The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Those WAEC Results? Ehn now, Nigeria is only reaping what it sowed! (2)

    Our own Generation W, where you and I are, has been a disgrace to our Generation V parents because we are not teaching our Generation X children those values they taught us which preach hard work, good sense and kindness

    Last week, dear reader, we presented the thesis that the woes we are experiencing in our public educational structures in the country right now can be traced right down to the mostly negative learning experiences of the average Nigerian child in childhood and at the public primary school level. We also agreed that those who are largely in charge of the affairs of our toddlers at this level really do not see themselves as parents to the large mass of pupils looking pityingly up to them for good management of all that concern them, the pupils that is, not the officials. So, in a round-about sort of way, the failure of the primary school level is in turn caused by the failure of the parental gene in us and the public officials charged with looking after the young ‘uns.

    Yes, reader, each of the organs in charge of running public primary level education – UBE, UBEC, SUPEB, electricity and water companies, etc., — are manned by people who also double as parents in their spare time. Like other Nigerians, however, it is presumed that their children mostly do not attend the schools they themselves administer or use their own products. In other words, they send their own children to public schools abroad, at public expense, and starve their charges at home. This is how it comes about that teachers are not paid; required materials are not provided for teachers and pupils to work with, classrooms and school environments are uninspiring, homes are in darkness, and the primary school experience is better forgotten for the child. In other words, these are parents who do what is good for their own children and kick other people’s children into the culvert. The result is that children’s imaginations are not awakened and teachers’ resolves are weakened.

    Parental failure at this most tender level is also pronounced in the way many parents believe that money can bring up children better than them. So, they do all in their power to play heroes and heroines to their children by throwing the stuff (mostly ill-gotten too) at their kids until life teaches them another lesson: that parenting means spending time and love, not money and power. There have been reports of rich parents buying houses for their wards to accommodate them while in their out-of-town schools. There are children on more than two hundred thousand Naira monthly allowance from parents. There are parents also who have rushed to their children’s schools to ‘deal’ with teachers who dared to beat their children.

    I do believe that the best parent in this world may not have a kobo to his name; while the richest man in the world (whoever he is) can be made poor by the incapacitating poverty of his child. Children’s imaginations need to be wakened up very early to grasp concepts, learn facts and generate ideas right from birth, by giving them attention, teaching them to read and reading to them, talking to them, etc. These are best done at home and in the primary school. This is the way to prepare them to develop the nation tomorrow. Impatient parents are not doing these; how then do we expect unpaid primary school teachers to do them?

    Nurturing a child is a team effort involving the entire society. Parents are expected to set values that the entire family will follow: no stealing, work hard and do not take advantage of anyone lesser than you. Parents are not teaching these values today because they themselves steal, do not work and take advantage of the rest of the society. They hope however that the schools will rectify their failures.

    Teachers are supposed to build on what already exists in the child as home values or start afresh: no stealing, work hard and do not take advantage of anyone lesser than you. However, those ones are too busy wrestling with poverty, due to unpaid emoluments, to inculcate those values.

    The society – elders, police, religious bodies – are supposed to build on what the home and school have already imparted: no stealing, work hard and do not take advantage of anyone lesser than you. Unfortunately, though, even those ones are looking the other way now because everyone is stealing, is not working hard, and is taking advantage of everyone else. This is exactly why the world is round.

    This weak foundation is what most children who attend Nigerian public schools carry into secondary school and forward into life. Unfortunately, this success-crazed world we are running is interested only in success stories; it is not interested in going back to fix where mistakes have been made. So, rather than endeavouring to rebuild the entire road of education, we all prefer to fix potholes. We fix examinations. Will that school, principal, parent, teacher, etc., which or who has not assisted a child or a class perpetrate some exam malpractice or the other in common entrance, WAEC or JAMB examinations please stand up for recognition? Let’s see: one, two, three … THREE? Oh dear! A case of ‘all have sinned …’ eh? All these just go to prove the parental failure theory: show me a child, so says an adage, and I will show you what the parents are.

    By the time a child is eighteen, in the western world which we are so assiduously copying, a child is shown how to earn respect from the world by teaching him to earn his pocket money, no matter how rich the parents are. Here, we teach a culture of shortcuts. Our own Generation W, where you and I are, has been a disgrace to our Generation V parents because we are not teaching our Generation X children those values they taught us which preach hard work, good sense and kindness. I predict that the Generation Y children of this Generation X will be worse than them, because of our failures. Don’t let us even go near Generation Z.

    Every generation is supposed to improve on the previous one. In the western world, where Nigerians run to for holidays, sneezing check-ups and other sundry matters such as hiding stolen money, each generation has built on the successes of the previous one while managing to minimize their errors. Around here, each generation appears to be more interested in taking public recklessness to the most abominably higher level than the last. In short, this generation is teaching its young ones how to make things worse and worse than they meet them. The result is this chaotic society we are all complaining about.

    I keep wondering what many parents will tell their children that they have been able to contribute to the world. Let’s see now, I imagine it will go something like this: I was appointed into this X position, and… em, I managed to send you and your brother and your mother overseas to school and live there, you know, so that you would have quality education, not like what we have here. You are really lucky, eh?!

    There is a lot wrong with education today that will need a great deal to cure, but educating parents in how to teach their children is a good start. If parents stop misusing their positions and instead concentrate on teaching children responsibility, we may get somewhere. More money may then be available to spend on the Nigerian classroom and its teachers; children may learn something before leaving primary school. Then parents and school authorities may be less inclined to cheat in examinations, and there will definitely be less tears, hues and cries to reap when results are released. Let us try it; it just may work.

  • Journalists on ‘marble’

    Journalists on ‘marble’

    IN 1997, Motoring Editor of the defunct Daily Times Newspaper, Olaniyi Ogundare died in Paris in an autocrash while test driving a new product of Peugeot Automobile.

    On the first anniversary of his death, Peugeot Automobile Nigeria Limited (PAN) published a remembrance advert in which the management paid tributes to the Ogundare.

    “In your professional duties, you were transparently honest, open-minded, trust worthy, appreciative and upright. Although you are gone, the legacy of your goodwill and credibility lingers on for which we are proud.” PAN stated.

    In a piece I wrote titled The Victory in Death published in the newsletter of Journalists for Christ in 1998, I noted that the question journalists mourning Ogundare should ask themselves is whether a good testimony like the one written about the late Motoring Editor could be written about them by their employers, colleagues and those they report if they die on duty?

    Penultimate Sunday, I was reminded of the above  article following tributes pouring in on the sudden death of the Vice Chairman of the The Sun Newspapers Pastor Dimgba Igwe who was killed by a hit and run driver while jogging around his residence.

    The tributes speak volumes of the kind of journalist, the ace writer, publisher, author, biographer and pastor was and will be remembered as.

    The key words I found  in the tributes which is worthy of emulation for every journalist includes consummate professional, distinguished editor and columnist, quiet and diligent worker, reformer, writer with fecund imagination, cerebral and fearless Journalist and renowned media administrator.

    Others are, trail blazer, worthy role model,  thoroughbred journalist, sensitive to national

    cohesion and development, refined journalist, God fearing, passionate and painstaking and  journalist with the Midas touch.

    President Goodluck Jonathan aptly sums up the whole essence of Igwe’s personal and professional accomplishments.

    “ Dimgba Igwe put his God-given abilities to the best possible use in a very purposeful life that was wholly devoted to the defence of truth and the public interest, as well as the promotion of the highest standards of his chosen profession of journalism.”

    Last Thursday, I was the Chairman at the third memorial lecture in honour of a young lady, Ngozi Agbo, nee Nwozor  who left her imprint on the sands of journalism through editing the Campus Life pages in The Nation.

    Members of the University of Lagos Press Club which organised the event never met the deceased but  said what they have read, heard  and seen about the Campus Life convinced them that Ngozi is a journalist that should forever be celebrated for the good work she did in raising a new generation of campus journalists nationwide.

    “You stood in the gap to ensure that our generation is not hopeless by choosing to spend the bulk your time in making us stars in a distressed generation. You opened our eyes to possibilities of a better Nigeria and gave us opportunities to learn and interact with one another through CAMPUSLIFE avenue.

    “With songs of praises to God, we remember you with streams of joy flowing in our hearts because we are the evidence that you once graced this surface earth and we will continue to be the change agents that you taught us to be,” Philip Okorodudu a graduate of the Delta State University wrote in the tribute published in the UNILAG Gong launched at the memorial lecture.

    What kind of person will you be remembered as? The option is yours.

  • Bode George’s hyperbole

    There will be no end to the silly and infantile ascription of divinity to President Goodluck Jonathan, even from unexpected quarters. A few days ago, a mawkish and inebriated Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, former Governor of Bayelsa State, thinking himself deep and philosophical enough, advised Governor Rotimi Amaechi to grovel before the president in order to propitiate him and his wife. After God, cooed Chief Alamieyeseigha, the president is next, and must not be provoked. It was apparent that, given the way public officials in Nigeria genuflect before the president, governors and other elected officials, the cult of worship and the shrine of political idolatry are flourishing in these parts.

    Though it is admittedly not out of character, Bode George, the fawning and fantasising former governor and top PDP chieftain, has described the name of the president as divine. Goodluck, he concluded in a newspaper interview, was doubtless a divine name on account of the successful completion of the national conference. There are probably many more top politicians and elected governors and councillors who ascribe divinity to their bosses, and consequently plant and water heretical thoughts in their leaders’ minds. There is apparently no telling just how low Nigerians will sink in subjugating themselves, or how far they will go in encouraging their leaders to act like God.

  • 2015: PDP’s Jonathan versus APC’s whom

    2015: PDP’s Jonathan versus APC’s whom

    There is probably no one left in Nigeria who thinks President Goodluck Jonathan will not be running for president in 2015. Not only will he run with flourish irrespective of the rigmarole enacted by the sycophantic Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), he will do so with damnable indifference to  the devastations caused by the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, and with complete contempt for the manner the sect exhibits his leadership failings. There will be no contest for the PDP’s presidential ticket, at least not a contest properly describable as a dignified joust. If anyone would be courageous enough to compete against Dr Jonathan for the coveted party ticket, it would be mimic jousting designed to create the false impression of internal democracy within the self-styled biggest party in Africa.

    With TAN rallies in full swing all over the country, signing up millions of people whom the organizers describe extravagantly as converts to the Jonathan cause, it is already taken for granted that within the PDP, Dr Jonathan is unassailable, and his campaign already in full blast. No one will dare oppose him except to mimic democratic reality, and no one in civil society, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or Nigeria’s servile law enforcement agencies will dare caution him or draw his magisterial attention to how ignobly he subverts the law. The country, in other words, quiescently acknowledges Dr Jonathan as the PDP presidential candidate and his campaign a trifling, inconsequential infraction.

    In the next few weeks, however, all attention will be focused on the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) as it begins its complex permutations to produce a winning presidential ticket. Given Dr Jonathan’s head start, not to say Nigerians’ sniveling propensity to venerate a sitting president, the APC will have the most unenviable task in the world to demolish the cultural strictures that promote sycophantic adulation of those in office. The party will be challenged to hammer out a platform that resonates with hostile or undecided voters, to outfox subservient and compromised law enforcement agencies determined to thwart common sense and humiliate the constitution, and to rein in rebellious regional political warlords whose regicidal instincts lead them to the most atrocious murder of principles and values ever. The APC will not find its task easy at all, nor, given their tendency to fight to the death whenever they disagree, do I envy the short, brutal and merciless uphill journey they must make in less than five months before the next polls.

    Compared with the conservative PDP, which appeared to have been born into power, and whose leading apparatchiks seem to think it is born to rule, the less obsequious APC, now increasingly looking like an outsider in the national political war, will want to ride upon a revolutionary manifesto to overthrow the old order. The party will not be discomfited by the discordance with which of many of its conservative but leading lights uncharacteristically flaunt a radical manifesto, nor will it allow the fratricide going on within its ranks to slow it down. It will expect that its hope of achieving victory in any coming encounter with the ruling party will triumph over its feeling of massive political incapacitation. The PDP is united by its long stay in office, and the spoils of office that cement that unity. On the other hand, the APC’s long stay out of office has become demoralizing, causing its leaders to fret endlessly and to fritter away its strength in meaningless, persistent and debilitating quarrels.

    Indeed, the most pressing task before the APC will be how to select a winning ticket from a political milieu that has morphed considerably into an unrecognizable form. Tom Ikimi, the chairmanship aspirant who recently left the opposition party, reveals that the APC anchors its hope of taking the presidency on winning the Southwest and Northwest votes in 2015. But contrary to his sinister and cynical tone, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that calculation, especially if the party thinks the votes from those zones are sufficient for victory. However, the calculation may be based on a wrong assessment of the character and cultures of the country’s geopolitical zones. The Southwest, for instance, used to be single-mindedly progressive, and its definition of progressivism not contentious. Today, the Southwest’s political culture, which used to be fairly distinguishable from the rest of the country both for its idiosyncratic progressivism and the firm values and principles that sustain it, has moved much closer to the national mean of general and enervating pragmatism.

    Worse, even the Southwest political elite is now fractured into contentious parts by internal schisms, some of them caused by nothing more than an insular struggle for regional dominance. Shorn of the principles and ennobling values that had defined its politics, religion and culture, nay its very existence, for more than a century, the region has become distressingly susceptible to the riotous application of religious parochialism. More alarmingly, a sizable faction of the region’s power elite, as demonstrated by Olu Falae, Yinka Odumakin, Ayo Adebanjo, among others, remains dangerously trapped in the bitter, vengeful and anachronistic politics of the past, especially their dichotomous view of northern feudalism versus southern liberalism. Yet, the iconic Obafemi Awolowo made a last ditch attempt in the closing years of his political life to bridge the so-called ideological divide between the North and the Southwest, to find a common ground between the so-called northern feudalism and south western liberalism.

    If the APC is to make progress and unite the Southwest behind the opposition party’s worldview, it will have to appeal to the voters directly, over the heads of the scaremongering and parochial factional elite that now holds the region in thrall. The party will also have to draw attention to the region’s culture of accommodation, its liberal spirit of tolerating other perspectives — be it religious, political or cultural — and then advertise the existence of a richer, better future outside the dogmas and insularity of the past. There are indeed shared affinities between the Northwest and the Southwest, and these affinities are not only shared with other regions; they in fact do not preclude either accommodation or rapprochement with those other regions. Going by the outcome of the national conference, and the insistence of some members of the Southwest elite that the recommendations be peremptorily implemented without recourse to either an enabling law or the National Assembly, it is feared that even the jurisprudential legacy .of the region has been corroded by emotions and long interactions with the lawless propensity of the Jonathan government.

    In picking Dr Jonathan’s opponent, the APC will have to ensure it carries along a sizable part of the Southwest, almost the entire Northeast and Northwest, in spite of the ongoing insurgency in parts of the North, and a healthy share of the North-Central. The South-South is largely out of reach, except a part of the ticket comes from there, and the Southeast seems all but lost on account of its emotive commitment to the patronizing Dr Jonathan. These permutations, as well as a clear appreciation of the changing political culture of the Southwest and an accurate sense of what needs to be done, will closely influence the APC’s choice of presidential candidate and running mate.

    Indeed, by now, the APC must have realized that it cannot hope to fight the ineffective but paradoxically entrenched Dr Jonathan without a more than disproportionate application of unorthodox politics. Its choice of standard-bearer must be revolutionary, unexpected, forward-looking, and transcendental. The party has only a few weeks to do this, and correspondingly fewer weeks to sell him. That candidate must, therefore, have no baggage to tie down the party’s resources, and must suffer no handicap to make the party fritter away its time and goodwill.  The APC may have a few leaders enamoured of brinkmanship; now they must draw upon that facility in a chess move certain to determine whether the party survives or dies, whether it succeeds or fails, whether it has a future or is crushed by the weight of its incandescent past. Now more than ever, it must take a bold and radical step, perhaps the most remarkable ever, to make a solid political statement. Will it? Can it?

    I think the party is faced with two main choices: to play safe by hugging the past, or to take a gamble with futuristic daring. Either choice is certain to have implications for Nigeria’s political future: whether we would slip into one-party rule and fascism projected deliberately or inadvertently by the Jonathan government; or whether we would begin the process of national renewal. The choice, I believe, lies between former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, the taciturn, principled and doughty retired army general, who is sadly misperceived and misunderstood by a large swathe of the South and North-Central; and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, who is not even yet a member of the party, but could, should he join the party, represent its future and hope. If the APC honestly recognizes that most of the factors expected to shape national politics and influence the electorate’s voting pattern in 2015 have been concocted by Dr Jonathan and the PDP, such as religion and ethnicity, then it will have no illusion what its responses must be. Gen Buhari is probably the best man for these trying times, but best men seldom win elections anywhere except in dire, unusual circumstances. In Nigeria, where voters lack the competence to read the signs of the times, it is even worse. The APC will have to gauge whether the fanatical support Gen Buhari attracts from parts of the North is worth the risk of alienating the untrusting remainder of the country.

    On the other hand, everyone knows Hon Tambuwal’s heart and soul are in the APC. If he can overcome the frightful parliamentary fallout of defecting to the opposition, he will probably open the eyes of the APC to more tantalizing political possibilities. Not only is he unencumbered by ethnic and religious baggage, he is modern, intelligent, a consensus builder with cross-over appeal, has a mind of his own, and is principled and loyal to causes, and much more. For its sake and the sake of the country, I hope the APC does not rule out Hon Tambuwal. This is the time for the party to do a strategic rethinking of its methods and ideas; a time to abandon the staid and stultifying formalism of the past; a time to let former Vice President Abubakar Atiku exit the presidential race with all the maturity and dignity commensurate with his political stature; and a time to let Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano bide his time for a future when his stature and exposure would stand him in good stead.

    This indeed is time for a miracle; APC had better furnish the country one. For every democrat, every Nigerian, every patriot who has the instinctive feel of the danger Nigeria faces with a government heading towards tyranny, one-party rule and unexampled impotence and incompetence knows it is of capital importance to deny Dr Jonathan four more years of misrule.

  • Confab: opening its political balance sheet (2) The triumph of General Aguiyi-Ironsi

    Confab: opening its political balance sheet (2) The triumph of General Aguiyi-Ironsi

    History tells us that Ironsi had to be killed by his fellow soldiers because he re-created Nigeria in an image that was contrary to its original image at independence in 1960

    The subtitle of today’s piece: “The triumph of General Aguiyi-Ironsi” is borrowed from the assessment of the just concluded national conference by Dr. Orobola Fasehun, formerly of Nigeria’s Foreign Service and the United Nations. Dr. Fasehun said among other things in a recent tele-seminar that the national conference has fully resurrected General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, despite several chest-beating assessments of the conference in glowing terms by many of the delegates, particularly those from the Yoruba region.

    The reference to Ironsi’s resurrection is to remind us of the promulgation of Decree 34 by Ironsi during his six-month tenure as military head of state after the first coup d’etat in 1966. Decree 34 dismantled without apology and pretence the federal structure of the country and installed a unitary system that transformed the country into an assemblage of provinces administered by a strong centre. History tells us that Ironsi had to be killed by his fellow soldiers because he re-created Nigeria in an image that was contrary to its original image at independence in 1960. After Ironsi, the federal structure was resuscitated, only for a few years.

    As we have observed on this page several times since 2007, Nigeria’s federalism gradually waned under the leadership or sponsorship of military dictatorships, largely between the creation of the first 12 states out of the four regions and the multiplication of the 12 states to the current 36 states, recently slated for increase by the national conference to 54 states. Not even Ironsi had the courage to create 54 provinces during his suicidal declaration of Nigeria as a country of centre-driven provinces. What the national conference had done by resolving to balkanise the country into 54 states is to ensure that the possibility of using regions as federating units or of even having any state or province economically viable enough to pass for a federating unit is made to disappear from the imagination of Nigerians.

    It is hard to explain how this kind of resolution could have come from majority of the delegates considered by many observers to be some of the country’s best. Could it be that the conference lacked thinking economists or economic thinkers? By packaging its failure to make a final pronouncement on resource control and revenue allocation on the ground of lack of technical expertise, the conference honestly owned up to significant intellectual deficiency with respect to issues that called for rigorous thinking. Resolving to break the country into 54 provinces or states suggests that most of the delegates (at least 70%) must have made spiritual and psychological commitment to running an administrative federalism that is sustained and can be sustained only through handouts from the central government. It is also surprising that the conference had enough expertise in the house to determine within the short time available to it which areas or communities should be allocated additional 18 states.

    Before any delegates or their supporters begin to congratulate themselves for devolving power from the exclusive list to the states, let us briefly compare the number of functions on the conference’s exclusive list to what exists in the 1999 Constitution put together at the instance of military dictators. There are 68 items on the exclusive list in the 1999 Constitution, with the first being “Accounts of the Government of the Federation, and of offices, courts, and authorities thereof, including audit of those accounts” and the sixty-eighth item being “Any matter incidental or supplementary to any matter mentioned elsewhere in this list.” On the recommendations of the conference, there are now 62 items on the legislative exclusive list. In reality, the central government has not lost any power. Some of the powers in the current constitution have been combined, thus giving the impression that the number of items of the proposed exclusive list is smaller than what obtains in the 1999 Constitution. For example, items 6, 15, and 24 were combined into one item, items 9, 18, 30 and 42 in the current constitution were merged while items 23 and 28 were combined into one item, to give a total of 62 items on the conference’s new exclusive list.

    With respect to functions proposed by the conference for the states, there are basically five new additions to the pre-conference concurrent list: police (by states that choose to have such law enforcement agency in addition to the overarching one provided by the central government), railway, prison, public holiday, and creation of local government. This is despite the fact that the conference still endorsed continuation of current allocation of petro-naira to local government as third tier of government. These additions to state powers are already being danced about by several delegates around Yoruba cities, but before the Yoruba get misled, the provision to neutralize the power of states to use these new powers and those on the old concurrent list has been added to each item on the concurrent list. Invocation of the principle of central legislative supremacy: “The National Assembly shall have power to make laws for the Federation or any part thereof with respect” to anything under the sun indicates that no state has any freedom to do anything that is not supported by the central legislative assembly, which has the power to legislate in whichever direction it chooses.

    Despite ample references to the Basic Laws of Germany by the conference, there is very little evidence that the conference borrows good models from the concept of sharing power and governance in the context of Germany’s combination of ethnic and territorial federalism, just as there is no such evidence with respect to the practice of territorial federalism in the United States. Just as the framers of the 1999 Constitution intended, a country of 36 (planning to morph into 54) mini states that beg for handouts from the central government cannot be given substantial powers that are not to be regulated or checked by an overbearing central government that has control over resource mobilisation and allocation. Having resolved to increase the number of provinces a la Ironsi from 36 to 54, it would certainly not make sense for the conference to fail to add the principle of federal legislative supremacy to every item on the concurrent list. Without doubt, some position papers sent by groups of Yoruba professionals that called for just two forms of power: exclusive and residual lists must have been thrown into the trash can before commencement of negotiations at the conference.

    Even if the national assembly, the only institution that can transform the resolutions of the conference to constitutional provisions (with the conference having already dismissed the option of a referendum and barring the invocation of Nigeria’s latest code word for decree, Doctrine of Necessity), accepts the resolutions of the conference hook, line, and sinker, Nigeria will remain as far from federalism as it was before the latest of its national conferences. In other words, it is not yet Uhuru for apostles of federalism and advocates of a sovereign national conference. In all, the recently concluded national conference has not been a waste of time, as many of its critics would like citizens to believe. On the whole, the delegates have thrown substantial light on what needs to be done to improve governance in a polity designed for administrative federalism. But the conference has clearly shown the nation what not to do, if it is to fulfil the desire of many of its citizens and nationalities to create a functional and sustainable federal system of government.

    To be continued

  • Ebola’s other victims

    Ebola’s other victims

    Unless care is taken, we may record more deaths from the fear of the disease than from the disease itself

    Knowing our country very well, more people may eventually die from Ebolaphobia than the number that would be killed by the virus or the disease proper. So far, Ebola has killed seven people in the country. And, in just one week, at least three people had reportedly died because those who should have treated them or given them First Aid were scared stiff to go near them for fear that the patients might be having Ebola. It could not have been otherwise in a country where many people want to go to heaven but not many want to die.

    The most prominent of these unfortunate casualties was the British diplomat who slumped and died on Tuesday at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMA), Lagos, at about 3.00 p.m. The envoy, Peter Leslie Carter, the British Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, arrived aboard a United Airlines flight and died at the arrival hall shortly after disembarking from the plane.

    A top security operative at the airport said “He was shouting, help! Help! And then slumped. People did not want to go near initially because of the Ebola scare that has been in town”. Although the airport authorities tried to give the impression that there was prompt response to the emergency, we all know the response might have come too late.

    There is also the story of another victim of Ebolaphobia; that of an unnamed man who was taken to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, by health officials from the MMA. According to a doctor who was around when the man was brought to the hospital, “They rushed him to the Accident and Emergency Unit, and since he was vomiting and purging and he also had high fever, we quickly took his temperature, it was very high. We were all scared to take his blood sample because we were not wearing any Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)”. To cut a long story shut, the man eventually died. Here, it would be difficult to know where to lay the blame because the doctor was not specific as to whether the hospital did not provide the PPE or whether they had but were not putting it on. In Nigeria, the two are possibilities.

    Then the third case, that of a woman that was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, and rushed to the Federal Medical Centre there. Rather than start treating her immediately, she was abandoned until she died the following morning. A senior hospital official was quoted as saying: “The victim was brought into the casualty ward by two Good Samaritans. She was reported to have been hit by a hit-and-run driver along the Sani Abacha Way in the Yenagoa metropolis. Instead of treating her due to the bruises and cuts in her body, the doctors refused, fearing it might be Ebola case. They refused even when the pictures of the scene of the accident were shown to them. The woman was brought into the casualty section by 2pm on Monday. She was abandoned and she died about 11a.m. on Tuesday. Even when the mortuary attendants were asked to take the body to the morgue by some doctors, they refused. They only took the body after the intervention of the Head of Administration. It is a shame.” It is indeed a shame, especially if the doctors had protective gears. The hospital has threatened to investigate the matter and punish the culprits; one can only hope that won’t be one of the usual empty threats common in the country.

    Now, the Federal Government has reconsidered its earlier decision postponing resumption in our primary and secondary schools till October 13. Apparently this is due to the pressure by private schools’ proprietors who said the decision would impact negatively on their revenue. I appreciate this concern and in fact empathise with them, but I do not think the matter should be about money alone. Ebola, as we all know, is no respecter of person. The October 13 date was one of the best decisions taken by the government to curb Ebola and it should not be reversed simply for pecuniary gains. The other argument by the proprietors about disruption of school calendar is weak because, God forbids, an outbreak of Ebola in any such school would spell doom for the country. The loss would be far more colossal than whatever the school owners might lose now. So, anyone with the interest of our children at heart should not be making such demand because of the vulnerability of the children to the disease.

    One of the proprietors’ points which I consider germane however is that despite the Ebola outbreak, the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), one of the campaign organs of President Goodluck Jonathan has unilaterally lifted the ban on political campaigns by holding rallies for the president despite the president’s reported non-sanctioning of such rallies! They have even been to Port Harcourt where Ebola cases have also been detected. This is bad enough. The school proprietors’ point is that since it is easy to be infected with the Ebola virus at such gatherings, the organisers ought to have shelved the campaigns until such a time when the risk would have been minimised or eliminated. The sad aspect is that if it had been the opposition parties that were involved in such rallies, the security agents would have swooped on them. But now that it is the president’s group, they are even protecting the organisers, including top govermment functionaries, at the rallies.

    Nonetheless, we still have to be careful because two wrongs will never make a right; indeed not even a million wrongs would. When the government postponed schools’ resumption, things were not as serious as they are today concerning Ebola. We have recorded fresh cases in a few other places. So, rather than start reconsidering whether to allow innocent pupils resume when we are still unsure of the state of Ebola in the country just for political or pecuniary expediency, or both,, the school owners should have insisted that government fulfilled its promises to the schools before the earlier October resumption date was fixed.

    It is clear though that it is guilty conscience, rather than any rational reasoning that is behind the decision to change the date again to September 22., which is regrettable. What we would have on our hands would not be a child’s play should a few pupils contract the Ebola virus. As for the adults, they can still find a way round it because many of them are sufficiently aware of what the disease entails. This is my assumption, though. Our school proprietors should not have behaved like Dr. Iyke Enemuo, who, for the sake of money agreed to treat an Ebola patient in secret. Today, he is no more. He did not even have the privilege of living to regret that decision. I am sure we do not want such fate to befall our children.

    In the same vein, the proprietors should not behave like the government and its agencies that do not care whether people catch Ebola at their campaign rallies, provided the rallies are in support of the president. This is only one of the many crude impunities of the Jonathan administration. For me, a president that has been in power for about six years should have his works speaking for him by now; he sure does not need any wild campaigns to remind Nigerians about what he has done for them so far. As the saying goes, a king does not have to remind his subjects that he is still their king; when that happens, it is an indication that there is a problem.

    My point is that we should not all be held hostage to the anything-goes politics of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that is ready to do anything to retain its non-performing government. The only regret in this matter is the state governments that also fell for such cheap political popularity. We should do everything to keep our children out of harm’s way so that they do not add to the numbers of the other Ebola victims that we have already recorded. The PDP can play politics with anything and everything, and grant concession no matter how unreasonable such might be provided it sees some political votes from the decision, but we should please leave our children out of this. They are our future; our hope. Don’t let’s eat up their tomorrow today on the altar of crass and primitive politics.

  • The Peoples Democratic Party Of Nigeria (PDP): Lying as Modus Operandi

    The Peoples Democratic Party Of Nigeria (PDP): Lying as Modus Operandi

    We would not have bothered much if PDP lies were limited to within itself but unfortunately, what happens within it and organisations integral to it are worse

    The late James Ajibola Idowu Ige, SAN, (September 13, 1930 – December 23, 2001) and Uncle Bola, to us, left behind enough quotable quotes and other inimitable contributions to Nigeria’s political history and lexicon to make his name absolutely unforgettable. Among these are his description of the five ‘Abacharite’ political parties as akin to five leprous fingers and PDP, after his usually deep observation, as the People Deceiving Party of Nigeria. The party has never been able to live down that apt description in its many years even as they continue to humour it as the largest party in Africa. The good thing is, its members do not only deceive Nigerians, they also live on a diet of lies. Only this past week, as a means of inflicting a pre-determined governorship candidate on its Adamawa chapter – how happy would they not be seeing Ribadu by President Jonathan’s side during the campaigns – a notice suddenly materialised inviting the 14 governorship aspirants to a meeting with the president. Commenting on the invitation, one of the aspirants described it as a ploy. Elucidating further, he said, and I quote: “We were asked to come to the meeting at 9 pm on Thursday. But we got wind of a plot by some forces in the presidency to hold the entire aspirants hostage in Abuja till Friday afternoon when the meeting will hold. As the meeting holds on Friday, Yola Airport will be closed and all roads leading to Yola will be blocked. They will then proceed to hold the primary election in the absence of all the aspirants so that they can manipulate the process for an anointed aspirant.”

    We would not have bothered much if PDP lies were limited to within itself but unfortunately, what happens within it and organisations integral to it are worse; and here we take, for our example, The Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) – President Jonathan’s lodestar campaign organisation. Although both the party and government continue to deny any relationship with TAN, below are the views of a perceptive Nigerian, Simbo Olorunfemi, in a letter to the Editor of The Nation, published on Thursday, September, 2014.  Under the caption, ‘What Manner of Democracy Is This?’, she  wrote inter alia: ‘The advertising campaign by the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria and her co-travellers, obviously well-oiled from an abundance of unexplained resources, has been running for over six months now. The government has nothing to do with it, we are told, yet the Secretary to the Government of the Federation always finds time to be at these rallies to receive a pile of signatures. The president has nothing to do with it, yet his ministers, from time to time, abandon their duty posts to partake in this trend. Even, Ministers Adesina and Okonjo-Iweala could not help but leave their busy desks to take part in rallies at Ibadan and Port Harcourt’. Lies, lies and yet, more lies. What exactly are we to make of these people?

    Nigerians were, however, served the mother of all these PDP lies by Hussain Obaro of Ilorin, Kwara State, who, again, in a letter to The Nation Editor, titled: The Big Scam From TAN, indicative of how politically conscious Nigerians have become, and published on page 19 of The Nation’s edition of Tuesday, September 2, 2014, when he  poignantly captured the fact that these people would go to any length to deceive and to defraud. Hussain is here quoted in full:

    “Few months ago, a non-governmental organisation under the aegis of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), circulated a message all over the internet urging youths to register their bio-data for job opportunities through TAN. Millions of Nigerians, employed and unemployed, rushed into cybercafés to purchase network-browsing time while those who have smart phones and other ICT gadgets with subscriptions made do with it and registered duly and happily. Nigerians were asked to fill in their phone numbers, permanent home address, and local government areas, among other sensitive information.

    Few weeks later, TAN began an endorsement rally in support of President Jonathan’s re-election bid throughout the various geo-political zones in Nigeria. To the dismay of Nigerians, the bio-data which they naively gave to TAN with the expectation that they would be provided jobs were carefully collated and presented at the various TAN rallies to the representatives of President Jonathan, Secretary to the Government of the Federartion, Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, as the Nigerians who are happy with the president’s transformation agenda in the creation of jobs, good healthcare delivery system, improved national security etc and have happily and willingly endorsed President Jonathan for another term of office come 2015!

    The use of bio-data of young Nigerians to score cheap, shameless and ridiculous political points without their consent is not only criminal and offensive, it is unfortunate and an insult on the sensibility of these young Nigerians, it is an embarrassment to this country and its image as it is a dent not only the credibility of the conveners of TAN but also on the presidency.

    The youths of this country should not be cowed or tricked into endorsing President Jonathan for another term in office. TAN should have come out openly and allow these young Nigerians to freely express their opinions on whether they wish to do so or not. Nigerian youths have been taken for a ride and for fools. TAN should as a matter of urgency render an unreserved apology in all the national dailies, national radio stations and television stations to Nigerians on their heinous crime and atrocity against the people.

    Failure to do this would be met with legal consequences, as various youths fora would have no other choice than to proceed to a law court for a legal battle. The sensibility of any people has never been this insulted in the history of this country. If you can’t help us out of unemployment, poverty and poor standard of living imposed on us by corruption and lack of ideas of our leaders, at least, don’t insult us or take us for fools”.

    Were I to be one of these young people, I would insist we collectively institute a class action against this infuriating banality from high quarters to teach a lesson they will never forget.

    Nigerians can now see why the PDP would not mind pre determining election results via pre-programmed ballot papers as was allegedly done in the 21 June, 2014, gubernatorial election in Ekiti whose later discovery made such deployment impossible in the subsequent Osun election. It also brings to mind the humongous lies currently being  peddled all over Ekiti by an in-coming government that has become hyperactive about money, going illegally to the state’s bankers for information about state accounts against all  protocol and decency simply because they had  allegedly pre-committed  huge Ekiti funds, straight  from  monthly  federal allocations, to servicing election related  agreements.

    The way PDP is going, shamelessly lying about everything and fighting shy of exposing and prosecuting sponsors of terrorism to the utter discomfiture of our hard fighting soldiers, we may one day wake up to find we no longer have a  country to call our own. God forbid.

  • Those WAEC results? Ehn now, Nigeria is only reaping what she sowed! (1)

    Our public schools are the most unattractive shells outside and the most dreary goatherd pens you have ever seen inside…where children are let in by day and goats by night

    Fact one: the Nigerian public school system has collapsed. That is not news. Yet, for some strange reason, everyone appeared shocked and angry that more than seventy per cent of the students who sat for the last West African Examinations Council (WAEC) examinations failed to obtain the required five credits. Fact two: there is also failure of governance in Nigeria. Everyone knows that too. Yet, somehow, we the general public, continue to expect the miraculous delivery of dividends to flow from the purifying throne. I keep asking: how on earth do we expect light to come from darkness? k&…If you ask me, na who I go ask?…k&

    Seriously now, many factors have been enumerated as being responsible for the sad state of our educational system in Nigeria today. There is the factor of governmental insincerity, lean funding, parental indifference and illiteracy (no matter how educated they are), teachers’ divided attention, teachers’ lack of motivation, unqualified teachers, infrastructural failures, overcrowded classrooms, poorly constructed classrooms, uninviting learning environments, zero level learning materials … and so on. Wonderful! One thing is sure: with these woeful failures, it is a wonder that there are still schools at all in this country.

    However, we shall not be discussing these factors today; I think much has been said about them already. One factor that I think is often overlooked is the fact that these failures begin from those not addressed at the primary level in public schools. It is the public primary schools that house the highest number of children: more than seventy per cent of them I hear. That is also where we have the higher number of parents who do not understand what education means or how to achieve its goals.

    Sadly, there are children who go to school without breakfast, and lunch is a dreamy distance away. There are children who rise up in the mornings and first hawk one thing or the other for their (sometimes indolent) parents before being allowed to go to school. They must also return to hawking in the evening after school. Don’t ask me; many parents believe that’s the best way to train their children by exposing them to as much of the inclement elements as possible. Like I said, don’t ask me. There are children who are not able to do homework because they are the chief earners in their families; i.e., the family subsists on what the children earn. I call that marching in reverse order. Then, there are children living in such miserable conditions that school work just does not come into the picture at all. In that condition, you can’t literally see beyond your nose. I tell you, there is nothing wrong with our education that we cannot cure by educating our parents.

    On the one hand, many parents are illiterate and do not really understand what is going on in school. Sadly, again, the government has been reluctant to really tackle the issue of mass literacy for reasons best known to it. Perhaps, a literate populace would threaten its covert affairs; perhaps a literate populace would ask too many questions; perhaps a literate populace would call more stridently for an end to corruption; perhaps… One thing is sure, the educational foundation of Nigerian children would be stronger if there was a strong bond of cooperation between parents and teachers. Caring educated parents would have more input in homework, school work, school behavior through PTA, etc. Right now, there is very little. In public primary schools, all the work is being done, and all the decisions are being taken at this crucial foundational level, by teachers who are ill-paid, ill-regarded and ill-motivated. This is why their word is law.

    On the other hand, there are also parents who are so rich that they use their wealth and position against the nation’s systems. A good many adults in this country are in some position of authority or the other as school or college teachers, administrators, corporate managers, traders or entrepreneurs, heads of religious bodies, housewives, househusbands, etc. Firstly though, if you are an adult and you are not yet a parent, wait for it, it will come; all bad things eventually come. Secondly, if you are a parent and your category is not covered by this list, don’t be annoyed; just find a bench and squeeze yourself in somewhere. Thanks.

    As I was saying, one of the requirements for holding authority is that you must mentor someone else: your children, your wards, your subordinates, your village urchins, your village groups, your spouse(s), your countrymen and women… These are your responsibilities, one and all. Unfortunately, practically everyone has ditched these responsibilities in favour of self-aggrandising schemes. Problem, though, is that work that is left undone has a way of … remaining undone. Nowhere does this show as readily as children that are not taught.

    Let’s take the home. I don’t care how important or unimportant you are, you must admit that you have sometimes been embarrassed by your child as a result of one lesson or the other you failed to impart. (I knew it; you are a liar). Many times, it eventually shows up anyway. In the news recently, there were reports of a child murdering his father over a stick of cigarette. Another child murdered and hacked his father to little pieces for easier disposal purposes. Yet another child murdered his mother for over-pampering him and not bringing him up properly. Yet another child was taught by his father how to rape a defenseless toddler. Just recently, another child drove his mother, in a drunken fit, to her death … Should I go on? Naaaay….! These ones were not so lucky.

    Some of us have been luckier. Remember that joke about a child who told the landlord that his father told him to tell the landlord that he is not in? I have one better. The child told the landlord: My father is really in the room but he told me not to tell you! Lucky father, at least he wasn’t killed; the child has just not learnt to lie decently.

    Most Nigerian children today are not standing on strong foundations because of their primary school education. Just drive by the public schools nearest to you, and if you are minded to do so, please, take a peek inside them. It’s all right for you to say that your children do not attend these schools since you are rich enough to ferry them across town each day to some expensive private school, or even across the seas to some expensive public school abroad. That will not do; the products of these public schools you are refusing to look at today will still rub shoulders with your expensively educated children in the world either as their work rivals, house-helps, or, God forbid, armed robbers, murderers, or 419ers – pick whichever one you like. For now, there is just this one world, and we all have to share it.

    Our public schools are the most unattractive shells outside and the most dreary goatherd pens you have ever seen inside. Oh yes, in many cities and villages, they do share the rooms: children are let in by day and goats are let in by night. I also understand that what goes on inside them by way of teaching is not different from the morning or night sessions either. Bottom line is, no learning takes place morning or night. Yet, there are people in charge of these schools, and they are often called teachers, headmasters and mistresses, school inspectors and education ministry authorities, heads of department of education in local governments, school boards’ chairmen, etc. And yep, they are parents too; and that is our tragedy.

  • Boko Haram, ISIS caliphates a continuation of history

    he world is stupefied by the declaration of a caliphate in Iraq and Syria by extremist Sunni militants. The Islamic State (IS), as it is now called, is headed by the self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who has triggered one of the most brutal modern day repressions over a territory that spans portions of northern Syria and northern Iraq. Perhaps inspired by the IS, and nostalgic over the numerous caliphates that had made waves throughout history, leaders of Nigeria’s militant Boko Haram sect have also declared a caliphate covering towns in Borno State, and still expanding.

    Starting essentially from the Umayyads and right through the Abbasids, Fatimids and down to perhaps the most extensive of them all, the Ottomans (1453-1924), the caliphate idea has since the seventh century remained an inherent part of the Muslim world. IS and Boko Haram caliphates are a mere recrudescence of an enduring idea. The Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903) is the Nigerian equivalent of the caliphates that swept through the Middle East and Europe between 661 and 1924. It is recalled that the setting up of a caliphate was the primary goal of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. Though it is not certain IS and Boko Haram would be allowed to take root, their formation, no matter how brief, is a reminder of the nostalgia that accompanies the idea. More importantly, it reminds us that that idea is unlikely to die for a long time. Modern caliphates reiterate the continuation of history.

    But more spectacularly, the fragile Boko Haram Caliphate, which some have described as incipient Kanuri nationalism, and the more expansive IS should remind public officials, state actors and statesmen, not to say Nigerian leaders who insist Nigerian unity is non-negotiable, that no national border is either inviolate or permanent. In time, and as a historical inevitability, borders will still be redrawn, and states, whether in Europe, America or Asia and elsewhere, are doubtless still in formation. If Nigeria is to last as a country, its leaders must act with the highest degree of responsibility required to sustain and stabilize the polity, as well as demonstrate knowledge of statecraft. The Jonathan presidency demonstrates clearly how horribly remiss Nigerian leaders have become in their responsibilities, and how in particular, by his actions, Dr Jonathan endangers everyone, including his predecessors.

  • Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernizing political elites in our country (1)

    Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernizing political elites in our country (1)

    The fly that has no one to advise it follows the corpse to the grave.
    Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God

    Let me state from the very onset of this piece that what has brought me back to the subject of Nuhu Ribadu’s defection from the APC to the PDP about which I wrote in this column two weeks ago is the unusually high number of emails that I got in response to that column. In number and sheer emotional intensity, almost no other column that I have ever written in this newspaper comes close to the responses I received to the piece on Ribadu. The majority of such responses were, as I had expected, full of bitter disappointment, anger and derision. Some responses were thoughtful and measured, but these were very few.

    A special category of emails among these responses concerns those that were full of sarcasm and invective. Perhaps the choicest among this group of responses were those that played satirical language games on Ribadu’s name, using the first two of the three syllables of the former anti-corruption czar’s name, “Ri-ba”, as a pivot for all kinds of printable and unprintable rubbishing of the character of the born-again PDP chieftain. “Riba” in the Yoruba language can be severally translated as bribery, graft or sleaze. From this, one particularly caustic email to me replaced the name Ribadu with the three-syllable word Ri-ba-dun, which literally means graft, bribery or sleaze is sweet, is profitable. I do not know if the same process is going among Nigerians who speak other languages and are as bitter as the person who coined “Ri-ba-dun”, but it would not surprise me in the least to discover that this is the case.

    Ribadu’s defection to the PDP, the worst, the most corrupt and the most mediocre ruling party in Africa and perhaps in the world, has demonstrably increased the level of cynicism in our country. He enjoyed great respect and credibility across nearly all social and ethnic groups in the country, especially among the masses of ordinary Nigerians. True enough, he did very poorly in his bid for election as President in 2011, but the cause for that failure had more to do with the systemic nature of the massively monetized corruption of the electoral process in Nigeria than to any personal failings in the man himself. I was very aware of the contradictions and inconsistencies in Ribadu’s work as the volatile, energetic and outspoken Head of the EFFC, but I did have considerable admiration for him and some members of his staff. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I am returning again this week to the matter of his defection to the PDP, my intention being to open up an aspect of the consequences or ramifications of his defection that I think that, for the most part, many who have commented on his defection have ignored. That dimension is what I describe in the title of this piece as the unending disappearance of productive and modernizing political elites in Nigeria, with special reference to the commanding place that corruption now has in the political affairs of our country. Let me explain what I mean by this.

    Beyond Ribadu himself, beyond the charisma and mystique that his work at the EFCC created around his personality in Nigeria and in the international community, and indeed beyond the moral implications, there is the crucial issue of what his defection to the ruling party says about the fundamental nature of our political elites in all the ruling class parties, especially the PDP and the APC but not excluding the other parties. Expressed in its simplest form, this is the view that our politicians, in all the parties and with only few individual exceptions, are soft, indeed even tolerant towards corruption. They may condemn it in the strongest of words and even make opposition to it a part of their electoral platforms and manifestos, but fundamentally, they do not have resolute, self-defining, self-constituting opposition to corruption. There are many signs and indicators of this but we can only highlight a few here.

    One: Regardless of how much you are publicly known to have stolen from public coffers, you can defect from any party to another party and you will be welcomed with open arms, no questions asked. Two: Legislators from all the parties enjoy salaries and bonuses that, in being the highest in the world and therefore not affordable for a developing country like Nigeria, more or less amount to a form of legalized but totally corrupt looting of our national coffers. Three: All the ruling class political parties, without exception, participate in the massive monetization of electoral politics in our country. The consequence of this, both obvious and implicit, is the transformation of electoral politics into a form of “business” whose yield, whose profit, fuels corruption of a very high and grandiose order in the political affairs of our country.

    It is on account of these and other manifestations of widespread and systemic corruption among the generality of our political elites that Ribadu’s defection to the PDP has been quite rightly seen as a confirmation, a revelation of the bitter fact that no matter how much they talk or seem to act against corruption, in the end virtually all our political elites, with only a few notable individual exceptions, are fundamentally tolerant toward corruption. Much in the way in which the dung beetle lives in and on excreta, they live and feed fat on corruption as the very medium of their existence as politicians. My main purpose in this series of two articles is to take this idea one step further from its emphasis on a moral critique of the scale of corruption in Nigerian politics to an emphasis, quite frankly and deliberately, on the prospects for reform and/or revolution in our country in the years ahead of us.

    On this matter, let me go directly and unambiguously to some distinct but interconnected central theses. In the first place, the moral critique of the humungous scale of corruption in our country can have positive political results if and only if there are reasonably large numbers of political elites who do take the struggle against corruption seriously and are willing and able to base both their electoral politics and their policies and actions in political office on that struggle. Such politicians are those I have designated in the title of this series “productive, modernizing political elites”. Incidentally, in the First and Second Republics, political elites of this kind used to be quite numerous – in spite of the political crises of those periods. But they are now a fast disappearing breed within the ranks of our present political class. Let me restate this point carefully: we can preach and moralize on the scale of corruption in our country as much as we want, but if political elites that are willing to take the struggle against corruption seriously can be counted only in single digits and not in their dozens, hundreds or thousands, reform will never happen within the present political order and we are headed toward revolution – of the Right or the Left, either of which can be very bloody or extremely self-destructive.

    Secondly, while corruption has probably for long existed and will perhaps forever exist in all forms and at all stages of human social development, and furthermore, while it has managed to coexist in one way or another with modernization and modernity throughout virtually all the regions of the world, there is a limit, a boundary beyond which corruption on a monumental scale is a great, crippling obstacle to progress, peace, sustainable development and well-adjusted modernity. Nigeria, under our former military dictators and now under the reign of the PDP – with some connivance from the other ruling class parties – has long gone well beyond such limits and boundaries. There are Nigerian economic or business moguls that make their wealth from productive, value-added and job-creating enterprises but by a wide margin, the great majority of our wealthy, propertied classes make their wealth from corruption-related connections to the state in ways that ultimately make their wealth non-productive. This is the economic or institutional basis of the rapidly disappearing breed of productive, modernizing political elites in our country.

    Thirdly, Ribadu, in his defection to the PDP, is highly symptomatic of this disappearing breed of modernizing political elites in Nigeria. While in the APC, he was extreme in his savage attacks on corruption within the ranks of the PDP but since crossing over to the ruling Party, he has said not a word on whether he has either changed his mind on that score or hopes now to work from within the PDP to rid the Party of its endemic corruption. And while we are on the topic, we might as well note here that while in the APC, Ribadu saw and spoke about no corruption within that Party. This strongly indicates that either now or in the past, he has probably never really seen the struggle against corruption as fundamental to his or our country’s political future. Thus, like the fly in the adage from Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God that followed the corpse into the grave because it had no one to advise it, Ribadu has chosen to follow the PDP into what is almost certainly going to be the graveyard, the dung heap of history.

    The struggle against corruption is fundamental to our country’s future, Ribadu or no Ribadu. Reform is still possible in our country, even if Ribadu’s defection to the PDP has dealt a nearly fatal moral blow to that possibility. In next week’s conclusion to the series, we shall explore past and present indications in Nigeria’s political history that provide a basis for hoping that before a revolution of the Right or the Left sweeps everything away, genuine, radical and humanistic reform has a chance in our country, even if it is the slimmest of chances.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu