The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Baba Lekki and Okon berate Papa Edwin Clark

    As the last independence anniversary got underway, Okon has been busy lamenting  the good old days before independence when food was aplenty in the land and the local wine made from ripe banana was so abundant that even monkeys were known to get drunk on the heady stuff. At some point, snooper became exasperated with the boy’s lamentation and protest.

    “Okon, but you claim you were born in 1980. How come you remember what happened around independence?” snooper charged.

    “Oga, I don tell una say official age no be facial age. Obudu monkey dey sweat na hair dey cover am”, the mad boy snorted as he continued his rhapsody about pre-independence bliss.  The following day the boy actually raised the stakes by appearing on a television series known as “crunch time” with Baba Lekki in tow.

    “Mr Okon, welcome to the show”, the lead presenter drawled in a heavily accented baritone.

    “Point of incorrection!”  the mad boy charged. “I no be Mr Okon again. Now I be Master Okon. When a man don dey cook for thirty years without accident he don become master be dat”.

    “Ok, Master Okon”, the man corrected in a voice full of mirth and mischief.

    “And make you no dey take Yoruba corner corner eye lauf at Okon like dat. Dis one no be like dem foolish general title dem Abacha man come give dem foolish Yoruba musician and him dey jump all over dem place”, Okon screamed.

    “Just get on with it and answer the question”, a Lagosian-sounding fellow shot out from the audience.

    “Foolish Yoruba man. How market now? Abi you don return from Abuja?” the mad boy sneered. The interviewer saw an opening since Okon was on the offensive.

    “ Sir, can it be said that Chief Clark has abandoned his son Mr Goodluck Jonathan?” the interviewer queried in his merry baritone.

    “Make una tell Jonathan make him produce him birth certificate now. When fire catch man and catch him son, man must to take care of him own fire first oo. He be like if say dem Buhari don set dem afire”, Okon sniggered. It was at this point that Baba Lekki barged in with a frown.

    “Edwin Clark na gbarogudu man”, the old man began in pidgin and then switched to perfect English.”When we were in London he was Urhobo, when we got to Nigeria he became Ijaw. Na money dey determine him tribe. Tomorrow  Kajegbodo Clark fit say him be godogodo”.

    “Ha baba if he wan disowner him fine fine Yoruba wife, Okon dey kampe ooo. He don tey I punish Egba woman”. The mad boy snorted in relish. It was at this point that some Arogbow Ijaw fishermen from the surrounding creeks stormed the station and disrupted proceedings.

  • How not to break an egg, and other (un) social etiquettes

    We’re living in a failed country and all you want to know is how an egg is broken? Your husband must feed you so well you can afford to buy eggs! You should have my problems.

    In the face of the Nigerian government’s failed policies, the ability to laugh would turn out to be the only thing that we have left. For one thing, it comes cheap; and for another, it is accessible to all; and so when Nigerians laugh, they do so extremely heartily, (like they do other things such as embezzling).  But sadly, even this last remaining ability which the government has not succeeded in taking from us, the book of social etiquettes is about to take forcibly. The reason is that such a thing as laughing wrongly not only exists, indeed, if the state were to be giving tickets for it, most of us would earn multiple fines.

         When a Nigerian perceives something funny, the mouth opens wide to show kola nut-stained teeth, the legs are thrown up in the air in abandon and a raucous bellow, coming from the pit of the nether regions, shakes the body like it were going through some tremors not unlike an earthquake. However, according to the rules, such an abandonment of posture not only breaks the rules of laughter, it actually displays the fact that such a one is not a lady or a gentleman. For, right social etiquette demands that when one laughs, one should do so carefully, opening the mouth no wider than an envelope slit and allowing the sound to ripple forth in just the minimum number of decibels that would not jar the ears of the listeners. It should be hardly audible.

      Social etiquettes appear to exist simply to plague us and cramp our style. For instance, take the subject of eating. With the little time I have between sleep, work, work and more work, all I want to do is look for the shortest possible route to cramp a few things into my stomach, if possible by-passing the mouth. But a lady, I am told, is not expected to pounce on her food like a famished tiger but should eat, instead, as if it were a painful duty. The movement should be slow and not rushed; the spoon should lightly touch the plate, daintily deposit its contents on the tongue without anyone seeing the mouth open. To show that she enjoys or loves the food is bad manners. She should appreciate the dish only to the extent that she can compliment the cook on the excellence of the dish, just to encourage him to cook the next meal. With these prescriptions, some wonderful results are bound to ensue: cooks will continue to survive their bosses; and ladies will continue to starve.

      It wasn’t always like this; in other words, such etiquettes did not always guide our reason. When I was little, the one social misdemeanour that people frowned at most was not to greet one’s elders. Believe me, a merciless, no-appeals court sat over you because it was assumed you came into the world knowing how to greet your elders; and failure to use this God-given talent was taken for a rebellion of sorts. ‘You are so small and you don’t know how to greet your elders! What is this world coming to?’ You were thence watched as a type: anyone who could pass by without greeting his elders was capable of anything, such as a revolution.

       But things, they are a-changing. The coming of western culture has brought changes in perceptions, and different etiquettes have emerged. Strangely though, what constitutes proper behaviour appears to be, by general agreement, directed mostly against women. To start with, a lady must not use a toothpick as if she’s holding a pickaxe, strenuously tasking herself to reach the unreachable parts by contorting her face like a body twister. No, it simply will not do. She must cup the toothpick in both hands and gently coax the offending particle to the surface. Should it prove stubborn, why, leave it to providence, for she may not use a pair of scissors, as I once saw a lady do. It wasn’t that she had big teeth; she just had a small pair of scissors. A man on the other hand, is allowed to suck in air between his teeth as loudly as possible until the desired results are achieved, no matter the company.

       Social etiquettes can be better observed in the unlikely event that a woman falls down. I read that should a lady feel any pressure to fall down for any reason, she must not allow her legs to dictate to her that they want to go up in the air, waving to and fro like a flag of peace. Neither must she also allow her behind to give off any sound, otherwise the ‘plop’ of the landing may be easier to manage than the grunt of the rising up. She must rather ensure that her skirt remains straight, and her wig does not fly off to reveal the unkempt and knotted tufts desperately trying to grace the balding pate. And the contents of her bag; oh my God! The contents of her bag must not be allowed to scatter on to the floor to reveal the many stories that surround her life. I think we better leave this topic for another day.

        There is no end to the rules of social etiquette; but when there are nukes pointed at our throats, the last thing we want to worry about is a group of rules that cannot save us. While we wait for those nukes though, many people have replaced some of the rules with theirs. When I was in school, one friend of mine was always so irritated whenever anyone around her told a man ‘thank you very much’. This was a faux pas of such proportions that earned the speaker a putdown. ‘Look’, she would lecture, ‘anyone should consider himself honoured to have had the opportunity to serve a lady, especially me.’ A simple ‘thank you’ should do, or he can take his favours somewhere else.

        Another friend commented that she was appalled by the way I broke my breakfast egg. I was greatly baffled, wondering if I had missed the instructions that spelt out how exactly it should be broken. I mean I had no idea that I broke an egg in a certain way, or for that matter, that one breaks an egg in a certain way and said as much. Furthermore, I thought that since the chicken that laid the egg was probably dead, she was not likely to mind just how anyone broke her egg. And to cap it all, I felt that since human rights are still in their infancy in this country, worrying about chicken rights was taking the act a little too far. My friend’s comment showed that I couldn’t be more wrong! A chicken had the right to know how her egg would be broken.

       Nevertheless, when I tried to find out just how many of us Nigerians were aware that an egg should be broken in a certain way, I got results. Some people looked at me in great sadness, as if I was one of the great unwell: what is wrong with you? We’re living in a failed country and all you want to know is how an egg is broken? Your husband must feed you so well you can afford to buy eggs! You should have my problems. Others simply asked: what egg? At the price they sell eggs, there is only one way to break it and that is on the head of the egg merchants. I think we should do the same thing to those rules: break them all on the head of the writer. Happy Egg week.

  • At last, the cabinet

    At last, the cabinet

    Finally, a tentative commentary on President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet appears possible. The public can’t be wrong: the cabinet is lawyerly, star-studded, eloquent, not quite gender sensitive and not too saintly, but potentially vibrant, and in many alarming ways apolitical. So far, everyone is focusing on the putative brilliance of the ministers, many of whom have been confirmed already. Soon, it will be time to discover whether that brilliance can be translated into productive, impactful work, or whether the cabinet can demonstrate the subliminal character necessary to concretise the values and principles of a great society. Soon, too, as a result of the expected synergy between the cabinet and the president, and the extent to which they meet the yearnings of the country, it will become clear just how ambitious the country is, or whether the country has diminished, as some suspect, to become frustratingly satisfied with little.

    It is unlikely that the expectations of the people concerning the cabinet, let alone its performance, will be high. Nigerians are famously not too difficult to please. But sooner or later, they will confront the critical question of assessing President Buhari’s governance philosophy and framework, not because they are complex and the people are slow of understanding, but because so far there has been no clear articulation of these indispensable foundations. The public is familiar with the president’s fight against corruption and insecurity, and his determination to plug, by dint of hard work and body language, every avenue of stealing and waste. But they will need, and will ask for, his philosophy of governance, which he has not really quite articulated. If the cabinet will help him articulate that philosophy, then it will have to do more than make the dreaded noise he recently spoke about.

    There is suspicion President Buhari will hope that the positive spinoffs from his disciplined government and brilliant cabinet will stabilise the economy and ennoble the country’s politics. Should he rely almost exclusively on these spinoffs and hope that a well-governed country with a healthy economy and normalised politics will obviate the urgent need for a governing philosophy, he will leave his government vulnerable and exposed to the vicissitudes of politics far beyond his control. It is indeed possible to govern a country well without a clear philosophy, but as France and Italy contradistinctively showed after World War II, it is impossible to sustain the legacy eked from the physical exertion of simply governing well. Somehow, the president may also view the Ahmed Joda transition report as a fitting foundation for his presidency, and consider other critical reports such as the Oronsaye report as complementary to his effort to navigate the country’s developmental warrens. But for now, notwithstanding his party’s manifesto and the engagement of these other reports, he has not given any indication of conceptualising a philosophy and framework of governance to serve as the indispensable fulcrum of his government, in the same way the world understands Reaganite America and Reaganomics, Thatcherite Britain and Thatcherism, Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Bush’s (the younger) New American Century.

    Perhaps it will take a little longer for President Buhari to give a concrete feel to the embryonic ideals emanating from his presidency. But perhaps, also, there will be no attempt by his presidency to synthesise or grow anything resembling a philosophy. It is therefore the duty of the public to demand, as indeed the business community is already doing, a definite, consistent and coherent set of programmes and ideas upon which the renewal and rebuilding of Nigeria can be anchored. The impression already is that, at bottom, President Buhari has spent more time plotting his way into office than forming and firming the ideas upon which he hopes to base his presidency. He has focused his energies on some pressing problems, and has worked hard to assemble a cabinet that could pass muster. But these will not transform into a great nation until that great nation has been built on a great idea. A fine cabinet is useful only to the extent that it is appropriately deployed in the service of a great idea; a great idea that will not manifest until it is harnessed from its disparate strands.

    Moreover, part of the crisis inundating the parliament, in which a Bukola Saraki virtually and unethically seized the legislative levers of power, could be traced to the president’s inability to conceptualise a governing philosophy for the country, as this column has repeatedly maintained. Rather than tamely surrender to what he described as the fundamentals of democracy, Nigeria needed President Buhari to develop a bold and unrivalled idea of Nigeria, and work actively instead of passively to build a unified parliamentary, judicial and political framework for it. What would Napoleonic France and indeed Napoleonic Europe be without the Napoleonic Code and, to some extent, the Continental System? The world may find this comparison and example odious, but what would Germany be without Bismarckian realpolitik and Hitler’s Mein Kampf? And what would Britain and America be without their exceptionalism, whose fiercely competitive core drove the Americans to the moon and Britain to global political and language imperialism? It is against this background that Soviet history makes sense, and Russian (Putin) redivivus becomes a sensible rather than a provocative project.

    Nigerian leadership since independence has been mediocre. In some sense, Ghana under Nkrumah, Tanzania under Nyerere, Egypt under Nasser, and South Africa under Mandela gave vague indication they knew what the situation called for. There failure, while it can be explained, cannot however be excused. But Nigeria never once attempted to approximate the ideals for which Nkrumah and the others lived and died. Yet, Nigeria has never lacked the opportunity, as the ample goodwill being made light of by President Buhari is showing. Babangida, Obasanjo and Shagari each had the chance to make something out of Nigeria. That they all failed, some very woefully, is a testament to the apparent genetic flaw inherent in their leadership.

    This column invested heavily, perhaps excessively heavily, in the Buhari project before he won the March 2015 poll. But given the undue emphasis on assembling an untainted cabinet, the inattentiveness to the parliament’s subversive and centrifugal tendencies, and the disregard for building the country’s ideological lodestar, the columnist will hope his effort and investment have not been altogether misplaced. The situation is of course not hopeless. Far from it. Yet, there is little so far to give any indication of success given the abandonment of the elements that conduce to building a great society.

     

    Theatrical Senate screening and Adebayo Shittu

    Senators and the Senate President, not leaving out the theatrical and voluble Dino Melaye, have been having a ball since the ministerial confirmation process began. They promised it would be stringent and thorough, but perhaps the Senate defines words in curious ways now. Bukola Saraki has been winking away at only God knows whom, while other senators may be in danger of cracking their ribs from the theatrics on the Senate floor. Some of the nominees themselves have embarked on incredible, extravagant somersaults to win confirmation.

    But while the Senate blithely engages in political revelry, could they be kind enough to interview nominee Adebayo Shittu from Oyo State a little more rigorously on what he knew about the April 25, 2000 religious crisis involving the Tabliq Muslim sect and the First Baptist Church, Oke Adagba, Shaki, Oyo State, which later spread into the town. Let him arm himself with the 2001 Oyo State Government White Paper on the crisis. Surely, as a prospective minister of the Federal Republic, he wouldn’t mind shedding some light on the crisis. More importantly, it would be interesting to hear his view on the matter, even if it has changed, and his projection on sectarian peace in Nigeria.

     

    Gowon and the Nigerian quandary

    On Thursday, former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, paid a condolence visit to the Awolowo family at Ikenne, Ogun State. Speaking to the press, he remarked about how ethnic diversity and sectional interests made it tough for him governing Nigeria. The same complex pastiche, he said, would make it tough for anyone to govern the country. He admonished Nigerians to be patient with President Muhammadu Buhari, almost the same gentle and indulgent manner he admonished everyone to be patient with ex-president Goodluck Jonathan.

    The contention, however, is whether the problem is actually caused by complex ethnic and sectional interests or whether the leadership lacks depth and puts little premium on justice and equity. Nigeria’s problem is not the differences between its people, as sometimes competitive as these might be, but the inability of leaders to recognise and embrace the building blocks of leadership. They refuse to acknowledge that leadership compels them to offer leadership to all interests without prejudice, and that it is compulsory to anchor their leadership on the values of justice and equity. Leaders who cannot transcend their backgrounds and prejudices have no business being in government. No, Gen Gowon, Nigeria is not difficult to govern. The problem is finding competent, transcendental leaders who have intuitive understanding of what must be done, when and how.

  • All the president’s men: an open letter to Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President, Media and Publicity (2)

    All the president’s men: an open letter to Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President, Media and Publicity (2)

    Mallam Garba Shehu:

    In this continuing piece in the series that began as an open letter to you last week, I wish to start with a question that may come as a surprise to you: When will President Buhari put behind him and finally move on from the travails that he experienced, perhaps even suffered, first from his overthrow as a military ruler in 1985, and subsequently as an unsuccessful presidential candidate three times between 2003 and 2011?  In starting this piece with this question, I am particularly mindful of the account that you gave earlier this week of how, during the last presidential electoral campaign, you and your family awoke one morning in your house at Abuja only to find that your house had been surrounded and completely blockaded by heavily armed units of the Nigerian Police. According to the account that you gave of that sinister siege on your house, only the intervention of social media activists through twits and posts on twitter and facebook accounts on the Internet alerted the country and the world to what you and members of your family were being subjected to. Once that happened, according to you, the besiegers had to leave you and your family alone because they realized that they and whatever evil intentions they had in mind had been exposed on the Internet.

    I am almost certain that this was not the only intimidating and frightening experience that you personally had as the Spokesman for the Buhari Campaign Organization, just as I also know that many other members of Buhari’s campaign team as well as chieftains of the APC faced untold harassment and intimidation from the PDP during the last elections. As the whole world knows, starting from the Ekiti and Osun States’ governorship elections of 2014, the PDP under Jonathan became more and more fascist in its open and maximum use of armed and sometimes hooded state and non-state thugs, kidnappers and enforcers against all opponents, especially of the APC. Indeed, I wish to assert here that though I was and have remained highly critical of the APC as previously a potential and now an actual ruling party, I spoke out consistently and forcefully in this column against those fascist actions and tendencies of the PDP in general and the Jonathan administration in particular. If this is the case, you might wonder, Mallam Shehu, why then am I asking when President Buhari will put behind him the many undoubted travails and humiliations of the years and decades that he spent in what I am in this series calling a political wilderness?

    Mallam Shehu, because I consider this a very crucial question, I shall try to respond to it with the greatest clarity and concreteness that I can muster. Thus, I draw your attention as well as the attention of other readers of this piece to two separate but closely linked and portentous statements that President Buhari has made as an elected Head of State. First statement: the states and peoples that did not vote for me cannot expect me to treat them like the states and peoples that voted for me. Second statement: for the non-ministerial posts in my administration that I do not have to submit to the Senate for screening and approval, I have appointed those who have stood loyally with me over the years, first in the ANPP, then in the CPC and APC. As an amateur psychoanalyst, to me these two statements reveal that the President not only has a long memory of those who have worked for and against him, but this memory, this political unconscious, weighs so heavily on his mind and psyche that things that happened years and decades ago still affect his thoughts and actions now, in the moment of his eventual political ascendancy as an elected president.

    It is not my intention in this piece to dabble into a sustained psychoanalysis of the President’s every utterance and action. As I see the matter, it is far more profitable for all of us to evaluate the potential and actual objective consequences and ramifications of those of the President’s actions and utterances that seem to come from his long memory of those who worked for and against him. Objectively therefore, whatever may be the understandable psychological basis of the President’s actions and utterances, I wish to state that what should concern us is the fact that he seems deeply inclined to a neo-feudal conception and practice of governance in a constitutional order that is intended to be bourgeois-democratic. As I consider this to be very portentous for our country’s future under the rule of the President and the APC, permit me, Mallam Shehu, to explain what I have in mind in making this observation, this claim.

    Mallam Shehu, to call a spade a spade, it is nothing but the very height of a neo-feudal act for the President to have said for the whole country and the world to hear that the states and peoples that did not vote for him cannot reasonably expect to be treated like the states and peoples that voted for him. I have not the slightest doubt that in all probability, many of our political leaders of the past and the present operated and still operate on the same basis as the President on this matter with regard to their marked predilection for punishing those who are against them and rewarding those are for them. But as far as I can tell, no other Nigerian Head of State has ever publicly stated this openly and with the apparent belief of Buhari that it is a declaration that is so logical, so unexceptionable that no thinking Nigerian can question or fault it. To a slightly lesser degree, the same thing is true of the declared intention to reward those who have stayed loyally over the years with the President through thick and thin: all our political leaders think and act on the basis of this idea, but none but Muhammadu Buhari has ever publically declared it as an underlying idea, a cornerstone of his actions and utterances, at least in this inaugurating period of his presidency.

    It is perhaps necessary at this point in the discussion to throw some historical and cultural light on the specifically neo-feudal nature of these ideas and utterances of the President. First of all, in all areas of the world in the long era of its dominance both as a form of political rule and a way of life, feudalism was profoundly local in its ideological, social and demographic expressions. The feudal overlord often extended his area of effective political and military hegemony far beyond his locality but fundamentally, those closest to him, those on whom he depended came from his village or his so-called demesne. Secondly, in extending the sphere of his rule far beyond his locality, the feudal baron always based himself on the strict policy of severely punishing those who were against him while rewarding those who were for him. Thirdly and finally, as much as it was fundamentally based on locality, feudalism was also profoundly patriarchal and male-dominant: a woman, any woman, was important not in her own right but only insofar as she derived that importance from a male relative – a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, a male cousin.

    Of the about 12 non-ministerial appointments that the President made before sending his cabinet list to the Senate at the end of September, only two are from the South and only one is a woman. This caused considerable consternation throughout the country, significantly even among Buhari’s own supporters. Now that the President has explained in the interview broadcast on the BBC Hausa Service last week that those appointees were only incidentally Northern and that his real motive was to reward those who had loyally stayed with him over the years and decades, it would seem that the matter has been laid to rest.

    But this is not the case. For where in this piece I have placed my emphasis on the President’s neo-feudal reliance on locality, I am absolutely certain that others will continue to place their emphases on the Northerness of those appointees. This is not wrong, not misguided but it misses the fundamental neo-feudalism of the President’s presuppositions. To give a telling illustration of what I am arguing here, dear reader, please reflect carefully on the following barely noticed or talked about detail of the President’s non-ministerial appointees: only one is a woman, this being the Acting INEC Chairperson who is said to be a sister-in-law of the President. Unlike the PDP rabid dogs of war who have been shouting accusations of nepotism in the appointment of the Acting INEC Chairperson to the high heavens, I am willing to grant that this appointee is perhaps as deserving as any male (or for that matter Southern) appointee. However, the fact remains that Buhari’s ministerial and non-ministerial appointees are overwhelmingly male: out of around 56, only six are female. As far as gender bias against women in the appointment of public officeholders in our country goes, this is one of the worst in our recent history.

    Mallam Shehu, it is banal and unremarkable to say that both in our country and in the world at large, we are no longer in the feudal age. But feudalism did once exist and rather strongly in some parts of our country, principally in the North but also in some parts of the Southwest. For this reason, remnants of feudal modes of thought and behavior survive among many of our political rulers and leaders. As someone who is not a member of the APC or any of our ruling class parties but passionately hopes that we shall soon put the aimless and wasted years of the reign of the PDP behind us, I was deeply disturbed, even offended and alarmed by President Buhari’s declaration that the states and peoples that did not vote for him should not expect to be treated like those that voted for him. I do not wish to provide fodder for the mad war dogs and bad losers of the PDP to continue their nation-wrecking battles against the President. But the President must recognize that we are no longer in the feudal era; we are in a plural, multi-ethnic and constitutionalist era in which crude, patriarchal and neo-feudal ideas about which groups or communities deserve reward or punitive action can be made the benchmark for governance. The matter is made even more onerous by the fact that President Buhari maybe the most powerful embodiment of these neo-feudal ideas and behavior, he is not a lone voice or figure in the new ruling party, the APC. I had thought that I would conclude this series this week. But the necessity to locate the President among other neo-feudal elements within his party makes it necessary for me to extend the series by one more week. So, Insha Allah, we shall bring the series to a conclusion next week.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Some times in the life of Nigeria

    Some times in the life of Nigeria

    Where were you on the first day of October, 1960?  Those who were not born then can take a honourable bow and remain . But for those of us, the surviving relics of a disappearing clan, it is time to ask some hard questions. Unlike human organisms that die and perish at once, never to be seen or heard of again, a nation can go through several incarnations. It can die and be revived. It can get up from the life support machine and walk away. It can surprise mourners at its own funeral wake by suddenly stirring and smiling. Nigeria has survived its most determined obituarists.

    But removing those who were not born on October 1st  1960, that is those under the age of fifty five, leaves a paltry fifteen per cent. Over the intervening decades, Nigeria has become a very young country indeed. Having spent the past fifty years railing and ranting about the iniquities and inequities of Nigeria on every independence anniversary, perhaps it is time to take another approach, to see how far we have come and how far we have fallen behind.

    This exercise is like taking a mental audit of the nation, viewing the nation through the mind’s eye.  A nation is a permanent work in progress which requires sober introspection and even more sober interrogation. All the excoriations and bitter recriminations will neither exorcise the ghosts of the terrible past, nor will they usher in a more glorious future. Nations founder when they are founded on lazy sentiments and idle wishful thinking.

    Better still that this mental audit, this cerebral cinematography, takes place in a foreign land, away from the hectic hurly burly of a post-colonial African nation permanently on the boil and eternally on the brink. More often than not, it is good for one’s sense of perspective to borrow seasons and tropes from an alien land. October 1st found yours sincerely in a dozing reverie inside a cab in Dallas driven by a wonderful hybrid of a man: an ebony black person with Arabian and oriental features superimposed on a melancholic visage which make him faintly unsettling.

    In case you have forgotten, Dallas is not all about Dynasty and other riveting soaps. It is also a land of deadly political intrigues, deadlier marksmen and Texan gunslingers, where the sheer oceanic plenitude of open space also contends with a lethal political insularity. Dallas was where the American dream ended briefly fifty two years earlier when a political psychotic named Lee Harvey Oswald summarily dispatched President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a telescopic rifle .

    It was the political domain of the legendary Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy’s successor and a man of bawdy humour and earthy profanity, who couldn’t care a hoot about dragging his political accomplices to the toilet while unleashing anal and verbal fusillades. After repeatedly failing in his bid to unseat John Edgar Hoover, the fabled FBI director, LBJ reportedly exploded, “Hell it is better to have a son of a bitch inside pissing out than to have him outside pissing in”. Hoover kept a tab on all of them, including a celebrated clip of Kennedy romping in the White House with Marylyn Monroe.

    Back home in Nigeria, it was a glorious day on October 1st 1960. The lowering of the Union Jack was a powerful testimony to the ability and capacity of the new African elite to seize the bull of history by the horn and by so doing negotiate a new deal for the Black person from his colonial conquerors and oppressors. As a scrawny kid in the concluding segment of primary school, yours sincerely remembered being fed with rice and some fizzy drink. It was all redolent of hope and possibilities. We arrived back home to giggling mothers and smiling fathers.

    On the cultural front, Nigeria was sending out some powerful statements of intent with the emergence of a fetching Aniocha beauty, Rosemary Anieze, as Miss Independence in succession to the delectable Camerounian belle, Nele Etule. Some of our writers and intellectuals were beginning to attract international attention. Nigeria looked set to restore some pride and dignity to the black person.

    Five years after in 1965, the dark clouds had begun to gather. Awolowo, one of the nation’s indisputable founding fathers, was in jail. The falcon could no longer hear the falconer. The entire western region erupted in wild flames which blitzed their way towards Lagos, the seat of government. After the dance of the forest, the nation was set on the path of thunder, as Soyinka and Okigbo, two outstanding literary warriors, would clairvoyantly put it.

    But the nation’s capacity to recover from self-inflicted wounds is legendary and a tad short of the miraculous. Nigeria is a glutton for grueling punishment. By 1975, yours sincerely was a youth corper in the then East Central State, that is after a long disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle of episodic education. The mood of personal buoyancy and optimism coincided with the mood of national optimism and abundant hope.

    It will be recalled that on independence anniversary in 1975, Nigeria was beginning to smile once again. The economy was bearish. After a bitter and bloody coup followed by a ruinous civil war, the country appeared set on the path of righteousness and rectitude once again.  Yakubu Gowon, the well-meaning but politically overwhelmed gentleman general, had been sent packing by junior colleagues. The new military government headed by the testy and tempestuous  Murtala Mohammed set about clearing the Augean stable of corruption and military impunity with much vigour.

    An unreconstructed apologist of military rule as the surest path to rapid modernization and accelerated national development at this point, snooper kept in his bedroom a framed picture of the Federal Executive Council headed by General Mohammed. On the extreme right was a youthful and gangling Colonel Mohammadu Buhari, the then governor of the North Eastern State. On the extreme left was the equally youthful and charismatic Colonel Alhaji, the governor of North Western state, who was later to tragically perish in an air crash off Sao Tome.

    Ten years later and by October 1st, 1985, the hope invested in the military as modernizing messiahs had begun to dim.  It was hope misplaced in the first instance, based on faulty comparison and naïve idealism. In 1979, by deliberate design, the military handed over power to the least competent and the worst prepared. They made an appalling hash of it all and when the soldiers returned four years later, it was to widespread jubilation and national applause.

    The mood of the nation on independence anniversary in October 1985 was of sober introspection and sombre apprehension. Two months earlier, a palace coup led by the Army Chief of Staff, Ibrahim Babangida, had toppled the government of General Buhari. If the applause had been muted this time around, it was because Nigerians were beginning to see themselves as helpless spectators in a play of military giants.

    Yet it was not all a tale of woes. Whatever the overlay of defeat and despondency, there has always been an underlying current of prospects and possibilities about the Nigerian project once certain conditions are in place. Those who watched the independence parade of 1985 must have left with the unforgettable memory of an Ibrahim Babangida drenched in rain and refusing an umbrella as he took the salute. It was a fetching symbol of leadership prospects and possibilities once our leaders get their politics right.

    In the event, the Babangida administration was to founder on the rock of poor politics and the misapplication of leadership potentials. By October 1st 1995, the military had comprehensively bungled the national project of democratization and the mood of despair and despondency had returned in full. After it had exhausted its historic and political possibilities, the military had been forced to bare its fearsome fangs and its most dreaded visage in order to retain the initiative. General Abacha’s despotic and kleptocratic blitz was in full progress.

    Ten years after on October 1st 2005, it was clear that despite the euphoria that greeted the military’s return to the barracks, the “Army Arrangement” that saw to the installation of one of its own as civilian president has failed to live up to its billing. Despite its brisk heroic beginning, the government of General Obasanjo had begun to unravel at the seams as a result of unresolved national contradictions and the monumental personal foibles and inadequacies of the helmsman.

    The self-willed general stalled and stonewalled, rummaging for an overdraft cheque which was superbly checkmated. In the ensuing chaos and collapse of the nascent democratic order, he was able to foist two manifestly inadequate successors in quick succession on a nation yoked to despotism and groaning for visionary leadership.

    This was the precursor and background to the sombre mood of the nation a fortnight ago as it celebrated its fifty fifth anniversary. After almost fifty years of wandering in the wilderness, the military spell has come to its full final swing. By some divine restitution, Nigeria is taking new tentative steps towards self-validation under another retired military ruler.

    If Mohammadu Buhari succeeds in merely laying the foundation of rectitude and fiscal responsibility in this country, he would have redeemed his old institution as well as his new constituency. Historical contradictions, being Janus-faced riddles, are never resolved to the perfect satisfaction of the contending gladiators. Those who win often lose a lot and those who lose often win something.

  • Chief Olu Falae: matters arising

    Chief Olu Falae: matters arising

    So where Awo would have seen this problem as a national one, and rather than peremptorily asking Fulani herdsmen to leave Yoruba land, he would have thoroughly analysed it and suggested ways of resolving them as such.

    The  vice royal  of Ilu-Abo,  Chief  Samuel Oluyemisi  Falae CFR,  is  far  too  important and  distinguished a personality  than to be laid upon by some  incorrigible  vermin’s – here I must be careful not to sound like that  irascible author of “herdsmen from hell”–  like the ones whose photographs we saw displayed in newspapers, claiming they were looking for money to celebrate Sallah. In ages gone by, long before the dictates of law and order prescribe otherwise, these ones would have been fed to lions. Such is the enormity, and how macabre the moment is!

     We talk here of  a  Chief Olu Falae, spiritual head of his people, a celebrated economist who, long before he ventured into politics, had served  this country meritoriously as a top and distinguished civil servant, leading banker and minister of the federal republic; not forgetting  that he was secretary  to the federal government. In politics, where he would later contest the presidency, it was Nigeria that lost when he was defeated by Gen Olusegun Obasanjo because, were the result otherwise, the trajectory of our country would have been different, and a lot better, given that the military would have been handing over to a democrat. The most profane of humanity should never have had the effrontery to put the chief through such ordeal as well as put the nation on such tenterhooks, even the president had to intervene. It is sincerely hoped that the consequences of that atrocity would be fully visited on the miscreants who, of course, represented, not the Fulani, but themselves.

     Unfortunately, sad and nauseating as the above is, it is the saner part of this unfortunate Fulani herdsmen incident as Afenifere’s subsequent reaction has been absolutely embarrassing, to say the least. So uncharacteristic was it, of our respected elders, that you begin to wonder what has happened to the concept of leadership in Yoruba land. So totally strange were the reactions that you wonder if they were coming from elders who dined and wined with the avatar, the inimitable Chief Obafemi Awolowo: his very associates and collaborators in that unmatchable, and unforgettable, era in the socio, politico-economic history of the Yoruba. For Awo had a template  as he uncannily demonstrated when, seeing the trajectory the Nigerian economy was headed under President Alhaji Shehu Shagari during the Second Republic, he drew his (Shagari’s) attention to it. Since I cannot pretend to be teaching Awoism to core Awoists, let me invite  Idowu Samuel for elucidation, as he did to the Awo template on Wednesday, 15 September 2010,  in  the article: ‘Obafemi Awolowo: One prediction, one democracy’. Wrote Idowu: “When Awo stepped out to speak, the shout of ”Awooo…!” would be thunderous and almost endless. Papa would pause for more than 30 minutes to gain control. He had to do it, sensing that the message he was to pass was germane, eternal and compelling. He would clear his throat for the last time to indicate seriousness. And then, there would be pin drop silence everywhere.”  Awo’s style was simple and direct, aimed at a resolution of the problem. He would draw attention, complete with verifiable facts and figures, indicate the likely consequences if situation was left unattended, and then posit ways out of the problem. His was never, as we saw in the instant case, a scruffy, knee-jack and, on-the-spur of the moment megalomania, left in the hands of some young men: the types described by Robert Greene in the 48 Laws of Power, mutatis mutandis, as being eager to “draw attention to themselves by creating an unforgettable, even controversial image and doing anything to make them seem larger than life in order to shine more brightly than those around them.” Writing further, Green says of these youngsters: “they make no distinction between kinds of attention, as notoriety of any sort will bring them recognition as having fire in their bellies.” Better to be slandered and attacked than ignored -seems to be their mantra. Some of them are now trying more than is necessary to be remembered by President Muhammadu Buhari.

    So where Awo would have seen this problem as a national one, and rather than peremptorily asking Fulani herdsmen to leave Yoruba land, he would have thoroughly analysed it and suggested ways of resolving them as such. Never would he have deigned to use Chief Falae’s kidnap, opportunistically, to re-open a political contestation already settled for the next four years. When, therefore, Afenifere threatened thunder, when it served notice of a unilateral declaration of independence by a Yoruba people it did not consult, when it undertook to banish a group of Nigerians from Yoruba land against the provisions of the Nigerian constitution, it was obvious that the traditional nation-cohering role for which the Yoruba leadership is well known, was being sacrificed on the altar of crude partisan politics, far away from fighting for Yoruba interest. At a time when former President Goodluck Jonathan has gloriously relocated back home to Otueke, it can only nauseate that our respected elders could, like the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, still not appreciate that the next election is not due until 2019. Or what, other than politics, could have brought together all of President Jonathan’s  election time allies in Yoruba land – Afenifere, the now divided OPC plus Femi Fani-Kayode, all, not only splitting hairs, but like they did to the former president on Yoruba votes, making promises on which they are in no position to deliver?  When, for instance, they threatened secession, how many Yoruba have they consulted or carried along with them? For Dr Faseun and Gani Adams – leaders of OPC which they arrogantly claim is the Yoruba military wing – is the Yoruba nation now no more than their 5000- strong politicised OPC they claim to have deployed to their misbegotten oil pipeline security contract?

    In a mail to the ekitipanupo web portal this past week, I raised the following posers: ‘What does Afenifere do when after their 2-week ultimatum, Fulani herdsmen are still in the Southwest complete with their flock? What do they do if northerners also ask Yorubas- traders, tailors, businessmen, and taxi drivers etc – in their tens of thousands – to also leave the north? What succour would they give if, consequent upon their threat, helpless Yorubas are attacked up north? What percentage of Yorubas  any longer  trust their leadership,  post Jonathan, given that the period saw our palaces completely bastardised with dollars with not a few Yoruba believing it was on their advice? How many Yoruba are in support of this threatened UDI – unilateral declaration of independence – when most of those threatening it can neither play “MASSOB”, nor would volunteer their own well-heeled children to lead the charge? Do they think secession is a tea party that should not be thoroughly interrogated, even if it were necessary? These elders are obviously inviting something they no longer have the capacity to handle. And they should just honourably sheathe their sword.’

    I am certain they are aware that for almost no other reason than the Fulani herdsmen, states like Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue etc have become literal killing fields just as they cannot be unaware that some Yoruba persons have actually lost their lives, for the same reason, in the Oke Ogun area of Oyo State but with nary a word from our elders as if one Yoruba life is more important than the other. Without any iota of doubt, the Fulani herdsmen have become a pain in the neck; a murdering horde spewing blood wherever they go. It is now of the utmost urgency that they are reined in and separated from their menacing AK47’s most probably supplied them by some wealthy Fulani leaders as these weapons don’t come cheap. However, that is the business of our law enforcement agencies which should be seen, or dragged, if need be, to perform their lawful duties. That murderers in successive crises in the north were neither tried, nor punished for decades, is one of the causative factors of Boko Haram now laying prostrate the entire Northeast with tens of thousands dead and billions of naira consumed in fighting it. Governments, at all levels, must now rise to find a lasting solution to this pan-Nigeria problem and elders will help that process if they do not lend themselves to making incendiary demands.

  • Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics (2)

    Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics (2)

    Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools

    I predict that every multilingual or multinational country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on principles which I have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability.—Awolowo in The Peoples’ Republic.

    To ensure effective governance of the United Arab Emirates after its establishment in 1971, the rulers of the seven emirates that comprise the Federation agreed to draw up a provisional Constitution specifying the power allocated to the new federal institutions. As in many federal structures around the world, certain powers remained the prerogative of each of the individual emirates, which already had their own governing institutions prior to the establishment of the Federation.www.uaeinteract.com/government/political_system.asp

    Today’s piece will begin to address some of the questions raised at the end of last week’s column:

    If the groups at the summit are in opposition to most of the governments in the Yoruba region, at what point are they going to call for rapprochement with elected governments of Yoruba states not in attendance at the summit? Do Yoruba citizens have a stake in the kind of federalism the Ibadan summit has called for? If so, what process does the summit have in place for mobilising citizens in the region for the fight for immediate re-federalisation or secession from the Nigerian union? But the focus of addressing some of these points today will be to demonstrate to those that organised last week’s Yoruba Unity Summit that the problem of dwindling federalism in the country is a long-term one that requires a long-term, rather than, a quick-fix solution.

    This column is not opposed to the call for federalism at the Ibadan summit of selected Yoruba socio-cultural organisations. The evidence for change of vision about how to make Nigeria achieve its huge potential is striking. For almost half a century, the country has failed to improve on the quality of life of most of its citizens while it has grown at the hands of military dictators into a centralised state system that denies subnational levels the autonomy required for innovativeness in such areas as economy, security, education, healthcare, and even infrastructure. Compared to when the country was governed as a fully federal state in the years before the fragmentation of the country into mini states, the Nigeria of today is in many respects incapable of raising the standard of living of most of its citizens. In the era of competitive federalism in the years before the civil war, it was possible for each of the four regions to apply the principle of competitive advantage to its development, despite ideological differences among the three regions. They each achieved this by raising from revenue principally from agriculture: cotton/peanut farming in the North; Palm produce in the East; Palm and Rubber production in the Midwest; and Cocoa from the West.

    In a recent World Bank report, Nigeria was ranked the third among the world’s ten countries with extreme poor citizens. Over 70% of its population live on N200 or less per day. 7% of the 1.2 billion people living below poverty line in the world are Nigerians. The Southwest in particular has lost the advantages of the head start in education that it gained in the years before independence and the civil war. Some of the causes of endemic poverty in Nigeria, according to the World Bank, include harmful economic and political systems, national conflict and violence, weak government effectiveness and efficiency, human rights abuses, weak respect for rule of law, and weak control of corruption. It has been observed that about 40% of primary-school age children are out of school. Even in the Yoruba region with the first free primary education scheme in sub-Saharan Africa, about 6% of children of primary age are not in school while more than 10% of those who attended primary school are not enrolled in secondary schools. It must be painful for those who participated directly or indirectly in promoting the importance of education under the government of Awolowo to look away from the decline in education, healthcare, security of life and property, and even lack of modest infrastructure in a region that was the actual pace setter in the years before the onslaught of military dictatorship.

    It is, therefore, not surprising that those at the Ibadan conference cried out for immediate intervention to end the system of centralisation that had been driven principally by military dictators and the belief by former military rulers that the Manna economy made possible by petroleum could support creation of tens of mini states that largely live on handouts from the federation account funded mostly by resources from petroleum. Just recently, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, leader of Northern Elders Forum, reminisced nostalgically in a newspaper interview about the positive impact of federal system of government in the past had on development in the country. He acknowledged the country’s cultural diversity and quoted Sir Ahmadu Bello on the need to construct a governing system that is driven by understanding of cultural differences rather than planning to obliterate such differences. Similarly, a leader of Northern Leaders Group in the Northeast even called for a national conference at which the North, particularly the Northeast would table its special needs. Those at the Ibadan summit are not alone in their call for a new political design of the country. This is in contrast to the new mantra being promoted by political office holders across the three levels that ethnic and religious differences are the source of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.

    Making their call for reinvention of the country at the coming to power of a former military ruler who campaigned on the platform of change and whom citizens voted for because they are hungry for change is good timing. The menu of policies for change is still being constructed by President Buhari as he shops for ministers to help him change the country. It is true that weak control of corruption has been cited by the World Bank for Nigeria’s decline, despite the country’s access to easy funds from petroleum for over five decades. It is also true that the new president has focused his attention on weakening the culture of corruption. But so is it true that the World Bank has fingered harmful economic and political systems as one of many causes. The balkanisation of the former four regions into 36 mini states at the beck and call of the central government by military rulers is an illustration of harmful economic and political systems.

    It may be myopic to just heap all the blame of the country’s underdevelopment on corruption. Since 1966, no government – military or civilian – has come to power without promising to end corruption. What appears to have been missing is coming to terms with some of the direct and indirect causes of corruption. It is conceivable that the transformation of Nigeria since 1975 into a country of unviable states in the guise of ensuring territorial unity is a major cause of corruption in the country. The competition among states had stopped for a long time being over revenue generation but over ostentatious use of funds passed to them from Abuja. If old men and women brought up on the cultural diet of achievement orientation in the decades before 1975 feel outraged by the visible decline in the Yoruba region to the extent of crying out for help, this should not surprise or alarm anybody who is interested in development of parts of the country and by extension the country as a whole. The right demand was made at Ibadan. What was overlooked at Ibadan is recognition of the complexity of restoration of federalism at the hands of a former military dictator who assisted in re-designing Nigeria away from a federal system.

    Re-federalising Nigeria is not as simple as Jonathan’s conference of 2014 that the Ibadan summit anchored its demand on. Insisting on the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference can be politically counterproductive. Jonathan’s party, the PDP, was not even in support of the conference. It was Jonathan that accepted to be goaded by many of the individuals now peddling his conference as the way out of the present political paralysis as a way of negotiating for votes. Individuals and groups that want restoration of federalism need to accept that the presidential elections of 2015 are over. The best way to move beyond obsession with Jonathan’s promise to restore federalism in a post-election period is to adopt a supra-partisan approach to ending the current unitary system that is designed for sharing of national cake, as distinct from baking the cake in all forms and in high quantities that can go round. Awolowo and other federalists and autonomists in other parts of the world had provided effective models for both partisan and supra-partisan methods of struggling for federalism. There is no evidence for such approach in the announcements of those hobbled by the Jonathan conference. We will discuss different approaches that had worked in other places next Sunday.

    • To be continued
  • Federal appointments: Buhari versus ‘selfish’ elite

    Federal appointments: Buhari versus ‘selfish’ elite

    For those who thought President Muhammadu Buhari was not bothered by the severity of the criticisms levelled against his appointments, especially presidency positions, the good news is that he is touched, even if he is unable to frame his responses well. Speaking through Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the opening of the 21st Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) in Abuja last week, the president inexplicably suggested that selfishness was behind the criticisms. Said the president: “You find out that the elite, whether from the Southwest, Northwest or wherever, are willing to collaborate in stealing the resources of the state. It is important to point out that the idea of where a person appointed into government comes from is meant to divert attention.”

    The president was being cynical. He was in sum accusing the elite of closing ranks when their private pecuniary interests were involved, but dividing the country and creating artificial divides and diversionary barriers when the wider interests of the country should take precedence. Alas, the president is beginning to sound like his predecessors, military and elected. Rather than seek to persuade the rest of the country to his point of view, and accept that indeed, it is possible for a majority to differ from the president, he has begun to read motives into what is arguably a simple, polemical issue.

    However, barely a day after the president gave vent to this unflattering view of dissent, pressures from Niger State forced him to withdraw the nomination of Musa Ibeto from his ministerial list. Former Deputy Governor Ibeto is an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain from Niger State who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) shortly before the 2015 elections. His competence was never in doubt. But his nomination was nevertheless withdrawn because it violated Niger State’s power zoning formula. It turned out that some of the state’s key appointees and elected officials were from the Niger North senatorial district. Alhaji Ibeto hails from the same district as the Secretary to the Government of Niger State and the governor himself.

    The presidency was right to respect the power configuration of Niger State, after all, appointments are not meant to divide the state or weaken the party. So, why then was it difficult for the president to recognise the need to spread and balance appointments at the presidency? President Buhari’s argument before the NES was both unfair to the elite and misplaced. The elite, whom he denounced as selfish, and this column maintain that the president was unfeeling in the structure of his appointments. Whether he likes it or not, without a religious and ethnic spread in his appointments, his policies and programmes stand the risk of being coloured by subtle prejudices and avoidable oversight. Importantly too, it was not only the so-called selfish elite that criticised his appointments; the criticisms were widespread and remain potent. His spokesmen suggested that by the time he would be through with the appointments, everything would balance out. It remains to be seen how that would be achieved, or, given some of the decisions emanating from the presidency, how he would avoid subtle biases.

  • And now a Somali Sapiens in Dallas…….

    Please recall that the dozing reverie was unfolding inside a Dallas taxi cab on Independence Day. A nation needs frequent mental audits in order get a sense of perspective and the national balance sheet.  There seems to be a cosmic overwrite which redirects Nigeria each time it stumbles. But given the profligacy of the Black person in the sultry tropics since nature plays a spoiling mother in such climes, whatever Nigeria has achieved has been at prohibitive cost and appalling human wastage.

    The rumination was eventually terminated by the wonderful hybrid of a driver who could no longer be ignored.

    “Where are you from? From your accent you sound East African?” the well-dressed, elegantly understated and well-comported man noted.

    “Oh God no! I am not from East Africa. I am a Nigerian”, snooper objected without much grace.

    “I see”, the man concurred with calm fortitude.

    “And where are you from?” snooper demanded.

    “I am Somali. I am from Somalia”, the man replied with a wry smile.

    “No wonder, you look like Siad Barre, the monster of Mogadishu”, snooper crowed with a hint of churlish distemper. The driver tapped the steering wheel in good humour and then eyed snooper through the mirror.

    “Oh no, I don’t ever want to look like that horrible man. We sent him to you in Nigeria like some human excrement after we have finished with him. We have not had a government ever since, and that was twenty five years ago”, the old guy noted with a smile.

    “Incredible!” a sleepy snooper yawned as a way of shutting the fellow up, but he was having none of that. He rapidly passed to the offensive. It was as if clan pride had been injured by snooper’s surly carelessness.

    “Nigeria has been the warehouse for expired African dictators. Felix Malloum from Chad, Siad Barre and Charles Taylor. There was even a time you guys were thinking of taking in Hissiene Habre, the devil of Samangudu. May be there was something to learn from them”, the fellow pressed with muted hilarity.

    “Oh shut up!” snooper wanted to slam the rogue but then restrained himself. Where did the guy learn all this from?  Fear froze indignity and indignation. Perhaps the all-knowing  and all-seeing FBI had infiltrated its Swahili specialist and Mogadishu mugger to rough one up. This certainly was no ordinary taxi driver.

    “In 1979, I visited Lagos upon the return of the soldiers to the barracks. There was so much hope and promise in the country. What happened?”, the old boy demanded.

    “Perhaps I should ask you your mission in Nigeria, since you seem to know so much”, snooper slammed the fellow who remained cheerfully unruffled which was all the more ruffling and baffling.

    “Oh no, I was not involved in any dangerous stuff. I was a student with so much money and time on my hand. For many of us who could afford it, Nigeria was the preferred destination as a beacon of hope and promise for the rest of the continent.  I stayed in a beautiful hotel in Ikoyi on Awolowo Road, I believe”, the old boy noted. The age grade and experiential median having been thus established, this was enough to loosen up yours sincerely.

    “See what we have done to ourselves!” snooper moaned.

    “It is the same all over Africa. Look at Mogadishu, a beautiful city overlooking the great ocean, built by the Italians. But now it has been destroyed beyond recognition. What the black man touches turns into ash”, the taxi driver noted without any hint of bitterness.

    Conversation drifted to the fear and suspicion among East African nations, the myth of Ethiopian origin, the real paternity of Haile Mariam Mengistu, to General Andom, Teferi Benti and Colonel Atanafu Abate but by now, we were passing through the Dallas downtown. My Somali interlocutor became sombre and quiet. And then he regained his animation.

    “You see that place?” he began in his calm manner. “That was where Kennedy was shot fifty two years ago. But whenever it stumbles, America has a great capacity to recover its poise. That is the difference between great nations and African toys. When last were you in Dallas?”

    “Exactly ten years ago”, snooper replied.

    “You can hardly recognize the place any more. Great developmental strides every minute. Meanwhile Mogadishu has gone back to the Stone Age”, the old boy noted with cool fatalism. By now we were getting to our destination, a sprawling gloriously leafy suburb of Dallas called Richardson. The old boy brought his calling card.

    “Here is my card and this is what I do. You can call me any time you need me. I live here now with my American family and three young children. The ones I left behind in Mogadishu have become collateral damage. My friends who left have all been slaughtered. I salute those of you who have the guts to go back, but I will never go back to that place”.

    It has been a remarkable Independence Day afternoon with a remarkable cabbie.

  • Reporting Africa

    On October 11, I was part of the audience at the award ceremony for the CNN/Multichoice Africa Journalists Award held in Nairobi, Kenya.  The programme started behind schedule due to the delay in the arrival of the special guest of the day, President Uhuru Kenyatta.

    Kenyatta, however, made up for his lateness with a very frank opening remark on how Africa is being reported by both local and international media.

    Expectedly, he lamented the emphasis on negative reports with not much attention being paid to some positive developments on the continent.

    I share his concern about the exaggeration of our failures and ignoring of our successes by the media but the truth is that there are just too many negative things to report on our continent.

    There is no doubt that we have some success stories to report about Africa but they pale into insignificance considering the crises we are experiencing due to corrupt governments across the continent.

    Our media can definitely report more positive stories about the continent, but it cannot afford not to reflect the reality of the way we really are to ensure that our leaders work hard to ensure better standard of living for the citizens.

    Below is excerpts from Kenyatta’s speech which should be food for thought for every African journalist and foreign correspondents:

    “In large part, you members of the fourth estate draw our mental maps of Africa. You tell us what matters, and how to understand it.

    “Let’s look at the pictures you drew this week.  I glanced at a global newspaper:  its Africa headlines were the coup in Burkina Faso, a bombing in Nigeria, crimes in Mali and the latest about Ebola. This came just after the UNDP report assessing Africa’s progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals, which showed very encouraging progress:

    “Child mortality rates fell by an average of forty percent in Africa in the period under review as did poverty in most African countries while improving women’s access to political leadership faster than any other region on earth. Why exaggerate African failure? Why ignore African success?

    “It’s not surprising that foreigners get our story wrong. The plunder and subjugation of Africa were justified by its misrepresentation as the home of outrage, atrocity and suffering.

    “The world beyond our shores has yet to escape those patterns of thought. What is surprising is that we too get our story wrong. I looked at a respected African newspaper, and it was equally negative, and equally prone to feeding the same old tired stereotypes. Indeed, the coverage of terrorist attacks – whose point is usually pain, panic and publicity – on Charlie Hebdo, or London, or New York on 9/11 respected the dignity of the victims.

    “We saw no images of dead or mutilated bodies in the mainstream media. But our coverage of African tragedies often disrespects and devalues African lives. I recall an African newspaper that led with the photo of a Westgate victim; and another in which the bodies of the Mandera victims took centre stage. If we cannot respect the dignity of Africans, who will?

    “There is an Africa that is dignified. There is an Africa that was afflicted by Ebola, just as there is an Africa, backed by the African Union, which gave its skill, its time and its money to save lives. There’s an Africa at war, but African peacemakers in AMISOM are ending some of our most intractable conflicts.

    “I have heard of an Africa that is hopelessly dependent on aid and charity; but the Africa I know has some of the world’s fastest-growing economies powered by radical transformation in technology and billions dollars of investments in infrastructure. I know that it is the innovation, resilience and sacrifice of millions of Africans that is lifting millions of our people out of poverty.

    “Stereotypes have an amazing ability to destroy our ability to see the facts; we who love Africa must stand up for her truths.

    “In truth, we depend on you African journalists to change the mental maps that lead us astray.

    “Imagine coverage that had told of African leaders’ warnings about the risks of state failure and terrorism before the Libya intervention; and examined the African Union’s plan to fulfil Libya’s desire for democracy in an orderly fashion. It might have saved thousands of lives. Instead, these efforts were caricatured and ridiculed, and intervention was declared the only option.

    “This time, with your help, Africa can represent itself aright.  You who stand with us here can honour the struggles and heroes of the African past by looking carefully, and speaking truthfully, about our continent – by giving us accurate maps of African reality. That’s why our meeting today is cause for celebration. I see here distinguished journalists who have served Africa well.

    “When those high standards are the norm, we will reclaim the African narrative.

    “We must, after all, the stakes are our freedom, and the safety and the prosperity of the world in which we live.”