The grim reaper has again struck nearby, the third time in a space of two months, taking away not only my own immediate junior brother, but also a dear friend, and classmate, at the University of Ife, Ile – Ife, Dr Jide Somade, and now my friend, Dr Anthony A. Akinola, the Oxford, UK- based, top class political analyst, who honed his exertions majorly on current issues in his must- read articles on the daily ‘breaking news’ in Nigeria.
Tony’s passing, which happened shortly after his 75th birthday, came to me as a rude shock having got a call from him not too long from the sad event.
Tony was ever so solicitous of others’ well- being that I often feel guilty pangs picking, about his third, or fourth call, even when I might not have reached out to him once. That notwithstanding, he will be the first to dismiss your feeling of guilt.
Whoever knew Tony will not only sorely miss him, but will readily confirm his incredible ability to quite easily make, and nurture, friendship.
This past week I wrote the following about him, elsewhere, corroborating the views of another friend of his:
“God knows that in Tony’s passing, I lost a gem of a friend.
Tony was everything the writer called him: an absolutely detribalised Nigerian, an astute and very objective political analyst who, unlike many of us public analysts, was able to walk the narrow and straight path of never taking sides in political issues, and one who was ever so solicitous of other’s wellbeing. To my one telephone call, Tony would have called me three or more times, especially when he particularly liked an article I had written or wanted us to discuss our many ‘ breaking news’ on the Nigerian political firmament. Many times, he shared my articles worldwide, to learned groups and International broadcast stations. I subsequently forwarded his efforts in this regard to our Ekitipanupo e- platform.
I have not always known Tony, even though I had spent some of my growing up years in the beautiful, rocky city of Ikere – Ekiti, his birth place. Even though younger than me by only a year, and, therefore contemporaries, our paths did not cross even while I had, at the same time, made lifelong friendships with the likes of Prince Kayode Adegboye, and our lately departed friends of blessed memory: Dr Remi Akeju and the Accountant, Ojo Adeyeri.
May the good Lord rest them.
It will, therefore, be the turn of another distinguished Ikere- Ekiti born Medical Doctor, my friend of more than six decades, classmate at Christ’s School, Ado – Ekiti, the UK- based Medical Consultant, Biodun Adu, to finally link us up.
Tony had read one of my articles talk about our Christ’s School days and broached it to his cousin only to discover that we were not merely classmates at the upper crust school but, indeed, very good friends. Biodun passed on Tony’s fondness for my articles to me, with me confessing just how much I have loved reading the racy articles oozing out weekly in the Guardian newspaper, from this guy at Oxford, UK.
Tony had read History and had this amazingly beautiful way with the English Language that after reading him, you’d be hard put to decide which, of his lucid analysis or his linguistic style of delivery, you love more.
Once Biodun linked us, not even the distance between the UK and Nigeria would separate us. Tony would send me his articles which I would then share locally, including forwarding it to the Ekitipanupo web- portal which houses over 2000 vibrant Ekitis both home, and Diasporan.
One of such articles which is as relevant today as when written, but slightly edited for space, is the one he titled: STILL ON REDUCING THE COST OF GOVERNANCE, of 16 October, 2019 where he wrote as follows:
“ Agitation or call for reduction in the cost of governance in Nigeria has been rather perennial. I wrote on this very topic sometime in the 1980s for the London-based West Africa magazine. I had then called for a reduction in the number of senatorial seats per state, which then was five. I had also called for a reduction in the number of ministers and advisers – all these in the Nigerian Second Republic. I would later follow up this discussion with a memorandum to the Ibrahim Babangida-led Armed Forces Ruling Council, sometime in 1986,,in which I suggested that senatorial constituencies could be limited to what is now three senators per state.
The cost of governance in Nigeria remains disturbingly astronomical in spite of expressed concerns by the citizenry. Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State recently joined this group by calling for a unicameral legislature. He would like the Senate to be scrapped. Even before him, former Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, now a senator, had called for the number of senators per state to be reduced to one. It is gratifying to note that these members of the political elite share the common concern of ordinary Nigerians. In calling for the Senate to be scrapped, Fayemi alluded to the fact that both little Ekiti State and mighty Lagos each has three senators. One would be surprised if Fayemi did not know that the very essence of the Senate is to serve as a forum where states, irrespective of size and population, assert equality of status. That was the philosophy that informed the American founding fathers to introduce a bicameral legislature. The House of Representatives accord representation based on population.
Ekiti State has six members in the House, while Lagos and Kano each has 24. However, because of equal representation in the Senate, the smaller states have not been complaining of domination or oppression by the bigger states. The preponderance of representation from one geographical end over the other would be a cause for major concern if the Senate were to be scrapped. “The primary benefit of the bicameral legislature”, according to an authoritative source, “is the limits put in place to prevent abuse of power. No one group is allowed to freely run through the government to produce policies which only benefit a few. It even stops the minority from being excluded by the majority under this representation format.” .
Of course, the need for a reduction in the number of ministers and advisers at every level of governance cannot be overemphasized. I am not an enthusiast of the President picking his or her ministers from each of the states making up the federation. It is enough that we respect geographical spread, especially that our nation has been demarcated into six geopolitical zones. Nigerians would need to be educated about this, not least because they are the very ones who complain if a member of their clan has not been nominated as minister. They even quarrel over the portfolios of political appointees. I assert that the disturbing cost of governance in Nigeria is more of the result of our corruption and prodigal culture than anything else. Prof Ayo Olukotun elaborated on this in a recent article in The PUNCH. The privileged greed of the elite is one reason the Senate has become an eyesore to ordinary Nigerians. Because the elite decide their own salaries and emoluments, they believe it is their divine right to take Nigeria to the cleaners. The salaries and emoluments of elected officials should, and must, be decided by an independent body, if that is not already the case. Moreover, these elected officials have their defined responsibilities. Senators, for instance, are lawmakers. It is laughable when they claim it is also part of their responsibility to execute projects in their communities. That responsibility belongs to state and local governments and should not provide senators with an opportunity to defraud the public.
We are all witnesses to the volumes of stolen funds and assets being revealed on a daily basis by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The billions of naira being stolen daily by both elected and other officials can hardly be described as the cost of running governments in Nigeria. Until stiff punishments are meted out to these economic criminals and termites, and until a new generation emerges to forcefully assert the future of Nigeria, complaints about the cost of governance will never cease”.
Vintage Tony.
Tony was a single minded patriot; one reason he was such a lover of the zoning of the Nigerian presidency, something he believed would help in solidifying the effervescent Nigerian unity, as it speaks to fairness and equity, two things that are sorely missing in contemporary Nigeria.
A scion of the redoubtable Akinola family of Ikere – Ekiti, he was born June 8, 1946 and attended Annunciation Grammar School, Ikere-Ekiti, between 1960 -’65 for his West African School certificate. He left for the U.S in 1979, studied Political Science at Howard University, Washington DC, and came over to the UK to read Law at Oriel College, University of Oxford, UK, between 1983 and 1986. A dedicated researcher and prolific writer, Tony authored many books, among them: ‘The Search for a Nigerian Political System (1986), Rotational Presidency (1996), Democracy in Nigeria: Thoughts and Selected Commentaries 2013 and Party Coalitions in Nigeria: History Trends and Prospects, 2014’
Professor Dipo Adamolekun, whose protégé Tony was, and who wrote the Foreword to one of his books, will sorely miss him, just as his bosom friend, Tony Aderiye, with whose family he stays in Lagos while visiting Nigeria will be truly inconsolable; not to talk of Biodun who must now add Oxford to his itinerary, visiting the family and so many others he interacted with while here with us..
I commiserate with Tony’s darling wife, Shola, and their amazing children, Funmi, Bimbola and Tobi, as well as the larger Akinola family of Ikere – Ekiti.
This piece is only superficially about the small passport photograph of me about which it is written. The photograph was taken in New York during a very recent visit that I made to that city. I had gone there from Boston to apply in person for the renewal of my Nigerian passport. Well, I had to go there because the Nigerian Consulate made it mandatory for any Nigerian living in the Northeast of the United States wishing to apply for or renew their passports to journey to New York to apply in person. The story of my experience at the Consulate is as predictably annoying as it was profoundly embittering. For nearly six hours, I waited and waited and waited only to spend less that a total of five minutes just to have my passport photograph taken. That was all they made me sit and wait for, a passport photo that took less than five minutes to take. And as if that was not enough, they informed me to expect my new passport in – yes, 12 weeks!
In case you are wondering, the picture that you are seeing with this essay is not a copy of the one that was taken at the Consulate. This copy here is of the picture that I went to take right after I left the Consulate at the end of my time there. As soon as I got out of the premises of the Consulate, I went looking for the nearest place in Mid-Manhattan where I could have a “fresh” passport picture of myself taken. Why? Well, to put the matter as simply as possible, I was so struck by the strangeness of the face, of the person that I saw in the picture taken at the Consulate that I had to be sure that the face that I had seen in the picture was “true”, or “real” or was indeed mine. This is in spite of the fact that when my friend, Yemi Ogunbiyi, had called me at the house where I was staying before I set out for the Consulate, he had screamed in great surprise when he saw my face on his phone’s viewership app: “BJ, that’s not you!”. Followed quickly by, “Ha, BJ, you cannot, you MUST not come home like this o”!
I bear witness that it is not the same thing to see yourself, see your own face as others see it, especially a long, long time after they last saw it. It is not only a matter of how long ago your friends and acquaintances had seen you last; it is also a matter of what grooming, what tender care you had either expended or alternatively, withheld from your face in the intervening period. In my own case, I had more or less left my face alone in the last two years in a sort of unconscious and unintended homage to the pandemic. I had neither visited a barber nor performed any self-tending labors on my face. I did not fail to notice that the hair was growing wilder and grayer all over my occiput, with the exception of the baldness at the top of my head. But beyond the first few months of this indifferent homage to the pandemic, I lost all interest in following where my facial hair was going or not going. I do remember that at one point close to the end of the year in 2020, I briefly thought about returning to the clean-shaven visage of the decade and a half of my pre-covid adulthood. But I stood firm and let the rhythm of the pandemic take over this aspect of both its tangible and intangible impact on our lives. It was in this context that my visage turned to what you can see in the passport photograph: an ancient, hoary man lost in the mist of time, no?
It is nothing short of fortuitous that, of all places in the world, I first came into thoughtful contact with this new “Taliban” look in my visage in New York City! This is because, of all the cities and towns in the world in which I have either ever lived or spent a considerable amount of time, New York stands out as the city which I loved the most in – walking! Not Lagos, not Ibadan, not London, but New York, pure and simple. All these other cities had exerted great impact on my love of walking. And Ibadan, especially as the town of my birth and childhood up to early adulthood, Ibadan had at first been incomparable with any other city in the world for giving great latitude to my inborn waka-waka mania. But not after I arrived in New York in 1971 and spent the next four and half years there as a graduate student. Although it took me a long time to discover what I can only inadequately describe as its gift of completely aimless walking that forever endeared New York to me, once I made that discovery, I was hooked.
Yes, I was hooked. To walking, completely aimless walking. Indeed, in my early-adulthood self-formation, aimless walking became a great counterpart and enabler of visionary flights of the mind and the imagination that ultimately led me to a passionate embrace of socialism and Pan Africanism, so far away from Nigeria and Africa. New York was able to exert this impact on me, not only because of its vibrancy and energy, but also because one could absolutely never get lost in Manhattan, never. As soon as you arrived and got the hang of the perfectly geometrical planning of its streets and avenues, you could walk anywhere, absolutely anywhere and you would not get lost. This was what I discovered again earlier this week when I went to New York and discovered that in the last two years, I had been confronting the world with a “Taliban” visage without knowing it. [By the way, I owe the “Taliban” attribution in this piece to the South Asian shopkeeper and his wife on 2nd Avenue and 45th Street who took the passport photograph that is the object of discussion and speculation here. Taking note of my long, bemused look at the photograph, he told me that if I didn’t mind his saying so, my beard made me look like a “Taliban”. I replied that there were no Taliban in Africa. To which he replied that “Taliban” comes in many colors and races!]
Taliban or no Taliban, is there a “message” in this piece or is it just a flight of fancy which magically transforms aimless walking to spiritual uplift and imaginative euphoria? Yes, compatriots, there is! If you have just been through the experience of angst and alienation at a place like the Nigerian Consulate in New York, you must count yourself extremely lucky, extremely blessed if you can walk through the long, long distance of four avenues and three streets of Mid-Manhattan at the age of 75+! Yes, I walked “home” from the Consulate to the house of my host on Madison Avenue. Frankly, soberly, I had not thought that I could or would indeed walk that distance. Indeed, in Boston, it would not have occurred to me to walk that kind of distance. But I did in New York. And as I did, I thought of how many at home of my age and with this new visage that I have, how many would walk half of the distance that I walked with this new passport photograph in my wallet. Please think about this yourselves, compatriots, is it not the case that anyone at home in Nigeria who sees a person of my age with the look, the visage in the passport photograph, is it not the case that people in general would think such an old man either an itinerant preacher or, worse, a homeless beggar? Indeed, a few days ago as I was walking, walking and walking in New York, I prayed for someone from home who knows me, perhaps who had been my student or younger colleague, I prayed that someone of that position would run into me here in the streets of New York. Such an encounter with a Nigerian homebody would, I imagine, have been salutary for both of us: For me, it would offer some consolation in the awareness that at least a person of my age can be seen in the streets of a big metropolitan city like New York not overladen with shopping bags, not climbing into or alighting from a medallion taxi cab or stretch limousine, and not emerging from the gilded portals of a five-star hotel – just walking.
I must report regrettably, compatriots, that in one major respect, how I look in the passport photo is reflected in how I walk now, be it in Lagos, Ibadan or New York. My pace is no longer hurried, vigorous, expansive. My pace is not yet a crawl, I do not get winded, and breathlessness is still a long way from me, thankfully so since in recent years I have been plagued by many ailments. I still drive myself, both at home in Nigeria and in the U.S. But in both places, I have had to cut my nighttime driving to the barest minimum possible, this because my eyesight has decreased significantly in the corners and contours of my peripheral vision. But I remain up to the task of driving to get all the things I need for daily life, especially in the U.S. It is only in Nigeria that I need and can afford house-help. There’s more to looks, more to a particular look than meets the eyes, compatriots
If you look at the passport photograph and stack these words that I am writing about it, do see what I am trying to get at in this essay, compatriots? Do I myself know what I am trying to put across beyond the astonishment that Yemi Ogunbiyi first expressed to me and with which I shall doubtlessly be accosted when I come home soon? Well, this much I know: as we grow older, we all have less and less to give in order to be able to cope with what life demands of us; but that is only with regard to the purely physical aspects of life; it has no bearing on what remains or persists deep inside of us. For instance, take the eyes that look out at you from the passport photo that serves as the object of this essay. See, they look rather vacant, unfocused, about to be dimmed forever, no? But don’t be fooled – these eyes see with an inner eye! And this is why I look at the eyes that look out at me and the world out of this passport photograph, and I think to myself how so different they are from the rage, the passion that my experience at the Consulate has downloaded on my patriotic feelings! As I walk through the streets of Manhattan now, circa 2021 AD, my passion for engaging my country and the world to make whole that which is broken in my country and the world is no less by even a whit than what it was more than half a century ago when I walked these same streets as a young man with jet black hair and a fulsome beard without a strand of grey in it!
When commentators insinuate that insecurity has worsened under President Muhammadu Buhari compared with the Goodluck Jonathan era, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina throws a tantrum. He and other presidential aides and spokesmen are right to feel bothered by the comparisons. Even if they don’t believe that the current administration is what it is cracked up to be, they still have a duty to sell it above average price, predictably above the price of the last administration. Speaking on Channels Television last Monday, Mr Adesina had suggested that it was ‘disingenuous’ to conclude that the pre-Buhari era was better in tackling security issues.
According to him, “In some areas, we may not have performed well like in other areas. There were three main promises and these promises were expanded into nine priority areas. One, we met an insecure country. We went at it and there was some stability and after a while, it exploded again and became hydra-headed.” He, however, grudgingly acknowledges a difference. “Before, the insurgency was the only issue, but now banditry, kidnapping and cultism came in. So, it’s a serious issue.” But defiantly, he adds in a tone of finality: “In all truth can we compare the security situation of 2015 to what we have now? As of 2015, yes it was only insurgency then, but the way bombs were going off like firecrackers in all cities, can we compare that to today? It will be disingenuous to say that there has not been improvement in certain areas of security.” But must he always compare two eras, even if injured Nigerians do?
Mr Adesina sometimes spreads a veneer of scripture on his comparisons and assessments. He has mercifully not done so this time, obviously not for want of scriptures. But that is not to say he cannot always find a theological basis for his arguments. As long as the insecurity nightmare under the Buhari administration continues to remain on the front burner, grieving families who are victims of insecurity, not to talk of travelers who can no longer move around the country without holding their breath, will be tempted to compare the Buhari era with the immediate past Jonathan administration. Mr Adesina has unwisely met them at their grieving turf, where the current administration cannot hope to win the argument.
If the presidential spokesman reposes so much faith in his comparisons, judging insecurity only in terms of the Jonathan era, not only will the premises of his argument be questioned and derided, few Nigerians will presume him to be objective. They will distrust his arguments, as they will ridicule his conclusions. They know by painful experience that whereas they could travel safely around the country, with the exception of the Northeast, during the Jonathan administration, that possibility no longer exists. At home and on the highways, and in the fields as well as in the forests, they have tangible proofs that their lives are no longer safe. They are, therefore, unable to fathom what different, otherworldly experience impels Mr Adesina into his highfalutin comparisons, and are astounded that despite his admission of the ubiquity of insecurity under this administration as against its localization during the last administration, he still bathes the Buhari era in glowing and scented pomade.
Mr Adesina should resist the temptation to compare administrations, especially in matters that are as open and incontestable as insecurity. There is, however, little proof that he will heed the advice. But should he deign to, and in order not to lie through his teeth, let him limit himself to the achievements of the Buhari administration. Let him paint a vivid picture of what his master has done, and hope that the facts and figures will speak for themselves. For even if the Buhari record on security is hopeless, perhaps his records in other areas of national life would speak for him and to his strengths. The expiration of the president’s second term is only 19 months away. No one sees the possibility of the administration quieting the rampant storm of insecurity convulsing the country, much of it triggered, perhaps unconsciously, by the administration’s heedless policies.
Comparisons, the English say, are odious. On insecurity, comparing the past administration with the present, especially through the lens of subjective presidential aides, is odious in the extreme. They have done the best they could on the subject. Perhaps they should let their records in other areas speak for them.
Methodist prelate, Boko Haram and bandits
In a recent interaction with the media in Abuja, Prelate of the Methodist Church Nigeria, Samuel Chukwuemeka Kanu-Uche suggested an engagingly simple solution to the insurgency and banditry ravaging the northern part of Nigeria. Arguing that the militants were hungry, he suggested that amnesty and palliatives should be able to do the trick. “Let me tell you,” he began without mincing words, “these boys are being used by politicians. If you engage them and be paying them N25,000 monthly, they will not kidnap. All they want is food. I support amnesty for them, the way it was done in the Niger Delta region; it quelled the tension. Let government also offer amnesty to Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Adeyemo, and say ‘come, let us dialogue’.”
If it were that simple, banditry and insurgency would have long ended. Boko Haram may by their recent desperation indicate that they are hungry, but they want more than food. Some religious leaders may also dispute Boko Haram’s clerical fidelity to the tenets of Islam, but, like the hedonistic ISIS in Syria and Iraq, they have anchored their faith and campaign on religion. The allure of caliphate is far more than gourmet taste of food. And to suggest that bandits would and should take N25,000 to halt violence is so unrealistic that it requires no elaboration. Inflation has made nonsense of that sum. In any case, is he suggesting that all a desperate person needs for national handout is to take up arms against the state? Moreover, who told the prelate that Messrs Igboho and Kanu want amnesty when they insist that their self-determination campaigns are not against any known law?
The Methodist Church has not always been adept at propagating liberation theology like the Catholic, Anglican and some Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria. It should not try to play anyone else’s script or steal another church’s thunder. Dr Kanu-Uche himself has been somewhat awkward in intervening in Nigerian politics. He simply doesn’t have the disposition or the natural resplendence in secular politics. The problem is not that his choice of polemical subjects does havoc to his immense theological talents; the problem is that his panaceas are so out of sync with reality as to be decidedly awful.
Gov Obaseki exceeds himself
In stamping his monarchical authority over the Edo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Godwin Obaseki insisted that if another governorship poll were to be held today he would score about 85 percent. The governor chases chimera. He will of course lose, for the state, in fleeing what it feared was Adams Oshiomhole’s incipient godfatherism, has now come to the realization that their governor is neither as technocratic as he was painted nor a democrat of any colour worthy of the immense sacrifice indigenes made in embracing change they gloated must be different from that of Lagos. It is possible Mr Obaseki is so inured to reality that he neither feels nor sees Edo’s disillusionement.
To the iconic Lagos Airport Hotel’s Banquet Hall this past Tuesday to bear historic witness as a gale of tributes showered on a great naval hero and a worthy associate of almost fifty years: Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu, former military governor of Imo and later Lagos State; former member of the Supreme Military Council and later Armed forces Ruling Council and indefatigable mentor to generations of top naval officers.
It was also the case the previous Thursday as yours sincerely traversed almost the entire length of Lagos to reach Elevation Church at Pistis Conference Centre, somewhere in the Lekki Peninsula for an evening of music and songs in honour of the late admiral put together by the children.
Themed, “Your Admiral, our daddy”, it was a grand pictorial panorama; a memorable feast of joyous singing and dancing which revealed a rarely seen side of the man with the disobliging frown as an aficionado of the arts who cultivated and enjoyed music and dancing at their sublime summit.
If music and dancing be the food of familial love and affection, let them play and waltz on till the end of time. The late retired Rear Admiral was a man of immense personal charms, class and charisma. Bazookas and bullets are one thing, ballets and ballerinas are another. In a fitting climax, the evening concluded with a bravura performance from the family repertoire of musical memorabilia. It was a theme from the immortal Sound of Music. The hall responded with applause.
Our paths first crossed in 1975/76 while yours sincerely was a Youth Corper in the old East Central State. In the first week of February 1976, the old state was split into Imo and Anambra states with the youthful Commander Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu appointed as military governor of Imo while the late Colonel Atom Kpera remained in the Governor’s Lodge at Enugu, the physically imposing and widely adored Col Anthony Ochefu having been dismissed for some earlier infractions. It was a development which provoked weeping and wailing in the entire Igbo nation.
In a national broadcast bristling with gusto and thunder, the fiery and tempestuous Murtala Mohammed warned darkly that neither jubilation nor protests would be entertained by the military authorities. It was the time of no-nonsense military rule. Barely a week after this command performance, Mohammed himself was assassinated in an abortive military uprising led by a completely inebriated Colonel Bukar Dimka who promptly declared a “dawn to dusk curfew”.
The abortive coup provoked a ferocious state response and the bloodletting was almost at par with the reprisal counter-coup of ten years earlier. The entire country was gripped with fear and trembling. In the secondary school where yours sincerely was serving as the pioneer corps member, there was a tall gangling chap called Chigbu Okoroafor who served as Laboratory Assistant.
Chigbu also happened to have been a kinsman and cousin of the new military governor. Yours sincerely had been embroiled in a fierce dispute with the Youth Corps authorities in Enugu which led to the confiscation of his allowance. I cannot now recall whether Chigbu followed his new mentor to Enugu airport to confront and denounce the Youth corps officials before a visiting and visibly scandalized Colonel Solomon Omojokun, but I recall Engineer Sola Alabi, aka Shaft, a fellow corps member, volunteering as a backup and human ambulance in case shooting erupted.
Having berated one for a breach of protocols and for showing up at the airport barely clad, the bemused and avuncular former Mathematics teacher ordered an immediate restoration of entitlements with a stern warning to the NYSC officials that corpers must be treated with the dignity and respect befitting senior civil servants and prospective leaders of the nation. Thus began the myth of the naked corper at the Enugu Airport.
Chigbu must have informed the then Commander Ndubuisi Kanu of a serving corper who was a likely candidate for a future military firing squad. The future admiral, himself a closet establishment rebel, must have duly noted and quietly applauded. Thus began a lifelong friendship and association with Ndubuisi Kanu.
Almost three decades later in 2004 on the morning of 15th March upon arriving in Nigeria from San Antonio to deliver the inaugural Afenifere Lecture, one had been pleasantly surprised to discover that the chairman of the occasion was none other than Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu. Now retired and enjoying life as a private citizen having barely survived the relentlessly brutal siege of General Sani Abacha, the Ovim born naval officer had emerged as one of the authentic heroes of the struggle against military despotism in Nigeria.
But there were more surprises in the offing. As one was about to commence the lecture, yours sincerely was accosted by the calm and dignified retired admiral beaming a cherubic smile and politely asking the guest lecturer to identify the equally smiling gentleman standing beside him.
It was Chigbu Okoroafor. Three decades after Isuochi now in Abia State, the former Laboratory Assistant had gone to University and had transformed into a flourishing oil exploration logistics expert and business associate of the admiral. It was the stuff of outlandish fiction.
Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu was that rarity among the old Nigerian military officer-class: a brilliant and first-rate senior naval officer who was also a dedicated and unflinching democrat. There is a contradiction somewhere and this contradiction led directly to a fatal conundrum for the post-independence military. Before it worked its way through the system, it was to lead to severe purges, cruel dismissals and a bloody self-decimation of the Nigerian military.
Kanu was an illustrious Igbo patriot and ardent Nigerian nationalist. Twice in his distinguished career, he found himself raising the banner of protest and rebellion against the Nigerian postcolonial state with severe personal consequences on both occasions. On the first occasion, the stormy petrel abandoned his Nigerian uniform to team up with Biafran compatriots on the ground of perceived injustice meted to his people in the Nigerian post-independence coliseum.
It ended in defeat, tears and professional humiliation for the proud Ovim man. Kanu was only lucky to be re-enlisted after the civil war, but with a drastic loss of seniority which was to hurt and haunt for the rest of his life. His earlier record of competence and professional brilliance must have stood him in good stead with the Nigerian military authorities. In the high noon of his career as a rebel officer, Kanu had seized a ramshackle, ill-fitted frigate with which he dealt the Nigerian Navy a black eye in a memorable encounter at Onne.
On the second occasion, Kanu, now mercifully out of uniform and in retirement, was to team up with like-minded and affronted Nigerian compatriots in what became known as the National Democratic Coalition (Nadeco) to fight the Nigerian military state to a standstill over the annulment of the freest and fairest presidential election ever held in Nigeria.
It was to lead to relentless persecution and the decimation of his business. On one occasion, his household was invaded and his service pistol seized as evidence and exhibit of arms importation. On another occasion when he was detained at Ikoyi Police Station, it was his wife who signed as a surety for his release in her own recognisance, just before they could throw him into the real Gulag.
Military hierarchs and ranking officers who constituted the conservative core of the old Army establishment could never understand how sane and sober officers could find themselves in the circle of civil rights protesters and all that prodemocracy nonsense. Didn’t they know that the army was founded on the canon of discipline and order?
Didn’t they know they were undermining military cohesiveness and national cohesion by extension? Once the army has taken a decision no matter how wrongheaded, it is the bounden duty of a loyal and disciplined officer to comply with that decision no matter his private feelings. To do otherwise is to invite chaos and anarchy.
Ranged against this institutional rigidity and frozen immobility were visionary and forward-looking officers like Ndubuisi Kanu. They saw the postcolonial Nigerian army as being caught in a colonial time-warp. They did not seek to undermine military discipline and order.
But they felt the army should not dabble into political matters beyond its core competence and real mandate. A situation in which a coterie or cabal of officers sat at night to annul the electoral will of fourteen million Nigerians is an affront to the national charter and hence totally unacceptable. It is a diabolical usurpation of people’s power on which the nation-state paradigm is predicated.
In a fine dialectical sense, both positions are correct. They are a mere reflection of the fact that in human institutions, societies and cultures, a dominant ethos on its way to historical superannuation will have to slug it out with an emergent paradigm on its way to national dominance. It is a confrontation steeped in blood, tears and misery. Some of the principal combatants on either side may never live to tell the story. But that is the toll of human exertions for a better society.
Given the relative peace that Nigerians have enjoyed in the past twenty one years of post-military rule and given the fact that military meddlesomeness in the national polity has been done away with for now, there can be no doubt about which paradigm has triumphed and which ethos has achieved national dominance. It is not a done deal as there are occasional murmurs and tremors.
But the fact that the military have been put where they belong underscores the significance of the battle fought on behalf of the Nigerian society by Ndubuisi Kanu and his colleagues. Many of these national heroes paid the supreme sacrifice. Some of them have been maimed for life under the military torture wrack. Some have become so economically vaporized that they are walking dead on the margins of society tormenting the psyche of the nation.
For the better part of the past fortnight, a grateful nation has been pouring encomiums and plaudits on one of its greatest children ever. In an apt and befitting epitaph, the Imo State government renamed the Heroes Square in the heart of Owerri, the Imo State capital, after the late Rear Admiral from Ovim and one of the most illustrious Nigerians to ever don the uniform of the Nigerian Navy. In a moving tribute at the Elevation Church, Vice-Admiral Jubrilla Ayinla described Kanu as his mentor and a role model to a whole generation of top naval officers.
Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu would be chuckling in his grave and probably nibbling away at his trademark kola nut. He neither sought to leverage his achievements as a warrior for democracy or his distinction as a respected and widely admired naval top shot to curry favour or seek undue advantage. He restricted himself to what he knew best and led a life of exemplary integrity.
But he would not have failed to notice that his beloved people are erupting once again in a cauldron of rebellion and insurrection after severe pacifications by both the colonial authorities and the Nigerian postcolonial state. It is a pointer to unfinished business and the unexamined expects of the National Question. But the great son of Ovim has paid his dues. May his illustrious soul rest in peace.
Time is the greatest enemy of tyrants. No matter the sanitary wash and the futile deodorants of evil deeds, the truth has a way of prevailing eventually over the cobwebs of lies and dishonesty. No matter the obfuscations and prevarications placed across its path, history will always vindicate the just, if not immediately but in the fullness of time. You can set the clock of human progress back but you cannot reset the time of retribution.
It is restitution time in Ouagadougou, the dusty and arid capital of the former Upper Volta. Famously renamed Burkina Faso, or the land of the noble and upright, by its most visionary and iconic leader, this is the time of symphony and perfect synchrony when a people live up to the billing of their name, when revolutionary acts of restitution and expiation mirror the collective aspirations and willed identity of a people. As the Yoruba people strikingly put it, our names sometimes haunt us.
It is Sankara fever in Burkina Faso. The entire nation is aglow as the people reclaim their abjured history in a festival of hope and national renewal. Last week, the trial of those who murdered an illustrious son of Africa got underway in the same capital where his name had been taboo for the better part of three decades and where there had been a determined official attempt to obliterate his glorious memory. Many African tyrants will be cowering in their bed at this moment. Blaise Compaore must be furtively watching developments from his luxurious liar in neighbouring Ivory Coast.
Thirty four years ago, Thomas Sankara was gunned down in a daring afternoon putsch masterminded by his bosom friend and former revolutionary comrade in arms. It was the end of a brave but idealistic experimentation in people’s power and purposeful governance. Sankara drove himself around in a battered Renault jalopy and could be found at the weekend painting and recoating his own official residence. It was too good to be true.
For four days after killing his friend, Compaore could not appear in public, claiming that he had succumbed to malaria. The fever of coldly calculating and violent treachery can be very overpowering indeed. This was at a time when Compaore’s emissaries, the two hapless majors who were later to fall to official sword themselves, were being cold-shouldered all over Africa with only Nigeria giving them a listening ear. Kenneth Kaunda drove them away and even our own General Obasanjo denounced the perfidy.
There is a Shakespearean gloss to the tragedy. Without Blaise Compaore, there would have been no Thomas Sankara. The two were childhood friends and youthful idealists. It was Compaore who masterminded the lightning coup that brought his friend to power having slugged his way to the capital from the storied Po Brigade to terminate the power struggle between Sankara and the then head of state, Major Ouedrago, who had put him under house arrest.
In a clairvoyant moment of lucidity, Sankara had observed that if Compaore was plotting against him, it would be too late to do anything about it. And so it proved. For years, it was said that Sankara’s father waited in vain for his former ward and adopted son to come and explain what happened between him and his adopted brother.
There was an international and continental dimension to the conspiracy to eliminate the great philosopher ruler. France was uncomfortable with his revolutionary harangues and Marxist sabre-rattling. President Francois Mitterand described him as a cutting edge that cuts too sharply.
Neighbouring Ivory Coast with its prosperous comprador ruling class felt he was a harbinger of bad news. The conservative military rulers elsewhere on the subcontinent felt he could inspire a revolutionary earthquake among the younger officer-class. He was a visionary ahead of his time. Now his time has come in a way and manner he himself could not have foreseen. History moves in a mysterious manner indeed.
JUSTICE minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami told the media last Wednesday that the Muhammadu Buhari administration was minded to declare a state of emergency in Anambra State in order to protect the electoral process and constitutional order in the state. The declaration, he thinks, will curb the deteriorating security situation in the state. He shot no innuendos at Governor Willy Obiano’s lethargic response to rampaging unknown gunmen, nor did he provide any excuse for the federal government’s feeble and futile law enforcement tactics in the state and the entire Southeast zone. Mr Malami has never postured as a lover of democracy and constitutional order, or even of electoral process. But proceeding from the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, and the customary jolt of adrenalin he sometimes gets in the midst of crises and controversies, Mr Malami is rising dashingly to the side of constitutional order.
It may take a little while to know what the FEC debated – if they are still capable of it – on next month’s Anambra governorship poll. If the cabinet contextualized the election against the background of the general unrest in the Southeast, particularly the perturbing issue of unknown gunmen attacks on individuals and public facilities, Mr Malami did not reveal this in his interactions with the media. The administration mercifully understands that the election must hold if the tragic impression of their incompetence and submission to scare tactics by non-state actors is not to be widely acknowledged. They have an image to protect, as sullied as that image might be; and the only way to underscore their vaunted competence and capability as a government is to ensure that no scare tactics dissuades them from performing their functions. They know that the Southeast is in a state of ferment; postponing the Anambra poll would imply that they had yielded to the objectives of the unknown gunmen, whom they believe to be the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).
Belatedly, Mr Obiano, like all the timid, foot-dragging and equivocating governors of the Southeast, is suddenly awake to the prospect of being condemned to sharing power with the hateful federal government or worse, in the event of a declaration of emergency. He dashed to Abuja to confer with the president, and came out, wild-eyed, to assure an incredulous public that the president had no intention of declaring a state of emergency. It is not certain what the president told him, or what marching order he received, since most governors still visualize themselves as military governors. Nevertheless, Mr Obiano dispensed with any constitutional argument to rebut Mr Malami’s shocking disclosure. Instead, he merely reported his own understanding of what the president said on the vexed subject. If he pointed out the constitutional anomaly of declaring a state of emergency in the state to the president, or quietly drew the attention of the president to the fact that Abuja is in fact responsible for the security crises of the states, he did not see fit to tell the media.
Nigerians are unlikely to hear any sensible and persuasive argument on the emergency issue from either the detached and anonymous Mr Obiano, or the superficial and meddlesome Mr Malami, or the taciturn and sometimes disinterested President Buhari. Overall, it is clear that both Anambra and the Southeast are worried about any state of emergency anywhere in their region, while it is unlikely that Mr Malami, as repugnant as his interpretation of the constitution has become, spoke for himself. The AGF mirrored someone or a group: if not the cabinet, then the president; and if neither, then perhaps a faceless group long believed by disquieted Nigerians to be directing the affairs of the country from behind the scenes, regardless of the decimation of the ranks of the so-called cabal. Public response to the threat to declare a state of emergency in Anambra must, therefore, take cognisance of the estimation of the power and influence of the real brains behind the supposed measure.
To weigh the AGF’s statement on the declaration of a state of emergency, it is important to scrutinise his argument. Hear him: “When our national security is attacked and the sanctity of our constitutionally guaranteed democracy is threatened, no possibility is ruled out…The government will certainly do the needful in terms of ensuring that elections are held in Anambra, in terms of ensuring that necessary security is provided… So, what I’m saying in essence, no possibility is ruled out by government in terms of ensuring the sanctity of our democratic order, inclusive of the possibility of declaration of a state of emergency, where it is established, in essence, that there is a failure on the part of the state government to ensure the sanctity of security of life, property, and democratic order.”
The only redeeming part of his statement is the disclosure that the Anambra poll would hold as scheduled. The administration’s resolve in ensuring the electoral process is not truncated is laudable. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan set that tone in 2014-2015 when he ensured that Borno State was not excluded from the general election. Beyond the Buhari administration’s resolve on the Anambra poll, there is nothing else of value in Mr Malami’s brutal attempt to justify a state of emergency. He speaks glowingly of democracy being constitutionally guaranteed, even deploying the word ‘sanctity’ to lend it gravitas, when in fact every of his six years in office as the Justice minister has been dedicated to objurgating the rule of law, subordinating and scorning the concept of democracy, and belittling the constitution almost in its entirety. He also suggests that for the administration, it is imperative to sustain the democratic order. He should remind himself of the last Kogi governorship election which was held under abominable circumstances, the administration’s selective obedience to court orders regarding the detention of persons, the mass murder of Shiites in Zaria and the spurning of court judgements in respect of their leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, not to say the wholesale manipulation of court processes and decisions. What democratic order is he talking about?
Given his antecedents, critics have suggested that Mr Malami is actually up to some mischief in the Anambra poll, perhaps intent on infiltrating the electoral process to create a desired outcome for the APC. This allegation has not been substantiated. Anambra is ruled by an All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) governor who probably hopes to be succeeded by a party member. Neither the Buhari cabinet nor Mr Malami, APGA leaders point out, has ever hinted of a state of emergency in states deeply troubled by banditry or insurgency, especially where thousands of people have been murdered. The Anambra crisis, not to say the other sporadic killings in the Southeast, seems contrived, considering the low death toll. It beggars belief that killings done in broad daylight, probably politically motivated, could escape the prying eyes and withering scrutiny of law enforcement agencies, including the police and Department of State Service (DSS). Downplaying the impotence or indifference of security agencies in favour of extraordinary constitutional measures to tackle the killings has persuaded many Anambrarians that the federal government does not mean well for the state. Anambrarians are sickened of the gunmen and exasperated with overzealous and undiscriminating security agents.
It was inappropriate of Mr Malami to suggest a state of emergency. He ought to anticipate that the public would read meaning into the suggestion. He has run the Justice ministry with extreme partisan fervor, and has, as the country’s chief law officer, managed the country’s laws superficially and indiscriminately. When the interest of the president or ruling party is involved, he has been deliberately less objective, and is always prepared to connive at mischievous interpretations of the law. He cannot pretend not to know that most Nigerians hold his legal proficiency and vaunted altruism in contempt. They suspect that the thought of emergency occurred to the administration because Anambra is not an APC state. All this should have prompted Mr Malami to advise the administration to do everything in Anambra but talk of state of emergency.
Whatever President Buhari really thinks of emergency may not be immediately known. But both the president and Mr Malami must now disavow the measure and get the security agencies to provide watertight security for the poll. They owe the state and the country that duty, irrespective of their previous years of lethargy and disrespect for the rule of law and constitution. Like the administration he serves, Mr Malami will not now change, partly because he is incapable of change, and also because he is loth to change. It was expedient of him to hint at state of emergency, notwithstanding its pitfalls. He will embrace many such retrogressive and even reactionary measures and interpretations of the law before his service ends. There is hardly anything he has said or done regarding the laws of the country and the constitution that is unimpeachable. It will cost him nothing to persist in his profligate approach to interpreting the law. If it suits him, he will do it; if it does not suit him, he will ask whether it suits his patrons, and then proceed to do it.
1999 Constitution on state of emergency
• Muhammad •Malami
Section 305 (1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the President may by instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in the Federation or any part thereof.
(2) The President shall immediately after the publication, transmit copies of the Official -Gazette of the Government of the Federation containing the proclamation including the details of the emergency to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, each of whom shall forthwith convene or arrange for a meeting of the House of which he is President or Speaker, as the case may be, to consider the situation and decide whether or not to pass a resolution approving the Proclamation.
(3) The President shall have power to issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency only when –
(a) the Federation is at war;
(b) the Federation is in imminent danger of invasion or involvement in a state of war;
(c) there is actual breakdown of public order and public safety in the Federation or any part thereof to such extent as to require extraordinary measures to restore peace and security;
(d) there is a clear and present danger of an actual breakdown of public order and public safety in the Federation or any part thereof requiring extraordinary measures to avert such danger;
(e) there is an occurrence or imminent danger, or the occurrence of any disaster or natural calamity, affecting the community or a section of the community in the Federation;
(f) there is any other public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the Federation; or
(g) the President receives a request to do so in accordance with the provisions of subsection (4) of this section.
(4) The Governor of a State may, with the sanction of a resolution supported by two-thirds majority of the House of Assembly, request the President to issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in the State when there is in existence within the State any of the situations specified in subsection (3) (c), (d) and (e) of this section and such situation does not extend beyond the boundaries of the State.
(5) The President shall not issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in any case to which the provisions of subsection (4) of this section apply unless the Governor of the State fails within a reasonable time to make a request to the President to issue such Proclamation.
(6) A Proclamation issued by the President under this section shall cease to have effect –
(a) if it is revoked by the President by instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation;
(b) if it affects the Federation or any part thereof and within two days when the National Assembly is in session, or within ten days when the National Assembly is not in session, after its publication, there is no resolution supported by two-thirds majority of all the members of each House of the National Assembly approving the Proclamation;
(c) after a period of six months has elapsed since it has been in force:
Provided that the National Assembly may, before the expiration of the period of six months aforesaid, extend the period for the Proclamation of the state of emergency to remain in force from time to time for a further period of six months by resolution passed in like manner; or
(d) at any time after the approval referred to in paragraph (b) or the extension referred to in paragraph (c) of this subsection, when each House of the National Assembly revokes the Proclamation by a simple majority of all the members of each House.
Comment
The intendment of the drafters of the 1999 constitution was that power to declare a state of emergency in the federation of any part thereof would lie exclusively but not arbitrarily in the office of the president of the federation. This power can only be activated when any of the seven conditions outlined in S. 305 (3) are met. No declaration of a state of emergency would be valid if none of these seven conditions are present. In the case of Anambra, the federation cannot reasonably be said to be at war, neither can any community or section thereof be said to be at war. Such a proviso would more readily appear to present itself for the president’s utilisation with the lawless kidnaps and brazen murders in the North. Neither can there be said to be such danger of a clear and imminent nature as to warrant the declaration of a state of emergency, especially in light of what appears to be a series of coordinated assassinations.
There appears to be a clash of interests between the governor who has argued strongly in favour of the security and stability Anambra state enjoys and the comments by the Attorney General that the federal government was considering a state of emergency. There is, therefore, no way S. 305 (4) and its attendant provisions can be activated. The governor’s position, after meeting with the president, even suggests that the Attorney General is on a frolic of his own. No one expects the Buhari administration, even if it were to bullishly insist on a state of emergency, to commit the absurd illegality of replacing the state governor and legislature with an administrator. There is, therefore, wisdom in carrying the state government along in matters like these.
Arguably, the drafters of the 1999 Constitution did not intend for a liberal reading of S. 305 (3), hence the strict requirements that must be met in S. 305 (1) (2) before the declaration can carry the force of law. Without the legislature’s ratification, any declaration of a state of emergency is merely inchoate and not substantive. Applying S. 305 (3) would indicate a schizophrenic and biased perception of the Anambra killings, and an accompanying ulterior motive, for neither is the danger alarming nor has a reasonable amount of time elapsed to warrant federal force subverting the state’s power. Perhaps, recognising this reality, the presidency has for now refrained from openly associating with Attorney General Malami’s speculative comments.
How time flies indeed. 15 years on October 5 when the founding Executive Director of Journalists Against (JAAIDS) Omololu Falobi, journalist per excellence and media visionary ( if I may add that) literally flew away at 35.
I still remember the after media training session discussion outside the old JAAIDS office at Caterpillar Bus-Stop, Ogba we had with some participants that day when he told me he would later in the day attend a programme in the Mainland.
I didn’t realise that would be the last time I would see Omololu until I got the distress call in the night that he could not be reached on the phone and was to be told of one of the saddest news I have heard in my lifetime the next morning.
It wasn’t until I saw his body at the Otta General Hospital that the grim reality of Omololu’s sudden demise hit me. I wish I could wake him up and let him know he was too young to leave his family and numerous projects and ideas in the works.
Alas, it was too late. The evil ones had done their worst by shooting my one and only Omololu whose accomplishments for his age was amazing.
Fifteen years after his death, his memories remain indelible. The impact of the pioneering work he did through JAAIDS in terms of media advocacy is still felt locally and globally.
Omololu was an excellent journalist while at The Punch where we worked together and a role model for many younger and senior colleagues.
He caught the vision of the digital age far back as 1999 when he bought a personal laptop for numerous online publishing when staff access to computers was still very limited and not many knew how to use it.
He was one of the earliest users of the internet. He shared resources and opportunities about making the best of media skills. He organized series of training sessions and awards for journalists.
He was a stickler for best practices and corporate governance in running NGOs which is why his organization still exist 15 years after his death with an office complex of its own.
I remember a top official of the Ford Foundation noting that Omololu was an authentic leader. In his words ” Omololu ran a transparent organization and will usually refer enquiries on projects to staff assigned and not be the all-in-all”
Marcel Van, of the World AIDS campaign captured the real stuff Omololu was made of in one of the numerous tributes in his honour.
“Omololu turned out to be one of those rare leaders in civil society that could translate his passion, intelligence and personality into a leadership role of an amazing mixture of vision, respect, energy, persuasion, humbleness, variation and authenticity.
Omololu inspired me in many ways to realise my potentials and some of the things I do today for which I am commended for I learnt from watching him run his organization and those frank discussions he never ceased to have when he thinks “Uncle Lekan” can do better.
His life and accomplishment confirm that it’s not how really long we live that matters, but how well.
Omololu will continue to live in our minds. His short and impactful life should inspire especially journalists to explore all frontiers to which journalism skills can be used.
We must not be left behind by the exponential digital changes in our work which Omololu effectively mastered and utilized.
We must dream and dare beyond the confines of our newsrooms. We must be the global professionals we can be like Omololu.
We miss Omololu, but we are consoled that like all mortals, Good men according to a Danish proverb will surely die, but death cannot kill their names.
Ordinarily, I had no good reason not to feature on this page as usual last week Sunday. But somehow, I started seeing the signs that I may not be able to sustain this weekly tradition that I have kept faith with for many years, ‘except whenever there was an earthquake’. True, penultimate Thursday, I had told the editor of this paper, Festus Eriye, to get a material ready to fill this space because I was just finding it difficult to put pen to paper. I thought the problem was my disillusionment with a baby that is still unable to walk at 61. A baby on whom the whole world had great expectations as the Black man’s beacon of hope when she got political independence from Britain on October 1, 1960.
I thought it was the inability of this Ill-fated baby to do what its contemporaries do that got me disillusioned and informed my inability to sustain a cherished tradition. By penultimate Saturday, however, it turned out that it was my body that was talking to me in the last two days, I only did not take heed. For details on this, please see the second article below.
I return to the baby that is yet to walk at 61. I am talking about Nigeria, with particular emphasis on people who are saying Nigerians would miss President Muhammadu Buhari when he leaves the stage in 2023. They should stop cursing this country. Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State only last month prayed that God should give Nigeria a president with good heart like President Buhari in 2023. Hen? I am happy Nigerians overwhelmingly rejected that satanic prayer in Jesus’ name and I believe that, like Cain’s sacrifice, that prayer never made it to God’s presence.
Perhaps the latest of such claim is the one by a former Minister of Education, Yerima Abdullahi, who told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that millions of Nigerians would miss the president when he steps down in 2023. Hear him: “Buhari will be missed after 2023, and there are millions of Nigerians who will because when he says it is white, it is white. Like him or not, you have to accept that Buhari has really done well for the country and has been through a lot to serve the nation.” Abdullahi, a graduate of Manchester University and former envoy is not done yet: “You don’t have so many of such leaders in the country. He is not a ‘Maradona’, he is not. He says things the way they are. It is very rare you find a leader with such courage.”
I know that comments are free; only facts are sacred. Even at that, there should be a limit to chicanery. Nigerians would have clapped for Abdullahi if he told us this in 2015, or shortly after. Pray, why would President Buhari or anyone for that matter go “through a lot to serve the nation”? Are there no options? Again, who cares about whether the President is a Maradona or not? Where was Abdullahi when even our own Maradona that he is talking Ill about came out to say things were not this bad in his time, an assertion that millions of our Maradona’s friends and foes agreed with? Moreover, to refer to courage in the way President Buhari has been running Nigeria’s affairs is to turn the meaning of the word upside down. At any rate, the President does not have to wait till 2023, let him do the needful today and see whether Nigerians would miss him or not.
We can understand when the government is consoling itself with such statements. After all, when a lizard falls from a wall and none of the people around acknowledges this as a feat, the lizard nods in acknowledgement of the ‘feat’. If the people making such reckless statement have nothing to say, they should just shut up and stop lowering the bar of sycophancy beyond its present deplorable level. Such statement offends the sensibilities of millions of Nigerians. Not even at this time when we are marking the country’s 61st birthday as if we are mourning. Never have I seen Nigeria in this kind of mourning mode or mood.
It is true the Buhari government is working on infrastructure, reviving the moribund railway. He has done a few things here and there. But in the very critical segments, its scorecard is zero. Whatever gains the Buhari government wants to lay claim to in agriculture or economy, etc has been eroded by insecurity. Proof? How much was a bag of rice when Buhari took over in 2015? How much is it today? How much was a bag of cement then? How much is it today? What was the exchange rate like when he took over, what is it today? How much innocent blood has been shed in the last six years? These people making spurious and indefensible claims about the Buhari government should always remember that their audience includes large sections of the country that are well educated. Only the uninitiated can clap for them because they lack the capacity to interrogate their dubious and doubtful claims.
I have said it before, that it requires more than the 1989 Miracle of Dammam for Nigeria to return to the state the Buhari government met it in 2015 by the time it is packing its bag and baggage from Aso Rock in less than two year’s time. When a government fails to provide security, it has lost its very essence. Unless there is divine intervention in this country’s affairs (a thing which can only happen in spite of the government’s nepotism and unfair tendencies), the Buhari government would leave Nigeria worse than it met it. So, what would Nigerians miss about the government?
This country was never this bad. No Nigerian, living or dead, has ever witnessed anything near the present rot and hardship. May this be the worst such experience we would ever have. Amen. A louder Amen? AMEN.
We lost her… My mother-in-law
•Late Mrs Ariyibi
THERE was something to suggest that all was not well with her when she called me in the morning of October 1. But nothing gave the slightest inclination that Death, the ultimate, was it, lurking around, bidding its time to snatch her away only about a day after. She had called to ask after her daughter and grandchildren, congratulate my family on the new month and to wish us a happy Independence celebration. Then the usual prayer that she always rendered whenever we spoke. Her voice was initially steady until something happened. Even then, I never thought it was something that could suggest she was on her way out to eternity. So, I never averted my mind to the unusual despite my being a veteran in the art of losing my aged loved ones.
When I look back, I always see I have enjoyed a lot of God’s benevolence in diverse ways, especially with the privilege of knowing my grandparents, including one of my great grandmothers. Many of my friends never had such privilege. As a matter of fact, many of them lost either both or one parent when they were still ‘babies’ themselves. But, in my own case, even as a child when some of my grandparents died, I can still tell stories of some landmarks concerning their deaths and burial. But that is not where I am going today. The point I am trying to bring out is that given these long years of experience in matters like this, I thought I should have been familiar with some of the clues to be able to tell in advance when an elderly person is about to die. But no.
That was the situation on October 2, when my mother-in-law’s last born, ‘Deolu called me on phone. I did not even know because I was in school. My phone was therefore on silent mode. Wondering what I am doing in the classroom at this point in time, again, that is a matter for another day. I saw that Deolu called me after the class but the call did not make much difference to me because it was not repeated. I assumed if there was an emergency, he would have inundated me with calls. It was when I got home in the night that I was able to return his call. He too missed my call because, then, he was apparently in the middle of an emergency. The young man was going through one of the toughest experiences in his life. His mother, my mother-in-law, Mrs. Oluremi Adeola Ariyibi (nee Sonuga) died literally in his hands, having been moved to his apartment (they lived close to each other at Ikorodu, Lagos State) when the emergency began on on October 1. I later learnt my mother-in-law had called all her children the day she called me, apparently to bid us all the final goodbye.
At long last, ‘Deolu and I were able to connect. However, by then the unexpected had happened. He had merely wanted to hint that Mama was not filling well when he called initially. “Mama is dead”, he announced. The next thing I did was to ask one of the rhetorical questions people ask in such circumstances. “Which mama”?
Anyhow, that was the summary of the woman’s last moments. Those of us who had thought we would have some time to plan a befitting burial were however disappointed when we were told she had left word that she must not be taken to the mortuary. In other words, she should be buried immediately. As a matter of fact, when I left home in Lagos with my wife on Sunday, October 3, for Ikorodu, we had thought we were going to bury her that day, even as we were not sure of the shape of the burial, in view of the less than 24 hours notice we had. After all, she was not a Muslim; so, why the hurry?But getting there, we saw this was not feasible and it was resolved that the burial be done on Tuesday October 5, after wake-keep on October 4.
In line with Yoruba culture and tradition, I pray that both of us will never have cause to discuss again on earth since she has departed this sinful world.
That was how the journey towards her burial began. I could not make it to the wake- keep, but I was told a lot of encomiums were showered on her for her good deeds. If I did not witness that of the wake-keep, the testimonies I heard at the funeral service from the different churches and neighbours she had cause to interact with at both the Methodist Church in Somolu, Lagos, and the one she attended after moving to Ikorodu from Somolu about two years ago, were enough to convince me that the woman was well loved by many of those she met in life. Even clergymen testified to her good deeds. She was not particularly rich, so, the question of flattering did not arise. It only happened that she was a giver even from the little she had. Many testified to her philanthropy, resilence and her willingness to stay with people in distress (irrespective of their social or economic status), feeding them with words of encouragement and prayers. At least two of such testifiers said she was either the one who led them back to Methodist Church or made them members of the church. Thus, without being ordained or decorated as an evangelist, she won souls for the Kingdom in her own little ways.
This was only an aspect of her spiritual life. She was a born chorister. She served in that capacity at Agbowa Methodist Church, lkorodu. She was also a member of the Girls Brigade. She was a Sunday School teacher, a prayer warrior, Bible Study member, financial secretary of Women Fellowship as well as a member of the church council, among others. She was married to the Late Bro. Sunday Adelani Ariyibi.
She once worked at the Sterling Health Pharmaceutical Company (now Glaxo Smith) from 1971-1993 when she retired as supervisor. Her commitment won her several awards in the company.
This piece will not be complete without mentioning an assignment she gave me, (even if I am not able to give details in print) but which posed a hard nut for me to crack in her lifetime. Because of its deep-rootedness, and its multidimensions, I did not even know where to start the assignment from. I can only hope that this hard nut would turn out a walk-over now that she is gone. At 73, she appeared to have gone too soon.
Mrs Ariyibi is survived by children and grandchildren, brothers, sisters, uncles as well as nieces.
