The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Akinjide Osuntokun at 80

    Akinjide Osuntokun at 80

    Even though Prof. Akinjide Osuntokun’s name rings a bell, I never met him in person until our paths crossed at the Ijora, Lagos office of The Comet (now defunct) when I joined its editorial board in 2000. He is one of the great Nigerians I have had the privilege of working with on the editorial boards of both The Comet and The Nation.

    Gentle, easy going and soft-spoken, Osuntokun, who clocked 80 on April 26, could hardly hurt a fly. Even when he is angry, he comports himself. It is an understatement to say he is brilliant and his brilliance tells  in his invaluable contributions on the editorial boards and in his other assignments. Of course you cannot expect less from a man with an exceptionally rich academic background who had served the country in various capacities, home and abroad.

    You cannot miss the fact that he is a historian of repute. But the man is equally witty and blessed with uncommon candour. I remember one of the things he said on the editorial board of The Comet in those days at the Ijora office. A certain chief executive had narrated the story of some unworthy and wicked workers who stole four brand new tyres that their company purchased on a Friday for one of their vehicles, to facilitate the movement of their product to the market. The tyres were fixed on a Friday. But by Monday when the workers resumed, all the tyres had disappeared, with the vehicle suspended. For a company that was struggling to survive, this, definitely, was a huge loss. Prof Osuntokun replied that such a thing was not uncommon in a situation where members of the staff are owed months of salary arrears! His sympathy was with the workers. Obviously that was not the kind of reply the narrator expected.

    But this does not mean Osuntokun supported stealing. It was only a reflection of his candour because what the person who told the story, himself an elder and respected member of the gathering, expected were bashings left, right and centre condemning the thieves who stole the tyres, as well as the security men who looked the other way as the tyres were taken out of the gate. And Prof. Osuntokun knew this. But he did not toe the line expected in spite of his respect for the person who narrated the story. That is the man for you.

    Of course, Osuntokun could not have supported stealing. He had held several positions of trust but we never heard he stole. Indeed, in their days, stealing, that we have found all manner of names to glamourise these days when the act involves personalities (in order to lessen the gravity of the fact that they actually stole, and by extension, their punishment), was taboo in their days. Not that it was not there at all; but it was few and far between. And when caught, attempts were not made to glamourise it as we do now; the big thieves were served their due comeuppance in a manner that would not make the common thieves green with envy.

    For Prof, as he is fondly called, money or material attraction means little. It is obvious he does not belong to the category of many other Nigerians who have no sense of shame. It would appear he waited patiently in heaven to be served his portion of the ‘scarce commodity’ before coming to the world. But for his being contented, he would have been a member of AGIP, that is, Any Government In Power, that many Nigerians shamelessly belong to. To further drive the point home that money is not everything, he had turned down several international assignments that would have fetched him a lot of money, opting instead, to remain in Nigeria. This was a demonstration of selfless service to the nation.

    But one aspect of his life that really fascinates me is his marital life. His wife, Dr Abiodun Osuntokun, died in 2003. He has refused to remarry since then. Nineteen years as widower is no mean task, especially for a man like Prof Osuntokun who had the means, financial and otherwise, the erudition, handsomeness, cosmopolitanism, fame, and what have you to husband even more than one wife if he so desired.

    Remaining single was therefore a tough decision to make in a local milieu where polygamy is the vogue and a veritable means of one proving to be a man. A man like him would have been a ladies’ man in his prime. An epitome of handsomeness that many young girls (not to talk of ladies and even women) would be falling over themselves for, offering him soap when having his bath by the riverside, each pleading passionately with him to take their own. Jide Osuntokun nwe lodo, gbogbo omoge nyo’wo ose: temi ni ko gba, temi ni ko mu; temi ni ko gba, iwo ni ma fe”, kind of situation. Apologies to my number one music maestro, King Sunny Ade.

    Polygamy, though fashionable among our forefathers in this part of the world, was for the sole purpose the harem and their children could help in the farms, because farming was their preoccupation. But many people who go into polygamy these days do so for various trivial and sometimes inconceivable reasons. It is their own way of being a man. If the man had remarried at the time his wife died 19 years ago, he would, as he has always maintained, have had to be comparing and contrasting which of the two is better, a thing he does not think is good enough for the memory of their union. “There were attempts to persuade me to marry another woman, but it wouldn’t have been fair to the memory of my wife, nor would it have been fair to the person I would have married, because I would have been comparing the two of them. But I thank God it made me to bury myself in my writing, my commitment to whatever the activity I enjoyed, especially writing”.

    Beyond that is the tendency of the new (or is it younger wife) to want to take dominion of the house, the foundation of which was laid by someone else, and any attempt by the man to resist would be frowned at by the younger wife, and perhaps interpreted as the man not loving her, or even comparing her with a dead person (his first wife). This might be the beginning of the problem for both the man and the late wife’s children. Prof’s children should therefore be eternally grateful to him and to God for this selfless decision.

    Indeed, if Prof Osuntokun’s children have not been showing gratitude to him for this especial selflessness, they had better start doing so. By saving them from what Yoruba people call ‘agbole were’ (mad people’s compound) that polygamy represents, he has rendered them an invaluable service which must have had a major impact in the various enviable positions they have found themselves today, saved from the ruinous distractions of polygamy.

    Whether Prof has not had any girl or woman friend since the wife died can only be answered by him. But that is not the point I am making because that would be a very tall order for any man.

    The more reason he deserves applause is because, as a Christian, he has the opportunity of a second chance at marriage after losing his wife. So, he would have committed neither crime nor sin if he had remarried. In spite of this, he refused to remarry. I doubt if the wife herself would expect him to live a life of celibacy all of these years. But I have a feeling she would be satisfied by her husband’s decision not to mingle (remarry) at least for the sake of the memory of their union, and in the interest of their children.

    But Prof too has God to thank for the gift of contentment. It takes more than simply being human for someone like him who had taught for decades in several universities where you come across all manner of ladies – tall, slim, light complexioned; or fat, of average height, black and beautiful – and  all you can wish for is that God should let this cup pass over you and it would be so all of the time, just like that? In this wise, one can only also imagine the temptations that Osuntokun would have passed through in the hands of women and ladies who would have wanted to succeed his late wife at all cost, especially knowing that he is a widower.

    Born on April 26, 1942 in Okemesi, Ekiti State, Professor Osuntokun began his primary school education first at Holy Trinity School, Ilawe, and later Emmanuel Primary School in Ado-Ekiti. He proceeded to Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti (1956-60); Ibadan Grammar School (1961-62); University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies and Queen Mary’s College (1964-65); University of Ibadan (1963-64, 1965-66); University of Ibadan Post-Graduate School (1966-67); Institute of Commonwealth Studies and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1968-69); Ecole Pratiquedes Hautes, Sorbone University, Paris, France (1969, among others.

    He had taught as lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor at various universities, including the University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, University of Maiduguri and Redeemer’s University, Mowe, Ogun State. He had also served as visiting professor, head of department of history, dean college of humanities as well as professor of history, among several positions in various ivory towers.

    Beyond the classrooms, Prof Osuntokun was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Germany (1991-95), a position he occupied until the Abacha regime came and wanted him to sell the regime to the outside world. A thing Osuntokun refused and which consequently led to his removal and incarceration for six months, without charge. He was also director, Nigeria Universities Commission Office, Washington DC, U.S.A., as well as in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

    Prof Osuntokun had authored several books including Chief S. L. A. Akintola: His life and times; Power broker: A biography of Sir Kashim Ibrahim and Abidakun: An autobiography of Professor Akinjide Osuntokun, in addition to several seminar and convocation lecture series. He also bagged Presidential Honour, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, 1990; Officer, Order of the Niger, OON in 2004.

    Like many of his contemporaries, Prof Osuntokun is still bewildered that a once promising Nigeria that they were very proud of in their time has been reduced to the present unenviable status of the poverty capital of the world by rapacious rulers. Rudderless. Adrift. And lost.

    Permit me to end this piece with the following words of wisdom by Dare Babarinsa in a tribute to Akinjide Osuntokun in The Guardian of April 7. “For our country to make progress, many Nigerians must be ready to follow the example of Prof Osuntokun, leave our comfort zone and be ready to endure hardship to transform our society.” Are we ready?

  • WHEN TWILIGHT CAME TO THE TYRANT (1)

    WHEN TWILIGHT CAME TO THE TYRANT (1)

    You drove a sword through Friendship’s heart
    Dumped Loyalty in an unmarked grave
    And seized the throne with your blood-encrusted hands
    And darkness fell on the Land of the Upright

    Roadsides reeked with the stench of murdered voices
    The Burkinabe danfa shriveled into a pall
    You broadened your brief in the network of other tyrants
    Your bloodline thick like a bastard plague

    Practiced puppeteers extolled your dance
    Fixed your vassal steps to the beat of their drum
    As they pledged all power, all privilege
    To the longevity of your rule

    But you saw Sankara
    In the air you breathed
    In the water which whetted your thirst
    In the interrogating mirror of the Burkinabe eye

    You saw Sankara
    In the rainbow which transgressed
    The darkness of your sky
    In every page of your trembling Bible

    You are the three-penny coin
    Tossed in the wind in the cannibal
    Game of dispossessing masters

    The laughing jackass
    Who held down his brood
    For the fury of the alien whip

    (Continued next week)

  • Why are we so blest?

    Why are we so blest?

    The day was far gone and dusk was fast approaching. There was no sign of the august reverend personage. He had left a message that he was already on his way. There was no reason to doubt that, except that people propose and Lagos traffic snafus dispose. At the end of the tormenting tortoise of traffic, one may discover that there was no tangible cause to it after all. It was just a case of WAWA, the acronym for colonial frustration. West Africa Wins Again.

    May be a towing vehicle needs towing itself, having broken down in the middle of the road. Or it may be that a refuse collection vehicle had spilled its entire content on the road making further passage impossible.

    These days in Lagos, it doesn’t take long for frantic officials to arrive on the scene but by then, the natural indiscipline of the average road user would have kicked in, making decongestion an uphill task. It surely takes a lot of testicular fortitude to survive The Road in a contemporary Nigerian city.

    Yours sincerely had lapsed into a long reverie probably triggered by the news of a mortuary attendant who had taken to mutilating the remains of the deceased as a prelude to harvesting their main organs for sale in the open market. Is there no end to the national shame?

    Is there no end to our ordeal? Whenever one thought that we had scraped the bottom of the barrel, something new keeps cropping up. One had lost count of people caught with freshly harvested human organs as if they originally belonged to rabbits or some lower species. Not even the dead are safe anymore.

    It reminds one of Walter Benjamin’s cryptic aphorism that if the enemy should win, not even the dead are safe. The level of de-humanization and de-civilization that has gone on in this stricken society beggars belief.  The magnitude of barbarism astounds.

    Every day, the rate of unspeakable crimes against humanity and our essence as the most civilized species mounts. Those who put this bazaar of bestialities together, this mosaic of horrendous atrocities, surely have a case to answer before the creator. Not even in the hottest contemporary war zones has one witnessed this level of human depravity.

    Last week, over a hundred people somewhere in Ohaji got themselves burnt to ashes while refining and prospecting for crude oil. Anguished Nigerian humanity could only sigh and move on as if it was all in a day’s chore. They will not be the first or the last. That one does not require Tucano jets to halt, only human will and the capacity to build functioning refineries to put those engaged in the illicit business out of work.  But human will has been harvested too.

    About the same time, daring marauders somewhere on Nigerian soil ,and probably not far from the bastion of military arsenal, published a picture of captured nationals for our national salivation almost a month after they were abducted from a train. Mum is the word from officialdom. And they say the state has not been overwhelmed by adversity.

    Not too long ago, an American clergy on a humanitarian mission to commission boreholes in a community somewhere in the country was so appalled by the cruel cynicism of the local rulers who were demanding bribe before they allowed him to dig for water simply concluded that God was gathering the worst set of people in Nigeria for an interesting experiment in human retrogression.

    It is a vision of hell, Gehenna, the Apocalypse and Dante’s inferno all rolled into one. The people have recoiled into their shells occasionally to come out hunting for human victuals. The rulers have become so inured to human suffering and so desensitized to national calamities that they are only capable of ritualized gestures of hypocritical regrets while waiting for the next tragedy.

    When one is not confronted by appalling savagery on the streets, one is haunted by images of wanton domestic violence and brutalization; when one is not benumbed by the casual callousness of kidnappers who maim and murder their victims at will, one is affronted by the unpardonable pardon of convicted state criminals.

    Even before one had sorrowfully turned his gaze away from viral videos of under-aged kids torridly copulating , one is gifted with the unseemly sight of traditional rulers personally lugging their loot away from government quarters. Nigeria could as well be a trauma ward in an emergency hospital where the specialists have all fled.

    There is such a collapse of mores and the humane ethos which undergirds all civilized societies that one cannot but concur with those who raise the alarm that Nigeria has seceded from humanity. Put in another way, Nigeria is stranded by choice in a liminal limbo of ethical lunacy. It will take a gifted political scientist of deracinated societies and a sociologist of historic dysfunction to capture what is going on. Is this the end of the Great Black Hope?

    It will be foolish and futile at this point to hold on to the belief that national salvation lies in the restructuring of Nigeria’s architectural category. That game appears to have slipped past the bungling political elite. Nothing short of the political equivalent of stem re-engineering will now do.

    Restructuring depends on substantial elite consensus. Once the hegemonic forces that have captured the Nigerian state spurned the idea of peaceful restructuring, the logic of a unitary authoritarian state must play out, elections or no elections. As it unfolds every day, it is the logic of grotesque political absurdity.

    As this column never tires of pointing out, elections do not resolve fundamental aspects of the National Question. In reality, they tend to exacerbate them. With the east in permanent political upheaval, with a substantial section of the north roiling in social, spiritual and economic turmoil and with the west overtaken by an ominous quietude, something far more momentous than the customary antics of the Nigerian selectorate may be in the offing.

    One does not need to be a star gazer to come to the conclusion that the continuing destabilization of the dominant progressive forces of the South West that have collaborated with them to capture power at the centre through the instigated profusion and proliferation of presidential hopefuls will eventuate in the ascendancy of uglier forces of separation and disintegration. Strategically weakened, badly destabilized and with their back to the wall, it will amount to sheer folly to expect them to go under meekly.

    This is why the coming weeks will be very interesting for both the polity and the ruling party and its fractious components. In the elaborate game of political chess, one fundamental lesson of Politics 101 has already been taught and taken in by those on the refreshers’ course: it is going to be a heavy price to pay.

    You cannot go into alliance at the centre dominated by unreconstructed ethnic supremacists with your flanks opened and dangerously exposed. We have been through this route before and it has ended in the mutual ruination of all the contending forces. Now, the skies are darkening with intent and the vultures are circling once again.

    It is an epic of traumatic dislocation with the forces of retrogression trumping the forces of modernity all the way as they seek to return Nigeria to their antediluvian vision of an anarchic fiefdom with the regnant pillars of tradition acting as self-immolating accomplices. Look for no other compelling evidence than the grotesque behaviour of some of our traditional rulers.

    But a battle won is not the same as the war won. It is precisely at the point when they think they have pulled off this anti-modernist heist, when they think they have won, that the forces of modernity, of involuntary nationhood and the enforced nation-state paradigm will reassert themselves with uncoordinated savagery as they have done in the past.

    Contrary to the dark brooding of the frustrated but well-meaning American clergy, Nigeria, despite its current hideous mutilations, is an on-going divine experimentation, a tribute to the subversive genius of the colonial imaginary which should survive its current mutilations to emerge in a new form. But before this happens, there is going to be one hell of caterwauling in this land.

    It was at this point that the august personage sauntered in as if to break the spell of mournful brooding about the fate of Nigeria. There was something about his upright and imperious carriage which reminded one of his proud and aristocratic Ondo forebears. He was neither craven nor crestfallen. He represented the true conservative essence of the old prelacy before it succumbed to later-day spiritual merchants and sundry mercenaries.

    A devoted reader of this column and quiet admirer of the columnist, the reverend came bearing no gifts of outlandish prophecies. Such lot could not have lasted a minute with yours sincerely before being thrown out. Pious, extremely well-educated in Nigeria’s founding university and pleasantly mannered, there was something infectious about his humility and good breeding.

    After customary pleasantries, he wasted no time in directing attention to the business of the day. He had brought out a bulky file which contained previous articles culled from this column among others. After this, he handed over a note which itemised the agenda for the day. After that, the fireworks commenced and yours sincerely soon found himself crouching under the intensity of a Socratic inquisition.

    “Do you know the long bridge after Ojodu Berger?” he opened casually.

    “ Yes I do. Isn’t that the Kara Bridge?” I responded.

    “You see!!” he exclaimed. “This is how it starts. We yield space too much and too often. There is nothing like Kara Bridge. The Kara Market is right under the bridge. That bridge is over the Ogun River. In about forty years if care is not taken, that bridge would have become Kara Bridge and it will be a long bridge too near and too short”.

    Yours sincerely was pleasantly taken aback by the revelation. But the reverend was adamant. He had urged one to use his influence with the authorities to do the needful and give the bridge its proper name and commensurate assignation.

    Having secured this important psychological beachhead, the venerable was in no mood to let up the offensive. He asked whether one was not aware of what can only be described as the creeping Zangonization of Ogere. Ogere is an idyllic agrarian town which is currently experiencing a relentless influx which will change the demographic of the rural community.

    The mind immediately went to Zango Kataf, Sango Otta and other Zangos in the waiting and alarm bells started ringing. But here is the snag. In a multi-ethnic nation of violent mutual antipathies induced by politics of the belly, if your own people are sedentary and rooted by nature and culture, no force or power on earth can stop transhumance movement as long as it is not directed by enforced human transplantation as state policy.

    After this, matters took a calmer and more rewarding turn with productive exchanges on the need to address the food crisis threatening the country through the immediate resuscitation of the old farm settlement schemes and the empowerment of able-bodied people roaming the streets in bitter frustration.

    As a direct corollary, there is the urgent imperative of turning Nigeria and Africa into a global factory based on the Chinese model of cottage industrialization and the desirability of draining flood through the deployment of water tankers. The reverend gentleman also spoke to the need to demarcate the new Badagry Expressway with functioning and properly designated stops as it is the best practice in civilized climes.

    It was time to leave. The man of God did not forget to rue the current bitter fragmentation of the dominant progressive forces of the South West and the deleterious effect this could have on the old region and the polity going forward to 2023. It is turning out into a veritable Pandora Box. The reverend gentleman propounds the Latin Doctrine of Uti Possidetis Juris which favours and gives primacy to actual possession no matter how it was achieved.

    However that may pan out eventually, blessed indeed are those who give serious thoughts to the dire crisis of political, economic and spiritual underdevelopment that has roiled the country since independence. Just at the time one is about to be overwhelmed by the sheer futility of it all, a ray of light appears from nowhere to boost hope and faith on the horrifying colonial quandary that is Nigeria. It has been a great afternoon with the reverend.

  • All hail the new Ogunsua of Modakeke

    All hail the new Ogunsua of Modakeke

    The Gbedu drums of royalty are still panning out their panegyrics weeks after the proclamation. The historic town of Modakeke is still agog with festivity and merriment. The feelings of renewal and rejuvenation are palpable in the traditional quarters of ancient warriors and lapsed combatants of this feisty town.

    All hail the new Ogunsua of Modakeke, Oba Olubiyi Toriola. Forty five years after Sunday Adegeye aka Sunny Ade, the inimitable genius of Juju music, waxed an unforgettable classic in honour of one the most illustrious sons of the soil, the late Chief Olaniyan Alawode aka 007, another illustrious son has mounted the throne of his storied ancestors.

    For a land of the physically brave and no-nonsense stalwarts, this is a worthy and befitting choice. Only the strong can call out the strong. The new Oba is not a spring chicken in the arts of self-defence both verbal and otherwise. Suave, urbane and deceptively mild-mannered, the Ogunsua is an elephant skull which is not an easy luggage for children and infants alike. (Atari Ajanaku ki seru omode)

    Looking at a king’s mouth, no one would ever belief that he once suckled at his mother’s breasts. Forty years ago, yours sincerely and new Kabiyesi were both staffers at the then University of Ife. Nobody knew we were at the tail end of Nigeria’s glorious intellectual renaissance. The evenings were taken up at the famous University Staff Club by leisurely discussions and rapier-like exchanges from intellectual gladiators from all ideological and political persuasions.

    At that point in time, the new Ogunsua had begun climbing the greasy pole of royal ascension as the Ikolaba of Modakeke. Whenever Chief Toriola showed up at the Staff Club, a cheeky professor of Chemical Pathology celebrated for brilliance and irreverence would commence openly baiting the new King. “Ha, here comes Toriola,  Ikolaba of Modakeke”, he would snigger in cynical mockery to which the new Ogunsua would retort with a devastating sucker punch: “Ha well, it is a title superior to other people’s kings!” (T’oju Oba ilu elomin)

    Forty years after, the old Ikolaba has finished climbing the royal ladder and has found himself top of the pole. No matter what, there will always be something to be said for patience and perseverance. When snooper put a call through to congratulate him, the new Oba was full of royal verve and pizzazz as they say. Here is wishing Kabiyesi a happy and successful tenure.

  • Train attack hostages and Nigeria’s impotence

    Train attack hostages and Nigeria’s impotence

    Early last week, Northwest bandits released photographs of 62 hostages taken during the March 28 attack on an Abuja-Kaduna train. Later in the week, another dismal and distressing photograph of a child born in their camp was also published. The hostages naturally looked gloomy and forlorn. It is hard to tell what was on their minds as their photographs were taken, nor could they tell, assuming they could do anything about it, what propaganda purposes their photographs would be put to. As it turned out, the bandits, also described by Nigerian laws as terrorists, were much cleverer than government officials had given them credit. By releasing the photographs to the public, including that of the baby, and going by the sullen looks on the faces of the captives, the bandits knew the pictures would evoke pity and anger in the public: pity for the hostages, and anger against the government’s unfathomable impotence.

    The train bandits have kept their hostages for a little over a month and have served notice that they would happily keep them for much longer as long as the federal government refuses to strike a deal with the outlaws. The bandits have asked for their detained commanders in exchange for the hostages. The government is unwilling to accede to their requests, and have furthermore been reluctant to negotiate with the bandits or account to the public regarding the realistic and sensible steps they have taken to secure the hostages’ freedom. The tedium of a stalemate that had lasted for over a month was broken only by the bandits who seemed to appreciate news dissemination and accountability far better than the government hiding under ‘security reasons’ to clam up.

    If the government is intensifying its efforts to secure the release of the hostages, it has not said a word to reassure the families of the victims that sooner than later, their loved ones would return home. It is not as if the assurances matter much in the face of their lethargy, but anything to give hope would have been cherished by the distraught families. Assurances or not, however, the hostages and their families must be wondering in the back of their minds whether their fate would not resemble that of previous hostages, such as the more than 100 Chibok schoolgirls taken hostage along with more than 100 others in 2014, whose cause the government has resigned itself to watching from the sidelines, almost as onlookers. It does not jeopardise national security or the security of the abandoned Chibok schoolgirls should the government get one or many task forces to give periodic briefing to the public on the administration’s efforts to secure the release of the schoolgirls. The sad conclusion is that there is no task force anywhere. The girls are either dead or have been forced into eternal servitude.

    The Northwest bandits who organised the train attack in March seem more responsive than the government has been flexible. A few days after the attack, they released one of the hostages, the Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Alwan Hassan, as they said, on compassionate grounds. He was released on account of his age and in the spirit of Ramadan. Other accounts insist the bandits collected N100m as ransom. The other accounts are probably more plausible. For if anyone should be released in the spirit of Ramadan and on account of frailty, surely the 41 women, two of whom were pregnant, and five children would qualify. However, last week, the bandits still insisted that they were uninterested in ransom in preference for a deal leading to the release of their detained commanders. Perhaps a deal would be reached soon since the hostages are nearer home in Abuja and Kaduna than the Chibok schoolgirls and the Dapchi schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu, callously and scandalously left behind when the government bought the release of her schoolmates a month later in March 2018.

    It takes a conscienceless nation to be impervious to the betrayal it has orchestrated against so many of its young people. It thought nothing of betraying its ageing population. Therein is the dilemma of a nation. No one is immune to being taken hostage, and no one is immune to being betrayed by the country. Since hostage taking began, the government’s response has been both shambolic and inexplicable. Reports concerning the train attack victims indicate that the injured among them received medical attention from qualified doctors, and provisions, including sex workers, continue to stream into the bandits’ camps. As Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai also indicated recently to the chagrin of security agencies, the government knows where the bandits are and even eavesdrops on their conversations. Yet, the government has neither planned an operation against the bandits nor put them under pressure. All they say is that carpet bombing the bandits would lead to collateral damage. But is carpet bombing the only solution? Is the Nigerian government so isolated from the rest of the world not to know that serious nations deploy Special Forces for these kinds of raids? Nigeria has trained Special Forces; what are they used for that they cannot be spared to go after the bandits and knock them out of action?

    The heart bleeds to see the photographs of the train attack hostages and the little baby born in the bandits’ camp. Indeed, Nigerians groan. Does the government experience the pain families whose loved ones have been abducted feel? Hundreds have lost their lives, and hundreds more are traumatised for life. Yet, the government has appeared as helpless as the public, leading to allegations of complicity on the part of government, or the reluctant conclusion by millions of Nigerians that indeed the country is experiencing wanton state failure in the classical sense. What is more deeply worrisome is that there does not appear to be any way out: no initiative worth applauding, and no indication that the national trauma would end soon. Worse, every Nigerian now lives and travels in dread of being abducted from their homes or on the highways as their government shuffles their feet and snoozes away.

    Ayo Adebanjo’s hysteria

    Afenifere leader Ayo Adebanjo has consistently maintained that the presidency should be zoned to the South, in particular to the Southeast in order for justice, fair play and equity to prevail. He is at liberty to advocate any position he likes. He is not alone. The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and Middle Belt Forum (MBF) also think that the presidency be conceded to the Igbo of the Southeast. For reasons not easily explicable, Chief Adebanjo’s voice is the loudest in this campaign. But the country is unlikely to heed their call, however. Regardless of the outcome of the 2023 general election, the Afenifere leader will continue to maintain his position. He will not abandon it. Though he prefers that no election be held until the country is restructured, he is, however, realistic enough to know that one man or a few groups cannot hold the country down.

    Restructuring is highly desirable, and if the country is to become stable and achieve phenomenal progress, it must restructure either before the polls or after. Restructuring is indispensable to the future of Nigeria. The prevailing unitary government, which masquerades as a federal government, is incapable of propelling Nigeria to the height its human and material resources have destined it. Despite the logic of the restructuring appeal, the other plank of Chief Adebanjo’s advocacy – rotating the presidency to the Igbo – is untenable.

    There was in fact never a time the presidency was rotated to any specific ethnic group. In 1999, not all political parties agreed to present a south-westerner as presidential candidate. That the two leading parties of PDP and Alliance for Democracy (AD) agreed to rotate was simply compensation for the truncation of the MKO Abiola Social Democratic Party (SDP) victory in 1993. Since then, expediency and personal interest have taken over the parties’ nomination process. It will take tectonic shifts to engineer a similar coincidence. Chief Adebanjo is, therefore, tilting at windmills. The Igbo are of course not unqualified to contest the presidency, but the Southeast will have to first produce an aspirant the rest of the country can trust. Relying on the campaigns of Chief Adebanjo and others like him to achieve that equity is futile.

  • Four keys to good s3xual turnaround

    Four keys to good s3xual turnaround

    THE desired marriage is not complete without an adequate plan for a better and fulfilled s3x life. S3x remains a potent tool to forge last ing relationships among couples and a good s3x life, no doubt, will certainly help prepare couples to face challenges.

    For couples whose s3x lives have taken a dip, this article presents another opportunity to rediscover the magic that once kept your hearts fluttering with joy. The cheery news is that great s3x is still attainable, as always. In addition, in order to make this possible, you will need to consider the following tips:

    Make it hot

    Do you know that the hotter the passion, the better the s3x, there are different ways to tell your partner how much you enjoy sleeping with him or her? Sometimes the way you talk about s3x or demand it; the way you respond to your partner’s advances or the things you do to your body in order to look good could go a long way toward keeping the passion in your relationship hot and sizzling. When there is a mutual desire to jump into each other’s arms and roll together in the hay, a couple would always be willing to go the extra mile to see to ensure that they both had the best of s3x. Therefore, flirting with your spouse will not hurt. There is nothing wrong with flirting with your spouse. If anything, flirting could spice up your s3x life a little.

    If you are the wife, you should form a habit of flirting with your husband all the time. When you put on your alluring airs, you are indirectly telling your husband that you are always interested in his s3xual prowess. I tell you, men often react positively to this kind of attitude.

    The way you look at your partner is also very important. This is because glances could generate an exchange of s3xual energy. Dressing seductively could eventually get your husband fired up s3xually, even though he would pretend initially not to notice. Any woman that is serious about winning the attention of her husband ought to keep a s3xy kit handy and make sure that all the items are available anytime, anywhere and at strategic points in the car, kitchen, and bedsides.

    Most men are frequently under s3xual pressure and an average man thinks about s3x at least five times in a day. It does not matter whether you are newlywed, you are a nursing mother, or you are a menopausal bride. What matters is that you must treat the nuptial bed like a bona fide business or make it one. You can even be a little mysterious s3xually. The fact is that if a wife arouses her husband’s curiosity, it is guaranteed that the man will always be back against all odds.

    Statistically, an average man gets bored easily s3xually. Voice your s3xual fantasy; practice it with your spouse.

    It is not strange to create s3xual scenarios in your mind. However, the best way to relive these scenarios is to share them with your spouse and practice them with her. Experts say all living beings have s3xual fantasies, in which an individual imagines himself enjoying erotic moments with his or her spouse in strange places at strange times and so on. Sharing s3xual fantasies with your partners is a way of heightening and intensifying erotic potential by showing your spouse possibilities that he or she has never considered before. In turn, this will open the door to a lifetime of s3xual ecstasy.

    Most times, spouses underestimate how powerful they become if they can fulfil their partner’s unrequited fantasy. The point is that if your partner has been dreaming about something all of his/her life, and then you help make it a reality for him, the chances are that you will definitely inspire him to display incredible loyalty and devotion to you. The advantage of these fantasies is that they give room to aggression, assertiveness, unpredictability, and impulsiveness that creates fun, excitement, and expectations; which in turn eliminates boredom. Bear in mind that an average human being loves changes and dislikes monotony, even in marriage.

    Giving your spouse great s3x is important

    Great s3x is like a basic chemical reaction between two married lovers. Love and great s3x are like chips and ketchup. Giving your spouse great s3x is like pledging your eternal allegiance to him or her. It is like vowing to make sure that he or she experiences orgasm for the rest of your life, to create a lasting s3xual atmosphere and environment, and to ensure that his or her desire comes first.

    Although most men dislike longish foreplay, they are aware of the fact that control is essential during lovemaking and that most women think wonderful s3x should be full of slow foreplay and should last long.

    Remember that the best s3x lasts between seven and thirteen minutes. According to a study published in a journal, medical researchers who surveyed people’s bedroom preferences say two minutes is too short, three to seven minutes is adequate and 30 minutes is too long.

    Good s3x frees couples from stress; s3x will be sweeter when stress is out of the way. How well you sleep will determine whether you will enjoy stress-free s3x or not. Bad sleep plus bad mood equals poor s3x. That is the equation.

    The best thing is to go to bed at the same time every day and to avoid watching the TV or listening to the radio just before bedtime, as they stimulate your brain and will keep you awake. It is not advisable to eat heavily before going to bed at night or your digestive system will do overtime work that will keep you awake for a longer time than necessary.

    Take a good bath. Everyone knows that a cold shower starts you off to good sleep and even in the morning, for good s3x. When couples are smelly and repulsive it is, actually, the sticky sweat that produces such and the simple antidote is a good bath.

    It is advisable to dim the light when you are about to sleep because it will help put your eyes to rest and put your body on wind-down mode for better s3x, hours after. Then stay off s3x for a while, in order to create freshness and sparkle in your relationship, both of you can decide to stay off s3x for a period of time. Indeed, a ‘s3x-fast’ could be helpful, in terms of preserving the warmth in the bedroom and affection. Besides, it will revitalize, restore and create a reconnecting s3xual experience.

    Exploring partner’s body turn marriage around

    Recently I met a certain gentleman named Mr. Collins who told me that he was having a little problem satisfying his wife in bed and could not help sharing it with me. He said, “I love my wife very much. My problem with her is that she hardly enjoys s3x with me, except it involves oral foreplay. When I refuse to do it, she accuses me of being selfish. I have observed that without oral foreplay, she would not reach her s3xual peak.

    “Although I have done this in the past, I won’t say that I liked it. I am afraid that if I continue, it might affect my health. What is the likely effect on me and what do you recommend? This whole thing is threatening to tear my marriage apart if l fails to find an urgent solution to it.

    “Secondly, I am in my early Fifties and I hardly stay up to thirty seconds before ejaculating. Most of the time, I would have finished having mine before my wife began to enjoy the act. This is another problem that is threatening my marriage. What type of drugs or cream would you recommend that can enable me to stay long enough to satisfy her in bed?”

    Since Mr. Collins seemed quite anxious to find a solution to this problem and he did not appear to be in a hurry to leave until I had sorted him out, l had no other choice than to lead him to an eatery nearby where we spent some time talking about it.

    Most married men often make the error of assuming that as long as they can ejaculate within 30 seconds of penetrative s3x, they have performed the extraordinary feat. What they do not know is that 30 seconds is too short a time to give a normal woman the pleasure that she deserves in bed. Certainly, no sincere and genuine woman will tell you that she is able to achieve or gasm in just half a minute of s3xual intercourse.

    It was obvious that Collins sincerely wished to please his wife and his inability to stay long enough to guide her to climax was no fault of his own. However, I had to let him know that it was the root of his marital crisis. Every woman needs her man to hang on tight until she achieves climax, that is the way a woman is made.

    The truth is that, like most men, Collins did not know enough about his s3xual responsibilities. He was ignorant of the fact that it was a man’s duty to please his wife in bed and men who fail to do this stand the risk of being treated with disrespect by their wives.

    I had to explain to him that the reason why his wife’s organ was unusually tight was that she was not properly lubricated before penetration. All that he needed to do to get her wet and ready for actual penetration was to indulge in extensive foreplay.

    Of course, the real problem was not that Mrs. Collins’ organ was too tight for her husband; it was because he had become too sensitive and easily aroused by the prospect of having s3xual intercourse. By the thrusting in and out of the woman in this condition, any man would most certainly ejaculate within a very short time. Such a condition is called Premature Ejaculation, which is usually a sequel to CPR. CPR normally causes ejaculation within 30 seconds and women need more than 30 seconds of action to climax.

    Although he did not know it, like most other average people, Collins was actually afflicted by Chronic Prostatitis (CPR).

    The bitter truth is that Collins and others who suffer from this ailment are literally denying their wives the best s3x that is due to them. The reason why Mrs. Collins is reacting negatively is that her man leaves her s3xually unfulfilled after each bout of lovemaking. Since she hardly understands what is happening to him, she thinks that he is deliberately denying her s3xual enjoyment.

    Considering the fact that Mrs. Collins even went further to teach her husband what to do, it won’t be out of point to conclude that she has done her best to find a solution to the problem. However, it seems that her husband, obviously dulled by the fear of contracting a disease, is slow to appreciate her sacrifice.

    I have said before that married couples that are keen on saving their marriages ought to take pleasure in exploring each other’s bodies extensively before launching off into penetrative s3x. Since men naturally respond faster to s3xual stimuli than women do, not many of them know how to satisfy their wives in bed. Such men will have to learn to slow down a bit. Secondly, they must understand that indulging in foreplay is a fundamental prerequisite for a fulfilled marital life.

    Unfortunately, most men do not feel any need for foreplay. However, their women do and they need it as they would need a life jacket while at sea.

    Regarding oral s3x, the truth is that nobody will be hurt if a man decides to tickle his wife’s s3x glands by performing oral s3x on her. If both of them are faithful to each other and do not indulge in extramarital affairs, there is no cause for alarm. However, when they both keep other lovers, they stand the risk of contracting syphilis and herpes or just any other s3xually transmitted disease. Apart from that, couples need to decide if they would introduce oral s3x as part of the menu or not.

    My final words to Mr. Collins and other men afflicted by chronic prostatis: get treated so you can last longer, discuss things with your wife and apologise for your s3xual inadequacy. Since you, both need to fully understand the dynamics of s3x, see a counsellor/ therapist, doctor or s3xologist.

  • Nod to repeat

    Nod to repeat

    • Unlike a former governor, Sanwo-Olu got the GAC’s approval for second term due to performance and not because he failed

    Give it to him, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State deserves the endorsement for second term that the Governance Advisory Council (GAC) gave him on April 18. The GAC is the highest decision-making body of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state. Sanwo-Olu’s chief press secretary, Gboyega Akosile, made this known in a social media post: “Breaking news: Lagos GAC gives nod to Governor @jidesanwoolu’s second term bid. The Governance Advisory Council at a meeting  in Lagos today gave pass mark to Sanwo-Olu for staying through to the developmental agenda of Lagos.

    Congratulations dear boss!”

    The endorsement has put paid to the speculation that the GAC had its eyes on another candidate for the party’s ticket in next year’ governorship election.

    Unlike a former governor, however, Sanwo-Olu earned the endorsement. After all, as they say, the reward for hard work is more work. His is the result of the good works he has been doing since his swearing in on May 29, 2019. He is therefore not in the same category with that former governor whose father asked that his son (the governor) be allowed “to repeat” (have a second term) because he failed to perform!

    It was “breaking news”, indeed. Until the tenure of Sanwo-Olu’s predecessor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the question of second term for governor in Lagos had always been a settled matter, at least since the country’s return to civil rule on May 29, 1999. This has remained so because the ruling party has succeeded in maintaining its strong hold on the state’s political levers since that day when Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu became the first governor in the new dispensation. Indeed, if anything, Tinubu has ensured that the state remains in the firm grip of the (now) APC right through all the political party name changes that the ruling party in the state has witnessed in the last 23 years.

    With Sanwo-Olu’s endorsement, only Ambode missed the second shot at the governorship in the state in the last 23 years. So, if Akosile referred to his boss’s endorsement as “breaking news”, he was right. If he had said that before the Ambode years, people would have been wondering whether he knew news. Or, what could have been breaking about something that was more or less routine?

    Again, the news qualified for “breaking” news because of the speculation that made the rounds early this year, that the GAC had been shopping for a replacement for Sanwo-Olu, a thing the council had dismissed several weeks before. Indeed, as far back as January, the GAC had made it abundantly clear that it had “not settled for any person to replace Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu as governor. Therefore, it is absolutely false and preposterous for anyone  to suggest so.” Indeed, the council had harsh words for those it considered ‘merchants of hate’ peddling the satanic rumour.

    This, ordinarily, should have settled the question of Sanwo-Olu’s endorsement. But things don’t always work like that in Nigerian politics. It is a long time between January and April. Anything could have happened within the period. Indeed, it is instructive that that was the way Ambode’s problem began. What started like a child’s play eventually ended up in the former governor losing his second term bid. The difference this time around, though, is that Sanwo-Olu did not allow that banana peel situation to repeat itself.

    Sanwo-Olu, even despite his modest achievements left the decision to return him for second term in the hands of the people. He knows it is not about achievements alone. Although the governor refused to state if he would seek reelection or not, he had told Channels Television in January, “I think we are doing a very good job” adding that “If I dare say so, I think that the citizens know what it is they will be missing if they don’t let us continue to wrap up all the things  we are doing.” He continued: “But for me, it is about ensuring that these four years that I have promised my citizens I put every bit of my sweat into it.” He said something that interests me and gave me the impression that he truly did not want what happened to his predecessor to happen to him. “I will ask, I will consult; citizens, how do you see it? That’s how you get it done. Keep your focus on, try and finish very strong.”

    I know I had cause to ask some of my friends in the Ambode government whether they had any meetings where some of the decisions taken then were thrashed out. Like the simultaneous construction works on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Airport Road and the Pen Cinema axis. Very good projects if you ask me, but they should have been taken one after the other because what some of us feared then was what happened later: chaotic traffic in that axis due to lack of alternative routes. If the construction works had been thoroughly debated, it is not unlikely someone would have pointed out this implication right from the time the projects were on the drawing board.

    I must confess I am seeing much of the fact that Lagos is still work in progress, with various projects here and there, particularly road projects. The Agege axis in the state is witnessing a massive urban renewal, especially with regard to inner roads. The Akowonjo Road is also being reconstructed, with befitting drainages on both sides. Roads that had never been tarred are being tarred, with drainages provided in many cases. Some other persons have reported similar activities in their areas of the state.

    Although things are happening in several sectors in the state, I am however going to focus more on roads in particular, and transportation, generally, on which the state government is committing huge resources. Here, one cannot but start with the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Redline Project Phase 1.

    The Red line is a 37 km North-South rail route that proposes to run on the same alignment with the Standard Gauge Rail system being constructed by the Federal Government, as part of the national rail network. It would be the first metro system in West Africa and the first of its kind in Nigeria.

    It is expected to run from Agbado to Marina, with 11 proposed stations at Agbado, Iju, Agege, Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Yaba, Ebute Meta, Ido, Ebute Ero, and Marina. The project is a part of the state government’s vision of an integrated multimodal transportation system. One can only imagine how far Lagos State would have gone on the development index if the then Buhari military government had not truncated the state’s metro line project initiated by the Jakande administration in the 1980s. One major detriment of the backward unitary system foisted on us by military adventurists! We must be wary of their civilian successors whose utterances and activities are also antithetical to civilisation and modernisation.

    With a population of about 27 million residents, Lagos is the most densely populated city in Africa. Indeed, it is projected that by 2025 it would be one of the five most populous cities in the world. This is where the redline project comes handy. The train will transport some 500,000 passengers daily. This would naturally impact on the number of passengers scrambling to enter the few available transportation alternatives available today. That is not all. Transporters using rickety commercial buses on the roads too would not need any Vehicle Inspection Officer to tell them that market has closed. It would also impact on security, as ‘one chance’ thieves and other criminals would have to relocate or change from their sinful ways. Even ‘Okada’ riders that have become lords on the roads, violating every known civilisation, would know that something has hit them.

    As with most construction works, the state government has had to divert traffic on the routes the red line rail would pass through, including the Ikeja Overpass, Yaba Overpass and Oyingbo Overpass. Expectedly, this traffic diversion has had to cause motorists and commuters some hardship while it lasted, the sweet part of the story is that such pains have to be endured to have a better traffic situation that would be beneficial to all in the long run. Moreover, the state government has made some arrangements to ease the pains.

    Hopefully, as the governor promised, the Red Line would begin operations by the last quarter of this year, or first quarter of 2023. I cannot wait to see this project take off. I can imagine how anxiously the governor and other critical stakeholders in the state would also be anticipating its commencement.

    If Lagos had so significantly changed for better between 1999 and now, we owe a substantial part of the gratitude to the fact that it has remained in the firm grips of the progressives, from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to the present APC. Continuity is therefore not a problem in Lagos. Indeed, if there is a place where continuity has paid off, Lagos presents a good example. This credit goes naturally to Tinubu.

    But there is still a lot to be done. I have had cause to mention street lights that have not worked for years. I used to mention that of Capitol Road in Agege. Mercifully, they are working today. But Fatai Atere has been in darkness long before the expiration of Ambode’s tenure. It is still in darkness almost three years to the end of Sanwo-Olu’s first term. I do not think it should be so. Once such facilities have been provided, they should be sustained. Adding more when some of those already provided are not functioning, for me, is not the way to go. And this is not only about Fatai Atere. Ditto all other areas where street lights have packed up, particularly the very critical parts of the state, if only for security reason. The same applies to traffic lights.

    Moreover, I have observed several times that drainages are cleared almost regularly, particularly at the onset of the rainy season, the garbage from the drains is often left beside the roads for long. In the end, much of it is flushed back into the drainages when rain falls, thereby making nonsense of the initial clearing. This should be packed away immediately for optimum results. Waiting for it to dry before packing is sometimes counterproductive. I have also been harping on this street that links Isheri-Oshun with Ten Acres or White Sand. It has remained in a terrible state for years, despite the rising population of the area.

    Lest I forget, those two defective skyscrapers under construction in Ikoyi should not be allowed to come down on their own, injuring or killing people in the process. If that happens, all the angels in heaven testifying for the state government would achieve nothing. Prevention is better than cure.

    All said, Governor Sanwo-Olu has to realise that he still has Lagosians to contend with at the polls next year. The GAC endorsement is only one of the hurdles. This is not the time for him to rest on his oars. It is time for more work. This is especially so as Lagos keeps receiving unusual in-flocks of people, either from banditry-infested parts of the country, or from other states where governors think it is the responsibility of Lagos to cater to the needs of all.

  • SNAPSONG 155

    SNAPSONG 155

    Tell the wind

    To lower its saddle

    Jump right in

    And ride the skies

     

     

    Surprise your space

    Swing swift and steady

    Through the clamour of the clouds

    Tease the moon, befriend the stars

     

     

    Look to the east

    And the rising sun

    And the west’s vast valedictory

    For its setting song

     

     

    Look up and up

    And comb the clouds

    Any bearded Patriarch

    And his rigid rules???

     

     

    Then direct your gaze

    To the world below

    Its perilous promise

    And amorphous beauty

     

     

    Out-sing the proto-call

    Of your dizzying heights

    Invest your feet

    In the divinity of the Earth

  • 2023: Jonathan stirs up a storm

    WHEN ex-president Goodluck Jonathan last Friday received supporters urging him to run for president in 2023, the media reported him as being tentative about the prospect. Where they got their tentativeness is unclear. Though he declared that he was still consulting, and that the process, whatever that process is, is ongoing, it was abundantly clear that up to that point he had made up his mind to run. Whether the All Progressives Congress (APC) coaxing him to enter the race is ready for him is a different thing altogether. Typical of the exuberant caution of Dr Jonathan, he wants full assurance he will get the nomination. That assurance will not come, given the calibre of those also eyeing the same nomination. There will be no consensus, and even the indirect primary the party is adopting in electing a standard-bearer cannot be casually executed.

    What remains for Dr Jonathan to fully enter the race is whether he can get enough assurance. Last year, caretaker committee members of the APC sold themselves the boondoggle of drafting the former president into the race. In their presumption, they were convinced that should the North, as monolithically conceived in their imagination, be compelled to relinquish power in 2023, it would be ideal to find a man constitutionally barred from seeking reelection in 2027. Dr Jonathan, they suppose, fits the bill. Ambitious, immoral, conspiratorial, and indifferent to the calamity they had predisposed the country to by their incompetence and lack of vision, the interim APC leaders led by their former caretaker chairman, Mai Mala Buni, embarked on exploratory discussions with the ex-president at his home in Bayelsa State and met him at his ingratiating best. What began as a casual exercise in political chicanery soon blossomed into full-scale conspiracy to leash the presidency to the apron strings of the North.

    Dr Jonathan is sold on the idea of retaking the presidency after having chalked six uneventful and ruthful years occupying the office. He is not consulting, and there is no ongoing process; he is only waiting for the green light from those in and outside the corridors of power who inspired the conspiracy and have promised him the office, and are pulling all stops to sell the idea of getting the North to make the self-seeking sacrifice of letting go of the presidency for a little while. It is not that they liked the former president, or thought highly of his leadership skills, despite their blandishments, or believe that in the unlikely event of his return, he would reset the country he and his unworthy successors had damaged almost beyond belief. They simply visualise him as a simple and willing tool in their noxious and self-serving power game.

    Consider Dr Jonathan’s response to his supporters who thronged his office in Abuja on Friday, and see whether there was anything subtle or philosophical about it. They had assailed him with their simplistic interpretation of the consumer price index, and had accompanied their analysis with an apology couched deprecatingly against the ruling party, yes, the same APC they accused of destroying the country. Finally they encouraged him to enter the race. But he can only enter the race on the APC platform, for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had taken the measure of him and found him to be wanting on all scores. The APC leaders, caretaker and elected alike, many now believe, may have inveigled the presidency to go along with the conspiracy, for there is a lot of vacuity in the corridors of power.

    Aware of this conspiracy, eager to submit to the lure of office, and desirous of returning to the monarchical Nigerian presidency of his infatuation, Dr Jonathan made a few facetious remarks and ended up betraying his ultimate intentions. Said he: “Yes, you are calling me to come and declare for the next election. I cannot tell you I’m declaring; the political process is ongoing. Just watch out. But the key role you (youths) must play is to pray that Nigeria gets somebody that carries the young people along and somebody that can also work very hard to see that some of the problems we see are dealt with by the government, and I believe that collectively we will work together.” Clearly, the somebody he asked his supporters to pray for is of course his humble self. And when he declared summarily that ‘we will work together’, it signposted not only what he had in the dark recesses of his mind but also his readiness to be involved. It will be defamatory to conclude that he has no programme or fresh ideas to run the country, but like many other aspiring leaders who pay researchers and policy wonks to cobble together a workable paper by which to govern, he will easily mask his lack of preparedness, or more ominously his idiosyncratic lack of conviction about anything, with meaningless spade work.

    Dr Jonathan holds a PhD, and it is assumed he can think. He may not have the character to prevent himself from being led by the nose, but he at least knows when he is being used. He is going along with the Governor Buni-inspired plot because should they deliver on their promise to return him to the State House, it would salve the wound he sustained when he was rejected ignominiously in 2015, in the same manner his successor hankered after the presidency just to obliterate the shame of the 1985 coup. Neither he nor his successor has fundamental programmes or plans to remake the country, and both are daydreamers with no capacity to fathom or shape the rubric of their dreams. Reassuringly for both, the plot to return the former president to the office from which he was disgraced seven years ago has nothing to do with programmes or plans, with competence or character, or with substance or any fealty to party or country.

    It took about 18 months to get the scheming caretaker committee of the APC to midwife a reluctant convention; no one knows how former governor Abdullahi Adamu, the 75-year-old new party chairman foisted on the party through a disingenuous consensus, would fare. Like his predecessors, he will be at the beck and call of the presidency; but since the presidency is amorphous, reflecting the interest and worldview of whomever in the cabal has the upper hand at any time, Mr Adamu’s brief will be an inconsistent portraiture of the push and pull that have undermined the Buhari presidency and unnerved the country as a whole. In one of his self-deprecating remarks when asked whom he would back as his successor, President Buhari blithely said that he would play his cards close to his chest lest political vultures gather to destroy his choice. Take that remark with a pinch of salt. It wasn’t until the last four weeks of the race for the APC chairmanship that the president was sold on the candidacy of Mr Adamu. The jury is still out on whom the president will back for the presidency. He is opened to deft and Machiavellian persuasion.

    The factors that will influence the president’s support are much more nuanced. Given his political trajectory, especially how vulnerable and exposed he became after his former chief of staff Abba Kyari died, and how often vacillating, sometimes simplistic and alarmingly insular his administration’s policies are, Nigerians should not expect any substantialness to the ideas that would shape his choice. The choice would be whimsical, probably coloured by ethnic and religious factors, and definitely not liberal, philosophical or inspiring. The APC caretaker committee and governors ceded to the president the right to produce the party’s chairman on March 26, and his choice was not elevating; but they will not cede the right to nominate the party’s presidential standard-bearer to him this time. There is nothing to suggest they will make the right choice, but they will at least retain that right.

    In sanctioning the ongoing manipulations in the party to produce their nominee, the APC appears to take for granted that since they are the dominant party, all 40m-strong hypothetically, winning the next presidential poll is as good as their candidate. They are grossly mistaken. The PDP is still a potent rival, waiting in the wings to cause a lot of havoc. Disaffection, as the PDP itself proved in 2014-2015, has a corrosive effect on a party’s chances. The presidency may also have a blank mind, which they interpret to be open and democratic, towards the whole process, but there is no excuse for not infusing noble foundations and considerations into how the next presidential candidate is produced, and who that candidate is. If, as some say, everything is pointing to the fact that the North is unprepared to relinquish power, it is without precedent and shorn of morality and nobility. In 2007, neither the outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo nor the then ruling party needed to consult anyone regarding power rotation given the delicate nature of Nigerian unity and politics. If it is taking so much persuasion to get the APC to behave rationally, it is an indication that the party is plotting to qualify that surrender with a one-term president, and also a blot on the reputation of the president that he has neither tried to shape the ideas that would guide that choice, nor insist on a wholesome, democratic process.

    The mere thought of visualising Dr Jonathan’s return to the presidency in 2023, as the self-centred Mr Buni and his accomplices in Aso Villa had contemplated to everyone’s chagrin, portrays APC leaders and the presidency as unpatriotic. The former president was rejected at the polls in 2015 for the obvious reasons of incompetence, despite his administration’s self-gratifying recalibration of the economy, indecisiveness, corruption, lethargy, and divisiveness. That his successor has been less inspiring, to put it mildly, does not legitimise that objectionable period and the six retrogressive years that prompted the battle cry of ‘anyone but Jonathan’. Money was plentiful in the Jonathan years, and the domestic and global environments were more clement than today. Now, Nigeria is effectively in debt peonage, to which the Buhari administration has no answer but to seek more loans, and the country is in the throes of collapse buffeted by insecurity and chaos on all fronts. Dr Jonathan’s response to less complex national problems was uninspiring, slow and befuddling. He will perform even more catastrophically in the event of a return to the presidency.

    Overall, the Jonathan draft will blow up in the party’s face. It will not gain traction. The assurance he wants will not come, not from a party chary of making grosser mistakes than it had already made, and not from a president whose vacillations have thrown the party into a quandary, a president whose mind is wearied by national problems and the manipulations and scheming around him. Dr Jonathan was scorned for his superficiality and lack of firmness; the mere thought by him of returning to the office he humiliated with inadequate leadership years ago shows that the poor impression many have of him is probably an overestimation. Worse, it is shocking that having taken the throne as elected PDP president, a fact that does not seem to stir or trouble his conscience, it is even more troubling and nauseous that APC leaders in the party and Aso Villa do not feel a sense of outrage that they are propping a former PDP president to become APC president.

    NSA, el-Rufai and anti-banditry war

    ON the same Thursday he was quoted as rebuking the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, for being too voluble and divulging classified security information, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, rebutted the story, claimed he was misquoted, and went on to describe the governor as exemplary. The news a day later was not simply the remark the NSA was quoted as making nor the rebuttal hours later after its import had sunk in; the story was how words easily develop unintended consequences or are frequently and easily misconstrued. The remark and the rebuttal generated a furious kerfuffle, but it is remarkable how the mainstream media either missed the real story of the day or downplayed it.

    Start with the rebuttal issued by the Head, Strategic Communication, Office of the National Security Adviser, Zakari Usman. According to him, “The reports quoted the National Security Adviser Maj. General Babagana Monguno (Retd) out of context. The NSA did not at anytime during the briefing criticise and accuse Governor Nasir El Rufai of divulging classified information as reported. These reports are verifiably false, sensational and misleading. For the avoidance of doubt, the NSA was not referring to Governor Nasir el-Rufai in his comment on the protection of sensitive operational information. The NSA while responding to a question had observed that it portends a danger to security operations if indeed it was true that security agents are in the habit of revealing unauthorised sensitive operational details as alleged…”

    It is true that Gen Monguno never accused the Kaduna governor of ‘divulging security information’, a crime the media inexplicably suggested by their headlines but declined to include in their stories. Perhaps compromising (security information) would have served more appropriately in place of divulging. Only the headline writers could explain why they took such lexical and journalistic liberty. Sensational? Misleading? Verifiably false? Well, these are swollen words deployed to capture the malfeasance of the headline writers. However, they were not too far from capturing the idea expressed by the NSA when, together with the Defence minister, Bashir Magashi, and Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, he briefed the media on the more than three hours meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) headed by President Buhari.

    So what did Gen Monguno say? Hear him as he responded to a question that Thursday: “Governor Nasir el-Rufai spoke about the security agencies, saying we know who they (bandits) are, where they are. Again, that is the danger. When you start talking too much, you give away a lot. Now, even if they say we know where they are, that in itself is already a problem. Because once you say it, whether it is true or false, the person who has your people in captivity will move to another location. It’s just as simple as that. So, sometimes it is best to just keep silent; mum is the word.” His impression of the volubility of the governor is unmistakable, as expressed in ‘talking too much’. But does ‘giving away a lot’ amount to divulgement? Perhaps a dictionary might be of some help. Divulge is defined as “make known to the public information that was previously known only to a few people or that was meant to be kept a secret.” That, alas, was what the governor did.

    But the problem, it seems, is contained in the Nigerian impression of the word which is taken as meaning something someone does deliberately. There are thousands of English words in Nigeria, like indictment, for instance, which have acquired far more vigorous and pugnacious meaning than the dictionary intends. Mallam el-Rufai obviously talked too much, and still does, often nineteen to the dozen, but he did not mean to knowingly disclose sensitive information capable of compromising security operations, especially being an apostle of blitzkrieg, collateral damage be damned. It is just as well, however, that Gen Monguno walked back his sarcasm. On the subject of insecurity, the public will likely be on the side of Mallam el-Rufai. In their view, the governor would not talk too much if security officers had done their work. And if he talked too much, and the bandits shifted base, security agents should not be so flat-footed that they cannot find the bandits’ new base.

  • Buhari reinterprets Boko Haram

    It was not always clear that President Muhammadu Buhari had an excellent grasp of what Boko Haram denoted in Nigeria. His vacillations on the sect, particularly before and soon after he assumed office, gave rise to a number of speculations regarding the genuineness of his claims against it. Some perceived him to be dead set against the sect, and others think he would have to be dragged along to lead the fight against the group. His statements on the sect over the years, which have not been dissimilar to his perspectives on the impunity and rampage of herdsmen in Nigeria, have sadly left the public confused with the same severity as he is unclear in his mind what he makes of the sect. His reinterpretation of the sect’s raison d’être when he hosted the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karin Ahmad Khan, at the State House, Abuja, last week puzzled many observers and left them scratching their heads what to make of his analysis.

    Referring to Boko Haram, the president said magisterially, “God is justice. You can’t kill innocent people, and shout Allah Akbar (God is great). It’s either you don’t know that God at all, or you are simply being stupid. To say Western education is unacceptable (Haram) is very fraudulent. That is why we are fighting them, and educating the people. And we are succeeding a lot. We came to office, when things were very bad, but we are educating the people. Education is fundamental. Religion and ethnicity are out of it. Some people have just made it a lifestyle to cause confusion, destruction and death.” Ignore the president’s comparisons about what he met on the ground and what he has achieved so far in terms of fighting the sect, what is more relevant now is his view of what Boko Haram stands for. It seemed at first that newspapers who headlined their story suggesting that the president divested Boko Haram of ethnic and religious agenda exaggerated. A close reading of the president’s statement, however, absolves the editors of sensationalism.

    But in arguing that “religion and ethnicity (were) out of it”, the president seemed to admit by his nebulousness that he feared that his argument about the sect’s divested motives was buncombe. The fact is that the president needed to say something definitive about Boko Haram before the ICC chief prosecutor, something that would rebut what he thinks are unfair suggestions of his government’s insensitivity in the differential application of force to separatist agitators in Nigeria and complicity in the Boko Haram ideology. In fact he goes ahead uncharacteristically to use trenchant and scurrilous language to describe the sect’s groupthink. Killers in the mould of Boko Haram, said the president angrily, were either stupid or ignorant and fraudulent. The ICC prosecutor would leave the president convinced that the Nigerian presidency is not dilatory in the fight against Boko Haram as many had seemed to suggest.

    In the early years of the Boko Haram insurgency, there was much misunderstanding about the ideology of the sect. Was it Islamic ideology or just plain nihilism? The president now seems to think that there is nothing religious or ethnic about the sect’s objectives. At last, this is some clarity from the president, of course in addition to the justificatory name-calling he indulged in against the sect. However, it is unclear that the president, after so many years of dithering and opacity on Boko Haram, has given the subject proper thought, let alone understanding. By limiting its operations and militancy to the Northeast essentially, Boko Haram appeared to insinuate ethnicity into its objectives, probably aware that as a Kanuri-based militant group it was unlikely to succeed in railroading the equally largely Islamic Northwest into insurgency. Centuries earlier, the Northwest (read Sokoto Caliphate) had also been unable to impose political Islam on the Kanem-Bornu axis. The ethnic undergird to Boko Haram may be tenuous, it is, however, inaccurate to say it does not exist at all.

    There is less ambiguity as to whether Boko Haram possesses and operates Islamic ideology. Both in its founding and modus operandi, the sect had always described itself as an Islamic group. Its incendiary rhetoric that justified violence and brutality as well as tried to portray the moral conundrums faced by Muslims in the Northeast and Nigeria was and remains fully Islamic, in fact jihadist-Salafism. The Northwest may see itself as puritan adherents of Sunnism, almost to the exclusion of any other variance of Sunnism, but it does not and cannot preclude the embrace by others of any such variants, whether it is, as the president describes it, a perversion, stupidity or fraudulence. What matters is what drives the militants, how their minds work, what their goals are – whether ethnic or religious exceptionalism. The Crusades (religious wars) initiated and financed by the Latin Church in the medieval period between about 1095 and 1291 was a deep perversion of Christianity, a perversion that warred against the very core of Jesus Christ’s teachings. But to describe the Crusades as anything other than Christian, whether it was a perversion and doctrinal error or not, would be grossly mistaken.

    Going by his long-term vacillations on Boko Haram, a confusion underscored by the sect’s strange offer to him to represent them in negotiations with the Goodluck Jonathan government, President Buhari may feel burdened to atone for his indecisiveness on the sect in its early years. But that atonement must not be at the expense of a clear understanding of what the sect stands for, even as it seems to be experiencing death throes. Should he remain in office far longer than the constitution allows, there is little doubt that in the hypothetical future the president would also arrive at the epiphanic junction he has seemed to stumble on regarding the ‘perversion, stupidity and fraudulence’ of Boko Haram ideology. Few would be persuaded by his argument; fewer still would be convinced that he knew all along what he needed to do to defeat the sect’s ideology and militancy.

    But who is destabilising Nigeria?

    President Buhari threw a poser to the nation on the subject of destabilisation during an Iftar dinner with governors, ministers and heads of government agencies. Fortunately for him, it was that kind of occasion where he expected no response. “We have the land, we have the resources, and we have the people,” he began cautiously, like a proselyte. “But I do not know why people will allow themselves to be successfully subverted to destabilise their own country.” Successful subversion? Would it not be enough to wonder why anyone would allow himself to be used to subvert his country? But leaving language alone, the greater poser is whom the president had in mind.

    Two days earlier, in a flurry of Easter homilies, some Christian priests took the Buhari presidency to the cleaners for doing a shoddy job at governing the country and responding incompetently to the insecurity ravaging the land and pitting brothers against brothers. Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who probably penned and disseminated the president’s Iftar remarks, had replied the critics by suggesting that they were in fact the ones destabilising the country and living untrue to their Christian faith. Both the president and his spokesman obviously ignored the more vital point that the critics were merely responding to the prevailing realities of poverty, insecurity, corruption, ethnic discord, etc. in the country. Critics blame the president for nearly everything.

    But if the president meant insurgents of the Northeast and bandits of the Northwest, all of them products of poor governance, it would be even more puzzling to rationalise his statement of instigating them into successfully subverting their country. They do not need to be instigated; government’s incompetence and impotence already did the job, successfully, it should be added.