The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Europe’s migrant refugee crisis: Re-enacting Mfecane

    Europe’s migrant refugee crisis: Re-enacting Mfecane

    In his controversial analyses of African affairs, former president Olusegun Obasanjo often puts on scholarly airs on account of his experience in government. He had supervised an activist foreign policy during his rule as Nigerian military head of state between 1976 and 1979, and had taken more than a passing interest in foreign affairs as elected president between 1999 and 2007. Now, he feels supremely qualified to write disquisitions on African and world affairs. But with the passing of notable and cerebral African leaders like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Leopold Senghor and Nelson Mandela, among others, the African analytical field is today populated by less gifted rulers and experts than the world average.

    In a statement he issued last week on Europe’s refugee/migrant crisis and the Muammaer Gaddafi factor, Chief Obasanjo said, inter alia: “It is time for the international community and particularly African leaders to take a good look at the factors responsible for the death and destruction in the Mediterranean by illegal migration of youths from Africa and address the causes in an honest, responsible, humane and holistic manner rather than the current futile attempt to half-heartedly deal with the symptoms rather than the cause…Although there are strenuous efforts to deny it, it is undeniable that the vacuum created by the lack of effective governance in Libya precipitated by the direct action of Western powers is responsible for the current anarchy in that country. The current inflow of African refugees into Europe from Libya is a direct consequence…The government in Libya which in 2000 acted humanely and responsibly to stem the outflow of illegal migrants to Europe has been replaced by unconscionable bandits and terrorists who have forcibly seized the instruments of state to facilitate human trafficking and illegal migration for their own material benefit.”

    Apart from establishing a spurious direct link between Mr Gaddafi’s fall and the repeated waves of migration to Europe, Chief Obasanjo also attributes the crisis to mainly economic and conflict factors. Not only did he misread the migrant crisis from the Libyan perspective, in the process betraying his indefensible support for the late Libyan leader, he also believes that Western powers were short-sighted in their machinations against Mr Gaddafi. By Chief Obasanjo’s acknowledgement, however, the migrant problem predated the fall of Mr Gaddafi, stating that about 17,000 Nigerians were repatriated from Libya in 2000. Economic factors explain only a little part of the crisis. In propping up the insurrection in Libya, Western powers merely responded to the looming stalemate in the Libyan war of resistance and liberation, a war accompanied by extreme butchery, a war triggered more by the widening gyre of the Arab Spring than by Western machinations. More importantly, the migrant crisis the world is witnessing today is less a product of African crises than Iraqi/Syrian civil wars. Even though numbers are still being compiled, most of the migrants come, in descending order, from Syria, Western Balkans, South Asia, some parts of Africa, notably Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, and Afghanistan. Syria accounts for the highest number of migrants.

    Indeed, the altruism Chief Obasanjo read into the actions and responses of Mr Gaddafi to the illegal immigration of some Africans in the opening years of the 21st century is absolutely misplaced. Mr Gaddafi repeatedly tried to profit from the illegal migrations, seeing it as a form of punishment for Western powers than a depressing manifestation of poverty and misrule on the continent. In 2010, for instance, Mr Gaddafi attempted openly and shamelessly to coax $4bn out of Western powers in exchange for his country’s help in stemming the flow of migrants and refugees.

    The quality of leadership and statesmanship has declined all over the world. In Africa, it is worse. Chief Obasanjo’s arguments show why Nigeria has never had any significant impact on the course of continental history, let alone world history. European leaders struggle to comprehend the migrant crisis, and seek ways to respond to it. Their efforts, though grounded in deeply historical understanding of the dynamic interplay of social, political and economic forces, have been desultory. Nigerians must be wary of Chief Obasanjo’s contributions to the crisis. His contributions simplify and misrepresent the process. They fail to take into account the forces shaping the Middle East. And they fail to even take cognisance of the undercurrents of African history.

    Contrary to Chief Obasanjo’s sanctimonious anger, Europe has been more dispassionate and less emotive about the migrant crisis, though it fears its economies and societies could be overwhelmed. One of the reasons is that for a continent that experienced two major wars barely 22 years apart in the last century, they are no strangers to mass movements of people across borders and sometimes across continents. They are familiar with the pressures that accompany massive dislocations occasioned by wars and economic meltdown. Importantly, unlike Chief Obasanjo and many others who fail to accurately contextualise the migrant crisis in Europe, European leaders are familiar with epochal migrations that have taken place over more than two millennia.

    Yet, African history boasts of one of the most impactful migration crises in the world: the early 19th century Mfecane (interpreted: crushing or scattering) or Difaqane in the Sesotho language, which convulsed the Zulu people and other around them in Southern Africa. No student of African history can fail to appreciate the chaos and mass movements triggered by the Mfecane between 1814 and 1840, and perhaps up to 1850s. Not only did the Mfecane cause mass movements and misery, as Europe, Syria, Iraq and others are experiencing, it also depopulated the Southern African region, influenced the formation of nations in that region, and paved the way for predatory colonial adventures that redrew and distorted the borders and histories of the indigenous populations. The Mfecane took place in the general area between the Drakensberg mountains, Kalahari Desert and Limpopo River, and was triggered by a host of factors ranging from land pressures, the nation-building wars of Shaka the Zulu, long distance trade, expansion of the presence of Cape Whites, decline of many indigenous kingdoms in the region, struggle between powerful kings, to wit, Sobhuza, Zwide, Dingiswayo, Moshoeshoe and Mzilikazi around the Pongola River and beyond. Then, of course, came the brutal and ambitious Shaka the Zulu with his new technique of warfare, and the region was never the same again. It is estimated that the region was depopulated to the tune of about one or two million people, though the estimates are controversial.

    Chief Obasanjo’s so-called deal with Mr Gaddafi is nothing but an awkward attempt at self-promotion, a disingenuous attempt to draw public attention to a hitherto unknown part of his public service years. The Libyan factor in the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe is minute. The main triggers are the heedless United States invasion of Iraq in combination with the civil war in Syria, itself a consequence of the Arab Spring, and the seething and endless struggle between the Sunni and Shiite power groups in the region. The vacuum created by the deposition of Saddam Hussein reopened the conflict between the more populous Shiites, who were kept out of the power loop for decades, and Mr Hussein’s minority Sunnis who ruled through the Baathist political party. The US invasion and the clumsy and unreflective foisting of Western-type democracy naturally tilted the scale in favour of the majority Shiites, paradoxically backed by the hated Iran. The Sunnis, with powerful backers from other Sunni Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, felt embittered and are believed to have acquiesced in the formation first of al-Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS.

    To a wise ruler outside the region, the entire Middle East and surrounding states are a political caveat. The struggle between the Sunnis and Shiites is expected to continue for a long time, and both the internal structures of the conflict and the outcomes will not be determined by popular democracy, but by force, as Yemen is showing. Invading Iraq was unwise, and it is not clear how the US committed that egregious blunder. How to recapture the escaped genie will be the preoccupation of the world in their effort to resolve the migrant crisis putting massive pressures on the European Union (EU). Millions have already been uprooted in the war-ridden region, nearly on the scale of the Mfecane. And the impact is felt in wider areas than the revolutionary movements that savaged Southern Africa in the opening decades of the 19th century.

    There are suggestions that the crisis should be tackled from the root. This is sensible but difficult, for the monster unleashed by the Syrian and Iraqi wars will not be easy to subdue. The oxygen upon which they depend will be difficult to eliminate. Russia views the conflict in the region as an extension of the Cold War, as a competition in which flexing of muscles could not be ruled out. Russia has been a long-standing ally of Syria, and in fact has a naval base located in the Syrian Mediterranean Port of Tartus, and is now actively involved in the Syrian civil war. It is not clear how the Russian approach would conduce to peace in that region, or curb the flow of refugees to Europe. If anything, the ISIS war may even intensify. It is true neither the US nor Europe has a clue how the complicated war and migrant crisis can be resolved. Both are loth to sustain Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad in power, for that is what it would amount to if Western powers put boots on the ground to fight ISIS. And they are equally wary of destroying ISIS because of the unintended consequence of strengthening Iran and its Shiite regional allies. Russia is not incommoded by any such considerations. It wants Mr Assad to be part of the resolution of the crisis in Syria, and is anxious to retain not only its influence in that country but also its base. Russia’s resupply of Syria may therefore prolong and complicate the war in Syria, and by implication the migrant crisis.

    Neither the Mfecane nor the current migration from ISIS-held territories was the first mass movement in history, as novel as the migrant crisis may be to the present generation. The controversial First or Second millennium exodus of probably less than a million Jews believed to have fled Egypt (Pop, 3.5m people at the time) is another example. The wars of Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong’s 1934 Long March, and the flight of Protestants from Europe to the New World (America) also triggered dislocations and movements. This column has argued many times that the world has not witnessed the end of the redrawing of borders. As wars, economic and climate pressures occur, people will undertake willing or forced migrations, some harrowing, and others adventurous. This generation is indeed privileged to witness a movement of the European migrant crisis proportion, and to document and analyse the story. But the analyses must be sober and unaffected by the self-promotion and romanticism of the kind dished out by Chief Obasanjo last week.

    The Syrian and Iraqi civil wars will not be resolved in a hurry, notwithstanding the best efforts of Russia, US and Europe. Resolving the wars is beyond the ken of Arabs and Persian peoples. The struggle between Sunni and Shiites in the Middle East will also continue for years, with perhaps occasional abatement. Iran will probably continue to grow into a major regional power, constitute itself into a specific and pressing threat to Israel, holding strongly to and nurturing the ambition to colonise the entire region as its Persian forebears did, as the Ottomans executed, and as Alexander the Great also accomplished with great flourish. It is a fallacy to think that multilateral security organisations such as the United Nations can keep the peace for a long time. In the face of national ambitions, empire-building objectives and economic pressures, such international arrangements are bound to wilt or collapse. The current migrant crisis merely foreshadows these frightening and destabilising possibilities.

    This is, however, not to suggest that efforts should not be made to tackle the terrible nightmare. Chief Obasanjo narrowed the search for solution and anchored it on a wrong misunderstanding of the forces at play and the historicity of the phenomenon. It is important not to lose sight of where the migrant crisis is coming from. Importantly, the dynamics of the mass migrations and the underlying forces that are shaping them must be properly understood and contextualised in order to find a solution, not the ‘lasting’ solution Chief Obasanjo idealistically conjured. There is, however, little evidence so far to show that all the interested powers and countries involved in the crisis have a clear understanding of what the problems are, let alone expertly juggle the factors necessary to dispose the region to peace and tranquillity.

  • Labour’s timely campaign

    Labour’s timely campaign

    Buhari must seize the momentum of the National Rally on Good Governance and Corruption

    For once in recent years, Organised Labour in Nigeria impressed me with the protest march it organised against corruption in 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, last Thursday. The states are Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kwara, Edo, Kogi, Kaduna, Plateau, Rivers, Bauchi, Jigawa, Abia and Enugu.  This is the way it should be. Labour is a critical segment of the country’s population and should be in the vanguard of progressive movement, including calling governments to order when they are derailing. The last time we saw labour in action in this country was during the fuel subsidy riots in January 2012. Even by the time that struggle was over; many allegations were levelled against the labour leaders, with some Nigerians believing that they eventually sold out to the Goodluck Jonathan government.

    Matters have not been helped concerning the Labour movement by the scams that have been brewing in its fold, first on the Nigeria Labour Congress’ (NLC)  now messy and controversial housing scheme, and the last February NLC elections that were stalemated. Many people believed the latter was the result of the infiltration of the Labour movement by  unprogressive elements in the country who would not want Organised Labour to speak with one voice, knowing that once they are able to unite, then, the antics of the corrupt ruling elite would be exposed and neutralised.

    That Labour was joined by some civil society groups is a good development because the civil society groups that were very active in the military era simply went to sleep as soon as we returned to democratic rule in 1999. This, indeed, was one of the things that the looters exploited to empty our treasury.

    I was fascinated not only by the protest march but also by the statements made at the rallies. Realising the despicable role that the judiciary had played in strengthening corruption in the country, the protesters warned: “Gone is the day when people that are corrupt will get perpetual injunctions restraining EFCC from prosecuting them. If we have such cases, Nigerian workers are ready to go to their residences and bring them to court and also interrogate the judge … We are also demanding that the penalty for corrupt public officers should be … capital punishment. It has worked elsewhere and there is no reason why it should not work here”. But this threat will remain an empty threat unless if the protest was genuine and it came from the bottom of the hearts of the organisers and their members. The point must be made, and poignantly so, too, that this is the mood of the nation. Those who want President Muhammadu Buhari to move on without looking at this sordid past are either the looters or their agents. We need to know what happened to our collective patrimony.

    I suspect that it is only a matter of time for the looters to quarrel with the capital punishment for them because rich people hate the sight of blood. It is for the same reason that they dislike the word ‘revolution’. But they almost always instigate revolution with their actions. For those opposed to capital punishment, Ghana remains a typical example. We all know what Ghana was like before the intervention of Jerry Rawlings who publicly executed six military generals, including former heads of state, over the same issue of corruption in 1979, in what has become known as the “Jerry Rawlings Solution”. The result is what that country is today. Even former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Farida Waziri, recommended the same panacea for Nigeria: “If some 20 high-profile offenders are tried and sentenced to death, this will send shock waves to Nigerians and curb both the impunity and intolerable prevalence of corruption in Nigeria”, she once said. Ghana may not be the best of countries even today, but it is far better than Nigeria in terms of corruption.

    Again, China has capital punishment for corrupt persons and that country is not doing badly either. When we even consider that what we are contending with are not pick-pockets but hardened thieves, then we see the need to be more draconian about corruption. For every naira that is stolen from the public till, someone suffers. Indeed, we cannot count the number of people that the massive looting we witnessed in recent years had killed. We cannot quantify the amount of social dislocation either. So, why must we allow those who caused such havoc to continue to harass us with their ill-gotten wealth?

    Labour has every reason to be worried about corruption. Many people have said it, and it is clear that this country has to kill corruption so that corruption would not kill it. Our textile sector is a typical example of how bad things have become for workers in the country and also a reason why Labour must be interested in how the country is being run. A company like Afprint, for example, used to operate three shifts with about 2,000 workers per shift; that was a workforce of 6,000 from one company alone. The 6,000 did not include management and administrative staff, not to talk of expatriate staff. All that is gone simply because of mismanagement and corruption in high places! And this is for just one sector of the economy. Unfortunately, many of those who ruled the country, particularly in the immediate past, do not seem to be remorseful of the grievous harm they did this country’s economy through their unbridled lust for public funds.

    Labour’s intervention at this point in time is good. Indeed, elsewhere, such intervention would have sent the guilty panting because they know the implication. Labour however has to put its house in order to be able to continue to speak with one voice and sustain the trust and confidence of Nigerians. None of those who stole this country blind would be happy seeing that NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) can come together to protest and even recommend the death penalty for them. If it is possible to check their pants, we would see evidence of the fear underneath. As for me, I do not have any strong sentiment for or against capital punishment. But then, I want to agree with Labour that people who brought this once-upon-a great nation to its present sorry state deserve nothing but the severest punishment. What they have done is worse than armed robbery. It is even the more annoying when such people are still walking as free citizens and making provocative and insensitive statements about the country, less than four months after losing out in a general election. In saner climes, many of these people would be hibernating in the remotest parts of the country, praying that no one should open the book of remembrance that would make people fish them out. Indeed, many of them would by now be cooling their heels behind bars or in hell in a place like China. But here they are, because this is Nigeria, they are just opening their mouths and all sorts of nonsense are coming out.

    President Buhari should seize the momentum by ensuring that nothing goes wrong with the anti-corruption war. No one should be deceived that those who looted the country’s treasury, like their type elsewhere, would go to sleep. As they say, corruption will always fight back. The corrupt know they have murdered sleep and therefore cannot sleep any longer, especially with a person like Buhari as president. So, they must be plotting every minute on how to scuttle the anti-graft war if they fail in their bid to negotiate their way out of the mess they put the country. I hear some of them are already being led to the president by some eminent people who they think can get them out of trouble. I also guess the president knows better.

    As I have always said, however, Nigeria should be interested most in its money; those of them who are penitent and return their loot may be pardoned. But it won’t be a bad idea if the hardened criminals among them rot in jail. If death penalty is considered anachronistic, then they should get nothing short of life sentence. There should be no opportunity of coming out of jail to enjoy the loot. That can only work in a country where people have a sense of shame; not in Nigeria.

  • Buhari’s return of equality to public discussion

    Buhari’s return of equality to public discussion

    The recent announcement that the Buhari presidency is poised to commence free meals for school children and modest social security for the destitute revives a tradition of public discourse that had gone out of fashion in most states of the federation until the 2015 presidential election. 

    For the past sixteen years, our country’s political and economic space has been dominated by two major themes: wealth creation and humanitarianism. All the PDP governments since the end of military dictatorship had focused on creation of material wealth at the expense of the welfare of majority of the citizens. Compared to many countries on the continent and despite the oil boom, Nigeria had paid lip service to provision of quality public education that can enable majority of the citizens compete in the expanding global economic space. General (now President) Buhari and the All Progressives Congress brought the theme of equality and what Aristotle called distributive justice back to the nation’s political space first during the 2015 political campaign. Just last week, the Buhari presidency moved from the plane of  campaign promise to policy development when the vice president announced that school children would be given one free meal a day in school.

    The last time Nigerians were bombarded with messages about the importance of bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots was during the last campaign of Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the presidency in 1983 and, more recently, during the campaigns of Action for Democracy and Action Congress of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007. When public policy rhetoric was not solely about war against corruption during Buhari’s first coming or structural adjustment in the era of Babangida, it was about primitive accumulation in the Abacha presidency, and endless attempts at economic and fiscal restructuring of Obasanjo’s second coming or the mania for wealth creation for and by those with assured access to the country’s treasury in the last six years of Goodluck Jonathan.

    The recent announcement that the Buhari presidency is poised to commence free meals for school children and modest social security for the destitute revives a tradition of public discourse that had gone out of fashion in most states of the federation until the 2015 presidential election. But, as expected, the leaders of yesterday’s party of power have started to pooh-pooh Vice President Osinbajo’s announcement. They warned against simple-minded imitation of an Aregbesola model that the same party had campaigned against and identified as the source of failure of the Osun governor to pay workers’ salaries as and when due. This theory of Osun State’s failure to pay its workers ignored the fact that there were more PDP-controlled states that were also unable to pay their workers’ salaries on time. Also amusing is the PDP’s silence on the negative impact of decline in revenue from petroleum and of the federal government’s decision to take loans from domestic and international money markets to settle federal workers’ wage bills.

    Nothing is unusual about PDP leaders’ negative stance on Aregbesola’s initiative to improve access to and retention rate in public schools. The negative attitude of PDP spokespersons is in character with the struggle for power in a multiparty democracy. What is bizarre about PDP’s characterisation of modest measures of social assistance to school children and poor citizens is the facile generalisation that such government expenditures on citizens are part of campaign rhetoric after elections. Despite similar criticism of Aregbesola when he introduced this social programme a few years back, the programme has enjoyed commendation from its beneficiaries and the international community on account of Aregbesola’s responsiveness to the state’s most economically vulnerable communities. It is also on record that Fayemi’s failure to win re-election in Ekiti in his second term bid was not because of his modest social security benefits to the aged of his state. Indeed, it was in spite of his responsiveness to the most vulnerable group in the state.

    It is a good beginning for Buhari and the APC that the poor and the forgotten in the country are the first community to benefit from his administration. Provision of free or subsidised meal for school children in elementary and secondary schools in many advanced countries has many advantages. Research has shown that children who have breakfast concentrate better in school than those who do not, just as those who have nourishing food in or outside school also improve school retention rate than those who do not have the opportunity of nourishing meals. It may be difficult for those with easy access to the wealth of the country to believe that there are millions of school-age children in the country who are malnourished on a daily basis. But the truth is that the country’s classrooms are full of children whose parents cannot afford to provide one nourishing meal a day. Without the kind of the model provided by the Aregbesola government, many of such children would have found learning too stressful and enervating.

    There is also an economic aspect of free or subsidised meals for school children. It helps to stimulate agricultural productivity. Better opportunities for bulk purchase of farm produce for farmers exist in Osun than in any other state in the southwest. Bulk and regular purchase has the capacity to improve farmers’ credit worthiness and to increase agriculture-related jobs, not to talk of providing employment for cooks and chefs. A visit to Osun State will reveal that no state has better public hygiene culture than what obtains in Osun today.  As this column observed a few years before Aregbesola came to power, each school child should be given one glass of fresh milk and one glass of fresh orange or pineapple juice each school day as part of the meal for the day. Apart from the additional nourishment such beverages can bring, the provision of vitamin and protein-rich drinks is capable of stimulating modernisation of  dairy  farming in the savannah region while daily serving of vitamin-fruit juice can boost modern fruit farming in the rain forest region of the country.

    On the few occasions I had visited Osun State, school children whom I interviewed were full of praise for the free lunch programme in their state. They were so enthusiastic about the free-meal policy that they described in glowing terms the meals given to them every day at the state government’s expense. Some of them even repeated the clichéd expression of “being given the opportunity to enjoy dividends of democracy.” It was not surprising when parents came out in droves to defend their votes when the nation’s security forces (or their clones?) supervised in a blood-thirsty way the state’s gubernatorial campaign and voting last year.

    If the experience of Osun school children is anything to go by, President Buhari and his party should act with confidence and waste no time to kick-start implementation of the free meal policy and other citizens’ welfare-related policies. Majority of Nigeria’s school children and their parents must be very excited about this policy. So must the federal government provide leadership to states on the need to use political power to enhance equality of opportunity for less materially-endowed citizens so that they too can add value in their own way to development efforts. Doing so will eclipse decades of politics of primitive accumulation by personalistic and patrimonial political and public office holders. It will also provide a new and enviable model for good governance in the country.

    But the efforts to reduce inequality must not be limited to one free meal per day for school children or token social security assistance to the elderly or the poor. Majority of Nigerians need government assistance in many other ways to enable them meet their basic needs: transportation, health, jobs, and salaries that can pull them out of poverty. Citizens are aware of the economic mess inherited by the Buhari government and do not expect miracles. However, they expect sincere efforts on the part of government at all levels to address poverty-alleviation and enhance equality across the country.

  • Blessed are the merciful: a Stella Adadevoh in European refugee debacle

    Blessed are the merciful: a Stella Adadevoh in European refugee debacle

    “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy – Matthew 5, verse 7 “

    Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. This is one of the eight so-called “beatitudes” of Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”. This is without question, the most widely known and admired of Christ’s teachings. I am not a Christian; I am not a religionist, but I regard Jesus as one of the greatest moral reformers and visionaries that ever lived. This does not satisfy fervently religious prayer warriors like my older brother, Elder Ben Ade Jeyifous, for whom both the divine conception and birth of Jesus, together with the narrative of his ascension to heaven are matters of both revealed truth and transcendent faith. To each man or woman his or her faith, his or her belief; it is enough for me that what Christ preached in his Sermon on the Mount remains as valid today as they were then and will be until the end of time – if such an end will come.

    These thoughts, these reflections have their origins in a report that I heard on the World Service of the BBC three Saturdays ago, on August 22, 2015. Unfortunately, I caught only the last or closing segment of the report which was about a Nigerian-born woman who is an immigrant in Greece and had formed an incredibly vigorous and effective advocacy group comprised mostly of women to struggle for and obtain humanitarian relief for the thousands of refugees and migrants streaming into Europe at the present time. According to the report, this woman was until a few years ago herself a migrant or refugee; she does not have a high-paying job and her social and economic conditions are only slightly better than dire. And yet, she gives nearly all she earns together with total devotion in body and spirit to helping others who, like herself only a couple of yeas ago, are caught in this unfolding tragedy of waves of human beings fleeing form homelands that have become too dangerous to live in to foreign lands that are reluctant to give them humane and dignified welcome.

    Since I heard only enough of that report to know that this woman is Nigerian-born and has an advocacy group that she co-founded, I have been engaged in a seemingly endless search on the Internet for her name, her identity and her life story, at least since she arrived in Greece. So far, my searches have yielded no concrete facts or accounts about this woman and her group. But I will keep searching for I have no doubt whatsoever that I will eventually come across a source of information that will reveal all the relevant facts of this woman’s life and experience. But meanwhile, she remains anonymous in my imagination, which is why I have no other or better way of thinking about her than thinking of her in the words of the title of this piece: a Dr. Stella Adadevoh in the debacle of the European refugee crisis. For of a truth, my head swelled with great national pride when I heard that report of this woman on the BBC, just as I had been powerfully and ineffably moved by the accounts of the heroic role that Dr. Adadevoh played in rising selflessly and courageously to the threat of the Ebola pandemic contagion in Nigeria slightly less than two years ago. Then as now with the story of this woman in Greece, we have ample proof that Nigeria, like other national communities in the human family, can and does produce heroines that are made of the stuff of legend in the scale of their humanness, most especially in their mercifulness.

    Mercifulness or compassion is very special because it is the most selfless and the least calculating of all the virtues enunciated in the Sermon on the Mount. True enough, Christ said that the merciful are blessed because they shall receive mercy. But what mercy did Dr. Adadevoh expect to get when she gave her safety, her life, to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus in her country? What mercy does this “anonymous” Nigerian-born woman in Greece expect from the acts of mercy she has expended in alleviating the suffering and the trauma of the refugees streaming into Greece and other European countries in the wake of the wars raging in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? There is of course the theological or ethical consideration that some acts of mercy may be predicated on the presumption that acts of goodness increase one’s stock of benefaction or recompense from the divine powers that are deemed to rule the universe. But in the lived and concrete immediacies of life and existence, true acts of mercy do not come from expectations of what one may get later in this life or in the life hereafter when the final reckoning, the final computation of moral and spiritual profit and loss is made by God or Providence. Indeed, we might ask here why genuine acts of mercy and human solidarity have been so sorely lacking in the European and more broadly, Western response to the debacle of the migrant or refugee crisis. Are these not, for the most part, Christian nations, these Western countries that have been so slow, so disinclined to show mercy, compassion and solidarity to the refugees and migrants?

    Here, it might be productive to highlight the case of Germany which has, by a long shot, been the most “merciful”, the most welcoming to the tidal waves of the refugees and migrants. In comparison to someone like the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been almost saintly in the compassionate statements she has been making about the plight of the migrants and refugees. While Cameron has more or less capitulated to the extreme paranoia of the British far right on the influx of the migrants and refugees, Merkel has repeatedly spoken very sharply against the racism and xenophobia of Germany’s far right. More significantly, she has stated that Germany is wiling to take about 800,000 refugees every year for the next few years. Here, you might say, is genuine, “Christian” mercy and compassion expressed in the idiom and the protocols of formal state policy. That is until you learn that this policy is actually calculated to be demographically and economically beneficial to Germany. This is because Germany has an increasingly aging population profile in which the birth rate and the youth population are not demographically robust enough to offset the percentage of the population that is growing too old for the effective workforce. In other words, Germany’s “mercy” here is predicated on the calculation that she will receive “mercy” in return from the consolidation of the stable workforce that is needed to ensure her economic supremacy in the European Union.

    Perhaps the thing that most clearly and incontrovertibly distinguishes the “mercifulness” of Chancellor Merkel and that of the “anonymous” Nigerian-born woman in Greece who is committing virtually all she possesses to the relief of the suffering and trauma of the refugees and migrants is the fact that while Merkel and the other European political leaders insist on making distinctions between “refuges” and “migrants”, the Nigerian-born humanitarian activist and others like her make no such distinction. In the context of the horrendous exploitation and trauma inflicted by traffickers on all those arriving in European countries from the Middle East and Africa, it is almost obscene and inhuman to make and insist on such distinctions. Putatively, a “refugee” is someone fleeing from dreadful war zones, especially the zones dominated and terrorized by ISIS. Conversely, a “migrant” is someone fleeing from the ravages of extreme or dire poverty with no end in sight for present and future generations. But in many cases, war and poverty are linked, whether they occur in states embroiled in full-scale war or post-conflict countries that are more or less failed states. Indeed, in the world we live in at the present time in this new millennium, poverty in the global south is often the extension of war into the domain of terribly unequal economic conditions within and between the nations of the world. And indeed, the late Marxist scholar and thinker, Giovanni Arrighi has determined, through rigorous research, that inequality in our world comprises two-thirds (or 66.6%) between nations and only one-third (or 33.3%) within nations. In other words, on this account, poverty is the continuation of war in the domain of economic production: the distribution and consumption of goods and services in our world are structured by great and incommensurable inequalities between the nations and peoples of the planet. The best and the most honest and humane among European thinkers and activists are very much aware of this fact and indeed make it the basis of their advocacy on behalf of the hundreds of thousands streaming into that continent at the present time.

    Nonetheless, Germany has stated clearly that it has room and space only for “refugees” and none at all for “migrants”. Ditto Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Some countries will take in neither “refugees” nor “migrants”, Hungary being perhaps the most intransigent and vociferous on this insistence. For the humanists and activists and their organizations, such distinctions, such language games used to mask outright racist and xenophobic sentiments and policies, amount to the collapse of genuine compassion and solidarity in a time of unprecedented crises of community and fellowship in our world. In this traumatic and traumatizing historical context for our world, one anonymous Nigerian-born woman, far away from home in a new home, is making a difference that is measured in the large-heartedness of the small acts of mercy and compassion that she and her advocacy group are taking to relieve the suffering and trauma that she sees all around her. I hope in time to find out who she is and thereby replace her present anonymity with the concreteness of a name, an identity.

     

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Dancing with my father’s friend

    Dancing with my father’s friend

    It was the time of music and memorable melodies, of spellbinding lyrics from those earthy geniuses of the talking drum and percussionists of political palavers. There are certain images that are lodged in the consciousness forever, certain impressions that can never be erased from the human memory bank. Memories are made of this. When shall good times return to Nigeria?

    It is an act of filial affection. Snooper takes a walk today away from the sclerotic deadliness of contemporary Nigerian politics to give a rare glimpse, a historic cameo, of one of Nigeria’s most charismatic politicians and his father’s bosom friend and fallen comrade in political arms, the late Gbadamosi Sanusi Adelabu Adegoke, a.k.a Penkelemesi.

    Adelabu Adegoke died fifty years ago last week in a car crash around Ode Iremo aged forty two. For the gifted ironist and great Ibadan nationalist, it must have been the equivalent of an old Ibadan generalissimo falling in enemy terrain.  A scrawny kid barely a year in school, snooper recalls the day of memorable mayhem with graphic intensity. It is an even more pleasant surprise that one retains a vivid memory of the man with the cat-like features and an amazing feline grace.

    Spare of build and middling of height, Adelabu Adegoke was nevertheless a titan among men. He was a giant in every other respect: in prodigal memory, in precocious intellect, in stubborn idealism, in visionary imagination and contempt for mediocrity, and in his prodigious appetite and affinity for the fairer sex. There was more than a hint of the ancient Ibadan warrior in Penkelemesi.

    He was Nigeria’s first rock star politician. In his feckless courage and aptitude for stormy confrontations, Adelabu Adegoke often betrayed the nobility of the naïve genius. This freewheeling and swashbuckling devilry of the happy warrior was to serve him very poorly in the treacherous terrain of pre-independence politics.

    Time after time, he was outgunned and out-foxed by more coolly calculating and Machiavellian scoundrels. But he retained his buoyancy of outlook; his vibrancy of intellect and optimism of granite will till the bitter end.

    Had he lived, and given his contempt for the norms of the bread and butter politician, it would have been interesting to see how he would pitch his tent in the great Awolowo-Akintola tango, or how he would view the antics of A.M.A Akinloye, his old comrade, who was to make a one hundred and eighty degree somersault back to right wing base.  Adelabu Adegoke came upon the political scene like a meteor and expired with the dazzling brilliance of a meteor.

    When beggars die, there are no comets seen but the heavens themselves blaze forth at the death of princes, observes the immortal William Shakespeare. The western Nigeria heavens did blaze forth on the death of Adelabu. Originating from beggarly and penurious circumstances, Adelabu was to overcome the straitened provenance of birth to become a shining star. Despite being born poor, he was a natural prince among men, combining an aristocratic hauteur with populist hell-raising.

    A plutocrat of plural possibilities, what galled him most was unearned merit and distinction and as the colonialists were to find out this royal rebel could be rude and rowdy with superiors while being cosy and conciliatory with subordinates. Adelabu was one hell of a political Robin Hood.

    But despite his outstanding qualities as a politician, despite his warmth, his humanity and spontaneous vitality, it is as a dancer of genius that snooper remembers the great man. Nothing can be more electrifying than the political dance. It is a carnival of the possessed, an orgiastic chaos brimming with elemental possibilities and permutations, redolent of collective orgasm. With his lean wiry frame, eel-like body dynamics and explosive foot-works, Adelabu was a star dancer. He was what the Yoruba will call “akuruyejo” or the small one who is a lovely dancer.

    It was a dull overcast afternoon. The first rains of the year came during the night turning the afternoon into a cool, lethargic affair in the small sleepy town. It was Adelabu’s bosom friend who picked his distinct scent from the distant echo of light music.

    “Ah Adelabu ti nbo (Adelabu is coming)”, father announced to no one in particular as a grudging grin lit up his stern comely features. The entire household erupted in spontaneous celebration. The women began chanting Adelabu’s praise with their husband staring at his assorted collection as if they were specimen from the zoo freshly liberated. Unlike his bosom friend, snooper pere was a man of amazing self-restraint. The unlettered damsels saw this as a rare opportunity as they crooned:

    Adelabu, Akande iji

         Igi jegede ti d’ana ru

          A nle bo lehin, o nl’ara iwaju

           Ekun oko Ayoka omo kumo.

    This was Adelabu’s usual gambit, his signature tune and part of his huge repertoire of political tricks. He would pack his car at a distant and then proceed on foot in a carnivalesque procession. Famously, he once abandoned his official car at Molete and then headed home on foot asking the good people of Ibadan to take possession of their property. The people responded with joyous lyrics.

    Adelabu ma kowo wa na

    Igunnu loni tapa, tapa loni Igunnu

    Ma kowo wa na.

    By the time Adelabu’s entourage reached the vicinity of our household, it had been transformed into a huge crowd of dancers and drummers, a colourful assortment of rural merrymakers, an agrarian tapestry of colour and chaos. Snooper and his various mothers joined the suburban pageantry to the delight and approval of the crowd. The prince of charismatic confusion was swinging and digging with regal abandon even as he winked devilishly at the more unprintable of the lyrics.

    Meanwhile Ayan, the lead drummer, a rogue musical genius of inventive profanity, had worked himself into a state of delirious frenzy, frothing at the corner of the mouth as he dished out tons of provocative malediction against political enemies. For the moment, he concentrated his attention on the palm tree, the symbol of the rival Action Group.

    Inu Igbo l’ope ngbe

     A ki kole adete s’igboro

      Inu Igbo l’ope ngbe.

    And later:

    B’a o r’epo mo a of’ori s’obe

       Ope nikan ko laiye.

    By the time the procession reached our doorsteps, Ayan had raised the stakes, taking a vicious swing at Awolowo himself. By now, he had about him the look of a deranged hyena even as his talking drum pulsated with malice and mischief.

    Bowo ba ba Awolowo yi yan ni e yan

    Kale ro njeba lola

    Bowo ba ba Awolowo yi yan ni e yan

    By this time, the procession had reached its destination which was our doorstep. The crowd puller had to be separated from the crowd. It was a rowdy separation. Adelabu disappeared  into the bowels of the house to strategise with his friend and comrade in arms. The curtains fell on a great man forever. Six months later, Adelabu died in a car crash. Nigeria had lost one of its most illustrious sons.

    Till date, snooper has continued to ponder how Adelabu would have dealt with the Awolowo phenomenon, particularly when it reached its full crushing momentum of mass mobilisation. Perhaps the pragmatic and more politically astute Ibadan politician would have surprised the ponderous Ikenne lawyer on the homeward stretch, cutting a deal that Awolowo would never have contemplated and saving his people from the long scourge of misbegotten federalism.

    It is unlikely that Adelabu would have cut a deal with Awo. While Awolowo viewed Adelabu with wary curiosity, Adelabu viewed Awolowo with brash intellectual contempt dismissing him as an upstart. Where was Awolowo when he Adelabu was performing those academic miracles at Government College, Ibadan, Adelabu would have rued to himself.

    But while Awolowo was a great political artist, Adelabu was a great artist in politics. The great artist in politics weaves powerful tapestries in the collective memory and imagination leaving behind only glimpses of his tortured and alienated genius. It is the great political artist with great stamina and stability who builds enduring empires. Fifty years on, yours sincerely remembers dancing with his father’s friend.

  • Revisiting Ekitigate

    Revisiting Ekitigate

    If the giddiness of his office will not permit governor Fayose to forever seek forgiveness from God, we, as chroniclers of events, owe him the duty of reminding him of the events surrounding the 2014 Ekiti governorship election.

    Sacrifices are paramount in the development of any society. However, it is nothing short of a scam to impose stiff sacrifices on the people when those who sit on their wealth live in ostentatious opulence. Fayose has not cut  his salary the way President Buhari  did, nor has he reduced his fleet of cars or the huge public burden of maintaining the state house where he lives like a  pampered and over fed king presiding over an impoverished people. Rather, he lives in filthy lucre, inflicting neck-breaking sacrifices on those he governs. It is all a ruse; a state-orchestrated deceit of the highest order. The imposition of tuition fees on Ekiti parents by an uninspiring leadership, with no economic vision, is just a plot to dis-empower the poor further.” – Wale Adeoye, a multi-award winning journalist.

    That epigram popped up on the ekitipanupo web portal as I wrote this article. And how timely it was as, being a member of the Fayemi Education Task Force, and knowing what great work that committee of experts, with many professors of education, former vice-chancellors, school teachers, parents and administrators did only a few years back, I had no hesitation in concluding that the Fayose  Summit  was  just a  ploy to free state funds for the governor’s  unaccountable use as we have seen him do, wasting state resources, serially, on irrelevant advertisements. Otherwise, how could a governor in Nigeria’s Southwest impose school fees in the year of our Lord 2015,  some sixty years after Awo introduced free primary education in the region?

    Incidentally, it was the reports from the summit that prompted this article. For instance, it was reported, and I hope he was misquoted, that the highly regarded Ekiti icon and respected legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalola, said he and Fayose are two of a kind. I am hoping all he said is that he will co-operate with the governor in developing education in Ekiti. That way, many of us, his admirers, will sleep easy.

    Another, which is the leitmotif for this article is this, credited to Fayose: “I have not seen in the history of the state where a man gives an incumbent governor 16:0”.

    If the giddiness of his office will not permit governor Fayose to forever seek forgiveness from God, we, as chroniclers of events, owe him the duty of reminding him of the events surrounding the 2014 Ekiti governorship election. And here, I shall rely exclusively on their own words as captured on the yet to be controverted Ekitigate tapes. None of those named in that show of shame has yet headed to the courts.

    God is not man that you will deceive Him and He gives to all men according to the work of their hands. When President Jonathan instigated, approved and funded Ekitigate – Chris Uba came  to Ekiti with truckloads of naira drawn from the Umuahia branch of  the CBN – his intention was to test run the rigging plan for his forthcoming election; a  seemingly foolproof  plan Musiliu Obanikoro relied upon to predict the president’s unalterable victory. They obviously forgot that ‘there’s God o’.  So solicitous was the president about not being disgraced out of office that, according to the details of the Ekitigate tapes, he ordered the entire Nigerian army, through instructions to the Chief of Army Staff, to rig an election. I leave the reader to judge whether he succeeded in that vain hope. Ekitigate must, in its entire ramification, represent President Jonathan’s lowest point in office as no Nigerian alive could have thought that the day would ever come when a head of state would suborn the Nigerian army to such infamy or debauchery.

    The Capt Sagir Koli tape features the following individuals:  Now governor, Ayo Fayose, Senator Iyiola Omisore, Brig General Aliyu Momoh, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, Captain Sagir Koli and one Hon. Abdul Kareem.

    I wish to specifically draw Fayose’s attention to these key quotes in the hope that if anything would ever make him sober, they should:

    Musiliu Obanikoro: –

    Jonathan’s Minister of State for Defence: “I’m not here for tea party, I am on a special assignment by the President.”

    “That Daramola (Fayemi’s Campaign Manager) I want him picked up in the morning! “Look here, you can’t get promotion without me sitting on top of your military council – (has promotion in the higher ranks of the Nigerian Army become so cheap?). If I am a happy man tomorrow night, the sky is your limit” -(voice)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO2SyPkk52w

    Ayo Fayose: – PDP Gubernatorial candidate and now Ekiti State governor.

    “We agreed in Abuja on the modalities to work, we agreed on a sticker, that any vehicle you see that sticker, you allow that sticker. That sticker is on those vehicles; his own was sent to him, mine was sent to me. The one by SSS – (the same SSS  Fayose  now daily moans about its so-called illegal use) – was given to me to give to them. There is

    no vehicle that left this place without that sticker. The people you just disarmed had that sticker clear and clean.” “Today they went to “Efon”; they carry all the ….. where we are supposing (sic) to be collating THE THING INEC GAVE TO US – read RESULT SHEETS – soft copies we now PRINTED and everything, because they see INEC  on top of it. Why is my CONTACT MAN not with them? I said my contact man would be sitting in (sic) the check point PERMANENTLY. I convince this man to leave this people, they were said to sit in the sun. They packed all the COMPUTERS – (tell me what a candidate was doing with computers on the field on election day) – it took me more than 2 hours to get this man to release this people.”

    “CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF CALLED ME and he told me, you are in safe hands, he [General Momoh] would perform and if you have any issues, call me. He told me that I have made it clear to him that I AM JONATHAN for this election.”- (Voice) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOce2g4O9XM

    Brigadier General Aliyu Momoh: – Commander of the Nigerian Army’s 32nd Artillery Brigade, Akure.

    “We have strike force, they just entered into the force. We can start arresting in the afternoon. There are about six special teams. “I have one “Strike force – Koro cuts in. “I have almost forty soldiers after deployment”. We have done a lot of arrest. Chief never believe me… he said OC mopol should handle them, we did. Now we have nothing less than 500 vehicles – (the same vehicles used in distributing the photocromic ballot papers Uba brought all the way from Igbo land) – with specific instructions”. It’s not because you are here sir. In fact if I start crying now….. No no no. (A General?)

    Fayose: “Excuse sir, I told Chief Uba (Chris Uba – a bloody civilian Jonathan turned to an army commander?) that he should send me some soldiers that should go with me. The war is eminent (sic). I was in my house when CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF called me, and told me he has briefed him (Momoh), and gave me his number because I never met him before. He told me he would perform, and if you have any issues, call me. He told me that I have made it clear to him that I am JONATHAN for this election. He only called me WITH INSTRUCTION FROM THE VILLA”.

    Now is that the election Fayose never stops breaking our ear drums about? Is that his licence to lead Ekiti to complete ruination? I think decency and penitence require that he stops these his funny jokes about 16: 0 20:0 or 30:0 and settle down to a modicum of governance.

    There can be no stopping us drawing attention to these things as death will come when it will.

    What remains to be done on the Ekiti governorship election, not for Ekiti, per se, but for the integrity of the Nigerian Army which for decades have been involved in peace keeping activities, mingling with armies from the civilised world, is for the Chief of Army Staff and the Director-General of the DSS to appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to institute an in-depth investigation into this lowest levels both the institutions have sunk  so as to salvage something of their integrity and make their re-branding efforts a  success. Also, Captain Koli, a hero and a patriot of the highest order, should be promptly recalled and integrated into the service he gave so much for.

  • On Adegoke Adelabu

    About a fortnight ago, the Ibadan people and the entire Yoruba race celebrated one of their greatest sons with a big splash. It was the centennial anniversary of Adelabu Adegoke, the political titan, emancipatory thinker and one of Nigeria’s most remarkable contribution to African nationalism and the decolonizing project.

    It is remarkable that a man who died almost sixty years ago at the youthful age of forty two remains the object of such great adulation and affection among the Yoruba people. This is a great lesson for our politicians. In the end, it is not the money you make that matters but the many whose life you touch in a positive and everlasting manner.

    With his grand gestures of anti-colonial defiance, his oratorical flourish, his imaginative fecundity, his verbal overkill and penetrating insight into the pitiable plight of the Black person, the charismatic and iconic politician touched the life of many people and by so doing a affected the destiny of the Nigerian nation in a profound and positive manner.

    To the best of our knowledge, Adelabu did not leave behind a vault of vast riches and stupendous wealth. Indeed such was his contempt for primitive accumulation that the late titan often sorely tempted fate, daring it to return him to the penurious circumstances from whence he came. His legacy resides in his political distinction, intellectual prowess and his exceptional brilliance as a student.

    This morning, and by popular demand, this column republishes a tribute to Adelabu first published seven years ago on this page on the golden jubilee of the great man’s tragic departure. It is also a labour of love and affection for snooper’s father who was a bosom friend and comrade in arms of the Ibadan political colossus.

  • Drama as Okon submits his assets’ form

    As the historic trial of looters assumes a national frenzy with the Labour people putting in their heavy proletarian boot while demanding the Chinese treatment for corrupt officials, legal fireworks are crackling across the length and breadth of the nation. It appears as if some legal snipers are at work and are bent on toppling legal colossi from their Olympian penthouses.

    The crux of the argument is as legally recondite as it is politically transparent. Dear readers, can a person lawfully declare his assets when he has not declared his liabilities concomitantly? In this particular case, the weight of evidence may also torpedo the evidence of weight, apologies to Timi, the Law. Put in another way, when do political assets become economic liability and when does economic liability translate into political assets?

    The evidence of weight in one may easily become the weight of evidence in the other. But can political weight aid economic weightlessness through assets shredding or the shedding of political weight? It promises to be a battle royale between the jurisprudence of living oracles and the oracle of living jurisprudents, apologies once again to Uncle Tunji Braithwaite.

    But you can trust Okon not to be left out of this epic legal melee. On Friday morning, the fey fellow sauntered into snooper’s bedroom clutching a raft of rumpled sheets with a drunken Baba Lekki in tow. The whole room was suddenly invaded by the foul stench of stale palm wine and raw tobacco.

    “Oga I wan quickly reach them ICPC for dem Abuja office make man submit him assets. I no wan make dem Buhari man come catch man for offside”, the crazy boy drawled with drunken gusto.

    “ I see. Since when has it come to this?” snooper grunted with a cynical hiccup.

    “Dem Yoruba boy say dem Sheriff don come. I don see one for dem American film. The way him dey shoot people, Okon no fit sleep again. I no wan make dem Sikira people see man come kaput. Na the thin dem dey wait for”, the mad boy wailed.

    “Get lost man. Is it poor church rats like you they are looking for?” an exasperated snooper screamed at the boy.

    “Ah oga, church rat no be dat poor ooo. Na church rat get church when dem human rats don vamoose. He get time like dat for Biakpan when I see with my korokoro eye as dem obonge church rat dey chase dem pastor. He come chase am sotey and he come catch am by dem organ and he come bite him blokos bad bad, Naim I come pick race”.

    “Okon, get lost. You are just a crazy crook”, snooper charged at the boy, trying to suppress his mirth at the whole comic episode.

    “Oga cook no kuku be crook. Dem crook dey Abuja, na dem dey cook book and na dem dey fry paper”, Okon sneered.

    “Wo o ri yen so”, the crazy old man suddenly thundered and then turning to snooper. “Let me tell you, you have been indulging in argumentum ad hominid, the arguments of barbarians and primitive beasts of no nation”. Not having the stomach for an early morning confrontation, snooper decided to ignore the drunken contrarian.

    “So Oga Okon, what are your assets?”snooper asked in a conciliatory mood.

    “Ha thank you oga”, Okon began with an expansive flourish” I get am for two thousand naira for bank. He be three thousand before before but dem bank boys thieve am, I get six yams I thieve for Ketu market. I get six eggs I nab for kitchen. I get two goats I capture when dem dey do two fighting. I get one dog I come arrest when him knack him partner kaput and him come dey cry. I get one monkey I nab as him dey cross road under dem pedestrian bridge for Oshodi. I get two chicken who dey abuse me for dem Isolo market, and and I get dem lady corset wey dem Charity forget after I wire am senseless and he no sabi road again. Na only one liability I get and dat one na Sikira who dey thieve all from Okon”.

    It was on this note that snooper threw out the drunken duo.

     

  • Calling new Immigration Chief

    Passing through the Nigeria-Benin Republic boundary in Badagry can be a nightmare for any traveller not familiar with the route.

    Last Tuesday and Thursday was not my first time of travelling to Togo and back by road, but I had expected that the situation would have improved since over four years when I did. But not much has changed.

    What is supposed to be the border post with clear demarcation of buildings and gates is an open land area with all manner of temporary structures occupied by immigration officers on both the Nigerian and Beninoise sides.

    Various barricades, some with ropes, are used by officials to supposedly check entry and exit of persons and vehicles across the two countries. With the lack of necessary infrastructure, what obtains at the border cannot in anyway be said to be thorough.

    The border is so porous that that no matter how hard the immigration officials try, they cannot, given the situation they found themselves working, effectively monitor who comes in or goes out of the country.

    Without any documentation, it is easy for anyone passing through the border to beat the official procedure and pay his or her way through, thanks to touts, especially on the Benin Republic side who are all over the border area.

    While my colleague and I on the trip had our passports stamped without paying any fee on the Nigerian side, we were lured into the Benin side by touts and ended up paying some illegal fees, instead of waiting for our taxi driver to drive us across.

    The touts were obviously working with the connivance of the officials. If not, I don’t understand why they and some corrupt officials should be allowed to exploit innocent persons openly without being called to order.

    Unlike the Nigeria-Benin border, the Benin-Togo boarder is well mapped out with tarred road and buildings for the officials to regulate entry and exit.

    On my return from Togo, I met Nigerian immigration officials operating in temporary shed and dilapidated structures as offices.  I could feel their frustrations about not having a conducive atmosphere to carry out their duties as they manage to work with the limited facilities they have.

    I learnt they have to make do with small generators fuelled by them at night due to lack of electricity supply.

    I notice on-going construction work at the border post, but I am not sure how long it has been on and how soon it will be completed. The border is yet another indication of dilapidation of various facilities in the country begging for attention.

    If we are really serious about ensuring the necessary immigration procedures at our border posts to check mate the influx of illegal persons, there is an urgent need to build the needed structures and properly equip the officials.

    The new immigration chief should make the Badagary border post a priority given the high traffic of persons on the West African route. It is a shame that Togo has a better border security post compared with us.

    Given our size and resources compared with our neighbours, our facilities should be the benchmark for others to emulate.

  • Holding our lawmakers accountable

    …We may call them also to book a tour of the national assembly structures… not to see where our money is going (we’ll never see that) but to at least see where our lawmakers plant their behinds when they are debating those bills we know nothing about

    Last week, dear reader, we lamented the fate of one Mrs. Egede who fell in the hands of a brute; and we went to town on how the collective leadership of this country, executive and legislative, had contributed to her death. Sometime in the week, I then chanced on a newspaper report about a United States Congresswoman who gave us a lesson in Nigeria on how and why we must hold our lawmakers accountable. Oh yes, she also lamented that the said lawmakers had not done much, if anything, to help our Chibok girls come back home.

     Truly, I have found it rather baffling that it is taking this long to find these blessed saints of God. What, I ask myself, are our more than fifty million men in this country doing if they cannot find these girls? What are they all going to do at work in their newspaper offices, police posts, army cantonments, corporate offices, fire stations, mechanics’ workshops, university classrooms, national assembly, etc., when they cannot find a number of missing girls? Why, let supper be late a few minutes, the men begin to holler across the hall, ‘what is going on in that kitchen? Why is supper so late? What have you been doing all day?’ Um hun; now, our girls are missing and our men are hiding behind their newspapers. Oh, no more newspapers these days, eh, only cell phones? Prima.

    I will not report the theories I have been hearing over these ‘missing girls’ story. They are so many. Suffice it to say that they are not palatable in any way. Of greater concern to us today is this matter of how we can make our assemblymen and women begin to hear us when we holler across to them on any matter. For instance, when I look down my palm and my housekeeping money has disappeared into the market (no, not into my wardrobe), I should be able to holler to my councilman, state assemblyman, Federal Representative or Senator, and they must hear me and also do something. They must all scurry to my aid. Ha!, in Nigeria you say? That’ll be the day!

    I tell you, I have always said Nigerians are biting more than they can chew on this democracy thing. For starters, please if you understand the democratic system we are running and the way it is supposed to work, please raise up your hand. Let’s see, one….one…one… What, only my hand is up? I was using it to count. Seriously, the level of democratic literacy in this country is too low.

    Do you remember that at the beginning of this republic, every elected official found his way to the U.S. ostensibly to ‘study the democratic system’ and how it works at state expense? The idea was that they would come back and put their knowledge into good practice for the benefit of the Nigerian mankind. Unfortunately, they came back with close to zero knowledge on democratic education but with a great deal of knowledge on something they call ‘lobbying’. In Nigerian parlance, it means sharing office. Now, occupying those offices, our lawmakers have become our masters.

    Anyway, my point is that they failed to take the electorate along on those trips so that we could also learn how to have expectations in this democracy thing. Since that did not happen, we the electorate have somehow got on in the best way we can. Thus, our expectations have been directed not at statecraft or state development but self-development. Now, what we expect from those lawmakers that come from our families hinges mostly on favours regarding what to eat, admission for our children, raising the marks of our children, adding to our housing funds, changing stubborn wives, changing useless husbands, buying new cell phones, new shoes, new cars, etc. Yep, they are useful after all, I mean the lawmakers. The only problem is that they escape with most of the funds that are supposed to be used to provide water, electricity, good  One Reader’s Digest article I read on the subject was very detailed on the five or so things that we are expected to call our lawmakers on and for. It says that we are expected to call them to ‘express our opinion’, particularly on bills. I add that we can also tell them what we think of them. I would advise that you be at least ten thousand miles away when you do the latter one. Anyways, to do the first one, you must know what bills are being debated in the house in the first place. Since most of us are more occupied with what we will eat, however, what goes on in the assembly really does not feature much on the menu.

    The article further stated that we should call our lawmakers more often because they can help us get our passports faster, particularly when we need to travel urgently. Well, since most of us don’t travel any farther than our villages to hunt game for holidays, we don’t carry passports. The animals don’t ask for passports before allowing us to shoot them. When they begin to ask, then we’ll know what to do. However, this does not mean we should not call our lawmakers when we have emergencies; we should. Please call them when food runs out in the house, your husband is late coming home, your wife refuses to cook dinner… Perhaps, calling them frequently will reduce the number of people desperate to become lawmakers.

    We are also advised to call them when we need help getting our benefits such as social security (we don’t have that here) or veterans (they literally take care of themselves) or pensions. Now, you’re talking. We need all the help we can get on how we can quickly collect our pensions or even health benefits. As a matter of fact, I foresee a situation where if our lawmakers cannot help us access those things quickly, they themselves can quickly become our health or pensions benefits.

    Then the article says we can call our beloved lawmakers to obtain funds for projects. Take me for instance; I’m always on one project or the other. Right now, I am trying to get my flower to grow into a tree. So sorry, I shouldn’t joke too much with this serious topic. Yes, there are so many projects that can do with some help from our lawmakers – e.g. how to make the government ban okada from taking pregnant women or nursing mothers as fares. In other words, there should be no more picking children on okada. The article says lawmakers usually know about federal grants for projects. Well, with the rapacious appetite of our lawmakers for the nation’s money since 1999, all I can say is that if you know about such grants, it is best not to let your lawmaker know.

     By all means, we need to call our lawmakers. We need to put them on their toes. We need to let them know that we are around and kicking mad at the fact that they don’t seem to want to know we are around. If for nothing else, we may call them also, as the article says, to book a tour of the national assembly structures. We may want to go to the assembly not to see where our money is going (we’ll never see that) but to at least see where our lawmakers plant their behinds when they are debating those bills we know nothing about. Call yours now. I will call mine just as soon as I know who exactly my councilman is… Yes sir, I have to start from somewhere.