The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Ribadu’s defection and sameness of political parties

    Ribadu’s defection and sameness of political parties

    On the 2011 presidential election, I voted for Nuhu Ribadu, former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss and candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), even though I knew he could not win. But I felt that more than any other candidate on offer at the time, including Gen Muhammadu Buhari, he was probably the most dynamic, charismatic, modern (both in depth of knowledge and cross-over appeal), and without ethnic, religious or ideological baggage. He in fact did not win, perhaps because everyone, including myself, knew he was young, impulsive, a work in progress, and a little somewhat idealistic, flighty and iconoclastic. Had he won, I would have been willing to offer my services to his government and the country in the assurance that my exertions would be both recognised and valuable.

    I always knew, however, that the young man was capable of curious rashness, not necessarily harmful to the country he so passionately craves to serve, but always counterproductive to the principles and values he wishes to be ennobled by. His defection last week to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after many months of speculations is not completely surprising. He was and still is a fine policeman and professional, but many of his admirers would wish him to be better anchored on the principles and values he adores but is unable to put into systematic thought and form. I am nonetheless unable to condemn Mallam Ribadu for the shocking political step he has taken, lured as he was by possible assurances from President Goodluck Jonathan or the PDP leadership to be made the PDP’s standard-bearer in October’s Adamawa governorship election.

    I have absolutely no doubt that should he overcome the stiff internal opposition in the state chapter of the PDP and is elected governor, the state would enjoy far more inspiring and productive leadership than many other states in the country have witnessed since their creation. His stewardship in Adamawa could also prepare him, ceteris paribus, for a shot at the presidency on a fortuitous tomorrow, when he probably would have matured. He would be in the news, and it would be mostly for the right reasons. And when he visits the State House in Abuja or appear at any other national event, he would be the cynosure of all eyes. Who knows, perhaps it was the lure of these possibilities that attracted Mallam Ribadu into taking last week’s fateful step to defect to a party he had consistently excoriated in the most brutal and waspish manner.

    Those who defend his defection, not to say Mallam Ribadu himself, have argued that his defection was not morally offensive, seeing that both the party he left and the one he has just joined have very few distinguishing features or redeeming virtues. In their opinion, the PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are not far apart ideologically, have their fair measure of political follies and foibles, harbour as many political ragamuffins as the other, and subscribe unflatteringly to, or are burdened by, the same political appurtenances such as short-circuited internal democratic practices. Mallam Ribadu himself gave close hints he would be a good governor in the PDP as he would be in the APC had he remained in his former party and became a governor on its platform. I hope they let him become governor, for it is clear he joined the PDP for that reason. If he doesn’t, then he had better go to Siberia, for he would not be able to live down the humiliation.

    However, the view is unfortunately widespread that both the APC and the PDP are virtually the same. This is a heresy promoted by those who still smart over the sanctimonious effusions of self-confessed progressive leaders. In repudiating the view that APC is ideologically different from the PDP, such troubled consciences have argued that there are governors in the PDP that perform as good as, if not better than, some governors in the APC. They also argue that the APC has nearly an equal share of odious personalities as the PDP, a reasoning underscored by the shocking and mortifying defections of personalities like Femi Fani-Kayode and Ali Modu Sheriff into the progressive fold, when in fact there was and still is nothing progressive about the two politicians. More importantly, many leading APC men have also defected to the PDP with so much pianissimo calmness and distinctive élan.

    But perhaps the most vociferous proponents of the PDP/APC sameness theory are leaders of the Southwest factional elite opposed to the APC leadership. They argue, and have convinced themselves and others, that even if the APC is progressive, a fact they now dispute animatedly, it is after all not the only progressive party in the country. In fact, given the loathing which that factional elite nurse against the APC, they are more than prepared to dismiss the party as an impostor deserving of extirpation by the Jonathan forces. Recall that that factional elite lost the power struggle in the Southwest between 2003 and now, and have tried futilely to win back its position, if need be, in alliance with either the most odious characters in the region or the devil himself. The region’s, and by extrapolation, the national ideological conflict between progressivism and conservatism should be contextualised partly within the struggle for power and dominance in the Southwest.

    Mallam Ribadu may therefore have been seduced by the foggy understanding and consideration of ideology in Nigeria’s contemporary politics, a fogginess helped by the blurring of ideological lines in political recruitment and policy enunciation in the Southwest. As Femi Falana argued in an interview published last Friday in The Punch when pressed to explain the APC victory in Osun vis-a-vis the party’s loss in Ekiti, the APC had failed to differentiate itself in the idiosyncratically progressive policies and politics of the Yoruba states as exemplified by the Obafemi Awolowo era. While this is a valid observation, Mr Falana himself recognised that this weakness does not fully account for the sometimes anomalous behaviour of the Southwest electorate, or any other electorate for that matter. It must be recognised that there will never be a time when the parties in Nigerian politics will be so differentiated that it would be a question of evil and good, right and wrong. That belongs to the realm of fiction and, to some extent, theory.

    The fact is that whether we accept it or not, and in spite of the jarring presence of certain personalities in the APC who are at odds with the party’s ideology, the PDP is actually largely and essentially a conservative party. It has retained all the essential elements of conservatism since the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, and has under Dr Jonathan reinforced that conservatism to the point of being reactionary, if not dangerously fascist. Anyone who can’t appreciate the PDP’s predilection for fascism is either blind or out of his wits. On the whole, however, and though it cannot be affirmed with certainty how it would conduct itself should it form the government at the centre, the APC has proved in the states it governs that it is more democratic politically and more progressive in its developmental imperatives. That it concomitantly and sometimes undesirably imposes less sympathetic tax and other fiscal regimes on the people do not detract from its progressivism, but only speaks to the progressive states’ policy dissonance.

    There may be nothing morally offensive about Mallam Ribadu’s defection, but there is nothing wise in it either. The former EFCC boss was not an ordinary member of the APC. He was the presidential candidate of the party’s precursor, the ACN. At that high level, policy and ideological summersaults are simply intolerable and inexcusable. No one could rise to a level where had he been elected president he would embody all that the party stood for ideationally, culturally, politically and socially, and yet saunter over to the enemy almost casually. By defecting, Mallam Ribadu gives the unsavoury indication he was neither persuaded about what his former party stood for nor convinced enough that the PDP he fought against in 2011 was the weak, banal and implacable organ his former party made it out to be. And though he retains our respect for his person and his ability, his defection nonetheless showed how tentative his principles and values appear to be, and especially that his often impressionable mind still needs a lot of work to refine and solidify it beyond the entrenched casuistry that vitiated his leadership of the EFCC.

  • Stellar in the time of Ebola

    Stellar in the time of Ebola

    In the time of Ebola, there is something to be said about the quintessential Nigerian spirit after all. There are moments when a particular passage encapsulates all that is noble and heroic about a suffering society. Such has been the death from Ebola infection of Stella Folashade Ameyo Adadevoh. This is one death that shows how the human spirit can rise above its shabby surroundings into the stellar plane of astral possibilities. We shall be mourning this heroic doctor for a long time.

    It has been noted that unhappy is the land without a hero. To this has been added the famous quip that it is the land in search of heroes that is unhappy indeed. However this may be, it must be noted that in this season of politicians without ideal or the stout convictions that power genuine politics, in this season of political harlots changing parties in a manner reminiscent of babies changing nappies, Nigeria may well need more heroes.

    Dr Adadevoh was not even on duty on the fateful afternoon that brought the hapless Sawyer to our shores. But as the most senior doctor around, she had insisted on attending to the footloose Liberian. When he died, she had prevented his corpse from being transited through the same route of infamy and state dereliction which had seen him evade sanitary surveillance in two countries, Liberia and Nigeria respectively.

    This would probably have triggered off a humanitarian catastrophe for Nigeria. By so doing and by sacrificing her own life in the process, Ms Stella Adadevoh probably prevented thousands of her compatriots from going under in a monstrous plague. It doesn’t get more stellar than that.

    It is tempting to dismiss Mr Patrick Sawyer as a madman—as President Goodluck Jonathan did in a moment of angst and anger. But Sawyer is a prime parable for the post-colonial condition, an example of stricken humanity escaping from the concrete horrors of a diseased African nation in the post-colonial epoch. Under the tyranny of underdevelopment and Stone Age medical facilities, people must seek liberty. It is a pity that in seeking salvation, Mr Sawyer almost brought epidemic damnation on a whole nation.

    The greater pity is that despite the bravest efforts of Madam Eileen Sirleaf, Liberia is yet to return to its pre-military coup stability and prosperity. This is a lesson for Nigeria and other African countries that support and prop up sadistic tyrants without the mental magnitude to rule even a hamlet. In an increasingly globalised world in which time and space are virtually obliterated, those who sow the whirlwind must expect to reap its grim repercussions before the old African cock crows.

    It is a cause for sober reflection that despite its parlous state, there are many African people and nations that still regard Nigeria as the medical and political Mecca of the Black race. The late Sawyer was one of these. Casting vituperative aspersions on him and his nation is particularly ungracious and graceless. To whom much is given, much is expected. It is like a delinquent elder brother crying that he did not choose to come first and therefore should not be held responsible for the fate of his younger siblings.

    The Ebola virus was first discovered around the Congo River in the late seventies. Almost 40 years after, no African nation has taken the lead in cutting edge medical research to find a cure. The trail has only thrown up a long tapestry of quacks and medical mountebanks profiting from their people’s misery while pocketing international research grants.

    In the case of Nigeria, this can only be so since a sizable number of its highly trained medical personnel had already absconded abroad, fleeing from the inferno of national ruination. In a show of diluted and adulterated sovereignty, we have been cadging and appealing to America and the international community to come to our aid and to release an experimental drug which is the product of arduous research and medical labour in other climes. What is the worth of the independence of all African nations?

    The point to note is that until Nigeria and one or two African countries rise and rouse themselves to fulfil their manifest destiny as the medical, educational and technological hub of the continent, Africa will continue to be seen as the poster boy for all that is dark and disagreeable about humanity. On current showing, particularly given the dismal and dissolute nature of the Nigerian ruling class, that golden age of the Black person will continue to be a pipe dream.

    But it is morning yet on creation day. The sterling example of Ameyo Adadevoh speaks to the glorious possibilities of the untapped heroic potentials and moral resources available to the crippled African nation once it gets its act together. There is a particularly poignant irony about her example coming at a time when the entire medical workforce of the nation has downed tools in agitation for better service condition and the government has as usual wielded the big axe by purporting to sack all of them.

    In the old world of sturdy values and ordered societies, nobility was said to have its obligation. The late doctor belonged to the old Nigerian nobility. No one could have come from a more distinguished pedigree. Daughter of the notable physician Professor Adadevoh, great grand daughter of the illustrious Herbert Macaulay, the father of modern Nigerian nationalism,  and great great grand daughter of the immortal Bishop Ajayi Crowther, she could not have been sired from a more illustrious lineage.

    There cannot be a more appropriate time to ask whatever happened to the modern rationality-driven society these great men were trying build. The old bishop, after being miraculously reprieved from international slavery, went on to pioneer the translation of the bible into Yoruba language. With his fiery oratory and the irreverent aplomb with which he put the colonial masters in their place, Herbert Macaulay stirred the spirit of nationalism in the new nation.

    All we have as cultural inheritance today is the vestigial remains of the great African society these illustrious visionaries were trying to build and the occasional heroic example of their solitary heirs. Having directly or indirectly experienced the tragedy of modern slavery, and having been rescued by total strangers, these men knew that in a rational, equity-driven society, the brotherhood of humankind is superior to the fraternity of tribal affiliation and primordial kinships.

    There was a country indeed. But before our very eyes, Nigeria has descended into a whirlpool of savage irrationality with skull-grinding ritualists on the prowl, with eye-gouging kidnappers on the loose and with a particularly irresponsible political class pretending to order the affairs of the nation even as it sinks further into dismal despondency and Stone Age indignities.

    All hope is not lost. The road to restitution may be long and arduous. But it can be reached by a determined society. Once again, it has taken the tragic heroism of an exemplary Nigerian to remind us of what it means to do our duty to the nation. This is one of those unique occasions that Goodluck Jonathan ought to have milked for its maximum symbolic possibilities and redemptive aura. He ought to have been nudged by his handlers to make a national broadcast as a tribute to heroic and paradigm-shifting courage.

    At the very least, the late medical practitioner should be accorded befitting posthumous recognition. In death, she ought to be granted one of the nation’s highest honours. Thereafter, a befitting national medical institution should be named after her. This is the only way to secure a very shaky future and to guarantee that the labour of our heroes shall not be in vain. May the soul of this noble woman rest in perfect peace.

  • Smirky Jonathan takes on conference sceptics

    President Goodluck Jonathan and his supporters are wildly exultant about the outcome of the national conference. In particular, the president has been irritably unsparing of his foes, whom he mocked furiously when he gave his remarks during the submission of the conference reports last Thursday. As far as he was concerned the conference succeeded, as he put it triumphantly, partly because he did not meddle in its deliberations and could not have meddled since he had no ulterior motives. Many trusting Nigerians, chiefly some voluble Southwest delegates who are battling their own private demons, echo the falsehood. The chairman of the conference, Idris Legbo Kutigi, a former Supreme Court justice, is however more restrained and magisterial, but Professor Bolaji Akinyemi even proffers reasons for what he described as the conference’s success.

    As a conference sceptic, and a proud one at that, one who unrepentantly distrusts Dr Jonathan’s motives, not to talk of his unprincipled conviction about and disinterestedness in the finer principles and building blocks of democracy, I find it difficult to explain the conference supporters’ hasty celebration. I do not understand why they are celebrating the very first step in the life of this boondoggle, as if all other conferences held since the 1970s miscarried during the discussions stage. Nor am I aware that conference sceptics predicted that the Jonathan conference would miscarry at the discussions stage, seeing that the delegates whose deliberations Dr Jonathan has falsely insinuated altruism, were handpicked.

    Dr Jonathan’s remarks show the depth of the problem confronting Nigeria. He has never been presidential in his approach to governance, and his statements have always been both uninspiring and inappropriate. In Thursday’s remarks, he spoke again with the boyish vendetta he is accustomed to, mocking and ridiculing his opponents, and failing to address their fears about why he convoked a conference he had moments earlier denounced in violent and acerbic language. He grinned mischievously, poked fun at his detractors, and indulged in fantasies about how the conference was an ambitious answer to the national question. He forgot that as imperfect as the current constitution is, the country’s problem is hardly caused by the letter of the constitution, nor even by its spirit. The problem has always been largely incompetent, immature, ignorant and selfish leaders. The conference did not address these other major attitudinal issues, nor could it have.

    In his remarks, Dr Jonathan had said: “The success of this conference has proved the cynics wrong in many respects. Those who dismissed the entire conference ab initio as a ‘diversion’ have been proved wrong as what you achieved has contrary to their forecast diverted our country only from the wrong road to the right direction. They said the conference would end in a deadlock as Nigeria had reached a point where the constituent parts could no longer agree on any issue.” It is not certain where the president got the misinformation that Nigeria’s constituent parts could not agree on anything, nor is it clear why he prematurely concludes that cynics have been proved wrong. As Justice Kutigi himself more wisely put it, previous conferences also successfully concluded their deliberations and submitted their reports.

    Though Dr Jonathan holds very high hopes for the conference report, so far, however, he has ruled like a tyrant, and, should he be re-elected, would continue to rule like one with unmitigated contempt for the constitution and the rule of law. If his supporters fail to see this, they are as entitled to live in denial as the president is entitled to nurture his chimera. However, the real battle over the conference will begin soon, going by how adeptly Dr Jonathan has prepared booby traps for Nigerians over the conference. First, he concocted the conference as a distraction, in spite of his tame denial, and designed it to raise political capital for himself for the 2015 polls. Second, as the most divisive president Nigeria has ever had, he is prepared to further divide Nigerians over the conference reports. He has said he will implement the conference recommendations that relate to policy matters, though his record in policy implementation and substantial reforms is questionable, and pass the constitutional recommendations, which are of course the most crucial of the conference’s three objectives, to the National Assembly. But both he and his voluble conference supporters, including jubilant and impetuous delegates, have already begun to insinuate that it would be unpatriotic for lawmakers to amend the recommendations substantially. Indeed, without legal basis, they even brusquely suggest that a referendum and a complete bypass of the legislature would not be out of place, irrespective of the fact that the legislature is already amending the constitution.

    How Dr Jonathan’s handpicked delegates can arrogate to themselves the supreme wisdom of knowing what we want, press ahead to suggest a silly, indefensible six-year tenure for the executive, and foolishly inspire the creation of 18 more states to compel acquiescence, all speak to their Nigerianness, if not Africanness, as a people without discipline, moderation, restraint, vision and commonsensical tolerance of the opposition. And with the collapse of the Labour Party, as witnessed in Ondo State, and also APGA in the Southeast into the PDP, the stage seems set for the massive betrayal and destruction of Nigeria by its short-sighted and ingratiating political elite. We owe it to future generations not to let them.

  • Resurgence of politics without bitterness, and ideology?

    Resurgence of politics without bitterness, and ideology?

    The facile claim by most politicians in our country that politics is a game of number does not apply to indiscriminate recruitment or admittance of members of ideologically opposed political parties

    As he exits the All Progressives Congress (APC) and migrates to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Nuhu Ribadu, a one-time fellow at the Centre for Global Development for his reputation as Nigeria’s anti-corruption czar thrown into irrelevance by the same party that appointed him to the country’s anti-corruption agency, re-introduced recently into the polity what Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of Greater Nigerian People’s Party during the second republic called ‘politics without bitterness.’ In the same breath, Malam Ribadu raised the problem of the scrambling of the culture of progressive politics in the country.

    Ribadu’s commitment to the politics of bitterness is unmistakable in his letter of withdrawal from the party that sponsored him as its presidential candidate in 2011: “My defection shouldn’t be seen as an initiation of political antagonism with my good friends in another party. I still hold them in high esteem, and even where there are marked differences, I believe there are decorous and honourable ways of resolving them.” He also added that there is no desire for any short-term gratification or love of ‘stomach infrastructure’ in his migration from APC to PDP, adding: “I wish to assure you that my defection is in pursuit of a good cause and never out of any selfish interests.”  Ribadu’s assurances should be believable, given the moral high ground that he occupied at the time he was head-hunted to run as ACN presidential candidate at the end of his fellowship at the Centre for Global Development in Washington.

    There will be many more qualified observers of partisan politics to comment on Ribadu’s choice of PDP as a platform for him to pursue his project of good cause. Today’s piece is about how Ribadu’s abrupt exit from APC, which he co-founded with other leaders of the Action Congress of Nigeria, provides  motivation for a narrative about the threat to the tradition of progressive politics in the country’s post-military era. When individuals like Ribadu migrate from APC to PDP and others like Nyako transfer their political seat from PDP to APC, students of political affairs are bound to raise questions about the character of progressive politics and parties.

    To call one party or movement progressive in the context of Nigeria is to recognise the role of ideology in the organisation of the polity and society. In Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History,” he predicted that the end of the cold war may lead to the end of major ideological conflict in the world at large. However, Fukuyama added that in countries that have not attained liberal democracy as a dominant value, the tendency for conflicts remains until such countries accept the inevitability of liberal democracy. This implies that there will be reasons for creating ideologies in transitional societies like Nigeria until the end of history, if Fukuyama’s theory is accepted as capable of explaining human historical trajectory.

    From the 1950s till date, there has been the imperative for any political party created by the Yoruba to construct a clear ideology that presents its vision and mission statements to the electorate, as a means of mobilising for citizens’ support. Whether it was the Action Group, the Unity Party of Nigeria of Awolowo’s time (with no reference to the use of such names by contemporary politicians), the Social Democratic Party, the Alliance for Democracy, Action Congress, Action Congress of Nigeria, and now the All Progressives Congress, politicians in the Yoruba region have always known that any party that wants to be listened to by the generality of voters in the region must present a progressive face and agenda.

    It was the belief that most Yoruba people are politically ‘to the left of the ideological spectrum’ that also explained why it was the SDP (a little to the left party) out of the two party-structures created by General Babangida that the Yoruba espoused in 1993, leaving the non-threatening number of Yoruba conservatives to NRC. The recognition among a majority of Yoruba people that government exists for the sake of the governed also explained the attraction of Yoruba intellectuals to Aminu Kano’s NEPU or Balarabe Musa’s PRP.

    Now that the country’s presidential system makes it easy for politics of personalities or god-fathers to eclipse that of ideology or of ideas, it is understandable when governors or former governors catch headlines when they migrate out of and into parties whimsically. The fact that political parties no longer scrutinise the ideological leanings or credentials of politicians crossing into their folds should be a source of worry for truly progressive politicians and thinkers. Most of the nomadic politicians that move from one party to the other are more besotted to power than to service to the people. This also explains why most of such politicians have no qualms in moving back to their first political party when their assessment of their new political party changes. To such itinerant politicians, a political party’s normative vision is of no relevance. What matters is the opportunity to use their belonging to or disengaging from political parties as a bargaining chip for power and privilege.

    It is too soon to point at what made Ribadu run from APC to PDP. It is also premature to say that he will not run back to APC from PDP later. What is important is for political parties that are progressive and want to be seen to be progressive not to leave the gate to the party wide open. There needs to be a mechanism within the culture of progressive parties to resist the temptation of being ensnared or seduced by individuals capable largely of generating sound bites and hype. What makes multi-party democracy meaningful is the distinctiveness in the vision and mission of each political party in contest with others for state power, not the readiness of parties to serve as fall-out shelters for members of other political parties.

    What has been obvious in the last fifteen years of post-military governance is the search by the ruling party for a one-party system. The saying that the PDP will be the party in power for the next 65 years is a code to other parties seeking power at all cost and with immediate effect to merge with the ruling party. It is the desire for absolute power that must have pushed the ruling power at the centre to stigmatise opposition political parties periodically as working and talking to undermine the party in power. While it is right and respectable for opposition political parties to resist being swelled by the ruling party, it is a puerile strategy for opposition parties, especially those that carry the image of progressiveness, to open their doors wide for politicians that may have differences other than ideological disagreement with their home parties.

    The facile claim by most politicians in our country that politics is a game of number does not apply to indiscriminate recruitment or admittance of members of ideologically opposed political parties. The game of number principle applies to the electorate. It is the number of voters that political parties can woo to their sides on account of the relevance of their vision and mission statements to the citizenry that matters in a proper democracy, not the number of individuals in office or seeking office who choose to change political parties without any reference to the ideological stance of such parties.

    Just as Malam Ribadu has pledged to avoid any acrimony with members of the APC during his stay in the PDP, so should APC leaders and their image makers refrain from demonising him for what may appear to be political nomadism in a country where whatever goes up politically must always come down.

  • Nuhu Ribadu’s defection: the instructive analogies of Sam Aluko and Nasir El-Rufai

    Nuhu Ribadu’s defection: the instructive analogies of Sam Aluko and Nasir El-Rufai

    Sometime in 1999 (or it may have been early 2000) I got an extraordinary personal note from Chief Ebenezer Babatope (“Ebino Topsy!) who had been Sani Abacha’s Aviation Minister and is now a PDP chieftain, being a member of the ruling party’s Board of Trustees. Before I come to the contents of this note, a few background facts and details are perhaps necessary.

    With many others like Edwin Madunagu, the late M. Agunbiade (“Chairman Mao”), Yemi Adefulu and Dayo Abatan, Babatope and I had been stalwarts and comrades-in-arm in the radical students’ movement in Nigeria when we were undergraduates, he at the University of Lagos and I at the University of Ibadan. A self-declared and militant socialist like most of us, Babatope had also been a diehard supporter of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and was quite easily one of the most indefatigable “Awoists” in our youth. After graduating from Unilag, he went on to become a prolific pamphleteer and essayist whose passion for socialism and Pan Africanism bristled in all his writings. As I recall it now, the bottom line of all his revolutionary writings and activities could be captured in one single slogan: let the revolution come and let it come quickly; it did not matter through which way it came. From this, the reader can deduce why it wa such a surprise to many when Babatope not only agreed to serve in Abacha’s cabinet but actually served him loyally, actively, vociferously. This observation leads directly to the personal note that Babatope sent me in 1999.

    Briefly, the note said please, BJ, don’t judge me on my service to Abacha before you read my new book and we have met to discuss the contents of the book. The note duly asked for the address to which he could mail the book to me and as a matter of fact, I did receive the book. I think between then and now he and I have met only once, but it was such a brief meeting that we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss his book and his experience as one of Abacha’s leftist loyalists. In my memory, the most noteworthy thing, indeed the most sensational thing in the contents of Babatope’s book was the part in which he bitterly asserted that many of those on the Left and among “progressives” who later turned round and vilified him for having served under Sani Abacha had in fact not only initially encouraged him to accept the appointment the dictator gave him but also had personally benefitted a lot from his ministerial job under Abacha. And as if to clinch the point he was trying to make though this allegation, Babatope gave the names of those he could name among such people; where, for one reason or another, he couldn’t or didn’t want to give the names of some particular personalities, he dropped unmistakable hints that let the knowledgeable reader know who they were.

    On the road to Damascus Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor and nemesis of the early Christians, became Paul, the rock who would later serve as the foundation on which early Christianity was built. This is one of the most outstanding moral and spiritual metamorphoses in history. And indeed “on the road to Damascus” has become perhaps the most widely used metaphorical phrase in the English language for a change, a transformation from a lower, evil state to a higher, more beneficent plane of being. But imagine the reversal of this historic, celebrated apotheosis in which on the road to Damascus, Paul became Saul of Tarsus: the hero became the antihero; the revolutionist who formulated new ideas of religious worship and thought became the brute who used violence and repression to squelch new possibilities in human spirituality.

    This, in essence, was the story that Babatope told in the book that he sent to me in 1999. The slight twist in his story was that he was not alone, that other “comrades” masquerading as St. Paul when they were really Saul of Tarsus encouraged him to serve under Abacha. More damningly, Babatope went on to add that in the depth and the secret of the night, these people often came to him for contracts and other forms of largesse. Biodun, do not judge me, Babatope said to me in his note to me in 1999, until you have read my book and found out just how many Sauls of Tarsus there are among those you and I have always thought of as progressives and revolutionaries.

    Now I think that in one way, Babatope was absolutely right in this claim, this plea. In our country, they are literally uncountable, the politicians and activists who at one time or the other were “comrades”, radicals and progressives who have decamped and joined the camp of reactionaries, ethnic jingoists, religious zealots and plain political opportunists. Indeed, so deep and wide is this phenomenon, especially since 1999, that the line has been almost completely obliterated between progressives and reactionaries, between genuinely patriotic democrats and extremely cynical politicians for whom patriotism is no more than a path to unlimited self-enrichment. To use our opening metaphor of “on the road to Damascus”, this means that the line between Paul and Saul has been almost completely obliterated in our country’s political affairs, again especially since 1999. Please note that I said almost completely obliterated because in fact the line still exists because the society is yet to be created in human affairs in which the line between what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust, what is decent and what is ignoble has been completely wiped out. And that is where Babatope was wrong in his 1999 personal note to me. This observation brings us to the topic of this piece, Nuhu Ribadu’s defection to the PDP. But what does my claim that Babatope was wrong have to do with this topic?

    It is extremely misleading to cast Babatope’s experience in the metaphorical framework of Saul becoming Paul on the road to Damascus. My old friend and comrade, “Ebino Topsy” will have to forgive me for saying this, but for many of us, his decision to serve under Abacha was saddening but it wasn’t that surprising. As a person, Babatope was – and I imagine still is – at heart, a warm, ebullient and caring person. But as an activist, as one who wanted justice, development and dignity for all women and men in our country and our continent, he always tended to place the means far above the ends. Please remember that I said earlier in this piece that if there was one slogan that captured the essence of Babatope’s progressivism it was “let the revolution come and let it come quickly; it did not matter how it came”. For men and women of conscience of this kind, any decision, any action at all can be justified one way or another. At any rate, I think Babatope has completely stopped trying to justify his prominence in the PDP as a way to hasten the revolution to bring better life for all in Nigerian and Africa: the “means” has completely swallowed the “ends”.

    So, as I contemplate the shock with which many in Nigeria this week received the news of Ribadu’s defection to the PDP, it is not to the likes of Babatope’s defection from socialism, Pan Africanism and Awoism to Abacha loyalism and PDP militancy that mind turns. There are thousands of such defections going on all the time in the rot and the decadence of the political order in our country. This is why it is to the far more rare instances when a defection – from Saul to Paul or the reverse and imaginary one of from Paul to Saul – is made by one who is generally recognised as an outstanding public figure or a moral and spiritual touchstone that my mind turns. In this regard, the two instances that readily come to my mind are, one, the case of the late Sam Aluko and his loyal service to Sani Abacha which, to the end of his life he vigorously defended absolutely without any apologies and two, the case of Nasir El Rufai who, from being the most articulate defender of the policies and actions of Obasanjo as President and “statesman” became perhaps his most fiery and unrestrained traducer. I suggest, dear reader, that when you think about Ribadu’s defection to the PDP, it is to the rare kind of defection that we see in Aluko and El Rufai that you should think of rather than the far more commonplace kind of defection that we see in the Babatope case. In concluding this piece, let me give a brief explanation on why I make this suggestion.

    It is very easy and also very tempting to see Ribadu’s defection as belonging to the Babatope type and from this to proceed directly to strong and emotion-laden condemnation. That is the pattern in much of what I have so far read in the reactions to Ribadu’s announcement of his departure from the APC to the PDP. For some people, this may provide some relief, some salve for deeply thwarted moral, emotional and political investment in Ribadu’s past and future career, but it does nothing by way of explanation or understanding. By contrast, when you think of the Aluko and El Rufai cases, you are immediately struck by the impression that there are no simple explanations and that you have to think hard to know what the defection portends for our country and its present circumstances and future prospects.

    Although I think his standing and achievements as an economic thinker were vastly overrated, the late Professor Sam Aluko was without question a towering figure among his generation of Nigerian social scientists. Moreover, he had been highly respected for his application of his intellectualism to public policy by way of advice to many governments. Then came his stint with Abacha which had the added disadvantage of coming near the end of his life. He pronounced Abacha the greatest leader Nigeria had ever had and the man who would finally bring economic development to the country. His reasons for making these assertions were so puerile, so unconvincing that they were an embarrassment to even his supporters. In effect, he became a sadly ridiculous and tragicomic figure, with only the saving grace that he did not seem to have served Abacha for self-enrichment or power lust.

    By contrast, El Rufai has given trenchant critiques of Obasanjo and his administration. The big question he faces is why he was silent on all the policies and activities for which he now berates Obasanjo when he was part of Obasanjo’s inner circle. Unlike Aluko and rather fortunately for him, the future still lies ahead of El Rufai and he will or may have the chance to prove to us and the world the worth of his defection from Obasanjo and the PDP. This also holds true for Ribadu, but in the first month of his defection to the PDP, what we have seen is more like the Aluko pattern: absolutely puerile and meaningless justification of his defection. Like Aluko’s absurd praise for Abacha as the greatest leader that Nigeria ever had, Ribadu this week hailed Jonathan as “a great achiever”. This would have been quite laughable if things were not so dire, so tragic for most of our people under the administration of Jonathan. When Paul becomes Saul, all bets are off, expect the worst but keep hope alive. For the society is yet to be created in human affairs in which the line between right and wrong has been completely wiped out.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Begging for bread

    Begging for bread

    Horrible plight of Nigerian students on FG scholarship in Russia

    Me I no go suffer,

    I no go beg for bread (2ce);

    God of miracles na my Papa o (4 times),

    Me I no go suffer, I no go beg for bread.

    This is a popular song that many Christians sing in churches on Sundays. But it is doubtful if the song will have meaning to Nigerian students on Federal Government scholarship in Russia. Why? They are already suffering and have started to beg for bread! Again, why? Because the Federal Government has characteristically failed woefully to provide for them. So, the students are not just exposed to the vagaries of an unknown land, they are also at the mercy of Good Samaritans from some less endowed African countries. The students, 322 in all, are beneficiaries of the scholarship under the Federal Government’s Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) Scholarship Awards.

    Under the (BEA) arrangement for undergraduate and post-graduate studies that Nigeria has with Russia, Cuba, Morocco, Algeria, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, Japan, Serbia, Macedonia, China, and Mexico, the Federal Government pays for the upkeep of the students, while the countries where the scholarship award is tenable provides the tuition. Each of the students in Russia is entitled to a monthly stipend of $500 for feeding and $450 annual allowance for medicals and clothing. The Nigerian government has not sent money to any of them in the last eight months.

    One of them, David Ikenna, a final year Medicine and Surgery student of the Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, says “We have been finding a way to survive by circumventing the laws, but it is at great risk to our personal safety and academic pursuits in Russia. Our situation is frustrating … The Nigerian government has failed us miserably”. He is not done yet: “Even with the illegal jobs we do, we still find it hard to make ends meet. It is shameful that we have got no alternatives but to beg for food and money from Ghanaians, Namibians, Ugandans and Sierra Leoneans who are on the same bilateral educational scholarships like us.”

    And these are some of the best the country has produced because they emerged through some rigorous and competitive processes. The case of 20-year-old Moyosore Ojuri, tells the story better. But first, her impression of their ordeal: “We are not private students. We came to Russia on the bill of the Federal Government. Why haven’t the authorities paid our stipends and other allowances for eight months now? For how long shall we continue to borrow money?”  Ojuri adds, “On many occasions, I have had cause to go to class on an empty stomach. Getting money for transportation from my hostel to school has become very problematic. More worrisome is the fact that I will soon be homeless as my hostel fees will expire at the end of August. We are grateful to the Federal Government for the scholarship opportunity, but there is no sense in leaving us here to starve to death in a foreign land.” The government’s failure to send money to the students has made them run into debts; and with the huge debt overhang on their necks, the lenders are becoming uncomfortable to continue to be their brother or sister’s keeper because they are beginning to doubt their ability to repay. This is quite natural.

    Ojuri is an exceptionally brilliant lady who had challenges too much for her age too early in her life. True to her surname, Ojuri (eyes have seen), her eyes have seen a lot in life. At 11, her father who had promised her the best of education suddenly died. The authorities of the secondary school she was attending saw the talent in her and gave her mother the concession of paying her school fees in installments. So, somehow, Ojuri managed to complete her secondary education. She had six distinctions and two credits in the 2010 West African Senior School Certificate Examination. She would have been stranded despite her brilliance but luckily for her, she came across the BEA and applied. She passed all the qualifying tests and was offered admission to study Metallurgical Engineering at the Volgograd State Technical University, Russia.

    Another student, Akinola Akindamola, a first class Mechanical Engineering graduate pursuing his Master’s degree at the Volgograd State Technical University, explains that they engage in all kinds of odd jobs to survive. Expectedly, the pressure is more on his female colleagues. “It is unfortunate that girls with exceptional academic brilliance are now forced to indulge in all manner of indecent lifestyles. These girls now go to clubs and dance semi nude for a fee that could be as low as $20. For the boys, employers use us for odd jobs, such as clearing of snow and as labourers on construction sites. Even as we do that, there is this perpetual fear that the police will arrest us.”  The police come in here because the students do not have work permit; the country is unlike Nigeria where people, including foreigners can do as they like without anyone asking questions. Concerning the ladies, the picture definitely could not have been as simple as Akindamola painted it. He probably did not want to add that some of these girls eventually end up underneath some ruffling sheets to boost their income!  God forbids, if any of them contracts the dreaded Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) virus, does the government not know it is culpable?

    These are horrible experiences for students who must have regarded their suffering as over when they touched down at the airport in Moscow. But here they are, barely 15 months after for some of them, the government appears fed up with them. And, given the Nigerian factor, their suffering might just have begun because those who sent them to Russia are now thinking about nothing but the 2015 elections.

    But it is nonetheless interesting that while Nigeria is defaulting in its own part of the bargain to its own citizens, Russia promptly fulfills its own side despite the fact that the beneficiaries are not Russians. How else do you know serious countries? Meanwhile, the same defaulting Federal Government had the temerity to complain to Russia what it felt it (Russia) was not doing right to the students. The Director, Press and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. Olu Lipede, in his effort to prove that the government cares about the students said: “We do care about their welfare. Last year (2013), we went to visit them in Russia and we inspected where they sleep and we made known to the Russian Government those things we were not satisfied with …” Does this kind of statement lie in the Federal Government’s mouth?

    Meanwhile, the same government will be blaming the country’s negative perception on everyone else but itself. It would waste a lot of tax payers’ money on meaningless image laundering when it would have achieved by far more mileage by doing the proper thing at the proper time.

    Now, besides welfare, some of the students who are to return to Nigeria for their mandatory internship programmes are also stuck in Russia, due to lack of funds. I keep wondering why the changing never changes irrespective of who is in power in this country. In the 1970s when Nigeria was still keen on the steel industry, some of our youths were sent abroad to learn about iron and steel technology. I remember how we used to envy the lucky few selected for the training then. Just a few years after, they became jobless almost as they were settling down to enjoy the fruits of their training abroad.

    As usual in the country, the stranded students’ matter is like the proverbial missing knife that no one would admit having used to peel yam. We do not know who to hold responsible.  Lipede blamed the students’ travails on the “budgeting process” and problems associated with “banking transfers.” What does this mean? How does this translate to stipends for our stranded students? Sometime later, some people who have fed fat from the system unproductively would be talking about patriotism, how can students abandoned by their country sing Nigeria’s song in a strange land? How many countries will abandon their own the way the Federal Government has done to these promising youths? Would those responsible for this inhuman treatment have treated their own children like this? How much would the scholarship have cost the government that it now finds it difficult to pay, considering the huge amounts that are either being mismanaged or stolen daily from the government’s coffers? No one should be surprised though. There is a systematic discouragement for people who thirst for education in the country, no thanks to ‘stomach infrastructure’.

    Anyway, since the god of Jonathan has failed the students, to that same God of miracles they must turn or return.

  • Re: # Bring Back Our Northern Domination – Femi Aribisala

    Re: # Bring Back Our Northern Domination – Femi Aribisala

    For Aribisala, the president occupies a sinecure position and so he must not be bothered at all, whether it is about the girls, about Ebola or anything at all

    With characters like Femi Aribisala, Nigeria is hopelessly doomed. How obstreperous, how gratuitously clownish can a so-called professor get just for the purpose of stomach infrastructure? I read this supposed academic and I almost threw up. What drives their kind, what is the end in view because like the Yoruba would say, must you, because you must eat beef, call a cow brother? What is the purpose of education if all it makes you do is become boisterous in advertising idiocy? In an article he titled as above, brimming with bile and incandescent pride, he descended heavily on a section of Nigeria you would think he was writing about Tajikistan; all in the mistaken belief that he was fighting President Goodluck Jonathan’s enemies, not knowing he was merely foolishly increasing the president’s problems in geometric proportions. At least the president has not been quoted as saying he wants Nigeria’s dismemberment.

    I crave readers’ pardon for fouling up their Sunday with some quotes from the thoroughly inflammatory article.

    He had started out with this totally idiotic, if not illogical proposition, which in itself is a pointer to where that word came into the PDP lexicon since this fellow became bullish in its defence: ‘The only way the APC can redeem its perception as a Janjaweed party is by putting forward a South-South man as its presidential candidate in 2015’. But that, indeed, was one of the best parts because he would later equate APC to Boko Haram in the article even when Nigerians know in which party a former northeast governor who was severally called in by security agencies concerning Boko Haram is now coolly berthed.

    And my mind went, instinctively, to the unfortunate university students who must have passed through a man who could write as follows about fellow Nigerians: ‘The Northern Elders Forum, the apostles of “the north is born to rule, “finally played their joker. They maintained that if the government does not #Bring Back Our Girls by the end of October, 2014, Jonathan should forget about running for re-election. This again reveals that there is more political mischief to the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls than initially meets the eye. As a matter of fact, it shows conclusively that #Bring Back Our Girls is simply another instrument of #Bring Back Our Northern Domination. The First Lady understood this clearly from the onset; which is why she declared that:

    “There is God o!” The people of Borno understood this. They have always known that their own feudal leaders are behind the kidnapping of the girls. With the statement of the NEF, Nigerians must no longer be in two minds about this. The kidnapping of the Chibok girls is part and parcel of a cynical plan by some northern elements to embarrass the government and militate against Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election plans.’ I am surprised this jester did not accuse the northern elders of breeding Ebola in their maximum security laboratory to embarrass the Nigerian president.

    Pray, how idiotic can anybody get arriving at this conclusion from that premise? Is our professor here saying it is beyond the ken of northern elders to call attention to the pitiable conditions of over 200 young Nigerian girls, holed up amidst terrorists for well over a  hundred days without the slightest idea as to when they would be freed, if ever?

    Indeed, there are professors and there are professors!

    I invite readers then, to come with me as this determined nation wrecker shows his devious hands. Wrote Aribisala, senselessly trying to pit northerners against one another in the belief that they are like the Yoruba some power mongers are currently  trying to mess up and sell cheaply: ‘The new north is the north of men like our most successful industrialist, Aliko Dangote, now the 23rd richest man in the world. It is the north of men like Ibrahim Gambari; our point-man and intellectual giant at the United Nations. It is the north of men like Nuhu Ribadu; it is the north of men like Father-Reverend Matthew Kukah, a Catholic priest with a national social conscience. It is the north of men like Mohammed Buba Marwa, the most dynamic governor in Nigeria during the Abacha regime. But subsisting beside this new progressive north is the old north of decrepit old men who have lived for long as parasites on Nigeria’s oil wealth. This bold north is the north of #Bring Back Our Northern Domination; a north of indolent political has-beens; looking for pensions from national coffers. It is the north of recalcitrant yesterday’s men who had lived large at the country’s expense and are hankering after an inglorious past where they spent the national patrimony with the profligacy and abandon of irresponsible firstborn children. This is the old north that ran down the nation’s resources. It is the north that built nothing and grew nothing. It is the north that ate up our groundnut pyramids. It is the north that, despite being in power for 38 years, failed grievously to educate northern children. It is the north of those who kept their fellow northerners in the bondage of abject poverty under a feudal system where, like dogs, they fed them from the crumbs that fell from their table. This old north is the north of men who are now reduced to pathetic bluster and blackmail. It is these same northerners that are now crying #Bring Back Our Northern Domination. But they can no longer fool the new emergent north; and they certainly cannot fool the rest of the country, except perhaps a few gullible and power-hungry Yoruba chieftains.’ Hogwash!

    What first surprised me on reading this portion of his senseless article was how a supposed intellectual could so revel in panegyrics you would think he is a juju musician. Indeed, Alhaji Dangote should please remember him in his will. Whoever recruited this fellow for the President Jonathan’s re election bid in the probable hope that there was money he could make in an election year has done a great disservice to the president. And if he chose to go on a frolic, he should look for something else to do.  Truth be told, this hagiographer is simply brainless.

    With this type of an educated fool, Nigeria is certainly doomed. With a professor so illogical, so blind he conflates his hated north, with a Boko Haram that is killing everybody, this country is going nowhere. Even a complete illiterate would remember that there was Boko Haram long before Jonathan. So what election were they stopping him from contesting then? Does Aribisala need be told that a group which attempted to kill both the late Emir of Kano and General Buhari, who he presents in his article as a blue-eyed boy of the same bad north he so unreasonably denigrates, could not logically be the handiwork of these same distinguished northerners he hates so much?

    Does he need to be so grovelling if all he wants is an ambassadorship with accreditation to, may be, nothing better than Banjul? Where is the proverbial restraint of the academic? Why could he have chosen to be a nation destroyer rather than the builder his level of education presupposes?

    This thoroughly illogical fellow is completely out of sync with the academia and he should hide his face in shame. By the way how many northerners are pushing the bring back our girls effort that the elders can no longer talk? Is Oby Ezekwezili a northerner or Mrs Oyebode one? Her father and former Head of State, General Mohammed, was from the old Bendel, the mother, a proud Yoruba, and she is married to one of our distinguished Ekiti icons, the distinguished lawyer, Gbenga Oyebode.

    What ails this character for Christ’s sake, insecurity?

    He worsened his case when, in an effort to humour the president, he went on to  commend the First Lady for views every reasonable person considered unfair and for which, she had since made amends. For Aribisala, the president occupies a sinecure position and so he must not be bothered at all, whether it is about the girls, about Ebola or anything at all.

    Just as this article was being put to bed I learnt, reliably, that together with a business associate of his, somewhere on Opebi, Lagos, our friend packages Consultancy/Training programmes which are mostly  targeted  at  making unearned profits from Abuja.

    Need we wonder any further why he must be a lick spittle?

  • Much ado about Ebola

    With five persons dead, including a medical doctor and two nurses and many under observation in the country, there is no doubt that the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease  deserves all the attention given to it.

    Until recently when the Liberian Patrick Sawyer decided to export his virus to Nigeria, not many Nigerians knew much about the disease that killed hundreds, beyond occasional mention in the media in the country.

    That has since changed with Ebola becoming the most talked about issue and everyone taking measures to avoid contacting the disease.

    Although President Goodluck Jonathan can be accused of being un-presidential for calling Sawyer  ‘a madman’, his anger is understood considering that the Liberian should have surrendered himself for treatment in his country instead of causing us the untold anguish that has followed the outbreak of the disease in Nigeria.

    The Liberian government owes us apologies, which unfortunately cannot mitigate the damage done, for not taking necessary measures to prevent Sawyer from travelling to Nigeria.

    The federal and state governments, particularly Lagos, have risen up to the occasion and deserve commendation for stemming the tide of the outbreak so far.

    While nothing may be too much to be done to stop the spread of the disease, there is need to avoid undue panic which seems to underline some of the reactions to the outbreak.

    It is worrisome that suddenly every sickness may now be mistaken for Ebola. Some sick persons have been denied treatment or abandoned on the suspicion that they may be Ebola patients.

    There is a growing stigmatisation of the disease, that Nigerians are now subjected to humiliating medical check ups for Ebola on international trips simply because they are from Nigeria.

    For a disease that has been ravaging some African countries before Sawyer came calling, it is not justifiable that the collective reactions have been that similar to an epidemic situation.

    Some of the hygienic precautions now being enforced should not have been Ebola-induced if not because we have been careless about our health. Before the Ebola crisis, there has always been the need for regular hand-washing which has not been taken seriously.

    Ebola is not the only disease that can be contracted  due to not washing of hands. This explains why October 15 has annually been observed as Global Handwashing Day (GHD) to motivate and mobilise people to wash their hands with soap. The campaign is dedicated to raising awareness of handwashing with soap as a key approach to disease prevention.

    For those who have always thought that the Hand Washing  Day was one of those United Nation’s Days regarded as unnecessary, they now know better that prevention by every means is better than cure.

    Hand sanitisers have always been in use by those who could afford them or where they are provided. It should not have taken the outbreak of Ebola for some organisations  now enforcing the use of hand sanitisers to do so.

    It should be noted that there is an amount of sanitiser that has to be used and brands to guarantee bacteria and virus-free hands.

    It’s good that Ebola has reminded us of health measures that should be part of our regular lifestyles. Hopefully we would not abandon them when Ebola is over.

  • The Day of the Salamander

    (An Afternoon with Emmanuel Ifeajuna)

    A little over a fortnight ago while Snooper was traversing the length and breadth of Osun State, the mind went back to a remarkable incident which occurred in the historic junction town very close to Ife during the summer holiday of 1964.

    These days, the ancient town centre has been bypassed by the dual carriage way linking Ibadan with Ilesha and on to Akure and Owo. But in those days, the old route cut through the heart of the town, or let us say that the town was built around this vital artery linking the west to the east. It used to be sheer pleasure watching the mammoth Gaiser vehicles and huge Armels coaches winging their way through town as they journeyed towards the bush meat resort of Agbanikaka and beyond. Among youthful holiday makers, vehicle-spotting was a delightful pastime.

    It was at the town centre that a rousing tragic-comedy occurred just a little over 50 years ago.  The town’s local enforcer, a burly scoundrel of a police inspector, had rammed his old, fuming banger into the backside of a gleaming, sporty car with a lone occupant. But rather than apologise, the rogue bully jumped out and started hurling insults and invectives on the owner of the car daring him to do his worst.

    We all held our breath as the solitary driver took it all in the chin, with his chin resting on his palm in a gesture of calm affront and outrage. But after tiring of the man’s thuggish and drunken buffooneries, the lone driver quietly opened the door revealing a man of medium height, superbly athletic build and a curious air of authority. With jaunty steps, the man went to the boot of the car and brought out the ceremonial sword of the Nigerian Army.

    “I am Captain Emmanuel Ifeajuna of the Nigerian Army. You will now behave yourself”, the man announced with a crisp clear cut intonation. The local bully neighed like a frightened horse even as his massive body lurched forward in drunken salute. Then he fell to the ground and started rolling on the floor wondering in hyperbolic vernacular whether he had not slaughtered himself.

    The mystery officer took a look at the crumpled thug and shook his head in generous indignation. His eagle-eyed scanning must have convinced him that the damage to his car was negligible. With the same calm composure, he put his sword back in the boot and entered his car, driving off to spontaneous applause from the crowd.

    The bully left town not long afterwards, but the balloon had suffered a fatal pin prick. As for the mystery captain, he was to enter national folklore a year and half later as one of the five majors that spearheaded the military mutiny of January, 15, 1966. Almost two years later, the flying Nigerian of the 1956 Commonwealth Games at Melbourne was dead, himself shot as a coup plotter in Biafra.

  • Time to stop playing this roulette game with our national affairs

    Rather, we proudly hold up, as models, individuals who are building extraordinarily shaped houses, buying the latest cars fresh from overseas ovens, and renewing girlfriends and boyfriends at the drop of European hats, and all at government’s expense

    I have kind friends. They not only vet what I write just to make sure no one would have cause to wake them up in the night on my behalf but also warn me when my grammar appears to be going in the wrong direction, such as underfoot. For example, these kind friends have, over time, warned me over several things. Once, they warned me that my grammar appeared to be slithering towards the overly critical. I bowed politely to them, Japanese style, and reduced the venom in my ink. After all, I thought, no need to antagonise anyone. Another time, they said I tended to make my jokes overshadow my points. Now, that got my hackles up. What are people trying to reduce me to without those jokes: Obj.? Never!

    However, watching events surrounding the Ebola Virus spread in Nigeria over the last few weeks has truly wiped the joke off my face this week. Against all our prayers, the virus has taken its toll on all our hearts, not to talk of all our lives and sanities. The other day, I saw a picture of an Okada rider who thought he had the Ebola remedy all wrapped up. Yep, he wrapped himself and his fare sitting behind him in one giant, transparent, airproof, cellophane bag! I thought: can anyone be more foolish?!

    The tugs on our hearts are getting more and more painful though. Not content with taking some of the selfless health workers who attended to the Sawyer man, the virus has heartlessly snatched yet another victim, Dr. Stella Adadevoh, the senior doctor who attended to him. Death never plays fair. More importantly, my worry is this: how on earth could we not have foreseen this? How on earth could we not have prevented it?

    These people died for many reasons, quite apart from being exposed to the virus. They died because this country has absolutely no first line of help when it comes to disaster management. This is careless. Look at the facts. Nigeria has the highest paid legislature and executive in the world. With the federal and state might combined, the country parades the highest number of executive and legislative members in the world, what with commissioners and special advisers literally strutting around in their hundreds. Yet, this country has no first line of crisis management. What the heck, you’ll say! Imagine Ebola breaking out in West Africa, and America has to be depended on for help with a drug they don’t even need in their own land.

    Seriously, the word out there is that Nigeria is the greatest nation in Africa, full of promises and all. It not only has enough material resources to dwarf all other minor nations, its human resources resound world-wide. There is no nation on earth, no endeavour on earth, no learning and research space on earth, where you do not have Nigerians at the forefront. Someone once said that if we get to the moon and there is no Nigerian living there, then it must be a new moon! Actually, that pun was not intended. Anyhow, here is this lolling giant, snoring wide awake in the sun, and losing its citizens on account of its ungainly carelessness. What can we put all this down to?

    Well, there is the important fact that the world recognizes this country for a few things only: corruption, corruption, and, oh yes, corruption. As we all know, this almighty beast that we all seem to worship has prevented us from finding our ways clearly towards progress and development. Once upon a time, I seem to remember in this country, the Nigerian army hospital used to run neck to neck on research with other research units so that no disease dared to enter the country without their combined permission. Not anymore. Now, the army hospital is not only so quiet and tame it is practically unheard anymore. The teaching hospitals, research institutes, universities and even self-inspired individuals interested in taking diseases in hand and finding solutions to them have shouted themselves hoarse in vain on demands for attention and necessary funding to do research. Now, they talk in whispers on the subject.

    When it comes to funding anything, most of all research, the government has the major, major responsibility in this country, while some will devolve to corporations. Unfortunately, no one is dispensing this responsibility responsibly. Rather than direct units to work as they should all over the country, national officials are more preoccupied with enriching themselves hoping to be far away from the country any day disaster strikes. Unfortunately again, like many of us mere mortals, our foolish plans are not always fool-proof.

    Sadly, this country has never earned more money than it does now; yet, there is so little to show for it. Rather, we proudly hold up as models individuals who are building extraordinarily shaped houses, buying the latest cars fresh from overseas ovens, and renewing girlfriends and boyfriends at the drop of European hats, and all at government’s expense. WORSE, WHENEVER SUCH INDIVIDUALS BREEZE ACROSS YOUR PATH, YOUR CLOSEST RELATIVES CRY SHAME WITH YOU. YOU THINK THEY ARE WITH YOU? OH NO, THEY ARE ONLY CRYING SHAME THAT THERE, BUT FOR THE GRACE OF YOUR INDECENT SCRUPLES, GOES YOU. IN OTHER WORDS, WHY CAN YOU NOT BE LIKE THE SA TO THE SA TO THE SA OF THE GOVERNOR WHO HAS BUILT GOD-KNOWS HOW MANY HOUSES? If only, just if only, a fraction of these sums devoted to purchasing private comfort could be diverted to pursuing the public good, perhaps that might significantly reduce the sum of all our fears. Again, no pun intended; these things just happen.

    So, decades in and out, the story of the giant of Africa has remained unchanged – one of philandering lasciviousness at the official level. And when some ballast of misfortune hits us, tails tucked in, the giant goes bowl in hand to the international coffers and research cupboards. Evidently, I think now is the time to begin to change this story.

    First, I think we need to convince our officials to begin to put the country’s money where its mouth is. Obviously, its mouth is where its needs are. As of now, these needs are roving between Boko Haram and Ebola virus outbreak; but clearly, its money does not appear to be going to either. With our common voice, we need to plead with our officials to occasionally interrupt their duties of stowing away pounds for their present and pennies for our future enjoyments and just think of our heretofore. We need to convince them, with our collective will, to develop even the most minimal plan for the development of this country. No, no, it’s not the kind that we already have on paper called wishful thinking. I think it also goes by the name of Vision 2020 which no one appears to take seriously, least of all by its custodians. We need one that is realistic and really serious.

    Secondly, it is very important now to set up a good chain of research that will coordinate the works of all the relevant units in this country. It is also important to fund them adequately. Dr. Stella Adadevoh and others might not have died had there been something for them to use as a sign of our own puny efforts before superior (if that) wisdom would arrive. As it was, we had nothing, and from all indications we still do not have much, yet the thing continues to spread. I think it is time to stop playing this roulette game with our national affairs; it is not working, and it is not helping us.