or that oil production has been undermined by excessive and uncontrolled bleeding and stealing, or that the nation is beset by money guzzling and morale sapping insurgency and banditry, but because the administration seems strangely paralysed and unable to proffer and execute daring policy initiatives to mitigate the looming economic chaos. Fiscal and monetary tools have been applied in desultory, uncalculated manner with little impact on the crisis. And with relentless trade disputes declared by various angry and aggrieved unions, the government has come under tremendous pressure to which it has been inexplicably lethargic and irresponsive. The industrial actions appear poised to spill over into politics, threatening the hold of the ruling party on the country as well as threatening general stability.

    It is not clear whether the Buhari administration recognises it, but these times call for drastic, relevant and urgent initiatives embracing politics, economy and society, all in a structured and systematic manner. However, it is this structured approach to crisis solving that is precisely lacking. Worse, whatever fiscal and monetary measures are being applied appear shortsighted. This is worrisome, especially the repudiation of bold, radical measures capable of tackling the chaotic situation and giving hope to Nigeria’s beleaguered populace. Healthy, effective alternatives exist, but the administration sees them as revolutionary, centrifugal, dangerous and inappropriate. However, and gradually, the government is being boxed into a corner, taking along with it into that cul de sac a distressed and angry people pauperised by inflation and a faltering currency set to go into freefall. What is even more frightening is the obvious inurement of the administration to the implications of the looming meltdown.

    Unfortunately, given the incendiary conditions enveloping the country, neither democracy nor stability is guaranteed to be enhanced in an environment of economic distress and poverty. And if democracy survives regardless of the inept management of the economy and general political asphyxiation, nothing suggests it would not become distorted or disfigured. There is in fact the sneaky suspicion that the administration lacks the understanding, not to talk of urgency, to respond to the existential crisis threatening to the country. But if that suspicion can be overcome, and if indeed the government can still bestir itself, the people must cajole their leaders into focusing on certain areas public officers had long and carelessly dismissed as no-go areas. One of those areas is restructuring, the bogeyman of the leaders’ natural antipathy.

    Nigeria’s economic crisis is not just one of global economic pressures, of microeconomic and macroeconomic instability consequent upon misplaced fiscal and monetary measures as well as poor policy formulations; it is indeed much more one of warped political and economic structures, in short, an unbalanced structure. The economy has to be rethought in substantial and ramified ways, and eventually rebuilt on new foundations that take cognisance of radical economic theories. And this must be accompanied by equally profound changes in the political structure of the country involving sound and novel social and cultural engineering. Nigeria has experimented with both parliamentary and presidential systems of government, with military interregnums that bastardised and polluted both constitutions. What is indubitable is that the country’s unrestrained population growth and inept leadership style are complicating the current economic crisis. Nigeria’s developing economy can simply not sustain the costly and humongous presidential system it operates.

    Whether they find the description harsh or not, the fact is that Nigeria is going broke as a result of a combination of many factors, including misshapen structure, grandiose and unsustainable approach to governance, environmental factors, inept economic management, and huge population growth that will sooner or later spell catastrophe for the country regardless of marginal economic growth. A bicameral legislature is superfluous to the country’s need; so, too, is a 36-state structure that replicates unwieldy, burdensome and inept bureaucracies. Added to this lethal brew is a poorly conceived and dangerously impaired unitary system wrapped in federal constitutional garb that hamstrings democracy. To redress these failings and repair structural imbalances, a homegrown system needs to be urgently conceived by Nigerian political philosophers to avoid a crash. In addition to the new ethos, it is crucial to also imbue national leadership with the overarching ambition of imagining a continental political and economic powerhouse that can withstand, if not better, global competition. Currently, because of a deficit of theoretical depth, the country’s ambition decibel has hardly sounded beyond a whisper.

    President Buhari has been unable to summon the wherewithal to respond to this complex and interwoven crisis, and has spoken and acted with troubling tentativeness, buck-passing, and sometimes disinterest. He can’t wait to leave office; but the problems, if care is not taken, can’t wait for the next government. Politically and economically, the country is spiraling out of control despite marginal improvements in the security situation, while the society, as viewed from its distressed, underfunded and famished constituent parts, such as health and education, has become badly if not irreparably fractured. And if the president is not what he is cracked up to be, might his administration as a whole reveal elements with the sagacity and acumen to help galvanise and reorder the country? So far, none has been found. So, the problem is pretty dire. With nearly all unions up in arms, and fuel subsidy growing by leaps and bounds inexplicably at a time of extreme thievery in both the upstream and downstream sectors, and excessive and indefensible printing of money to support the government’s unimaginative approach to governance, it would be a miracle for the administration to berth the ship of state next year without substantial internal or external help.

  • Ayu musters the art of ambivalence

    Ayu musters the art of ambivalence

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may have had a head start on the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in electing its chairman and generally putting its house in order, but months down the line, there is little to suggest that that advantage has reasonably benefited the main opposition party. The party’s chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, is probably the main reason. When the party fixed its elective convention for October 2021, at a time the APC was engaged in one of the most elaborate and sustained political rigmarole ever, the country whooped with excitement. Should that elective convention hold, the country speculated, the PDP would prove itself rejuvenated and reinvigorated. And should they flawlessly elect their chairman and other national executives, despite the initial acrimony bifurcating their ranks, they could go on to mount perhaps a credible challenge to the dominance and suzerainty of the APC.

    Not only did the PDP pull off a coup of the most extraordinary complexion, they did it with aplomb, too textbook to be believed. In retrospect, it looked like the party was all along engaged in a fairy tale adventure as implausible as flying to Mars and back in a day or two. Not only did they have a smooth convention and elected a chairman even more smoothly through consensus and affirmation, they went on to organise a presidential primary in May that made the APC green with envy. The incredibly smooth presidential primary seemed an even more incredible act for the APC to follow in June. Yes, that primary involved despairing compromises and horse trading of the most pernicious kind, but many party denizens put that outcome down to politics, as a matter of fact, realpolitik. Alas, when things look too smooth, it is perhaps time to be wary. Yes, they had two glorious conventions, and it even looked initially like all they needed to do was just paper over the cracks to give a semblance of unity, but the aftermath is now trying their souls sorely and also trying their patience badly.

    More and more, the PDP leadership, particularly their presidential candidate, has become exasperated with that aftermath. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, said William Congreve. But with respect to the scorned runner-up in the presidential primary, Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike, hell’s fury is an incandescent rage. He is irate, bitter and, from all indications, inconsolable. He argues that though he feels pained being scorned, especially because it negated the party position on rotation of the presidency between North and South, he is embittered because of the manner he was corned and the demeaning reasons adduced by the presidential candidate, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, and other top PDP leaders. On the other side, however, he was rejected and conspired against, they suggested gamely, because the scorned Mr Wike lacked the carriage and temperament to preside over Nigeria should Alhaji Atiku, assuming he was elected, become incapacitated. Then they drove the knife in by dismissing him as flippant and lacking in gravitas, or something to that effect.

    Now, no one liked to be spurned at all, let alone by those who by every definition are not one’s betters. But to be dismissed in uncomplimentary phrases will be difficult for anyone, let alone the supremely confident and witty Mr Wike, to live down. Consequently, he has made it difficult for reconciliation to be forged as quickly as possible. Mr Wike has kept the PDP leadership guessing what his next move might be, and he has alternated between lauding them one day and denigrating them the next. He has also flirted with the opposition and given hints he might not be too indisposed to defecting. He stopped just short of voicing that heresy. But he has acted it inexpertly, and done it with extravagant flourish during the commissioning of some projects in the state. Unable to make up his mind, and still miffed by the inability of the party leadership to cobble a peace deal with him, he has doubled down over his demands, chief among which is the resignation of the party chairman, the exceedingly ambivalent and now increasingly flighty Senator Ayu.

    Few outside the PDP remembered that Sen. Ayu was close to Alhaji Atiku, and was thought to even be one of his confidants. At the presidential primary, the PDP chairman simply removed his gloves, rolled up his sleeves, and instead of remaining an arbiter, entered the primary fray on the side of the eventual winner. He helped the winner scheme, jostle and cajole delegates; and when the final tally was read out, he was uncharacteristically delirious with joy. He was quoted as making the inelegant statement describing Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal, a former ally of Mr Wike, as the hero of the convention for being what the Rivers State governor’s camp labeled as a turncoat. Now, whined Mr Wike’s camp, Sen. Ayu wants to have his cake and eat it. Asked shortly after he was elected chairman whether he would step down should the party pick a northern candidate for the presidential election, he evasively suggested he would. It is true he did not make an unequivocal statement in that regard, and managed to leave many observers befuddled with his answers, but it was clear that those who heard him, not being too schooled in the dialectic of English semantics, went to bed assuming that the unprincipled former senate president would act nobly.

    At a point in the past one week, he was thought to have actually resigned, with another former senate president David Mark thought to be in custody of the letter. Not so, said the chairman’s spokesman: should he deign to resign, he knew the process to follow, for he is a stickler for the fine arts of resigning plum jobs. The summary of the whole back and forth is that Sen. Ayu has not resigned, despite the resignation being probably the main reason blocking the rapprochement between Alhaji Atiku and Mr Wike. And surprise, except PDP leaders make it compulsory, the chairman will not resign, not now, not in the future, for as he put it, he was elected for four years. And if at all he would consider stepping down, he grunted, it would be after Ahaji Atiku had been elected president. And if he was not elected president, why, the inimitably ambivalent Sen. Ayu would find another excuse from his rich armamentarium. It is not for nothing that he has secured the reputation of being unprincipled and ambivalent.

    Convalescing APC surprisingly unites, but…

    While the opposition PDP appears frazzled by internal dissension, the ruling APC, initially thought to be irreparably damaged by its same-faith ticket, and terminally wounded by their leaders’ non-performing administration, has begun to convalesce. Now more united than it was last year, and more focused than the early starter PDP, it is perfecting its strategies far from the glare of publicity.

    But the embers fanned by its acrimonious interim management team, which heralded their convention in March, are still smouldering. The anger is yet to be doused, and the crushed ambitions of disappointed aspirants left unassuaged. Overall, however, the APC is now doing far better than its beginnings suggested.

    Nevertheless, the challenge that will prove the most difficult for them will be how they will convince the electorate during the campaigns that they can transcend the limiting and limited achievements of the current administration. There are some records to recommend the party, but the state of insecurity and the parlous condition of the economy will be their worst disincentive. Much more, paralysed by inaction and inflexibility, they will have a tougher time explaining why ASUU has been on strike for about six months and students kept idle at home.

    Yes, the party is convalescing, but the process is slow, fitful and uninspiring. They have barely two months to make a difference if critics are not to begin suggesting that the APC leadership is deliberately setting up their party to fail next February.

  • Why are Northern PDP leaders so disdainful of Southern Nigeria?

    Why are Northern PDP leaders so disdainful of Southern Nigeria?

    In 2015 when they were trying to get Goodluck Jonathan out, rotational presidency was reasonable for equity. They argued that no section of the country should be allowed to dominate the office of the President. To keep Nigeria one, this position is sound. No doubt, the peculiarities of this country make rotation a necessity at all levels. Not only for the office of the President. I’m talking about political inclusion here. But some people, largely for personal gains, will not let it be. The good thing is that Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, will complete eight years as President next year. Ordinarily, all the political parties should ensure that their presidential tickets are zoned to Southern Nigeria to ensure that power rotates to the South” – Yemi Adebowale, ThisDay.

    When in March 2023, Sokoto state Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, vehemently opposed zoning during  his address to  former PDP presiding officers of state Houses of Assembly and those of the House of Representatives ahead his official declaration to run for the Presidency in 2023, he was not being original. Rather, he was merely re -echoing the kite President Muhammadu Buhari’s influential nephew, Malam Mamman Daura, had flown, way back July 2020, that there was no need, any longer, for zoning the presidential ticket to any part of the country.

    This coincided with rumours that some elements from the North were already perfecting plans to retain the presidency in the region.

    Were these gentlemen being altruistic, or patriotic, or were they mindful of  fairness and equity, they would have, at least, waited till  the presidency had gone round every part of the country.

    No, not for them as  that would have made nonsense of their belief that the North owns Nigeria, a lie the Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) has never tired of repeating.

    Nigerians were not going to wait for too long  to see the PDP, or those within it Chief Bode George, its former National Vice Chairman,  recently described as “devils, who have taken over the party “  give that chimera the party’s official affirmation. (Kudos here to APC Northern governors who insisted that the party’s presidential candidate must come from the South).

    To assert their pride and belligerence, below is  what now subsists in the PDP, aka the Northern Party of Nigeria (NPN), in a country consisting 6 geo- political zones and over 250 ethnic groups:

    PDP National Chairman – North

    PDP Presidential candidate – North

    PDP BOT Chairman – North

    PDP Governors’ Forum Chairman – North

    PDP Presidential Campaign Spokespersons (2) – Both from the North.

    What manner of impudence is this, especially from a political party that was once flaunting how ‘uniquely Nigerian’ it is, arrogantly citing Article 7 of  it’s Constitution which specifically states that the party will adhere to the principle of zoning of its elective offices between the various regions of the country.

    Concerning the next election,  there’s hardly any  Northern PDP leader that has not spoken of zoning like Southern Nigeria simply counts for nothing. They have had turns battering governor Wike – one of the arrow heads of the clamour for President Buhari’s successor to come from the South. First, it was Babangida Aliyu who had a dig at him, followed by the, otherwise respected Sule Lamido, who so completely over reached himself, amongst a coterie of others, that in his reaction, Wike couldn’t help describing them as Atiku’s attack dogs.

    That, incidentally, was the same Babangida Aliyu who in 2015, when they wanted to shame President  Jonathan out of office, for which reason many of them actually worked for the victory of candidate Buhari, had said that “zoning in the PDP “is sacrosanct and binding in the selection and fielding of candidates”.

    That the Northern PDP can be that obdurate despite the fact that  the party has its safest states in the South-south and Southeast, obviously confirms the thinking, in some circles, that the party, probably unknown to its members in the south, as well as its rank and file members, a North – controlled ‘Controlling and Directing mafia whose word is law.

    Otherwise, why will the Northern leaders be asking for a leg, and an arm, to have Chairman Iyorcha Ayu, who had himself, publicly, undertaken to step down as Chairman, if a Northerner emerges as the party’s presidential candidate, responsibly  be a man of his words and resign,  even if only for PDP to pretend that there is fairness and equity in its ranks?

    No.

    They must arrogantly cling to the ruse that Atiku is the only competent man who can win election for the party even if, bar 1999 when he won election as governor of his native Adamawa state, he has not won any other despite contesting in literally all election cycles since  that date, a quarter century ago.

    Read Also: Wike whacks Atiku

    You would think that this time around, they are presenting to Nigerians, a different Atiku from the one who, as Vice- President, superintended over  the sale of  national assets worth $100B, for a mere $1.5B.

    PDP should actually do Nigerians a favour: point out to them those things that can be described as Atiku’s successes in the public service of this country.  When they have done that Nigerians will be able to compare whatever they come up with for “the only man who can win elections for them “ with the “legacies of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reforms in  Lagos State’s Civil Service, judiciary, local government and administration, policing and security system in Lagos State, revenue generation, transportation system, infrastructure renewal and revolution, as well as job creation, all of which remain quite phenomenal and enduring till today”. Or who would forget that “he created LAMATA, LASEMA, LASTMA, LAWMA, LASAA, LASAMBUS, LASRRA, BRT & LAGBUS, Lagos State Water-ways Authority (LASWA), KAI BRIGADE, Neighbourhood police, Lagos State Motor Vehicle Administration Agency and 37 additional Local Council Development Authorities and much more, where several thousands of people now work and earn their daily bread”.

    I write here about Ashiwaju

    Bola Ahmed Tinubu, “who worked in the best financial consultancy multinationals in the world, including Deloitte, Arthur Anderson, Haskins & Sells and GTE, where he was involved in auditing & setting up fraud proof accounting templates for more than 200 giant corporations worldwide”

    “He worked in the biggest oil company in the world – Mobil, where he carried out a forensic and surgical audit of the finances & accounts of the oil giant, which indicted top executives of the oil giant, including the expatriate Managing Director and led to his sack and consequent appointment of Tinubu as Treasurer of Mobil, to implement sweeping changes in the company’s finance & accounts and audit departments because the Board of the oil giant made it clear they could not find anyone more qualified, or with the necessary courage and competence to implement his recommendations”.

    That is the man a serving governor, and past Speaker of the House of Representatives,  withdrew for on the convention ground, apparently in obedience to the party’s ‘Controlling and Directing’ mafia, some members of which are believed to be external to the party. Those who know actually say that it is, in fact, being controlled by a slew of aging, retired military kingpins.

    Nigerians had better beware if they do not wish to be taken back to Egypt.

    I digress.

    While the party’s Southern governors were insistent that President Buhari’s successor should come from the South  for the sake of fairness and equity,  believing that in accordance with the party’s constitution, it could not afford to treat zoning with levity, its Northern controllers went beyond all reasonableness, and chose Northerners, not only as the presidential candidate, but had the temerity to appoint Northerners to all the key positions that have anything to do with the elections as shown above.

    Are Nigerians being told something we do not yet know?

    I personally think so and had hinted at it as far back as 1st May 2022, in the article: ‘Why Are Northern Elders This Overly Concerned With Who Emerges PDP Presidential Candidate?’.

    Therein, I wrote as follows:”Give it to the  Fulani for the confidence they have always had in their intelligentsia.  Consisting, in the days of yore,  of the likes of Ahmed Talib, Yahaya Gusau, Liman Ciroma, Ali Akilu, Adamu Ciroma, Adamu Fika, Hamza Zayyad, Muhammad Bello, Mamman Daura, Mahmud Tukur, Ahmed Joda, MT Usman to name a few, they are, to this day: “a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality, high intellect, special skills and experience”, as well as being undiluted Northern patriots. Mostly ascetic, self – effacing and, always working stealthily, their sole concern is power – its acquisition, retention, and its usage for the North.

    Anything else matters not”.

    “This is where, I suspect, ex- President Ibrahim Babangida’s intervention became inevitable. Past master in political trickery, I verily believe that  General Babangida is  working for the North, not  just for a party. And his involvement is the climax,  not the  beginning, of  a plot  which started as soon as President Buhari was sworn in for his second term. Or  when, in Nigeria’s political history, has Northern elders been this involved in who emerged the presidential candidate of any political party? None, of course, but as I see things, the need to maintain the status quo, post Buhari, has become the urgency of now for the Northern oligarchy.”

    In Atiku, they chose very deftly.

    But do Nigerians, any longer need a soothsayer to tell them exactly how arrogant, self -opinionated and disdainful of  them, a PDP government under Atiku Abubakar would be, seeing he is already acting like a Sheik? Nigerians will, however, remember that they have been forewarned about Atiku, by none other than former President Olusegun Obasanjo under whom he served for 8 years as Vice President.

    In his book,  My Watch – Obasanjo  wrote about Atiku’s: “trust in money to buy his way out on all issues, his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety, truth and national interest for self, and selfish interest”, exactly the attributes we saw on display in his emergence as the PDP presidential candidate.

    So disgusted with Atiku was Obasanjo he said later: “With what I know of  him, God will never forgive me if I support Atiku for President”.

    I invite Nigerians to think through how, and why, a candidate who had gone all the rounds of Nigeria, campaigning to be the PDP presidential candidate, would suddenly, indeed, at the very last minute, opt out of the election to pave way for another candidate.

    But no matter how powerful these people are, or believe they are, do Nigerians deserve all this shambolic treatment, like they are not the ones who are going to vote in the election?

    I have news for them.

    Since INEC has done everything it could to make our elections credible, I trust that PDP shall have its due comeuppance, come February, 2023.

  • 2023 preferences: parties, pedigrees or personalities?

    2023 preferences: parties, pedigrees or personalities?

    “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd USA President

    In a democracy, the powers of the followership can only be jettisoned at the peril of leaders. Professor Barbara Kellerman, Harvard scholar of repute in followership studies once pontificated: “followers are more important to leaders than leaders are to followers.” Courageous cum functional followers, with the power of their choices, expressed in voting, depending on their individual, sometimes erratic, eccentric or egregious, preferences could pull the rug off the feet of laidback or lackadaisical leaders who are presumptuous and preposterous. Even supposedly good leaders with great administrative acumen are sometimes shunned and shuffled aside by followers’ preferences like it happened in Osun State gubernatorial elections twice: Chief Bisi Akande and Mr. Gboyega Oyetola kissed the dust in their attempt to embark on the second term in office.

    The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines preference as “the power or opportunity of choosing”. The rightness or correctness of choice is another matter that is left to the political education and enlightenment of the followership. It is instructive to distinguish and differentiate political education from acquisition of diplomas and degrees as one possessing a PhD might be politically naïve while one follower possessing a primary school leaving certificate may soar higher in political education. It is irksome and irritating that despite noise on the social media, most elites in Nigeria’s context fall into the former category. Hence, election results, especially with the amended Electoral Act strictly enforced by the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), are not what some social media analysts could foresee coming. In this vein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd United States of America (USA) once posited: “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” In essence, the voters of this country, Nigeria, possess humongous power to dictate who the next President will be come 29th May 2023, all things being equal according to the INEC timetable. This columnist is sometimes upset and unsettled when informed and intelligent people that are supposed to know better compare Nigeria with countries like Singapore, United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Germany, Canada, France, etc. Our democracy is an embryonic and emerging one with no basis of comparison to the styles of government in the aforementioned countries. For instance, Singapore, as beautiful and becoming as the city-state-nation is, does not practice open democracy. Thus, Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister from 1959 till 1990 when he stepped down. Even after stepping down, he was in the cabinet as Senior Minister and later as Minister Mentor. This columnist could attest to this as he was a resident of Singapore for almost four years. Hence, our case in Nigeria is peculiar and it is good to look at what shapes followers’ choices in any election. What are the major determinants of followers’ preferences in a nascent democracy such as that of Nigeria? In this essay, three major determinants would be fixated upon, namely: parties, pedigrees and personalities. These would largely play out in determining who mounts the saddle as the President come 29th May 2023.

    Political Platforms or Parties:

    In February 2023 as Nigeria’s followers go to the polls to elect another President, there are some that will base their choices on the political parties they like irrespective of who is flying the flag. It should be borne in mind that certain states or regions are favourably disposed to certain political parties. There might not be little change in this direction in 2023 in comparison to the past elections. Democracy allows for liberty and freedom of fraternity for followers which aspirants and contenders for offices need to be wary of at the outset if they are not to meet their waterloo! This is in tandem with the witty words of Indian first law minister, B. R. Ambedkar who stated, inter alia: “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.” As things stand presently, for instance in the southeast, the People Democratic Party (PDP) is likely to hold sway. However, with the rising profile of Mr. Peter Obi, the flag bearer of the Labour Party (LP), the votes in that region may be split between the PDP and LP. Predictably, in the southwest and northwest, certain followers, going the route of preferred party choice, will go with the All Progressive Congress (APC). In this vein, northcentral will be a battlefield between APC and PDP – the two most popular and dominant parties. However, it will be statistically speaking a sort of outlier for the LP to make any other headway in any other region if followers’ preference was to be on choice of party as the party has no structure on ground.

    Politicians’ Pedigrees:

    It is seemingly getting clearer than most followers, who are enlightened, educated and emboldened will make their choices based on the pedigrees of the contestants or aspirants flying their parties’ flag rather than their parties. What is pedigree? Pedigree is “the recorded ancestry or lineage of a person or family.” It talks more about where the aspirants are coming from? What positions or roles had been handled by the aspirants before? How had the aspirants performed in such roles or positions? Can such be replicated in the context of a higher office of the president if elected? How prepared cerebrally is the aspirant taking into cognizance his/her past feat(s), if any? The questions could continue in this vein and vent. In Yoruba proverbial parlance it is said that if one person will be installed to as the head hunter for hawks, he should be able to at least effectively hunt down hen (“ti a ba fi enia je oye awodi, o ye ko le gbe adie”). Biblically, David was chosen by God because he could shepherd a few sheep of his father, Jesse, daring lions and bears in the process. It was recorded of David in the book of Psalm 78 verses 71-72: “from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance. So David shepherded them with integrity of heart and guided them with skilful hands” (Berean Study Bible). To some discerning democrat, they will apparently align with Will Rogers, American author, who opined: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” To them, their choice would be in congruent with another Yoruba proverb: “eni to ba ma daso funni, torun e lan wo” (meaning: in choosing the fashion designer that would sew your cloth, you will first of all look at the dress he/she is putting on).

    Preference based on Personalities:

    There are diverse perspectives to be considered by followers regarding the personalities of the aspirants. The three major contenders come into focus here, namely: Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, APC; former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, PDP; and former Governor Peter Obi, LP. Why fixating on these three out of many others? These are the main contenders taking cognizance of followers’ perspectives and persuasions. There are some followers who are adamant admirers and adherents of particular politicians no matter how the opposition paints their political idols. Professor Barbara Kellerman of Harvard University referred to this typology of followers, in her book: “Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders” as “Die-hard”. These followers, come rain, come sunshine, will vote based on personality perceptions. However, with race and religion polarizing the political perceptions of followers from south to north, east to west, there might be some schematic, albeit, not seismic shift in voting patterns in the presidential polls of February 2023. Going this route, the preponderance of positing and positioning in the minds of the followers in going to the polls would be how they view the contenders flying their parties’ flag, not their pedigrees or political parties. Die-hard followers of Mr. Peter Obi believe is clean cut from the old block of corrupt politicians, and that economically he will outmaneuver the ship of state to a safe haven. However, records of his feats, vociferously vented, while in office as two-term governor of Anambra, are widely disputed as falsified or inaccurate by past and incumbent Governors of that state. The erstwhile Vice President Atiku Abubakar, PDP presidential flagbearer, though enjoying a cultic following among his own die-hard disciples have the same die-hard followers of Senator Kashim Shettima, the vice-presidential flag bearer of APC, to contend with in the same northeast zone where the two of them hail from. Definitely, for both Atiku Abubakar and Kashim Shettima, for as many followers voting on the basis of personalities, the northeast zone will be a battle ground. However, in the southwest, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu will likely hold sway in the polls as many of his die-hard followers are drawing many to their side through all manner of persuasive pleas, rather than forcing a sense of entitlement or espousing subtle threat to curry support for their principal. The “Obidient” die-hard followers of Mr. Peter Obi need to take a cue from this and change their odd strategy before it is too late.

    Conclusion:

    Conclusively, it is imperative for the followers to choose one of the major contenders for the seat of the president come February 2023. For many that are not politically inclined but open minded, the choice could even be more herculean to make. However, going the route of someone with seemingly “less baggage” should not be an option as we pandered to that argument in 2014 in picking Buhari, and we are wasting away in the wilderness with his laidback and lackadaisical leadership, that by and large is not inclusive in practice, that most of us wish May 2023 should be fast forwarded and end as swiftly as possible! He himself, according to his recent interview, confessed the toughness of the job, and wished the whole thing would end quickly to pave the way for his return to his farm in Daura.

    My stand and stake, as a concerned and courageous follower in Nigeria’s project, will be to look at the trifecta of parties, pedigrees and personalities of three main contenders and choose based on who has the cerebral capacity to hold Nigeria, deep in diverse socio-cultural-religious preferences, together and simultaneously, possess the mental mien coupled with an ability to deliver dividends of democracy sustainably. Presently, I will not fixate on any particular candidate as all the three main candidates are yet to officially initiate their campaign for followers to interrogate and interface with their policies, plans, programmes and projects. However, one of them will emerge as the President of Nigeria, if an election is held in February 2023 as slated by the electoral umpire, INEC! In fact, going the route of research inquiry, one of the contenders of the two major political parties will ultimately emerge as the President-elect come February 2023. It is instructive to note that from past presidential elections since 1999 till 2019, this has been the sequence, and it is not likely to change in 2023, if all the present scenarios remain constant. However, as the days draw near for campaigns to commence in the month of September 2022, it is good to heed the admonition of the 44th USA President, Barack Obama, who once posited: “We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.” The mass of followers should not pander to ethno-religious eccentricity in the choice of who to lead this country from May 2023 going forward. It is high time the mass of followers was objective in assessing who the cap fits. This is also a clarion call to those who are politically educated and enlightened among the followers to explore and exploit all means and methods to persuade others followers to toe same path of honour and not be laidback in conduct as in the words of former Prime Minister of United Kingdom (UK), Winston Churchill, “politics is not a game, but a serious business.” It is a truism that whosoever occupies the seat will enact policies that will impart, positively or negatively, on the citizens’ life, education, environment, business, etc.

    • John Ekundayo, Ph.D. – Harvard-Certified Leadership Strategist, and also a Development Consultant, can be reached via 08155262360 (SMS only) and drjmoekundayo@hotmail.com
  • That old time religion

    That old time religion

    As soon as I began drafting this piece, I remembered a book that I reviewed for a friend, George Nkwoji, in the year 2000, ‘The undotted scriptures’. My friend, now publisher of Nigerian Moment Newspaper, was then an elder in Olumba Olumba’s church, Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (BCS). Nkwoji said he left his Anglican Communion for Olumba’s church because the Anglican Church was “poorly lit”. Today, my friend is wiser. He has retraced his root back to his Anglican Communion. He must have discovered that no matter how “poorly lit” the Anglican Communion is, it cannot be compared with Olumba Olumba’s church.

    But the problem is really not about a poorly lit church in Nigeria. Many churches in the country today are simply in total darkness and a few that have a semblance of light are indeed poorly so lit. And that is creating a lot of problems for the church.

    Please let no one get me wrong. I am not going to blame the church authorities for this. Rather, I may wish to join issues on the basis of faith that we profess. Moreover, whatever I say also pertains to me as a Christian. But I am bothered because it appears the churches are too preoccupied with other existential matters at the detriment of the spiritual, hence, some of these measures that do not reflect what we are told always about certain events in the Bible concerning how to exercise our faith. We are always reminded on the pulpit how the wall of Jericho fell after the Israelites had shouted and danced round it. We are also always told about how God killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers overnight for the sake of His people. There are several such examples in the scripture.

    What is missing today is that old-time religion and this is not about any particular sect or denomination. It is missing across board. Otherwise, why would vigil be cancelled just because of threats from some bandits and terrorists? Something must be wrong with our faith. Yes, the government, because it is a secular arrangement, can fret over such a threat and take panicky measures. Not the church. That should tell us that definitely, something is wrong somewhere.

    Indeed, there must be something wrong with a nation with churches and mosques in virtually every nook and cranny, yet is about the headquarters of ritual killings and other heinous crimes in the world. There must be something wrong with a nation that has converted virtually all its erstwhile profitable  industries and commercial warehouses into churches, yet is so far from God. There must be something wrong with a nation that so much professes to love God but is more notorious for doing the biddings of the devil.

    Read Also; Nigeria has legion of issues to resolve; religion is not one

    What I can smell here is that our churches are simply unsuspecting and this is unfortunate. In the height of the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic in December 2020, several states in the country banned vigil and other night programmes in churches and mosques as well as other places of worship. In fact, the Federal Government’s ban on nocturnal activities had effectively taken care of such activities; what several state governments did was merely to reinforce that ban. As a matter of fact, Sunday worship was suspended for some time as a result of the pandemic; the measures were later relaxed.

    The point I am making is that while it was the governments, federal and states, that proscribed night worship back then, this time around, it is the churches themselves that suspended vigil. I find this scary, considering the fact that churches sing of the old-time religion and want God to continue to relate with Christians today as He used to in the years of the early Christians, yet, many Christians (including myself), are not ready to go through the rough mills and baptism of fire that Apostle Paul and others went through in the course of propagating the gospel.

    The fact of the matter is that the town and the cassock have found a confluence of sorts, and both seem to be enjoying the romance. That is what you see in many churches today.

    If we are suspending vigil for fear of terrorist or bandit attacks, did the June 5, 2022 massacre at St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, happen in the night? Was it not in broad daylight that at least 40 worshippers were killed in the church and several others injured? So, what are we talking about? With the suspension of vigil, the impression we are giving is that if we have a repeat of the Owo daylight attacks in any other place, it is Christians themselves that would ask Christians to stay at home on Sundays, not the devil, or government.

    I know that when it gets to that point, it would be ‘to your tents, oh Israel’. Most of the churches that would ignore such calls for boycott of Sunday services or vigil would do so not necessarily because of their love for their members or even for God but because of the bottom-line. In many churches today, it is work and eat. There is no food for lazy man or lazy pastors. So, if only for the church authorities to smile to the bank the day after service, many of them would not be favourably disposed to the idea of suspending Sunday services, no matter the extent of potential threats from any quarters, unless they are compelled by the government to shut their doors.

    Again, this is not necessarily to blame the churches for suspending vigil. I do not think they have a choice in the circumstance. That is the level of faith they have planted in their members; again, including myself. And this is what I am holding them responsible for; their inability to imbue in their members the kind of faith that would make them shrug off terror threats and declaring, like Queen Esther, that “If I perish, I perish”. Where else is it more glorifying to perish if not in the house of God? Where is that old time religion? Where is that old time faith?

    I have heard many people criticise our stinking rich pastors who go about with all manner of security escorts like our politicians, and yet would be telling their members that Psalms 23 and 91 are all they need for protection. None of them has satisfactorily answered that question.

    Many of our church leaders celebrated Leah Sharibu when we all learnt that she became Boko Haram captive simply because she refused to renounce Jesus Christ. How many of our church leaders would not have denied Christ at the time Sharibu clung to him in spite of the looming danger, if only to enjoy their freedom, even if they would spend weeks fasting and praying for forgiveness thereafter?

    The altars are cold because, just as it is in town, money is what is being worshipped in many churches today. There are many examples out there. But I would cite one which I may also have shrugged off but for the confirmation about a similar experience from, incidentally, a bishop in another denomination.

    What happened was that the children of a female member of the particular church wanted to do final burial programme for their departed mother and they approached the church with the aim of doing the service there. The reverend in charge gave them a long list of requirements they were supposed to bring before the church would conduct the service. I don’t want to bore you with the details. But by the estimation, the expenses would conservatively be in the region of N250,000-N300,000. And these, according to the minister in charge, must be brought for inspection at least two hours to the commencement of the service! The woman’s children could not understand this because their late mother served the church meritoriously in her lifetime.  How come the church would forget this so soon, they wondered. They then decided on an alternative venue for the service. As I said before, I had thought this was an isolated case until I was told during a discussion with a bishop in another denomination, of a similar experience in the same denomination under reference. They did not even consider that the fellow is a fellow man of God.

    So, when gold rusts, what would iron do? If the church cannot accommodate the poor, who then will take care of them? Is the church denomination in question not aware that some people do not even have N250,000 to splash on any ceremony? How can such people have a budget that size for the church alone?

    But this is only a minuscule of the terrible things happening in some of our churches today. Where in the Bible did Jesus Christ levy people for anything before rendering any service or help? We see pictures of Yahoo-Yahoo boys in the social media splashing Naira rain on some pastors and shepherds who dance ecstatically to welcome the fortune that has arrived for them from the pit of hell. We hear pastors preach against corruption, yet they take its proceeds from politicians and other corrupt elements that some of them are on their payroll.

    How, in the midst of all these can the church truly live to its billing as church? How can the church get the power to confront the enemy, not to talk of defeat it?

    I have no issues with churches deciding on precautionary measures such as procuring body scanners, engaging adequate security men, good perimeter fencing, etc. in addition to being generally security conscious. After all, even the scripture enjoins us to watch and pray; not pray alone. But to ban vigil in the name of insecurity does not seem to me the right thing to do. Again, as I said earlier, there is no way the church can do otherwise in the circumstance because that is how far their faith can go.

    But suspension of vigil can only be an interim measure. Otherwise, it is the church that would ultimately kill Christianity through its own lukewarm attitude or undue fears about the perceived enemy whose weapon is only carnal. What the church should do during the interregnum is for its leaders to be interceding for it so that when the country is safe again in its estimation for a return to vigil, it would be a return with a bang. A great revival, so to say. To sit back and do nothing is dangerous for the church and Christianity in the country.

    The average Christian knows that most evil plans and works are concluded in the dead of night, even outside of the Christian realm. If you now place an embargo on vigil, how do you confront such challenges vigil-for-vigil? The fact is that many Christians cannot do vigil on their own in their respective homes. It won’t take long before they start yawning.

  • The Apero Intervention

    The Apero Intervention

    Blessed are those who are yet to give up on Nigeria. This column affirms this proposition this morning with every sense of responsibility. It is very easy to give up on Nigeria. There is something terribly frustrating and even infuriating about a country so scandalously blessed in human and material resources only to end up as the poverty capital of the world.

    Yet there are many patriots out there who have refused to give up on the nation, who insist that it is not over until it is truly over.

    For the past six weeks or so, Segun Gbadegesin, notable philosopher, traditional savant, quintessential Yoruba patriot and The Nation’s ace columnist has turned the page of his column to interrogating proceedings from a remarkable gathering of Yoruba scholars, intellectual luminaries, military wonks, public analysts, political crusaders and celebrated researchers carefully assembled to proffer the way forward for a troubled nationality in an even more troubled and endangered nation.

    In the event, it has turned out a remarkable feast of deep introspection and splendid intellection; a conclave of some of the best and brightest of Yoruba minds both at home and the fabled diaspora. In Yoruba cultural parlance and as the name itself hints, Apero is the gathering of the wise and wizened, the grizzled and the gnarled particularly in times of despair and political uncertainty. As the Yoruba themselves put it, we gather to share wisdom and not to distribute folly.

    The exchanges have been remarkably frank and forthright shot through with countervailing insights borne along by remarkable hindsight. From security for the constituent units of the nation, through the vexed issue of restructuring, to the educational disaster staring the nation in the face and the collapsed ethos of omoluabi which has pushed the Yoruba people into an ethical and normative free fall, nothing was off the table. You can only trick a woman into bed once, as they say.

    Nothing exemplifies this sense of urgency and the dire plight of a people under siege in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation more than the clarity and pained lucidity of Gbadegesin’s unrelenting exposition and remorseless gloss on the proceedings of the gathering in the past six weeks. The retired professor of Philosophy at Howard University writes lucid and deceptively artless prose that hides a telling punch which is occasionally deployed to devastating effect.

    A critique of this vast nature with its far-ranging and far-reaching recommendations and proposals for drastic reforms cannot but reveal willy-nilly the conditions of its own possibility. Although like a wise Yoruba elder and major stakeholder in the political fortunes of his people in the post-military dispensation, Gbadegesin tries to pull his punch, the anger sometimes breaks through. In the event, Apero is a subtle and restrained critique of the extant political hegemony in Yorubaland.

    Read Also; Nigeria 2023: The tunnel of reality

    At the inception of Apero, yours sincerely was invited by the organisers to contribute to one of the proceedings as a lead discussant. But prior commitments on the home front and a clash of engagements precluded that possibility. One had since been monitoring events from the side lines.

    But talk of odd telepathic developments. Just as one was about to put his intervention on paper, a call came through from Gbadegesin urging the columnist to appear as a lead discussant in the final session by comparing the situation in the run up to independence and the First Republic to the current order. In the time honoured old Yoruba code of honour, refusal this time was out of the question.

    Comparing the pre-independence era in Nigeria up to the period leading to the fall of the First Republic with the epoch of post-military irruption in the country is like comparing an apple to an orange. They are both fruits, but they taste differently. This is because the trajectories and antecedents are dissimilar and they are powered by different dynamics of power appropriation.

    Let us first erase some historical illusions from our minds. In the history of human evolution, there has been no completely organic or seamlessly idyllic society. Historians and sociologists of the human condition insist that if there is anything about organic societies, it is that they are always gone. In other words, human evolution is marked by protracted periods of war, hunger, famine, natural or man-made pestilence followed by peace, progress and rapid development.

    The notion of an idyllic and organic society of remote antiquity is an ideological weapon or merciless stick often deployed by embattled and besieged societies to whip existing recalcitrant realities into some tolerable order. Every monument to civilizational triumph is also a monument to appalling human suffering, unspeakable barbarities and terrible bestialities.

    For example, the much-maligned and bitterly resented military intervention in Nigeria’s postcolonial history also had its high noon of visionary capacity building and patriotic developmental impetus. These were the years of rolling National Development Plans and infrastructural frenzy whose extant legacies subsist.

    In his autobiography, The Son of a Peasant Farmer, the late Tayo Ogungbemile, a former students union leader who rose to become the Acting Comptroller General of the Custom and Excise Department, narrated how he walked up to Brigadier Adeyinka Adebayo’s office to present a policy paper on how to rescue indigent Yoruba undergraduates from the jaws of misery and truncated ambition through a means tested bursary programme.

    To his surprise, somebody from the governor’s office got in touch with him the following day to inform him that the proposal had been approved and adopted as state policy. If only this semi-confederal arrangement even within the ambit of military rule had been sustained, Nigeria would have been a better and happier place.

    But the colonial foundation on which all this rested was creaky and barely fit for purpose and to get a better perspective we must go back to the amalgamation and incorporation of hitherto separate entities by the conquering imperialist masters. For a protracted period after the amalgamation, the colonial authorities did not show much interest in the organic health and unity of their new ward beyond safeguarding their economic interest which was the main reason for conquest in the first instance.

    For decades after amalgamation, Nigeria  was ruled very much like a dual-state nation with the amalgamated components allowed to do their own stuff as long as the overriding economic interest or what Lugard infamously dubbed “the dual mandate” was not threatened or impaired. Even the developmental projects were geared towards facilitating this economic mission.

    The British authorities appeared more interested in insulating the stable and cohesive order they met in the north of the nation from being infiltrated and contaminated by the anarchic regicides and rowdy republicans down south. Consequently, all interactions among the emergent political elites of the amalgamated units were forbidden, prohibited and virtually criminalised.

    It was only around 1949 in the run up to independence and as the decolonising project took on a strong hue that the British authorities began to realise what a hot potato and combustible colonial combo they had on their hand. A seminal rethink of the colonial policy and overall imperialist organogram became inevitable. A belated awareness of the recalcitrant reality that based on significant cultural, spiritual and political differences, a loose confederal arrangement is the best for the colonial behemoth arbitrarily and whimsically hewn out of the heart of Africa.

    There were two important fruits of what has been called the civil war of colonial authorities in Nigeria. First, there was a significant thaw in the policy that precluded interaction between the elite of the north and their southern counterparts. Second, the colonial administration began to load the dice of political ascendancy in favour of the indigenous political elite spawned by colonization, having realised the political anomaly of handing over power back to the traditional institutions they had supplanted.

    The immediate fallout of the ensuing struggle for political supremacy between old tradition order and the new indigenous elite was the political imbroglio between the Alaafin of Oyo and Chief Bode Thomas which led to tragic consequences. In the north, the premier, the Sardauna of Sokoto, deposed and banished the Emir of Kano just to show the powerful northern emirate who was in charge.

    But by and large the new elite consensus was at play in shaping the political destiny of the nation and in producing a new federal constitution acceptable to all at the Lancaster House Conference in 1958. In the new found spirit of give and take, Obafemi Awolowo was prevailed upon to drop his exit clause and his romantic notion of classical federalism which had no basis in actual reality while Zik and Ahmadu Bello were persuaded to modulate their unitary federalism and confederal  predilection respectively.

    This was arguably the finest hour of these statesmen and the constitution that arose from their deliberations  was a great spur to national unity and rapid economic development. With each of the three regions in dynamic competition, Nigeria recorded its fastest growth rate ever. A great mammoth had erupted from Africa and the entire world took note.

    This was the situation in the first few years after independence until the old demon of hegemonic domination reared its head again, lending credence to expert prognostication that wherever there is a master nationality bent on a wilful domination of other constituent units, peace, stability and progress are at best a very tenuous proposition.

    The peace, stability and progress of Nigeria was shattered in the early hours of January 15, 1966 and the country has never really been able to find the magic of stability and prosperity ever since. The festering contradictions have since compounded the National Question pushing Nigeria to the very edge of failed statehood and aborted nationality. Unless we find the time and energy to recuperate the essence and spirit of the Lancaster house conference, Nigeria will continue to remind the world of Albert Einstein’s famous mad man.