The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Southern Kaduna, murderous herds men and their sponsors: Issues in a misbegotten federation

    Apparently, El Rufai, the Fulani prince charming, in a classical demonstration of Aryanism (the master race), cannot bear to see Fulani blood spilled. 

    “”God sent me as His apostle of liberation to this continent to stop it from decadence. “I heard from God and He has proved it beyond measure. Therefore, every occultic root, every political root of this uprising is cursed today!
    “All the northern forces that are sponsoring this uprising and killings, I decree the curse of God upon them.
     ”Lord, if it is your will to break up Nigeria, break it now!” – Bishop Oyedepo on the Southern Kaduna genocide.

    It cannot be funny that the same General Muhammadu Buhari who, as a former Head of state, wearing a long face, leading Arewa top guns which included the likes of General Buba Marwa, Alhaji Aliko Muhammed, Alhaji Abdulrazak and Alhaji Hassan  on 13 October,  2000 to storm the offices of Alhaji Lam Adesina, the Oyo State governor, to protest alleged killings of Fulani herdsmen  in Saki, Oke Ogun, is the same man who, as Nigeria’s incumbent president, looked askance as hundreds of poor Southern Kaduna Christians were being mowed down by an increasingly murderous Fulani herds men. El Rufai, the megalomaniac Kaduna State governor, would not rouse himself to action until it became obvious that the killings were becoming equal opportunity as those who were being slaughtered, and their villages burnt, started to kill the marauders in return. Apparently, El Rufai, the Fulani prince charming, in a classical demonstration of Aryanism (the master race), cannot bear to see Fulani blood spilled. You would not but wonder if this is the same Muhammadu Buhari Nigerians trooped out to vote into office less than two years ago.

    I am no blue-eyed, sentimental or petulant columnist. Rather, I am over 70 years old and,  if at that age I cannot speak truth to power, then my education is not only a bloody waste, my age is worse. For those who think that this country cannot rapidly unravel or, as some like to kid themselves, that its unity is non-negotiable, I have the following contributions to a discussion of the Southern Kaduna crisis by individuals who are ordinarily cool about the Buhari government to ask that they think again. As is my wont, only my contribution will be ascribed.

     I wrote: “Reading through these two stories, the words of Pastor Adeboye, praising Gov Fayose, came poignantly back to me. With the two different approaches to the problem of these murderous people by both the two governments, it goes without saying that Governor Fayose will long remain a hero of Ekiti people. That the president has not spoken on the horrible killings in Southern Kaduna – not even during his last major radio and television address  to the nation – and his equally appalling handling of this problem especially in mostly Christian areas of both the North central and many parts of the southern stares, shows clearly, as I said in a recent article, that President Buhari obviously prefers his Fulani people to other Nigerians even where they were never able to take him to the presidential gloryland he now occupies until he had reached out beyond them to other parts of the country during the 2015 election.

    Incidentally, the gory picture of killings in Southern Kaduna was mailed to me via WhatsApp all the way from America. When you juxtapose that with the graceful Obama farewell address in which he said only ignorance could make any group think that some Americans are more American than others, then you know we are absolutely in the backwoods here in Nigeria.

    While these Fulani herders kill at will, their political leaders are also all out, both at the executive and legislative arms of government, trying to force grazing routes on Nigerians with a view to having Fulani settlements, complete with some of these killers, planted in each part of the country. No wonder, it  has been suggested in very serious quarters that  all these herdsmen’s antics are, indeed, a precursor to some devilish religious scheme and it is getting increasingly difficult not to believe them.

    My candid advice, if the federal government continues to treat non Fulani’s like they are lesser Nigerians, is that those aggrieved victims of the mindless Fulani killings, and governments and citizens of states who hold their freedoms sacrosanct, must take a page from the Fayose book, get their peoples prepared and – here governors as chief protectors of their peoples must pro actively act in their support – and get them ready for whatever is coming. After all, President Buhari has himself said that these killers, assisting their ethnic Fulani compatriots in the killings, are well trained men, armed with superior and sophisticated weapons they brought all the way from the Maghreb as if Nigeria has no government to defend it against these marauders.

    Fayose has shown the way, Nigeria is a federation and state governments must rise up to their responsibility of safeguarding their people. There can be no two ways to it. After all, we die but once”.

    Wrote a seasoned lawyer next:

    “Reading the way Alhaji Lam Adesina and his Security Chiefs dealt with those Fulani supremacists who  today are holding the” kuku ida “ (in power) set me thinking , made me proud and shed a tear at the same time. Nigeria was a country not too long ago; there were leaders who knew their briefs, there were Security Chiefs who manned their duty posts. It now appears that the carrying of begging bowls, monthly, to Abuja has reduced men to children.  Honestly, it appears as if we have forgotten that Nigeria is a Federation and not a feudal enclave under the Lordship of one powerful Emir.

    And our people who ought to discern the times are so blind by reason of stupid politics that they would scurry to defend their oppressors to their shame and hurt. The only thing I know is that some of us are conscious of our free born status and can never agree to this second class citizenship being engineered by those whose days in power could be numbered.”

    And then, an Engineering Professor interjected:” Looking at those mass slaughter of fellow human beings is simply awful, and I have since stopped thinking that all this is really about cattle rearing. I have come to accept the claim, in some quarters, that a form of expansionist agenda is surreptitiously being undertaken. What could midnight burning of houses, raping of women and killings all over the country have to do with cattle rearing?

    * Fayose may be anything, but his approach to this matter will stand the test of time. Chief Awolowo, asked what he would  have done if he were to be Shagari when the Cameroonian gendarmes trespassed our territory, killing our citizens, had replied :

    “if you wake up every morning to find your neighbour pointing a gun at you, you need to buy a gun and hold it conspicuously each morning, for him to see”. What is absolutely inexplainable is the dumb refusal of other Southern governors to adopt the Fayose strategy. Seeing the carnage, in what has a semblance of genocide, I started to look beyond the herdsmen. Nasir El Rufai, the Kaduna State governor, eminently qualifies for arrest on the strength of some of his statements over the Kaduna South mayhem. He confessed to have paid some Fulani killers, who are from outside the country, so that they stop killing! Hogwash! The failure to do anything, but look the other way, until immersed in an unmamanageable public outcry, says a lot. It sounds so unbelievable that this president, who swore to protect the lives of Nigerians, could look the other way while citizens were being beheaded in their hundreds. That  this president, who as an ordinary Nigerian, led a crowd of Miyeti people to invade the government house, Ibadan, could look the other way as children, pregnant women and able bodied citizens of Nigeria were being butchered by those Nasir described as foreigners, is beyond belief.  Clearly, this president seems more interested in protecting the lives of cows, the rustling of which he has deployed soldiers to fight, than protect ours.

    • We Yorubas are obviously in a culture shock; for here, human life is sacred and we believe that only the Almighty who gives it, can take it. We will now have to decide whether, or not, we want to be made no more than slaves in our own land or continue to watch, helpless,  the continuing defilement of  sacred aspects of our culture  by co-habiting with unruly beings to whom cows’ lives  are obviously more valuable than humans’”.

    Lesson of all these: Nigeria’s unity should not be taken for granted. I can only hope this is internalised.

     

  • Less can be more, less can be generative: a counter-memory from nature, mythology, science, technology and art (1)

    Less can be more, less can be generative: a counter-memory from nature, mythology, science, technology and art (1)

    Esu sleeps in the courtyard, it is too small for him/Esu sleeps in the bedroom; it is still too small for him/Esu sleeps inside the kernel of a palm fruit; now he has space large enough for him to sleep in From praise chants to Esu, the trickster god of fate, contradiction and paradox
    Less is more Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

    If, as the well known saying goes, too much of anything is bad, too little of everything is worse. Who prays for less of health, wealth, life, beauty, luck or fortune? Between abundance and scarcity, every woman and man alive in the world will gladly choose abundance. It seems a universal trait, doesn’t it, that we all pray for abundance and give thanks for it if it comes our way. Between having one child or two children and having five to eight, most of us would choose the latter, including people who do not have the material means to raise their children in comfort or in adequacy and security of life’s many necessities. As a matter of fact, and at least in our society and many other developing nations of the world, the poorer the man or woman, the larger the number of children desired. There is no doubt about it: most people alive now and that have ever lived almost always prefer/preferred abundance to scarcity, more to less.

    Postcolonial or neocolonial Nigeria seems to have taken the application or realization of this truism much further than possibly any other society on the planet, with the possible exception of America. Thus, like the Americans, our obsession, our delight in number, size and scale is extreme to the point of being self-defining. The manifestations or expressions of this observation are legion. The previous ruling party, the PDP, used to boast that it was the biggest ruling party in Africa, even if it was also probably the worst and most decadent ruling party in the African continent and possibly in the world. Now, ideologues and opportunistic and sedulous supporters of the new ruling party, the APC, have taken up and appropriated that boastful and empty claim of being the biggest party of all. We have thirty-six states or mini-countries and against the charge by many concerned patriots that this number is too large to be sustained by the pressure of our population size, there are loud and clamant demands for still more states to be created. Too often we read smug, self-satisfied accounts claiming that Nollywood, the national video film industry, now produces more films per annum than any national film industry in the world save Hollywood. But this claim leaves out the fact that we also produce more trashy films than any other country in the world. We have far many more universities now than any other country in the African continent, and yet in the same period that we consummated this “achievement”, the ranking of our universities has taken a nose dive not only in the world at large but also among the universities of or in Africa.

    Perhaps at this point in the present discussion, dear reader, it is important for me to let it be known that it is not a platitudinous jeremiad about Nigeria’s obsession with number and size that I intend in this piece. This obsession is certainly worthy of critique in its own right, most of all in its most debatable expression in the boastful claim that we are “the giant of Africa” simply because we are the most populous nation in the African continent. But far beyond platitudes, what I have in mind in this piece is a conversation in which size, number and scale might be put into conversation with their opposites – smallness, littleness and even minuteness – so as to show that our national obsession with size is not a “natural” or logical effect of our peculiarity as an African nation but is part of an ideological system that our political and social elites deliberately promote in order to run our society as their fiefdom, their modern day slave plantation or makeshift refugee camp.

    There are many discursive steps to take toward a convincing demonstration of the veracity of this claim. The first step is show, in line with the two epigraphs to this essay, that in many aspects of nature, society, mythology, science, technology and art, less often leads or conduces to more; indeed, it is far more generative than gigantic or super scale and size. Moreover, it is precisely because even though it is little known or talked about, this idea that “less is more” or “small is big” pervades so many areas of life and society that I am calling it a “counter-memory” of humankind. The idea is “counter” to the apparently universal belief that abundance and bountifulness are always to be preferred to scarcity and want. Precisely what do I have in mind in this act of reclaiming this counter-memory that we may simply call “less is more”? To answer this question, we must go to our two epigraphs, one at a time.

    First of all, I readily admit it. For a long time that lasted over about a decade, although I was greatly fascinated by the paradox, the enigma of the first epigraph to this essay, I did not really understand the profound meaning of the idea of Esu at last finding a space large enough for him to sleep in inside a palm nut kernel when much larger spaces like the bedroom and even the courtyard had been too “small” for him. This “meaning” is of course the idea of germination in human life in particular and all existence in general: inside the infinitely small space of a kernel or a seed, life can and is often regenerated on an almost limitless scale. Thus, in a literal and rather trivial sense, the space inside a kernel is small; but in a metaphoric and extraordinarily consequential sense, this same space is vast beyond measure.

    A similar notion of infinitely small spaces and their inverse vastness is the founding basis of a large sub-discipline of the science of physics, especially so-called “particle” or subatomic physics. The spaces and entities studied and tapped for their powers in this branch of physics are so small, so minute that they cannot only not be seen by the human eye, they can be apprehended and explored only by super-microscopes powered by high-speed electron magnifiers. Moreover, this process has led to what is now known as “nano-fabrication”, a process that measures and uses possibilities made available by spatial and temporal measurements of one billionth of a second or of a meter. To normal or “ordinary” human sensory and temporal perception, a hundredth of a second or a meter is already mind-boggling. But a billionth? Yes, that is what “nano-fabrication” and “nano-technology” have now made not only possible but a vital part of scientific and technological modernity or even postmodernity. The mapping of the human genome and indeed, cloning and other spectacular forms of gene splicing in use in fields as diverse as agribusiness in the production of super harvests from genetically modified crops; resonant imaging that makes it possible to probe into the innermost recesses of human organs and tissues; and the digital revolution in the production, storage and reproduction of words, images, texts and sounds endlessly in 21st century Information Technology (IT): all these fields and processes are made possible by “nano-fabrication”, the ultimate scientific and technological realization of the mythology of Esu’s preference for infinitely small spaces that generate bountiful harvests that are not limited by time and space. Germination and regeneration through and by small seeds is for all time and all places, including seemingly desolate regions like arid deserts and frigid arctic zones.

    Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the man from whom comes the second epigraph to this piece, was a world famous architect who was a leader of a so-called “minimalist” movement in modern art and architecture. To the baroque splendors and ornate excesses of feudal and early modern bourgeois architectures, van der Rohe and his followers substituted an austere minimalism that in form, style and function placed emphasis on as little as possible in materials, space and decorations used in the construction of both public buildings and individual dwellings. In modern African drama and literature, the greatest practitioners of minimalism are South African playwrights who were forced by the rigors of apartheid censorship and repression to use as few actors and performers as possible so as to be able to quickly disband and escape when they were raided by the regime’s goon squads. What arose from necessity became a great artistic achievement when opponents of the regime in theatre and performance created two- or three-character plays that used techniques of plays-within-the-play and role-switching to create the impression that many characters, many performers were on the stage when the actual number of the cast was one or two.

    One of my personal favorites in the many expressions of this minimalist principle of “less is more” in the domain of philosophy and theory is the idea present in fields of knowledge and ideas as diverse as semiotics, structuralism and poststructuralism that the generation of reference and meaning takes place through a very limited set of rules and procedures whose combinations are however endless. On this account, if you know and can “play” astutely with the few rules and procedures, you can generate reference and meaning endlessly. What is particularly exciting about this “theory” is the contention that though experts may be able to expound on its operations more than laymen and women, by the very structure of our brains and minds as human beings, we are wired to create, change, play with, revise and renew meaning and reference as much as we like or are compelled by circumstances and/or intention. In other words, every woman and man is a potential activator or beneficiary of this principle of “less is more”. Halleluiah!

    It is necessary at this point to say with as much emphasis as possible that these reflections are not limited to and by ultramodern, millennial scientific, technological and artistic developments. Thus, I do declare that the idea that less is more and can be regenerative, that life can be enriched and or renewed by wanting and consuming as little as possible has always been around in nearly all the cultures of the world. Nearly all the great thinkers, visionaries and moral reformers of the world made it a habit, an obligation on themselves and their followers, to want and own as little as possible. And there is a saying, an adage that is found in almost all the folklores of the world that says that the only real and true way to be “rich” is to want, need and own as little as possible. The late Ulli Beier used to say that the real “Babalawos” or “Dibias” of our traditional precolonial societies never made accumulation of wealth their passion or mission in life. Jesus famously asked of all those who wished to follow him and be his disciples to sell off all their belongings and like him, take the vows of poverty.

    I am not romanticizing poverty and condemning wealth and abundance as values in and of themselves, compatriots. It is the worship, the idolatry of money and wealth that I identify as an obsession foisted on all in our society by our political, social and religious elites that I condemn and unmask in this piece. More specifically, it is the perpetration and perpetuation of this idolatry of money and wealth through our national obsession with number and size that I explore and condemn. We do not deal in small, modest numbers and scale, compatriots. Looting that is countable in millions and not in billions does not get our attention and concern. With us, wastage and squandermania that do not astonish in their scale do not cause outcry and outrage. In next week’s concluding piece in the series, we shall link this obsession to the hegemonic ideology of a demographically and socially tiny elite that sees the country as its fiefdom.

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • CAN, Obazee and the future of Financial Reporting Council

    CAN, Obazee and the future of Financial Reporting Council

    IN their first response to the sacking of Jim Obazee, until last week the executive secretary of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC), the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) found it irresistible to gloat. The opinion of Musa Asake, a reverend and the General Secretary of CAN, on the matter is most pertinent, though it may represent nothing more than the initial response. Said he: “The sack of Jim (Obazee) is good riddance to bad rubbish. Anybody that wants to fight the church will find himself where he does not want. Jim got to the position by the grace of God, but set out to probe and destroy the church of God. I spoke with him several times on this issue but he wouldn’t listen. He was going to take the church to what is worse than Armageddon. Thank God the authorities have stepped in to right the wrong. He should have been fired a long time ago and we don’t know why he was left alone, but God’s time is always the best. That code should be thrown out completely because government should not interfere with the church. The church is a no-go zone for the government. Doing that has serious implications. If they attempt it, it will lead to confusion in the nation.”
    The sacking of Mr Obazee was precipitated by the shocking decision of the highly respected Pastor Enoch Adeboye to step down as the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Nigeria. Pastor Adeboye hinged his decision on a provision guiding tenure limit in the FRC Act that made it imperative for him to take that course of action. He would still remain as head of the church worldwide, he explained. A day after Pastor Adeboye stepped down, the media was ablaze with speculations that other general overseers who had exceeded more than 20 years as heads of their churches would also soon step down. But it was obvious that passion was inflamed over the matter, with Mr Obazee unable to secure the kind of support needed to turn the tables against CAN leaders.
    Even though the FRC Act exceeded itself by venturing into tenure politics in the church and other faith-based organisations, this column will not be drawn into making comments on the propriety or otherwise of the FRC Act or the decision by Pastor Adeboye to step down. What is intriguing, however, is the decision by CAN to, as it were, take ownership of the FRC Act as if the law affected only the church and other faith-based organisations. In fact, the law also affects the business community as much as anyone else. More crucially, even among faith-based organisations, the law also affects all Christian denominations and Islamic groups, many of which are at peace with the Act. It simply does not seem right, whatever its shortcomings, to regard the law as targeting either the church or a part of it, or even faith-based organisations alone. The controversy is unnecessary, especially after the matter had been thrashed out in the courts and in other fora where stakeholders met minds on the matter, and notwithstanding prevailing dissatisfaction with the outcomes of the meetings and legal cases.
    CAN reserves the right to object to the law and probably see it as undue interference in its internal procedures. But the law deals with much more than the issue of tenure. The Christian body can even continue to assail the law, and if it likes read meaning into any or all of the actions of the FRC’s sacked chief executive, who is said to have been a former RCCG pastor with an axe to grind. But what CAN is not expected to do is to engage in the kind of gloating noticeable in its initial responses. The public will hope that when it finally releases its main response as promised, CAN will give a more sober assessment of the issue and offer an inspiring way forward. For after all, the law, as obnoxious as it may seem, actually offers church leaders an opportunity to return to its foundational and doctrinal past when apostolic leaders devolved financial and administrative responsibilities to others while paying watchful, intense and weighty attention to spiritual matters. That way, both on earth and in heaven, shorn of the everyday mundaneness of running the church, church leaders would live above suspicion and aspire to the more perfect stature they are expected to tremblingly work out.

  • Writhing and writing

    Writhing and writing

    (A primer for transformation)

    Writing is easy. All you need to do is to hold your pen firmly and begin to scribble away until your fingers began to hurt and probably to bleed. Yet there are times when you just don’t feel like writing anything, when you feel you have written whatever there is to write. You even begin to plagiarize or parody yourself.

    Self-parody is like sodomizing or even lobotomizing yourself. For the writer, this is the worst form of self-abuse. Intellectual indigestion sets in before a writer’s block begins. It is the literary equivalent of what is known as a burnt out case, a case of leprosy prevalent in the old colonial Congo that is so severe that you can hardly feel anything anymore. Because you are mentally petrified, the whole world has also become one huge slab of a stone. A wit has after all described a critic as a man who leaves no turn unstoned.

    The conceit behind the opening sentence is not even original. You know that somebody has said something close to that before. But in your crammed and cramped state, you cannot recall the exact words or the name of the author. In panic and in urgent need of some literary laxatives, you reached for the Google search engine, skipping the Obasanjo-Awujale tiff which had filled the pages of the newspapers. You dismissed this hegemonic tussle as the opening gambit on the political chessboard ahead of the next presidential election. Nigerian power masters set forth at dawn even when at the dusk of it all the nation has nothing to show for it.

    But when you type in the phrase “writing is easy”, it immediately yields a moveable literary feast containing about twenty eight gems of compelling reflections on the magic of writing by writers across age and time. Snooper leaves you with three of these gems. “The first sentence is not written until the last sentence has been written”, Joyce Carol Oates. “Writing is easy. All you need to do is to cross out the wrong words”—  Mark Twain. “ There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. Ernest Hemingway.

    If writing is such a burden then why write at all? Or why write and writhe? But for most writers, writing is an obsession, a type of holy madness. It is when you stop writing that the madness becomes unholy and unwholesome. The obscene takes over from the scenes. In solitude, you consume only yourself. But without solitude, you are bound to consume others. The seer has become the shearer.

    It has been suggested that writers do not stop writing because the writer is a righter. The writer as a righter? What does this mean? It means the writer is the ultimate moral, ethical and spiritual compass of his society; the one who sets aright whatever has gone wrong and awry with his society; the all-time weatherman for troubled climes who forges in the smithy of his soul as the unregulated conscience of his race, to misappropriate James Joyce.

    If snooper’s memory serves him right, more than thirty years ago, in an engrossing and polemical monograph written for the monograph series of the Department of Literature in English at the old University of Ife, Niyi Osundare, the master-poet of agrarian splendour and joyous soaring lyricism, set forth the artistic template for what has since become a glittering career in popular and populist poetry. It was titled: The Writer as Righter.

    At that point in time even with the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry already in his Ikerre Ekiti hunting bag, it was obvious that Osundare had a sense of mission and of what should be the place of the writer in his society. Thirty years on and several national and international garlands after, the great crooner from Ikerre has not looked back, neither has he spared the politically errant the merciless and astringent bromide of his poetic master strokes.

    The cost of this poetic license can be prohibitive. Osundare often calls snooper on his occasional visits to Nigeria to compare experience and to share in the joys of glorious literary creation. In his guttural voice, rich and redolent with political ironies, the superlatively endowed lyricist recently told yours sincerely of how he was compelled to devise an escape route through Ise Ekiti at his own mother’s funeral, just in case the local tyrant decided to visit him with poetic justice after an earlier poetic infraction. Such are the pains of writers and righters.

    But unlike snooper, at least they allowed Niyi to bury his mother. Yours sincerely was not so lucky. Abacha’s goons kept a vigil and were on the prowl should in case yours sincerely have the temerity to show up once again as he did a week earlier, beating their evil security dragnet hands down through the help of some trusted associates. As a gesture of filial obligation to a beloved mother and as a mark of indignant contempt for military despotism, yours sincerely had shown up a week earlier to pay his last respects to the dying matriarch. Many thanks, once again to Akin Osuntokun, my politically estranged younger brother.

    As one writes this, the eyes began to cloud all over again. Perhaps it is because this coming month, it is going to be twenty years. Most rulers hate writers because they cannot write, nor are they capable of imagining the pains and trauma of creative gestation. Take a census of Nigeria’s rulers and see how many of them can be regarded as authentic authors rather than purveyors of ghost written memorabilia. Many of them cannot even read over without stumbling over their own recalcitrant creations.

    When Charles de Gaulle, the greatest Frenchman of the twentieth century, was asked to put away Jean-Paul Sartre who had been a thorn in his flesh and had been described by De Gaulle’s loyalists as the hyena behind the typewriter, the great warrior declined, famously grouching that Sartre was also France. Political titan and literary avatar profoundly disliked each other but each knew which sacred national boundary cannot be crossed without the nation suffering for it.

    The fact is that Charles de Gaulle was not only a military and political genius, he was also an accomplished author in his own right. Pound for pound, De Gaulle remains one of the most gifted prose stylists of the French language. African leaders who tend to excel have all been authors and avid pen pushers: Tafawa-Balewa, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Augustino Neto, Amilcar Cabral. etc. Only the imaginatively gifted can call to the imaginatively gifted.

    But if oga no dey write, it is also the case that oga no dey read as well. Let them continue to write their nonsense while oga continues to work wonder. The problem is that without books and a life of the mind, there is nothing for oga to work with. A barren mind is incapable of producing great visionary ideas. This idea that something can come out of nothing and that reading does not matter is part of the ruinous, nihilistic legacy of the political elite that has percolated down to the great multitude in Nigeria. In every society, the ruling reading culture is a reflection of the reading culture of the ruling class.

    From classical Greece to the ancient Roman Empire, through Mandarin China, England, Holland, America, France, Singapore and Fidel Castro’s Cuba, every society that has excelled and commanded the attention of the world has done this through the literacy of its ruling elite and the cultural awareness of the generality of the populace. In many of these societies, economic, political and industrial breakthroughs are often preceded or accompanied by a huge explosion of learning and mass literacy.

    In the pre-literary phase and the great epoch of orality, Africa was there with the rest of the world because the great African oral culture also threw up its superb artists, philosophers, historians military geniuses and great chroniclers. This explains why Africa was not lagging behind the rest of the world in the epoch of empire. In retrospect, perhaps the greatest historical calamity that has befallen Africa and the entire Black race is the inability to transit from oral culture to the literary epoch on its own terms.

    There was enough warning before the Europeans took matters into their hands and applied their own solution as they deemed fit. Now, another world-historic calamity beckons as the advent of a knowledge-driven society and the supersonic boom of the hitherto unimaginable makes nonsense of the old paradigms of creating wealth. No government ever decrees the birth of genius. There is an organic connection between genius and the state of awareness of a society.

    Genius depends on the organic tension between individual talent and the dominant culture. A backward feudal society stifled by mass illiteracy and hobbled by superstitions can only throw up its own type of genius, particularly when it comes to scientific breakthrough. If ever such a society, against the run of play and the logic at play, manages to produce outstanding geniuses, they will in all probability unravel in the infancy of genius unless they are transplanted to more hospitable climes. This is the bane of contemporary Nigeria.

    There is too much unstructured and uneducated discontent in this land. It is a particularly evil augury for both ruled and rulers. In order to redeem Nigeria, we must take the foundational step and go back to where the rains started beating us at least in the post-colonial epoch. We must bring back the great learning culture, the great city libraries, the great town hall debates among holiday makers which powered the brief intellectual renaissance of the seventies and early eighties of which Niyi Osundare and so many others are sterling and outstanding products.

    It is this explosion in learning and cultural awareness which drove the Yoruba cultural revolution under Awo, which led to the great transformational stride that pushed the Igbo nation into global reckoning between the thirties and the sixties and completely overhauled its social and psychological fabric. It was the same phenomenon that led Ahmadu Bello to found the New Nigerian publishing conglomerate a few weeks before he was assassinated. Writing has its pleasure and writhing its great traumatic pains. But taken together, they may well be the elusive magic formula for a nation in urgent need of transformation.

  • Awujale versus Obasanjo

    Awujale versus Obasanjo

    IT has taken almost six years for the autobiographical book of the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, to attract the attention it richly deserves. No one is prepared to say how the new publicity happened, but sometime last week, someone sent an excerpt of the book to media houses containing an unflattering description of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo as a venal, vainglorious and grasping leader. The excerpt has caused an uproar. Chief Obasanjo is predictably peeved, but no one is coming to his defence. He apparently does not need one, for he himself is a one-man wrecking crew. Satisfied that the excerpt has received rapturous attention, the shadowy figures behind the first excerpt, or perhaps someone else altogether, has decided to draw public attention to other scathing parts of the book. Where the first excerpt deals with a duplicitous Chief Obasanjo, the second focuses on the political malfeasance of the equally grasping and venomous ex-military head of state, Ibrahim Babangida.

    Oba Adetona’s recollections are detailed and riveting. Perhaps the evasive and epigram-loving Gen Babangida will respond sometime soon. However, the impatient and unreflective Chief Obasanjo could not wait. His response indeed evoked a mystery. For a book that is so well written and elegantly produced, it is a mystery that it has taken so long to foment a fitting buzz around it. While media professionals have proved to be consistently lazy in doing justice to good books, it is intriguing that Chief Obasanjo, who is so mercilessly skewered in the book, has not had the time to peruse the book, indeed study it. And when his attention was drawn to the said excerpt, as he put it condescendingly, it is shocking that he rushed to publish a response without getting a copy of the book to enable him pen a comprehensive and reflective response. It is vintage Obasanjo.

    The book is undoubtedly frank and revealing. The now widely advertised famous excerpt in particular shows Chief Obasanjo as a dishonest, unfeeling and unprincipled opportunist. Neither his public service (1976-79; 1999-2007) nor his private image, both as a father and as an individual, disproves the conclusion so poignantly reached by the Awujale. It is, therefore, surprising that there are indications that some Yoruba elders might wish to intervene in what they describe improbably as a quarrel between the ex-president and the Ijebu monarch. There can be no reconciliation between the two, nor should there be, for both gentlemen are the products of very dissimilar backgrounds: one is principled and noble in his carriage and words; and the other has since his military days remained a rake and rambling man. What is there to reconcile? Indeed, how do you reconcile fire and water?

    The Awujale autobiography reveals many things about many people. But for the purpose of this short essay, the excerpt in reference should suffice to address the topic of today. It is clear the Awujale is not a fan of Chief Obasanjo, that great and self-righteous narcissist. But whether the excerpt sets out to paint a realistic picture of the duplicitous and unprincipled former president contrary to the one he continues to project falsely, or it simply sheds light on the contrived misunderstanding between the business mogul, Mike Adenuga, and Chief Obasanjo and his Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is not immediately clear. What is clear, however, is that the picture painted of the Obasanjo persona is a terrible deconstruction of a man so morally perverse that it is a miracle he ruled for eight years, not to talk of finding his way out of the presidency in 2007.

    The summary of the Awujale thesis is that Chief Obasanjo unreasonably harassed Mr Adenuga in order to get at the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar, with whom he was at daggers drawn, and that, as a condition to stop the witch-hunt, the ex-president opportunistically coaxed the donation of a massive library building out of the business mogul. The uncompleted building is stil on the university campus as evidence. Oba Adetona did not mince word. His account is detailed, restrained, elegant and convincing, complete with instances, locations and sometimes eyewitnesses. Chief Obasanjo was on the contrary truculent, abusive and, for effect, diversionary and deliberately insinuative. It would require a leap of faith to believe the ex-president’s account. There was no conviction behind his response, only chutzpah, and it was obvious he had been cornered. First, he said it was beneath him as president to sit down with Mr Adenuga before the press, suggesting that he had no reason to meet with the business mogul, not to talk of cajoling him to contribute a building block to the Bells University of Technology. Then, most fallaciously, he passed the buck for that cajolery to the genial Professor Julius Okogie, who was at the time the vice chancellor. Of course, no one would doubt that the letter asking for that humongous donation would be signed by the vice chancellor. But to suggest, no matter how remotely, that Chief Obasanjo did not know about the letter to Mr Adenuga and other generous contributors would be stretching credulity to its elastic limit.

    It did not require the exposition of the Awujale to tell the public just how deceptive and intimidatory Chief Obasanjo is. But it helps that, using definite examples and mentioning names and instances in his autobiography, the Awujale has done the public the great service of disrobing the masquerade. It would be interesting to find out how the list of donors was drawn up, or whether it could have been done outside the inspiration and connivance of Chief Obasanjo as a bullying president. It requires someone of such quaint and contradictory moral perspective like Chief Obasanjo not to see the contradiction of receiving, assuming he did not solicit, help or donation from a businessman under investigation, if not persecution, by the EFCC. The fact underscored by the Awujale in the short excerpt is that Chief Obasanjo has never been loyal to anything or person, not to talk of loftier and more esoteric matters of ideas and ideology. Furthermore, suggests the excerpt, Chief Obasanjo broke every rule known to the Nigerian constitution, and every moral compass known to man. He got away with nihilism because he was so indecent as to be prepared to deploy every force and evil imagination known to law or even outside the law.

    The case made against Chief Obasanjo in the Awujale autobiography is so revealing that it is not surprising the former president immediately opted for ancillary matters and other digressions alien to the book. But the ex-president’s response missed the mark so badly that he began to accuse the Awujale of having stakes in Mr Adenuga’s and Aliko Dangote’s business empires. He forgot that he became the subject of many allegations because he was president and faced accusation of conflict of interest when he asked for donations, directly or indirectly, and covetously established connections with other people’s businesses. Oba Adetona is right never to have trusted Chief Obasanjo, and even more principled by refusing to at first back the retired general for the presidency in 1999. The oba does not give the impression in the excerpt that his view of Chief Obasanjo has changed. Indeed, he is not disappointed.

    Chief Obasanjo has done spectacularly well for himself. He is not known to wait until he has left office before feathering his nest, as a former super permanent secretary once recounted in a newspaper article of the moment a former military head of state, Murtala Mohammed, wanted to replace Chief Obasanjo as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters. And as his first wife, Mama Iyabo, also corroborated, the ex-president is not guided by any moral restraint despite his sham and fulsome display of religiosity. Even some of his children, one of whom he betrayed spectacularly, are aghast at the monstrosities he seems so effortlessly capable of. Nuhu Ribadu, former boss of the EFCC may deny all he wants, but the facts available suggest that the ex-president manoeuvred EFCC to less than salutary duties. The impeachment of Governors Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo State, Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State prove how disreputably Chief Obasanjo bastardised the constitution and tore to shreds the moral and political fabrics of the republic.

    Such a man, so burdened by the cumulative moral baggage mentioned in the Awujale excerpt, cannot find the conviction and logic to fault the poignant allegations against himself. Indeed, it is fitting that he made only half-hearted attempt to dispute the Awujale’s account of his serial betrayals. From all indications, Chief Obasanjo will go back and read the entire book in the hope he can find more materials to deploy as a tool of vilification against the Ijebu monarch. But the true hope is that having spent nearly all his adult years faking a moral credential he is not capable of sustaining, and having vilified and undermined his betters with a severity that is truly fanatical and farcical, at last, someone like Oba Adetona and books like that salient autobiography will finally put paid to the former general’s pretensions. History, it is clear, will judge him very badly. But the real catharsis for a long-suffering people, including some members of his family, forced to swallow his atrocities for the past few decades, will be when his self-confessed thick skin is breached and he is exposed and demystified.

  • Potable water for all

    Potable water for all

    Adamu’s audacious moves at water resources ministry

    Water is indispensable to all living things.  Human beings use it for nearly everything: drinking, washing of clothes and plates, bathing, cooking, brushing our teeth, watering the garden, washing the pets, scrubbing the floor, watering the yard, farming, industrial uses, etc.

    Although we need both food and water to survive, it is possible for human beings to go for more than three weeks without food.But not so for water. At least 60% of the adult body is made of it and every living cell in the body needs it to function.

    Paradoxically, successive governments hardly pay much attention to it the way they do power, roads, education, health and other sectors of the economy. Little is heard of our ministry of water resources. May be that explained the paltry N6billion capital vote the ministry had in 2015. This is peanut considering that the ministry has 17 agencies/institutions under it, including 12 River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs).

    Mercifully, the capital vote was increased to N37billion and N7.2billion for recurrent expenditure in last year’s budget. However, to underscore the importance attached to the ministry by the present administration, the proposed vote for it has been increased from the N44billion in 2016 to N85 billion in the current year’s proposal, in spite of the downturn in the government revenue. One can only hope the National Assembly would realise the centrality of potable water to human existence and be generous in approving its budget.

    With a silent worker like Suleiman H. Adamu as minister in charge of the ministry, we should be hopefulthat the money would be spent judiciously. Like other ministers in the President Muhammadu Buhari cabinet, Adamu was appointed in November, 2015. He immediately swung into action after receiving briefs from the departments, units and agencies in the ministry. Less than a month after his swearing in, he organised a ministerial retreat from December 11-13, 2015, to acquaint him with the ministry’s opportunities and challenges. Consequently, five major issues of focus were identified viz: repositioning the ministry for efficient service delivery; executing the ministry’s mandate more efficiently; identifying alternative sources of funding projects; strengthening river basins operations and enhancing monitoring and evaluation.

    Many people think the Federal Ministry of Water Resources is all about providing potable water for Nigerians alone. No. Its mandate extends somewhat to the power and agriculture sectors, among others. And so much is going on towards delivering on most of the ministry’s core responsibilities. So far, it has concluded the immediate and long-term plans for the water sector (2016-2030). Its roadmap includes: conclusion of the Draft National Water Resources Policy and National Water Resources Bill. And, in order to reposition the ministry for better service delivery, Adamu has embarked on manpower review as well as prioritised the execution of the ministry’s projects, based on established criteria. The ministry is also working assiduously towards assisting in the Federal Government’s efforts to boost power supply as well as improve food supply through its implementation of a national Irrigation Development Programme and identification of dams with hydro electrical power potential, for development.

    Indeed, a committee has been constituted on the revitalisation of RBDAs while the dams with hydro electrical power potential will help in further diversifying the source of power supply in the country. Lest we forget, the RBDAs played a major role in the agriculture sector a few decades back. So, it is cheering that the ministry is looking into how they can be revitalised to make them efficient again.

    It has become clear that government alone cannot cater to the needs of all ministries and parastatals; so, the Federal Ministry of Water Resources is working towards partnerships for alternative funding. Moreover, the ministry is developing and implementing a National Water Supply and Sanitation Programme to enable it achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It has also inaugurated the National Council on Privatisation Sub-Committee on RBDAs, through which the ministry is collaborating with the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and ICRC to put the RBDAs on the path of full commercialisation. The same applies to the hydropower and irrigation projects for which the ministry has developed guidelines for investment opportunities. Bringing in private investment into these areas will help the government to save money for other pressing demands while at the same time ensuring the elimination of the bureaucratic tendencies and corruption that have hobbled many government parastatals. In other words, efficiency will be better guaranteed when this happens.

    Of course, the ministry alone cannot achieve all these objectives. Therefore, it has gone into active collaboration with other ministries and parastatals, including the federal ministries of agriculture and rural development; power; finance; budget and national planning; environment; health and the ICRC, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, BPE, state governments and other stakeholders to achieve the plans. Such collaboration is necessary for synchronisation of ideas so they would not be working at cross-purposes. So far, implementation plan for each of these items has been concluded.

    The other good news from the ministry is the launching of Graduate/Youth Farmers Employment Programmes in seven locations nationwide. These include Kampe Irrigation Project, Kogi State; Integrated Farming Project, Abeokuta, Ogun State; Talata Mafara Scheme, Zamfara State; Kadawa Inegrated Centre, Kano State; Ogoja Irrigation Scheme, Cross River State; Agbala Integrated Farm Project, Imo State and Doma Dam Irrigation Project, Nasarawa State.

    This is a continuous programme that mirrors the Songhai Integrated Farm model and engaging carefully selected participants in batches of 50 to be trained in various agricultural activities. It would ultimately be extended to the 109 senatorial districts in the country. The ministry has also  completed and commissioned the Central Ogbia Central Water Supply Project in Bayelsa State to provide potable water to Otuoke and 12 other communities of Central Ogbia Local Government Area.

    Under Adamu, the ministry has executed a number of memoranda of understanding to facilitate the actualisation of the ministry’s goals. These include: memorandum of understanding between the Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Hungarian Ministry of Interior for Strategic Cooperation in core mandate areas; memorandum of understanding between the ministry and National University of Public Service, Hungary, on collaboration on areas of capacity building and sustainable development. Others include the memorandum of understanding with M/S Powerchina International Group Limited for the overall planning and study of Nigeria’s irrigation and hydropower resources as well as that between Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) and M/S Powerchina International Group Limited, to conclude studies for the actualisation of transfer of water from the Congo Basin to Lake Chad Basin.

    The ministry has also secured the approval of the Federal Executive Council for the National Water Policy, Irrigation and Drainage Policy and Water Resources Bill for subsequent presentation to the National Assembly (Executive Bill) for passage into law.

    As if these are not enough, the ministry has proposed for completion and commissioning, several water supply, dams and irrigation projects. These include: Northern Ishan Regional Water Supply Projects; rehabilitation of Ojirami Dam Water Supply Scheme and Reticulation in Edo State; Inyishi Water Supply Projects; rehabilitation/upgrading of Vom Water Supply Projects; Otamin Water Supply Projects; Ekeremor Water Supply Projects; completion of Sabke Water Supply Projects; rehabilitation/upgrading of Takum Water Supply Projects and Mangu Water Supply Projects.

    Dam projects in the pipeline are: Ogwashi-Uku Dam; Mangu Dam, Plateau State; Kashimbila Dam, Taraba State; Aloshi Small Earth Dam, Nasarawa State; Inyishi Dam, Imo State; Ekuku Dam, Kogi State; Amauzari Earth Dam, Imo State; Ile-Ife Dam, Osun State; Barkin-Ladi Dam, Plateau State; Otukpo Multipurpose Dam, Benue State; Galma Multipurpose Earth Dam, Kaduna State; Gimi Earth Dam, Water Supply and Irrigation, Kaduna State.

    We also have Jibia Irrigation Project; Gurara Water Transfer + Gurara Irrigation Project, Kaduna State as well as the Gurara Water Transfer Conveyance Pipeline, Kaduna State; Middle Rima Valley Irrigation Project; Mangu Regional Water Supply Scheme (intake and distribution), Plateau State; Shagari Irrigation Project, Sokoto State; Bagwai Irrigation Project, Kano State; Adani Rice Irrigation Project; Lower Anambra Irrigation Project;  Zauro Polder Irrigation Project and Mamu Awka Drainage Projects.

    For record purposes and easy tracking, the ministry is also preparing a compendium on dams and irrigation facilities nationwide.

    Without doubt, this is a loaded assignment but the challenges will be greatly reduced if the government is able to hand over some of the areas it has slated for commercialisation to the private sector.

    But then, only someone who understands his brief and is ready to work can confront such daunting challenges. Adamu’s antecedents show that he is made of the sterner stuff needed to accomplish the tasks. Born on the 19th of April 1963, Adamu, a 1984 graduate of Civil Engineering of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and a Master’s degree in (Construction) Project Management from University of Reading, United Kingdom, has garnered enough experience from the beginning of his career at the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), Abuja, in 1985, to the Water Resources and Engineering Construction Agency (WRECA), Kano State, where he designed, supervised and managed water and dam projects.

    He had served as project manager on several projects, notably under the PTF Urban/Semi-Urban, Regional and Rural Water Supply Programmes, National Farm Power Machinery Rehabilitation Programme and National Waterways Development Project (Dredging of River Niger). He is a Registered Engineer and member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as well as Fellow, Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).

    However, setting lofty goals is not enough; what is important is the ability to deliver on those goals. As stakeholders in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) have noted, full implementation of the 2017 water resources ministry’s budget would impact on other sectors of the nation’s economy. But again, as they observed, the problem is not about the amount allocated but judicious use of the money voted to the sector. These are critical points that Adamu must bear in mind as he goes about executing his tasks.

  • Leave it at home, compatriot, leave it at home!

    Leave it at home, compatriot, leave it at home!

    Oro po ninu iwe kobo [There are innumerable words (even) in a cheap tabloid]
    A popular saying dating back to the beginnings of newspapers in colonial Nigeria
    What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are small matters compared with what lies within us Ralph Waldo Emerson

    How many of those who will read this piece will follow the advice, the injunction in the title of this week’s essay? Probably close to zero. At best, a number countable only in single digits. Leave one’s cellphone or smartphone at home when one goes out? What a futile and even cranky proposal, most would say. So why am I in all seriousness making the suggestion? Well, that is the question. However, before we get to this underlying question, we have first, to ask another question and this is: how, in the first place, did it arise, my advice, my plea that people should leave their cellphones and smartphones at home every time that they go out? Oro po ninu iwe kobo!

    For the answer to the question behind the underlying question that prompted the idea for this piece, I have to start by telling readers about what normally should be a quite unremarkable fact: for the first time ever, I bought a smartphone last month. Incidentally, this fact reveals as a blatant lie my friend, Femi Osofisan’s “revelation” that my cellphone is a very cheap and primitive Nokia. This “revelation” was made in a tribute that FO recently wrote to mark my 71st birthday anniversary. Up until about a month ago, what FO said about my Nokia cellphone was absolutely correct. But that is no longer the case, alas! For years, even for decades, FO with the active collaboration of my other great friend, Yemi Ogunbiyi, had done all that he could to get me to replace my old phone with a “proper phone”, a “real phone” as they put it. Yemi’s shaming teasing of me on account of the beloved Nokia cellphone was merciless. In the company of people I barely knew and/or who barely knew me, Yemi would display my discarded cellphone for all to see with the cutting commentary of, “look at his phone, a whole Harvard professor”!

    FO’s “strategy” for shaming me into discarding the redoubtable Nokia contraption was less dramatic than Yemi’s, but it was no less spirited. In his case, he was in addition deeply affronted by the loudness of my ancient Nokia phone, as if the very fact that something so cheap would dare to be so offensively loud was a great and insufferable outrage. This feeling of FO was worsened by the fact that, as he has now informed the whole world in his recent tribute to me, I had and still have a habit, a tendency not to answer phone calls, no matter the decibel of the loudness of the ringtone. [More on this later]. Once, without my permission and my knowledge, FO went so far as to take it upon himself to reduce the loudness of the phone’s ringtone to a buzz that was closer to a whisper than a muffled whistle. Of course, when I discovered what my friend had done, I restored the ringtone of the phone to its lordly decibel and secretly enjoyed my friend’s frustration. My phone is my phone is my phone, if you please!

    But strange and powerfully affecting is the unrelenting war of friends like mine to rid one of habit(s) deemed unworthy! To this day, I can offer no explanation other than Femi’s and Yemi’s conjuration for what happened one day last month when I accompanied a friend to a SLOT franchise outlet – and suddenly, on an impulse I had absolutely not anticipated, I decided to buy a smartphone and did so on the spot. The rest, as the saying goes, is history, a tantalizing or confounding history. Where I never once lost or misplaced the old Nokia, in less than a month that I have had the new smartphone in my possession, I have on three occasions had to run or drive back like a madman to a place where I had absentmindedly left my new smartphone. The most recent episode of this drama took place only yesterday, Thursday, January 5, 2017. So far, I have been lucky and have recovered the phone before it was picked up by a “lucky” finder. But how long will the luck hold? And how can I drill into the nerve cells of my memory or my mind the fact that I no longer own a Nokia contraption but a real, ultramodern smartphone? Or, as a matter of pragmatic reasoning, why not leave the smartphone at home every time I go out? That is the underlying question of this piece, compatriots.

    You see, dear reader, it had never been my habit or practice to carry the old Nokia phone around with me everywhere I went. As a matter of fact, even in my own house, I neither had it with me all the time nor made it habit to have it on my person in one of the pockets of my clothing. Indeed, quite often, it was the ringtones of a phone call that enabled me to locate where the phone was in the house. And then, I buy this expensive smartphone and old habits collapse and things begin to fall apart, so to speak! I begin to take the smartphone with me everywhere I go. And I begin to absent-mindedly leave the phone in some places – three times in one month, the first month of my possession of the phone! Consequently, I am forced to think back to why I had for so long stuck to the Nokia phone and resisted all the spirited stratagems and efforts of my friends to shame me into buying into the world and the habits and the rituals of those who have smartphones and/or iPhones. And I discover, to my amazement, that the first law, the first obligation of smartphone owners and users is that you do not ever, ever leave the phone at home when you go out. Nobody told me of, or formally inducted me into the rigid operation of this “law”. I had seen it operate, silently but implacably, and had internalized it, absolutely without being conscious that I had done so. That is the central problem in this discussion, compatriots: internalization of habits and dispositions of which one is barely conscious.

    In the last one month that I have had this new smartphone – and lost and found it three times – I have rediscovered why, for a very long time, I had stuck to my old, ancient, even antediluvian Nokia phone in complete rejection of smartphones and the protocols and rituals that they seem to impose on their owners and users. Permit me to put this rediscovered aversion to the social universe of smartphones and their uses in the simplest manner possible: I hated it that one had to spend so much time with and on the phone at all times of the day, absolutely without any exception. Another way of putting the matter is to say that I found smartphones massively intrusive in the daily, even hourly sociality of my fellow citizens. The “worst” cases pertain to those who have two or three smartphones and rather punctiliously and/or happily attend to the demands, the impositions of their multiple smartphones.

    Yes of course, they have no problem with having and using many smartphones, so what is my own business in the matter, you might ask. It is a fair question. But so also is it fair for you, dear reader, to accept and affirm my own right not to have to be with and on the phone at all times of the day if that is what I choose. That was my choice when I had the Nokia cellphone. The most consequential of the expression of that right was my habit of not taking the phone with me everywhere I went and not answering all or even most phone calls that I received. [Let me qualify the actual workings of this “right”: during the day, I get a great deal of missed calls; later in the course of a day, I try to return as many of the missed calls as I can] When I bought that smartphone in early December 2016, this right was put under severe pressure. This essay is a first attempt, admittedly prompted by FO’s tribute on my 71st birthday, to reflect on what this experience means, for me in particular but hopefully for all of us.

    FO in that tribute correctly says that I am very jealous of my privacy and often resent any and all attempts to break down or into my privacy. [Actually, he expressed the idea in much stronger language, saying that I am often “fanatical” in the protection of my privacy. This is true, but why should my friend be the one to reveal my “fanaticism” to the whole world?!] To privacy, I would add “interiority”, this being the inner space of thoughts, feelings, introspections and imaginings that we all constitutively have as human beings and ought to take every step possible to cherish, nurture and protect. In an often quoted statement that serves as the second epigraph to this essay, here is what Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the great American neo-Romantic writers had to say on the significance of this space of human individual and collective interiority: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are small matters compared with what lies within us”.

    The past history of our planet and our species is vast beyond measure and so is the infinity of the future that lies ahead of us. And yet Emerson avers that they are small matters in comparison with what lies inside of us. There is no doubt that this claim is hyperbolic. But it is deliberate and exemplary hyperbole. What Emerson is arguing is the idea that if we do not know what is inside of us, we cannot really know what lies ahead of us. What does this mean?

    All societies and cultures of the past in all the regions of the world to varying degrees recognized that human beings have a vital need to know and be in connection with the inner life of their psychic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual selves. It is necessary to emphasize the common human dimension of this point because, ordinarily, it is a select group of thinkers, artists, visionaries and psychics that are credited with the will and the capacity to cherish and protect the interior spaces of their personalities and identities. There is also this: this inner space of Being, this interiority that all human beings have, is morally neutral; it is filled with and by both good and evil, both the impulse for creation and that for destruction. We can direct or channel it to the good, the beneficial only if we stay in touch with it. It is impossible to overstate the need for this in a society like ours that is so full of needless hardship, suffering and despair.

    Compatriot, it may seem like a mad injunction, but for heaven’s sake, leave your smartphones at home, unless of course you are a barber, a tailor, a bricklayer or the CEO of a big business enterprise who, in order to stay on top of things, has to have your cellphone or smartphone with you all the time. For the thousands or even millions among us who do not belong to any of these groups, leave your phones at home when you go out and you will once again have the chance to connect with your inner life. I promise you a liberation that will astonish you. And who knows, you/we may even start a movement!

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Commercialising the armed forces: a disgusting idea 2

    Commercialising the armed forces: a disgusting idea 2

    The army’s participation in cattle farming in every part of the country is being guaranteed to be free of the tension fomented by nomadic herdsmen.

    The Federation shall, subject to an Act of the National Assembly made in that behalf, equip and maintain the armed forces as may be considered adequate and effective for the purpose of defending Nigeria from external aggression; maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violation on land, sea or air; suppressing insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so by the president, but subject to such conditions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly; and performing such other functions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly.—1999 Constitution Sec217.(2). [Emphasis added]

    The first part of this piece describes details of the new mission of the military to become a major player in the country’s economy through direct and robust investment in agriculture. More specifically, the announcement by General Buratai includes playing a major role in the economy by moving nomadic cattle roving to the next level; raising fishing ponds, vegetable gardens, fruits, chicken and eggs, and establishing cattle ranch in every part of the country where there is a military base. The thrust of today’s column is to discuss concerns about decision of the military to amend its constitutional role, without reference to the legislature.

    First concern is that the role of the armed forces in the development of the country is clearly stated in the constitution, as captured in the epigraph overleaf. The role assigned to the armed forces in the constitution is similar to the role allocated to the armed forces in most successful countries in the world: to protect and defend the country’s sovereignty, its people and its borders. This is the function of armies in the world, except a few countries, like Egypt and Pakistan, where the military is empowered to compete with civilians in every aspect of the economy. Defence and protection provide guarantee of peace and a peaceful environment in which all other human activities, economic and social, thrive. And this is what enables prosperity and provides conducive environment for citizens, owners of the country’s sovereignty, to engage in building the economy for all.

    For the armed forces to be able to deliver the function of defence ably and successfully, the military engages in physical, psychological, and intellectual training. Making members of the armed forces combat-ready and effective requires concentration on their part. The funds to give the military undivided attention to protect citizens are provided by citizens. In short, professionalisation of the military is considered crucial to peace and stability that can allow nations to prosper and develop sufficiently to create a good life for civilians and military alike. Any attempt by the military to divert the attention of its members from its statutory role and take on the task of growing the economy is fraught with danger for the country’s territorial integrity and security of life within the country.

    More specifically, intellectual training for the military is quite demanding. It aims to build in every soldier and officer the knowledge necessary to function in the modern world – from the knowledge of history, geography, basic/applied sciences, diplomacy to the knowledge of engineering that can improve capacity of the military not only to use sophisticated weaponry but also to add value to weapons manufacturing. Nurturing a capable military is a lifelong engagement. It is therefore illogical for the country’s military to get attracted to the experiment of countries like Egypt and Pakistan, which use their armed forces to combine defence of the nation and economic production that ranges from poultry business to dairy production and selling insurance premiums. Any attempt to constitutionally allow the Nigerian military add new layers of civilian economic activities: raising cattle, goats, and chickens is bound to create distractions for the armed forces, thus putting security of the nation-state and its citizens at risk.

    Although the duty of a soldier to protect and defend is universally at a great cost to the citizen; nevertheless, it is a price worth paying because the benefit is as priceless as it is unquantifiable, just as the recent routing of Boko Haram terrorists from Sambisa Forest has demonstrated. Most citizens have not paid adequate attention to General Buratai’s new policy of turning military men and women to cattle farmers. When citizens wake up to realise the danger in the military’s radical departure from its constitutional duty, they are bound to ask: How does cattle ranching by the military meet the purpose of defending and protecting citizens?

    Citizens are also likely to wonder why the legislature would prefer to ignore attempts to institutionalise private profiteering for military officers by adding cattle and dairy production to their job description. True lovers of democracy and free enterprise in the country are bound to urge General Buratai’s civilian bosses, from the minister of defence to the president, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the legislature to concentrate on soldiering and leave issues of politics and economic management to those who are trained to handle them. The involvement of the military in Nigeria’s politics for decades delivered instability with which the country is still struggling. Why would anyone think that army’s institutional involvement in the economy of the country will deliver anything different? Effects of militarisation of the polity for decades, particularly redesigning the polity as a command system that turn states into subordinates of the central government from its status as coordinates are still being interrogated by citizens from various regions.

     There are other dangers in giving the military powers to determine its role without reference to the legislature. General Buratai’s policy announcement about the intention of the military to get involved in growing the nation’s economy threatens the principle of separation of powers. In particular, it poohpoohs the principle that in a democracy, the military are bound to operate in accordance with laws of the land with respect to constitutional and administrative law for every aspect of the nation’s life. It is in fact wrong for a policy that has not been approved by the legislature to be announced to the nation by a chief of the army, where there is a civilian minister of defence. The fact that the current president and minister of defence are retired soldiers does not give any officer the right to act as if the country is under military rule.

     The proposal by the military to engage in economic activity has capacity to distort the nation’s economy. For example, how can competition be fair if a branch of the executive (the military) funded by taxpayers arrogates to itself the power to become a player in an economy in which civilians who, unlike the military, have no access to public funds be assured of a level playing field? Without mincing words, the attempt by the military to grow the country’s economy instead of focusing on defending and protecting the country is a wrong-headed one. It is capable of scaring citizens with rich traditions of cattle farming, like the Fulani, from effective participation in this activity, if constitutionally armed men in the military are given license to compete for land and other resources with civilians. How fair is it for the military to acquire land on the terms of allocation for public use to be allowed to turn such land into profit making capital for military officers and their spouses?

     The argument that both Egyptian and Pakistani armies are as involved in their respective economies as the Nigerian military would want to be does not make the Pakistani or Egyptian model right for a multi-ethnic democratic federation. The question Mr. Buratai needs to ask himself is what advantage has the involvement of the Pakistani and Egyptian militaries in the running of their respective economies delivered for the people of those countries? Without any disrespect to these countries, the story is one of poverty and chronic instability.  Neither Pakistan nor Egypt is mentioned among the world’s economic best practices. On the contrary, they figure prominently in the list of high receivers of aid from other countries.

     Finally, what the country needs as it moves into a regime of productive economy that requires creativity and innovation is not to turn its military into farmers. It is to invest more on the military to make it more reliable in terms of protecting the country from both internal and external attacks. The country has over 170 million civilians who can raise cows, goats, chickens, etc. It is politically unwise for an elected government, especially the legislature to support or look away from a proposal that may distract less than 500,000 members of its armed forces from giving the 170 million people the security cover they need to grow the economy.

  • Is the Villa bureaucracy also padding the budget?

    Is the Villa bureaucracy also padding the budget?

    At this rate, by 2019, this government would’ve succeeded in buying enough “Motor Vehicles” to drive the entire country off the edge.

    Thanks to Hon (Dr) Abdulmumin Jibrin, the suspended member of the House of Representatives who had to be suspended, unprecedentedly, for a whole legislative year because the highly compromised souls of the House leadership will be too gutted to always find him too close by. Conscience, they say, is an open wound. As a born again, conscientious objector after being personally implicated as chairman of the House Appropriation committee, Jibrin had turned round to be the peoples’ only source of knowing that: “after the Appropriation Committee received all the budget reports from standing committees, an analysis was conducted. We discovered that about 10 only out of the 96 Standing Committees of the House had introduced about 2,000 projects without the knowledge of their committee members amounting to about N284, 000, 000, 000. I was alarmed. But I was cautious because at our pre-budget meeting with the committee chairmen, I was clearly warned not to touch their budgets. I reported the matter to the speaker. He did nothing about it obviously because he was working behind the scene with the committee chairmen.”

    Although that remains an allegation, Nigerians know only too well that if this happened in the lower House, the Senate must have accounted for double. Or how do you account for some members’ love of exotic cars?  Jibrin, having been so un-comradely, and with President Muhammadu Buhari breathing down their necks over padding, Senate has very quickly – thanks to the distinguished senator, that one of the armoured cars’ fame – come up with a bill that will see them get through the legislative front door, an amount, double if not triple, what was hitherto, being embedded in the budget, annually.

    As is now well known to Nigerians, a bill, sponsored by Senator Oduah, which has since passed the second reading, will when it becomes law, hand over to them 20 percent of the national budget for constituency projects. The about N1.4 trillion will be handed over to them,  they being contractors, so they can construct bore holes, erect market stalls, buy  sewing machines, grinding machines, knitting machines, motorcycles, tricycles etc for their constituents. If President Buhari cannot stop this nonsense, tell these folks they are elected to make laws and perform oversight functions and not to take on executive functions at either the national or sub national levels, then he should seriously consider resigning from office.

    Enough of this utter rubbish like this is the only national assembly on earth.

    The Yoruba say it is one smart Alec that can police another. (ole lo nmo ese ole to lori apata). Given this wise saying, Nigerians must plead with the legislature to, this time around, take a critical look at the budget provisions for the Villa which keep increasing in spite of our very parlous economic circumstances. The legislature should help us to know whether a worse padding had actually been going on at the very seat of power when all we have been doing is put the legislature to the guillotine. Not a few commentators have called attention to these ever ballooning figures and all I need do here is copy and paste their findings. While one of the most popular, or was it ludicrous, aspects of the 2016 budget, that is,  before Nigerians got to hear about padding, was the N3.6 billion earmarked for the purchase of an unspecified number of BMW saloon cars, the items calling for very careful interrogation in the current budget have more than tripled, as we would show.

    One of the commentators referred to above wrote, mutatis mutandis: “The first item is the “Sewage Charges” budget of the State House Headquarters”. It was put at 52,827,800. That means 144,733 per day. Compare this with N 6,121,643 for 2016. This simply means that the vote went up by 1050% compared with the 2015 budget, and 850% when compared with the 2016 budget. The State House Headquarters budget for “Honorarium/Sitting Allowance” is N 556,592,736 while the Jonathan government budgeted 174,471,371 in 2015, and this government, in 2016 jacked it up to 507,518, 861. Have these allowances been increased while workers’ salaries remain stagnant? There is the nebulous thing they call “Residential Rent.” This is something I have failed to understand up till now and I wouldn’t mind someone explaining it to me. That aside, the amount budgeted for this in 2015 was 22,459,575; in 2016 it was 27,735,643. But in this year’s budget of “Recovery and Growth,” this same “Residential Rent” budget went up to 77,545,700. What abracadabra is this? There is an 8,539,200 budget for “Anti-Corruption” and I’m perplexed as to what exactly it is. The last time there was a budget for “Motor Vehicles” or anything like that was in the 2014 budget by the last administration and it was a total of 132,200,000. This government came in 2016 and somehow concluded that the State House Headquarters did not have enough “Motor Vehicles,” so they started by budgeting 877,015,000 which was something like a 650% increase over the 2014 budget for the same item. Yet in 2017, 197,000,000 has again been budgeted for the purchase of “Motor Vehicles” and “Buses.” At this rate, by 2019, this government would’ve succeeded in buying enough “Motor Vehicles” to drive the entire country off the edge. 2016 will go down as one of the darkest years in this country in relation to power supply. So, where is a budget of 319,625,753 for “Electricity Charge” in 2017 coming from for the State house? This was 45,332,433 in the 2016. In 2016 State House Headquarters budget for the “Rehabilitation/Repairs of Residential Buildings” was 642,568,122, while in 2017, it is 5,625,752,757. Meaning that an enormous asteroid most probably managed to destroy the residential building at the State House Headquarters. This goes on until you hit what Olatunji Dare described as a curious affliction in his column in The Nation of Tuesday, 3 January 2017 referring to the never-failing humongous vote for kitchen equipment.  As is Professor Dare’s wont, he put it crisply as follows: “This disorder consists in an obsession with “kitchen equipment,” with cutlery and crockery thrown in, and a predilection for purchasing them year after year, without reference to the quantity purchased the previous year, without having to justify any new purchase, without having to account for the previous year’s purchase, and without the least consideration for cost or consequences”. Of the princely sum of N42billion earmarked for the Villa in the budget, expenditure on food, cooking gas and kitchen utensils is expected to gulp  over N850 million when, specifically, N100, 820,300 would be spent on the purchase of kitchen utensils such as forks and knives.

    It is totally befuddling how the 2017 budget proposals failed completely to take into account the country’s prevailing economic circumstances and all Nigerians can do is plead with the legislature to, for once, do a decent  day’s job by taking a critical look at these budget proposals.

  • Govt meets Southern Kaduna mayhem with sophistry

    Govt meets Southern Kaduna mayhem with sophistry

    AFTER waiting endlessly for the hyperbolic governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, to pacify the rampaging and vengeful herdsmen he acknowledged were his Fulani compatriots from within and without the country, the federal government has finally and sulkily embarked on remedial measures to bring peace to the pillaged villages of Southern Kaduna. Brigades of the military and squadrons of the police are being deployed in the area, and disarmament is reportedly ongoing. It took months of intense killings and pillaging for the government to finally stir itself, and only after locals had started to organise self-defence.

    But despite the horrendous scale of the destruction in Southern Kaduna, and the apparently targeted attacks against the area’s ethnic minority and Christian communities, the government is offended that anyone could attempt to lather the conflict with ethnic and religious colouration. The Interior minister, Abdulrahman Danbazzau, a retired army general and in fact former Chief of Army Staff, who had all along been anonymous in the conflict, finally found his voice to condemn those he growled were looking for excuses to ‘create divisions along ethnic and religious fault lines for their own selfish interest.’ He came to this and other conclusions without sitting down with religious leaders and chiefs of the affected areas or carrying out a fact-finding mission himself. All he was concerned with was sermonising about ‘true religious leaders not fanning hatred.’ A thoroughly disenchanted and displeased Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has replied him, citing evidence and figures.

    After first describing the attackers as foreigners, some of the northern leaders in a position to do something about the conflict, including both the Interior minister and the state governor, have finally buckled under pressure to describe the attackers as ‘common criminals’. This is at least an improvement over months ago when the attackers were described as foreigners on revenge mission. Perhaps not to be misquoted or misinterpreted, President Muhammadu Buhari has kept discretely quiet, with his aides hurling the dictum ‘action speaks louder than words’ at the public. Southern Kaduna will hope, as the CAN leaders say, that the 16 villages occupied by the ‘foreign invaders’ will be retrieved from them by resolute and impartial security officers and the locals resettled back in their land.

    By prevaricating for so long over the attacks in Southern Kaduna, the government allowed the problem to fester and attain definite ethnic and sectarian shapes. Now, to reshape the conflict into a purely criminal matter, as the government disingenuously prefers, will be difficult in the short to medium run. In a conflict where the president says nothing except in press releases, nor does he visit victims or scorched settlements, where the Inspector-General of Police angrily disputes casualty figures without providing alternative statistics and even misquoting the Rwanda genocide figures, where the Interior minister pours scorn and diatribe against those who see tribalism and sectarianism in the crisis, and where the state governor has made many unwise and reckless statements in the past few months, it is not surprising that indigenes of the area and many who sympathise with their plight accuse all the four government officials of hiding behind religious and ethnic sentiments to manage the crisis in a slipshod manner.

    It is not difficult to see why the Southern Kaduna crisis will be a campaign issue in 2019, especially given the appalling and belated responses of the federal and state governments. They will remind the federal government that it looked the other way as a 74-year-old woman, Bridget Agbahime, was murdered for religious reasons by identified people while the suspects are blatantly and provocatively discharged through actions orchestrated by the Kano Justice ministry. They will wonder why government officials keep talking about patriotism when little or nothing has been done to instil confidence in anyone, whatever their religion or ethnicity, that Nigeria means so much more than each person’s petty prejudices.