The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • War Lord Democracy

    War Lord Democracy

    As military rule mercifully recedes into remote and distant memory in Nigeria, it is profoundly ironic that the democratic process continues to manifest some of the ungainly features of repressive autocracies. For example, there is the continuing militarization of the polity and the weaponization of politics itself to the point that it has become a game of political warlords. This much was evident in the last days of the last regime.  Only a balance of terror and the watchful eyes of the international community prevented Nigeria from tipping over into the abyss.

    But so soon thereafter, we are at it again as it is customary for a country with a legendary reputation for permanently camping at the edge of the abyss and for flirting with suicide.  Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me, as George Orwell famously noted. Politics in Nigeria is a game of multiple treachery and multivalent betrayal.  Yet it is only those who consider politics however dangerous hair-raising as a mere game that would fail to see the delinquent seizure of the machinery of the senate by some rogue senators in all its dangerous and destabilizing import.

    Once again, something new comes out of Nigeria. This one goes beyond the established norm of political normlessness. As we shall see, it strikes a deadly blow at the change mantra of the current regime. It casts the senate in dissident dissonance and disharmony with the executive and possibly with the judicial arm. It sets the stage for a crippling administrative disorder and possible disintegration. A hybrid senate leadership is a hybridized monster which is unknown in the history of modern democracy and one with a capacity to destroy even its own. It is a peculiar mess, a typically Nigerian peculiar mess at that.

    Having said that, it is important for those who have invested intellectual, strategic, political, economic and even ethnic capital in the project of change and the possibility of national redemption not to despair or throw up their arms in frustration. Democratic change cannot and does not occur overnight. It is always easier for forces of reaction to regroup and reassemble at short notice because they know the economic price of everybody but the political value of nothing.

    It is too early in the day to consign the Buhari administration to the trashcan of history. Nigerians, both mighty and low, must learn the virtue of patience. A people without any demonstrative capacity for collective revolutionary initiative must also not add the vice of impatience to their baggage. This is not the time to further inflame passions. It is not the time for wild speculations and unrestrained tirades. Without sacrificing party supremacy, APC must engage its dissident members. Bukola Saraki is a wasp perched on the most delicate part of the human anatomy.

    It has been a typically Nigerian coup, full of intrigues, double dealing, double crossing and ambush within ambush reminiscent of the exploits of Nigeria’s aging coup maestros. There is also a hint of self-coup, or what the Latin Americans call Autogolpe. An Autogolpe is a conscious coup against one’s self. But this one is probably unconscious.  When Mohammadu Buhari tersely but awkwardly noted that “a constitutional process has somewhat occurred”, we say with the retired general that it is actually a constitutional autogolpe that has somewhat occurred.

    The Nigerian president must now be helped out of the awful mess he has partly created. But he will need to change tack. He must avoid the Ben Bella Syndrome. Ahmed Ben Bella was a great hero of the Algerian war of independence against the French. It was a nasty and cruel contention whose echoes reverberate till date. When Ben Bella finally assumed office, he had become so physically, psychologically and emotionally drained that he could only spend time trifling with extant structures until his colleagues put him out of his miseries.

    There are extenuating circumstances for the presidential faux pas. As a born again democrat who has deliberately and strenuously purged himself of the autocratic mind-set of his military career, Buhari is anxious to be seen as a man who values consensus, a man is willing to marry messianism with the multiplicity of contrary views, and a man not willing to be seen as disrupting the seamless web of governmental harmony among the executive, the judiciary and the legislature.

    This can only work in advanced climes where people have learnt from bitter experience to live for the greater good of the greater society. But in a society teeming with political sharks and vultures, it is a manual for political martyrdom. It is up to the retired general to find a golden mean between the obsessive and obtrusive meddlesomeness of his military predecessor in civilian office and the hardy and alert proactiveness necessary to do the job at hard. The Nigerian presidency is not a habitat for secular saints.

    In Latin America after they had almost killed themselves off due to incessant and tempestuous coups, the generals decided on a simple method of eliminating the perennial bloodfest.  Whenever a coup is in the offing, they would do a simple troops’ audit and since God marches on the side of the greater battalion, the general with the highest number of battalions  on his side carried the day.

    On Tuesday, Bukola Saraki did a troops’ audit. But as a veteran power pragmatist who knows that there is no party as such but alliances of inconvenience, he simply called for help from battle hardened adversarial combatants itching for a pound of flesh. The old warriors of reaction and ethnic revanchists still nursing the wounds of their ouster from the federal Toll Gate simply rallied.

    It is a foul and unethical thing to do reeking of betrayal and perfidy, but it reveals the monumental hollowness that lies at the heart of the current democratic process in Nigeria. There is no party as such only amalgams of mutually contradictory and violently incompatible tendencies that have refused or are probably incapable of congealing and coalescing into an organic whole. It is a dialectical mirror image of Nigeria itself.  You cannot plant cassava and expect to harvest yam. It is a symptom in search of a disease and the nearest diagnosis we can come up with is democratic warlordism.

    In the event, the defeated and disorganized PDP showed greater cohesion and dynamic mobility than the ruling party. They have claimed that they were also benefitting from the phenomenon of Tambuwalism, which is akin to an invasion of enemy territory even before the commencement of proper hostilities. It is rumoured that the veteran Tambuwal himself also played a stirring role in this one. It is in the nature of cut-throat politics, and there are no permanent allies but present interests.

    The APC has received its baptism of fire. It should now go back to the drawing board. It should immediately put in place a rigorous mechanism for party conflict resolution through the three Cs: conciliation, compromise and consensus.  It is obvious that the party has suffered grievously due to lack of internal cohesion and as a result of excessive vanity and obsession with the spoils of office.

    When all else fails, it is only the presidency that can wield the big stick. The failure of the president to wade in much earlier and to do so in a decisive manner when he was eventually roused to act has resulted in a political black eye for the party. It is a curious irony that Buhari would seem to be encouraging political warlordism in his own party when the electoral revolt that swept him to power is a stinging disavowal of the same phenomenon in the larger Nigerian polity. The Nigerian senate is the surviving stronghold of our last political Shoguns.

    Having acquired teeth and muscle, this senatorial Shogunate is going to try President Buhari’s will and iron resolve to reform and sanitize the Nigerian polity to the snapping point in the next few months. It is going to be a battle royale the likes of which has never been witnessed in these climes. If the president wilts and withers away, it is all but guaranteed that his presidency will end as a colossal failure, unable to make a dent in the monumental rot that has stifled the nation. As we have previously advised, it is going to be a game of will and wits and the president will need all his political savvy and street wisdom.

    A lot is going to depend on his party and its principal partners. A few columns back, we had commended the tragic fate of the inchoate and incongruous alliance which ended authoritarian misrule in Kenya to the APC. Going forward to a fresh election, the party disintegrated into its political components and ethnic particularities. The result was a brief civil war which shook Kenya to its foundation and from which the country is yet to properly recover.

    It is not a question of whether one likes President Buhari or not. The Change Project which the retired general has courageously spearheaded in collusion with many patriotic Nigerians and which has resonated spectacularly with our compatriots both at home and abroad is the last chance to redeem this country and put it on the path of rectitude and righteousness.  If it fails, it is going to be goodbye to Nigeria as we know it.

  • What money should do for a nation

    What money should do for a nation

    He who waters a stone has received his yield in full but he who waters a field may yet receive a bounty.

    Last week’s article asserted that money does not answer everything. In the wrong hands, it is more apt to complicate things than to resolve them. Today’ piece identifies some good money can bring to national development if guided by adroit fiscal policy.

    Poverty is the greatest single challenge for Nigeria and Africa. Thus, the intelligent deployment of money to spur growth in the political economy is of keen interest to Nigeria and Africa. Where inordinate poverty exists, pervasive unemployment and idle capacity will also be found. Sage fiscal expenditure is essential to reducing poverty by bringing idle capacity into the productive stream. This is important given current trends in the global economy.

    Most African economies depend on the export of natural resources for two essentials that are interrelated yet actually distinct. First, exports are vital to procure foreign currency through which the nation may satisfy its import obligations. Given that our currencies are not considered hard currencies readily traded in the global market, this function is vital and inescapable.  The second function is more important but less inevitable. Nations then tend to use the amount of foreign currency received from imports as the basis for determining the amount of its sovereign currency it shall release into the domestic economy.  This mechanism is a significant determinant of the activity and employment in an economy so constructed.

    Currently, this mechanism augurs poorly for most African nations due to the global decline in commodity prices, particularly of oil.  The lower oil prices result from more than a transient downturn in the business cycle. These lower prices threaten to be long-term or secular in nature.  The advance of technology has severely undermined the model upon which Africa’s fragile economies are based. Shale oil fracking technology has swiftly catapulted America to being an oil and gas producer of such a magnitude that it can now satisfy its own needs. This self sufficiency has reduced the American appetite for Nigerian oil from a flood to less than a trickle. The prosperity and activity we hoped would be spawned by the deep sea wells of the Nigerian coast has now moved to the oil fields of the American heartland.

    China and other Asian nations have taken up the some of the slack but they cannot completely cover the hole left by the American shift in consumption. Moreover, China now invests tens of billions of dollars in alternative, renewable energy. At some point in the near future, those investments will begin to bear fruit for that nation just as investment in fracking gave the American economy a fount of newly available, affordable oil that had nothing to do with importing from Nigeria or other nations.  When that day comes, the Chinese economy will have added another buttress to its long-term development and diversity. It is will be a fine day for China. For African nations, it will be the opposite. If the two largest economies in the world lose appetite for a nation’s primary exports, the model upon which that nation’s political economy falls under assault by these harsh realities.

    The nation is faced with stark choices. Either it holds course in hope that other consumer nations will increase their demand or that nation must adapt to the new reality. To hold course is to rest the fate of the political economy on the graces and goodwill of another sovereign nation with its own interests and objectives. It is a thin and slender reed upon which to anchor a nation’s future.  Even if another nation or a group of them increase consumption, the relief to the exporting nation would be a trembling one.  Given the pace of technology and the gradual diminution of oil as the lifeblood of the global economy, the exporter cannot assume the new consumer will align with them forever. Just as America rapidly changed its consumption patterns in the brief span of a few years and as China invests in oil-independent technologies, others nations might well follow either the American or Chinese path. That would leave the exporter in the cold.

    This tenuous circumstance calls for a restructuring of the exporter political economy. Such a change cannot be done on the cheap and without government policy leading the way. Herein, the dilemma lies.

    Just as the nation is coldly shaken by harsh economy reality into recognizing it must change, the nation now receives even less money than before to accomplish the great change. One setback becomes inescapable.  With fewer buyers purchasing reduced amounts of the commodity, the nation earns less foreign currency.  The nation will be forced to modify its imports or place great pressure on the domestic economy to answer its foreign import obligations instead of its own internal challenges and imperatives. This will place a visible burden on the national currency’s exchange rate. This would not be so onerous if the nation had considerable industrial capacity. The lower exchange rate would render its manufactured goods more affordable and thus shift export earnings from raw material to the manufacturing sector.

    Over the long-term, this feat must be done. At some point, African nations hoping to establish a strong manufacturing base will likely have to endure some of the pain associated with lower exchange rates. However, it can only capture the benefits thereof through government policy filliping the development of nascent industries.

    Without such policies fueling a more benign industrial level, the exchange rate drop will be a nearly absolute economic detriment. The weakening exchange rate is only the most visible effect. The hidden costs levied against the productive economy are even more injurious because these costs combine to both suppress economic activity – increasing unemployment of human labor and productive capital. The hidden costs also inflate prices through an external shock while bringing none of the salutary benefits of a reasonable level of demand-driven inflation.

    The new economic reality requires a new industrial policy and a new industrial policy cannot be had without the wholesale rebuilding of the national infrastructure ranging from roads, ports and rail to electricity and potable water.  To achieve this, will cost money, more money than the government currently produces based on the mechanism of using export dollars to determine the amount of naira the government issues.

    Thus, the government of a natural export-driven political economy faces an existential choice in this harsh environment.  Retaining the mechanism of basing the quantity of local currency on the amount of foreign currency derived from exports is to consign the nation to the lower rungs.   There shall be no escape from national poverty except greater national poverty.

    There is no need to retain this anachronism. It is a throwback to a global financial currency regime that no longer exists. Whatever utility this mechanism once had, is long gone while the harm it imposes gets compounded by the day.

    To achieve full employment of our human and material capacity, Nigeria must eschew this vestige of a day long past. We must question why Nigeria continues to peg the amount of naira government issues and spends to the quantity of export dollars earned.

    To do so abnegates our national economic sovereignty at a time when freedom of decision is most needed. It is to allow the fuel consumption appetite of the leisure vacationer in California, the London cabbie and warehouse owner in Shanghai  to determine the level of economic activity in Nigeria, more so than any Nigerian, even more so than the  government itself. Few successful nations have given themselves over to the whims of foreign consumers to such a degree. There is no reason why Nigeria or any other African nation should abandon its destiny in this manner.

    How government now distills naira is a function of the gold standard. But that system was abolished forty years ago because it proved untenable under modern conditions. This currency regime had a built-in defect. It tended to brief eruptions of exuberance followed by longer periods of deflation. For example, the growth of money supply for the overall system was not dependent on the level of economic activity. It was dependent on the continuous mining and supply of gold, the rate of growth of which may not have been consonant with the rate of growth of the real economy. This asymmetry was a cause of dysfunction sending many an economy into unnecessary recessions and curtailing growth and employment that might have been. Nigeria now experiences a similar turn with the decrease in dollars caused by declining oil prices.

    All this means that, instead of chaining the naira to gold as in the former currency regime, Nigeria ties enchains its currency to the dollar. Nigeria has “dollarized’ the economy in such a way that economic and monetary policies decisions an preferences made in America hold undue influence over this economy. While not stated as such, by limiting naira issuance to the amount of export dollars earned Nigeria has imposes a dollar standard on its economy. This denigrates the status of the naira to that of an ordinary tradable commodity, thus forfeiting its rare utility as an instrument of sovereign national power.

    Enslaving itself to this mechanism means the nation has inadvertently converted exchange rate management into the primary goal of economic policy. This mistake in policy is tragic given the coarse and steep poverty afflicting so many Nigerians. Nigeria’s economic policy imperative should be sustainable growth derived from the full employment of the people and of the national assets. To focus so much on exchange rate management will be to sacrifice the imperative of growth.  In sacrificing growth, maintenance of the exchange rate too becomes unavailing.

    We must comprehend that the amount of foreign currency earnings is a good indicator for only one thing: how much the outside world wants a nation’s products and services. The amount of foreign currency earned in no way should be the final arbiter of how much domestic currency is needed to sustain optimal growth.

    We must convert ourselves to a different view of what money is.  From last week, we now know what it is not. It does not answer all things. We also must not treat it as a finite item, a commodity. Money is nothing but a social construct, a human invention to help us improve our material well being and reshape the world to our betterment. It is an agreed symbol of economic value so that value can be better transferred over space and time to accomplish economic goals that mere barter could not even comprehend. Money is way of attaching economic value to people, goods, services and even ideas.

    As such the primary objective of government in exercising the sovereign right to issue currency is to deploy enough money and do so in a manner that allocates a just sum to all productive factors of the economy. As a priority, this includes the vast reduction of poverty and joblessness by allocating funds to people and assets heretofore left idle due to suppressed, inefficient levels of economic activity. Wisely using this sovereign right to allocate value, government can minimize unemployment and begin to construct infrastructure capable of hosting a modern industrial sector that will further tackle joblessness and idle capacity by bringing more people and equipment into productive endeavor.

    At some point, the nation will have to full face the bitter medicine of exchange rate adjustment that positions the nation to be export competitive at level of manufacturing. To get to that point, government must spend funds to create an environment with the requisite infrastructure conducive to enhanced industrialization. To be able to make such expenditures, government must ultimately sever the de facto dollar standard now imposed on fiscal policy.  If Nigeria does not make this break, the economy will always function at less than capacity. Unemployment and poverty rates will always be too high. The exchange rate will continue to face a permanent downward trajectory characterized by disruptive fits and jolts that reflect the search of other actors for their economic high ground while Nigeria stands as passive backdrop to its own economic reduction.

    Nigeria should exchange reliance on the dollar peg with a lever of greater collective purpose and ingenuity. It would help the nation and the legions of poor and jobless people if government fiscal expenditure would be based on a calculation of how much money was needed to lessen joblessness and idle capacity while ensuring that inflation did not climb to unacceptable proportions and the exchange rate did not suffer too steep a decline in too brief a period. In this manner, government can allocate sufficient funds to build the infrastructure required for a non-oil based economy. Government will thus have the funds to develop a social safety net as well as provide meaningful jobs for many. At the same time, government must assertively implement an industrial policy that expands, modernizes and makes competitive our manufacturing as well as agricultural sectors. As Nigeria deepens economic activity, the resultant growth and enhanced diversity of the nation’s export strength will give the nation better leverage to manage the exchange rate than it now has.

    Nigeria must face the fact that its current unemployment and idle capacity hover have sunk to what other nations would regard as those of a depression. What is now considered normal in Nigeria would be bemoaned as a disastrous depression in other nations. History shows that rescue from such a dire state is not found in the private sector. Government must do the heaviest lifting or the lifting will not get done.  In assuming this rightful status, government will become the main driver of economic development. This is the path that every nation has taken that has escaped from depression without losing a generation over to the economic calamity. It is up to Nigeria to decide whether it will have the courage to try to break the old chains that will bind it to newer depths of poverty and economy dislocation or will it meagerly seek to live within the current confines and try to manage the increasingly bleak consequences of this supine poise.

     

    The clock is ticking. Nothing can stop it.

  • The U.S 2016 presidential election –A cursory look

    The U.S 2016 presidential election –A cursory look

    The United States presidential election of 2016 will hold on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, meaning that, unlike in Nigeria, no OPC-like groups or some other anti-democratic conspirators will be in a position to have it postponed by a day, not to talk of  weeks

    With political events  cascading  rapidly back  home, all  poignantly demonstrating what a  rainbow coalition APC,  the ruling party, is, I am  reminded  that  my vacationing in Scotland, June  2011, enabled  me  reflect on the implications of the then recently concluded  Scottish election, especially  what I considered  are  its implications for Nigeria.  In the article: The Scottish Election and its relevance to Nigeria, I observed  that the election of May 5, 2011 was the equivalent of a political tsunami, giving the Scottish National Party (SNP) an unprecedented landslide victory and dominance in the Scottish parliament. That was, in fact,  long before the 2015 general election at which the SNP literally wiped out the Labour Party in Scotland. What underpinned the 2011 result, like the last, I must add, are cultural identity and shared history, economic self-management, promotion of enterprise, and a desire to end local imperialism. I concluded from the above that a honest restructuring of Nigeria would  result in a fiscal federalism in which each constituent part will develop at its own pace,  plan  its  economic development as suits it best, and, among other things,  pay  salaries and wages based on its  ability to pay rather than the present,  head-masterly arrangement in which the federal government railroads compensation with  states like Kogi, Ekiti, Ebonyi and Osun having to pay their workers the same salary as Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Lagos or Kano. The last has become particularly germane given the rash of unpaid workers.

    Unfortunately, when in 2014 the opportunity came to put things right, the effort was completely politicised, conceived, primarily, as a stunt to gift the incumbent president two additional years in office. For that reason, the membership was so skewed the government coyly nominated most members by including organisations whose representatives it nominated whilst its  Afenifere  midwives even had the audacity to tamper with the list of nominees submitted by  some state governors.  Today, the best that could reasonably happen to its report is to make it a working paper, amongst others, at a genuine attempt at restructuring Nigeria.

    I digress.

    Matters appertaining to the 2016 U.S Presidential election predominate the airwaves where I currently find myself. I therefore think it is an opportune time to take a cursory look at what is going on. First, some irreducible facts about the U.S Presidential elections: The United States presidential election of 2016 will hold on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, meaning that, unlike in Nigeria, no OPC-like groups or some other anti-democratic conspirators will be in a position to have it postponed by a day, not to talk of  weeks.  It will be the 58th quadrennial U.S Presidential election. Voters in the election will select presidential electors who, in turn, will elect a new president and vice president of the United States. The incumbent president, Barrack Obama, is ineligible to be elected a third term due to term limits in the twenty-second amendment to the United States Constitution and, unlike some African Heads of State, would not be manipulating to have his country’s constitution amended to enable him serve longer.  Article Two of the U.S Constitution provides that for a person to be elected and serve as president of the United States, the individual must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the United States for a period of no less than 14 years. Candidates for the presidency typically seek the nomination of one of the various political parties.  Each party devises a method (such as a primary election) to choose the candidate the party deems best suited to run for the position. The party’s delegates then officially nominate a candidate to run on the party’s behalf. The above is very much in tandem with what obtains in Nigeria – of course, we copied the presidential system from the U.S – though it must be stated that our own bribe-suffused part of it is a creation of Nigerian politicians.  Additional requirements  before formally declaring as a candidate include filing with the Federal Election Commission, getting  listed in five or more major independent nationwide polls and  having held office as the head of a cabinet-level department, be a member of the U.S Senate, or a member of the House Leadership, governor, former or incumbent vice-president, or incumbent president.

    Both the Democratic and the Republican parties already parade a galaxy of names, some of them with high name-recognition. Those already in the field for the Democratic Party are: Lincoln Chafee, Governor of Rhode Island, 2011–2015, former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, 2009–2013; U.S and Senator, 2001–2009. Others are Martin O’Malley, Governor of Maryland, 2007–2015 and Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator since 2007. An exponential, and yet increasing number of candidates have shown up on the Republican side of the divide most probably  as a result of a feeling the GOP thinks it could build on the 2014 Midterm election momentum to put its candidate in the Oval Office. There are, at the last count, about 10 of them, amongst them Ben Carson, a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and paediatric medicine and the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins joined at the head.  Others include former and serving governors  Jeb Bush, George Pataki, Mike Huckabee,  Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Rick Perry and Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham –who says he has never sent an e-mail; Rick Santorium, Bernie Sanders  and,  Carly Fiorina, former Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard,  who believes that her work as tech adviser to agencies like NASA, CIA etc eminently qualify her. The list must remind the reader of a typical Anambra governorship election.

    Each of these candidates brings different experience and expertise to the table but what will be the key campaign issues at the 2016 U.S election?  As is usual, domestic issues, especially the economy, will dominate the campaigns.  A recent Gallup poll showed that eighty-six percent of Americans say the economy will be extremely important to their vote next year, a significantly higher percentage than for any other issue. The economy has historically retained this importance at both presidential and midterm elections, irrespective of whether the economy is weak, as in 2008 or strong as in 2000. Immigration and race issues, in particular, are attracting more traction than hitherto and the decibel will be quite high between candidates, like Hillary Clinton, who support granting immigrants within the U.S  a pathway to citizenship, and those like Marco Rubio, who once supported it  and was one of the four Republican senators who joined in drafting a  comprehensive, bi-partisan reform bill, but  now not only opposes extending it to citizenship but wants legal immigration drastically cut down. The GOP has upped the ante on the recruitment of Hispanic voters which the Koch political empire is aggressively pushing but the Dems are not just standing by. Indeed, congressional Republicans have done enough damage to their cause to make Hillary Clinton the favourite Latino candidate.

    On the international front, Russia, China and ISIS will take the cake. Putin’s swagger and arms twisting tactics, specifically, his annexation of Crimea and continuing war in the Ukraine and Obama’s response, which the Republicans consider tepid, will be on the top burner. Ditto, China’s increasing belligerence, staking claims to  international waters  just like the bestiality of the  Islamic State  of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is of such importance both parties only last week had a bipartisan vote authorising President Obama to arm and train Syrian rebels. Equally important will be the never-ending war on terrorism which has now spread ferociously into Africa through the likes of Al Shabab in Kenya and Boko Haram within our own borders in Nigeria.

    Next year’s U.S election promises to be quite an engaging one. The much awaited Supreme Court judgment on Obamacare, President Obama’s all important  law, with a distinct possibility of being his greatest legacy, could  very soon come spinning off with over six million Americans losing their health insurance and what better place to start the fireworks, should that occur.

  • Christian Oladele Onikepe

    A Tribute

     

    On Tuesday, May 26, 2015 Christian Oladele Onikepe passed on to meet his Holy Father, God Almighty. His indomitable spirit and joy for life are carried on by his family, extended family, friends, colleagues and fellow travelers on the path we call life.

    There is only one Christian Oladele Onikepe and yet to everyone that met him, he was many different things. He was a father, friend, mentor, spiritual guide, kindred spirit, a debate and discussion partner, a leader and much more… If you were to ask him to describe himself, he would simply say, “I was sent to this world to be a servant of God, in humility and simplicity of the heart, and to be a testament to God’s grace and mercy.”

    Born to a large family, Christian Oladele Onikepe possessed a keen intellect and grew up to be one of Nigeria’s brightest minds and brilliant thinkers. He was a star student at GOAGS, Gbongan, Government College, Ibadan, University of Lagos where he bagged a Second Class Upper Division honours in French, and capped it all with a Ph.D in French from the University of Grenoble, France.

    In his professional career, he touched and changed many lives as professor, social activist, and advocate for peace. At the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, he and his peers were pioneers. He led colleagues and students in reinterpreting African literature through the application of metaphysical concepts. This led to the first ever successful doctorate in his academic unit at the university. Christian expressed and lived his faith through his teaching and mentoring. Always the rigorous academician, he was also the humble teacher who respected his students’ intellect—even when he disagreed with them. He was an unyielding and passionate defender of the weak and helpless; and of what was right.

    In the United States he also worked towards sharing knowledge and shedding light on the African experience, both within the country and abroad. He was highly successful at two institutions, namely Mount Saint Mary’s University, Maryland (America’s second oldest Catholic university) and the University at Buffalo (SUNY), New York. At SUNY-Buffalo, he was part of the team that helped to lay the groundwork for the university’s graduate education in Cuba in January 2002. An accomplished teacher, Christian was also a Fulbright Scholar in Burkina Faso, West Africa, in 2004 and 2005.

    In addition to his work in Francophone cultures, he never forgot his roots. He was a tireless promoter of his beloved Yoruba culture and language. His boundless energy and joyfulness were infectious. Wherever he was, he fought for religious tolerance and freedom. Always humble, passionate and charismatic, he tirelessly advocated for a space in which Christian, Muslim and Traditional practitioners could work beyond ethnic and religious differences, towards the common good. In Nigeria, he was one of the co-founders of NARETO, the National Association for Religious Tolerance and Peaceful Coexistence.

    If he were to speak his wishes today, it would be to say, “celebrate my life as the only happiness in this world is that of always being content with what God has given me. I can “demand nothing with fervor, except the perfect accomplishment of God’s will in my soul.”

    We will always carry you in our hearts, Oladele Christian Onikepe. We will always remember and see you in every smile, every joyous song and everything good in life.

     

    • Tayo, Angel, Ope and Ifedayo

  • Law and (Dis)order

    Mr. Buhari, a people’s man, may be president, but Nigerian politicians are still sharing things. They are still sharing the nation, partitioning it among themselves like slices of cake. They are old wine in new bottles. My problem is that I think Mr. President believes these politicians are part of the people

    Honestly, this is laughable’, was a commentator’s take concerning the elections that took place in the senate which saw the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as Senate President. The commentator was speaking on the radio. He said more but that was what struck me most. Certainly, the affair was no joke; yet, it managed to elicit laughter, and sadness and tears and what not, in many of us. To the commentator, it was simply inconceivable that a group of people who were supposed to attend their own inauguration on a certain day decided rather to hold an intraparty meeting, at the same hour the event was scheduled to begin! Seriously?!

    Actually, when you think comedy materials are about drying up, something happens to pull us out of the dry rot. First came Buhari’s belonging to everybody and nobody which everyone understood alright but which fed our comedians’ funny bones. They went to town with it and took it viral. Then came this latest comedy: senators deciding to go and do a last minute meeting hoping their seats would keep warming for them. Naturally, someone shaved their heads for them in their absence.

    Many people have been crying foul over the election of senate officials, especially the aggrieved party, APC. Naturally; I would too. I notice though that the party is not basing its anger on the legality or illegality of the action. I would not either. Though not a lawyer, I believe that the election was somewhat lawful. I would say that the principal actors in the matter took care to work within the law. The party could therefore only anchor its anger on the fact that its wishes were not respected.

    Actually, that’s the argument that has been raging. Once elected, who does an individual owe his allegiance to: his party, which fosters his election, the people, who vote him in, or his conscience, which constitutes his integrity? This is one of the questions that accompany civilisation. In the not so civilised times, this was no issue. People simply decided they were willing to sacrifice themselves to the public good by going into public office. They also held cudgels in their hands to convince recalcitrant electorates. Thereafter, they did not owe anyone anything, only those with bigger cudgels.

    Now, with civilisation have come political parties, made up of people who gather together to build political machines that automatically make people. This is why it is called the party machine. It makes people. It also gobbles people up. It provides the means and machinery for getting mostly wrong people elected into office; that’s why they need the machine anyway. It also explains why most people prefer to listen to and obey the party rather than the electorate or their consciences. Just think of the alternative – going around with cudgels which are bound to wear out, so forcing one to get more and more cudgels…

    Anyway, let’s get back to the matter. I believe that the clerk has confirmed that a quorum was formed on the day of the election, and every other order was observed. I think that seals the legality of the event. The problem is that constitutions have a habit of being general sometimes. They go something like this: a quorum shall have been formed when two-thirds of the members would have gathered in from their homes, toilets, girlfriends’ and boyfriends’ houses, kitchens, and so on. Unfortunately, those blessed constitutions are typically silent on matters such as the nature of that gathering, e.g. how many of that quorum shall be female or male; how many shall be morally good or bad; how many shall be of one party or the other; what the maximum number of the psychiatrically unsound shall be allowed in, and so on. I think this last is important; too many organizations have too many mentally cuckoo land lubbers these days. So, in that senate election, I think the law was satisfied.

    I do notice though that our legal luminaries have been pointing out that the senators’ election that day was either morally questionable or downright fraudulent. The problem with arguing on morality is that every issue has too many sides. An action that is morally corrupt in one situation may be slightly admissible in another. That is why it is difficult (though not improbable) to use morality as a yardstick to judge legal matters. And this is a legal matter.

    What we should rather be raising dust over, and this is what really bugs me, is why the APC senators-elect chose the hour of their inauguration to hold a party or party meeting (what really is the difference?) That is what is disorderly. There are conflicting stories on how this sorry state came to be. One says the senators had been summoned to a meeting by the president in order to resolve the impasse regarding the party’s senate president candidate. Another report says the senators decided to hold a meeting at that hour preceding the inauguration so that they could all speak with one voice. I think that was what caused the radio commentator’s laughter. Hmm; the party machine for you.

     Anyhow, at the inauguration hour, the APC senators were not on their seats, literally, not just like your Nigerian ‘not on seat’; but come to think of it, neither was the president. And this is where the story gets a little sticky. There are also reports that the president had sent a message to the clerk of the house that his deputy would deputise for him, literally. So you see, these stories just don’t add up, not that I’m too strong on mathematics. In fact, you could say my mathematics is stronger on me than I am on it. But really, I don’t get this situation at all.

    The president is a very busy man, especially now that he is trying to put back on track a highly ruptured country. No one appreciates that more than I do. Yet, given that the national assembly is a very important part of our governing process, it seems that the president could have spared some minutes to build himself some goodwill among the assembly members and declared the proceedings open himself. Altogether, the party ought not to have scheduled a meeting for that hour, if it is indeed true that it did.

    I learnt from the assembly elections a few disheartening facts. Mr. Buhari, a people’s man, may be president, but Nigerian politicians are still sharing things. They are still sharing the nation, partitioning it among themselves like slices of cake. They are old wine in new bottles. My problem is that I think Mr. President believes the politicians are part of the people. He needs to watch out; they are not. They are in the business of trying to own Nigeria. To me, that is what is truly laughable, because if they really want to know who owns Nigeria, they should come back in fifty years time and ask.

    So, we can conclude, from the smart way the elections were conducted and concluded, that there is still an unknown force, cabal or group that is ruining, sorry, ruling Nigeria, and we have not run far enough away from them. The voice is indeed the people’s; they have spoken by electing Buhari. But the hairy hand is decidedly that of Esau with some wily politicians attached at the other end. I can only warn the new collective leadership of the country that revolutions are never planned; they just happen, and usually conditions breed them, for example, when leaders think they own the state. That is when the people’s voice becomes loud.

  • Debating Buhari’s speed

    Debating Buhari’s speed

    Barely one week into President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, Nigerians have become embroiled in a debate over whether he is cautiously forging ahead or making haste slowly.  They want to see action, plenty of it, perhaps reminiscent of military regimes, the kind that came in those sentimental and impressionable days with ‘immediate effect and automatic alacrity.’ They want, by now, to see his list of ministers ready, even if it would not be presented for screening. They wanted to see his principal staff in place a day after he was sworn in, kicking and puffing with activities and thundering the resolve of a president high on energy and brimful with ideas. They want to see everyone, security agents and civilians alike, shaping up or preparing to ship out. Alas, barely one week into his presidency, the renewed and reinvented President Buhari has only managed to announce a few appointments, one of which even sounded like duplication.

    The problem, it seems, is that during the campaigns, most of the voters, many of whom reached voting age long after President Buhari had ceased to be military head of state, did not actually know him. The voters took to heart the piffle dished out by PDP propagandists, some of whom, like Femi Fani-Kayode, Governor Ayo Fayose and Olisa Metuh, simply invented the APC candidate of their notorious fantasy. They sold him to the electorate as an ogre, brutal and impetuous, abrasive and unreflecting, and hasty, bigoted and inflexible. If he were all of these, those who voted for him in the northern part of the country couldn’t care less. They did not dispute the propagandists’ impressions, but they were unmoved by the extreme pejorative dismissal of a man they trust and had become instinctively attached to. Elsewhere, the propaganda was rather effective, with the Southwest voting for him by a close margin on account of their double-mindedness over his attributes; and the Southeast and South-South embracing his opponent, former president Goodluck Jonathan, to the hilt.

    Otherwise, the real President Buhari is fundamentally different from the picture of him painted by the PDP during electioneering, a picture quite at variance with his personality and attributes. As head of state, he was never impulsive; he was instead methodical, unhurried, even long-suffering, reserved, surprisingly trusting, and eager to delegate responsibilities. Nothing said he was infallible in those days, and in fact made his fair share of mistakes. But he was then, and still now is, a man who quietly made up his mind and stuck with it for a considerable length of time. Nor did he suffer from any complex, a fact that made him indifferent to analysts describing his first coming contrapuntally as the Buhari/Idiagbon government. More importantly, those very close to him argue that the picture of him painted by his detractors is so far off the mark that it is difficult to redeem.

    It is, therefore, unlikely that President Buhari can be moulded into someone he is not in a matter of few weeks or years simply because he had been invested with the mantle of leadership. From the look of things, given his reactions to the germane politics of his party, including last year’s primaries and keen jousting for influence and dominance in the APC, he will proceed more with the deliberateness the public can’t seem to recognise or appreciate than seek to please them. He will build a careful continental, and if need be, international, coalition against Boko Haram, examine all conceivable battle scenarios, assemble the troops and materials needed to wage an effective war, no matter how long, and then launch determinedly into the campaign. He is inflexible as his opponents say, but it seems more like the kind of inflexibility that makes him committed to a task for as long as it takes, notwithstanding the reverses.

    It has also been suggested that he had all of six weeks to plan his first few actions once sworn in. Instead, it is said, he opened himself to interminable queues of visitors and well-wishers, while failing to pay attention to the exigent issues of the day. But notwithstanding the transition committees set up to make the handover seamless, President Buhari did not receive the Jonathan government’s handover notes until a day before inauguration. In a democracy, he needed to exercise more caution than in a military regime. Nor could he have ignored the stream of well-wishers to whom he owed his election, if not his present and future support. Five years of the Jonathan presidency might have hurt the country unbearably, but it is no excuse for expecting that in one week, the Buhari presidency would begin, without reflection or study, to launch recklessly into popular schemes and programmes.

    It is expected that he will assemble a great team, reappraise his campaign promises and party manifesto in accordance with current reality , and after a few prefatory steps and troubleshooting measures, will in the many months ahead plan and execute uplifting and soaring projects. It is not clear how he will relate with the National Assembly, but he has his party and leading party strategists to help him navigate the warrens that both legislative chambers have become. He will in addition need to sharpen his wit and reflexes, for he will be confronted now and again by many urgent and debilitating national issues. In many instances, the opposition will attempt to blackmail him even as they enact and execute policies and programmes that undermine the rule of law and constitution. Ekiti and Rivers are examples.

    Much more than what speed he is on, his main challenges will concern how to calibrate intelligent reactions to the selfish manoeuvring of the opposition, whether in Ekiti or elsewhere. Rather than re-programme their party scientifically as a sound alternative to the APC, the PDP seems to be confecting and perfecting a series of measures to blackmail the president and the rest of the country using the constitution and all other sentimental buncombe. All President Buhari needs to do is ensure great fidelity to the constitution. He should confront political chicanery firmly, promptly and courageously. He urgently needs to set the tone for the country, a tone that was neither in his campaign promises nor in his party manifesto. That tone will determine to a large extent whether he will be feared and respected like great world leaders, and therefore be successful, or he will be ignored and exploited like former president Goodluck Jonathan. President Buhari needs a disciplined, focused and ambitious country; only he can set the tone in the direction. This has nothing to do, at least so far, with the speed of his actions. It has instead everything to do with the brilliance and prescience of his actions.

    Nigeria has the population, economy, skilled manpower, a dangerous mix of problems and challenges, as well as exists in very interesting times. All that is required to drag her out of stagnation and decay and turn her into a roaring success is an intuitive and courageous leader, one imbued with sound judgement and deep intellect. Will President Buhari be that man? Nothing guarantees he will be a success, or that he has all the qualities to make the difference. But there is nothing in him that predisposes him to failure either.

  • Fathers and sons

    Fathers and sons

    Poor boy , even after suffering an electoral catastrophe on the scope of Hiroshima the wicked Yoruba enforcers will not leave him alone. They will not allow him to lick the wounds of rejection in silence and solitude.  Even an attempt to honour his illustrious departed father has met with fierce resistance. The whole thing backfired and boomeranged in his face. Yet is a Yoruba axiom that honoring one’s parents is the ultimate filial compliment. If so, why must his own be different?

    We are of course talking about our very dear aburo, Femi Fani-Kayode, Deacon in a remote incarnation, lately presidential bull terrier and illustrious scion of illustrious ancestors. But before this engrossing tale of fathers and their sons, and of the punitive politics of the Yoruba people and its retroactive severity race ahead of the griot, let us dispense with some customary formalities.

    Despite the deep ideological chasm between us and our even deeper abhorrence of his politics, readers of the column would have noticed a cagey reluctance to come down hard on Femi.  Rather than excoriate him for his political impieties, snooper often passes over the matter in stony silence and deeply felt regret.

    The reason for this is a rather odd and awkward sense old charity and obligation. Femi holds snooper in almost reverential admiration. By his own written admission, snooper ranks near the very top in Femi’s pantheon of literary avatars. Even when one stoutly disagrees with or is working at political cross-purpose with him , one always thought that it will be rather graceless and mean to publicly castigate somebody who holds you in such high public esteem, no matter the affront.

    But in commemorating his father and eulogizing him as a former deputy leader of the Yoruba, the younger Fani has raised a matter of public interest which should be addressed in the light of history and Yoruba politics in its military and post-military phases.  The ire and flak from some commentators are predicated on the conduct of the father during the pre-military and military period and of the son during the military and post-military phases. We must now look critically at the fact.

    During his eventful lifetime, Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode ,SAN, QC,CON, Balogun of Ile-Ife, aka Fani-Power,  cut quite a dash through the country’s legal and political circles. Tall, good looking and extremely charismatic, the supremely self-confident and brilliant lawyer was a man of magnificent presence. Born into wealth and distinction, the son and grandson of Cambridge graduates, there was something of a classical snob about the old patrician.

    This disdain for the rabble and the masses was to lead his politics inexorably in the direction of fascism and his ideology towards Social Darwinism. Who are the odoriferous and hygienically challenged masses to protest when a body of men of superior intellect and superior breeding has volunteered to rule them? Tani baba won gan? It was straight out of the political manual of Benito Mussolini.

    But this fascist mindset was going to be out of sinc with the radical populism and Black nationalism  which was the driving ideology of the dominant Black intellectual and political elite of the decolonizing period. Up to a point, Fani Power was being true to his elitist roots. One’s personal insertion in a social and political milieu often determines their ideological outlook.

    Having been where only few Black people dared, having brilliantly excelled and beaten the White man at his own intellectual game, it was possible that Fani-Kayode no longer regarded himself as a Black person not to talk of being a Yoruba man, an African Aryan so to say. It was even noted that during their students’ days in England, what Fani considered to be Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s ill-fitting trousers and thick Remo accent were the butt of savage jokes and derision from the upper class, impeccably attired aristo with his Buckingham County glass cut vowels.  This elitism and in your face reactionary conservatism may well be driving the younger Fani in the same direction.

    In the event, Fani senior was as colourful as he was controversial. Tales of his political derring-do abound and abide.  For snooper, the most hilarious, possibly apocryphal, was when the great “Fani Power”  was said to have walked into a live WNTV newscast completely soused and sodden to felicitate with his beau, the delectable Ms Toun Adeyemi.   Chomping at his custom made cigar, and unaware that the news was being beamed to the world, the legendary hell-raiser was said to have bawled at the former Mrs Onibokun: “Ah ah, O chop life? Enh, o ni lati chop life niiii”. The entire station went off the air. The rest is history.

    But fair is fair and it is sometimes good to set the record straight however much the facts inconvenience us. The truth will let us see the ways of history and the strange turns of elite conduct in moments of dire emergency . Femi Fani-Kayode’s efforts to romanticize the memory of his father posted on this Facebook account has met with blistering scorn and apoplectic disavowals. Many will have none of that nonsense. In the old West there seems to be no statute of limitation to injury done to the race.

    Enter the inevitable Hardball. Hardball is the witty, irreverent, brilliant and entertaining meta-column on the back page of The Nation newspaper. It is a reader’s delight any day, that is if you are not on the receiving  side of its nettling scorn, and as the name suggests it is hard and packed with cujones. If Hardball was grudgingly willing to concede Fani’s deputy leadership of what is widely considered as an occupation government, the column took fearsome umbrage at what it considered the attempt by the son of Fani Power to leverage this dubious distinction and promote his father as a one- time deputy Yoruba leader.

    Hear, hear Hardball: “ But to romanticize [Fani} as a force for public good, with all due respect to the loving memory of his relations, is pure balderdash. That was what FFK tried to do by dubbing him as “deputy Yoruba leader”. He was absolutely nothing of the sort”.

    Absolutely? Snooper must now enter judgment against Hardball. At the first gathering of the Yoruba people after the second coup of 1966 and under the chairmanship of the then Colonel Robert Adeyinka Adebayo,  the recently released Chief Obafemi Awolowo was unanimously  named as the leader of the Yoruba people. But to mollify the powerful conservative rump of the old reactionary tendency, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode was also named as deputy Yoruba leader.

    It was a tense and fraught arrangement. The hard line, radically progressive Francis Adekunle Fajuyi would have had none of that. But Adebayo was of a more liberal and integrationist outlook. This cosmetic patch up left bitter wounds to fester. Quick-witted and wonderfully survivalist, Fani himself knew that there was unfinished business in the air.  Whether it was Chief Awolowo’s  icy stare of disdain or his legendary scorning glare that did it remains to be seen. But soon thereafter, Fani packed up his  things and relocated to England seemingly for good.

    Future historians will have a lot to chew about this intriguing episode in Yoruba history and post-colonial politics. But as it was in that turbulent period, so it is in this equally tumultuous conjuncture. Yoruba politics continues to be riven by elite division and bitter polarities which often spill unto the national canvas with dreadful consequences. Snooper will not follow many in concluding that Femi has merely taken off where his father left, but it is useful to remind this gifted young man that if a man chooses to be on the wrong side of his people, no matter how high he climbs in the ladder of vindictive preferment, he can never be on the right side of their history. Case dismissed.

  • Dateline June 5, 2015, Bayreuth, Germany: the future of Nigeria and of Africa

    Dateline June 5, 2015, Bayreuth, Germany: the future of Nigeria and of Africa

    As the title of this piece indicates, I am in Bayreuth in Germany and it is exactly a week after the inauguration of the new administration of Muhammadu Buhari. It is the day of the deadline for sending my piece for the week in this column. I am here for the 41st annual conference of the African Literature Association (ALA), the largest professional association of scholars and critics of African literatures in the world. Femi Osofisan is also here, as are many other Nigerian scholars and artists. As a matter of fact, Soyinka put in a brief appearance as a special guest on the first day of the conference on Wednesday. He gave a short and characteristically very sharp and witty informal speech at the formal opening ceremonies, a speech in which he called the assembled confreres and the world’s scholars in general to become more proactive, more “fundamentalist” in the defense of freedom and life, given the opposing “fundamentalism” of terrorists and jihadists in their assault on life and freedom of thought and religion in many parts of the world.

    This is the first time in more than a decade that I am attending an annual conference of the ALA. This is because I stopped going to conferences of all professional associations a long time ago. In this piece, I cannot go into why I took that decision. But I can reveal the fact that I finally made an exception for this particular conference because I happen to be in Germany for another reason at the same time. As a matter of fact, when one of the conference organizers heard that I would be in Germany at the time of the conference, she contacted me and persuaded me that whatever my reasons for stopping going to conferences were, it would be unthinkable and unacceptable that I would stay away from this conference that coincides with the time of my stay in Germany this summer. Also, I was easily persuaded because the theme of the conference this year interests me a lot. It is “African Futures and Beyond: Visions in Transition”. When you are getting into the eighth decade of your life, the future interests you a lot. This is not because very little of it will occur in what is left of your biological existence but because you want to think, you want to project far ahead into what you and the present living generations will leave for unborn, future generations, for posterity.

    Not unexpectedly, many at this ALA conference have been asking me and other Nigerians present here what the future holds for our country with regard to the relatively peaceful transfer of power from one running party to another and the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s new President. I am sure that if the theme of the conference had nothing to do with the future they would still have been asking Nigerians here present the same question. All the same, one recognizes the fact that the questions that we are being asked at this conference are in part sparked by the theme of the conference. In other words, while for a long time now nothing in our country has been a source of hope for the future of Africans at home and abroad, this ALA conference on Africa and its future is taking place at precisely an historical moment when Nigeria is at last sending out signs of hope for the future of the country and the continent. This piece is about this portentous convergence between the theme of the conference and the unfolding events in Nigeria. Concretely, I deal with what I have been saying to people at this conference who have been asking me what to expect with the changed circumstances in Nigeria, especially with regard to the new ruler, Muhammadu Buhari. In other words, what I have been saying to people at this ALA conference is what I am now weaving into the expanded text of this piece on futurity in the “new” Nigeria.

    The future looks promising in the “new” Nigeria, I have been telling people at this ALA conference, but only with the caveat that we bear in mind the fact that the change from the erstwhile ruling party and President provides a new space for fresh starts and initiatives that we did not have before now, that in fact had been almost completely blocked. Other than that, there is nothing inherently hopeful and full of bright portents for the future in the mere change from one ruling party to another. Indeed, on the very specific theme of futurity itself, Nigerians have to be doubly, even triply cautious. This is because while the ousted ruling party in particular and Nigerian political elites in general had been very vocal in espousing the dream of a Nigeria that would have one of the largest economies in the world, they had done everything possible to make the realization of that dream impossible. Of course, no one at the ALA conference had ever read about or heard of “Vision 2020”. This did not surprise me in the least because I know that in the years of the rule of the PDP, the great majority of Nigerians also knew little or nothing about “Vision 2020”. When life in the present is so full of a great and ever expanding scale of a lack in the basic necessities of life – jobs, amenities and security of life and possessions – the last thing that you think about is a document, a construct promising on paper a Nigeria that will be one of economic powerhouses of the world. This is symptomatic of a larger problem that I now wish to address, this being the willful and almost irrational negative orientation toward futurity among our political and intellectual elites.

    Perhaps the single most expressive sign of this negative orientation toward futurity among our elites is the speed with which many outgoing governors went after foreign debts with only a few months, in some cases weeks, before their departure from office. This is of course first and foremost a cynical manifestation of the predatory greediness of many of our rulers: a governor who will not be in office when the crushing burdens of servicing and paying off the loans are being extracted need not worry about such burdens. But beyond this, it also shows that the future is negatively configured in the collective minds of our elites and perhaps also, our peoples themselves, thanks to the power of ruling class ideologies and practices. The basic thinking behind this seems to be why worry now about a future that is not yet here, a future that lacks any definable, concrete features, a future, finally, that will either take care of itself or be taken care of by God, IJN?

    It would of course be a mistake to think that a positive and empowering orientation toward futurity is totally absent in our country – as if that was even possible in any nation on the planet. After all, like nearly all other governments in the world, Nigerian governments are obliged to outline the development process in accordance with mandatory Five-Year or Ten-Year Development Plans that are periodically released to the nation and the world. What I have in mind here is the suggestion that in the end, a positive and empowering orientation toward futurity is a joint venture between the rulers and the ruled; in the best of circumstances, the people, the ruled, provide the motive force for this partnership between the rulers and the ruled. Let me be very clear about what I mean by this: the rulers, the governments at the centre and the states are not in the driver’s seat of history and the future; no one is. On account of this fact which some consider tragic and others consider ironic, God or some other avatar, sacred or secular, fills in the void. I personally consider this a hopeful portent for if no one is really in the driver’s seat of history and the future that fact ought to impel us to become proactive in the movement toward a future that always and forever looms on the horizon of the present.

    This is why I believe that a strong, self-aware lobby on behalf of the future must come into being and flourish in our country if the space of possibilities that have opened up in Buhari’s “new” Nigeria is to take root and bear fruit in the fullness of time. You might say that such a lobby could emerge if only there existed traditions of positive orientation toward futurity in our country. I happen to believe that this is in fact the case. For contrary to the view of some racist European philosophers, African languages, philosophies and religions were not lacking in a robustly positive orientation toward futurity. Moreover, the idea is not as abstract and contentless as it seems. It is best seen perhaps in ideas pertaining to significations and practices around sacrifice. Parents sacrifice a lot to put their children through school; they give up satisfactions and conveniences that make life in the present livable not to talk of enjoyable, so that in the future their offspring may have better lives than theirs. Small communities impose heavy financial levies that they can ill afford so that a new hospital or clinic may be built in a village. Finally, national wealth is saved in robust currency reserves, not consumed in orgies of conspicuous consumption by elites besotted by squandermania; those reserves are put to use in times of need in the future.

    Let that lobby on behalf of the future emerge and emerge quickly in Buhari’s “new” Nigeria. It may well be our final guarantee that the new space of possibilities will bear fruit. One of the first tasks of such a lobby or pressure group is the reversal of priorities away from recurrent expenditures toward capital projects in the annual budgets of all the federal, state and local governments in the country. As a matter of fact, Buhari has promised that this is something that is very much on his mind, something he will try to implement early in his administration. But the truth is that without a powerful movement of the people for its implementation, Buhari will not and can never be able to implement the kind of administrative revolution that this will require for its consummation.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Leading Nigeria aright

    Leading Nigeria aright

    It was exactly 16 years on May 29 when Nigeria returned to civil rule, after about another 16 long and tortuous years of military interregnum. On that day in 1999, I remember some of the events at the Eagle Square in Abuja, where Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as president. I was on the editorial board of ThisDay then, and I remember how I celebrated the occasion alongside some colleagues at one of the elite restaurants in the Yinusa Street area of Ikeja in Lagos. I ate a bowl of ‘fufu’ and ‘edikaikong’ soup and assorted meat usually associated with that eatery and later ‘washed’ it down with some bottles of Stout. Those were my days in Egypt, though. I still vividly recollect some of these things because May 29, 1999 was a watershed in Nigeria’s history. I cannot say the same of any other May 29, whether in 2003, 2007 or even 2011, which only came and went like any other day.

    It was a great day in that Nigerians, including myself, had looked on to Chief Obasanjo with great expectations. The new president then did not disappoint, at least in terms of speeches. One thing I keep remembering was his promise to “lead the country aright”. Could Obasanjo be said to have done just that by May 29, 2007 when he stepped down, after serving the two terms permitted by the constitution, and with his third term ambition having hit the rocks?

    However, May 29, 1999 and May 29, 2015 are not exactly the same. Whereas the former was celebrated with pomp and pageantry (and understandably so because it was not easy sending the soldiers back to the barracks after they had tasted power), the latter was marked with pains in the hearts of millions of Nigerians who had dreamt big of what their lives and the country would be like 16 years after the country’s return to civil rule in 1999, only to find themselves in the unfortunate situation that bad governance has put the country in today; the fuel scarcity and all.

    But, what the events of the last 16 years, particularly those of the last six years or so taught us is that it is possible for this country or any country for that matter to go under, and all it takes is for people to be silent when they should be talking. Many of what we witnessed in the period we would have sworn could never have happened in Nigeria a few years back. Yet, before our eyes, many brazen illegalities were committed by the people in power. We saw how governors had been impeached without the requisite number of legislators. We saw how generals were told to help the ruling party fix election. We saw our economy raped by rapacious politicians. We saw how about 20 percent of our oil was daily carted away and the government looked on helplessly. We saw how militants and ethnic militias were empowered, first to do the work of our navy and then to cause mayhem to scuttle or rig election. We saw how public funds were spent in a carefree manner and stolen by roguish public servants. We saw how those who were alleged to have stolen subsidy funds as well as other thieves walked in and out of the inner recesses of the seat of power. It was in our full glare that an inspector-general of police attempted to prevent National Assembly members from entering the assembly complex.  Pray, what is the difference between Nigeria and some smaller African countries that we have always seen as backward, because all these are the features that make us call them backward? Indeed, what have we not seen?

    The lesson in all these is that Nigerians, as a people, must be vigilant. Most of these anomalies would not have occurred, or kept repeating themselves, if we had been vigilant enough. And this is irrespective of the political party in power. That eternal vigilance is even the more desirable now that President Muhammadu Buhari has taken over. I have pondered over his inaugural address which he read on May 29 and it seemed to me to address the core issues in the country today; from Boko Haram to armed robbery and kidnapping as well as corruption. It also touched on the vexed issue of youth unemployment, power and others.  The president even alluded to his being the president of all, which really intrigues me in the sense that it shows that he is learning fast. Once upon a time, it used to be ‘my people’ and ‘your people’. By and large, the president allayed fears about most of the frequently-asked questions about Buhari. Indeed, I had wanted to write on this topic even before the elections, but held back because I did not want it used against the then presidential hopeful. It is wise to first drive away the thief before telling the owner of the stolen property that he did not keep his property well enough. Now that the thieves (both in the literal and metaphorical sense) have been driven away, we can now tell President Buhari some home truths that would be useful for his administration and the country at large.

    The president has given a speech that shows he has a good grasp of the country’s challenges. But it is one thing to identify problems; it is another to solve them. I do not subscribe to this idea of ‘a problem defined is a problem half-solved’. If that is always the case, Nigeria would not be in a mess today because we have always had good analyses of our problems; that is to say we have always known what the problems are. Yet, we still have not been able to solve any of them. What this implies is that it takes more than mere identification of the problem to solve it. The will to solve the problem is crucial. It is this will that has been lacking over the years, and that is why we are where we are today; that is why countries that we were together on the backbenchers’ seat before have since abandoned us there. Indeed, it is in such countries that the expression ‘move the nation forward’ has meaning. It has become a cliché in Nigeria. Every government here says it, yet, we are only moving forward in reverse.

    The Buhari government sure has its job cut out for it. The Goodluck Jonathan administration has done so much damage and this explained why I told those in the then ruling party who had not even allowed Buhari to be sworn in before asking him to do magic, to shut up. Some readers mistook that for an alibi for the Buhari government not to perform. But the point was not about making excuses for the government but to say those asking him (Buhari) to perform know the havoc they had wreaked on the country’s economy and therefore lacked the moral right to ask the new president to perform. I stand by that viewpoint.

    All said, President Buhari must, as I said a few weeks ago, hit the ground running. Already, people are agitated; some are saying the government ought to have made certain appointments, fired some people and taken some decisions. They are complaining that the government seems too slow. I do not necessarily buy any of these. But that is in so far as slow and steady wins the race. Within the next few weeks, one expects that the policy thrust of the new government would be crystallising. Already, nine days are gone out of the four-year tenure. That is how time flies. So, President Buhari should know that the ball is now in his court. He has talked the talk; he should now walk the talk Nigerians want to start seeing signs that they at last have a leader who can truly lead the country aright. It is not necessarily by taking populist decisions but at least by beginning to lay the foundation of an enduring legacy that would wipe away the tears in their eyes all these years.

    GEJ on my mind

    I had expected that President Muhammadu Buhari would have made public the part of his predecessor’s (Dr Goodluck Jonathan) hand over note bequeathing his (Jonathan’s) generator to us as he had promised.  Since mum has been the word from the Buhari government on the matter more than one week after assuming office, I guess Dr Jonathan had reneged on that promise as usual. But I would not take it against him because it is impossible for him to ‘dash’ us what he himself would sorely need in his native Otuoke where he is spending his retirement. After all, even God did not tell us to love our neighbour more than ourselves. Rather, He admonished us to love our neighbour as ourselves.

  • Putting an end to the Ekiti conundrum

    Putting an end to the Ekiti conundrum

     But he should need no telling now that President Muhammadu Buhari is no Goodluck Jonathan nor can the police and the security services, who were his real bulwark,  any longer play deaf and dumb to his illegalities

    Now that the possibility of the G19 impeaching Governor Ayo Fayose has receded into history, despite his serial illegalities, it should be time to revisit my article of April 19, 2015.  Titled: ‘Ayo Fayose –Before it is too late’ – it was the culmination of an introspection into the decade plus political crisis that has engulfed the state and made nonsense of its development. The result is that Ekiti has regressed even more than some parts of the country where guns had been booming for years. We have had an emergency administration declared, had a one day governor, just as there had been murders and attempted murders, linked to politics. On the positive side, we have had citizens, and others from outside the state who, in the relatively saner intervals, invested billions, especially in the hotels and tourism sub-sector. Today, they must be ruing the day they decided to invest in Ekiti as clients have drained out as a result of the rolling crisis. When I wrote the article, there was no way I could have thought things would get so bad ten individuals could be kidnapped in Ekiti in years, not to talk of within a space of two weeks, as we saw recently.

    I did not stop at just writing the article  but went ahead to contact, not less than 15 highly regarded Ekiti  leaders  and distinguished  individuals , whose names I need not mention here, to help in facilitating peace between the warring parties for the sake of  our people, and the development of the state.  One direct result of these contacts was the joint meeting, called by Chief Deji Fasuan, of the Ekiti Elders Committee and the rump of the Committee for the creation of Ekiti state. Aare Afe Babalola who I did not contact, later called another Elders meeting which, unfortunately  got stalemated.  From that point on, the pugilists were left to their own devices but with the swearing in of the new PDP controlled House of Assembly this past week, impeaching Ayo Fayose by the G19 has now become an obvious impossibility.

    But it will be the very height of illusion to think that our problems are over. In the article under reference, I reminded Governor Ayo Fayose of the fate that became President Taylor of Liberia and went on to say that given the Supreme Court decision, I will candidly advise that a consensus be reached that governor Fayose should run his term. I suggested  he should, in turn, climb down from his high horse and apologise  to Ekiti people for his serial illegalities and, henceforth,  rule Ekiti in a civilized manner. I said he should do everything to return peace to Ekiti and that on the other hand, the G.19 should drop the impeachment process in the full knowledge that four years is not a life time. I went on to say, among other things, that for genuine peace, the governor should pay the G19’s outstanding salaries and allowances, ensure that normalcy promptly returns to the state House of Assembly as well as pay the outstanding salaries of the officials of the previous administration. I then concluded by saying that the governor should not make the mistake of seeing himself as a sole administrator but should rather, let Ekiti take centre stage in all he does. I did not fail to add that though I have been his constant critic, the time has come, to put a closure to all that for the sake of Ekiti. It is time for the two parties to sheath their swords, I pleaded.

    We are now at an opportune time for Fayose to seek the path of peace since any  fear of his impeachment has evaporated. Both now, and at his first coming, one of his biggest mistakes, which led to disastrous consequences at his first coming, was his undue reliance on federal authorities, especially Presidents who were themselves, masters of impunity. With that umbilical cord, he perpetrated, and got away with too many things. But he should need no telling now that President Muhammadu Buhari is no Goodluck Jonathan nor can the police and the security services, who were his real bulwark,  any longer play deaf and dumb to his illegalities. He now has to play by the rules and should constantly remember that it was a PDP controlled House of Assembly that impeached him at his first coming. He  must now, willy nilly, play according to the dictates of the Nigerian constitution. Governor Fayose must now begin genuine governance which has been in total abeyance since he became governor. And in this, he already has his job cut out.

    He must set out, post haste, to cashier his teeming thugs,  local as well as the alleged elements of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force, retrieve all the guns he generously gave them, and turn into the gutters the drums of concentrated acid with which they were armed. He must ensure that these characters are fully paid, lest he creates another version of Boko Haram that will make life unbearable for both state and country as we have seen in the North Eastern part of the country. He must handle this task with maximum dispatch if we want to rid Ekiti of kidnapping and armed robbery which the present circumstances have birthed and encouraged. Ekiti can ill afford any of these crimes. He must equally turn attention to his army of adulating young men/women for whom he must now provide productive jobs as  the devil finds jobs for idle hands.

    He must fully realise that the hard task of governance beckons. If he has any developmental blue print for the state, this will be the time to bring it out as the  omnibus ‘stomach infrastructure’ camouflage, for which he created a directorate, will  suffice only for festivities but certainly not sufficient to answer the critical questions of development or of  a decent daily survival.  He cannot leave our elderly to their own devices,  forever claiming there is no money. We all knew that his predecessor, out of the same paucity of funds, was paying N5, 000 monthly stipend to about 20, 000 elderly citizens which he cancelled on assumption of office. There must be something to replace this welfare scheme just as development must be seen in other sectors of the state economy – education, health, agriculture, etc.

    For the APC, it is time for us  to also sit back, and clinically interrogate, our problems with a view to arriving at  a rapprochement. It is not strange having two or more competing groups within the same party. Though dysfunctional, as we  have seen , time and again,  in  the  Lagos PDP,  the  key thing is we must not relate like enemies. The more popular group will always emerge victorious at state congresses and that should, ideally, settle the matter. Political contestation, inter as well as intra party, is a constant feature of democracy. I have said it before, and it can still bear a repetition: APC’s problems in Ekiti are only skin deep and will be resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.

    Our politicians, across board, should in view of what Ekiti has lost and suffered, honestly moderate their antagonistic relationships. If truly the interest of Ekiti is our focus, there is no reason our personal interests should predominate and I do not think any of us can  claim to love Ekiti more than the other.

    In conclusion, for all round  peace and harmony to endure in Ekiti, our elders must tread the narrow path, be  always objective and not be timid or afraid to talk truth to power.  Failure to do these has been our nemesis. They must be peace facilitators, not partisans. This they can do by ensuring that those in authority are not allowed to become demi gods just as the opposition should be kept on a leach to ensure that their activities are kept strictly within democratic limits. That we need peace in Ekiti, after a decade of self-inflicted crises, is self evident. Let us all work towards it.