The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Can PMB, no, APC afford another political faux pas?

    If the president would not move to stop this self interest-induced camaraderie with the PDP by its National Assembly leaders, then APC needs be told that Nigerians are watching, and waiting, as the party makes fools of them, knowing pretty well that the next election is even less than four years away. 

    Let me rephrase that question: Can President Muhammadu Buhari survive a second damning political miscalculation? If he does, will he, and his party, succeed in positively affecting the country as they promised us all during the campaigns, or as the PDP never ceases to chorus, is all that change mantra nothing but a chimera? In an event that, in retrospect, can now be described as sleeping on duty, President Buhari surprisingly showed not even the faintest interest in who and who became the Senate President or the House Speaker when, given a clear understanding of the critical role of the National Assembly, he should have shown much more than a passing interest in who emerges in those positions. The result was that  a clever Senator Bukola Saraki did not only end up defying both the party and the president,  shredded the party’s  well choreographed  preferences but also traded off a key position that rightly belonged to the majority party, his. For me, it remains a puzzle till this day whether the president simply did not understand the role of the National Assembly, as in the senate constitutionally having to confirm some of his key appointments and such other things apart from its primary function of law making, where his government would, willy nilly, have to depend on its majority in the two chambers.

    Nigerians are already getting to see the effect of that tactical error especially as it is beginning to play out in the Senate.  The consequences of a second faux pas would, of course, be far worse and the National Assembly is already furiously working towards that, relying on a nebulous claim of separation of powers, as if in our own Electoral Laws, it is not the party that was voted for. I refer here to the ongoing constitution of the membership of committees in both chambers where the leadership is dramatically orchestrating a parity between both the APC and the PDP simply because of the highly flawed manner in which they got to their high offices. Indeed, so  unreflective is the National Assembly now that while the president, well aware of our parlous financial circumstances, is doing everything to cut down the cost of governance, restructuring ministries and planning to have ministers without portfolio thereby, among other things, cutting  down on the number of ministerial aides, its (the  National Assembly) leadership,  is creatively, and unilaterally, increasing the number of committees just so their members could dig deeper into the little money the country now has consequent upon the down turn in the price of oil. Were they not being driven by their own survival instincts, since it is now payback time, they should have been mindful of what obtains in the U.S from where we copied the presidential system.  Even with all the hue and cry over the president’s single-minded determination to restructure the bureaucracy, the U.S, a much more endowed country than ours, has only about 15 departments, namely: State, Treasury, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labour, Defence, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veteran Affairs and Homeland Security. In place of  our  House of Representatives’ 96 committees, the U.S  Congress,  equivalent to the  House of Representatives,  has only 24 committees  made up of  the following: Agriculture, Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget,  Education and the workforce, Energy and Commerce, Ethics, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, House Administration, Judiciary, Natural Resources, Oversight and Government Reforms, Rules, Science, Space and Technology, Small Business., Transportation and Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs, Ways and Means, Intelligence and some select or special committees like the one on Benghazi. The senate has an almost identical committee structure. In constituting  these committees, it is customary for members of the majority party to hold the chairmanship but even if, for purposes of  attempting  to further unify our country the leadership wants to concede  chairmanship to PDP, it should only have  been tokenistic but because  they got to office ugly, the leadership  thinks  nothing  of  rubbishing the Nigerian masses who voted  massively against  the  same PDP in the last elections. If neither the president nor the party would move to pro-actively stop these politicians keen only on their own survival, with some of them serving on two or three committees, we would again have lost a golden opportunity to put a stop to the unspeakable profligacy going on at the National Assembly. It would be remembered that somebody who should know once alleged that the National Assembly consumes 25 percent of the national budget though they tepidly denied it. But that, in fact,  is only a part of the problem as the Speaker has already constituted the House committees virtually at par between APC and the PDP  while , from the grave vine, we  learnt  the senate president would be  toeing  the same line. This will be very disrespectful of the Nigerian electorate who made a clear choice in that election and is keen on seeing some concrete change.

    It never ceases to amuse me when our politicians behave as if they own us all – something akin to a master class – believing their personal interests supercede the peoples’. It will be a huge surprise if the National Assembly leadership does not appreciate how very much President Buhari would need all the support he can get from his party members in driving his and the party’s agenda. One would have thought it a no brainer to appreciate that the president would need their support, working, especially through the committees, to translate his campaign promises and programmes into action. That is the window of opportunity they have again thrown away. Or how on earth did Speaker  Dogara get his 48/46/2  ratio  in the distribution of chairmanship positions which he allotted to APC, PDP and the other  two  opposition parties, in that order? How does that reflect the parties’ numerical strength in the House?  I ask again, is this what is rumoured the senate president is about repeating in the red chamber? Are they such strangers to the practice in the U.S where no minority party member chairs a committee? This is what happens when overarching ambition drives politicians to disrespect their party and become unequally yoked with members of the opposition party whose only prayer is to defeat, and replace, the ruling party at the next election.  Can’t they see? Are these the president’s party members who will help him kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria? Indeed, I have a sneaky feeling that, by allegedly gifting the PDP the chairmanship of critical committees as Finance, Petroleum, upstream and downstream, and Gas, Aviation, Environment, Foreign Affairs, Science and Technology and Works, somebody is already strategising for that party’s presidential candidacy come 2019. Or has  the PDP not announced already that it has zoned it to the north, deliberately remaining silent as to what exact zone in the north, so they could play some politicians, one  against  the other?  Can’t the non complicit APC members, apparently presently keener about serving on juicy committees, see the larger picture and put on their thinking caps? Can’t they see that there are some of their colleagues who care not a hoot as to whether or not APC survives beyond 2019 as long as they achieve their own political ambitions? It is left to President Buhari and the APC leadership to know exactly what they have coming or they would have kissed victory at the 2019 elections bye long before they know it. As I have repeated severally above, what concerns the National Assembly leadership, as well as many of its members, is not the well-being of the country. Rather it is calculations towards 2019 and whatever else, in addition to their humongous salaries and allowances, they can make even when Nigerians are hoping, apparently against hope, that they will appreciate our current circumstances and reduce their totally disproportionate earnings. If the president would not move to stop this self interest-induced camaraderie with the PDP by its National Assembly leaders, then APC needs be told that Nigerians are watching, and waiting, as the party makes fools of them, knowing pretty well that the next election is even less than four years away.

  • New frontiers of the National Question

    Almost everybody is on edge these days. There is a foul and murky distemper abroad.  There is so much bile and bitterness around. This new National Charter of mutual loathing is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals, groups, ethnic categories, youths, old people, men, women, rulers, the ruled, pastors and pastoralists are all implicated in the gridlock of national disaffection. Welcome to the new frontiers of the National Question.

    In a multi-national country, whenever there is a rise in ethnic consciousness, you can be sure that it is accompanied by a corresponding recession of national consciousness. There is so much ethnic profiling, group-baiting and tribal scapegoating in this country that one may tend to agree with the American missionary who glumly concluded after a recent tour of Nigeria that God is probably  putting the worst set of people on earth together in a nation-space to conduct an experiment.

    Boxed together in the same territorial space by alien conquerors who consider them an inferior race, it is hard for the diverse people of a colonial contraption like Nigeria not to feel like enemy combatants forced to observe a tense truce. The National Question remains as long as it is impossible for the disparate entities to congeal into organic nationhood, and as long as the political elite are incapable of coming up with certain core values which drive the destiny of the nation.

    This is why MASSOB is massing and sobbing, and why hitherto peaceful Fulani cattle people have suddenly transformed into herdsmen of the new apocalypse armed with AK Kalashnikov. While this is going on, normally circumspect and reflective Yoruba notables are threatening fire and brimstone. In response some northern notables have resorted to ethnic baiting and an irresponsible trivialization of the issues at stake. Meanwhile as the nation’s economic misery is compounded by a looted treasury and falling oil price, there is a vicious and deliberate sabotage of the economy by some groups as a weapon for settling old and recent political scores.

    It is tempting and comforting to dismiss many of these disaffected nationals as belonging to a lunatic fringe of extremists who have lost the battle with reality and who must exhibit certain anti-social pathologies. The problem with this rosy view is that the lunatic fringes are often an uncomfortable manifestation of the deepest political unconscious of a group, a race, a nation or an ethnic formation, that is what everybody thinks but which they are afraid to say,  and what everybody wants to do but which are better left to affronted  voices from the margins who are not afraid of the consequences of their actions and pronouncements.

    In a relentless, mercilessly documented landmark publication titled, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen has shown how Hitler’s hate-suffused fantasies could not have been the private delusions of a solitary madman or the antics of a lunatic fringe but the manifestation of a group-think which found deep resonance in the political unconscious of the people and made them compliant accomplices and collaborators in Hitler’s genocidal heist.

    Goldhagen has been slammed by some major authorities for first constructing a theory and then looking for compliant evidence to fit into this. But this does not detract from the major thrust of his construct. In most societies, the genocidal impulses of the lower masses are usually held in check by elite social engineering which tries to abolish or neutralize societal divisions based on race, creed and region and religion and through philosophical constructs which sets premium by racial harmony and the fundamental oneness of all humanity .

    It is when the elite of a nation give vent to the baser impulses that darkness looms and an apocalyptic meltdown inevitable. This is the origin of genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, of pogrom in Nigeria and of the madness that hobbled Europe in two memorable world wars.

    There are sections of the Nigerian political elite bent on toying with the apocalypse. Just how we came to this sorry pass after a landmark election that was supposed to usher in a new beginning for the nation must remain a mystery to the uninitiated. But they are merely the return of the repressed.  As this column has repeatedly warned, elections do not resolve national questions. They often bring them into bold and bitter relief or exacerbate them as the case may be. Elections can never unite or unify a political elite bitterly polarized along regional, religious and ethnic fault lines.

    Grappling heroically with corruption in all its systemic manifestations, President Mohammadu Buhari can be forgiven for being peeved and miffed by these centrifugal forces and the attempts to distract or wrong foot him. For now, he has decided to ignore them, or to treat them with the stoic contempt and disdain he thinks they deserve.

    But this is not going to be enough, for they stand a chance of dead-ending his economic reforms. The economic reconstruction of a collapsed nation cannot succeed without its political reconfiguration, for in the final analysis it is the political foundation that determines the economic configuration of a nation after allowances have been made for the modulating pressures of economics on politics.

    Given the economic ravages of the Jonathan years and the total devastation of the Nigerian treasury, the retired general from Daura can be forgiven for behaving like a brutal and candid physician who must first open a festering and purulent wound before cauterizing it. This is the correct surgical procedure even though it may not be sweet music to the ears of those responsible for the nation’s economic adversity in the first instance.  And those lot have been singing like canaries.

    But General Buhari must be reminded that the economic carnage of the Jonathan dispensation cannot be divorced from the unjust politics that threw him up in the first instance and the structural delinquency of the nation’s political architecture. Gazing exclusively at the nation’s hideous economic wounds is a good sign of probity but it can also skew Buhari’s  adamantine disposition in the direction of an unhelpful inquisition which may in turn induce dangerous  countervailing group reaction.

    This is where the president needs the political dexterity and the cosmopolitan gamesmanship much more than he has been able to muster so far. Rather than being constantly nagged about his hideous injuries, a badly wounded patient also needs tropes of hope and narratives of possible redemption. The outstanding surgeon must not only cure the wounds he must also procure hope for the badly mauled. President Buhari’s speechwriters have their work cut out for them. They must infuse the narrative with tropes of hope and the conceits of the heroic stirring of Nigeria’s manifest destiny which threw up the president in the first instance.

    Just as all great and exceptional leaders do in moments of grave national emergency, it is time for President Buhari to engage the nation in critical and introspective soul-searching.  There is too much hatred and bitterness in the land. In the event, it may be discovered that the curious resurgence of MASSOB and its delinquent antics is nothing but a political ploy with an economic foundation which resonates with the deep political unconscious of the Igbo elite or its dominant faction, whether they care to admit this or not. Ditto for the resurgent restiveness in the Niger Delta.

    Yet no one ever knows just when dire economic straits could factor itself into an unstable political equation tipping the balance in the direction of anarchy and chaos. Who would have thought that the phenomenon of hostage taking and economic kidnapping which was thought a southern preserve would achieve a cultural crossover with some urchins abducting an outstanding patriot like Chief Olu Falae on his farm? If that economic misadventure had gone awry, we would have been grappling with a major political disaster.

    But in the prevalent climate of cultural hysteria, notable Yoruba elders also succumbed to ruinous politics. First, by unilaterally ordering the expulsion of Fulani herdsmen from Yoruba space within a stipulated timeframe, they gave an ultimatum which could not be enforced given the subsisting balance of power in the old region. Second, their knee-jerk reaction gave room to the prevalent suspicion that the kidnapping outrage is merely a pretext for a more fundamental animus: the loss of relevance and political hegemony.

    This is not how Awolowo would have handled the situation. The great sage and outstanding political thinker would have closet himself in his study and come up with an original prognosis of the National Question in all its new dimensions. If they want Buhari to take them seriously as altruistic statesmen, they must not give the impression that they are still bickering and smarting over the outcome of the last election when they backed the wrong horse for the wrong and most bizarre reason.

    The election has come and gone and Buhari will be there for the next three and half years. It is time for Yoruba notables to engage him in the quest for the redemption of the nation for which they have sacrificed a lot. And they cannot give precondition for this. Insisting that Buhari must implement the recommendations of the Jonathan Confab is a whimsical nullity.

    Buhari did not order the conference and it was not part of his campaigning manifesto. In any case, despite the reality of the virtual economic collapse of the nation, if the proliferation of unviable states as recommended by the Confab is their main preoccupation at this point in time, then it is time to summon the appropriate protocols.

    But if the reaction of the grand old men of Yoruba politics shows how far ruinous politics can damage the collective health and wellbeing of a nation, the response of certain northern notables reveals the devastating damage to the Nigerian commonwealth and the wide divergence of cultural nous. They range from peevishness to sheer political perversity.  While our friend, Shehu Sani, turned the whole thing into a Suya joint yabis, Rabiu Kwankwaso broke a cultural taboo by openly insulting and slandering elders from a different ethnic formation.

    The issue of cattle grazing factors deeply into the Indigene-Settler segment of the National Question. Even after we have established autonomous grazing zones as an interim measure, it should be clear that this deeply cultural habit cannot be sustained in a modern nation-state. But it is a habit that is part of the cultural identity that has defined and sustained our nomadic compatriots for generations and epochs and hence cannot be summarily abolished without far-reaching ameliorative and radical measures being put in place. Perhaps it will take the advent of a modernizing Ataturk.

    Meanwhile, we must get on with the colonial conjoining and imperialist mish-mash which has brought   hardy Sahelian lifestyle to bear on tropical latitude. If we found the resolve and the creative resources to bear on the National Question, the sheer diversity of Nigeria may yet turn out a source of strength and a unique African brand. If not, the unresolved National Question will eventually resolve itself in its own unique manner. Let President Buhari find the time to be in a hurry.

  • Okon requires three referees

    The craze for titles in the land finally landed on Okon’s doorstep with the heavy and sinister import of an opening gambit leading to a historic scam. On Friday just before dawn, the entire compound erupted in loud singing and wild jubilation. As a bleary-eyed snooper jumped out of bed, he was confronted by a historic scene straight out of comic Bedlam.

    Leading the riotous retinue was Okon wearing an outsize academic gown that had seen better days with American national colours wildly emblazoned. He was accompanied by the usual suspects, an assorted menagerie of out of work vagrants, ruffians, ragamuffins, casual riffraff from the Nigerian underground and the inevitable Baba Lekki dressed like a lawyer in terminal turpitude.

    “Okon, what is the meaning of all this, and why are you disturbing everybody?” snooper demanded.

    “Ha oga, I no dey disturb everybody, na everybody dey disturb Okon. I wan quickly reach dem American university for Arepo becos dem don give Okon dem doctor title”, the crazy boy crowed.

    “I see. Doctor of what?” snooper demanded with cynical incredulity.

    “Doctor of Cutlery and Kitchen Services, abi baba wetin dem yeye Yoruba people call dis dem nonsense again?”  Okon sneered.

    “Doctor of Culinary Science, DCS”, the delinquent contrarian responded with drunken gusto.

    “Ha oga dem ask me which title I fit pay for, dem say dem get am for Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Ayatolani, Professor and dem doctor. I ask make dem give man Pope gbuaaa, but dem say dem get room for only three Pope and dem Ibo people don corner dat one. Naim I come ask for doctor”, the mad boy giggled.

    Two days after this, Okon appeared swashing and swaggering in drunken self-importance. He eyed his boss with expansive contempt.

    “Oga, na money dey find money. Dem title don dey pay. He get dem new newspaper dem dey call Afinity and dem don appoint Okon as dem columnist. But dem say make I bring three referees and I come ask dem wether na football or boxing referee, but dem no answer. I go get dem Onigbinde man and dem Ibo referee for Ajegunle, and I go beat dem editor silly, him no go fit read again”, the crazy boy sniggered.

    So, what will you be writing for dem?”.

    “Oga dem say na me go dey write dem satire. So I say no problem, he get one Yoruba ogbologbo vulcaniser for Idi Oro and dem dey call dat one Sir Tyre, na him go dey write tire and na me go dey collect money. No wahala “, Okon drawled in self-admiration.

    It was at this point that the half-crazed dustbin woman charged breathlessly into the room. “Oga, oga, dem Calabar boy don put him leg for cow shit again oo. Dem police people dey look for am. Dem say him thief  acada gown. Dem leader say him be Inspector General”, the woman screamed.

    “Ha oga dat one be say title don jam title” , Okon rumbled as he scaled the fence with athletic prowess.

  • Aliko Dangote at Harvard: the question I wanted to, but did not ask him (1)

    Aliko Dangote at Harvard: the question I wanted to, but did not ask him (1)

    It is perhaps appropriate that I go straight to the question that I very much wanted to put to Aliko Dangote but decided not to when he gave a talk at Harvard University on Thursday, October 29, 2015. This is the question: Why is it that our business moguls have never given the slightest indication that they realize that the solution to the perpetual crisis of fitful and unreliable generation and distribution of power in our country depends as much on them as a group as it does on the state, the government? Having begun this piece with that unasked question, perhaps the next thing for me to do here is to admit that I did not put the question to Dangote because I realized that it would have been a bit unfair to put the question to him in that particular context, quite apart from the significant fact that the audience at the talk would have so completely misunderstood the intent of the question that they would almost certainly have read it as a deliberate provocation to Dangote, an attempt to detract from the extraordinarily buoyant and euphoric mood of the reception of his talk. What is the background, the context for these observations and musings?

    Sponsored jointly by Harvard’s Center for African Studies and the Harvard Business School, Dangote’s talk was the first in the so-called Hakeem and Myma Belo-Osagie Distinguished African Business and Entrepreneurial Lecture. In my ten years at Harvard, this was quite easily the most well attended lecture given by an African at the University. In saying this, I have not forgotten that other notable Nigerians like Olusegun Obasanjo, the Sultan of Sokoto, the late Professor Ade Adefuye (former Nigerian Ambassador to the U.S.) and Babangida Aliyu, former Governor of Niger State have all given lectures at the University since I have been teaching there. Unquestionably, part of Dangote’s appeal is due to his fame as not only Africa’s wealthiest man, but also one of the world’s richest and most influential transnational business moguls. Ours is one of the poorest regions of the world and so far, with perhaps the single exception of the commercialization of religion, the efforts of our wealthiest entrepreneurs to effectively run global business operations have failed woefully. Reported by Forbes to be worth about 80 billion dollars, Aliko Dangote would stand out in any region, any nation on the planet; in Africa in particular and the global south in general, he is like a colossus. Thus, Dangote’s fabled achievements in entrepreneurship assume legendary proportions in the African context and this was reflected in the turnout for and reception of his lecture at Harvard on Thursday, November 29, 2015.

    Beyond these important but external factors, Dangote’s talk was also the very essence of relaxed, poised and, on occasion, witty delivery. Human self-identification with achievement and celebrity, especially in wealth, is a phenomenon known all over the world and at all times in recorded history. The good folks at Harvard, one of the world’s most prestigious universities, are no exception to this norm. Thus, those who showed up for Dangote’s talk – the great majority of them either Africans or of African descent – dutifully laughed at every joke that he gave and indulgently cheered every turn of phrase through which he expressed a solidarity, an African oneness with the audience, despite the aura surrounding his person and worth. Above all else, the man was absolutely in command of the occasion; he not only gave his talk fluently without any prepared notes, but he did so with a mixture of candor and a complete absence of pomposity. He has probably given versions of the same talk in many other contexts; all the same, the combination of straight-from-the-heart anecdotes concerning the origins of his wealth and the highlights of his business activities greatly endeared him to the audience. Moreover, he was very forthright about the challenges of doing business across virtually all the regions of our continent, without obscuring the really daunting obstacles or blowing them out of proportion as many ‘roving’ entrepreneurs on our continent tend to do. To crown it all, during the “Q & A”, Dangote was very attentive, very solicitous towards his questioners, especially the young students who, it seemed, came to the talk determined to milk every ounce of intimation from the great man on how to strike it rich, how to become billionaires themselves some day.

    In that context that I have taken such great care to describe as fully and as positively as possible, it would have been thought completely out of place and perhaps also out of order for me to have put that question to Dangote: why is it that our business moguls fail to recognize that the solution to our perpetual, crippling problems with the generation and distribution of power lies as much with them as with the government? No one in the audience would have missed the implication that behind this question lies a suggestion that our business moguls are as much to blame as “government” for our problems with power generation and distribution. No matter how much I tried to hide or blunt this implication behind the question, the audience and perhaps Dangote himself would have felt that I was putting him in particular on the spot; I was making him personally answerable for a problem that everyone thinks lies solely with the “government”. Also, it would have been thought that even if my premise was right, this was not the right place, the right occasion to bring up such a matter for discussion.

    At this point in this piece that I am writing more than a week after Dangote’s lecture, I must now openly admit that this idea was and is indeed on my mind: the most powerful and influential among our business elites are as responsible as “government” for the fact that almost 200 years after electrification became indispensable for industrialization and the modernity that came in its wake, in Nigeria and most of our continent we are still literally and symbolically in the “dark” when it comes to dependable, efficient and life-changing and life-enhancing electrification. In making this assertion, I wish to state that if it seems like an accusation, a bitter indictment of our business elites, my aim is to generate productive discussion, not to try and condemn the “accused” thoughtlessly. As a matter of fact, to the extent that virtually everyone thinks that the ‘problem’ lies solely with “government”, to that extent have discussions on the failure of effective, regular and dependable electrification in our part of the world been extremely tortured and unproductive. If this is the case, the very last thing I wish to do in this piece is to shift the venue of frustrated discourses on incomplete, imperfect and frustrating electrification away from “government” to “business”.

    In his lecture at Harvard, Dangote as a matter of fact spoke repeatedly on the problems that he and the Dangote Group have had with power supply. He shared with the audience the information that the only way he solved the problem, indeed the only way he could have solved the problem, was to opt out completely from any local, regional or national power grid, not only in Nigeria but almost in every country in Africa in which he operates as an industrialist, a manufacturer. He was particularly emphatic on the fact that he and his Group strive everywhere they operate in Africa to be completely self-sufficient in power generation and supply, at every level of all the processes involved. If this is the case, the reader might well ask how justifiable it is for me to suggest that a business mogul that has so assiduously and successfully applied himself to sufficient and regular power generation and supply for his operations could be part of a business elite that is as responsible as “government” for our national and continental crises of incomplete and unreliable electrification at the dawn of the 21st century.

    I do have a response to this perfectly logical and understandable query for my claim that without exception, all our business elites are as responsible as “government” for our problems with power generation and supply. The Dangote Group may be the largest African-owned industrial empire in our continent at the present time, but its apparent self-sufficiency in power generation and supply is neither unique nor atypical. As a matter of fact, it is so typical, so normative that it stands as a mark of the peculiar kind of “industrialization” that has come to replace the nascent, vestigial “industrialization” that was first introduced by the colonizers into our country and the rest of the continent. It is this mode of “industrialization” which, at least so far, subsists on incomplete and vastly imperfect electrification that I wish to explore in this two-part series.

    I locate this peculiar mode of “industrialization” in post-independent, postcolonial Africa against the background of the universal dream of all mankind at the dawn of electrification as a linchpin of modern industry: power supply everywhere and for everyone, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year round, year after year. This is no longer a dream in those parts of the world in which electrification, having been extended to all areas of life, is no longer restricted to “industry” as a privileged site. In next week’s conclusion of the series, I hope to show an iron-clad collusion between our political and business elites in the separation of “industry” from “life” as a primary cause and effect of our perennial problems with power generation and supply.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Too little, too much – this unemployment benefit…

    The competition between the three regions is still too strong and bristly fought to enable us embark on that kind of venture. It will simply become another space for the dishonest execution of that war

    I hear that the upper house of the national assembly has done it again, put itself in the news. This time, I hear it has, as a body, disagreed to agree to put on hold the decision to pay unemployment benefits to unemployed youths. You know them don’t you? Oh I don’t mean benefits – anyone can recognise those. They are those things that when you put them in your pocket, you feel so light you’re practically floating on top of the planet. So no, I’m not asking if you know what benefits are. I’m asking if you know what unemployed youths are. They are those poor tykes who scour the streets in worn shoes hoping that if they kick up enough stones and pebbles, those things would whisper something to them about where jobs are hiding. I wish I could tell you whether it works or not.

    Well, bless this new government for having its heart in the right place. It actually upped and decided that it wanted to pay out a certain sum of money called ‘unemployment benefits’ to those young things. Perhaps, the money is to tide them over, or give them some strength while they muster up more resolve to kick up more pebbles, I don’t know. What I do know is that that effort is a little too little, too much because it is fraught with a great deal of unclear particles. Let’s see why now.

    To start with, the sum of five thousand can buy what now in the market? Hardly a thing. You try setting it aside as your transportation fare for the month in any city in Nigeria, and you’ll soon find that while it may take you out, it may not take you back home. Try setting it aside for food and you’ll soon find that while it may fill your plate with some grains of carbohydrates (if you look hard enough with your magnifying glass that is), it will not lay in your plate a tiny slice off the flanks of a willing cow for protein. Worse, it won’t scoop an ice cream cone in your dessert spoon. So, I guess the slightly esteemed senators were not saying no to the sum of Five Thousand Naira. I think they were saying no to the sum of Five Thousand Naira multiplied into the endless places occupied by Nigeria’s youths. I think someone said that will go into trillions of Naira or so a month.

    There are other considerations. Just how many unemployed youths do we have in Nigeria? 10 million? 20 million? Someone said he was conservatively putting the figure at 30 million. Now, that is worrisome. If you have that number of youths without employment sitting at home or kicking up pebbles on the streets, I think the country should be shaking in its shoes. The situation is clearly a tinderbox sitting on a dynamite box sitting on a gunpowder box. Now, you have the situation.

    Obviously though, we are all not quite agreed on just what makes for an unemployed youth. If we measure by the demographic factor of age, are we saying all young ‘uns who are employable should be from the age of ten or eleven to thirty or thereabouts? You better believe that many youths who are employed right now are no older than the least in this bracket. I have reported here that a youth of no more than twelve to sixteen is the breadwinner of his family even as he works in the dignified field of begging. Many other young ‘uns of no more than six, seven or eight years are also breadwinners for their families in the equally dignified field of hawking. So, yes, we do have unemployed youths of many questionable designs.

    Are we to pick our qualification from the factor of education? Are we saying that our unemployed are only those who have graduated but have not been able to get jobs? Then we must decide on what we intend to mean by the word ‘graduate’. Many have ‘graduated’ from either primary or secondary or trade school and have no intention of going to any school but to get a job to help their families. Now, will they qualify? Who is to decide who gets left out?

    Now, what about those people who are not very happy with their lowly jobs because they are of the decidedly unshakeable faith that nature has joined hands with their country to rob them of life changing opportunities? Who is to prevent them from registering their noble behinds on the benches of the welfare office? Supposing they believe that that five thousand naira would make a difference in their lives, shall we prevent them?

    Nigeria has no data base for anything – not for the number of beggars in the country or the number it needs; not for the number of houses in the country or the number it needs; not even for the number of farms it has in the country or the number it needs; not for the types of food eaten in the country or the number it needs; not for the air it breaths … Need I go on? Heck, we can hardly get the correct statistics for the country’s population because it varies so wildly from lips to lips depending on who you are and what you need the statistics for. The figure has moved steadily in the past ten years from 120 million to 140 million to 160 million, translating to a growth rate of 20 million per two or three years. Serious, no? I have never known a country grow so fast.

    I am sure I have told you this joke before but, like I always say, I love repeating my jokes since no one laughs at them anyway but me and myself; so, I will tell you again. There was this visiting dignitary who had to endure a long speech from a representative of the colony he was visiting. The locals read out a long list of what they needed – roads to take their agricultural produce to the market, rail transportation for the locals, etc. The visitor was astounded. ‘Did you not just tell me last year that nothing grows on your land, so we could not raise your taxes?’ he asked. ‘Yes, we did, your honour’, they replied, ‘but you see, last year’s statistics was raised for a purpose, and today’s for a different purpose.’

    More importantly, Sir/Ma, it has become nigh impossible to trust any Nigerian with any statistics. Ask a south westerner to compile the names of all unemployed young ‘uns in the land and what do you get? A list full of south westerners dead, half-dead and barely living. Ask a northerner to compile those names, and what do you get? A list full of northerners dead, half-dead and barely living. And if you ask a south easterner to compile the names, what do you think you’ll get? All the names of the fish in the sea, that’s what. The competition between the three regions is still too strong and bristly fought to enable us embark on that kind of venture. It will simply become another space for the dishonest execution of that war.

    This time, I think I agree with the senators that the time is not yet ripe for this well-meaning gesture. Too many things still need to be put in place for it to happen. For one thing, Nigerians must first be schooled to be honest, and secondly, they need to learn to put the country first. In the mean time, the business climate of the country must be sanitised to enable the market absorb more of our darling young ‘uns.

  • Peace and me

    In a recent tweet on the Journalists for Christ Twitter handle (@journalistsFC), I asked if journalists were one of those Jesus Christ had in mind when he said in Matthew 5:9, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

    I am yet to get a response to my question from any of the followers of the handle, but I have a conviction that even though there were no journalists when the statement was made, journalists now have a major role to play in promoting peace in whatever they publish and broadcast on their various platforms.

    There is a report of how in the second republic in Nigeria, a federal radio station played a popular song Give Peace a Chance during a political crisis and the state radio played Get up, Stand Up, Stand up for your Right.

    Many lives were lost in the crisis, no thanks to radio stations that chose to fuel the crisis instead of helping to quell it.

    What can I do for peace as a journalist?

    As a journalist, I take the role of promoting peace seriously. My theory for justifying the need for journalists to be peacemakers is that the media needs peace to thrive.

    I usually remind journalists who indulge in fuelling any crisis situation that they should always remember that the media also has a lot to lose.

    In war or any other violent case, not only are journalists’ movements restricted like others, the media business is adversely affected.

    Many journalists who dare to report some of the crises have been killed.

    As a journalist, I will continue to do my best to promote peace in my publications and urge others to do the same.

    I wholeheartedly subscribe to the principle of peace journalism which states that journalists should make choices that increase the prospects of peace.

    The choices include how to frame stories and carefully choose words in the body and headlines of the reports without compromising the basic principles of good journalism.

    As an Editor, I will be more careful in deciding what story should be given prominence considering the overall interest of the society. I will seek to educate my readers on controversial issues to ensure that they have better understanding, especially when there is a deliberate attempt to mislead the people by interested groups.

    I will do my best to get all sides of any story and provide necessary context with a view to ensuring that the general public is better served.

    I will be more willing to take sides with the government of my country in a crisis situation like the kind we are having against Boko Haram terrorists. I will not allow my organisation to be used by terrorists to make false claims which sometimes gives the wrong impression that they are having an upper hand even when they are losing grounds.

    What are the limitations for me to work for peace?

    There is no major limitation for me to work for peace. The code of conduct for journalists in my country implores us to strive to enhance national unity and public good.

    There are, however, instances when journalists don’t have enough information or access to give a true account of a crisis situation. We have had to rely on information that cannot be verified and end up misinforming the public.

    Government officials and even the general public sometimes also make our work difficult by not being willing to speak up when they should. We are aware that there is information that the government cannot disclose, but journalists need to be taken into confidence to help them know how to go about reporting some issues.

    How can I overcome the limitations?

    I have a commitment to promoting peace in whatever way I can, and will do everything possible to overcome any limitation except it is beyond my control.

    Instead of rushing to write on any controversial issue, I will opt for seeking all necessary information to enable me have a truthful, balanced and fair report or informed commentary.

    How about us?

    We all have a duty to ensure peace and must work together.

    My remarks  at the Peace Forum organised by the Heavenly Culture World Peace Restoration of Light , International Peace Youth Group and International Women Peace Group in Lagos.

  • Newswatch: Twenty years after

    Newswatch: Twenty years after

    It all seems like yesterday. But it is a little over twenty years ago that Newswatch, Nigeria’s premier newsmagazine, hit the newsstand with aplomb and dazzling self-assurance. From the premier box of history, it has been a tangled web of turbulent events packed into the two memorable decades. That the magazine itself remains on the newsstand is a tribute to the resilience and dogged professionalism of its surviving founding fathers.

    To say, then, that a lot of water has passed under the Oregun Bridge is a wry understatement. If journalism is indeed history in a hurry, the story of Newswatch also reads like the story of the country it has chosen to report and analyse: a gifted child buffeted by unremitting adversity but somehow managing to survive.

    The magazine has had to contend with the assassination and martyrdom of its founding chief executive, the charismatic and visionary Oladele Sunmonu  Giwa. Many members of the original team have left, some to greener economic pastures, others to become successful publishers in their own right, a few to take up political appointments, one or two to global journalistic distinctions, and a handful to lick their wounds in the punitive socio-economic abattoir of contemporary Nigeria. The magazine itself has survived proscription, declining credibility and relevance, and the clogged arteries of professional vitality. Yet pound for pound, it remains arguably the best produced magazine in Nigeria.

    For yours sincerely, it is also a milestone of sorts. As the first contributing columnist of Newswatch, or to be precise, as the self-described fifth columnist after Dele, Ray, Dan and Yakubu, one has continuously held down a column in Newswatch and magazines directly or indirectly associated with it for the past twenty years. The first five years were with Newswatch itself, the next five with African Concord, Tempo and The News, and the last ten years as the founding columnist and editor at large of Africa Today.

    This is not to mention countless affrays and sorties in other magazines and newspapers against the Nigerian post-colonial state in all its malevolence and intestinal putrefaction. It has been a great pleasure to be a ringside witness and combatant in what may yet turn out to be the defining epoch of post-colonial Nigeria.

    To be sure, Newswatch was not the first newsmagazine published in Nigeria. Before it, there had been some faint-hearted and rather tentative beginnings. But these amateurish precursors cannot begin to match the heroic scale of planning and execution  that went into making a sweet reality out of a lofty dream. Okotie’s Newbreed succumbed to military autocracy and perhaps its own chaotic managerial style.

    The New Nation published by Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, one of the nation’s finest and most accomplished journalists, went under as a result of critical under-funding and manpower shortage. But with Newswatch, the men and the moment seemed to have meshed in perfect historic symmetry. Journalism in Nigeria would never be the same again.

    The seventies were unarguably Nigeria’s golden years. With the horrific carnage of the civil war behind it, with the country awash with petro-dollars accruing from dramatically increased oil revenues, with what is in retrospect a benign and benevolent military dispensation in the saddle, and the rump of a political class yet to go berserk with greed and inanition, Nigeria appeared headed for the moon. To add to this embarrassment of riches was the sheer scale of human capital under-girded by an energetically aware public and a flourishing reading culture.

    The week that Murtala Mohammed was murdered, the Sunday Times sold approximately half a million copies. Thirty years later, with the liberalization of press ownership factored in, the combined sales of all Sunday newspapers in Nigeria does not approach this epic benchmark. The Nigerian middle class has relocated— or evaporated as the case may be.

    The buoyant reading culture and indigenous national intelligentsia of the seventies were the fruits and products of the great feats of social engineering of the fifties and pre-military sixties. During that period, the three regional governments, in healthy and dynamic competition, sought to outdo each other in a frantic march towards modernization and the development of human capital.

    Education was the war-cry throughout the length and breadth of the country, particularly in the west and east which appeared to have been bitten by the bug of westernization and liberal democracy. Public and private schools were modeled on the great learning institutions that so dramatically transformed Victorian Britain from the mid-nineteenth century. It is no surprise that when the products of this great educational ferment arrived in the universities at the end of the sixties, they found themselves at the vanguard of a nation-wide revolt against burgeoning military autocracy.

    Ironically enough, by the time Newswatch made it to the newsstand in early 1985, an irreversible decline had set in for the great Nigerian reading culture. With the regions gone and states substituted, healthy competition and the drive to excel also disappeared and a uniform mediocrity of vision and governance settled in with the central government resembling a huge economic almshouse.

    Even then nothing prepared Nigerians for the shock of the Second Republic: a bazaar of bandits and a conclave of crooks. Virtually all the vital sectors had collapsed by the time the politicians finished with the nation. Education had taken a severe pounding culminating in protracted strikes in higher institutions.

    About this time, a slow but hazily perceptible shift of cultural values began to take hold of the nation. The great tradition of learning and arduous self-education which had produced some of modern Nigeria’s titanic personalities began to give way to the glorification of materialism and economic brigands and the lionization of crooks who had come by easy money. If this development cannot be divorced from the logic of military ascendancy with its distaste and disdain for rarefied convolutions, the ascendant political class, in its eagerness to please its new masters and buy into military “culture”, could also not be absolved.

    While this was going on, while the dominant musical class acquired new patrons and objects of giddy adulation, a major geo-political shift was also rumbling its way through Nigeria’s tectonic plates. Newswatch was born into a national paradox. If its elegant song of freedom was a liberating tonic, if its arrival spoke to the majestic  empowerment of journalists and of the dramatic transformation of Kakawa Street grubbers into arriviste entrepreneurs, this advent also coincided with the advent of a far more ruthless and sophisticated military dispensation bent on totally dominating the Nigerian environment and imposing its will on the political landscape. Compared with the tentative and temporizing gentlemanliness of the Gowon era, the architects of politics as war manoeuvres had arrived, hardened and probably unhinged by the pathologies of a brutal civil war.

    This new military prefecture consisted of officers who had been the military backbone of the Obasanjo interregnum. They had developed a historic contempt for the civilian faction of the political class and justifiably so, given the larcenous fiasco of the Second Republic. They were also privy to the historic weaknesses and resentments of the nation’s dominant intellectual class and had perfected how to convert these to achieve their own objective. In the event, Newswatch was to become an early casualty in the crystallization of this reality of perpetual military domination of Nigeria.  The editors were plucked from the giddy clouds of instant success to the ugly reality of violent and fatal collision.

    If Newswatch had been an ordinary, garden-variety magazine, it might have been spared the brutal confrontation with reality. But immediate success also portends imminent tragedy. After some minor boardroom skirmishes, the magazine struck gold in its choice of chief executive. Blessed indeed is the magazine or newspaper whose chief executive is also a talented writer. Still more blessed if the helmsman were to combine this with sound managerial skills.

    But when a chief executive of a magazine is an exceptional writer, a great administrator and a visionary recruiter and manager of human resources, it is the winning ticket in the sweepstakes. Without showing any hint of a personality disorder, Giwa distilled several contending and occasionally countervailing personas. If his writing skills hinted of the Bohemian artist, his administrative thoroughness echoed the dour Prussian burgher; If his personal flamboyance and exquisite taste recalled the cheeky élan of the French, his entrepreneurial bravura suggested the Yankee “New Deal” wheeler-dealer.

    It was not surprising then that the magazine took off like a rocket. By July 1985, it had become a national sensation. By September of the same year, it had become an essential commodity. Its brilliant edition of the Babangida palace coup quickly sold out, and photocopies were stapled together and sold by intrepid vendors. By the hundredth day of the regime, Newswatch had assumed an iconic status with the editors and the new military establishment viewing each other with the wary respect of superpowers immensely aware of the meaning of nuclear deterrence.

    The chief executive of the magazine was already on first-name terms with the chief executive of the nation, and clearly relished this. There were astonishing and alarming indiscretions. Unlike the famous friendship between Gamel Abdel Nasser and Mohamed Heykal, the revered editor of the authoritative Al-Ahram, this one was not based on any political commonality or ideological congruency. It was rather like the concluding chess game in Bound to Violence.

    Behind the glitz and the glamour, the acutely aware and politically discerning must have felt a sense of foreboding . It was all too good to be true. Newswatch was collecting laurels as well as formidable and powerful enemies. Its major weapon was an uncanny ability to pry into the Byzantine maze of intrigues of the military administration and prise open for the public the malign secrets of unaccountable power .

    It was a profoundly democratizing ploy. But for a military regime that relies on stealth and surprise, that thrives on habitual and often malignant opacity, this was the equivalent of enemy action. Indeed, the soldiers were not alone. To many members of the larger political establishment, the frantic disclosures of shady business deals and their sordid collaborations with the military oligarchy induced panic and fright.

    And since men are killed not because horses are stolen but so that horses may not be stolen, the tormentor in chief had to go, with maximum collateral damage and in such a spectacular fashion calculated to drive the fear of the lord into the most stubborn of infidels. Almost twenty years after, the act still resonates in all its daring and chilling homophobic novelty. In retrospect, it is a miracle how the staff of the magazine, particularly the remaining editors, survived the disorienting trauma of the first four weeks. But survived it they did, and without missing a single edition, too.

    There were those who maintained at that point that the damage had already been done, that the point had been made and Newswatch would never be the same again. Teenagers who have witnessed the ravages of a firestorm would never toy with thunder. A slackening of pace and cooling of investigative ardor might have surfaced. But as if to prove its traducers wrong, Newswatch was back with a bang six months later with a sensational scoop of the report of the Political Bureau .A prompt proscription  that was later converted to a six-month ban was the instant reply. A dark cloud enveloped Oregun.

    For many, the publication of the report was an act of futile and perverse bravado. But in retrospect, it was a singular act of courage which extended the frontiers of freedom, particularly against a repressive military autocracy bent on imposing its will on the nation. Others were to build on this in the final phase of the struggle against military dictatorship.

    By then, a chastened Newswatch appeared to have reached a tense truce and uneasy accommodation with the military oligarchy. But as it is always the case with history and the cult of heroic example, they had already inspired others by their example and the martyrdom of their founding chief executive. All in all, it has been an eventful and worthy outing for Newswatch and its staff.

    Such then is the cunning of history that in the murky ambience of contemporary Nigerian journalism, the surviving founding fathers, whatever their foibles and human failings, are beginning to look like secular saints. Dele Giwa must be smiling.

     

    • First published in 2005.

     

  • Saraki’s long, winding and unflattering trial

    Saraki’s long, winding and unflattering trial

    Senate President Bukola Saraki faces three cruel choices, none of which is capable of redeeming him. One, he could be absolved of the 13-count charge slammed against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau, for which he has been facing a convoluted trial since September. Two, he could be found guilty, thus wrecking his political career and ruining his reputation for life. And, three, he could coax the government and everybody else involved in the case into a truly disingenuous political solution that could see him ending up neither innocent nor guilty, neither tried nor excused from trial. Left to him, he would have preferred that the case never came up in the first instance. Indeed, given the sordid and unpredictable choices facing him, there is no proof that in his solitude he would not want the hands of time turned back to enable him make different choices.

    The Appeal Court, which reserved ruling in the case he filed some two weeks ago to disqualify the CCT from proceeding with his trial, has now ruled it could grant no such relief. The case will now continue except he can get the Supreme Court to come to his rescue. For reasons that are not too hidden, Senator Saraki seems determined that the case should not proceed. He has mustered overwhelming support from his colleagues across the political divide, and across the two chambers of the National Assembly. And he has managed to convince himself and his supporters that the merit of the case does not count as much as the politics of the case. According to him, he is in court fighting for his honour and reputation because he summoned the effrontery to grab power in the Senate. He deploys such expiatory words as political persecution, witch-hunt, and legislative independence to stultify the case and justify his relentless rigmarole.

    This column is not privy to what Senator Saraki and his lawyers think of the case against him, whether he has hope of freedom or hopelessness of conviction. Given his determined effort to thwart the case, however, he gives the impression he fears the direction the case may take. He is alleged to have engaged in false declaration of assets and corruption. The allegations are distributed into 13 charges by the prosecution, which says it needs just two or three days to prove its case. Until the case is finally determined, however, no one can say how the pendulum would swing.

    The choices Senator Saraki faces are appalling because the implications are far-reaching. Assuming he fails at the Supreme Court, and the trial proceeds but he is absolved at the CCT, the victory will strengthen his hand, weaken the bargaining hand of the ruling party, cause a drawn-out stalemate at the ruling party level until one party to the intra-party crisis surrenders, and possibly alter the country’s political dynamics in profound and unforeseen ways. If he is found guilty, the consequence is less ambiguous: he will leave his post as Senate President not only a vanquished and humiliated man, he will vacate politics entirely a broken man. This is an outcome he will be reluctant to contemplate. But if a political solution is cobbled together, as he hopes, he and his party may declare a draw, bury their pride, and put up a brave face and move on, perhaps a little shamelessly. Indeed, a political solution will not hurt both the party and Senator Saraki as it will hurt the president and damage the integrity of his anti-graft war.

    Irrespective of the course of the CCT trial and the final outcome, Senator Saraki is unlikely to come out of the case smelling of roses. It will be remembered that he deliberately stymied the trial with legal and political shenanigans. It will be remembered that though he rhapsodises democracy and the rule of law, he nevertheless did everything in his power to undermine the case, notwithstanding the consequences to democracy and Nigeria’s political evolution. Rather than submit to the rule of law, he has cried political persecution and whipped up the National Assembly into a frenzied, divisive, unthinking and emotive assemblage of activists with cracked ethical compass. It was at first assumed that Senator Saraki was unwilling to submit to trial because it humiliated his office. The truth may be more nuanced. Had he been sure of his innocence, he would have helped advance the cause of justice and the building of institutions by submitting to a quick trial to shame the enemies he talks about so often, so engagingly and so garishly.

    Except the courts inexplicably relent, Senator Saraki will eventually come to trial. It is inconceivable he will come out unscathed. And this will not be because his so-called enemies pressed their advantage, or saw him in the political victimhood he has tried to paint himself. It will be because the substance of the case does not favour him. Worse, he will be unlikely to get the sympathy of the discerning and judicious members of the society, for they know more than he and scores of his supporters and sympathisers that the cost to the entire body politic of sparing one man is too high for the nation to pay.

     

  • Dele Giwa on our mind

    Dele Giwa on our mind

    It is just as well that Dele Giwa’s troubled ghost slipped back into our national consciousness just twelve months to  the thirtieth anniversary of his martyrdom. As evident by the contradictions of democratic change, the ethical sandstorm in the senate,  the swift blurring of line between political heroism and grandstanding villainy,  the strange feeling of unease in the land, it is clear that the system is still working off the harmful effects of prolonged military rule.

    Yet it would have been better to leave the ghost of Dele Giwa out of this painful and protracted process of national healing. Some wounds take much longer to heal and they react negatively to inflammation. Nigeria already has too many ghosts and their living survivors to contend with: from war orphans, coup widows, relics of assassinated politicians, poisoned patriots, state-executed exemplars, etc, etc.  If we are to resurrect all these people we have sacrificed at the shrine of the nation, what an endless cortege of misery and shame!

    But it is obvious that some people feel no misery or shame.  A people that have not acquired a culture of shame in the course of their long history are an endangered people.  After a long period of honourable silence over his questionable role in the official cover up of Dele Giwa’s murder, Chris Omeben, a retired Deputy Inspector General of police, has returned to the ring flagging his questionable red bull again.

    In a bizarre ritual of self –exculpation,  Omeben was reported to have told a press conference that his investigation into the death of Dele Giwa was impeded by  the denial of access to the principal suspect: Kayode Soyinka who was the London Correspondent of Newswatch at that point in time.  Soyinka was so close to his boss that he usually spent his official trips to Nigeria in Dele’s residence.

    Omeben’s story is an old wives’ tale which does not dignify anybody, not the least a man who could easily have become the nation’s top cop. Soyinka’s response was bristling with fury and contempt. According to him, it was Omeben who actually prevented the principal suspects from being investigated. Ray Ekpu, Soyinka’s former boss and the man who succeeded Dele Giwa, weighed in along the same line virtually accusing Omeben of perfidy and dishonesty. There seems to be too many living historic witnesses willing to prick and puncture Omeben’s balloon of lies.

    It is possible that in the twilight of his earthly sojourn, Omeben’s compromised conscience is finally pricking him. But repeating old lies is not the best way to go about restitution. Snooper can reveal to Omeben that he (columnist) spent the independence anniversary of October 1st 1986 in Dele Giwa’s house as his guest, that is two and a half weeks before his assassination. The conversation and the ambience remain as fresh as ever.

    Like a self-healing wound relying entirely on its own internally produced anti-toxic agents, this nation is going through a painful and slow process of recovery. The martyrdom of Dele Giwa may well be one of the prices to pay in the tortuous and tormenting journey to authentic nationhood. This is why this morning, we bring you a piece which puts the Dele Giwa and Newswatch saga in proper perspective. Written exactly ten years ago to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the magazine, it has also turned out an unwitting obituary as the great magazine folded up shortly thereafter.

  • PDP, Buhari and Rivers, Akwa Ibom polls

    PDP, Buhari and Rivers, Akwa Ibom polls

    In his response to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) name-calling and blame game over the judicial reversals in Akwa Ibom and Rivers, Lai Mohammed, the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman and now minister-designate, suggested that rather than whining, the PDP should rebrand and repackage itself to appeal to the electorate. That was what the APC did last year, swore Alhaji Mohammed, and that was why the party won the 2015 polls. That the APC won the polls is not in dispute; and that it repackaged itself, especially assembling a viable though tentative coalition, is also not controversial. What is in dispute is why the APC won. Indeed, it appears overall that the APC won the poll because the PDP first lost it. Alhaji Mohammed must put things in perspective.

    However, there is no argument whatsoever that the PDP needs to repackage itself in order to reclaim its former appeal. As the APC spokesman correctly observed, PDP’s 16 years in office and four electoral victories were achieved on false foundations. Its ideology was suspect, and its methods, not to say its competence in office, were abysmal. It subscribed to no inspiring ethical mantra, and it had very little vision of where Nigeria should be and its place in the world. It therefore won elections dubiously and malevolently. It muscled the system, corrupted everything it touched, and entrenched a most vicious culture of doing business, practicing law, and securing the country. In fact, the PDP had no pretext to be called a party; and when it ruled, for that was what it did, it also had no pretext to be called a government.

    It is therefore not surprising that in two separate statements last week the PDP blamed everybody but itself for its electoral debacle and its inability to sustain the victories it managed to coax from the country’s compromised law enforcement agencies and lax electoral system. The PDP argument and suppositions, as rendered by both its publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, and national secretary, Wale Oladipo, are untenable. In Prof Oladipo’s words last Thursday: “The undue interferences by the executive arm of government in the activities of the judiciary, legislature and INEC, using the Department of States Service (DSS), is clearly unacceptable to the PDP as well as the Nigerian people, and the party has resolved to vigorously resist such. The PDP finds it offensive and provocative the judiciary’s handling of cases involving it in election tribunals in some states, particularly Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Imo, Taraba, Ogun, Plateau and Lagos. The tainted judgments of these tribunals, which are evidently products of arm-twisting from the nation’s security operatives under the direct command of an APC member, remains unacceptable to us.”

    Advocating and instigating Nigerians “to rise and use all lawful means to resist anti-democratic forces now using the judiciary and security agencies in their desperate scheme to subvert the will of the people and destroy the nation’s democracy,” the more acerbic Mr Metuh further suggested very strongly: “Let it be known, and clearly too, that no matter the strong-arm, threats and manipulations by the APC government, the PDP is not willing to and will never surrender the mandate freely given to us by the people in states where we won in the last general election, neither are the people of those states willing to allow sectional invaders to exert influence on those to be in charge of their affairs.”

    He then adds: “In the last five months, after conceding defeat at the presidential elections and other polls where we lost, Nigerians are witnesses to the fact that the PDP has remained calm and steadfast to its commitment to providing mature, decent and civil opposition with more interest in the peace, unity and corporate interest of our dear nation. However, the ruling party and the APC Federal Government in their dictatorial inclinations are much more interested in playing crude, selfish and sectional politics and trying to use manipulation of judicial processes to forcefully take over states where we genuinely won in the elections.”

    The old guard still directing the affairs of the PDP appears dead set against reality and change. They have sought to divert attention away from their incompetence and unethical politics. They will continue to resist the change, remoulding and renewal their party needs to confront the APC now and in the future. Without reforming itself and restructuring its operations, without changing its leadership in a revolutionary sweep of the Augean stables, it is impossible for the party to midwife the positive outcomes it dreams of. Until a group of idealists within the party —  probably young men in their forties, digitally inspired, brilliant and ethical — take over the leadership of the PDP, the already ossified party will continue to atrophy and die. It is in the interest of Nigeria for the PDP to renew its strength and anchor itself on an inspiring and lofty foundation in order to offer the alternative that many well-wishers think it capable of. The country needs it; the APC, whether it agrees or not, also needs a strong and healthy opposition; and the PDP itself needs to be a healthy and vibrant opposition to sustain its own life.

    Except it tells itself a horrendous lie, most of the victories it procured in past elections were manipulated. The unraveling taking place at the moment is not orchestrated by the judiciary, as the PDP falsely suggests. It is the right thing to happen; and if the PDP will look at the positive side, the process of electoral reversal is helping the party to shed weight and to rediscover its real self and where its strength lies. It does not need the so-called wealthy states of Akwa Ibom and Rivers to function and remake its image. What it needs are the right and revolutionary ideas, bright young men and women able to seize the moment, and a sense of being that is transcendental, unflappable and almost immortal. This column is directly calling for a revolution in the PDP to snatch the party from the hands of the indolent and visionless masters that had constrained its future for far too long.

    The PDP and Nigeria need this change in the opposition party simply because despite the enormous goodwill that swept APC into office a few months ago, the ruling party has been unable to pull its weight. It has proved lax in controlling its men, and its highly vaunted social and economic road map has become an archival document ignored and disdained by its leaders. Its dominance in the National Assembly has led the party, not to lofty deeds, but to opprobrious manifestation of discord and aimlessness. For a party that evinced vigour and audacity late last year and early this year, it has appeared today like a man without a soul, enervated, absentminded and fractious. Its number one citizen, President Muhammadu Buhari, though it is an exaggeration to say he is dictatorial as the PDP argues, has been unable to rise to the pedestal the last electioneering anticipated.

    If the PDP can reform, renew and measure up to the hopes of the electorate, and if the APC is unable to articulate the lofty vision contained in its founding documents, nor redeem the utopia it eagerly philosophised about many months back, then the opposition can indeed flower and offer perhaps the real change that the change party can’t seem to comprehend. It is not true, as the PDP fallaciously reasons, that President Buhari can’t lead as a democrat in a democracy. What is, however, true is that so far, President Buhari seems paralysed by either his anxieties over democracy or inundated by the shenanigans in his party, or both. He will have to come out of his shell, avoid making the kind of plaintive statements he made last week about a broken and fallen economy, and boldly and courageously enunciate the requisite vision and structure that will reinvigorate Nigeria. But if he will not do it, and cannot be compelled, then let a reformed and renewed PDP seize the high ground and orchestrate a new age of enlightenment, the nirvana of Nigerians’ hopes and dreams.