The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Mr President, things is hard

The story of the woman and her children who ate amala with palm oil in Ekiti tells it all

It is tempting to see what happened last Sunday at Odogede area of Igede Ekiti, headquarters of Irepodun/Ifelodun Local Government Area of Ekiti State at about 1.30 p.m. as something that provided comic relief; that is something to just laugh over. But to do that will be glossing over a potentially explosive issue; to do that will be missing the point and the import of the larger implication of that singular incident.

It was supposed to be a holy day; one in which Christians are expected to be as holy as the angels. But that was a day when a woman, said to be a teacher at Ekiti Baptist High School in the area chose to steal the pot of amala from her neighbour’s kitchen. The teacher had apparently taken her time to watch the neighbour preparing the amala and praying that she would at least get up from the kitchen to do something inside. As soon as this happened, the teacher went into her neighbour’s kitchen and carried the pot and the amala to her own apartment where she and her children began to eat it with palm oil. When the neighbour returned to the kitchen and could not find her pot and amala, she was shocked. Eventually when she saw her neighbour (the teacher) and her children eating the amala with palm oil, she was so touched that she went back to her kitchen to bring soup for them.

This is a serious matter; it is poverty of indescribable proportions. I know some food items can flow with palm oil; like yam, for example. But amala with palm oil is not a good combination. I doubt if it was worse than that during the civil war when some of my Igbo friends claimed they rejoiced anytime they had lizard to eat. That was at a time when bush meat and ‘home meat’ (rats and all) had been exhausted. It was lizards to the rescue. That is why many of them keep wondering why the new generation of Igbos is reawakening Biafra.

Things must be so bad for people to ever dream of the idea of eating amala with palm oil, and for the food to flow. Ordinarily, it should get stuck in their throats. How they perfected that art is still confounding. And to think that such a thing happened in Ekiti; south west Nigeria! One, Ekiti people are naturally proud. Two, they are so well-read that some people now think that is their bane, considering the things they do these days. Well, nothing suggests that the woman teacher is an Ekiti; but that is not important. Even if she is not; the characteristic Ekiti pride should have made her (as one who lives in an Ekiti town) to rebuff stealing, which was what she did; even if with an explanation, as they sometimes say in court.

The incident reminded me of a similar one that occurred to me and my fellow youth corps member, Olaitan Olubiyi, who was the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) public relations officer for Gongola State for 1984/85. Olubiyi and I shared the same pot of soup; our rooms were adjacent in the five-bedroom flat that five of us (corps members) shared then. Both of us had been classmates since our days at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos. What happened was that, on December 31, 1984, we had cooked what was supposed to be our New Year delicacy and had hoped that we were going to start 1985 on an exciting note (after a not-so-exciting George Orwell’s 1984) with the choice soup, specially prepared for the season. But alas! By the time we returned from the cross-over night service, our pot and its content had disappeared, without trace! They had crossed over to God-knows-where!

That was back then. As serious as the matter was, we took it with philosophical calmness. As a matter of fact, we were grateful to God that we were out of the house when the thieves struck because such people would not mind to kill to steal even a pot of soup, especially considering that people were just putting the Maitatsine incident behind them in that part of the country at the time. For the younger generation who do not know Maitatsine, (like the pupils in an Ikenne, (Ogun State) primary school who did not know Chief Obafemi Awolowo and indeed mistook him for Obafemi Martins (Obagoal), it was another Islamist fundamentalist group that unleashed mayhem in that part of the country in the early ‘80s.

Incidents like these should jolt our leaders to the tasks ahead of them. They are more of a wake-up call for them to think outside of the box. President Muhammadu Buhari might not have caused the problems on ground; but he has to do more than ever before in this second year of his administration. So far, the cavalier style of his administration does not convince me that he knows some of these issues on ground ought to have been solved as early as yesterday. That is my problem with his government; and that is what many people feel and that is why they are also saying the era of excuses is over.

But this is not a challenge for the president alone. Governors too have a lot to do to steer their states away from the monthly handouts from Abuja. As they say in Yorubaland, Olorun o pa enikan lekun (God has made enough provision for all). I do not know any part of this country that is not blessed. Why would everyone be waiting on Abuja for handouts? It has been said now and again that the present structure in the country is unsustainable. Why would the entire country collapse simply because oil prices have crashed or because some militants decided to be fighting for God-knows-what? It doesn’t make sense.

The point is; by and large, governments in some of the states can do with far less number of people pushing files in their ministries. Many of them may regard this as an unkind cut; Labour union leaders may hit their heads on the ground; but that is the simple truth. How can some states pride themselves as ‘civil servant states’? What does it mean? What do civil servants produce to require the huge number of workers that gulp 60 to 70 per cent of the revenues of some of the states monthly? Let the workers strike till thy kingdom come, the fact is that unless the economy improves, workers in many states will no longer get their pay as at when due again. Strike cannot bring out the money that is not coming as it used to be from Abuja. Ekiti State governor, the darling of his people, Ayodele Fayose of the ‘New Awada Kerikeri’ fame, has turned the strike in his state to a wall-clock joke by saying he has joined the workers on strike in solidarity! Show me any other governor who has exhibited such outpouring of love.

Now that there is no money to pay the civil servants in Ekiti and many other states, reports say many of them are now returning to their villages to farm. That is the way to go. Before the discovery of crude oil in the country, we were making some progress; each region according to its ability. It was the soldiers who came and truncated all that. They brought us to the situation where we have a monster centre that is consuming unproductively and cannot sustain itself without the oil from the Niger Delta. A centre that was supposed to depend on its constituents parts, with true federalism, is now the one dishing money to those parts. It is a misnomer and that is part of the reasons why we are all now catching cold because the oil that we rely on is being threatened not only from without (falling prices) but also from within (militancy).

But what is happening in the country right now with the multitude of workers not getting paid for months should be a blessing in disguise. Yes, we may be able to solve the problem with the militants once again, if their issue is not about the government stopping its anti-corruption war. But that should not be an excuse for states to remain complacent and do nothing to look for money elsewhere for their survival. Those calling for the creation of all manner of states will stop their agitation once they know they have to look for money to run those states. Whatever truce we get now with the militants will as usual be temporary. It is high time state governments began to think of life without crude oil. We did it before; we can do it again. Where laws have to be tinkered with; let the legislators begin to do that right away. Many countries had used this kind of hard times to turn their fortunes around. We can do it if only we are able to see that oil is not just the answer. As a matter of fact, diversification alone is not. Let’s return to federalism; or true federalism, as our politicians call it. Apparently we have been having problems because we have been operating false federalism! Otherwise, ultimately, all so-called ‘civil servant states’ will die naturally, or be annexed by healthier ones. It is a matter of time.

N.B. I always confess whenever I use this headline that I am not its originator. Sonala Olumhense used it (Things is hard) sometimes in 1983 or so.

June 12, 2016
Muhammad Ali and the invention of boxing

What would the world have been without its geniuses and exceptional talents? Human history would have been a dull monotony of uninspiring facts. Humanity itself would have been gravely endangered by its sheer ordinariness and the unmitigated evil of banality. Civilization owes its dazzling triumphs over nature, its remarkable strides towards self-actualization to these gifted game-changers. Without them, the world would have been a poorer place indeed.

These extraordinary men and women worked so hard at their game that you would think their life depended on it. In most instances, it actually did. They can be an uncomfortable troubling reality; a fearsome nuisance. Simply because they rupture reality as we know it, or challenge conventional norms and established practice as routinely perceived, they are often subject to hardship, persecution and even the occasional violent death.

The often fatal contradiction between visionary genius and apprehensive society was succinctly put by the late American writer, John Kennedy Toole himself echoing another major contrarian, Jonathan Swift. Toole should have known. After unsuccessfully hawking the manuscript of his novel to various publishers for eleven years, the poor chap committed suicide only to be posthumously lionized and feted in absentia by American society. According to him: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, the dunces are all in confederacy against him”. (A Confederacy of Dunces).

Human nature is naturally and stupendously wasteful. The oceanic plenitude of time and the sheer prodigality of human possibilities allow for this relentless wastage of human and other resources. But somehow, we always manage to come back to our senses and pay handsomely for the initial error of judgement. At the end of it all, the sacrifices of genius are appreciated by a grateful and contrite humanity and they assume their rightful place in the pantheon of heroes.

This past weekend, the world said goodbye to one of such extraordinary people. The human race stood still as Mohammad Ali exchanged mortality for immortality. It was a parting reserved for kings and the very greatest of the human breed. The man famously known as the Louisville Lip would have been nodding in bemused acknowledgement. Supremely self-confident, self-irony was a stranger to him. For decades, he had shouted himself hoarse from the roof top that he was the greatest . Now, wasn’t he? And yet he was just a boxer, or was he?

Unarguably the greatest boxer of all time, the former Cassius Clay was also one of the most serially endowed personalities of the epoch: a poet marked by genius, a talented dramatist and a gifted orator. Had he given much thought and time to it, Ali would have been an extraordinary political practitioner. Like his beloved country, the 1960 Olympics Light Heavyweight Champion and three times Heavyweight Champion of the world was a master of the art of ceaseless self-renewal and creative explorer of the limits of human possibilities in punitive exertions.

Mohammad Ali invented modern boxing by reinventing the ancient art of fistic confrontation. Before him, boxing was a mere blood sports of two men pummeling each other unto death on a blood splattered canvas. With him, it became a game of refined violence and consummate intelligence combining stunning physical coordination with acute mental awareness. It was the invention of total boxing: bobbing and weaving with your fists, your tongue, your eyes, your legs and your brains. The lion may be stronger than Androcles but Androcles is smarter. The brain is mightier than brawns.

Here is one of God’s gifts to humanity. We leave it to the authority of Norman Mailer, the great American writer and a boxing aficionado himself, who once dumped Gore Vidal on a pile of pudding in a nasty spat. Mailer wrote two great books on Mohammed Ali’s epic duels. According to him, these fistic contentions could no longer be described as boxing. They were gladiatorial chess enacted at the highest and most refined level of human intelligence.

If Mohammad Ali had left it at that, he would still have made the galaxy of avatars as one of the most extraordinary prize fighters of all time. But Ali was much more than a boxer. He was a moral genius and supreme political hero who proudly and stoutly refused to follow the American dominant collective to do evil, and at a time when it was particularly dangerous and feckless to do so. In doing so, the poor nigger of Louisville, who was neither a card-carrying intellectual nor a professional political philosopher, redefined the very concept of modern citizenship and its obligations to a fumbling and faltering super-security state.

Nobody ought to have doubted Ali’s sterling patriotism and intense nationalism. He ate America and breathed America. At the 1960 Olympics Games where he took the gold medal barely out of High School, the then Cassius Clay let it be known to everybody within and without earshot that he did it for his beloved country. According to eyewitnesses, for two weeks of the games, the boy from Kentucky State wore his gold medal as a badge of honour and affection for his country.

Half a decade later, the Lip of Louisville had gone on to spectacular fame and fortune as the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the world with the uncanny knack for predicting when his opponent would fall and managing in the process to dump the monstrous mobster, Sonny Liston, on the canvas twice. A boxing superstar had arrived at the American supermarket.

For the first Liston fight, Ali was a rank outsider by 7-1. Everybody thought that the menacing hulk with a fearsome reputation as a doyen and denizen of the American under-world was going to take the loquacious fellow apart and make a mince meat of him. Even Ali’s own handlers had failed to organize a victory party. They probably thought that if there was going to be a gathering at all, it would probably be an all night vigil at Ali’s hospital bedside praying for his survival.

But something was beginning to happen to boxing as they all knew it. It was no longer a duel of brute force but an imaginative tour de force of elaborate bluff and bluster; a cerebral game in which the opponent is first psychologically destroyed before being physically and clinically dismantled. It was no longer about bare knuckle physical savagery and joyous bloodletting but a triumph of refined mind over vulgar strength. The wildest animal can be tamed and domesticated by superior human intelligence.

But if this was Ali’s hour of gold, it was also America’s hour of lead—to borrow from the title of Charles Lindbergh memorable memoir. An ethical and moral lacuna had opened up in God’s own country. The Vietnam War was raging and consuming everything. The nation found itself in a double bind. The IQ requirement for enlistment was lowered and Ali became eligible for war service to his nation. A draft was issued.

Ali chose to fight rather than to flee, risking everything in the process. Ali flatly refused to be drafted to war on the ground of being a conscientious objector. The uppity upstart has finally got his comeuppance, or so it seemed. Tempers were inflamed along racial lines in America. Revulsion against the great prize fighter rose and Ali was summarily stripped of his title and banished to the dungeon of the unworthy. He became an object of hate-filled messages.

But the great boxer was not going to be fazed by all this. He had faced greater hostility in the ring and triumphed. To those who saw him as a traitor and draft dodger, Ali famously retorted: “I ain’t got no problem with them Vietcong. Them don’t call me nigger”. It was a mortal rebuff and moral reproach to an America that has failed to face its own inner demons while seeking to lord it over other nations.

Like the doughty and redoubtable fighter that he was, Ali fought on, losing so much but gaining global respect and admiration for his heroic stance. He had become a pariah in a country he loved and admired so much. His inability to practise his trade caused him so much trauma and private pains. But after an epic legal slugfest the American Supreme Court eventually ruled in his favour.

There is as yet no perfect human society. We must give it to America that it is a land of ceaseless self-surpassing and unrelenting self-interrogation which allow it to come to term with its own moral absurdities. It is a wonderful trick for national rejuvenation. Yet in the particular case of Mohammad Ali, there are those who argue that the damage had already been done, that he was only allowed back into the ring after he was past his glorious prime and after his superhuman reflexes had been dulled by humiliation and adversity.

This is neither here nor there. For it can also be argued that it was the memory of injustice and humiliation that allowed Ali to summon deep reserves of courage and resilience when they mattered most and against the physical ferocity of stronger opponents leaving us with classics of human exertion such as the “rumble in the jungle” and “thrilla in Manila”. Ali showed us the elastic limits of the human capacity to absorb physical punishment. It was ritual suicide by installment.

Ali had taken enough blows to fell even a stubborn elephant. But for thirty two years, he bore the resultant affliction with great dignity and Olympian pride. It was his longest bout and it showed in the charred hulk of a once magnificent physique. When the hour of the grim reaper finally came, it was a grateful nation that mourned and buried one of its greatest sons ever. Ali had died the way he would have wished: an all-American hero and a global icon. He didn’t need to tell us that. He had earned his spurs. Human beauty has triumphed over human bestiality.

June 12, 2016
President Goodluck Jonathan and corruption

If I were President Jonathan, I would put a stop to these arranged lectures and talks until such a time my innocence would have been established

“Nigerians know that Buhari is not the architect of their pains, which he is doing everything to stop by stemming the bleeding caused by the rapacious PDP.. Whenever the condition in which we have found ourselves is discussed, it should be stated clearly that Buhari has got his teeth into clearing the mess of about 16 years during which PDP chiefs, at our expense, led a rollercoaster champagne life that would make Hollywood greats green with envy. They lived like kings and partied like movie stars. Nigerians said “enough”, kicked them out and handed Buhari the mandate to demolish the edifice of vices built by fraudsters, pranksters and gangsters parading as leaders. Now the rebuilding has begun. It will take some time and patience. –Gbenga Omotoso, Editor, The Nation, Thursday, 09.06.2016.

Looking at the duo of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Mrs. Patience Jonathan the other day, smooching, hugging and dancing azonto, one question that raced through my mind was: what do the Jonathan’s now think of Obasanjo, the man who brought them fame, fortune and ultimately, perdition? You do not need to have known former President Goodluck Jonathan up close to appreciate the fact that he was a perfect gentleman, neither a Pharaoh nor a Nebuchadnezzar. But that was until Obasanjo, out of   his utter disdain for the duo of Ibrahim Babangida and Abubakar Atiku alongside the slew of Northerners keen on contesting for the presidency in 2011, cajoled and ended up railroading a quiet, peaceful and easy going Jonathan into contesting the 2011 Presidential election, thus single-handedly tearing PDP’s zoning arrangement into tatters. The party recently attributed its shellacking in the 2015 Presidential election, majorly to that very incident.

I have read and heard a whole lot of Jeremiad coming from those the new media describes as the wailing wailers. I have read and listened to many say Buhari should stop whatever it is he is doing, pack, go and let corruption come back in all its fury, a wish God forbids. As I often say in this column, I am not here to eulogise Buhari as I do have reservations of my own about some of the things he did and those he left undone. For instance his appointments have been mostly sectional, rather than inclusive. Also, he ought, by now to have given the Fulani herdsmen’s menace much more attention than just asking the police and the army to handle it because undisputed research has shown that some top guns in these agencies are not uninterested parties. The President, we pray, will come back from his 10-day leave much more invigorated. He should   therefore waste no more time in frontally and properly interrogating a problem that has left thousands of Nigerians killed for nothing. Another area of my being ill at ease with the President is how, a full year into his administration, he still sits pretty seeing the National Assembly remain a sink hole with legislators carting home multi-millions quarterly despite the country’s parlous economic circumstances. This past week, we saw them self-eulogising and back slapping regardless of how greatly Nigerians have come to loathe them. These are people who awarded themselves ridiculously huge allowances which were not approved by the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission. I think the President should stop this illegality by whatever means he can , not minding the fact of the Legislature being a different arm of government since the appropriate government agency has severally denied approving such allowances. After all, the buck stops at his table.

I digress.

With what Nigerians now know about the Goodluck Jonathan era, the suffering we are presently experiencing   be it power, foreign exchange etc and which the wailers never stop shouting about, even as they left a putrefying Augean stable for Buhari to clear, would have been nothing but a child’s play had the former President got re-elected. Indeed, by now, Nigeria would have become another Venezuela, that other country where oil boom has turned oil doom with its citizens queue-ing to have the lowest item needed for survival . The signs were all there as the Jonathan government has started feeding Nigerians on a daily diet of lies. For instance, MrsOkonjo-Iweala was serially denying the fact that Nigeria was broke even as they have already borrowed close to half a billion naira to pay workers’ salaries. President Jonathan lost the election but certainly not for lack of trying. As Orubebe was busy ranting his inanities, tying to provoke Professor Jega, the INEC chairman, in order to precipitate a situation where their goons would teargas everybody and stop the announcement of the election results, Diezeani’s bribe money for the purpose of altering the Presidential election results nationwide was going round every part of the country. As God would have it, those to whom she shelled the money knew it was too little, and too late as Nigerians have put an ignominious end to the era of lootocracy. Rather than part with the money, most simply held to their own share of the loot. Had Jonathan won, nobody would have heard a whimper about this humongous amount of money sourced, illegally by Diezeani from her rogue accomplices in the oil industry which she had dominated like a colossus.

With daily breaking news about the heist perpetrated under his nose , it is a shame President Jonathan is going round the world trying to burnish his name and claiming, tongue in cheek, that he fought corruption. So massive was the looting that his ministers very easily convinced him not to cooperate with the incoming administration as a result of which he could only give his handing over notes to his successor a few days to his exit. By going out making those claims are we to assume that he is unaware of many of his men who have confessed to looting the treasury one way or the other? Did his cousin,   Robert Azibaola, just chanced on 40 Billion dollars for a contract which the EFCC describes as dubious, for the supply of Tactical equipment for special forces but details of executing which it says does not exist? What of how people around him turned a so-called negotiation for the release of the Chibok girls to a casino? While regaling his audience in a speech at the Bloomberg studio in London claiming he fought corruption by not making money available to people, was it that he had not heard what Hassan Tukur, his Principal Secretary, was reported to have told the EFCC about the 40 Billion dollars he, Jonathan, approved, and Azibaola picked from the office of the National Security Adviser which had by then become an automatic teller machine, for the release of the Chibok girls? Is it possible the former President has not heard that Tukur has confessed to diverting the money and sharing it with somebody? Or what corruption can be greater than authorising, as reportedly claimed by the National Security Adviser, the sharing of 2.1 Billion dollars meant for arms purchase for items not remotely related to arms? And what about the millions of dollars raked in from oil crude sales which should have gone to the federation account to relieve states, but was diverted and used by the oil empress for the purpose of altering the presidential election results?

If I were President Jonathan, I would put a stop to these arranged lectures and talks until such a time my innocence would have been established. Or hasn’t he just said he is being investigated?

Sir, this time around, silence will be golden.

I REMEMBER

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June 12, 2016
Public education and the future of Yoruba civilisation (2)

Citizens of Oyo State, the state that received the birthing of Nigeria’s first public education system, needs to interact with other states in Nigeria and outside, to borrow ideas about how to sustain public education qua public education

Such arrangements [Liberia’s plan to subcontract provision of public education to private companies] are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution.…This also contradicts political commitments made by Liberia and the international community to the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal which is on education and related targets…Provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education…It is ironic that Liberia does not have resources to meet its core obligations to provide a free primary education to every child, but it can find huge sums of money to subcontract a private company to do so on its behalf…These sums could be much better spent on improving the existing system of public education and supporting the educational needs of the poor and marginalized…Before any partnership is entered into, the Government of Liberia must first put into place legislation and policies on public private partnerships in education, which among other things, protect every child’s right to education…There also needs to be an independent body or institution established to receive complaints of potential violations of the right to education that might result from this development.—Kinshore Singh, UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to education.

I have opened today’s piece with a longish quotation from Kinshore Singh’s reaction to Liberia’s (first in Africa) plan to outsource public schools to private contractors, to suggest that what Oyo State is planning to do is not new, even though avoidable and unnecessary. The proposal by Oyo State which has been generously endorsed by leading monarchs in the state is similar to Liberia’s plan which UNESCO has found unacceptable on account of contravening United Nations’ recommendations on public education.

The news that labour union members were absent from the Consultative Forum at which leading Yoruba monarchs expressed support for Oyo State’s plan to outsource public education to private entities is unfortunate. Labour as a major civil society group should have been present, regardless of perceived irritation, at every minute of the meeting of stakeholders to educate the audience about the role of government in the provision of public education in every country of the world—capitalist, socialist, and communist. Strike has its significance, but dialogue within stakeholders is crucial for intelligent conversation on matters that affect the destiny of citizens. And labour unions are indispensable organizations to such dialogues. It is, however, instructive that the consultative forum has been turned into an ongoing one, to allow for all voices to be heard on this important matter. And labour unions should return to the meeting to enrich discussion on the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the plan to hire contractors to manage public schools at a time there is no force majeure that cripples the civil service in the state and its local governments.

The first piece last Sunday claimed that Oyo State government is asking the wrong question about how to improve performance of public schools or that decision to contract out management of selected public schools to profit seekers is creating a solution for problems that have not been properly identified. Just as Singh had observed in respect of Liberia’s model for Oyo State, a better option for solving the problem of management of schools in Liberia (and also in Oyo State) is for such governments to ‘approach UNESCO in the short run for technical assistance and capacity building, instead of entering into partnerships with for-profit management companies.

The problem facing education in the Yoruba region is much larger and more challenging than finding professionals to manage public schools. There is still memory of a tradition of public school management that had gone into decline in the decades of fantasstic corruption made possible by huge flow of revenue from petroleum and emergence of many venal men and women in uniform and mufti that had ruled Nigeria for the past four decades. But the public service, especially the civil service that created public school system in the region that included Oyo can be revived, once the region returns to the economy of production from the economy of inordinate consumption in which the region had been mired for several decades. In other words, the challenge of managing schools should be the least worrisome of the problems provision of high performing public school system faces.

Apart from the problem of decades of consumption that had diminished creative governance in our country, challenges have also arisen from the politics of centralism that made easy and fun-filled governance possible through distribution of oil money across mini-states and from the resultant diminishment of the powers of states and local governments in the organization, periodic review of education systems, including curriculum reforms, quality of instruction, learning environment, etc. In most countries, management of primary and secondary schools is the function of local governments. USA and Germany are handy examples of this model. In addition, the old system of political oversight over school management by principal stakeholders, such as parents and children, needs to be reactivated once Oyo and other states opt for a return to productive culture, away from the parasitic culture of consumption thrown up by military dictators and civilian rulers in the name of search for unity through even development when oil revenue was robust.

One thing that has become incontrovertible in the 21st century is the universal recognition of the centrality of an educated and trained population for nations’ progress. It is because of universal recognition of the role of quality and equity in provision of state-funded primary and secondary education, regardless of citizens’ socio-economic level, that the UN chose to create Millennium Goals to guide developing countries towards a better future. This must be the cause of the insistence by the United Nations that under-developed or developing countries need to imitate advanced countries in accepting the importance of equal access of their citizens to state-funded schools that provide learning that can make the undeveloped parts of the world become competitive in the development of science, technology, and innovative knowledge, the levers of progress.

Moving management of public schools away from the public service also has its serious implications. If the public service system is incapable of carrying out its functions, is the best option to relieve it of such functions and make it a house of freeloaders or salary earners on sinecure appointments? PPP, the new buzzword in our country, is good for activities that can bring revenue. Public education all over the world is seen as service to citizens and not revenue generating agencies, like airports, roads, railway lines. America’s popular saying: “If ain’t broke don’t fix it” is applicable to the hyping about privatizing management of public schools. What appears broken in respect of public education is ideology, policy, and commitment to creating and sustaining modern and conducive public schools.

Citizens of Oyo State, the state that received the birthing of Nigeria’s first public education system, needs to interact with other states in Nigeria and outside, to borrow ideas about how to sustain public education qua public education. A public school that is transferred to private managers is no longer a public school but a profit-making venture for such managers. The noise about the innovativeness of hiring professionals outside the civil service system to manage schools as the best way to improve achievement of public schools sounds more like karounwi or sheer symbolic acts. Oyo and other Yoruba states cannot afford to take any step that can adversely affect the access of citizens to state schools. If the problem is failure of management at the hands of public servants, let us reform the civil service. If it is a problem of funding public schools effectively, let us introduce education tax. Awolowo did this in his time. He even started Western Nigeria Lottery to generate funds for education. Many states in the USA now use lottery revenue to enhance funding of public schools. The consultative forum should be directed at the real problems: crisis in the philosophy, design, and provision of public education that can improve the competitiveness of Oyo State within and outside Nigeria. We may be avoidably distracting citizens or overheating the polity by insisting that transferring public schools to contractors is the only way out of the problems facing education.

June 12, 2016
The limits of intolerance

Three recent incidents in Niger, Kaduna and Kano states are worrisome and should be taken seriously by all concerned to avoid a reoccurrence.

In our supposedly secular country, a group of Muslim men stabbed a Carpenter in Kaduna state for not observing the Ramadan fast, while a 74 year old Christian woman was also killed in Kano for allegedly blasphemy.

Earlier in May, one Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel was killed by a mob in Niger State over allegation of posting a blasphemous statement about Prophet Muhammad on the social media.

If the incidents have not degenerated into religious clashes, it is not because they were not serious enough to warrant retaliation by the Christians in the affected communities or in other parts of the country.

The criminal act in the name of a religious faith could have degenerated into a breakdown of law and order, but for prompt appeals from government and religious leaders who have condemned the unwarranted killings.

It is unfortunate that any group of persons, in total disregard for the freedom of beliefs guaranteed by the country’s Constitution and the rule of law, will take the law into their hands and commit such heinous crime.

Irrespective of the religious configuration of any part of the country, nobody, as the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai rightly noted, can impose a tenet of his faith on another person. The decision to observe any religious activity is the prerogative of an individual.

If for any reason, a religious group feels offended by comments about its faith, like in the case in Niger and Kano, the law of the country does not allow anyone to kill, no matter the provocation.

Such cases should be reported to law enforcement agencies or religious leaders for proper investigation and prosecution where necessary. It is criminal for anyone to invoke unproven allegation of blasphemy and kill the alleged offender.

Even in core Islamic countries, killing for whatever violation of religious tenets is not as barbaric as some self- proclaimed defenders of their faith in Nigeria want us to believe.

For too long, many offenders have gotten away with criminal acts on the excuse that they are defending their religious faith. Any case of murder, like in Kano and Kaduna should be treated as such to serve as a deterrent to others.

I believe President Muhammmadu Buhari and the governors of the affected states that justice will be done regarding the recent incidents.

Islamic groups, including the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), which have condemned the killings will need to intensify enlightenment programmes on interfaith and mutual co-existence and prevent miscreants which they say are responsible for the killings from reinforcing erroneous impression about Islam.

June 12, 2016
Now, a Persian parable for Nigeria

Remember the Persian Empire? Apart from the Oriental splendor and magnificent riches, it was a land of great emperors and first rate royal fighters and eagle-eyed archers who could take enemies out from a mile. But it was also a land of militant rebels and redoubtable nay-sayers that could fight to the last man without yielding ground in a fiery enactment of the “Masada Complex” of Israeli soldiers. Masada was a site of historic carnage where the ancient Israelite warriors fought to the last man rather than surrender.

The mighty empire-building British forces learnt never to toy with Afghan tribesmen. They fight with the ferocity of affronted ants. Twice in the nineteenth century, they were trapped in the notorious Kyber Pass and routed by Afghan forces, leaving the odd straggler to tell the story of memorable mayhem. Two hundred years later, the Afghan warriors are still at it after seeing off virtually anybody who dared to interfere in their internal affairs. For almost two decades, they have been involved in a messy and nasty dog-fight with the Americans. They regroup with greater resolve after they have been dislodged. Let the top dog beware of the gutsy underdog.

And the fable was told of a mighty Persian emperor who had been waging a fierce campaign to subdue a rag-tag rebel force. The entire landscape was crimson with blood and gore and the battle field was littered with the dead and the dying. A temporary truce had to be arranged to evacuate the quick and the dead. During the lull in fighting, the Persian emperor rode on a chariot of fire and fury to parley with the rebel commander in his field headquarters.

“So, my friend, why do you fight so hard?” the puzzled emperor asked the intrepid and hardy rebel commander.

“For loot of course. What else is there to fight for? “, the rebel fighter responded poker-faced.

“I see”, the great emperor grunted with fiendish relish.

“And if I may ask why does your majesty also fight so hard?” the rebel commander pressed.

“I fight for honour. There is nothing else to fight for in life”, the emperor blurted with a wary countenance.

“In that case your majesty, we are both fighting for what we don’t have”, the rebel chieftain growled and then ordered the battle to be rejoined after honorably allowing the emperor a safe passage.

June 12, 2016
How not to be a Parent

Unless we end this new culture of indulgent parenthood, parents will be unwittingly signing their own extinction warrant

Early this month, the world marked the international day of parents. I guess the world was trying to tell us something; such as it’s not easy to raise a Cassius Clay and bend, twist and tumble him into a Mohammed Ali. It was saying that it is not easy to bring an Albert Einstein into the world, watch him tumble and squirm through all his early exams and then bring out the theory of relativity out of him. It is definitely saying that all those people out there still trying to bring the Einstein out of their little thugs should not despair; there is hope. Einstein almost didn’t get it, but he did, finally.

There is a saying that children will be the death of those who have them and also the death of those who do not have them. It took me a while to understand that; you know how famously slow I am. When I did come to understand it though, of course I disagreed. As far as I am concerned, parents are quite capable of killing themselves. In fact they have started to do just that, but guess where – in their children.

Naturally, it can be daunting to find oneself the only thing standing between this wee bundle and the deep floors of River Granges. I tell you, you need nerves of steel to prevent yourself from panicking, calling 911 and immediately tendering your resignation.

One woman in America was said to have been so lacking in these nerves of steel she took one look at the world, another one at her five children and decided that if they lived on the floor of the river in her town, the world could not reach them with all its drugs, failures, murders, politics and … and badness. So, she drowned them. Another one slit the throat of her four children, also because she was so afraid the world would ruin their angelic looks and character. Naturally, these women were jailed, but the children were safe.

Honestly, it’s got so bad many parents do not know what to do with their children anymore. If they, the parents, killed the children in their childhood, they would go to jail. If they let these children grow up, it does not favour the parents. To start with, the girl child soon discovers boys, and her voice. That’s when she discovers that her parents are unreasonable and belong to the old school whose candlelight went out long ago. This stage has led many parents to commit murder. Un hun.

On the other hand, the boy child soon discovers friends, guns and drugs, in that order. His voice comes later to give a million reasons why he should be allowed his freedom to play with all three as he pleases. That is also when he discovers that the very house that gave him shelter from sun, rain and armed robbers has become restrictive and he needs his freedom. This stage has also led many parents to commit disownment. Un hun.

Please believe me when I tell you that once, the oldest woman in the world was asked if she still had any worries at her age and she replied, ‘not since my youngest child entered the old people’s home.’ Oh, I’ve told you this before? Good, I was afraid I was repeating myself. Obviously, the job of a parent is to have children and worry sick over them.

‘Have children; will do things’ has become the credo of many a parent around here though. As an alternative to calling 911 and tendering his/her parenthood resignation or drowning the troublesome tykes in River Granges, many Nigerian parents have found ways to… err, raise the little buggers. First, they tolerate them for around a year till they can totter around on their little trotters, and then they, wait for it, enrol them in lessons, in order to give them an advantageous start in life!

Clearly, we have finally arrived at the age when parents are ready to do anything for their children. This means that children, not the parents, are wearing the pants in the house now. There was only one pair of pants in my house, and you could immediately see who was wearing them by the size (much bigger than all of us), by the colour (definitely not in our hues) and by the shape (it uses a belt). Now, fashion has come round and round and parents and children are struggling for the same pair of skin-tight pants, and guess who’s winning – the children. How do I know this? Wait.

In the not too distant past, examinations were a way to measure a child’s abilities in many things. If he passed, he was applauded all round. If he failed, he was excommunicated from the comity of nations in the family – no food, no new clothes and no new smiles from all. Now, examinations have taken on a new character. They are a way to measure the parents’ attention deficit disorders. Many parents, not having time to spend with their children in order to bring them up properly, over-compensate by lavishing on them such things as money, material items, admissions bought from the stores and new ways to cheat in examinations just to be sure they passed.

Imagine the horror of this nation when the news reported sometime last year that a set of parents impersonated their children in an examination! Before then, all we heard was how parents would organise to have their children register in examination centres that were well below the radar so that they could pass. We knew how parents in a community would come together to take very good care of invigilators sent into their midst, being after all, strangers. But to actually sit for an exam in the place of a child beats my imagination hollow because I have been wondering honestly: what did they do for uniforms? How did they manage not to let their wrinkles stand in the way? I would really like to know because I have a few lines on my face I want to get rid of for reasons slightly related to theirs. I would like to go back to school to read the course of my dreams: Loxodontology, the study of elephants. I want to know how to make them dance the waltz, on one leg, on the beach, while I am lying on the sand, counting the palm leaves…

Thanks to parents now, examination malpractice has gone way past the manageable level. I wrote here sometime ago that there are few things wrong with our educational system that curing the parents would not cure. I nearly got roasted, alive! But for the grace of God, I tell you, I would have been singed to my eyebrows. Really, parents have unfortunately forgotten their primary duties.

The primary duties of parents to their children are clear. Instead of teaching their children to cheat, parents should be teaching RESPONSIBILITY. Instead of plying their children with earthly materials and rousing their appetites for the moon, parents should be teaching PROBITY. Instead of teaching self-indulgence, parents should be teaching SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Armed with these, a child would better appreciate the true issues of life. Then, more theories of relativity will ensue. Unfortunately, they cannot be picked up by the wayside; they must be taught by parents.

Unless we end this new culture of indulgent parenthood, parents will be unwittingly signing their own extinction warrant. Putting power into the hands of children, weak heads that they are already, is a most dangerous thing. Take warning for I am telling you that very soon, children may decide that they no longer want or need your parenthood; they can parent themselves. Perhaps then, the children will do a much better job at parenting their parents even.

June 12, 2016
Ambode’s first anniversary

So far, so good

Give it to him; Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State has given a good account of himself since his swearing in on May 29, last year. He might not be a man of many words, but he has proven to be a man of action. After the initial lull in his first four months or so, there has been no stopping him as he continues to launch one project or the other almost on a monthly basis. It was like the proverbial ram that beats a retreat; it has only gone for more strength.

The governor began to worm his way to the hearts of Lagosians in November last year when he launched an ambitious security project worth about N4.7billion. It was just about the time the people were wondering whether he was capable of wearing the big shoes of governor of a mega city like Lagos. But the criticism turned to praise with the donation by the government of security equipment and vehicles to the Lagos State Police Command and the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), to enable them tackle effectively the criminals who wanted to make staying in Lagos a nightmare for law-abiding citizens. The donated items included 100 4-door salon cars, 55 Ford Ranger pick-ups, 10 Toyota Land Cruiser pick-ups, 15 BMW power bikes, 100 power bikes, Isuzu trucks, three helicopters, two gun boats, 15 Armoured Personnel Carriers, revolving lights, siren and public address system. Others were vehicular radio communicators, security gadgets, including bullet proof vests, helmets, handcuffs, etc. Uniforms, kits as well as an improved insurance and death benefit schemes for officers were also part of the gesture. With these and other items on ground, criminals should not find the state a safe haven, the governor told the security agents. So far, this has been the experience of Lagosians.

The administration realised that security cannot be enhanced in a situation where most parts of the state are in darkness. So, the state government came up with the idea of Light Up Lagos Project, an aggressive effort to provide street lights in as many places as possible. This was something that had been taken for granted over the decades, whereas I remember street lights existed in the nooks and crannies of the state in the late sixties, perhaps till the seventies. I remember at Ogba-Elefo (Atitebi Compound), off Moshood Abiola Road, Ebute- Metta, where I grew up, we had street lights under which we played as children. The relics of the lights (close to the new Chief Magistrate’s Court in the place) were just removed a few years back.

I have seen lights under the Light Up Lagos Project in places like Capitol/Alfa Nla streets; Maryland – Mile 12; Old Ota Road, Alimosho; Cemetery Road, Badagry; Kara through Alapere; 7up Toll Gate and Berger; Ligali Ayorinde, Victoria island; Babatunde Anjous, Eti-Osa; Itire Road, Surulere; Martins Street/Ereko, Brook Street, Lagos Island; Olowookere Street, Alimosho; Bode Thomas, Surulere; to name a few. Without doubt, this must be bad news for marauders and other criminally-minded persons who ply their illicit trades under the cover of darkness. On the other hand, it is a plus for night life and business which was a part and parcel of Lagos life in years past.

Another area that the government realised could reduce insecurity is by providing jobs for the teeming jobless, particularly the youths. Indeed, this is one sure way to complement the massive investment in security, otherwise, the well-equipped security agents would be working in vain. The Ambode administration has therefore set up a N25billion Employment Trust Fund, ETF, to address unemployment and promote wealth creation through entrepreneurial development. And, to ensure the fund works as intended, it has the former chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mrs Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, as chairman of its board. Still on unemployment, the government has also launched a registration/labour exchange centre in Ojo Local Government Council, with the objective of having a data base of unemployed persons which would then be used to develop an appropriate intervention programme for them, as well as link them with potential employers. Five of such centres are to be established to cater to the needs of the five divisions in the state.

A lot is also happening in the transportation sector. It is not just about road construction and rehabilitation, the government has also increased the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses in the state by an additional 400 air-conditioned buses to ply the ever-busy Ikorodu Roundabout – CMS route. The impact of these is being gradually felt and this is so due to the mega city status of Lagos, with its ever-burgeoning population. Over time, and with more programmes and projects, including water transport and light rail materialising, the state’s roads would eventually be relieved of the usual logjam, and travel time drastically reduced.

It is apt to say that Lagos State has been particularly lucky, especially since the country’s return to civil rule in 1999. Nigeria as a country might have leadership deficit; but not Lagos which has continued to post impressive records within the period. This is what has continued to make the state witness the progress it has been witnessing, especially in the last 17 years. I have always said that continuity, especially as used by our politicians, is not the issue, but the use to which continuity is put. Lagosians should congratulate themselves for their choice of governors since the return to civil rule in 1999. One can only imagine what would have happened if the state had been captured by the predators that had ravaged most other states of the federation. Those who might want to argue that Lagos has no choice but to do well because it has the resources are missing the point. The point is; it is not about having huge resources, it is more about prudent use of the resources.

But if Lagos’ revenue profile has been rising, so are its responsibilities. The state is just joining the league of oil-producing states in the country, and so has not begun to enjoy the derivation that oil-producing states enjoy. This means the bulk of its revenue comes from internally generated revenue (IGR), which has been growing exponentially since 1999. The IGR has reached a record high. Under the present governor, Lagos State made a whopping N101.69 billion in total revenue in the first quarter of this year. It was about N97.28billion in the same period of last year. This translates to about N33.8billion per month. It is instructive that the state’s revenue, particularly the IGR component, has been on a steady rise since 1999 and the magic is just a sound financial reengineering and prudent management of resources, in spite of ever-growing demands.

This is the secret of the state’s plenty at a time when most other states are crying for funds. It is true that not many states are as endowed as Lagos, the point remains that many too are not as resourceful to see the areas where they can make money because of the assured monthly hand-outs from Abuja. Perhaps now that that source is becoming threatened, some of the governors would wake up from their slumber.

It is from these resources that the Ambode government has been doing the good works it has been doing, in continuation of the trend that has been on ground since 1999. The 20 Mobile Intensive Care Units (MICU) ambulances and 26 transport ambulances that the government has bought to bring quality healthcare closer to Lagosians as well as extend the coverage of emergency services to the rural areas were all funded from the state resources. Education is not left out, with a good chunk of the budget allocated to it so the government could fund its a-meal-a-day project, Ibile tablets for secondary schools, among others. The government has also inaugurated mobile courts to summarily try traffic as well as environmental offenders and mete out immediate punishments to those convicted, in order to reduce the congestion in the regular courts.

If Ambode sustains the tempo, there is no doubt that the state would have witnessed even more unimaginable development by the time he would be seeking re-election in 2019. A pointer to the fact that more surprises are under way is the 4th Mainland Bridge that the state government has just signed the Memorandum of Understanding for its construction, through Public Private Partnership (PPP). The ambitious project, valued at a cost of N844billion will open up many parts of the state as well as decongest the ever-busy Ikorodu Road. For a government that has gone this far in one year, then not even the sky is its limit.

Permit me to end this write-up by canvassing, once again, for a special status for Lagos. Although the state has long seized to be the federal capital, its role as the industrial hub has not diminished. This is why more and more people troop into the state daily in search of the proverbial greener pastures. The state deserves special federal attention.

June 5, 2016
The President in their Labyrinth

In his dying moments, trapped and ensnared in a maze of intrigues and subterfuges he has woven round himself and his people, Simon Bolivar, the great Latin American revolutionary hero aka the liberator, was known to have exclaimed: “How am I ever going to get out of this labyrinth?”. So close to his chest did the liberator play his cards that nobody could predict his next move or military gamble. One of his aides was known to have quipped: “only my master knows what my master is thinking about.”

In a brilliant fictional recreation titled The General in his Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the late Colombian master of magical realism, has done gripping justice to the last days of Simon Bolivar. What is important is to note that there are labyrinths and there are labyrinths. For the trapped it is mandatory to find a way out of them. But while some labyrinths are entirely self-made or self-spun, a case of the trapper being entrapped by his own wiles and subterfuges or being finally manipulated by his own manipulations, some labyrinths are woven by a constellation of political forces in their economic, spiritual and structural malevolence which leaves the entrapped floundering in hopeless and futile audacity.

General Mohammadu Buhari is trapped in their labyrinth. It is a severe, mortal maze which is not entirely of his own making, but one to which his political failings have contributed significantly. This is how the Nigerian presidency must appear to clinical and dispassionate onlookers at the moment. It is obviously easier to find your way out of a labyrinth of your own making, but certainly not out of a maze unfurled by others. To start with, the initiative is not yours. You are merely reacting to forces that may be one or two steps ahead. The Buhari presidency has already lost one or two of these epic battles of will and wits. But how did we get to this sorry pass in an atmosphere of revolutionary clamour for change?

It is obvious that the nation is going through a very difficult phase and nothing is guaranteed, not even deep, enduring institutional change. As the first anniversary of the Buhari administration stole upon the country last week, it was obvious that all was not well. There was an atmosphere of dolorous dismay and quiet desperation. Even the much awaited presidential speech, if it was not exactly a damp squib, did not do much to galvanize the nation into greater resolve or mend its broken spirit.

As the harsh and hostile economic realities finally dissolve and evaporate the remnants of the old Nigerian middle class and its lower substratum, there is much bitterness and anger in the land while the old lower classes welcome back their absconding siblings with open smiling arms. The child who says his father did not take his chance will soon find out that there are no chances left to be taken but an illusionist fantasia in the cannibal casino.

But in our misdirected anger and the orchestrated vendetta against the Buhari administration, it is important to keep our eyes focused on the ball. There are two articles of faith on which this column still stands. First is that regime change for the nation was mandatory in the context of the kleptomaniac flailing and floundering of the Jonathan administration. Second is that owing to the structural contingency imposed on the nation, there was no one else to turn to in the circumstances we found ourselves except the retired general from Daura.

Anybody who believes otherwise no matter the highfalutin rhetoric is a purveyor of ethnic, religious and economic irrationality and an enemy of political rationality and the immanent logic that undergirds the development of human society. But this being a democratic set up, everybody is entitled to his opinion. The only thing is that you cannot win back what you lost in the arena of democratic contention by a resort to violent demonstration and the minatory blackmail of other groups.

Nigerians may bemoan the electoral fate which has foisted a seventy four year old retired general who may well be past his prime and who ruled last about thirty years earlier on them, but this is a question for the Nigerian selectorate. The selectorate select and the electorate elect willy-nilly. Thrice in his younger and more vibrant prime, Buhari offered himself for national services and thrice the Nigerian selectorate checkmated him. It was only when they had their back to the wall and revolutionary anarchy beckoned that they relented just like they did with him thirty three years earlier. But on both occasions, they made sure they put the politically challenged general in their labyrinth. It is not a long leash.

What Nigerians should bemoan is the contradiction between structural contingency and human agency which has made it possible for a few individuals to determine the political destiny of the nation. Oligopolistic politics is the politics of oligarchies and not meant for average folks who are nothing but spectators at a play of giants. In the process of misruling and misdirecting the nation, the political oligarchs have acquired enormous economic clout, and they are not going to let go easily.

Such has been the epic structural gridlock that by the time the political divinations and anti-democractic diviners come up with their short list, the best and the brightest, the most qualified to rule Nigeria in the age of rampaging globalization and knowledge explosion, would have been casually eliminated. And those who are left, haunted by the trauma of ancestral memory or the pathology of personal suffering can only rule with a persecution complex so bitter and damaging that it must affect their judgement.

The structural constraints and contingency which put a president in an iron labyrinth can also be seen in the existing dominant party formations in the country. These political agglomerations are not parties in the real organic sense of the word but special project platforms in power formation. But they often work. This is the reality since the advent of the military. Thus in the Second Republic the NPN was formed as a broad national coalition to ease off the military from power.

Once the NPN briskly unraveled, its military patrons stepped in to prevent a bloody challenge to the dominant power formation in all its dire consequences. The clairvoyant Augustus Meredith Adisa Akinloye could not have put it better when he noted that there were only two parties in the country: the military and their civilian subalterns. General Babangida’s Transition Parties, SDP and NRC, brilliantly dismissed as government parastatals by Chief Anthony Enahoro, perished with the transition programme after acquiescing in the annulment of the best presidential election ever held in the nation.

In the case of General Abacha’s transition, the parties famously described as the five fingers from a leprous hand did not even make any pretence to neutrality and independence. They existed at the mercy of the prickly despot and were there merely to facilitate his metamorphosis into civilian dictator. They died with the despot and when General Abdulsalaam Abubakar tried to resuscitate them in his maiden broadcast to the nation, he was swiftly countermanded by those who put him there and he changed tack accordingly.

Consequently, the PDP was conceived like its old forebear the NPN: a broad coalition of Nigerian political heavyweights that could guarantee post-military stability and peace even at the expense genuine democracy and development. For some time, the PDP stayed the course, relentlessly chopping off the head of their party chairmen until they lost concentration and forgot why they were there. In a self-deluding tip at political equity they brought a power neophyte who brought the house crashing on everybody.

Regime change became inevitable. In the past, it was through the mechanism of military intervention. But since military rule was no longer feasible, a coalition of contraries had to be cobbled together to ease the PDP out of power. Unlike the PDP which is an organic formation of the ruling class, the APC is an antagonistic platform of mutually exclusive political tendencies brought together for the purpose of regime change. Once that purpose is achieved, there is no unifying vision or bonding experience to fall back upon. If care is not taken, the party’s tenure in federal power may be much shorter than imagined. Perhaps that is the whole idea, anyway.

General Buhari may be finding out to his peril that unlike military rule in which command and authority are clearly delineated, civilian rule is a different kettle of fish. Khaki no be Guinea brocade or Atiku fabric for that matter. In the military, you know where the enemy is or where he is likely to come from. But in the cloak and dagger world of real political war, the enemy is in bed and already embedded. Having failed to stamp his authority on the centrifugal forces in his party early enough and having lost the senate to contrary forces, the president has found himself in the labyrinth of intimate adversaries.

Last week, the Turaki of Adamawa, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, opened another front for the president by lending his considerable weight to the clamour for an urgent restructuring of the country. It is easy and tempting to dismiss these increasingly strident calls as mere red-herring or opportunistic political gaming. But they find resonance in an increasing number of Nigerians who believe that this is the only solution to the political shenanigans which have hobbled Nigeria’s development and stifled the diverse energies and creative spirit of its diverse people.

President Buhari appears to be unmoved and unimpressed by the cheek of it all. While he should be commended for heroically battling the scourge of corruption and for restoring the sanity of the Nigerian state, the reality on ground shows that the unease in at least two significant sections of the country coupled with the international and local conspiracy to defang his economic nationalism are beginning to chip away at his statist and commandist escutcheon. If these loud rumblings were to find traction in a Yoruba middle class already embittered by the prospects of economic vaporization, it may put the entire change project and its south West phalanx in acute political jeopardy indeed.

Going forward, the president needs to go back to the drawing board. The creeping militarization of the polity draws the army into needless and unwise civil commotions. This is the time for the president to commence a rigorous study of this difficult country in its political minutiae and economic, religious and ethnic particularities and peculiarities. For starters, rather than throw the last conference into the archives as he vowed to do, the president should gather a group of wise citizens who will study all the conferences and advise him on the way forward accordingly.

June 5, 2016
Genocide: Never again in Rwanda

The first time I watched Sometimes in April, the historical drama of the television film on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda was some years ago when the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor E.A. Adeboye reportedly urged members of the Church to watch the film.

He recommended the film against the background of fanning the embers of ethnic hatred in Nigeria by some groups to let them know what happened in another country where ethnic disagreement resulted in genocide.

I remember watching with trepidation, some scenes of the film that depicted the height of man’s inhumanity to man which left almost 800,000 Tutsis and their Hutu sympatisers dead.

Penultimate Friday night, I watched the film again in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda where I am attended a seminar. Earlier in the day, I had joined my colleagues on the trip to visit the Genocide Memorial Museum where the the story of the genocide is documented in various forms for remembrance and learning.

The shocking reality of what I and others saw and heard during the visit to the museum made me to watch Sometimes in April again to fully grasp and meditate on the import of what really happened in the battle for supremacy between the Hutus and Tutsis and what future awaits Rwanda.

As I watched the film again, I was gripped with the fear that has been expressed by many observers that despite the tremendous progress Rwanda has made twenty-two years after the genocide and the peace that now reigns, what obtains in the country is a delicate balance of forces.

For some moments, I had a sneaky feeling of soldiers and militias storming the Kigali Serena Hotel I was staying as depicted in the film. I had to pull the curtains and look out to be sure my fear was unfounded, at least for now.

Good enough, deliberate efforts are being made by the government and the people of Rwanda to ensure that the kind of senseless killings that happened in 1994 never happens again.

Yearly, the commemoration of the genocide is marked with the Kwibuka ceremony which is about remembering what happened, uniting and renewing in fight against the genocide ideology.

A top Rwandan media executive spoke about two constitutional provisions which has helped in stabilising the ethnic and political situation in the country. They include power sharing formula that ensures that the ruling political party does not have more than 50 percent of political offices and consensus on major government policies for the good of all.

While President Paul kigame can be faulted for his kind of ‘democracy’ sustained by heavy security presence all over the country, he and his countrymen and women deserves commendation for the massive development the country has witnessed since the genocide.

Going across the the country, it is hard to believe that it once experienced any war. The major roads are well paved and clean without any noticeable potholes. The city centre in Kigali is a beauty to behold with various structures.

Throughout my stay in Rwanda there was no power outage and no generator was in sight.

The Rwandans have done well for themselves and should resist any temptation of a repeat of the 1994 incident. In the spirit of unity and ensuring continuous development that is making the small country a model for others in the continent, the interest of all groups should be accommodated as much as possible by the ruling government.

June 5, 2016