The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Boko Haram: Time is running out

I don’t envy President Goodluck Jonathan and his officials when they have to respond to the continuous attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents and other terrorist groups in the country. Their reactions have become so predictable that there seems to be a template for such statements that what is required is for the name of the state where the latest incident is recorded to be inserted and some paragraphs moved around.

I imagine that if the presidency has its way, it would prefer not to keep issuing the embarrassing statements which contain promises it has found hard to fulfill. If the promises so far made by the federal government of being on top of the security problems in the country are anything to go by, terrorist attacks should at least have subsided by now.

Unfortunately instead of being checkmated, the terrorists from all indications are gaining more grounds by killing so many people that it is hard to compute how many innocent Nigerians have died in suicide bomb blasts.

Despite the joint security cover provided by the military and the police, the terrorists have become so sophisticated that they have recently unleashed female suicide bombers on some states. No one is sure when the next suicide bomber will strike.

Last week, some graduates checking their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) postings in Kano were killed when a female suicide bomber ran into their midst and diffused the bomb on her. That is how bad the security situation in the country has degenerated that it is difficult to believe that the federal government knows what next to do.

Like the president noted in one of his anti-Boko Haram pronouncements last week, years ago, it is difficult to imagine that any Nigerian will agree to be a suicide bomber like we used to read about. However, this is the sordid situation we have found ourselves and there is an urgent need to do everything possible to stop the terrorists from further endangering the fragile peace and stability in the country.

The president said the country would have been in turmoil if former Head of State, General Muhamad Buhari, had been killed in the recent attack in Kaduna. He was right as it would have been difficult to stop the spontaneous reaction by Buhari’s supporters who despite all denials still believe that the attack was sponsored.

At the launching of the Victims Support Fund in Abuja last week, President Jonathan made a firm promise that he will lead the battle to defeat Boko Haram. He has no choice but to fulfill this promise in accordance with the oath of office he swore to.

More than ever before, Nigerians are worried about their safety in various parts of the country and the needed confidence has to be restored as quickly as possible.

It used to be that graduates were usually excited about being posted to any part of the country, but that is no longer the case. To be posted to some states now is almost equated to a death sentence.

Nigerians are tired of reading condolence messages from Aso Rock. They want permanent solutions to the security challenges in the country and federal government cannot afford to fail in this matter if it wants to be taken seriously.

August 3, 2014
The El-Zakzaky tragedy

Five years ago, security agents grossly mishandled Boko Haram’s unorthodox approach to social and religious engineering. Many analysts, including this column, and rights groups warned stridently that government’s approach was counterproductive. No one listened. The consequence, today, is a full-blown rebellion unmitigated by any panacea the government might throw at it. Indeed, the prospect of a complete overthrow of the old order is now absolutely not impossible. Five years after the folly of 2009, the government’s security agencies, which act more like a neo-colonial force and custodian of a diseased order, have enacted another brutal repression of a religious movement, this time one headed by Sheikh El-Zakzaky, the Zaria-based Shiite leader. About 35 of his movement’s members, including three of his sons, were killed by troops.

This immense tragedy shows there is something fundamentally wrong with the structure and orientation of the security services in Nigeria. According to the Shi’a leader, his three sons felled by bullets were: Mahmud of Al-Mustapha University, Beirut; Ahmad, a chemical engineering student at Shenyang University, China; and Hamid, an aeronautical engineering student at Xian University, China. The fourth son, Ali, according to him was shot in the leg but is alive. Mahmud was shot in the abdomen but bled to death because “soldiers blocked everywhere along the way.” In addition, he claimed more ominously, his two other sons and many of the followers were “simply arrested by the soldiers and thereafter killed in cold blood.”

Investigations are underway, says the government. But like the so-called investigations that took place during the early stages of the Boko Haram challenge, it is not clear of what use these will be. I think as a country we should simply brace up for more perilous and probably defining times ahead. Events in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, not to say the undefeated and growing Boko Haram menace, should instruct us to build a just society along new and unifying paradigms. Sadly, we have instead chosen a different and dishonourable path, and are determined to stew in our juice.

August 3, 2014
Between the President’s Superman cape and Sherlock Holmes’ hat…

While Mr. President was undecided on whether or not to don that cape, another enemy has gone and camped round about his territory, and that is the dreaded Ebola virus

Honestly, a man should not have too many enemies. The tendency is that he would either have to spread his resources thin to cover his exposed flanks or he would overreact in fear by lashing out recklessly. Believe me, I know about reckless. I see it every day on the road when I see a young ‘un behind the wheel. They are the ones whose speedometers never read ‘I just want to get home to my family’ speeds. For your reckless youth, however, the meter is constantly reading between ‘It is great to be young, stupid and mad!!! and ‘Hell, hell, heeeeell, here I come!!! When you see such people along your route, you just better pull by and let them get on. It is best not to go down with them.

Reckless, however, is another name for this country right now. I know this point has been flogged again and again by so many writers but it obviously cannot be overstressed. What we have coming from the north is nothing short of recklessness meeting recklessness. Successive government officers have tended over the decades to focus more ardently on the things most beneficial to them such as how much they can stash away from funds meant to ensure that people do not become excluded through excessive poverty or political marginalisation. The result is what we have all been witnessing in the form of the reckless killing and bombing of fellow citizens by boko haram terrorists, and the destruction of future generations of human resources. Unfortunately, the target group of this anger has been fellow innocent people who are victims of the same poverty and exclusion, and are possible future human work forces. Vicious circle, I’ll say, from which relief seemed a mirage until the president gleefully announced during the week that he would lead the country to win that war.

Now, don’t ask me how the president intends to lead the country ‘cause I honestly don’t know. I say, suppose he dons a military uniform, untrained and peace-loving as he is? Would he hold the bayonet and grenade? Suppose he dons a mufti and goes in as just another undercover agent, gathering information about the lay of the land, the enemy’s armoury, army number, etc.? Suppose, eh, just suppose he dons Superman’s cape and literally flies in and routs the enemy before you can say boko haram? Now, that would be a story worth telling my grandchildren.

Honestly, as I read that piece of news about the president’s declaration, I immediately felt pride swelling in my heart. Luckily, I was able to quell the tide of swelling before it got to dangerous proportions. I felt that the president was telling the country for the first time that, hey, you people, you do have a president you know, and look, it’s me! Then I thought, just as I’m sure he also thought, what the heck had he been doing all this while? Why wait for thousands of people to lose their lives before making that kind of heartening pronouncement? Why wait till nearly all was lost through bombings, shootings, sackings of villages before donning this Superman’s cape? The president needs to explain that first.

I’m sure, dear reader, you would want to say let him even win the battle first and leave explanations till later. The trouble is that, you know, there are some among us who like to ask intelligent questions in the heat of the moment. Once, a grandmother had told her grandchild that whenever she was afraid, a good song would drive the fear away. Imagine the consternation of the grandmother when the child wanted to sing in the middle of an attack on the house by armed robbers!

Well, while Mr. President was undecided on whether or not to don that cape, another enemy has gone and camped round about his territory, and that is the dreaded Ebola virus. This enemy, we understand, takes no prisoners and leaves no quarters. It is so dreaded every country in the world wants to lock their doors against it. It is therefore understandable that everyone in the country is literally up in arms against it.

First, everyone seems to have agreed that venison, which has been appropriated as ‘the Nigerian delicacy’ and renamed ‘bush-meat’, is no longer as innocent as it looks. It is now a suspect in the efforts to track down the killer disease. Imagine that: some people are going to starve. Beer is no longer going to flow down the red lane as effortlessly as it used to do when accompanied by dried game. Now, beer has to travel down all by its lonesome self. Not funny.

There are more suspects. There is the handshake, the universal signal of brotherhood and friendship. We understand that the virus can be transmitted via handshakes. To give someone a handshake is now indeed an enemy action as it is a clear sign of a desire to spread the virus to one’s enemy. Henceforth, at least until further notice, it has been advised that handshakes be forbidden to forestall unintentional adoption of the virus from a host. Now, everyone has to go around greeting with the teeth literally gritted while shaking hands mentally, and everyone literally has to keep his/her hands by his side. A no-handshake policy, indeed, is going to make the world a harder place to live in; as if things were not bad enough.

Worse, people are now even scared to visit their sick friends and relatives, and I think that is the unkindest cut of all. Just try and think what that is going to do to families. Wives will no longer trust their husbands’ fevers; husbands will not trust their wives’ fevers. For one thing, where did she or he get it from and why should they have to maybe die for the carelessness of the other? That is when we realize the truth: no one wants to die. Then the questions begin: if you were not prepared to die with me, says the offended one, why swear ‘for better, for worse? Then another truth dawns: all that proclamation was just part of the rhetoric of marriage – to persuade.

Worse, sick relatives are going to take endless umbrages for other relatives who fail to visit them on their beds of languishing. The culmination of it all is that everyone is going to go around suspecting each other’s sickness now. We can however take courage in the fact that there are other ways we can still rely on each other. There is the… and then the… Oh you! I bet you were already imagining something unsavory when all I am talking about is the phone. Yes, the phone will now become the all-important focus for family gatherings.

This is why I started this essay by saying that a man should not have too many enemies to fight. The president has his own personal battles which no one can help him with, what with 2015 and all. However, there is no doubt that he needs to don more than one uniform to fight ours. Just as soon as he is through leading the country against the terror war in Superman’s cape, he needs to put on his Sherlock Holmes coat, hat and smoking pipe and track down this dreaded disease.

August 3, 2014
Transferring Abuja’s governance narrative to Washington

What is innovative about this contract is that all the activities of changing the narrative about governance in Nigeria are to be done from K Street in Washington

With several years of aggressive cultivation of the Nigerian diaspora by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, it is reasonable for value-added Nigerians in the United States to feel unsettled by the recent announcement in Abuja of a multimillion-dollar contract to a Washington public relations or lobby agency.

The federal government’s decision to hire a Washington-based lobby group to burnish its image from Washington to the rest of the globe must have meant a major loss to local professional public relations firms, lobby agencies, and savvy advocacy groups, the type that have been beating the drum of President Jonathan’s re-election bid, even when the president remains reluctant to announce his entry into the race. For a meagre sum of 275 million naira per annum, Levick Strategic Communications has been hired to lead other subcontractors to assist in promoting “transparency, democracy, and the rule of law throughout Nigeria.” More specifically, Levick is to assist Nigerian government’s efforts to mobilise international support in fighting Boko Haram as part of the greater global war on terror.

What is innovative about this contract is that all the activities of changing the narrative about governance in Nigeria are to be done from K Street in Washington. The public relations game changer for Nigeria is not working just to spread good messages about Nigeria’s governance in the Western hemisphere but also to spread new narratives about governance in the country to citizens at home. From now on, strategising about consolidating and enhancing the culture of democracy in Nigeria will be determined and directed by sophisticated lobbyists in Washington. And this company will also be responsible for conveying messages of Nigeria’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law to all the corners of the world.

Nigerians in diaspora in the United States must wonder what led a government with which the Nigerian Diaspora Association has a robust relationship of cordiality to jump over them to give such a juicy contract to foreigners. Public communication professionals among them (and they are legion) must marvel why the loss of homeland PR firms in Lagos and Abuja has not been allowed to become the gain of Nigerian public professionals in diaspora. Those Nigerians abroad who are not savvy about the workings of power are likely to feel betrayed or cheated by a federal government that had organised conferences and seminars in Atlanta, New York, Washington, and other U.S. cities on how to create synergy between the country and its diaspora.

On their own part, Nigerians at home must be astonished by this contract, especially the objective of assisting the government to promote transparency, democracy, and the rule of law throughout Nigeria. Is the local media narrative not already doing that and very aggressively too? Without doubt, some segments of the media created and operated solely to do panegyric journalism has done so much of that and very well too. But there are other media houses across the country that are mordantly critical of threats to transparency, democracy, and the rule of law in the country. Similarly, top public relations firms within the country must be puzzled about new pro-democracy narratives that Washington spin doctors have been hired to create and propagate all over the wide world.

With respect to the charge to Levick to assist the federal government’s efforts to find and safely return the abducted Chibok girls, those who observed the activities and pronouncements of Malala during her recent visit to Abuja must wonder why the country would need a special contract to do what Malala had chosen to do pro bono for the country. Malala may not be an image manipulator, she is without doubt the world’s most admired symbol of anti-terrorism. She is more likely to assist the government in this respect at no cost to a government that is already too stretched financially to the point of seeking one billion dollar loan from the international community, even if on Shylockean terms. With her pronouncements during a recent visit to Aso Rock, Malala appears to be in the best of positions to talk to the international community about the readiness of the government in Abuja to find and bring the Chibok girls to safety, more so after the government’s announcement that it knows where the girls are and is only working on the best time to emancipate them from their captors.

It is not clear in media reports when the project to hire K Street’s image makers was conceived. Was it before or after the government discovered where the girls are kept by the terrorists? Given the assurance by the federal government that all its security agencies know the location of the Chibok girls, one part of the project seems to have been accomplished, even before signing the contract with Levick. The second part, bringing the girls home safely, looks less of political advocacy Washington style, than military strategic thinking and attention to tactical details that are needed for the job of liberation of innocent school girls from the den of terrorists. If there is need for special assistance, is it not more reasonable to approach the many countries that have already sent representatives to the country to show their commitment to assist Nigeria in the liberation of the girls and termination of Boko Haram’s terror, especially after the U.S. government has undertaken to train our security forces in strategies and tactics of fighting terrorism?

The federal government may have found one new friend on account of the contract given to Levick. It certainly has lost many friends at home and abroad. It has made it known to the entire world that it does not believe in the professional know-how of thousands of public relations specialists within Nigeria and among its diasporic communities in the western world. It is an irony that at a time the federal government is committed to transformation of the job market to create jobs at home, it is also creating jobs for public relations workers in the United States, a major aid giver to Nigeria on many fronts.

It should not surprise anyone if the federal government chooses to hire another lobby group to work on the message of dis-alienating competent Nigerian public relations men and women at home and abroad that its offer of contract to Levick’s Strategic Communications for millions of dollars per annum had insulted and alienated. This should be the time for the government to go into its archives to remind itself of the methods used by late Dora Akunyuli to re-brand Nigeria during the presidency of UmaruYar’Adua.

July 27, 2014
Jonathan, Buhari and demonisation of the North

Former head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, may not have reached mythical status like the eponymous Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, but he has clearly become a genuine hero whose death, had it occurred in last week’s Kaduna blast that claimed more than 100 lives, would have had dire consequences for the country and the Jonathan presidency. Two days before suicide bombers targeted him, the retired general had excoriated President Goodluck Jonathan for insensitively declaring war on Nigeria, a war he said the president could not hope to win for natural and historical reasons. Even if the two incidents were unrelated, majority of the general’s admirers would never allow themselves be persuaded that the Jonathan government did not have a hand in it. All that was needed for conflagration to break out was a spark in Kaduna, and another fuse lit somewhere else in the far North where the stoic and bold general had made his reputation as a friend of the dispossessed.

If Dr Jonathan cannot take counsel from the Buhari incident, then he is probably more unwise than he is globally – as a result of his poor handling of the Chibok abductions – reputed. The president remorselessly exploits Nigeria’s political, religious and cultural fissures, and it is doubtful whether he is sensitive to the implications of a political explosion. If the unthinkable had happened in Kaduna last week, and mayhem had been unleashed, would the president feel confident to exonerate himself and his brand of politics from the catastrophe? A Nigerian president is required to understanding the history of his country, where the dividing lines must be drawn, which boundaries he must never cross, what sentiments he must never exploit, and what defenders he must never permit to rally to his cause, let alone entertain openly and shamelessly. There is nothing to suggest that the president appreciates these lessons, nor does he have the discipline to let the lessons, were he to understand them, constrain his actions and policies.

No one doubts that Dr Jonathan is Nigeria’s most divisive president. He and his aides may think this label harsh and undeserved, but more and more, as if determined to keep flying in the face of providence, he exploits and exacerbate these divisions. For instance, rather than see the opposition as an integral part of democracy, and indeed as an ingredient, if not a fulcrum, for the stabilisation of Nigerian politics, both he and his party, and also his overzealous and uncontrollable aides, believe that the only way to normalise politics in these parts is either to extirpate the opposition like a pest, stigmatise their leaders, or defang it so comprehensively until it becomes unrecognisable and impotent. This depressing worldview manifests in the rash of impeachment intrigues inspired and instigated by the ruling party, and connived at by the presidency, notwithstanding Dr Jonathan’s half-hearted dissociation from the Adamawa, Nasarawa and other impeachment plots.

In addition, and just like during military regimes when the line between a ruler’s private and public/national interest becomes deliberately and short-sightedly blurred, Dr Jonathan has deployed national security organisations, whose operations are guided by definitive constitutional provisions, to wholly private and skewed interests of the president. The military, particularly the army, secret service, and other instruments of coercion have been completely reoriented towards the preservation and advancement of the Jonathan presidency. Little thought is spared for the cohesion and operational effectiveness of those security organisations.

Gen Buhari’s poignant and controversial statement also alludes to something more debilitating and truly worrisome about the president’s style. Dr Jonathan’s presidency is not only divisive; it has engaged, more than any other government before it, in the demonisation of the North, the North liberally defined. Taking advantage of the ingratiating style of Nigerian politicians, their sycophancy, their unending greed for power and their impotence in the face of tyranny, Dr Jonathan has either by public statements, body language, or indifference to the plight of the Northeast encouraged or allowed the continuing demonisation of the North. This attitude is unsafe and unhealthy.

For a long time, and even more remarkably so now, the presidency has argued that the political and business elites of the North are behind Boko Haram. Many South-South groups and individuals, and now alarmingly many Southwest groups and individuals, actually parrot the view that Boko Haram, in spite of its beginnings and chronology, was hatched to undermine the Jonathan presidency. Like all other elites in the country, but perhaps more guiltily, the northern elite was at first slow in recognising the danger constituted by Boko Haram. In fact, given its initial silence and knowing winks, it appeared that the northern elite were indifferent to the violence. They probably recall having lost the power stakes midway into the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency, and then to Dr Jonathan after the 2011 general elections. For a period, they became dangerously inured to the damage caused by Boko Haram and the long-time social, economic and political impact of the sect’s anarchic campaigns. But to conclude they hatched, inspired and funded the insurgency was a little too fanatical and specious.

Surprisingly, even leading members of the Afenifere and some other top Yoruba elite hitherto reputed for deep thinking and calmness in analysing national issues have become converted to Dr Jonathan’s fallacy. Such conversions in the Southwest must, however, be properly situated within the framework of the emerging ideological and power struggles in the zone. To assuage their guilt for abandoning what is believed to be the mainstream progressive politics in the Southwest, former so-called Awoists and other self-proclaimed progressives have suggested that both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) contain progressive elements, or that at any rate, the APC is not even truly progressive. Having argued thus, it became both desirable and ineluctable for the Jonathan supporters in the Southwest to embrace the silly and unfounded notion that northerners support Boko Haram’s subversive campaign because they see leadership as their birthright.

When Dr Jonathan permitted himself the luxury of visiting the Northeast a few years back, he had accused the elite of harbouring Boko Haram insurgents, an accusation still repeated by many even in the Afenifere. He made no mention of the impotence of his security organisations, which he controls exclusively and deploys as he pleases. He even threatened his hosts with fire and brimstone should one more of his troops be killed by the insurgents. Since then, the militants have killed more so-called ‘northern supporters of Boko Haram’ than soldiers and southerners, and it is not certain how many more northerners they need to kill to persuade southerners to revise their theories. The militants have killed respected members of the North’s military elite such as Gen Mohammed Shuwa, and other members of the political and traditional elites. Yet, neither Dr Jonathan nor his Southwest supporters have felt the need to properly situate the ongoing terror war within the context of the global terror war and international extreme political and even jihadist tendencies.

The PDP’s insistence on blaming the APC for the large-scale insecurity the country is experiencing, in spite of evidence to the contrary, not to say its adamantine resolve to equate the opposition with religious fanaticism, has led many in the opposition to believe that the Boko Haram insurgency is actually nurtured by the ruling party for private and political ends. There will be no end to the accusations and counterarguments. But in terms of misinformation and disinformation, there is little doubt that the Jonathan government and the ruling party are cruelly and effectively exploiting the Boko Haram insurgency to retain control of the political space and to cynically manipulate the minds of the gullible, especially in the Southwest, Southeast, South-South and North-Central.

Gen Buhari has timeously warned the president about how close to the brink his government has brought Nigeria with his divisive and exploitative politics. Given the kind of people he has surrounded himself with, and his own deplorable inability to go beyond the surface in analysing and understanding the dynamics of Nigerian politics, power and peoples, I fear Dr Jonathan is quite unable to grasp the fears that trouble Gen Buhari’s mind. For, as it has long been evident, even the ability to appreciate danger requires some depth of understanding, a quality altogether lacking in the present government.

July 27, 2014
The new cement war

Govt has to rethink policy on 32.5mpa grade

In the last few months, there has been another brewing war over cement in the country. This time around, the issue has to do with the 32.5mpa grade which a few stakeholders claim is responsible for the frequent building collapse in Nigeria. Curiously, it is the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), which had consistently maintained that all the cement produced in or imported into the country, met international standards that prescribed the reviewed standards of cement. Quite interestingly, only Dangote Cement, the dominant cement manufacturer in Nigeria, supports the SON’s review because it already has a headstart as it produces mainly the 42.5mpa cement. Others can hardly catch up.

Cement comes in three grades, 32.5mpa, 42.5mpa and recently, 52.5mpa.. The new policy prescribes the use of the 52.5mpa for the construction of bridges; 42.5mpa for the casting of columns, slabs and moulding of blocks and the 32.5mpa for plastering only. Hitherto, 32.5mpa had been used for most construction purposes. The matter eventually got to the House of Representatives which set up an Ad-hoc Committee on Public Investigative Hearing on the Composition and Pigmentation of Cement (Cement Quality) in Nigeria. The committee conducted a three-day public investigative session from May 13 to 15, 2014, with relevant stakeholders submitting memoranda to it. The stakeholders included Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, SON, Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (CMAN), Nigeria Society of Engineers, Nigerian Institute of Architects, Nigerian Institute of Building, Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and FCT Development Department. All the eight cement manufacturers in the country also submitted their position papers on the matter.

Going by the logic of those who claim building collapse is due to the use of 32.5mpa cement, buildings would be safe if the higher grade of 42.5mpa cement is used. This argument lacks substance, as there is no empirical evidence to support it.

The chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Yakubu Dogara, in his welcome address at the public investigative hearing noted that building collapse claimed about 297 lives between 1974 and 2010 .. These numbers do not take into account the injured as well as many cases of permanent disabilities. Material losses, if properly quantified, will be in billions of naira”. Without doubt, the figure will be higher if we realise that not all the cases of collapsed buildings are captured in the media.

Any rational human being confronted with such grim statistics would naturally be moved and the tendency could be to call for the removal of whatever is said to be responsible . But this is not something to be unduly emotional about. The situation requires extensive research to determine the true role that 32.5mpa cement played in these unfortunate incidents. As they say, ‘beheading cannot be the solution to headache’. Moreover, some of the prominent buildings built decades back were constructed with 32.5mpa cement and many of them are still standing. These include the National Assembly Complex, Abuja; Elephant House, Alausa, Lagos; Nitel Building, Lagos; Airport Hotel, Lagos; Western House, Lagos; Great Nigeria Insurance House, Lagos; Federal Secretariat, Lagos; Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos; Premier Hotel, Ibadan and Cocoa House, also in Ibadan, among many others.

Many of these structures have been there for decades. Cocoa House, a 24-storey building, for instance, was commissioned in 1965. The 32-storey NITEL Building was completed in 1979, etc.

For me, to blame a particular grade of cement for building collapse is like blaming waiters in restaurants for obesity. We all know, as the House committee and other stakeholders in the industry noted, that cement is not the only material that is used in the construction industry. In essence therefore, it cannot alone be responsible for the high incidence of collapsed buildings. So many other things could have gone wrong in the mix that could have led to building collapse.

It would appear that the Federal Government has finally realised the dangers that unfair monopolies constitute to the economy, hence its decision to break them. At least that was the impression created by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, during the formal presentation of the Draft Competition and Consumer Protection Policy to ministries, extra-ministerial agencies, organised business communities and state governments in the northern part of Nigeria, when he disclosed that a new competition and consumer protection policy that would address the various trade concerns and provide a level-playing ground for businessmen in the interest of consumers, in particular, and the economy at large, would begin soon.

Unfortunately, it is the same minister and SON that are behind the review of cement standards in the country in this suspicious manner. Now, at what point did SON have a change of heart, having certified the 32.5mpa cement as having met international standards, until lately? From the look of things, it would seem the decision was hasty and decisions on such crucial matters ought to be properly digested before they become government policy. All the critical stakeholders in the built industry that presented memoranda to the House committee could not have been wrong. Most of them are professionals in their own rights whose views should count when such decisions are about to be taken.

This was what the House committee public sitting on the matter achieved. Its conclusions are much more robust and reflect the cross-fertilisation of ideas that went into their assignment. If we are even to go by the assertion by COREN that “SON does not have a technical laboratory nor competence to test the qualities of cement produced, packaged or imported into Nigeria, nor equipment for periodic monitoring of companies producing cement in Nigeria”, at the public hearing, a claim the House committee said “was not refuted by SON”, then, we can see that there is much to the matter than meets the eye. As the committee observed, no other country, apart from China, has banned the production of 32.5mpa cement. India’s grade 43 is said to be equivalent to the 32.5 mpa. Even China that banned the 32.5mpa did so because it has achieved over-capacity in cement production, and, also as the committee noted, “to address environmental concerns”. Nigeria is nowhere near self-sufficiency in cement production.

It is instructive that the committee asserted that not in any single case of collapsed building has the use of 32.5mpa cement been blamed by the relevant independent professional bodies that investigated them. Buildings may collapse due to a number of factors including, but not limited to the following: the cement exhausting its shelf span or due to loss of its essential qualities as a result of stacking exposure or exposure to the element; lack of control or regulation, and because relevant standards on concrete and related issues are not enforced in the downstream informal construction sector. Other causes are: inadequate education or awareness on the appropriate application of cement grades in the country. Indeed, this is so serious, as, according to the House committee, “The level of ignorance of the availability of different grades of cement in the Nigerian market is so high to the extent that most directors of works and academic institutions of higher learning are not aware of the different types of cement available in the country”. So, “if gold rusts, what would iron do”? There is also the problem of the greed of some professionals or end-users who might decide to add more sand than required in the construction mix. Of course, there is also the problem of the quality of iron used in construction, etc.

What one can see in all of these is the ubiquitous ‘Nigerian Factor’. If, as SON claimed, the 32.5mpa cement is susceptible to misapplication and can therefore “result in construction failure”, what is the guarantee that cement of higher grades cannot also result in the same thing once those saddled with the responsibility of ensuring standards and best practices in the sector do not do their work as they should? Or, put differently, when the ‘Nigerian factor’ still reigns supreme? The sad reality is that more buildings will still collapse in the country unless we begin to hold people accountable for the menace.

All said, until it is conclusively proven that grade 32.5mpa cement is responsible for the high incidence of collapsed buildings in the country, or elsewhere, the SON review, which confers undue advantage on the dominant player in the industry that currently produces essentially the 42.5mpa grade would appear to have been targeted at stifling the weaker players who produce the 32.5mpa largely, and the 42.5mpa only on requests by their customers. It would be tantamount to continuation of the cement war by some other means, with the Federal Government throwing its weight, as usual, behind the dominant player. It does not make economic sense for any investor to set up a cement factory for the sole purpose of producing products for plastering. The government has to rethink the policy in the overall interest of the economy.

July 27, 2014
A gathering of crocodiles

With the hosting of a foreign flag on what is supposed to be Nigerian soil in the little known northern town of Gamboa, and with the security forces showing little appetite for swiftly terminating the disgraceful affront, Nigeria is effectively partitioned. Whether we like to hear it or not, and whether we want it mentioned or not, a great horror movie is unfolding not just for Nigerians but the Black race as a whole. Yet like paralysed participants in the Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the German horror film, we appear too dazed and confounded to comprehend what is going on.

To be sure, this is not the first time Nigeria would be so symbolically dismembered. The Biafran flag was hoisted on a larger swathe of the nation and for a longer period. But not with this kind of psychotic daring and in your face bravura. In any case, Biafra never left anybody in doubt about its intention to secede from Nigeria. It was a textbook secession. The hosting of the flag was the final act of formal consecration after the declaration of independence from Nigeria.

As far as rituals of secession go, the leadership of Biafra adhered scrupulously and rigorously to internationally stipulated norms and independence was formally declared after a Consultative Assembly mandated the old eastern region leadership to lead its people out of Nigeria. Thus, the former Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, freshly cashiered from the Nigerian Army, became the leader of a new nation. The rest is history.

In the case of the Boko Haram insurgency, a rag tag militia has now snowballed into a full blown military force that has gravely imperilled the territorial sanctity of Nigeria, and one that is bent on imposing its weird form of a theocratic state on a substantial swathe of the nation if not the entire country. There is no Northern Consultative Forum as such in sight. There are no Boko Haram officers to be dismissed as yet. The only thing we have going is President Jonathan’s offhand declaration that there are already Boko Haram cells in the sanctuary of his own administration.

Yet the insurrectionist sect has succeeded beyond its wildest expectation, laying to waste and complete ruination the northernmost fringes of the nation. If the federal forces were to withdraw from this troubled and tormented region at this minute, we might as well say goodbye to Nigeria as we know it.

In a development that points at some international conspiracy beyond the government’s tenuous grasp on reality, the murderous sect has the entire north within its rifle sight, and it seems able to strike at will any target of choice even in the federal capital of Abuja. It is now beginning to probe the Southern underbelly of the nation in what promises to be an apocalyptic endgame for Nigeria. History has become a nightmare from which we are trying to wake up.

At the purely symbolic level, the cost to the psyche of the nation and its fabled military has been quite prohibitive and out of proportion. The old northern establishment has had its totems and escutcheons of political and spiritual authority completely devastated and ground to dust. The state and its paraphernalia of authority and coercive disincentives have been shown to be incapable of protecting, not to talk of maintaining, the territorial integrity of the nation.

At the last count, the Boko Haram sect has accounted for General Mohammed Shuwa, a civil war stalwart and one of the finest officers of the old Nigerian army. It has killed the Emir of Gwoza, with his fellow traditional travellers being lucky to escape after they were dramatically abducted in broad daylight.

It almost succeeded in dispatching the late Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, until natural death mercifully intervened. It has summarily liquidated scores of notable politicians and clerics. It has successfully cordoned off a huge chunk of the nation known as Sambisa Forest. Meanwhile, it continues to hold in maniacal custody dozens of female pupils summarily rounded up in the middle of the night from Chibok, despite all national and international entreaties.

It has continued to cock a snook at the federal authorities, treating them with implacable contempt, even as it spurns all offers of negotiations. From its redoubt, it has continued to issue threats undermining the fundamental raison d’etre of the state. Perhaps as an uncoordinated response to its deep humiliation, the military are beginning to show a dangerous edginess and a nervous disregard for civil populace and its ranking authorities. For political astrologers reading the horoscope of impending national calamity, it doesn’t get more bothersome.

Last Wednesday, the chicks came home to roost, or rather the crocodiles gathered once again on the banks of the River Kaduna. A desperate and determined suicide bomber almost succeeded in eliminating General Mohamadu Buhari, another civil war veteran, former military Head of state and persistent presidential hopeful, from the political equation. Looking at the scene of carnage and combustion, it feels more like Islamabad or Afghanistan than Nigeria.

The horrific consequences of Buhari’s elimination and in Kaduna of all places are better left to the imagination. For the better part of the Fourth Republic, this formerly pleasant and placid former capital of the old north and administrative seat of Lord Lugard has known its fair share of sectarian and religious upheavals. A tense truce prevails, but the city remains effectively partitioned between a Muslim north and a Christian south.

In a clumsy and inarticulate manner, Kaduna mirrors the endemic fault lines of the nation itself, and its sorry and sordid history of elite-manipulated divisions. Yet it has not always been like this. In its heydays of glory, a breezy and cosmopolitan Kaduna that welcomed all and which served as the headquarters of the Nigerian military cum political complex and its emerging lions mirrored the strengths and possibilities of this gifted nation.

Anybody who has spent his prime in Kaduna in the glorious seventies like this columnist, must know what we are talking about. It was pure bliss and blessing on the scale of the beatitude. As a fresh post Youth Corps graduate, Snooper spent a whole year in the cosy and plush ambience of Tourist Lodge on Dawaki Road. The owner, Idris Morrow of the fabled Morrow bread, was as eccentric and impossibly kind as they come.

Snooper recalls launching into a tirade in Yoruba language one afternoon about the quality of the food and the possible racket that was going on to the hearing of Idris Morrow. Alhaji Morrow sat glum, stony-faced and seemingly inattentive. At dinner later, Idris Morrow walked up to yours sincerely in his inimitable dancing gait.

“Omo mi, se o ti jeun?” (My son, have you eaten?”) Idris Morrow asked with a furtive smile in Yoruba as Snooper froze in his seat . Idris Morrow then calmly sat down and explained that he was actually born in Lagos and had lived in Yaba. “The problem with you boys of nowadays is that you are impatient”, the old man concluded with a grinning flourish. Thereafter developed a father and son bonding with the great man initiating Snooper to the rarefied social circuits of the Kaduna power aristocracy. Every Saturday, our first port of call was at Mrs Akilu, the wife of the late respected technocrat.

There is a sense in which it can be claimed that the history of modern Nigeria is irretrievably wedded to the history of Kaduna. It was from here that Lord Lugard proclaimed his famous and infamous Doctrine of Dual Mandate which forcibly grafted the new nation to the apron strings of the metropolitan order. It was also from here that the late Ahmadu Bello began his great feat of social engineering which saw to the emergence of a new northern political, military and technocrat elite which placed the north at premium political advantage.

But it was from Kaduna again that Ahmadu Bello’s feat provoked its violent political antithesis when a group of impatient young majors rose in brisk fury and radical distemper to abridge the First Republic. Forty eight years after this set of crocodiles swam out of the River Kaduna to consume everything in sight, Nigeria has known neither peace nor durable progress. It has been forty eight years of solitude and still counting.

It is just as well that this great city is named after the humongous crocodiles that once lazed away on its muddy bank. Only god knows what havoc these fellows must have cost the unwary natives. But their human incarnation have cost the nation even more. The Nigerian political elite are a bunch of crocodiles who cry while feasting on the entrails of the nation. But this meal cannot go on forever.

Had General Buhari been killed last Wednesday, the crocodiles would have swum out of Kaduna river again in what might have become a Nigerian version of Hiroshima. We thank God for small mercies. But let this remind the political elite of how close we are to the precipice of no return. While the madmen in our midst only need to be lucky once, the nation has to keep being lucky.

For the Daura-born general, it is a win-win situation. If the attempt on his life can be traced to the Boko Haram sect, it will from now on be extremely stupid and irresponsible for anybody to cast him in the satanic role of a fanatic and sympathiser. If on the other hand, the assassination bid can be traced to some other rogue elements, it may have the unintended consequences of softening Buhari’s image and solidifying many undecided Nigerians behind his cause.

What the general should now do his to parlay his new found authority of personal outrage into playing an even more constructive role in the rescue of the north from its self-inflicted wounds and the redemption of the nation from an own goal. He doesn’t have to be fixated on the presidency. What saved him from that mortal embrace may yet turn out to be a higher calling.

July 27, 2014
Revisiting the Photo-chromically rigged Ekiti election

Jaws will drop when Nigerians get to know the details of the rigged Ekiti election

I am always beside myself when I see the uninitiated continue to insult, indeed, completely rip apart, a doughty, decent and extremely respectable Ekiti people, unfortunate victims of PDP’s unprecedented, in Nigeria, though happened in Zimbabwe’s 2013 Presidential election, photo-chromically rigged election of 21, June 2014, being described in very nauseating ways. There is hardly any insulting epithet under the sun Ekiti has not been painted with arising from PDP’s irreverent rationalizations for its earth shaking ‘victory’ in that election: an election in which the thief foolishly stole more than the owner, with the sitting, performing governor (Fayemi has outperformed all Ekiti governors, dead or alive) not winning a single Local Government area and the vote of the ‘winner’, Ayodele Fayose, warts and all, almost doubling the governor’s in the mistaken belief that the lie becomes more believable if the margin of victory is humongous.

So successful were they that my friend, a world reputed intellectual and proud Ekiti icon , was pained enough to do a poem, rather a dirge, for Motherland’s fabled love of stomach. Fortunately, now that the APC has headed to the tribunal, the world will soon come to know the details of this latest ‘Watergate’. The PDP and ts government have so negatively impacted the country that they would do just about anything to hold on to power or steal it. Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan recently reminded us that Nigeria now generates about 4500MW of electricity as against 4200 MW it had a whole twelve years ago when the late Dr Olusegun Agagu was Minister of Power and Energy and that was after injecting between $24 -$50 billion while another writer regaled his readers as follows: ‘Former President Olusegun Obasanjo condemned GEJ’s government. Muhammadu Buhari criticized GEJ’s government. Maitama Sule expressed worries over GEJ’s leadership style. Mrs Hilary Clinton described GEJ’s government as corrupt. Senator John McCain said there is no government in Nigeria. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni mocked GEJ on Boko Haram. Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe described Nigeria as a corrupt nation. The question is: Are all these people ignorant of what good governance is? And all that was long before we sank into this Watergate, this photochromically rigged Ekiti election.

And I ask, is there a level to which this government will not degenerate?

Many, incidentally and surprisingly including the U.S embassy in Nigeria, have commended INEC for conducting what they call a transparent election in Ekiti. I can forgive the U.S having been accustomed to Nigeria’s shambolic elections of ballot box snatching, murder and mayhem which were patently absent this time around, but I feel certain America will by now be chuckling to itself saying: we were had!

Which election did PDP not rig? Is it the election which Olu Falae contested at the tribunal, or the one Buhari took to the tribunal and in which, to save President Jonathan an Appeal Court President had to be hurriedly sacrificed? Back to Ekiti, is it the 2007 governorship election and the rerun which the Appeal Court held were both egregiously stolen by the PDP? It is obvious PDP did not overtly rig the Ekiti election because it has long ensured ‘victory’ when Obanikoro flew into the Akure Airport with his strange ‘luggage’, later allegedly ferried to Ekiti in a bullion van. To dispute this, Obanikoro, Jelili Adesiyan and the Anambra perpetual gubernatorial wannabe, none of them Ekiti, should tell the world what their mission was in Ekiti during the election. Obvously the vehicle arrested a few days to the Ekiti election conveying items from INEC’s Ado-Ekiti office was most probably ferrying the batch of vanishing ink to be used in Osun which must have accounted for Omisore’s insistence, and INEC’s subsequent acquiescence, in the transfer of the state’s Resident Commissioner. This is one reason APC must insist on the use of indelible ink in the Osun election as specifically stipulated by the Electoral Law. Otherwise, the party must make such available at all the polling booths if INEC decides to continue to act illegally by providing vanishing ink as it did in Ekiti.

I paraphrase below, the argument of Hon Bimbo Daramola, MHR, Director General of the Kayode Fayemi campaign, which should put the final nail on the coffin of this baloney called stomach infrastructure and the more asinine one that a governor who put in place the first ever welfare scheme for the elderly in Nigeria, giving 25,000 Ekiti elders a N5000 monthly stipend ,who employed about 10,000 youths through such schemes as the highly acclaimed Youth Commercial Agriculture (YCAD) which has seen a trained Medical Doctor turn a farmer, and one whose annual budgets are made bottom up by going to every Ekiti community to ascertain their critical needs, and much more, was aloof and disconnected from the citizenry:

‘I dare say 95 percent of those who are so confident in their oracular postulation neither have the hard facts about the Fayemi years in Ekiti nor the numerous initiatives that were aimed at restoring Ekiti back from its ruins.

It is obviously unknown to many that no administration treated Ekiti teachers better than Fayemi’s regardless of the competency test which was badly misunderstood. Critics should therefore go and compare the various administrations since the creation of the state. Today they say teachers are against Fayemi despite their regular promotions, payment of rural location allowance, core subjects allowance, 27.5% pecuniary allowance and both local and foreign training. I am sure the election was not won because of stomach infrastructure or rice, he says, certainly not! Otherwise it would mean that all of a sudden, 25000 senior citizens suddenly became memory fatigued or brain dead and forgot the man who made government have such impact on their lives,10000 volunteers who have been on monthly financial support for the past 36 months’ lost their minds’ and the people of Ikogosi who play host to local and international tourists in their thousands equally temporarily forgot the man who made the Ikogosi Tourist Resort what it is.

Continuing he said, the increased state revenue, jobs created from investment in road reconstruction, the Ire Ekiti Burnt Bricks factory left prostrate for 23years, the various job creating schemes, all must have suddenly counted for nothing because somebody brought in some bags of 2.5kg of expired Thai rice?

Hon Daramola goes on: When latter day analysts begin to ascribe interpretations to what they do not know, I expect rational people to step back and attempt a much more dispassionate evaluation before jumping to conclusions. For instance, when one Segun Ayobolu who confessed he has not visited Ekiti since Fayemi became governor goes on to rely on hearsays, reasonable people would expect him to demonstrate circumspection. Although he tried to tuck away his sloppiness by claiming journalists are not intellectuals, one would still expect much more than his cocktail of lies and conjectures. And then Akin Osuntokun goes on to mutilate facts on the altar of the expediency of an urgent, even, dire need to enter into political reckoning which this “victory” suggests to him: time to graduate from sitting perpetually on the President’s Chief of Staff.

Come to think of it, he continues, was that election all about the governor alone? Did it matter anything that the APC has 3 Senators, 5 members of the House of Representatives, 25 state house assembly members in the state, besides political appointees? All these people suddenly froze into political nothingness? And it no longer mattered that 10 of those who vied for the PDP gubernatorial ticket had decamped to the APC; Asiwaju Segun Oni no longer has any political relevance in his home town; ditto erstwhile PDP top shots like Hon Olatubosun , Hon Babade, Chief Ojo Falegan and many more?

Our people must learn to think much more beyond the veneer and take these empty postulations with more than a pinch of salt. They must see the PDP for what exactly it is : an ensemble of political desperados and power mongers who would stop at nothing to win elections.

And as this writer has never shied away from saying, jaws will drop when Nigerians get to know the details of the rigged Ekiti election.

July 27, 2014
Boko Haram: We’re all victims now

Boko Haram is Nigeria’s ultimate man-made disaster. Natural disasters often occur as one-off events, whereas the insurgency in the North East is becoming a never-ending horror flick.

Unfortunately, this is not make-believe as lives are being lost and communities devastated. Speaking in France in May this year, President Goodluck Jonathan estimated that over 12,000 have been killed in the conflict since 2009.

For many years Nigerians living far from the flashpoints could not really relate to the violence because the victims were mostly poor, faceless, nameless ‘nobodies.’ All that changed when the insurgents snatched close to 300 girls from Chibok over 100 days ago.

By that singularly brutal act, Boko Haram landed foot first on global primetime TV. Today, Abubakar Shekau’s sorry visage is about as familiar to the average person as any pantomime bad guy in a Nollywood production.

A few days ago, former military Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, came within a whisker of being assassinated when suicide bombers took aim at his convoy. He was clearly the prize they were after, but his would-be assassins bungled the task. In the process over 40 innocent persons became collateral damage.

In the nascent stage of Boko Haram atrocities, exasperated Southerners digesting their daily dose of gory headlines from the comfort of their sofas in Lagos, Yenagoa or Abakaliki, could afford to snort derisively that “these bloody Northerners can blow themselves to kingdom come if they like.”

Today, the reality is that no matter how far we are from the epicenter of the conflict, we have all become victims in one way or another.

We desperately need to come to terms with how Boko Haram is impacting our lives, and the way we live, to understand that if we don’t throw all we can muster at the monster, it will soon consume the entire country.

Some years ago, statements credited to unofficial United States diplomatic or intelligence sources suggested that Nigeria could break up in 2015. Ever since that report came to light, Jonathan and several other former Nigerian leaders have vowed that the worst would not happen. They speak with such confidence thinking that a split would follow the old Biafran template.

Truly, Nigeria may not break into tiny pieces in 2015, but what percentage of our sovereign territory would we be exerting control over when terrorists have started planting their flags in parts of Borno?

Unless we radically review our approach and begin to take the fight to the insurgents, what Biafra couldn’t achieve in the 60’s could manifest through the war in the North East.

So far, our best efforts rather than contain the terrorists have only pushed them to unprecedented levels of depravity. This is a group that does not operate by any known norms of civilized conduct and is not influenced or affected by international conventions that govern conduct in war. That is why they serve up fresh atrocities every new day.

The question is how many more mindless blasts or slayings can this fragile country take before things spiral out of control? Many wars have been ignited by some stupid incident. World War 1 was sparked off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo in 1914.

Who could have predicted the fallout if Buhari had been killed in the deadly blasts a few days ago? Given the present foul political atmosphere in the country, conspiracy theories would have gone into overdrive – with unpredictable consequences.

This government doesn’t understand the deadly phenomenon they are toying with. That is why its leading lights are still playing political games trying to tie the opposition to the insurgency. If the governments that have held power since 2009 had properly assessed the danger posed by Boko Haram, we won’t be where we are today.

Five years ago when the sect’s members went on an orgy of violence across three North Eastern states, the then President Umaru Yar’Adua went ahead with a state visit to Brazil – despite the massive loss of lives and destruction of property.

Back then, it was clear that this latest manifestation in a long line of extremist Northern Islamist groups was something special. But what did Yar’Adua do? From the safety of Brasilia, he sent preachy appeals to other Muslims not follow the ‘bad’ example of Boko Haram. On his return from the trip he didn’t even deign to visit the site of the mayhem, but retired to Aso Villa to business as usual.

His successor has followed that same pattern – treating psychopathic killers as compatriots who can be reasoned with. The government even went as far as colluding with Hillary Clinton’s State Department two years ago to thwart efforts by the US government to designate Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO).

While this tomfoolery was going on, Boko Haram got enough breathing space to beef up its fighting capacity. Now, they have acquired a fleet of pick-up vans, APCs and, according to some reports, even anti-aircraft guns which they still don’t have the knowhow to operate. In that time, too, they mastered the deployment of IEDs to deadly effect.

What could have been contained three years ago within the budget now requires the country to go a borrowing $ 1 billion.

In 2012 when Nigerian government officials and diplomats were strenuously resisting the FTO designation for their enemy, the argument was that it would make life difficult for privileged Nigerians who travel overseas as they would be subjected to intrusive searches. Today, we have much more to worry about.

One of the inevitable consequences of wars is that they produce refugees who flee to neighbouring countries or internally displaced persons who run to other parts of the country for safety. Already, thousands have fled the theatre of conflict in Borno.

Recently, over 400 Northerners were intercepted in several trucks headed for Port Harcourt in the dead of night. Although security agencies reportedly apprehended a wanted Boko Haram leader among the travelers, the vast majority have since been repatriated to the states from which they initiated their journeys.

We should prepare for more of such mass movement as the areas of conflict broaden. Worryingly, the consequences of such movements go beyond security as they have ramifications that are beginning to threaten national unity.

After steps were taken by the Imo government to track Northerners living in the state, reciprocal action has been initiated by several groups in Kano and Kaduna seeking registration of Southerners living in those states. Where will such tit-for-tat actions lead? No one knows.

If things get worse in the North, people would drift South – it is only to be expected. As it is, many farmers in the North East cannot access their farms for fear of being killed. Those who manage to plant crops soon lose all to rampaging insurgents who harvest them to feed their hungry cadres.

The economic impact is spreading beyond locals who have lost their means of livelihood. Boko Haram is affecting our pocket and impacting our dining tables. Much of the produce that used to come from Borno State and surrounding areas has been cut off leading to price increases because of diminishing supplies of everything from grains to livestock.

On the political front the implications are equally troubling. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Attahiru Jega, keeps assuring us that election will hold all over the country next year. Unfortunately, security conditions in large swathes of the North undermine his words.

Who is going to conduct polls in unprotected places like Damboa or Chibok? If the President could not visit such places for security reasons, which school teacher or NYSC member would put his life on the line to guarantee the success of those polls?

If the conditions in many areas of the North are such that free and fair elections cannot be held, how does it affect our democratic transition? There are grave questions that need to be answered. Unfortunately, those to address them are still too giddy with a sense of their power to realise that their empire is shrinking dramatically by the day.

July 27, 2014
‘Stay blessed’: benediction or beatitude, sarcasm or seriousness? [A secular sermon]

Benediction: (1) an utterance of good wishes (2) the advantage conferred by blessing; a mercy or benefit
Dictionary.com (online)

Beatitude: (1) supreme blessedness, exalted happiness (2) any of the declarations of blessedness pronounced by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew, 5:3-11]
Dictionary.com (online)

As our prayer warriors say, stay blessed”. It is only recently, as recent as two weeks ago, that I noticed that in some of my email correspondence with friends, acquaintances and family members, I have for some time now been ending my emails to them with these words: “as our prayer warriors say, stay blessed”.Indeed, when an email which carries this benediction is directed to a non-Nigerian, I usually say, “as the prayer warriors in my country say, stay blessed”.

Human beings are the most imitative of all the living beings on our planet. As soon as this practice which started rather unconsciously came to my conscious attention, I immediately knew that I was imitating the action of some of my email correspondents who end their communication to me with those words, ‘stay blessed”. These are my “prayer warrior” relatives, acquaintances and friends. “Stay blessed, Uncle”. “Stay blessed, Prof”. “Stay blessed, BJ”. I think it was from responding sarcastically by ending my own emails to such “prayer warriors” that I began to end my emails to non-prayer warriors with the same benediction, ‘stay blessed’. But why direct sarcasm initially meant for prayer warriors to non-prayer warriors? In moving from one to the other, had I moved from sarcasm to seriousness? If so, was the seriousness also there, side by side with the sarcasm, in my emails to my prayer warrior friends and relatives? Dear reader, questions like these led to my decision to write my column this week as a sort of secular sermon that reflects on the gap between sarcasm and seriousness whenever I have used that phrase, ‘stay blessed’ to end my emails.

I did not know it initially, but now that I am thinking consciously about the matter, I realize that it must have been the feeling, the intuition that more than a benediction which is an utterance of good wishes, the phrase, ‘stay blessed” had become a beatitude with our prayer warriors that led me to be sarcastic in my appropriation of the phrase in my responses to the emails of my prayer warrior relatives and acquaintances. As the second epigraph to this piece indicates, beatitude is a state of supreme blessedness, of exalted happiness. The word beatitude also refers, perhaps more commonly, to the declarations of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. We shall come to this connection later in this piece, this lay, secular sermon. For now, let us focus on beatitude as a state of supreme blessedness which, I contend, is what our prayer warriors have in mind when they say or write the phrase, ‘stay blessed’.

I am neither a priest nor a theologian, but I think I am not mistaken when I assert that a state of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness is what happens to congregants who have just had a powerful, transcendent experience in an act of cathartic communal worship; to individuals who, through prayer or meditation, have just had an epiphany; or to anybody deeply spiritual who has just experienced a profound intimation of divinity or eternity. Now, I confess that except vicariously, through some books that I have read and a few films that I have watched, I have never experienced such states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness. But I suspect very strongly that this is true of the great majority of human beings who are living now or have ever lived. For it is not part of our fate or experience to be in regular, prolonged and common states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness. There is of course the false exception of those who apparently regularly achieve such states through drugs, orgiastic sex, severe clinical disorders and manipulative religious frenzy. But we know that it does not last; and there is always a heavy, sometimes terrible price to pay. Thus, sustained and regular states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness do not constitute part of our spiritual and psychic common heritage as human beings. But this is not an inevitable, natural or metaphysical condition of humanity; it is a product of human action and inaction and very few places on the planet are as illustrative of this point as Nigeria.

In our country at the present historical and political moment, who will contest that “supreme blessedness” or “exalted happiness” is far from the daily lives of the overwhelming majority of our peoples, rich and poor but especially the poor? Nollywood is an eloquent testimony to this grim fact, with its deep immersion in occult evil and devilry and their agents and the terrible emotional and moral havocs they wreak on human lives. But Nollywood is an ironic, reverse but deadly accurate reflection of life in our country. Boko Haram and their covert internal backers and external sponsors are not witches; they are people like you and me. The gangs of extortionate kidnappers who operate in many parts of the country putting safety and security of life in jeopardy for millions of Nigerians are not supernatural beings, even if many of them patronize occultists for “power”; they are high school dropouts and university graduates who can’t find work and turn to violent criminality as a default option. Those who are looting and squandering our national wealth and making the lives of the vast majority of our peoples hellish are ordinary human beings, not demons. Thus, there are very few instances of beatitude, of supreme blessedness in Nollywood films precisely because there are very few sources of supreme blessedness in Nigerian socio-political reality. But our prayer warriors continue to invoke their beloved, talismanic beatitude, “stay blessed”.

The book of Matthew that contains the passage on the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes that Jesus declared is my favorite passage in the holy book of Christians. Interestingly, Jesus in that passage makes EIGHT declarations of beatitudes with specific designations of the groups and individuals that are deserving of them. Again, I state that I am neither a priest nor a theologian. By this I mean to emphasize that my commentary and reflections here are not theological; they are socially and morally diagnostic and prognostic. Ever since I first read this passage of the beatitudes in the book of Matthew, I have marked down in my mind those eight categories of individuals and groups that Jesus thought deserving. They are: (1) the poor; (2) the meek; (3) those that mourn; (4) the merciful; (5) the peacemakers; (6) the pure of heart; (7) those that thirst for justice and (8) those that are persecuted. Even the most casual review of this list will discern that overwhelmingly, the moral and spiritual solidarity of Jesus is with the disenfranchised and the disaffected of society. But he did not completely exclude the rich and the powerful, at least those among them who are merciful, who are peacemakers and who thirst for justice.

As I have stated or even frankly admitted earlier in these reflections, when I use the phrase ‘stay blessed’ in my emails to my prayer warrior friends and relatives, I am mostly being sarcastic, though I know in my heart that I also think of my use of the phrase as a benediction, an utterance of good wishes. The sarcasm comes from the fact – let me state this rather bluntly – that when prayer warriors say to me or say to one another ‘stay blessed’, they are using it more than a benediction; they are using it as a mantra, as a pietistic and smug belief that they are in a state of supreme blessedness. But I look at contemporary Nigerian religiosity – Christian and Moslem – and I see nothing remotely in a state of supreme blessedness. What I see at the top is a deep, wide and self-serving plutocratic collusion with the contemporary money changers in the temple, the secular powers that are ruining our country and making life a hell on earth for the majority of our peoples. And what I see at the bottom of the explosion of religiosity in our country at the present time is a craven and idolatrous surrender of the masses of our peoples to fear, bigotry and superstition. I make exceptions, of course, for I have met many religious people of different faiths who are “pure of heart”, who are “meek” and who are “merciful”, the states of blessedness that Jesus extolled in his Sermon on the Mount.

‘Stay blessed”. In Jesus’ Name (IJN). To combine the two, one must look for inspiration in the radical solidarity with the dispossessed and the disenfranchised that Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. This in fact has been the historic role of all the religious movements of the past and the present that worked for – and are still working for – human progress in the different nations and regions of the world. At any rate, these are the things that come to my mind now any time that I use the phrase ‘stay blessed’ in my emails. Now that I have clarified for myself that my sarcasm when I use the phrase is not without genuine benediction for the recipient, I feel better and hope that at least those who know me well among my prayer warrior email correspondents know that I mean well towards them. I doubt, though, that they can feel the great anger that also comes with my sense that the phrase is largely used as a mantra, a talisman, a fetish that lures people into complacency in a time and a country in which only the greatest clarity about the sources of the real-world forces that make life so difficult for most of our peoples can save us. So, stay blessed, dear reader, but avoid the snares of complacent religiosity.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

July 27, 2014