The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • The dead also speak

    Introduction

    Apropos of the foundational crisis of the Nigerian nation, it is meet to report that it is not only in scholarly tracts, passionate polemics and jaundiced jeremiads that the trouble with Nigeria is openly discussed and analysed. It has also found its way into fiction and literature. A person who gives birth to a misbegotten child must be ready to carry it on her back. Many affronted nationals and concerned sympathisers have questioned the wisdom and efficacy of the originating colonial clause of amalgamation. This morning, we publish a brief excerpt from Bulletin from the Land of Living Ghosts first published in 2004.

    “I can assure you, Mr Pemberton-Gilbey, and without any fear of contradiction, that General Waja did not die on that day of the bloody coup which swept the National Salvation Council from power, and he may very well not be the man that was buried in the Cemetery of Patriots”, wrote Professor Ignatius Alawiye, notable crank and retired Professor of history in the nation’s premier university who had lost his own mind while plotting the historical narrative of the nation’s decline into lunacy and anomie.

    James had met the infamous hell-raiser running rings around government officials and top civil servants at an official seminar at the nation’s administrative capital. It was on the seemingly safe and sanitised subject of why Generals could never be revolutionaries and the impossibility of a State carrying out a coup against itself.

    They had reckoned without the scrupulously shabby autodidact who shambled in lugging a huge box bursting with hansards, official gazettes, war memos, classified and declassified documents and British parliamentary reports from the governments of William Gladstone, Benjamin Disreali, Authur James Balfour, Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay Macdonald and was eyeing everybody with neurotic scorn. A top government official made the mistake of grasping at the cobra’s tail.

    “Is it possible to carry out a coup against one’s self?” the bland bureaucrat asked.

    “Why not? Isn’t that how the nation itself came into existence?” the old bruiser suddenly shot out after a testy silence.

    “Professor, how?” the bureaucrat asked with a smile thinking it was time for some comic relief. He was profoundly mistaken.

    “The amalgamation of the protectorates was an act of violence against separate states carried out on a whimsical impulse by Lord Lugard after a night of torrid passion with an Irish journalist”, the professor growled.

    “How?” the civil servant stuttered.

    “I have searched all the declassified documents, the correspondence, the memos, the hansards and the letters. I have not seen the instrument of authorization. So, Lugard carried out a coup against himself or committed what the Latin Americans call an autogolpe”, the professor noted.

    “But…”

    “There is no but there. The founder of the nation is also its first coup maker. A congenital cripple can never carry a straight luggage. Lugard must first be brought to justice before we try other coup plotters.  This nation was born of a coup and it will die of one”, the professor screamed as he was carried off by security agents.

    The professor was a study in apostasy. Before he recanted and became a born-again-democrat, he was in fact a defender and apologist of the military oligarchy. When the old General was overthrown, he had put together a caustic biography of the war-hero. Titled, The Lion That Squeaked, it was full of the fireworks of scurrility. It was meant to demystify the General and put him in his place. Shortly after the launching, he experienced a conversion of Saul-like proportions and started shouting himself hoarse that the General was the greatest hero of the nation and that he had been paid to undermine his memory. It was alleged that he had been accosted as he hurried away from the hovel of a woman of easy virtue by the ghost of the General which gave him a sound beating. Thereafter, he became persona non grata with succeeding coup-makers and gradually sank into penurious oblivion until he was dredged up by the soldiers once more.

    • Bulletin from the Land of Living Ghosts, published 2004.

  • Super Falcons’ avoidable show of shame

    Following last Wednesday’s intervention by President Muhammadu Buhari, members of the Super Falcons that won the 10th African Women Championship (AWC) in Cameroon recently along with the Super Eagles participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers were last Friday paid their outstanding entitlements.

    According to an official statement, the office of the Accountant General of the Federation released $1,173,820.00 to pay outstanding win bonuses for the Super Eagles in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and for the Super Falcons’ participation at the AWC.

    It is unfortunate that it took the Falcons’ protest to the National Assembly, where the president was to present the 2017 budget, for the presidency to take the girls seriously.

    If the money could be paid promptly after the protest, why did the presidency wait for the nation to be disgraced before taking necessary action? It is bad enough that the Ministry of Sports did not expect the girls to win the competition in Cameroun after winning seven previous editions.

    Having won contrary to expectations, the least the minister could have done, instead of exposing himself to ridicule, was to prevail on the presidency to hasten the payment, especially when the girls refused to be fooled this time as they have been done in the past.

    With the payment of the entitlement, it has been proved that what was stalling the payment was unnecessary bureaucracy, which should not have been allowed to apply in this instance.

    The Super Falcons and other sportsmen who sacrificed a lot to represent the country and win laurels despite all disadvantages compared with their colleagues from some other nations do not deserve the kind of shoddy treatment they are usually given.

    They should be treated as heroes that they are, and not be reduced to beggars before getting their entitlements.

    How do we expect our sportsmen to put in their best when they are not sure they will be adequately rewarded and recognised for doing the country proud?  Some of these allowances should not have been owed in the first place, but to delay the payment until the team members refused to release the cup they won in Cameroon and refusing to check out of their hotel is a national embarrassment that should not be allowed to happen again. It is a bad precedent that should not even have been allowed to happen in the first instance.

    While the footballers have now been paid, there must be some other sportsmen who don’t have the same clout to protest what they have not been paid in the past. The government should not wait until other lesser sportsmen decide to take a cue from the Falcons on how to get what is rightly theirs.

    Coaches and other officials should also be promptly paid when the need arise. When national football coaches are not paid for months as had always been the case in the past, it is an indication of how unserious we are about winning some of the competitions we participate in. An unpaid coach can only try to do his best, which may not be enough given the circumstance they have to endure.

    There have been reports that some members of the Super Falcons may be penalised for whatever embarrassment they may have reportedly caused the minister and officials of the Sports Ministry. This must not happen as the girls had no choice but to wash the dirty linen of the football authorities in the open once and for all, to stop the practice of delay or nonpayment of entitlements.

    The president should not hesitate to wield the big stick if that is what is required to sanitise the Sports Ministry, starting from the minister who has turned the sector to a theatre of comedy with his high profile gaffes since assuming office in September last year.

  • Elephant and throne in Gambia ( An aomerinjoba template for African despots)

    Elephant and throne in Gambia ( An aomerinjoba template for African despots)

    Aomerin joba ( We are going to crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele ……………………..
    Aomerinjoba (We are going to crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele …………………………
    Gbobo wa pata kalo merin joba ( All of us must go and crown the elephant)
    Erekuewele……………….

    In the traditional African tortoise fable so beloved by the Yoruba people, an overweening and overbearing elephant consumed by ambition, insisted on being crowned as the king on account of its size. The people obliged. They had already hatched a plot to lure the foolish mammoth to its destruction and sure death. A deep pit was dug covered with damask and all the accoutrements of royalty. Thereafter, the elephant was asked to proceed to the throne accompanied by much singing and dancing.
    Like many of their fellow Africans in the epoch after formal colonization, the good and good-natured people of Gambia have been to hell and back. It is an intriguing irony that they eventually resorted to traditional African stratagems of cunning, concealment and dissimulation to see off the crackpot despot who has tormented and tortured them for twenty two years.
    In the end, Yahya Jammeh, through a combination of overconfidence and battle-weariness, succumbed to an elementary political miscalculation so obtuse that you begin to wonder whether his fabled marabous and political antennae were on sabbatical. It simply shows that no dictator can dictate beyond his allotted time once the time is ripe and the people are ready.
    The international, continental and local climate had turned against him, but he thought he could hang on. If he had known that the election would end in such a comprehensive shellacking, he would have stalled and stonewalled. But like all despots on an opiate diet of messianic invincibility, he underestimated the Pan-Gambian revulsion against his odious rule and the bitter resolve among both the elite and the people of his country to see him off in. In the end, such was the scale and magnitude of his electoral humiliation that the fog of messianic delusion suddenly cleared revealing a pathetic, whimpering bully.
    Yet here was a man who only three years earlier in 2013 was boasting that he could rule for a billion years, if it was the wish of Allah. Allah is not the God of injustice, but the rogue despot knew what he was talking about. Before then, he had routinely rigged elections and had silenced the most vocal of Gambian opposition. He thought he had happened upon the perfect formula for ruling in perpetuity. Such was the cult of personality he had built around himself and the aura of impregnable power that his people only spoke about him in whispers even after casting furtive whispers around for the ubiquitous enforcers solely recruited from his Jola people.
    A lady friend of this columnist, an iron lady in her own right who once chaired the African Union Commission on Human Rights based in the Gambian capital, told snooper of being sent several official feelers that the government of Yahya Jammeh will not tolerate any human rights nonsense and she should take note if she valued her life. It all reminds one of the barely literate Valentine Strasser, a former Freetown disc jockey turned military ruler of Sierra Leone who now lives with his mother in a hovel outside the capital, summoning a resident American upon seizing the reins of power and asking the harried fellow in creole: “A wan know if America go recognize we gobment?”
    Such has been the level of depravity and murderous comedy some illiterate military usurpers dragged this unfortunate continent. Officially known as His Excellency Sheikh Prof Alhaji Doctor Yahya AJJ Jammeh Babili Mansa, the illiterate hooligan was a combination of comic brutality and murderous buffoonery which would have made Field Marshal Alhaji Idi Amin Dada wince in horror.
    The Gambian nightmare began one quiet morning in July 1994 when soldiers led by the then Lieutenant Jammeh began protesting for better pay and conditions of service. But they quickly realised how weak, inefficient and unpopular the government they were demonstrating against was and swiftly raised the stakes.
    The government of Sir Dawda Jawara, an ethnic Mandika, collapsed like a pack of cards as the protests snowballed into a full-blown military intervention. The Nigerian Colonel who had been seconded as Army Chief of Staff quietly disappeared from Banjul only to meet a more fateful nemesis in the punitively proactive and strategically pre-emptive General Sani Abacha in a matter of months.
    Having ensconced himself in the presidential Villa, it took only a few months for Jammeh to unleash a reign of terror on the Gambian populace. Most military coups in Africa are an opportunistic affair with strategically placed officers cashing in on popular discontent without any ideological unanimity or coherence and even coincidence of political principles among the coup plotters. Regime instability is therefore a foregone conclusion. Gambia could not have been an exception.
    Jammeh was to bring the entire Gambian nation to heel having decimated the original band of coup plotters. Some were sentenced to long term imprisonment others were hounded into exile while the unlucky few disappeared forever. Summary executions of prisoners on death row became the norm. A few years back, Alieu Bah, a former military officer who had been in prison since 1997 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, was taken out and shot.
    Any wonder then that under Jammeh, the formerly sedate and serene country became a police state? Many citizens fled to nearby Senegal as Jammeh became the only political game in Gambia. Human rights violations became rampart, even as the Gambian despot built up a reputation for eccentric pronouncement on matters beyond his ken and comprehension. He claimed to have a cure for infertility and AIDs and advocated that gays should be summarily decapitated.
    In the course of a twenty two year despotic reign, Jammeh virtually alienated all sectors of the Gambian society with his brutish insensitivity and lack of concern for the plight of the ordinary Gambian. If Gambians thought that life under Sir Dauda was hard and harsh, it became pure hell under Jammeh.
    His cruel and casually brutal attitude to human rights violations slipped through when he was asked about the fate of Deyda Hydara, a journalist suspected to have been murdered on his orders. “Other people have also died in this country. So what is so special about Deyda Hydara?” he quipped with barely concealed irritation. This cruel disregard for the sanctity of human life indicates how far Gambia regressed into the Stone Age under its whimsical tyrant.
    Yet when all has been said about this barbaric spell in Gambia, an inescapable fact stares us in the face: national character or the structural configuration of a nation is fate. Like most African nations in the epoch after formal colonization, Gambia must throw up its own local tyrant. There must be something about the structural configuration of most African nations which predisposes them to the irresistible rise of local tyranny until the nation in itself becomes a nation for itself. This is what has just happened in Gambia.
    Despite its miniscule size, Gambia is also riven by ethnic, class, regional and caste divisions. There was no genuine elite consensus, not even an agreement to disagree. Its founding father, Dawda Jawara, a British-trained veterinary surgeon, was a product of a provincial revolt of agrarian and pastoral notables against the urban elites. Gambia boasts of the sophisticated Aku people, descendants of former American slaves who upon manumission decided to settle along the coastal strip. Until his first marriage to a lady with impeccable upper class credentials, Jawara himself suffered under the social slur of belonging to an inferior caste of leather traders.
    The urbane, cultured and unfailingly polite Sir Dawda was a master conciliator who ruled with a restraint and rectitude that was unusual and uncommon among Africa’s traditional post-independence big men. But he was no visionary. Under his watch, the national divisions simmered just below the surface, boiling over once in 1981 in a Marxist inspired guerrilla uprising led by the Libyan trained and funded Kukoi Samba Sanyang in cahoots with elements of the constabulary known as the Field Force.
    It took the intervention of the Senegalese army and about six hundred dead to quell the rebellion. Jawara, who was attending the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in London, had to be ferried to the safety of the Senegalese capital while the rebels held sway. The debacle underscored Gambia’s utter dependence on its bigger neighbour for its survival. But this vulnerability and the unmistakable sway of Senegal in turn led to quiet national indignation and resentment.
    Thirteen years later, the national contradictions boiled over again in a bloodless military coup which toppled Jawara. Nobody was willing to lift a finger for a government which was widely regarded as corrupt, dissolute and well past its sell-by date. Senegal was not willing to risk its troops to maintain a government that had lost popular legitimacy. This time around, a nearby American frigate ferried the urbane vet and his family to safety and historical oblivion.
    Thus began a twenty two year reign of terror by a barely literate military thug which culminated in a battle of will and wits this past week when the entire nation rose in concert against the crackpot despot. It was the first time the entire populace would be acting in Pan-Gambian concert against an enemy of the nation. It has taken a demographic shift in favour of the youths of Gambia who had been homogenized by poverty and hunger and an international climate of hostility to civilian and military autocrats to achieve this.
    It is a new day and dawn in Gambia. To be sure, the transition from despotism to genuine democracy in the nation is going to be a fraught and delicate matter. With the agents of the defeated ancien regime still manning the security apparatus of the nation the focus and steeliness of the new rulers will be sorely tested as overt and covert attempts are made to roll back the historic gains. But it is most likely that out of the ashes of despotism and despondency a new Gambia is set to emerge. And the rest of Africa will take note.

  • El-Rufai’s fiefdom

    El-Rufai’s fiefdom

    KADUNA State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, is probably Nigeria’s most controversial governor today, perhaps his state’s most controversial ever. Beside him, the ideological rigidity of Balarabe Musa, the state’s and Nigeria’s first impeached governor, was nothing but child’s play. Does Mallam el-Rufai think his penchant for controversies damage his reputation? Not at all. He revels in controversies. In fact, since he is incontrovertibly cocksure of everything, he thinks his combative and disputatious ways underline the high frequency at which his intellect operates and the high level at which he as a politician luxuriates, as well as reflect poorly on the abysmal level at which his opponents and traducers wallow. There is no disabusing his mind on these matters.
    The Kaduna electorate did not examine Mallam el-Rufai very well before voting him in. There is of course nothing wrong with voting a somnolent politician into office, nor for that matter a megalomaniac. But it is crucially important for the political culture and economic development of a state that the electorate must know the worldview of their elected representatives. Now that he is their governor, and will be in office for a little more than two years more, they will have to manage him as much as they can and try to either curb his needless pugnacity or coax him into some form of conciliation. Mallam el-Rufai will not change, and indeed can never change. On the three salient issues agitating the otherwise cosmopolitan state, a state the governor is attempting to transform into a fiefdom, he thinks he is indisputably right and his critics are incontrovertibly and lawlessly wrong.
    The three issues are his deafened ears to the Shiite crisis, as reflected in the notoriously redacted White Paper issued by his government last week; his malignant hatred for critics, as reflected in his animus against Shehu Sani, a Kaduna senator; and his mismanagement of the herdsmen/farmers clash which is transmuting through his clumsiness into ethnic and religious conflict. There are more issues manifesting even now, and there will be more before his controversial first term is over, for the governor is adept at turning a perfectly normal disagreement into a conflict of untold severity. Ignore his inability to sustain loyalty to a cause, to a mentor, and, contrary to what he says and thinks, even to the constitution. He is too anarchic and his mind a seething cauldron of misadventures to moderate his interactions with both the laws of the land, which he loves to quote out of context, and the people around him, whether his betters or his inferiors.
    First, then, the Shiite crisis. Left to Mallam el-Rufai, Kaduna State should be organised into a community of goose-stepping cadres who wake up every morning, file to the governor’s door, and pay obeisance before the day’s work. Unfortunately for him the Shiites, particularly the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), happen to be cut from the same cloth as he — difficult, imposing, intellectually arrogant, contemptuous of other people’s ways and beliefs, and intractable. But unlike the governor, the IMN lacks the state coercive tools to influence the general adoption of their way of life. Unlike him, they have neither the state apparatus to inflict violence on others even near the scale their traducers have accused them of nor the arrogance to suggest openly and repeatedly that they could never be wrong. Even if, as the governor suggests, the Shiites secretly promote or nurse the romantic idea of Iranian-type revolution, and the state had a responsibility to nip it in the bud, it is questionable whether the el-Rufai approach is the best.
    In any case, last December, hundreds of Shiites, some say nearly a thousand, were killed in what the state described as a clash between the IMN and soldiers. The cause and course of the clash, not to talk of the casualties estimated to be more than 347, have been well discussed in this place and elsewhere in the public domain. The most recent controversy, however, involves the White Paper recently published by the state. Put side-by-side with the fairly balanced report of the Justice Mohammed Lawal Garba-led judicial panel that looked into the Zaria disturbance, the White Paper is a poorly worded and arrogant piece of justification of brazen and horrendous crime. The judicial panel complained of lack of cooperation from the army to determine the scale of the slaughter. The White Paper ignored that lacuna and instead focused almost exclusively in damning the Shiites. Rather casually, it also suggested that the federal government could try to determine the culpability of soldiers in the massacre and take action. Among other things, the White Paper, quoting state burial law of 1991 and the Geneva Convention, also justified the hasty burial of victims in mass graves. This, in the 21st century.
    Mallam el-Rufai is governor of the state and leader of both the law-abiding and lawbreaking indigenes of Kaduna State. A fuller reading of the documents on the Shiite crisis shows that the governor simply has no conception of government as a ramifying social contract, nor even a fair understanding of the burden of statesmanship on his puny shoulders. He had made up his mind about the Shiites and what to believe, and so, he simply ignored most of the recommendations in the judicial panel’s report and instead bore down on the panel’s recommendations that were averse to the IMN. There is little anyone can do or say to compel Mallam el-Rufai to have a wiser and nuanced appreciation of the crisis and what needs to be done to deliver justice. He does not care, partly because his judgement is very poor, and he lacks even a modicum of wisdom to navigate the delicate, difficult and sometimes treacherous terrains of delivering fairness and equity to nonconformist citizens. He is obsessed with maintaining the powers of the state, but sustains that power crudely and archaically. For someone so messianic and so conceited, it is not surprising that he thinks he can get away with the injustice his government has perpetrated and justified against the massacred members of IMN.
    Mallam el-Rufai’s poor handling of the Shiite challenge is, however, not the beginning or the end of his attempt to create a fiefdom for himself. Even in the rather straightforward case of herdsmen/farmers clashes, the governor has behaved most incompetently and irresponsibly. He tries to give the impression of neutrality and fairness, but every step he takes or not take, and everything he says or not say, has implicated him as biased, parochial and full of ethnic hubris. There is no doubt whatsoever that he believes in Fulani exceptionalism, and has barely disguised his contempt for other groups. While responding to allegations of siding with Fulani herdsmen in their clash with farmers in Southern Kaduna and displaying nonchalance to the sufferings of minority ethnic groups, Mallam el-Rufai inadvertently disclosed that his government sought out the aggrieved herdsmen even outside the country’s borders and paid those among them who claimed to have suffered economic losses.
    Though the governor’s aides have struggled to deny that any payment was made to those who invaded and murdered aggrieved farmers in Southern Kaduna, they have not been successful. There is no other way to interpret the governor’s statement on the matter. Hear him: “… Fulanis are in 14 African countries and they traverse this country with their cattle. So many of these people were killed (during the 2011 elections crisis), cattle lost and they organised themselves and came back to revenge… We took certain steps. We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people, trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger Republic and so on, to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging you to stop killing. In most of the communities, once that appeal was made to them, they said they had forgiven. There are one or two that asked for monetary compensation. They said they had forgiven the death of human beings, but wanted compensation for cattle. We said no problem, some we paid. As recently as two weeks ago, the team went to Niger Republic to attend one Fulani gathering that they do every year with a message from me.”
    Not only does Mallam el-Rufai demonstrate his allegiance to a Fulani nation of his abstraction, he finds no difficulty at all in diminishing the place of the Nigerian constitution in his governorship, and scandalising the oath he took to protect the constitution. It is not surprising that by his attitude, statements and responses to the pains of the Southern Kaduna people, not to talk of Christians who distrust his intentions, he is not viewed as a neutral party in the conflicts raging in that part of his state. Again, the governor neither cares nor thinks he is wrong. He is always right — he of outsized ego and abrasive words. As his interminable quarrel with Senator Sani shows, Mallam el-Rufai does not demonstrate a good understanding of democratic principles, nor does he consider that as a governor, he needs to build consensus and bridges between peoples, and between his government and those living in the state, whether they voted for him or disliked him. It should alert him to possible dangers ahead that two of the state’s three senators object to the way he carries on — his intolerance and hubris especially. More people within and outside the state have also noted his unsuitability to the office he occupies, and it worries everyone but his fanatical supporters.
    Sadly, it is pointless to advise Mallam el-Rufai, and this column will not venture one. He listens only to his own counsel, especially when it concerns his ego and people of differing and probably competing backgrounds to his fond prejudices. He will always double down on his own private ideals within his limited worldview. He will fight his opponents in order to vanquish them; he will disrespect anyone but himself; and he will attempt to create a fiefdom where he, his stock and sectarian ideals reign supreme. Those he cannot disrespect or vanquish, he will treat with contempt. And if God Himself were to question his strange and offending ways and beliefs, he would ask for the code governing the relationship between God and man to be reworded for his own benefit and exemption.

  • Okon takes to bushmeat “husbandry”

    It is Christmas once again, the season of giving and forgiving. It is the season of extravagant weddings among the children of the stupendously well-heeled and even more extravagant gestures of generosity and goodwill among the fabulously unhinged. And Jesus laughed. While the pockets of the very poor bled to death, exquisite and pedigreed pink champagne flowed from the quarters of the affluent, drowning the tears of the needy in the mush of the needless.
    Snooper has been in the thick of things, separating those who have been asked to slap from those who have been slapped senseless. As a gesture of Christianly goodwill Okon has been slapping everybody in the neighbourhood and wishing them happy Christmas. When he was asked what he thought he was doing, the crazy boy told his interlocutors that slapping is no violence since it was the last order he received from party headquarters.
    But this turned out to be nothing but a cunning decoy. Snooper was woken up last Friday by the noise of sundry animals from the garage. It was as if the whole world has become a vast menagerie of menacing mammals. Half-dressed, yours sincerely rushed to the scene to find out what the problem was only to be confronted by the most outlandish sight anybody can imagine. There was Okon tending to all kinds of domestic captives, including goats, rams, sheep, tortoise, snakes, dogs, pigs, cats and the odd cow with Baba Lekki nodding in senile applause.
    “Okon, what exactly is the meaning of this noise and nonsense?” snooper demanded without concealing his disgust even while on the look out for the meanest and maddest of the animals.
    “Ha oga na Christmas come turn houseboy to dem bushmeat hawker. I been dey forget to tell you say I dey do dem bushmeat production. Dem be 100percent local sourcing”, the boy snorted as he turned to Baba Lekki for verbal reinforcement against his boss.
    “Listen, you bourgeois rascal. The boy said he is into animal husbandry. Which one is your own there? Abi chanji no dey for change again? “the old codger weighed in with caustic malice.
    “Baba thank una. He good say you never fire gbana dis morning. Na me be dem mama him husband, na me be dem animal husband”, Okon cooed with delight.
    “Look, I am not talking to you old fool”, snooper snapped and then rounded on Okon. “Okon where did you get the two goats from?”
    “Ha dem two goats dey do two fighting for Ojuelegba. Dis one he come beat dat one silly and him come reverse as if him go gather strength as dem Yoruba people dey say, but him come dey run away, naim I come arrest dem and I come sentence dem to death”, Okon submitted.
    “What about the dogs?” snooper demanded.
    “Dem two dogs dey knack each other for Ikeja. Dem knack each other sotey dem no fit walk again. I come look dem well well I come see dem be male. Dem be gay dogs. Naim I come arrest dem for same sex kpoi kpoi or homosex”, the mad boy crowed.
    “Änd the pigs?” snooper pressed.
    “Ha dem three pigs no get common sense. Dem dey do zebra crossing for pedestrian crossing and since dem no be zebra or pedestrian, I come jail dem for wandering and impersonate”, Okon remarked. At this point, the cackling from the hens became unbearable.
    “Why, you even have about six hens. I bet they were fighting too ?” snooper sneered. Before Okon could answer, the old man looked at him in approval before bursting into a parody of Odolaiye Aremu’s classic tribute to Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu.
    Hun, Jagunlabi re gboro Ibafo
    O k’adie bo bi onisenla
    Beni kora, kota, kogbe, won o si bun
    Agbako l ‘ádie se.
    “Oga true true I dey go jeje when dem hen come dey start abuse me, naim I come charge dem for treason and I come surround dem and dem come dey cry, but dat one no concern me”, Okon whimpered like a shifty thief.
    “Ökon, all these are domestic animals, they are not bush meat”, snooper admonished the crazy boy.
    “Ha oga, bushmeat simply mean meat from bush. So I go take dem to dem bush, kill dem for dem bush and come roast dem for bush, bushmeat don ready be dat”, Okon sniggered. It was at this point that one of Okon’s indescribable reptiles made a direct hay for snooper forcing yours sincerely to back-heel into the house with automatic alacrity.

  • Trump, Nigeria and the Romney effect

    Trump, Nigeria and the Romney effect

    UNITED States President-elect Donald Trump’s dilatory approach to picking his Secretary of State has had the unintended consequence of exposing the poor quality and character of many politicians. No one exemplifies this sorry fact than former U.S. presidential contender, Mitt Romney, who ran for the White House in 2012, but has briefly lobbied to be picked as the U.S. number one diplomat. The U.S. does not of course have a monopoly of such politicians, but it is remarkable that despite all he said about Mr Trump during the recent presidential campaigns, Mr Romney could offer himself for the Secretary of State position. Does he not have shame? Does he think it is patriotism?
    Here are just two of the nasty statements Mr Romney made about Mr Trump: “Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark … His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader. His imagination must not be married to real power … Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics. We have long referred to him as “The Donald.” He is the only person in America to whom we have added an article before his name. It wasn’t because he had attributes we admired …”
    “Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”
    There is nothing to show that Mr Romney’s observations on Mr Trump were misplaced, or that on assumption of office, the president-elect would suddenly transform into a statesman. The essential Mr Trump manifested in the campaigns, and both he and his team think he will remain the same person many sensible and judicious people unflatteringly think him to be. If the chances of Mr Trump transforming into a better leader is slim, if the chances of offering America and the world what he does not have do not exist, why would Mr Romney seek to work under that phony? except that he himself is probably a phony. To Americans appalled by their presidential choice, and to the agitated world, Mr Romney would be a reassuring pick for Secretary of State. Yet, the fact is that most politicians do not have character, as the Kaduna State governor, Mallam el-Rufai, has shown in his attacks against his mentors.
    All over the world, the quality of leadership has declined steeply. It is evident in Nigeria, where for the past 17 years or so, including even the present, only fifth-rate leaders have assumed office. It is a tragedy that the names being peddled for 2019 presidential election and beyond are also fifth-rate politicians whose charlatanism is so offensive that it makes the sensible to despair. Other than white racists, America must feel the tragedy of having the vacuous Mr Trump take office immediately after an intellectual and wit like Barack Obama. But that tragedy is commonplace in Nigeria, indeed second nature to them, as politicians crisscross political parties in search of either refuge from predictable government tyranny or the proverbial fleece of power, wherever it can be found.

  • Corruption in the ivory tower

    I think the greatest problem, today, has to do with the quality of those in the commanding heights of our universities

    “Suddenly, education that was considered to be the corner stone for the development and modernisation of Nigeria was ignored, neglected, and starved of the necessary funds and policy initiatives needed to move it forward. Increasingly, national and state governments started cutting educational funds, thereby, creating the impression that education was no longer an important strategic tool in directing the country’s growth.  With this development, the looting of educational funds became acceptable.  Thus, it became fashionable to loot funds allocated for academic enhancement, capacity building, infrastructural development, modernisation, and rehabilitation of educational institutions.  The looting involved educational policymakers, bureaucrats in various educational ministries, and school officials responsible for administering the schools.” – Priye S. Torulagha

    The above caption was the title of a recent article by Professor Niyi Akinnaso, my contemporary at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife. Having been weaned largely on about the same moral principles at the great university of learning and culture, it was no surprise that I found myself agreeing with many of his views on the subject. This article is an attempt at situating when the rain actually began to fall on our universities.

    Niyi almost brought tears to the eyes recalling the past glorious years of Nigerian universities. I had the distinct privilege of working in three of the best, but more importantly, I worked directly with two of the very best Vice Chancellors ever in this clime: Oluwasanmi at Ife and Akinkugbe at Ilorin. Either of them would faster have drunk the hemlock than steal a penny of university funds. I think the greatest problem, today, has to do with the quality of those in the commanding heights of our universities. Besides the great Vice-chancellors of old, compare those we have in these institutions today with the Alukos and the Aboyades of that era. They were also matched in integrity in the administration – both registry and the bursary – with men and women who would not have allowed any errant Vice-Chancellor play games with university funds.  Besides, there were also some conscientious objectors; men like my late uncle, Dr  Remi Olaofe and his friend, Dr Sowumi  at Ibadan, and at Ife, Drs  Segun Osoba, and Toye Olorode, men of incomparable integrity ready at any time to call any Vice-Chancellor  to order.  At Ife for instance, the fear of Ife Dialogue, edited by Dr Osoba, was the beginning of wisdom. I should know. I was in the Vice-Chancellor’s office and had to do some rejoinders to their articles though strictly in my personal capacity. Unfortunately, those days are, forever, gone from Nigerian universities as most people have become far more concerned with self, than for the common good.

    Some two weeks ago, I toyed with the idea of writing an article on what I considered the new, totally abrasive preoccupation of the SSANU, a union I believed, considering its role in the crisis at Ife, Abeokuta and Akure, was fast becoming something of a nuisance. To this end, I spoke to a university Pro Chancellor, a Vice Chancellor and was going to speak with another Vice Chancellor, himself in the eye of the storm, and the National President of SSANU. The arraignment of two officials of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, put paid to that. I have since been told, by a gentle man who should know, that members of SSANU are in the best position to know of any underhand dealings with the funds of any university  as, at least, one or more of its members would, willy nilly, be privy to the act. That for me, however, did not remove the fact that SSANU, as a union, has a plethora of selfish reasons to wish to deliberately make life difficult for an uncompromising Vice-Chancellor; some being financial demands not approved by government policies and succession battles for the outgoing Vice-Chancellor’s position. Unfortunately, the deafening corruption in universities is more than quintupled at the National Universities Commission as Prof Wale Tomori, a former Vice Chancellor, brilliantly captured it last year in a convocation lecture.

    First, a word about union activities in Nigerian universities. Hardly would any union, indeed, any Nigerian organisation, claim to be more, or even be as democratic, as the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities. As thoroughly befits it, decisions are taken with every segment of the membership, except at Ilorin, taking part. And considering one’s personal contribution to the very beginnings of that institution – I was a foundation staff – I consider its solitary, negative approach to ASUU very regrettable. ASUU, despite the interruptions it sometimes causes to the university calendar, has been a distinct asset to higher education in Nigeria. But for it, our universities would be an arid zone devoid of both physical, as well as learning and research infrastructural facilities critical to university development. SSANU was rather genteel at its first coming, concerned more with its members having training opportunities comparable to their academic colleagues. I knew these, being a member of the inaugural Executive Committee of the then newly established Association of University Administrators with the likes of Ebenezer Babatope (Lagos), the late Charles Balogun (Ibadan), Talib Umar, Tom Adaba (ABU), and a few others. The junior staff union was, however, another kettle of fish entirely, conceiving of itself solely as an adversarial association against university authorities. Their greatest weapon, it seemed, was their unfailing election of the most illiterate of their members as president so as to be able to feign ignorance of university rules and regulations.

    And what trouble they gave university authorities!

    However, in the ‘70s and early 80s, corruption, either relating to money or sexing up marks was not a major problem and plagiarism was hardly an issue. Then a virulent military government emerged on the Nigerian scene and while corruption in universities did not begin with them, they torridly worsened it.  Corruption has started to rear its ugly head when some senior academic staff, desirous of promotion, started going to military governors complaining that their Vice –Chancellors were not giving them ‘chairs’, which, in a particular case at Ife, the governor misconstrued as settees when he confronted the Vice Chancellor who would not give a whole university lecturer, mere chairs when there was no dearth of carpenters in town. From that benign beginning governors, as well as presidents, civil and military, as visitors to the universities, began packing university councils with their friends and acolytes, so they could do whatever they wanted there. The worst happened in a Southwest state not too long ago when a governor appointed two siblings as Chancellor and Pro- Chancellor in a state university.  Appointment of Vice Chancellors would, however, take the cake in corrupt activities. They were mostly schemed into office, and knowing how he/she got there, the first thing a ‘smart’ Vice Chancellor does is to pamper, and ‘capture’, the Council chairman who is probably on first name terms with the Visitor. That done, and with troublesome council members also made members of juicy council committees, the Vice –Chancellor is now free to do as he wished. From then, not even the minister or the commissioner of education, who is hardly permitted by the Chief of Staff to see the president or governor can, any longer, call the Vice-Chancellor to order.  Nor is the distinguished, but rather  aloof Chancellor, most probably a high ranking king or VIP, close enough to know what games the Vice -Chancellor and the chairman, in collusion with their already compromised council members, are playing with university funds.

    Any wonder then some university funds are believed to have been lost to wonder banks?

    However, while the above has been the dominant theme, as in other areas of the Nigerian polity where corruption is king, it must be said, without the slightest equivocation, that there are some chairmen and Vice-Chancellors who have been clearly above board; those for whom no temptation is strong enough, to make them sacrifice their strict moral principles. There are even instances of council chairmen and Vice–Chancellors being at loggerheads.

    Given the above common scenario, however, it seems the only way to effectively fight corruption in our universities will be through the efforts of internal whistle blowers who must, however, be sure that they are not being driven by morbid personal or group interest.

  • Cleansing the Augean stables, Nigeria, circa 2016 CE (3): politics and governance in consumption without limits

    Cleansing the Augean stables, Nigeria, circa 2016 CE (3): politics and governance in consumption without limits

    Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances but under circumstances existing already… Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 

    Muhammadu Buhari set a trap for corruption and his trap caught Law. He is still reeling from the shock of the experience. That was the main organizing idea of last week’s essay in this series on the major locations of epic, miasmic corruption in our country. For this week’s organizing idea, consider the following observation: the trap that Buhari set for corruption should have caught not only Law, but also Politics and Governance; but it didn’t or at least so far, it hasn’t. Please don’t get me wrong. Quite sensationally, very senior lawyers, high court judges and even an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court have all been indicted and arraigned for super-scale corruption. But so have politicians at the highest levels of governance. So, obviously, Buhari’s war on corruption has nor spared politicians. But consider the following two facts. One: overwhelmingly, the indicted and arraigned politicians have been politicians of opposition political parties, with only one or two coming from the president’s own party, the APC. Two: even as Buhari continues to wage his war on corruption, allegations and evidence of corruption within all levels of government are surfacing, in states, local governments and legislative constituencies controlled by all the ruling class parties implicated. The conclusion from these two facts is irrefutable: Buhari’s war on corruption has not remotely come near, not to say touched Politics and Governance in the way in which it has rocked the institution of Law. This is the main focus of this continuation of the series that began two weeks ago in this column.

    To give a clear outline of what is involved in this failure or unwillingness of Buhari to carry his war on corruption into the heart of the institution of politics and governance, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to a set of astounding similarities – with a few differences – between Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, especially with regard to our theme of corruption on an epic, Augean scale. First, the two are the only men to have ever served as both military rulers and elected civilian heads of state and government, with each man parlaying reputations for no-nonsense toughness gained as military dictators in the performance of their duties and responsibilities as democratically elected rulers. Thus, it was no mere coincidence that as civilian rulers, it was these two men who took up the war of corruption as veritable expressions of their toughness, their determination to instill discipline and probity in public office and public coffers in our country: Obasanjo brought us the dreaded anti-graft agencies, the EFCC and the ICPC; Buhari launched the ongoing war on corruption, especially in the theatre of the Law and its organs. So far so good.

    But then consider the following set of facts. Both men directed the firepower of their battle against corruption against either political enemies within his party (Obasanjo) and/or politicians of opposition parties (Obasanjo and Buhari). With both men, even as their wars against corruption intensified and caught the nation’s and the world’s attention, allegations and evidence of corruption in the legislative and administrative institutions over which they presided surfaced to both embarrass and compromise their claims to total intolerance for corruption. As a matter of fact, there are very personal dimensions to these contradictions or even negations of Obasanjo and Buhari as completely clean and untainted warriors against corruption. For instance, in his bitter political quarrel in 2003 with Atiku Abubakar, then his Deputy in the Presidency, both men gave very extensive and very sordid evidence of their graft, their free-wheeling acts of looting and pillage of the national treasury, with enough material to condemn both men to impeachment from office. Moreover, Obasanjo infamously emptied the national treasury in his ill-fated third term bid, as he sought to buy the allegiance and the votes of legislators with the sum of N50 million per legislator. How does this contradiction apply to Buhari?

    In 1984, as military dictator, Buhari had been greatly embarrassed by the scandal of the 53 suitcases that his ADC, one Major Mustapha Jokolo, forcibly got past Customs at Murtala Mohammed Airport uninspected, this at precisely the time that this was forbidden by a decree promulgated by Buhari himself on account of widespread currency smuggling. Did the suitcases contain smuggled currency? Buhari’s enemies and the general public at the time thought so and said as much, but Buhari and his supporters had a slightly plausible explanation in the form of subordinates who act without the knowledge of, and against interests of their bosses. We shall never know the truth of the matter, but it was so scandalous at the time that its distinct intimation of acting corruptly against laws and protocols one is sworn to uphold and defend has haunted Buhari over the last three decades.

    Certainly, it didn’t help Buhari’s case then that his ADC, Major Jokolo, was never disciplined, just as now it provides no help to the credibility of his war against corruption that the president has seemed completely unable to do anything at all about the myriad of manifestations of corruption, graft and decadence in his party, the APC. These include budget padding to the tune of billions of naira and insistence on continuing to draw humungous salaries and allowances by legislators at a time of severe hardship and austerity for the majority of Nigerians; former governors on pension benefits whose scale and size are unequalled anywhere else on the planet; First Ladies around the country who are unconstitutionally and corruptly usurping the functions and parts of the budgets of ministries and parastatals; and the widespread incidence of vote buying dubbed “dibo kosebe” (“vote for me and receive money to have stew in your empty cooking pot”) in the recently concluded Ondo State governorship elections.

    As far as I know, there was not a single Party Conference or Congress on corruption in the sixteen years of the reign of the PDP. And if there was an official, implementable Party Paper or Document on corruption, it lies buried in the unmarked grave of the PDP’s uncreated moral conscience. In other words, to Obasanjo belonged the beginning and the end of the Party’s policies and actions on corruption. Slowly but seemingly inevitably, the same pattern is emerging with Buhari and the APC. Outside of Buhari’s personal charisma and credibility as an anti-corruption warrior, the current ruling party has nothing at all to show Nigeria and the world as the Party vision, the Party programme on corruption. This is both a cause and an effect of the failure and/or unwillingness of Obasanjo in his time and Buhari at the present time to take the war on corruption to the heart of their respective parties. Here’s another way of saying the same thing: the war on corruption in Nigeria would have come of age and become really consequential the day Buhari and the APC deal with corruption, looting and graft within the leadership and the rank and file membership of the ruling party itself.

    The central question, the tantalizing conundrum of these observations and reflections is this: with the well-deserved reputations for no-nonsense toughness they brought from their time in office as military rulers, why have politicians and the political ethos in Nigeria proved far too strong, if not virtually insuperable, for Obasanjo and Buhari in their respective wars on corruption? The conundrum is less baffling in Obasanjo’s case: the man was himself not only prone to corruption, he was and still is completely self-righteously blind to his personal corruption and corruptibility. To this day, he still insists that his endlessly wasteful and corrupt third term bid did not happen and that we, the Nigerian people, imagined or invented it! Buhari, on the other hand, presents us with a more complex case. Unlike Obasanjo whose setting up of the anti-graft agencies, the EFCC and the ICPC, was done in obedience to the dictates of the Western powers acting through such organizations as the IMF, the World Bank and Transparency International, Buhari took up the mantle of anti-corruption warrior on his own volition and will. Moreover, even if at this stage his intellectual grasp of the scope and the challenge of corruption is clearly very limited, the genuineness of his intentions is (still) unquestionable. But having said this, we must now assert vigorously that in history and the affairs of humankind, intentions alone are not enough. What do I mean by this?

    “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”, so goes the epigraph for this essay. It is taken from a monograph by Karl Marx in which the revolutionary philosopher was reflecting on the role of individuals in history, with special reference to the very intricate relationship between the individual and his or her class. Applying this epigraph to our reflections in this piece, we could say that whether or not Buhari is more credible than Obasanjo as an anti-corruption crusader and warrior, both men are equal in their total incapacity to deal with their class and its endless propensity for corruption, especially with regard to the fraction of their class with whom they share(d) membership of the ruling party. Let me make this very clear: like Obasanjo in the PDP, Buhari has so far proved unable or unwilling to take on corruption among politicians and administrators in his own party, the APC. This is not to say that the dozens of indicted and arraigned judges, politicians and public officeholders amount to nothing significant. What I am saying, what I urge the Nigerian masses and those who stand with them in their hardship and suffering to demand is that Buhari must also deal with corruption, graft and looting within the APC itself. Above all, I am saying that the time has come to demand of the new ruling party to produce a programme on corruption that will include far-reaching house-cleaning within the APC itself.

    And if this does not happen and Buhari remains unable or unwilling to extend the war on corruption to his own party? Expect, compatriots, that his war on corruption will either ultimately fail or the success that it achieves will be so miniscule that it would not have made the slightest dent on the sovereign reign of corruption in our country and the terrible suffering it is hourly and daily causing the vast majority of our peoples in every corner of the land. What is particularly troubling is the fact that Buhari and his handlers are already focused on his re-election in 2019 and for this reason, the last thing the president and his men would do now is extend the war on corruption to house-cleaning within the APC. Consumption far in excess of production; consumption without limits: that is the basic “programme” of the class and the government in power in our country at the present time. Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari present us with two contrasting masks of the same avatar of a particular form of capitalism that is one of the most unregenerate and unjust in modern social and economic history. Obasanjo and the PDP are gone from the historical scene, almost. Let us therefore concentrate on what we confront in Buhari and the APC.

    Next week: Education, especially Higher Education (HE)

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                               bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The changing profile of women

    Actually, I have no problem with anyone daring any other gender’s profession; what I have problem with is women taking on the criminal acumen of men

    I am behind times. This means, dear reader, that while my body is in the twenty-first century, my mind still resides somewhere in the twilight zone. I don’t know why, considering I have been taking my vitamins and soaking up on my humour books. I thought they were enough to take me anywhere. Guess I was wrong. That is why I am a little lost on the subject of the tricks women are turning these days.

    I have always assumed that women should be ladies. You know what those are, don’t you? They are those beings generally called females, you know, the child-bearing specie of the human race. Because they produce eggs, females are considered weak and delicate. I think that’s why they call them the weaker sex. After all, any ol’ person can produce eggs like chickens.

    As it turned out, women did not really like this stereotype and set about doing something about it. Oh no, they did not stop bearing children. Let’s face it, if they don’t continue to bear children, who is going to take up that little job – men? So, they just went about turning their lives around.

    First, they changed their dressing mode. Let us take English dressing. The women first looked at their skirts and dresses and decided that they were too lady-like. Something needed to be added, and they promptly seized the men’s trousers, shirts, and jackets. And, deciding these were not enough, they seized men’s ties. Now, a business dressing for a woman is the complete ensemble of these items, and everyone is nodding assent.

    There are a few side effects to that, of course. Some audacious men are now deciding that women should not have all the fun. They are taking a few items from women’s wardrobes too. Men now wear skirts, dresses, lipstick, and the whole nine yards of makeup. In disgust, such men have been given a name – cross-dressers, sending the message that what women can do, men dare not do.

    In other cultures, the story is not much different. Take dressing in Nigeria. It is quite normal to see women in iro and buba for instance and men in agbada. These days, however, you can see women in agbada too, only under a different name like boubou. But, let a man put on the iro and buba and what do we call him? Mad, and all his relatives promptly disown him. I tell you, it’s an unfair world.

    Then women crossed over into the men’s professions. From being housewives, teachers, nurses and housemaids, women have systematically forced themselves into the traditional world of men’s work: lawyering, doctoring, piloting, engineering, snake catching and charming, nuclear physics researching, crocodile hunting and eating, state governing, motor mechanics and all other unmentionables. Actually, I have no problem with anyone daring any other gender’s profession; what I have problem with is women taking on the criminal acumen of men.

     If you have been reading the news lately as I have, you would have come across some very disturbing items. First I read that a very pretty lady is very busy in Kaduna State presiding over a kidnapping syndicate. I mean, I have been used to having the odd woman being the ‘armed robber’s girl’ or the ‘little woman of the kidnapper’. However, it is a new one for me that women now no longer want to stay safe behind their men; they now lead gangs.

    As if that were not enough, I read recently too of another woman who was caught, along with her boys, in another kidnapping story. The crowd that caught the bunch obviously went into a frenzy and stripped them of their humanity – made them naked to the entire world! No, I am not blaming the crowd although it would have been better to hand them over to the police; I’m flummoxed that the glory of womanhood was lost in the act of stripping that woman naked. More was to come.

    There is the story of a woman who is said to have contracted someone to ‘get rid of’ her husband. I’m sure you understand that to mean she wanted her husband killed. I do too. Now, I wondered, where exactly in the evolution of women did we revert back to Lady Macbeth whose milk of human kindness somehow went dry before she made the most important decision of her life? Honestly, I don’t know where we got it wrong.

    Then I read about the unfortunate incident in Ibadan where a woman was said to have stabbed her husband to death. And I thought, seriously? Since when did women begin to take such offensive offensives? Was it when women got their liberation to vote; or was it when Jack the Ripper stopped lopping women’s heads off that they lost theirs? I don’t know, but it does baffle me that these hard streaks are just popping their ugly heads in women across the land. It’s as if they have lost the wonder of being ‘Her Ladyship’. You see this trend most in traffic.

    Honestly, watching women drive in traffic is like watching hyenas driving. Just as hyenas laugh with abandon, so they drive. It can actually put you off driving. Sometime ago (I think I have told this story but I’ll tell it again), I needed to extract myself from a traffic snarl and a man watching the whole thing nearby commented that if it had been him as a woman, he would not have given way to anyone. So, I said, is that what women are supposed to do: be unreasonably tough like men?! That is exactly how not to be a lady.

    So, what happened to all those qualities that used to be encouraged in women – gentleness, consideration, prudence, love, mercifulness, kindness, patience… These used to be the hallmark qualities of women. Where did they go? Now, we have women displaying roughness, hatred, impatience, thievery, unkindness… Why is this so? Could the changing world be to blame?

    We will all agree that the world is changing, too rapidly for my liking. In the olde worlde, women could be counted on to ensure sanity wherever they were. Women were given every courtesy: at doorways, tables, etc. Indeed, their very presence in a room ensured that the atmosphere remained cordial for everyone. They were that feared. Now, women are being thrown around anyhow. So, they also throw others around anyhow.

    There is a gentleman around me who calls me ‘My Lady’ for some reason best known to him. No, it has nothing to do with the way I carry myself. If you cross a cow’s gait with that of a lady buffalo, you might get close. I think he imagined to challenge me to some ideal behaviour. Now, I live in mortal fear of falling off that perch so that he does not say, ‘so, you’re not different after all.’

     I am writing all these because I am worried about what can be going on in Nigerian homes, if what we see in public is but a miniscule representation of women’s behaviour today. All I can say is that our children are doomed. It means that most Nigerian children are being raised by confused women to grow up as ruffians and cutthroats. Little wonder.

    The stereotype of women used to be positive, no matter how derogatorily the men may have presented it. Now, the stereotype is downright negative, no matter how positively the men may be putting it. One man boasted about how tough his wife is because she once slapped a taxi driver who ran into her car. Me, I am still mortified that I once held a man’s lapels for some offence – soooo unladylike. We need a formula to transform our women back to ladies, and soon.

  • Beginning of renaissance in the Yoruba region? (3)

    One area that leaders of the region need to pay attention to create strategies for revitalising the region’s knowledge industry in order to move the region in the direction of the knowledge economy.

     Let’s face it. We cannot continue to pretend that we can deal with the issues confronting our Region and her people on a case-by-case, insular state basis. It will not work, and we cannot, no matter how hard we try, achieve long-term sustainable development and radical transformation in Yorubaland. Therefore, the key to leveraging our uniqueness is the regional approach to dealing with our afflictions, overcoming our difficulties, as well as creating sustainable pathway to progress together. State-by-state solution solutions, desirable as they might seem, are no longer enough. The capacity to optimise the space for development lies in collective thinking and actions, as well as effective collaborative governance. —Abiola Ajimobi, Chairman, Southwest Governors Forum & Host of Southwest Regional Development Summit on November 21, 2016.

    Today concludes the series on attempts to stimulate a renaissance imagination in the Southwest. This piece borrows substantially from the Yoruba Summit’s optimism about turning the challenges facing the region into opportunities for development. Emphasis will be on policy suggestions on areas of critical importance that can help the region regain its long-lost tradition of people-centred governance that gave the region a head start almost half a century ago, which has in the last three decades been experiencing gradual erosion.

    Just like the governors, this writer knows that the current six-state structure in the southwest will be very difficult to dismantle or regroup into one-state region that was in place until 1975. This is not because other federal systems do not have room for existing states to merge if they so wish, but largely because professional stakeholders in the power industry in the existing states would resist such move.  For example, in the German Basic Law, the constitution allows for merger of states wishing to do so, just as the Ethiopian constitution creates conditions for secession, for any state desires to opt out of the federation. But the country’s 1999 Constitution does not countenance that possibility while most political stakeholders, from post-colonial politicians to traditional rulers are equally preoccupied with creation of more states. The realistic thing to do in our present circumstances is what the governors have done: embarking on process of integrated development. What should leaders and citizens of the region do to ensure that the goal of integrated development that can empower citizens across the six states is met? The short answer to this question is that they must look for creative ways of marrying the Awoist philosophy of governance with new ideas that can respond to the demands of the 21st century.

    One area that leaders of the region need to pay attention to create strategies for revitalising the region’s knowledge industry in order to move the region in the direction of the knowledge economy. The things that need to be done in this respect are not as far-fetched as they seem. The curriculum of primary and secondary education in the region needs to be reviewed to encourage innovation and critical thinking. Governors and legislators from the region need to call for a review of the current centralised curriculum.  From the experience of such countries as the UK, the US, Belgium, school curriculum in federal polities need to marry national core with local courses that can promote freedom and innovation. One recommendation submitted to the governors of the region by DAWN at its inception: using Yoruba as language of instruction in the first six years of schooling while teaching English as a language, needs to get the nod of the region’s governors in the planning for Integrated Development. The current constitution, as unitary as it seems, does not prevent states from promoting mother-tongue education.

    Still on reinforcing the architecture for a knowledge economy, each of the state universities in the region should be funded to become centre of excellence for designated disciplines. It is self-deceiving to act as if each of the existing universities is a centre-of-excellence comprehensive institution. The financial and manpower resources to make each state university in the region are not available at present. Relatedly, a coordinating body should be established to steer joint applied research on specific needs of the region. Similarly, each state should provide leadership for incubation of ideas for development of one of the following areas borrowed from initiatives in integrated development in other parts of the world: Growing Prosperity, Improving Wellbeing, Attaining Sustainability, Fostering Creativity and Innovation, Building Communities, and Expanding Opportunity. Each state should share knowledge on assigned area with the others. On these concerns, there is need for far greater investment in research and development through partnerships and collaborations with universities, research institutions, and businesses in the region.

    Furthermore, each must be mandated to report on its area of specialisation to a Regional Economic Council. If DAWN is to be used for this purpose, it will need to be strengthened substantially. Such strengthening will include proper funding and reconstitution of the agency’s board of trustees and diversifying of its staff to include representatives of the private sector, particularly in business, agriculture, and manufacturing, as well as professional economists. Odu’a Investment is one regional company that requires immediate attention. For a company like that to be worth just about N5 billion in over 40 years of operating and mostly during decades of buoyant economy in the country calls for review of its vision and mission. Like the region itself, this company needs to be born again.

    Profitable agriculture and manufacturing used to thrive in many parts of the region, from textile industry in Ado-Ekiti to food and beverage processing in Ibadan, palm-oil processing in Okitipupa, glass manufacturing at Igbokoda, wood processing at Ondo, ceramic/cement manufacturing in Abeokuta, beer production in Abeokuta, Ilesha, Ijebu-Ode, Ibadan, and multi-purpose factories in Ikeja. Most of these factories had collapsed during the years of total dependence on oil revenue. There is need for an agricultural/industrial strategy. Any strategy that does not include specific initiatives for regular electricity in the region – on or off-grid – will be as much of a mirage as it has been for the whole country. The regions in the north are already working toward provision of electricity to drive their agriculture and manufacturing. Planning for development of agriculture and manufacturing ought to be coordinated among the states, rather than each state going it alone.

    Furthermore, a new thinking is imperative in respect of culture of public service in the region, especially the civil service. As the region enters a new era of taxation as the region’s main source of revenue, a new vision of public good and public service will be needed, rather than the current public service culture that had been damaged by decades of corrupt enrichment of politicians and bureaucrats with access to public finance. There will be, more than ever before, need to create trust in government. And this can only happen if citizens are encouraged to participate in decision making and civic organisations in the region have opportunities to monitor service delivery to ensure transparency and accountability.

    Finally, planners of integrated development must take advantage of the huge Yoruba diaspora in the new commitment to re-energise the region. The diaspora, though formally ignored by governments in the region, is reported to remit annually close to $8 billion to the region. It is also a demographic group that can add significant value to development efforts in areas of education, health, technology, and management. There should be a strategy to establish formal relationship between the region’s Integrated Development Commission and the diaspora, to stimulate synergy between Yoruba homeland and diaspora. There are enviable models for the role of diaspora in development of homeland in India, China, Estonia, etc. The governors have chosen a good goal for the region. And this goal can bring smiles to the faces of the people, if approached with the resolve to succeed.

    Concluded