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Category: Sunday

“I will accept the results of the elections only if I win” -Trumpian Nigerian echoes
By now, everyone reading this piece who has been closely following the campaigns of the 2016 presidential elections in America probably knows where the quote that serves as the title of this week’s column comes from. Earlier this week, at the end of the third and final debate with his opponent, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate, flatly refused to commit himself to an unambiguous, affirmative acceptance of the results of the election. The question was repeated three times and on each occasion, Trump gave the same answer. As a matter of fact, the day after the debate when nearly all the newspapers headlined his stunning refusal to endorse the definitive and regulative institutional significance of elections forthe strength of American democracy, Trump reasserted this refusal in the quote that serves as part of the title of this piece: “I will accept the results of the elections only if I win”.

I expect that every adult and politically sophisticated person reading this piece will immediately get a sense what I am calling “Nigerian echoes” in this Trumpian stunner. Why?Because in the last presidential elections in Nigeria, neither of the two contestants, Goodluck Jonathan and Mohammadu Buhari committed himself to respect for and principled acceptance of the results of the then impending elections. Indeed, the fears were very widely held throughout the country that the declaration of either of the two as winner would plunge Nigeria into a nation-wrecking violence precipitated by the loser’s supporters. This, in the main, is what I am calling “Nigerian echoes” in Trump’s stunning refusal earlier this week.However, it is not the main point that I wish to discuss in this piece. If that is the case, what do I have in mind in this article?

What I have in mind in this discussion can be briefly and succinctly expressed before I go into the matter at some length and it is this: In Nigeria, Trump’s refusal would not have come as a surprise to anybody, let alone send shock waves down the collective spine of large segments of the national body politic as it did in America. This is because while Nigerians know their country and its politics and politicians very well, in America the great majority of the populace are in profound denial about the scope and depth of Trumpian beliefs and tendencies in the country’s politics and politicians. This phenomenon is perfectly consistent with fundamental human traits and well-known norms of social psychology: until it is almost too late, we are often in denial about things that other people can see in us as plain as daylight. And indeed, on the basis of what Nigerians know about their country and its politics, any Nigerian who has even a minimal contact with, or awareness of American politics in the last few decades could easily have seen the declaration of Trump this last Wednesday coming, even as most Americans stolidly refused to recognize or acknowledge the signs.

Concerning what I am calling “Trumpian echoes” in this piece, let me be specific and concrete. In the main, it is politics at its most vicious, divisive, cynical, opportunistic and violence-prone. As if this is not bad enough, throw into the bag of Trumpianism racism, misogyny and xenophobia. I should perhaps explain here that I am deliberately using the abstract noun and adjective of “Trumpianism” and “Trumpian” to indicate that in the context of this discussion, I am talking about attitudes and beliefs that are not specific to Donald Trump but go far beyond the individual politician who bears that name to scores upon scores of other politicians as well as millions of the populace considered as potential and actual participants in the electoral process as a core institutional dimension of democracy. If this is the case, why are Americans in such widespread denial about the fact that Trumpianism runs much deeper than the intensely obnoxious person known as Donald Trump and is nothing short of a notable infection in thecountry’s politics and politicians? And why does Trumpianism, so familiar in a country like Nigeria, seem so strange, so unprecedented in America that most people are so shocked by it that they spontaneously and reflexively go into denial about it, generally thinking of it as an aberration?

In reflecting on the ramifications of these questions, let us admit that until the coming of Donald Trump to American presidential elections, “fire and brimstones” demagogues of the likes of Ayodele Fayose, Elder Orubebe, and Doyin Okupe, with their counterparts in the APC and other Nigerian political parties, were not common and definitely were not in the storm centers of American electoral politics as they are in Nigeria. Let us be very precise here: fire-spitting neo-fascists were not unknown in American politics before the portentous advent of Donald Trump in the current presidential campaigns in the United States; they were active and visible in the far-right margins of the electoral mainstream and were to be found mostly among racist hate groups, neo-Nazis, rural, xenophobic militias in the American heartland and the dwindling remnants of the KKK. To such groups, American democracy is either a complete sham or is non-existent, especially with regard to elections and electoral politics. As a matter of fact, these groups are so contemptuous of mainstream American democratic institutions and values that they have for a long time now been ranting and raving tirelessly against all mainstream American politicians and political parties. In this historic context, we can say that Trumpianism existed in embryo in the extremist and incendiary politics of these groups before Donald Trump arrived on the scene both to give the tendencies embodied in these marginal groups a seemingly irrepressible incarnation and a real chance of actually wining the highest prize in American electoral politics.

At this point in the discussion, it is perhaps useful to pause for breath, metaphorically results of speaking. In this country, whether in civilian “democracies” or military dictatorships, we have had thugs, fascists and demagogues who take no steps whatsoever to hide who they are in very high political positions. We have had political elites who make no secret of the fact that they are willing to take any and all measures to stay in office by rigging elections openly and with maximum impunity with the use of both state violence and non-state violence. In America, people and groups of this kind of mindset have for the most part been in the margins of the political mainstream. That is until the advent of Donald Trump and his defiant, stunning declaration: I will accept the results of the elections only if I win.

Among many other signs, Obama’s experience as a two-term president should have alerted the American political mainstream to the combustible personal advent of Trump himselfand the irruption of Trumpianism into the highest levels of the country’s electoral politics. Ina merely formal sense, Obama’s electoral victories in 2008 and 2012 were accepted; they were not contested. But in actuality, the non-cooperation that he experienced from the Republican Party was so total that it effectively amounted to non-acceptance of his electoral victories. There have been widespread discussions as to whether this effective delegitimation of Obama’s electoral victories was based on race or ideology or a combination of both. In the context of the present discussion, this hardly matters. What matters is the fact that what was done to Obama, for whatever reasons, was bound in the end to be done to precisely the same group of people who had been so overeager in robbing the nation’s first African American president of his electoral mandate. As Americans themselves like to express the deal in matters like this one, “what goes around comes round”.

But that cannot be our last word in this piece. There remains the issue of how the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world could produce Trumpianism of a kind that is so similar to what we routinely experience in Nigerian electoral politics that we are left wondering what the cause of this startling similarity might be. Common human frailties that afflict all human societies and individuals, rich and poor, powerful and weak, developed and developing? Without a doubt, yes. On this count, Trump is as Nigerian as Fayose is American. Bu there is also the crucial issue of difference and diversity, racial, sexual, class, ethnic and religious. I would rank this particular factor perhaps higher than the more generalized dimension of universal human traits. This is because on the whole America has struggled for a much longer period and perhaps even more honorably than has Nigeria in dealing with the negative, nation-wrecking manipulation of difference. But without ignoring this historic factor, in the last few decades, the long unresolved legacies of the manipulation, by and for white men, of racial and gender difference for advantage over racial minorities, women, poor migrants, and non-Christians have been festering, just as they have in Nigeria. They can and should learn from us, the Americans might say to the Nigerians. To which it is perfectly logical for the Nigerians to say the same thing to the Americans.
- Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
October 23, 2016
Many hearty cheers to grandstanding!

Is this law to divert attention from Jibrin’s accusations or impress citizens that NASS is sincere in its commitment to support Buhari’s war on corruption?

In the 1970s one of the illustrations of the power of mass media in a democracy was theorised as Agenda Setting. Politicians were supposed to worry about persuading voters to buy their manifesto while governments were expected to implement agenda captured in their manifesto. But the media was believed by communication theorists to have the power to create and propagate issues that get citizens engaged. This theory still holds. But today, post-election governments in Nigeria at all levels spend more time setting agenda through conferences than implementing them.

Last month, a conference was held on corruption at which members of the National Assembly and governors spoke effusively on how to improve the culture of budgeting. Again, just a few days ago, another conference was convened to discuss how to fight corruption. Apart from Kenya’s former anti-corruption tsar, other major speakers were the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Both lawmakers revelled in pontificating about the importance of fighting corruption while assuring the nation that the two legislative houses they head are committed to supporting President Buhari’s fight against corruption.

Why would these two top lawmakers need to tell the nation that they are ready to support the anti-corruption fight? If they were members of the opposition party, PDP, this would have been understandable, but what is the sense in top APC leaders who hold top legislative posts at the instance or in the name of APC, a party whose major campaign plank was (and remains) killing corruption before corruption kills the country need to assure conference audience of their loyalty to anti-corruption cause? Why would principal officers of the National Assembly need a conference to call for an independent anti-corruption agency?

Lawmakers are being ‘cheered’ in this piece for pontificating about how to fight corruption while one of their members is on suspension for 180 days for acting as a whistle blower to alert the executive and citizens about the depth or height of corruption in the House of Representatives. Would it not be less hypocritical for the top lawmakers to stay away from such conference and use the time to address complaints of the suspended chairman of Appropriation Committee? In other climes, the herd instinct that made it easy to prevent Jibrin from representing his constituency in the House would have been avoided for several reasons.

One, fellow lawmakers would have investigated Jibrin’s claims to save the institution from embarrassment before suspending Jibrin if found to have chosen to parade fiction as fact. Similarly, law enforcement agencies in such countries would have insisted upon investigating the claims of Jibrin to confirm or disprove his sensational claims, if only to sustain the trust of citizens in governance institutions. No country interested in justice would have looked away from such serious claims about principal lawmakers looting the country’s treasury, especially under a regime whose raison d’etre is fight against corruption. Secondly, security-conscious countries would have sensed the security risk in ignoring Jibrin’s allegations. If such allegations are found to be false, Jibrin would have been punished for attempting to bring an important branch of government to ridicule.

In addition, the electors of Jibrin from Kano would have gone to court to fight disenfranchisement. How can House Rules of any parliament have the power to derogate from the sovereignty of millions of Kano voters? Counterparts of Kano electorate in other democracies would have petitioned the judiciary about attempts to nullify their citizenship rights. In fact, lawmakers in truly democratic countries would have investigated Jibrin’s claims and if they are found to be groundless, he would have been handed to law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute for libel, slander, and deliberate effort to cause disaffection in the legislature with a view to destabilising the polity.

In another development, the same legislature that Jibrin accused of corruption has announced its readiness to create laws to protect whistle blowers. This new move by the National Assembly deserves special hearty cheers. Is this law to divert attention from Jibrin’s accusations or impress citizens that NASS is sincere in its commitment to support Buhari’s war on corruption? Jibrin has acted as an unduly energetic whistle blower whose complaints should have been protected by all well-meaning believers in the cause of fighting corruption. Is the National Assembly planning to make the law to protect whistle blowers retroactive to cover Jibrin?

As if to bring the matter of Jibrin back to media attention, the conference organised by the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption and the National Assembly was assured by the committee’s chairman, Prof. Sagay, that there is need to investigate Jibrin’s claims. Should the EFCC be too busy from investigating bigger suspects than Jibrin who has in fact confessed to committing the crime that he has accused his colleagues of, shouldn’t the matter of Jibrin’s self-confession be passed to the investigative division of the police, to save time and cost?

The recent conversion of the Nigerian Bar Association to the school of thought that arresting individual judges suspected of crime is not synonymous with attacking the judiciary as an institution certainly deserves some hearty cheers. Without finding out why DSS broke into the house of some judges, the NBA was the first organisation to threaten fire and brimstone by announcing that it would withdraw from attending courts because of DSS’s arrest of judges. What has the NBA now uncovered to make its initial threat untenable? In other climes, the cream of a country’s Bar would first seek information on any matter before rushing to take sides as the NBA rushed to do when the news of arrest of judges broke. It belittles our learned colleagues that they have had within two weeks to change from sympathisers of judges arrested to supporters of their arrestors.

It is amazing that EFCC chose the conference on anti-corruption to ask for permission to keep a percentage of money recovered from loot. Although governance in our country is being done increasingly through conferences, a serious organisation like EFCC should have refrained from turning what should have been an intra-governmental memo to a conference announcement. However, it is risky to tie funding of EFCC to percentage of loot, regardless of what the United Kingdom does. Adequate resources should be given to EFCC, ICPC, and other similar organisations to do their job. There is no reason why the federal government cannot provide funds to these organisations, knowing that whatever is recovered would come back to the federal purse. An organisation that has brought in N100 billion from the Northwest alone should not be left scrounging for funds to provide conducive space to work. It will enhance transparency to separate the source of expenditures of EFCC from funds it recovers from thieves of state. Allowing EFCC to start collecting commission from proceeds of graft will set a bad precedent for the police, customs, and other agencies.

Clearly, our country is at a critical time in its history. There was recession when General Buhari tried to fight corruption as a military dictator. But this is the first time that a government has been mandated by citizens through election to fight corruption. Since everybody’s experience (including Buhari’s) is low in terms of fighting corruption through the mechanism of an elected government, people are willing to excuse a few lapses in the fight against corruption. But what is likely to send wrong signals to citizens is any attempt— direct or indirect— to look away from any petition or complaint about any person (in the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of government) acting in ways that suggest corruption.

More importantly, it may be counterproductive for lawmakers or even executive branch leaders to take citizens for granted. Spending manpower hours and funds on conferences on corruption or on how to fight corruption does not automatically amount to efficiency in the fight against corruption. Nothing is likely to gladden the hearts of citizens than for all the branches of government to respond to allegations of corruption about serving officers. Conferences have their role in modern governance, but they also have the potential to turn important government agenda from action to verbiage.

October 23, 2016
Redeeming Aso Villa from witchcraft and other powers

IN an impassioned piece recently, former spokesman of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, Reuben Abati, took on the topic of witchcraft and other strange and extra-sensory perceptions hobbling the highest seat of power in the country, Aso Villa. In the piece, he recounted many first-hand experiences which many would dismiss as too controversial to be true or downright superstitious. Some of the stories are admittedly so poignant that they cannot be waved off. Dr Abati is also sufficiently senior in the media world and learned as a Ph.D. holder to be described as delusional. No matter what anyone thinks, there are indeed forces and powers everywhere, and man has often felt his own insignificance due to the strange, inexplicable occurrences that surround him and sometimes vitiate his efforts or even thwart his lofty purposes and ideals. Aso Villa, like many other houses and even offices, cannot be immune to those forces and powers. Nor, given the fondness of some Nigerian presidents for dabbling in the occult, is it expected that the seat of power will not be a haunted place.

For the scientist, Dr Abati’s essay may not have strong probative evidence to support his deductions and conclusions. But for anyone who lived under the Gen. Sani Abacha military government, the essay reminds them in some curious ways of the self-indulgences and depravities that pervaded the seat of power. However, this piece is not really about demons and demonolatry as they relate to deaths and sicknesses and other forms of pernicious ailments suffusing Aso Villa, for that would be delving into religion, a sore and argumentative point for many commentators given to empiricism. The most important part of his essay for this column is his transfixion with demonolatry as a possible explanation for the many policy mishaps that agitate and destabilise the seat of power.

Hear him: “When Presidents make mistakes, they are probably victims of a force higher than what we can imagine. Every student of Aso Villa politics would readily admit that when people get in there, they actually become something else. They act like they are under a spell. When you issue a well- crafted statement, the public accepts it wrongly. When the President makes a speech and he truly means well, the speech is interpreted wrongly by the public. When a policy is introduced, somehow, something just goes wrong. In our days, a lot of people used to complain that the APC people were fighting us spiritually and that there was a witchcraft dimension to the governance process in Nigeria. But the APC folks now in power are dealing with the same demons. Since Buhari government assumed office, it has been one mistake after another. Those mistakes don’t look normal, the same way they didn’t look normal under President Jonathan. I am therefore convinced that there is an evil spell enveloping this country…”

Dr Abati seeks extraordinary explanation for the inscrutable change that comes upon a president once he is ensconced in Aso Villa. The explanation is much simpler than many Nigerians think, for the problem is hardly the spiritual ambience of Aso Villa, but the content of a president’s character. Dr Jonathan, whom Dr Abati served as spokesman, never had a reputation for decisiveness or discipline, nor ever manifested depth of understanding of, and mastery over, complex issues. Bereft of those gifts, there was little Dr Jonathan could do to intuitively grasp the options that would work on a figurative today and tomorrow. Leadership is not just about winning elections, assembling a team, residing in Aso Villa and dishing out orders. The leader himself is the key. And his character, brilliance, charisma and vision all have roles to play in mitigating his weaknesses, and helping him to enthrone farsighted plans and policies on the country.

The problem with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency, for instance, was not Aso Villa or the demons supposedly crawling or wafting around the place. A cursory reading of his wife’s book and his own penny dreadful books will reveal how poorly equipped emotionally and intellectually this narcissist was in office. He was an accident waiting to be inflicted upon the country. Once inflicted, he immediately ran riot with improperly digested policies, personal indiscipline, poor vision of where the country should be, and an exaggerated impression of his own qualities and views.

In and out of office, Gen Abacha was an unfettered evil, a sybarite given wholly to pleasure and larceny. He had no principles except that of a libertine, and he subscribed to no values except those of a dissolute and rambling traitor. He personified evil, walked evil, and manifested evil. He did not need to battle evil. He carried it with him everywhere he went, whether to conference tables where he rarely made an appearance or whore rooms where he frequented and luxuriated.

Dr Abati says he has noticed the same tendency to make mistakes in the Buhari presidency, and tries to illustrate his conviction with President Buhari’s unerring bent for policy mishaps. But President Buhari’s failings and weaknesses are a product of his constricted worldview, not of any spell. No demon made him assemble an insular kitchen cabinet, nor imbue him with arcane sense of humour. No demon made him adopt a pugnacious style that overlooks policy complexities and nuances. No demon made him repose confidence in force rather than consensus and diplomacy. And no demon made him stagnate, 30 years out of office, in educating himself on the topics of globalisation, modern economics, the role of women in modern societies, governing a complex, multi-ethnic society, and appreciating the place of political parties and programmes in governance. He, rather than demons, is responsible for his own foibles. He of course possesses other gifts and attributes, not to talk of personal discipline, but they are suited for other times and situations.

Some of Dr Abati’s claims and observations may very well be indisputable, but many others are misplaced and misconceived, and it is clear he does not expect his essay to meet the scholarly rigour he is doubtless familiar with and quite rightly enamoured of. But he can take consolation in the fact that his essay was widely disseminated and discussed. There is no fate worse than being ignored. As many Nigerians also know, there is hardly any leader who has not battled forces beyond their ken and control, as Napoleon, Hitler and others had attested centuries ago, but it did not stop them from achieving great things or transforming their societies. For as Cassius moaned to Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act 1, Scene 2), “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”If a president fails, as Dr Jonathan, Chief Obasanjo and others are judged to have been, Nigerians must blame them, not demons, even if the demons in Aso Villa levitate tables, chairs and other unmentionable parts of the human anatomy.

October 23, 2016
Miracle reunion

As we celebrate the return of 21 Chibok girls, we must keep working for the release of the others

Even if God reenacts the miracle at the Red Sea where the Israelites looked back and saw Pharaoh and his army and their chariots, for the last time, those who would not believe in miracles will not believe. Or if God reenacts waking up Lazarus from the dead; those who will not believe will still not believe. Rather than agree that these are miracles, they will find some scientific or other explanations for the events. The same way it is going to be difficult to convince the people who do not believe that the return, on October 13, of 21 of the Chibok girls abducted from Chibok Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, in the night of April 14, 2014 was a miracle. But those who believe that miracles still happen, in spite of our sins and all, know that this was something that is beyond human comprehension. Even as I insisted that my own little contribution to the campaign for the return of the girls (Chibok girls: still on my mind) which features at the bottom right corner of this column since the girls were abducted be retained whenever space seemed to be a constraint, I almost gave up hope that those girls would ever return to reunite with their parents.

But the parents of the Chibok girls who have returned know better. One can only imagine how expectant both the girls and their parents would have been when told they were going to reunite again. It must have seemed like a dream. But the dream turned to reality on October 13. They experienced it and if you ask them, even those who never believed in miracles among them will tell you they now do. The tears of joy; a mother backing her grown-up daughter like a baby; fathers hugging their daughters, etc. tell the story of the miraculous reunion. These are reactions that are uncommon and which depict the mood of the moment.

Lest we forget, about 276 girls were initially seized by the terrorists that fateful night, but scores escaped in the hours after the kidnapping. Another 19 year-old was found with her four-month-old baby early this year. The girls’ abduction drew global attention to the terror war in Nigeria, with US’ First Lady Michelle Obama joining the #BringBackOurGirls online movement.

The Boko Haram insurgency has claimed more than 20,000 lives and displaced 2.6 million people from their homes since 2009 when Boko Haram took up arms against the Nigerian government. So, for the girls to have survived the ordeals in the hands of their captors means that they are destined for something in life. It is like someone who has gone to the lion’s den and returned. They are lucky indeed.

And to think that this was what some people toyed with; this was what people who should have stopped the terrorists a long time before much havoc was done shared the money meant for purchase of arms and an army general even had the temerity to tell us that all they owed the soldiers was a rifle each and that they could have summarily tried and executed those of them who deserted the war front ostensibly for lack or arms all within five minutes! God will certainly have a lot of cases to attend to on the Day of Judgment. To borrow the phrase of our former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, “there is God o!

We cannot but congratulate the Buhari government for this breakthrough. But this is just the beginning; the government should not relent in its efforts to bring back home the remaining 198 girls still in captivity. As we celebrate, we cannot but remember the role of the #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) campaigners led by Oby Ezekwesili, for keeping hope alive and serving as a constant reminder of the fact that these girls must be brought back home, sometimes to the point of being labelled as a bundle of irritants who see nothing good in the government. Kudos must also go to the external mediators, particularly the Swiss government for their inestimable role in facilitating contacts between representatives of the Nigerian government and intermediaries of Boko Haram on the release of the girls. Of course we cannot forget the role of the International Red Cross too in the event.

But the government must realise that another phase of its duty to the girls is just about to begin. In a region known to be educationally disadvantaged, abducting girls from school must have done a lot of damage to the psyche of the students and their parents, and this could lead to fears about sending their female children to school again. This is bad for the region and the entire country because a situation where some sections are doing well educationally and others lag behind can only mean retrogression for the country. Already, we see that manifest in several ways, whether in admission to tertiary institutions where entry points are deliberately lowered for some sections to enable them meet up with others from other regions, or in Federal Government’s ministries and parastatals where relatively young graduates from certain areas rise faster in service not because they are better than their colleagues but because of where they come from. Indeed, this is why I sometimes wonder when the government talks about uniting Nigerians through a national programme like the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). How do you explain it to two graduates who served and joined the civil service the same day when one begins to experience a meteoric rise because of his state or region of origin whereas the other who probably knows the job better crawls on the ladder of promotion? This, however, is not the issue for today.

Back to the Chibok girls.

It is gratifying that the Federal Government has decided to ‘adopt’ the girls, as it were and take responsibility for their education and welfare to whatever level they want to go. President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday when he hosted them and their parents to lunch at Aso Rock: “These 21 girls will be given adequate and comprehensive medical, nutritional and psychological care and support. The Federal Government will rehabilitate them, and ensure that their reintegration back into the society is done as quickly as possible”, the president said.

He added: “Aside from rescuing them, we are assuming the responsibility for their personal, educational and professional goals and ambitions in life. Obviously, it is not late for the girls to go back to school and continue the pursuit of their studies”. This is good talk; indeed, it could not have been better put. What is expected is for the government to walk the talk because, as the president rightly noted, “these dear daughters of ours have seen the worst that the world has to offer. It is now time for them to experience the best that the world can do for them. The government and all Nigerians must encourage them to achieve their desired ambitions.”

So help us God.

October 23, 2016
The week Ogun struck twice

There were you on the bleary afternoon of October 19, 1986 as the dreadful news began to seep through the airwaves? Somewhere in Opebi, Ikeja life drained out of a gifted and most inspiring Nigerian journalist. No one could have survived the horrific wounds. Dele Giwa, the charismatic and dynamic editor of the ground breaking weekly, Newswatch had just been assassinated. It was the weekOgun, the god of iron, struck twice.

Earlier in the same week, Nigerians had risen as one to celebrate the first Nobel Prize for Literature ever awarded to a Black African. As it had been widely predicted, it went to a Nigerian. Ogun, the god of iron and Wole Soyinka’s acknowledged creative muse, had gifted the great Nigerian dramatist with literary immortality. But before the week ran out, Ogun had struck again.

The deity of steely violence and blood –suffused cleansing berthed at Talabi Street, Ikeja. As the acrid fumes cleared, Dele Giwa’smangled body nestled amidst a tangled mass of twisted metals and charred wood. The hour of platinum is also the hour of pellets. For a nation accustomed to extravagant paradox, this was irony at its most supreme.

Thirty years later, the mind continues to marvel at the revolutionary wickedness of this novel method of human wastage. This was to open a gale of murder and mayhem as if Nigeria was waiting for the astral signal of sophisticated violence. Three decades later, Nigeria is foaming with blood and is like an open ended morgue filled with the dead and the devastated. Historians of the future gazing at the vast necropolis will wonder how killing and human culling could occur on such an industrial scale in a largely primitive society. A society which cannot sustain its citizens has procured the most scientific means of dispatching them.

Let us say this once again, particularly to those who pretend to be hard of hearing. No one who has blocked or conspired to thwart Nigeria’s path to greatness will escape harsh and exacting retribution. If not now, then much later, as Dele Giwa himself famously noted in the poetic prose of a joyously clairvoyant child.

In many respects, Dele Giwa himself reminds one of a child, particularly in the sweet innocence with which he romanced unaccountable power and its hard principalities. As the Yoruba in their gnomic wisdom will put it, nobody must ask a child not climb the hill of Langbodo. That is if he ever survived to ask questions.

Yet,there is a mystical and metaphysical dimension to Nigeria’s fortunes and misfortunes, a hidden order to disorder, that one can only shudder at the brainless effrontery of those who have been toying with the destiny of the greatest conglomeration of black souls on earth. Described by an early colonial administrator as an arbitrary block hewn out of the heart of Africa, Nigeria is a great tribute to the self-subverting genius of the colonial imaginary. If it had not existed, it would have had to be willed into existence by post-colonial imagination.

As part of the national remembrance of this great Nigerian journalist, we republish this morning an expanded tribute to Dele Giwa which was first published on this page nine years ago.. As it was on October 19, 1986, so it has been on October 19, 2016. But this time around, it is the judiciary that was being firebombed by public opprobrium.

October 23, 2016
The rhetoric of marriage

The president should listen to his wife’s rhetoric, no matter how fallacious because in a democracy, the gains and pains of office are shared by both.

Have you noticed that the news these days is full of reports about politicians and government officials saying things that do not make much sense? They are telling us things or having things told about them that are not fit for human consumption. They go: ‘Mr. XYZ: You have ‘taken’ billions of Naira from the State!’ And Mr. XYZ goes: ‘Oh no. I borrowed only half of that amount, and I am ready to return some of it.’

     Pity yourself, dear reader, and me too if you’re minded to, who have to swallow this pigs’ muck. You will notice that there is usually nothing about you or me in the news. We don’t get into the news even when we succeed in executing that quintuple somersault that we had been practicing for years or invent a car. We don’t get into the news for not embezzling anything, for driving well, for greeting our neighbours… Oh no, no one notices when we deign to eat right. Ordinary folks like you and I only get into the news when we decide to feed on worms instead of Indomie (although I cannot tell the difference save for colour) or kill someone for Twenty Naira instead of twenty…

     This sad state of affairs would have continued but for the diversion recently given us newsreaders by no less than the first family in the land, President Buhari’s family. Now, reader, we have to tread carefully because when you are dealing with issues relating to marriage, you can get beaten up. ‘`Tis perilous indeed to get between the tree and its bark,’ someone once said. You see, many are still limping for meddling, for you’re dealing not just with marriage issues but also with the art of rhetoric itself. You know what rhetoric is, don’t you? It is the art of using arguments to persuade someone that he/she does not exist.

     So yes o, marriage has its own rhetoric, where the participants are forever talking and never hearing what the other says. Other people hear it for them, such as neighbours, friends and family. “Don’t you know that when you said ‘What if I even have a girlfriend outside’, what you were really saying was that you actually have a girlfriend?” Marital rhetoric itself can go something like this: ‘Honey, do you think I have grown fat?’ In reply, the man’s ‘Honey, the world is round; fat is round; fat is a good thing’ may make her burst into tears before filing for divorce. That is marital rhetoric.

    In a recent interview, the president’s wife was said to have declared some things to the effect that the president did not know many of the people appointed into governmental positions. In making this assertion and much more that have already been reported or caricatured, the woman was saying things that were made plain to her husband but not to us. So naturally, his reply showed that the discourse was plainer to him than to us, something to the effect that his wife belonged in the kitchen. In short, the world was just an observer to the rhetoric typical of the marital situation. You and I are therefore not going to interfere. We will not even attempt to referee the match on who said more. We will just hold a closed-circuit TV discourse on it, but no one must tell the president.

     We must first understand the background to this; I meant the first lady’s utterances, not the marriage, people. In the first place, it is common knowledge that there is a serious depletion of funds in the land right now and salaries are getting scarcer and scarcer and everyone is groaning in hunger. Unfortunately, rather than blame previous governments for their lack of foresight and failure to plan for rainy days, Nigerians prefer to heap blame on the current president who promised to bring a change to the people’s circumstances.

     So, still wearing her apron I believe that the first lady came out of the kitchen, took one look at the sitting room and all the characters gathered therein, shook her head and exclaimed: Wharra mess! Heck, my husband does not know these people; how then can he trust them to bring change to the people?! I can’t even trust them to like my cooking!’

    You see, the first lady’s rhetoric was pointing at the behind-the-scenes fact that indeed, the country appears to be dealing with a new government but in actual fact, there exists a set of people behind the scenes who seem to be controlling things. Those who have hijacked the government are really the ones to blame. These are the people responsible for everyone’s frustrations, anger and hunger, not her husband. That was the spirit of her submission.

     In her own way, I believe the first lady was really trying to weigh in on the national discourse on the side of, well, the first man since no one else appeared to be doing it. She must have seen it as her responsibility to defend her family against external attacks, the same way the army does for the nation. What she ended up doing however was to question the man’s status on the bridge of this ship: are you ‘Captain Kirk’ or are you a visiting observer from another planet? And that’s what she said, trust me.

     Naturally peeved, the first man in the land retaliated at the letter of his wife’s words. He promptly consigned her back to the kitchen. To tell the truth, when I first heard the story, I wanted to pounce on Aso Rock. Thank God I was held back for I might have ended up in Kirikiri thinking I was making for Aso Rock. Honestly though, I felt sure the president’s reply had taken women back to the pre-18th Century period when they were not even held to be human beings. I still think that’s what he meant though, so I’m still waiting for his personal assurance that he did not include me in that sweep of his hand when he told his wife, ‘get back to the kitchen!’ Believe me, that place is hot!

    Anyway, in catapulting his wife back to the kitchen, the first man in the land displayed his knowledge of some behind-the-scenes facts. For instance, he said that he did not know his wife’s political party. This meant that he believed that his wife lacked the ‘knowledge-base’ to make comments on politics, particularly his brand, to be able to pass judgments on whether he was Captain Kirk or not. More importantly, since her knowledge-base is more defined by culinary activities (kitchen), social activities (sitting-room) and other activities that I don’t know – honest!- (the other room), his wife was better off honing her skills in those areas. I only wish someone would tell me what that ‘other room’ is. So, you see, our first man in the land was not telling his wife she had overstepped her bounds. He was simply trying to accentuate her area(s) of expertise. And that’s what he said, trust me.

        Now, you know that the whole thing has been one big miscommunication. As I said earlier, marital rhetoric can be unpredictable because it can assume several forms. Sorry but there’s no space for that now. It is important to note though that just because women are born in the kitchen (well, everyone thinks so) does not mean that they do not have feelings or some grey matter. True, much of it may have been fried with the yams, some remnant of it still works. The remnant of the first lady’s told her something which she voiced out. The president should listen to his wife’s rhetoric, no matter how fallacious; because in a democracy, the gains and pains of office are shared by both.

October 23, 2016
Snippets of Giwa’s humour

His jokes could be as expensive as his hand-woven suits. But they came without any hint of malice or ill-will. He could take as much as he would give. Only the psychologically maladjusted could come away nursing any animosity or ill feeling. As a connoisseur of good living, he was as brash and confident as they came.

Snooper remembers once walking into the sitting room after coming up all the way to see the doyen himself. Giwa’s face glowered with the possibilities and pleasures of literary jousting and exquisite conversations washed down with even more exquisite cognac. Giwa smoked with aristocratic relish, as if he was lapping at a fragrant bar of rare honey.

“Ah welcome. This is the only socialist I know who wears suits”, Giwa snorted with child-like relish. Very soon, he was all over snooper, sniffing and carping at the jacket like an Alsatian of higher fashion.

“The lapel of this jacket is too wide. Reminds one of those Ojoyin tailors”, Dele Giwa snorted like a mischievous but good-natured kid.

“OjoyinkoIremoni. Look I didn’t come to Lagos for a fashion show”, yours sincerely rallied.

“When next I travel I must get you a couple of decent suits and stuff. All these Ilarecoats will not wash”, Giwa noted with a mock frown.

“Listen, my coat is not from Ilare. I bought it from Sheffield”, snooper snapped.

“Ah, ah ah”, Giwa crowed exultantly, “Why would anybody buy a jacket from Sheffield? The only thing they know how to do there is steel cutlery”.

October 23, 2016
Dele Giwa was here

Beautiful mornings do not last forever. The radiant, luscious and autumnal morning of October nineteen, 1986 did not endure at Talabi Street, Ikeja. As the cool brilliant morning wore on to midday, a novel and spectacular method of human wastage made its devastating entrée into Nigeria’s political space.

Oladele Baines SunmonuGiwa, groundbreaking editor with film star good looks, was bleary-eyed after a night of carousal celebrating black Africa’s first Nobel prize in Literature. But he was already in his study. As he was handed the bulky parcel with the presidential coat of arms, Giwa had exclaimed rather redundantly: “This must be from the president!”

If Dele Giwa had any intention of reading the message on earth, the presidential parcel had an altogether different proposition. It was: Open and read in heaven. As the celebrated editor casually tore through the swanky seal, the parcel hissed and let forth a historic explosion.

Within seconds, the entire study had become a burning, hollowed out shell. Shrapnel, shards of glass and shreds of human flesh littered everywhere. Crouching under the smouldering hulk of the reading table was Dele Giwa, his magnificent torso mangled, his mid-section sensationally shattered. As he gained awareness of what had happened, Giwa gave a weak yell. “Won tipami!” , he moaned in Yoruba.(They have killed me!).

Acrid fumes of burning human flesh, roasting books and other refined refuse filled the air. Life had begun to ebb away from one of Nigeria’s greatest sons, a mesmerising maestro of the written word, a formidable journalistic sleuth, an extraordinary social animal and a warm, humane visionary.

As far as dying goes, it was quite a way to go, a volcanic exit if ever there was one, a one-way ticket in a chariot of fire and on a turnpike of no return. It was an extraordinary act of political intimidation, the equivalent of the ultimate nuclear intervention in post-colonial elite warfare. It was a maximum message of intent to dominate and prevail at whatever costs. Nigeria would never be the same again.

Those who killed Dele Giwa could have organised for him to be quietly dispatched by a lone gunman. They could have set him up in a scene of domestic violence. They had the means to make things look like an armed robbery attempt. They could have a car run him over as he took his early morning jog around Ikeja. No, these modes of elimination are too mundane and cheaply predictable.

By choosing to bomb Dele Giwa out of existence, his executors wanted Nigerians of his ilk to note the range and repertoire of the murderous cocktails at their disposal. After all, it is said that men are killed not because horses have been stolen, but so that horses may not be stolen.

But in addition to its preposterous violence, we must also note the sneaky cowardice of the act. It began a pattern of sly surprise and political ambush that was to become their trademark as earthly powers that be sought to bring the entire Nigerian social landscape under their dominion. Being a plucky warrior himself, Giwa would have loved to go under in a personal, no-holds-barred duel. For a man of such stirring valour, the anonymous bestiality of a parcel bomb would have been the unkindest cut of all.

May be Giwa would not have died after all, but this was not due to any concession from his vicious killers. History has it that had there not been a minor marital tiff, Giwa’s spouse would almost definitely have opened the parcel thinking that it contained early copies of Newswatch, the magazine Giwa edited with such distinction and panache.

Like all good women, Funmi shared in the triumph and success of her husband. By October 1986, Newswatch had become a publishing sensation. The magazine had not only the aura of an excellent publication but also the trappings of a great work of art in progress. Week after week it served its rapidly expanding readership scoop after scoop putting egg permanently on the face of the dominant military faction of a corrupt political class that operated by stealth and secrecy.

It was the complete Americanization of Nigerian journalism, with its power of full disclosure, its fierce and obdurate independence and its raucous razzmatazz. Giwa himself with his matinee idol looks and film star carriage seemed to have been torn out of The Great Gatsby, the classic film of the American dream with its Hopalong Kid and his perpetual romance with an orgiastic future and its immense possibilities. That dire future is now firmly with us, and it is not an American dream but a Nigerian nightmare.

Giwa was the Nigerian Gatsby, a remarkable wannabe from the gutter of deprivation who became a man of means and a major player in the power sweepstakes. He took his giddy transformation in his elegant strides, and with style and aplomb. Not for him the vulgar obscenities and crude hoopla of the wantonly self-obsessed ragamuffin. He was as cool as cucumber. He became a source of inspiration to millions of Nigerian youths trying to escape the grinding poverty of the bleak house.

In the event, it was all too good to be true. Dele Giwa patronized the power-elite and spoke truth to power like a mystical superpower addressing earthly powers. By so doing, the great journalist threatened the power structure and the pecking order of an unlettered power-Mafiosi. By his very example, he was pointing to an alternative life-style, an alternative vision away from the larcenous crudities of those who depended on crude oil for survival.

In the circumstance, both the message and the messenger were handed death sentences without any suspension. The inimitable K.O Mbadiwe once chillingly cautioned his journalistic tormentors to note the fate that befell their predecessors. When a newspaper and the editor were abusing him, K.O said, he did not do anything about it but a few weeks later, according to him, both the paper and the editor folded up. It remains a miracle that Newswatch did not fold up after Dele Giwa’s murder.

When Dele Giwa was sensationally dispatched, snooper noted at the time that the image of a virile gifted young man with his mid-section shattered might well become the enduring image of the nation itself. Once a country loses its way, it continues to wade deeper and deeper in the jungle of crippled nationhood.

Thirty years after Dele Giwa’s murder, this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the very eve of Giwa’s anniversary nine years ago, a Nigerian law maker, a trained medical doctor at that, fell to the din of fistic contention as his colleagues slugged it out for the third time on the floor of the house. He was later pronounced dead. Four years after the bomb , made its way to the independence celebration at Eagle’s Square in Abuja. The Nigerian terminator machine has been working in overdrive gear.

Now try this. If we were to resurrect all the great men and women we have wasted, all the brilliant Nigerians that we have sacrificed at the altar of a vicious and incompetent state, what an endless funeral procession that would be, what a crying cortege of shame it must be!

Since we have nothing but dark memories of contemporary Nigeria, this is what we must hold on to, since our heart aches with sorrow and tragedy, this is what we must hang on to. The enemies are those who want to us to forget, who want us to bury history and their complicity by asking us to bury our sad memories. No, we shall not. National memory is made of sterner stuff. And Dele Giwa lives forever.

October 23, 2016
And dem judges… dem a changing….

When the Nobel Prize for Literature for was awarded to a non-literary poet who had nothing but contempt for formal poetry like Bob Dylan, the first thought that came to snooper’s mind was that Dele Giwa, had he lived, could also have won it with his musical prose and brilliant poetic cadences. Confirmation came later when a member of the jury in response to a query from the purists of the profession simply retorted. “The times… they are a changing!!”Meanwhile for the first time in its history, the Nobel jury is still looking for its latest Literature laureate. Times are changing indeed.

The times are changing in Nigeria too, but for the worse or the better depending on how you view it. Who would have thought that we would live to see the day when revered judges would be trading allegations of enticement and corrupt inducements?

But one man’s meat is truly another man’s poison. After searching in vain for a judge to grant him a perpetual black market injunction to restrain the police from searching the kitchen for contraband rice, Okon collapsed in tears.

“Oga he be like if say demBuhari man don strike the fear of dem lord into dem lordship”, the mad boy jeered.

“Ha Okon, dem judges dem a changing”, Baba Lekki intoned with Nobel sagacity.

“Baba make dem keep dem change and give man him change”, the crazy boy hollered as Baba Lekki chanted: “ As it pleases their lordships!!!!!”

October 23, 2016
Law and disorder

Something new always comes out of Nigeria. For a country that has turned ethical brinksmanship and flirtation with suicide into higher art, the current mass arrest and detention of judges from the uppermost echelons of the judiciary must be all in a day’s work. But the international world is aghast. There is no comparative experience in the history of the civilized world.

How can things turn to this sorry and sad pass in a country that has produced some of the most prodigiously endowed lawyers of the past century, a country that often farms out its judicial excellence to other countries? Where else in the world are judges, including Supreme Court justices, subjected to this kind of public humiliation and opprobrium? Is this the country of Sapara-Williams and that long line of legal avatars stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century?

Often, the international community sees farther than the local community. It sees what we don’t see and knows what we don’t know. It knows when a country is on the brink of anomie and when it has crossed the threshold of legal and judicial sanity and radical anarchy beckons. Like a wise elder, it knows how and where the tree would fall and the earth shaking nature of the impact when youths are engaged in tree-felling.

But let us get legal niceties out of the way. The nocturnal visitation to the sacred domains of their Lordships may be regrettable but so far there has been no legal authority to challenge the powers of the DSS to arrest anybody threatening or undermining national security in all its ramifications. The interpretation of these ramifications, be it political sabotage, economic adversity, spiritual aggression, armed intimidation and even judicial terrorism in aid of the electoral subversion of the will of the nation as expressed by the electorate, is the sole responsibility of the security agencies.

To be sure, it could not have been the intendment of the framers of the constitution that the law would one day go after its most sacred protectors in such a shabby manner. Nobody could have imagined a situation in which state functionaries would hurl top judges and lawyers into detention on the suspicion of engaging in manifest and manifold acts of illegality bordering on state subversion.

If the international community is alarmed by the state assault on the judiciary, many Nigerians are also traumatized by the astonishing revelations and the scale of judicial sleaze. Many citizens are horrified by the outlandish nature of judicial thievery and the in your face nature of the acquisitions. No constitution could have foreseen this judicial obscenity from the leading lights of the bench. By aiding the law to abet social disorder, our lordships have thrown up an intriguing dimension of social justice as part of the National Question. This is institutional suicide by any other name.

But since it is merely an accessory after the notorious fact, the judiciary will not go down alone. In every human society, the ruling law is the law of the ruling class. The law is expected to uphold and valorize social order as seen and as conceptualized by the ruling class for the benefit of the entire society. But when and where the law and its enforcing agents act in a way that undermines and subverts social order, it is an invitation to social anomie which often compels a drastic retribution from forces acting—or thinking they are acting—on behalf of the old status quo.

Like gluttonous rodents set upon a sugarcane plantation, the Nigerian judiciary is too far gone to save or redeem itself through internal reform. In the past thirty years or so, every attempt to reform the judiciary either through external intervention or internal purge has been spurned or treated with abrasive contempt or met with outright stonewalling.

The confrontation with Buhari’s Law and Order administration is inevitable. For law to thrive there must be order. For order to be sustained there must be law. It may well turn out that by stepping in with force and drama, the Buhari government may yet save the Nigerian judiciary from itself or from more ruinous consequences.

The law loses its badge of authority and force of legitimacy when nobody believes in it, when the public holds every judicial pronouncement in contempt and when its leading lights are subject of public ridicule and open disdain. It will take radical surgery within the context of revolutionary stirring in the society to redeem both legal system and public order.

But in a situation where essentially conservative social forces are locked in contention, it may be naïve and simplistic to expect a radical emancipation of the nation from the clutches of a medieval social order as the immediate outcome. Despite his heroic probity and open abhorrence for injustice, there is no evidence that General Buhari fancies a structured and programmatic approach to the crisis of the Nigerian state and its judiciary.

Indeed it may well be that what is playing out is a convergence of private animosity and public misgiving. General Buhari himself has been a serial victim of judicial delinquency and is known to have the memory of an elephant. If his private anger and indignation are allowed to shape public developments, if his personal sentiments and preferences are allowed to determine the fate of the judiciary, the outcome may not be as altruistic and patriotic as one might be led to expect.

Having learnt to lower one’s sights about the ideological and political direction of the Buhari administration, having learnt not to raise the bar of hope higher than the limits and limitations of its principal actors, perhaps the most scientific way to look at the judicial palaver is to see it as the dialectical interplay of hostile and antagonistic forces which may result in the mutual ruination of contending forces. The judiciary cannot hope to win this, but neither will anybody trying to rework the nation away from the modernist template of a true nation-state.

As usual with a country at the mercy of bitterly centrifugal forces, Nigerians have been split down the line over this one as well. Class, ethnic and regional solidarities have rent the elite asunder while the masses are braying for blood. Where you expect solidarity along the lines of superior national interest, you have what can only be described as competing tribalismsor the ethnicizationof equity with justice viewed from the prism of primordial interest.

For example, those who watched quietly when top judges were receiving humongous gratification for perverting the course of justice and for delivering judgement in conflict with common sense are now charging the government with highhandedness and a descent into tyranny; those who kept quiet when Jonathan stoutly and stubbornly refused to reinstate Justice Ayo Salami based on the recommendation of the NJC have now found their voice, screaming from the rooftop that General Buhari has turned the nation into a Banana Republic.Some banana indeed.

What can one say about a country in which the political elite find it difficult to unite behind a common cause or coalesce behind a pan-Nigerian conception of justice based on equity and fair play for all? What does the future portend for such a country with an irredeemably fractured ruling class?

The Nigerian judiciary has had it coming for a long time. Something was bound to give eventually. Like an old nemesis, it has taken the return of General Buhari to earn it divine retribution. But by a tragic irony, the unravelling of the law may also trigger the second comeuppance of the man from Daura himself, if the counter-accusations coming from the judicial council are to be believed. History is a cruel task master indeed.

At the end of Buhari’s first tenure, the Nigerian political class was so bitterly divided and so badly polarized by what appeared to be the lopsided nature of justice meted out to the political offenders of the Second Republic and what was widely considered to be the religious, regional and primordial prejudices of the Buhari administration that a section of the political elite were openly mooting the idea of secession. Two civil war heroes from the west gave interviews where they canvassed a con-federal arrangement for the federation.

After Buhari’s ouster, his successor and former Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Babangida, was forced to shop for willing and compliant judges to reverse most of the draconian convictions of the military tribunals in order to placate some sections of the political class. It was from that moment on that majoritysectors of the judiciary became willing tools of the executive as long as the price is right.

Thirty years after his dethronement, Buhari has come back to confront the Aegean stable with the same contradictions and his own personal failings obviously in place. The nation is back to unfinished business. If General Buhari continues to leave his political flanks exposed just as he did the first time around, if an important segment of the political class feels badly bruised and alienated by the looming confrontation, if he is unable to summon the Nigerian masses to his ensign, the outcome may not be different.

General Buhari should count himself lucky. It is very rare and unusual for history to set the same exam for the same historical personage thirty years apart and in seemingly dissimilar circumstances. If he flunks it this time around, it is all but certain that neither the general nor the country will have a third chance doing the same thing and repeating the same error all over again. Nigeria is suffering from failure fatigue. That is the surest symptom of social disorder.

October 16, 2016