The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Jonathan’s war, from Buhari’s perspective

    Jonathan’s war, from Buhari’s perspective

    After observing the ruling party’s open and unremitting war against the opposition, Gen Muhammadu Buhari last week felt compelled to warn President Goodluck Jonathan not to take the country on the misguided path of tyranny and dictatorship. The president will be reluctant to listen to the general, for he would probably think that once he wins the 2015 presidential poll, then he would be in a position to offer concessions and make amends. But even the hypothetical offer of concessions would be a far-fetched idea should he win the poll, for Dr Jonathan naturally loathes the opposition, sees the presidency as an office to be revered rather than respected, uses the words criticism and abuse interchangeably, and is willing to bring every national institution to the service of his private political goals.

    Said Buhari: “Our country has gone through several rough patches, but never before have I seen a Nigerian President declare war on his own country as we are seeing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian President deploy federal institutions in the service of partisanship as we are witnessing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian President utilise the common wealth to subvert the system and punish the opposition, all in the name of politics.” The trigger for the Buhari warning was of course the impeachment of Murtala Nyako, until recently the Governor of Adamawa State, in circumstances that were clearly political, and also the ongoing impeachment effort against Governor Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State, again in circumstances that are evidently immature and political. Both impeachment plots, as well as a few others in the pipeline, are widely believed to be aimed at crippling the opposition APC and making the re-election of Dr Jonathan in 2015 much surer.

    The president and his aides have denied that Dr Jonathan is behind the unsavoury plots. But Gen Buhari is unimpressed by the subterfuge. He reiterates that, “Whether or not President Goodluck Jonathan is behind the gale of impeachment or the utilisation of desperate tactics to suffocate the opposition and turn Nigeria into a one-party state, what cannot be denied is that they are happening under his watch, and he cannot pretend not to know, since that will be akin to hiding behind one finger.”

    Then the general warns apocalyptically: “I, along with many other patriotic Nigerians, fought for the unity and survival of this country. Hundreds of thousands of patriotic souls perished in the battle to keep Nigeria one. The blood of many of our compatriots helped to water the birth of the democracy we are all enjoying today. Let no one, whether leader or led, high or low, a member of the ruling party or the opposition, do anything to torpedo the system. Let no one, whether on the altar of personal ambition or pretension to higher patriotic tendencies, do anything that can detonate the powder keg on which the nation is sitting. It is time for all concerned to spare a thought for the ordinary citizens who have yet to see their hopes, dreams and aspirations come to reality, within the general context of nationhood.”

    Was Gen Buhari unduly harsh, or did he overstate the problem? I doubt very much. Other former heads of state recognise the problem, but have perhaps chosen to engage in private but unproductive engagement with the president. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, even though he was partly responsible for the foisting of Dr Jonathan on Nigeria, has shouted himself hoarse over Dr Jonathan’s poor judgement and lack of wisdom. The alarming fact is that Dr Jonathan is the least sensitive to just how close Nigeria is to fracturing. If the other former presidents and heads of state will not weigh in to compel the president to a high degree of moderation and constitutional discipline, we could soon all discover that there is after all nothing inevitable or irreversible about the peace, stability and unity the country glibly confesses.

  • Curbing indiscipline in schools

    Whether in public or private schools, cases of indiscipline abound. It is not unusual these days to hear of students engaging in some unimaginable misconduct or the other.

    Indiscipline means lack of discipline, lack of control, lack of proper training; it means unruly behaviour, disobedience and disorder.

    I was not surprised that I was asked to speak on this issue that has become a matter of great concern to all at the recent end of year ceremony of a school. My brief was however on the roles parents should play in curbing indiscipline in private schools.

    We now live in a world where indiscipline reigns supreme in virtually every aspect of our life. It is however not limited to students.

    All of us are in one way or the other guilty and there is an urgent need to return to the good old days when discipline was the order of the day. The situation was so bad at one point in our history that a military government had to declare War Against Indiscipline called WAI.

    Even now we have various paramilitary organisations charged with enforcing discipline in various sectors but unfortunately we are not making much progress.

    There is urgent need to address this issue to ensure that students are as disciplined as much as possible if they are to be good leaders of tomorrow.

    The indiscipline we hear  of in public schools include students not abiding with instructions outlined for them, indulging in social vices, disrespect for teachers, unruly parents who don’t want their children to be disciplined for wrong doings and many others.

    Parents have a major role to play to curb indiscipline in our private schools which are subject to government guidelines on how such institutions are to be run.

    The first point to be made is that parents must be disciplined. They cannot give what they don’t have. They are supposed to be role models for the children who normally have no choice but to be disciplined if parents show them good examples.

    Secondly, parents must give their children the necessary home training for them to appreciate the need to be disciplined in schools. No doubt schools are supposed to train the students, but without proper home training not much can be accomplished by teachers.

    Parents need to spend more time to train their children despite the hectic schedules they now have to cope with. Parents  run the risk of having to pay dearly in future  for not investing enough time to ensure proper training of their children if they don’t do so when their children are still young and amenable to instructions.

    Parents must be aware of the rules and regulations of the schools they enroll their children and not attempting to circumvent them their status not withstanding.

    Where they have cause to disagree with some regulations or disciplinary measure they should seek appropriate channels to seek redress instead of taking the laws into our hands like some parents do.

    There have been instances where parents go to schools to beat up teachers for daring to discipline their children. This is very unfortunate. While teachers should be moderate in enforcing discipline, parents should not give their children the impression that they are above the law.

    Parents of children in every school need to work with the authorities to enforce discipline both for the teachers and students through forums like the Parents Teachers Association.

    Parents should take seriously reports of misdemeanours by their children before the situation is beyond their control.

  • A wonderful day for a wonderful man

    To the lush and commodious bowels of Eko Hotel and Suites last Sunday for the seventieth birthday bash of our gifted senior friend, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola, immediate past Chairman of the Punch newspaper group and illustrious scion of the illustrious Ogunsola family of Ibadan.

    Snooper has rarely seen so many truly illustrious and distinguished Nigerians gather in honour of an exceptional citizen. The Nigerian illuminati have a way of honouring one of its favoured children who have done the nation very proud. After the death of his brother, Chief Moyo Aboderin, Ogunsola had taken the Punch group by the scruff of the neck from the brink of bankruptcy and looming receivership to the commanding heights of newsprint respectability.

    With the no-nonsense and implacably principled Ogunsola at the helm of affairs, the paper survived several military ambushes and unfriendly fire to become the voice of the voiceless in the struggle against military despotism in Nigeria. It was a daring and courageous thing to do, but then Ogunsola is from the city of fabled warriors.

    In the event, it was a moveable feast, straight out of the pages of The Great Gatsby but without the quirky histrionics of the great American fictional hero. Wit, raconteur, intellectual and celebrated agnostic, Ajibola is a man of refined taste and rarefied public school elegance. Nothing escapes his meticulous attention to details and the mathematical rigour of his scrutiny. But if you are able to survive the quiet but exacting interrogation of your credentials, you are likely to find just below the surface a man of immense kindness and memorable generosity of spirit. Here is wishing the chief many happy returns.

  • They will be singing for Rauf

    Snooper has just received a zodiac message on the morning of Aregbesola’s re-election. It is not going to be a close call. There is a vision of school pupils of all hue dancing and singing for Rauf. In the muffled din of celebration, the lyrics are unforgettable. It goes like this.

    Our egg is better than your corn

    The yolk will save us from your yoke

    The albumen will become a timeless album of the mind

    Which will remind us of the wasted years of our fathers

    The growing infrastructure of our brains

    Will forever mock the shrinking structure of your stomach.

  • In this place full of all known oddities, life is brutish and short

    The question still remains why? Will somebody please tell us why these things are happening?

    These terrestrial plains are full of oddities enough. Take the countries of the world. Don’t we have countries so rich and contented they are even planning right now to create cities on extraterrestrial plains where some of their citizens may retire to periodically when their souls feel like taking a break? On the other hand, don’t we have countries so poor it is all they can do to even keep their governments running and their citizens fed on one square meal a day? Then, don’t we have countries so advanced in scientific discoveries they have practically invented everything including machines that work, think, eat, fight, and breathe for humans? In such societies, machines keep the roads orderly, maintain the transport, water, electricity, and all other systems, and generally keep a tab on public utilities. But then, we also have countries that are so steeped in ignorance and superstition that they still make human sacrifices. Just one more comparison before we leave this paragraph. Don’t we have countries so developed they know and protect every member of the society irrespective of race, party, colour or creed? And then don’t we have other countries so undeveloped they are practically at the point of asking you if you are of a certain religion or creed before selling you a box of matches? Well, don’t we?

    Now, let’s come to the oddities in our own Nigeria. One of the great oddities, among many others, that I am never tired of pointing out in Nigeria, is the religious hypocrisy that is so endemic and pandemic to us. All religions in Nigeria appear to recognize the cardinal rule that loving God and loving one’s neighbour summarise God’s laws, making them the two rules that matter most. Yet, here, in this land, we have enough religious oddities. One, we have our religious zealots who hold such noisy night vigils all night long, with drums and other music apparatuses blaring so much noises out of loud speakers placed outside the worship place so that the neighbours cannot sleep. The only thing those ones can do is mutter imprecations against all men of God into their pillows all night. Two, we have other religious zealots who blare their early morning call to prayers right into the ear drums of neighbours accompanied by loud music and sermons, depending on their pick. They never mind such little things as neighbours who may be sick and need some quiet, have been on night duty and need morning sleep, have babies that have been up all night, or have gone partying and have come home to sleep. Yep, we are all entitled to our oddities, but the point is that our religions are so busy loving we their neighbours that they keep us awake all night, muttering imprecations into our pillows.

    One oddity that is still difficult to understand though is the predilection for settling scores with bombs, particularly in the north. It is no longer any news that over this last week, bombs went off in Kaduna in such mad successions that had all our collective vertebrae baffled and reeling around in intemperate shock. No one is sure of the death toll but figures are said to be around a hundred, give or take. Naturally, as with all such bombings, the victims are all innocent of all the grievances that prompted and motivated such a grandiose and disproportionate destruction.

    What I find incomprehensible though is that when these bombings occur, everyone is shocked and we all scamper around trying to find reasons or some kind of solace in conjectures. Then, the country moves on, with nothing coming out of police investigations. Granted, there are those among us so intelligent that they can read the political terrain and tell what it all means despite what we see, or even foretell what may come next. There are however many like me who are of a more simple turn of mind who like to be told first the kind of leaves at the bottom of the tea cup before being given the interpretation of those leaves and why they are at the bottom of my teacup in the first place and not someone else’s. No one, so far, has been able to explain to us why we are daily losing hundreds of citizens to bombs indiscriminately discarded by aggrieved individuals. It is an egregious violation of our intelligence indeed that we are being slaughtered for a reason we don’t know. So, the question still remains why? Will somebody please tell us why these things are happening?

    Perhaps, I tell myself, some people are so angry with the government that they have resorted to bombing the government’s citizens, you know, as they do in football. If you cannot get the team, get the players by breaking their legs or something. Truth is, I don’t know any Nigerian now who is not angry with this government, but if we all went around bombing each other, where would we all be? The government is not paying me enough, gboam! The government is not giving enough electricity to the people, gboam! The government is not pumping water into my house, gboam! Now tell me, just how many gboams do you think we will need to make it hear us? One good example, just look at the way the government is handling the crisis in the health sector. I tell you, it deserves many gboams for that. Rather than tell people the truth and let everyone go home and build the country by doing the work they are paid for, the government decided to create a crisis for political reasons where none need have existed. Now, there is a crisis, and there is an impasse and everyone is watching how it will get itself out of that unsavory jam.

    Perhaps again, I tell myself, these bombers are truly being used and sponsored by faceless politicians to make faceless political points that have not been clearly enunciated. If that is so, all I can say is shame, thrice shame on them for using defenseless and innocent citizens to make such useless points! One, I assume these politicians are men; two, I assume they are old enough to fight their own fights. So, I believe it is not only cowardly, it is unmanly of them to fight through boys hardly out of their nappies to be able to fully appreciate the values of left and right thinking, and worse to use innocent people as fodders in their cannons. It is just so cowardly. Cowards!!!

    In all of this, we are all losing. Just imagine the sheer number of those who have been sent to the beyond since this crisis began, and multiply by three to include those who have been rendered economically incapable, then imagine the vast area of land that can no longer be farmed because of this problem, then imagine those who have become refugees outside their homes on this account, then you begin to appreciate the problem a bit. Right now, the loss in economic terms is huge. Yet, it does not include the great depletion of future human resources this problem is occasioning. We cannot now begin to calculate the incalculable harm this thing is doing to our future. When the time comes, let us pray that we do not pack our hands on top of our heads.

    Let the sponsors and users of this group of arsonists and bombers be made known so that we can dismember them, verbally. It is important that they should come out of hiding and face the nation to tell us why so many people’s lives have been made brutish and short through being killed, maimed, displaced, or psychologically tormented. As fellow Nigerians, we deserve an answer.

  • Nadine Gordimer, 1923-2014: white African, incandescent writer and revolutionary humanist

    Nadine Gordimer, 1923-2014: white African, incandescent writer and revolutionary humanist

    [A Tribute]

    Then I discovered the truth, which was that in Zambia I was regarded by black friends as a European stranger. It is only here (South Africa) that I can be what I am: a white African.
    Nadine Gordimer, in a BBC interview

    It is surely one of those great ironies of life that just as we were celebrating the 80th birthday anniversary of Wole Soyinka on our continent and the world was rejoicing with us, we would almost at the same time be mourning the death of Nadine Gordimer at the age of 90 and the whole world mourns with us. Like Soyinka, Gordimer was one of a kind. From very early in her life and career as a novelist and activist, she was completely on the side of justice, respect and dignity for all women and men, without any qualifications based on race, class, gender, nationality and ethnicity. To the very end, she stuck to this early intuition without ever wavering. And like Soyinka whose fight against injustice, abuse of human rights, corruption of political leaders and the terrible suffering of the majority of his fellow citizens was and is legendary, Gordimer was also an implacable foe of apartheid in her homeland who saw, with prophetic vision, that it was a doomed system.

    Her novels and short fiction are unmatched in their combination of radical or even revolutionary politics with extraordinarily well crafted, luminescent writing. Unlike J.M. Coetzee, her fellow South African Nobel Laureate, she wrote about real, everyday people and their struggles against, or witting or unwitting collusion with apartheid. As a matter of fact, she admitted that one of her most successful works of fiction, Burger’s Daughter, was partly based on the legendary Bram Fischer, the white lawyer that famously defended Nelson Mandela at his treason trial. This may be the explanation for the fact that during the apartheid era, many of her novels were banned and then unbanned and then banned again. She joined the ANC, significantly at the time when it was a banned organisation and became a lifelong friend of Nelson Mandela. She was quite easily one of the most prominent white members of the ANC. Characteristically, within the ANC both when it was a movement and when it became a governing party, Gordimer was a rallying point of criticism against and dissent from the party’s departures from many of its founding noble aims and ideals. She was very critical of Thabo Mbeki’s retrogressive ideas and policies about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and she has in particular been fiercely critical of the current President, Jacob Zuma.

    Personally, I was deeply drawn to and influenced by three of Gordimer’s novels, Burger’s Daughter, July’s People and The Late Bourgeois World which all explore both objective and subjective, subtle changes and transformations that revolutionaries and ordinary people experience in the struggle against apartheid. This pertained to both black and white protagonists but was more focused on whites who, in resolutely taking up the fight to end apartheid found that they both had to give up all their white privileges and, in effect, fight against their own people. In this respect, July’s People in particular, in my own opinion, is an extraordinarily powerful and enigmatic novel. Again in my own judgment, I think there is no book, fiction or non-fiction, as important as this book in exploring all the ramifications of what, historically, it means to be white and African, to be a white person who has not come to Africa to exploit it or is just passing through the continent as an exoticist or a flanneur. This observation brings me to the heart of this tribute which is based not only of my reading and teaching the works of Gordimer but also on my meetings with her.

    We met only twice. The first of these two meetings took place in 1992, two years before the formal end of apartheid and the inception of democratic majority rule in South Africa. A few years ago, I met her again at Harvard when she and other African, African American and Caribbean Nobel Laureates were honoured by Harvard’s Du Bois Institute in an unforgettable ceremony full of glitz but also of gravitas. Since she was in the midst of a great number of the Harvard and global intellectual and social glitterati during this second meeting, we hardly talked beyond exchanging greetings and a few pleasantries. Thus, it was the first meeting that left a lasting impression on me by confirming and solidifying all that I had expected Gordimer to be from reading her works.

    The meeting took place in Harare, Zimbabwe. Abiola Irele, Femi Osofisan, Kole Omotoso, Niyi Osundare and I had been invited as the Nigerian delegation to a UNESCO-sponsored conference that was meant to be an encounter between South African writers and intellectuals and their colleagues in other African countries to deliberate on what impact, what reconfigurations we could expect in African writing and thought with the end of apartheid. Thus, there were delegations from other African countries beside the Nigerian delegation. However, because at that time South Africa was embroiled in a terrible social and political turmoil, the South African delegation was very small, the smallest in fact from any country. But to my great satisfaction, Nadine Gordimer, who had the year before won the Nobel Literature Prize, was present.

    Simply stated, she was the most approachable world class writer I had ever met. And also a great conversationalist, completely frank in expressing her views and genuinely interested in whoever she was conversing with. It was a complete surprise and a revelation to me how very quickly and easily we fell into conversation about small and great things; about Nigeria and about South Africa; about African literature and writings from other parts of the world. When I told her which of her novels and stories I fairly regularly taught in my classes, she was very curious to know what my students made of each novel or short story. And she was very, very willing to discuss her own writings, something, by the way, that WS doesn’t much like to do. At some point during our conversation, I suddenly realised that Gordimer was actually saying things about her writings, about what to expect in a post-apartheid South Africa and about our world that other people, a much wider audience should hear or read. I then asked her if I could have a recorded interview with her the next day. Without the slightest hesitation she agreed – which further amazed me given the fact that we had just met and before the meeting she had never heard of me.

    We duly had the interview the next day and it was published in a special issue of the journal, Callaloo, the premier African Diaspora literary journal that publishes original creative works and critical studies of and by African and black writers worldwide. I mention this fact because in that published interview, the only important disagreement that I had with Gordimer arose from some comparative reflections that she made on the question of the uses and meanings of race among South Africans and black Americans. More precisely, the issue bears directly on an aspect of this tribute that is captured in two words in the title of this piece and is directly expressed in the epigraph to this article. The words are “white African”. Let me explain.

    Is there a difference between “non-racialism” and “multi-racialism”? In my published interview with her, both Gordimer and I agreed that there was indeed a difference between the two words and that that difference had everything to do with the pasts and futures of race respectively in South Africa and America. In the new constitution that was then being drafted for post-apartheid South Africa during that meeting with Gordimer in Harare in 1992, it was explicitly stated that the goal was to build a “non-racial” South Africa. In my comment on this, I pointed out to Gordimer that “non-racial” or “non-racialism” had been rejected in America by all those – black, white, Native American, Latino, Asian and others – struggling against historic racism and its contemporary legacies. This was because it was felt that non-racialism conceptually or definitionally denied the existence of race when so much in American society, economy and politics was still based on race and racism. For this reason, anti-racist Americans of all races and ethnicities preferred to talk of “multi-racialism” which, to them amounted to a frank recognition of the reality of race, of there being many races so that racial difference can be better understood as a way of coming to an embrace of the things that make all of us members of only one race – the human race.

    To her great credit, Gordimer in the interview conceded the validity of the argument about multi-racialism, only insisting that because the Boers had historically made use of the reality and existence of many races to keep South Africans apart and white-dominated, it would take a long time for South Africa to “evolve” to a concept of multi-racialism that could itself lead every South African to accepting and acting of the belief that we are all members of the same race. I cannot but think that Gordimer made this “concession” because this question was one that she personally and heroically had settled for herself decades ago, early in her career. She was white and she was African who belonged to the same single human race with all her fellow South Africans, black, white, brown, colored, Asian and others. In the long years and decades of the struggle against apartheid, there were many white South Africans who belonged to this illustrious group of proponents and activists of non-racialism, among them Bram Fischer, Joe Slovo, Ruth First and many others too numerous to name here. Nadine Gordimer was a towering presence within that group. She belonged first, proudly and responsibly, to our continent; from this, she took on some of the outstanding issues of our times and our common human community.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Trouble on the border

    Trouble on the border

    The rich hide behind their strong wall and are glad but the poor despise their habitation

     

    This article started out being about the refugee border crisis in America where thousands of Central Americans, many of them unaccompanied children, seeking haven from the violence and poverty of their homelands. Then came the tragic downing of Malaysian flight airlines MH17.

    The tragedy brings the world closer to a war wanted by few save the most powerful nation in the world, the puppet regime in Kiev and the Washington appendage that 10 Downing Street has become. For months, Washington’s strategy has been to keep the temperature high and maintain the pressure on Russia, hoping Putin would be goaded into war as the separatists in the East wilt under the mounting weigh of Kiev’s rejuvenated martial prowess.

    When Russia and the EU sculpted an extension of a cease-fire agreement weeks ago, the Kiev government refused the olive branch although the rebels acceded to the proposal. Kiev rebuffed peace because Washington did not want peace at the moment. Peace and maintenance of the status quo would benefit Putin since the eastern region of Ukraine is currently out of the effective writ of Kiev. This would be a boon to Putin and a defeat to America. Thus war had to continue.

    America and its NATO allies have funneled material and advisors to enhance the Kiev military as well as the irregular, neo-fascist militias in this battle against the eastern separatists. As a result, the Ukrainian military has increased shelling and aerial bombardment of civilian centres, killing dozens of people, including women and children. There are reports of Ukrainian aircraft striking Russian border towns, again in apparent attempt to stoke the Russian bear into a thoughtless reaction. If Russia can be instigated into directly invading Ukraine, then America will be able to marshal the entire weight of NATO and the West to isolate Russia with draconian sanctions, teaching Putin a lesson that might cost him his job, if not his very skin.

    These benighted transgressions by the Kiev regime are not published by the mainstream international press. Information about crimes by the Ukrainian government is suppressed or discounted as the regrettable fallout of war.

    Now, the rebels apparently have made a terrible mistake that plays right into the hands of the West. Putin had been walking a fine line that now has become a high-wire tightrope.

    Ukraine is the place of a civil war doubling as a proxy contest between America and Russia. America wants to advance NATO to Russia’s front door, then exploit that proximity as leverage to undermine or deter Putin from his increasingly independent, anti-American demeanor. Putin does not want war in Ukraine nor to annex the eastern regions. He wants to maintain Ukraine as a buffer zone providing strategic space between Russia and NATO’s eastern boundary.

    He helps the separatists in hopes of achieving this objective. However, he has been a study in patience and restraint by not taking steps that would cause him to transgress beyond this logical national objective.

    It appears the rebels downed the plane believing it was a Ukrainian military transport.  It was terrible and deadly mistake. Yet it is no darker than the work of Ukraine’s military purposefully targeting residential areas and civilians. It is no more wretched than American drones bombing wedding parties and funeral processions in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other nations. An awful thing has happened, but those making the most noise about the tragedy do so to shift our eyes from the blood on their hands.  The media abets this legerdemain.

    Mainstream media quickly concluded this was a missile fired by the rebels. They did not wait for confirmation. This conclusion fits their script thus they ran with it. Nowhere in the media did I hear any journalist ask whether this could have been done by the government-aligned fascist militias that have access to such weaponry as well. Why would the fascist militia do this? Seeing the tremendous Western reaction, the answer is apparent.

    This sounds far-fetched but it is not.  Remember the Sarin gas class levied against Bashar Assad in Syria.  America was ready to hurtle its arsenal at Assad for crossing the line President Obama had articulated against chemical weapons use. The precession to war was doused when parliament denied PM Cameron his request to join the belligerent escapade. Parliament did not take this step because it suddenly had become pacifist. It did however, have a pang of conscience. It seems British intelligence had quickly gained information that the Sarin used in the attack had not the same chemical fingerprint as that in Assad’s stockpiles.

    Despite the mountain of news reports naming Assad as the culprit, the gas came from elsewhere. The Syrian rebels and their clandestine sponsors unleashed the attack hoping to bring America into the war. Stripped of his British sidekick, President Obama grew cold feet about going it alone. He knew the evidence against Assad was inflated and uncertain. Thus, he pushed the decision to Congress and Congress also balked.

    Don’t forget the well-publicised charge several years ago levied against the Iranian intelligence agency for plotting to assassinate the British ambassador to the United States. The frenzied disclosure of this alleged plot precipitated howls of war among the American neo-conservative pining for war against Iran. Since then, nothing has been heard of this case because there was never anything to it.  This alleged plot was a contrivance to stir bellicose feelings against Iran in order to justify harsher sanctions or worse.

    The press has also made reference to the gruesome 1983 downing of a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union, claiming that incident was similar to the present one. How it is similar the press fails to mention for their job is not to inform but to plant the seeds of suspicion in our minds. As such, they also fail to mention how an American naval vessel downed an Iranian passenger flight in 1988. The Soviet mistake decades ago is cited to cast guilt on present-day Russia. The American mistake is not mentioned because they want you to believe America makes no mistakes and is never in the wrong. This is not news reporting it is an exercise in bending the public mind.

    In Ukraine, neither side is the precinct of angels. However, Devils are more than enough to go around. Both sides deserve to be condemned. However, the media would have us see things as a fight between good and bad. It is a charade to get you to believe that which is, in essence, unreasonable. Media coverage has been abhorrent to objectivity. When segments of Ukrainian society bucked against the duly-elected Yanukovych government that was aligned with Moscow, the media did not label those elements as “pro-American coupists.”  The media called them ‘freedom fighters and democrats.” But the rain that falls to the right is the same that falls which falls to the left.

    The rebels now do to the leaders of the current government what those leaders did to Yanukovych.  The media should deem them freedom fighters and democrats. Instead, they are negatively described as “pro-Russian” as if they have no mind or objectives of their own but are merely the witless, brutish pawns of the cruel genius of Moscow. The purpose of the global media is not to bare the truth but to conceal it behind cascades of misleading information and pejorative labels designed to rouse emotions yet add nothing to our understanding. The objective is to make Russia loom as a sinister machine in need of repair and a different main operator with a completely different global orientation.

    With this latest tragedy, the ante has increased in what already was a high-stakes game of wit and nerves. Filled with bile and bellicosity, American war hawks press for more overt military aid to the Ukrainian government and for increased sanctions against Russia, even though sanctions were just expanded the day before the incident. President Obama will mouth diplomacy but this will be an empty feign. He shares the hawk’s objective. NATO must be driven right to Russia’s front door and Putin must be taught a lesson so sharp that it deters future opposition to American foreign policy.

    Putin must now decide whether to stand his ground and weather the storm caused by the lethal mistake of his rebellious allies or retreat, leaving them to their own fate. Leaving them to their own fate would gain him temporary respite and perhaps avoidance of more sanctions harmful to his economy. But this would not guarantee his or Russia’s position in the long term. If he shows weakness now, the West will rush to aid the Kiev government in crushing the eastern rebels. A stinging defeat for Putin, this would be but the prelude to the expansion of NATO right to the edge of his western border.

    The American policy of isolating Russia from Europe would have gained an important salient, the price of which would be the nearly permanent escalation of tensions along that border. The terrible wall Russia once built in Berlin would have been resurrected on Russia’s own border against Russia’s will.  Although this new wall would be invisible its presence would be no less real and no less foreboding than the former.

    Given this likelihood, Putin has little choice but to maintain his level of support for the rebels. Their defeat is his defeat. If the West increases military support for Kiev, Putin must do the same for the rebels. No one will want to back down. Pride of power and bloodlust will reign. The internecine civil war will become more crimson, escalating in death and depravity much the same as the Syrian conflict except this time America suborns the government while Russia abets the insurgents.

    The ingredients have all been placed on the counter. Mix them as predicted, and the world will see the worst of war take hold of Ukraine. Not only will this pit broaden and broaden in the Ukraine, it will draw America and Russia into closer quarters at a time when their intimacy will be nothing if not confrontational. This scenario will drag the sluggish European economy, particularly as summer turns to autumn and autumn becomes the winter when Europe needs Russian gas supplies.

    Instead of the escalation that looms probable, the sides would do so much better if they genuinely honoured the victims of the tragedy by using the incident as a means to peace and political solution.

    First, a moratorium on further military activity needs to be established. The status quo on the ground should be observed. Second, peace talks should be organised to reconcile the Kiev government with the insurgents. While separation from Ukraine is not plausible, talks offer greater autonomy for the eastern region. A political solution is the only way this war can end without first being widened and made more devastating by the injection of martial support from the rival outside powers. This political solution must be underwritten and guaranteed by America and Russia. Third, once a truce is established, the international community must deploy a neutral peacekeeping force as a buffer between the two sides. Fourth, in the context of the political solution, the parties must seek international judicial assistance to investigate and allocate responsibility for the airline downing and for other war crimes that have taken place. Only within the context of an overall political solution can the tragedy of the airline be resolved. If this item is taken out of sequence, it will not bring justice but will ignite greater animosity and violence.

    If these steps are not taken, it will be because someone does not want peace. That party will bear moral responsibility for the deluge to come. (Last, one must wonder about the management of Malaysian Airlines.  After the mysterious disappearance of a previous aircraft, one would think the company would have turned into a paragon of caution. Yet, most likely to shave fuel costs, they flew the ill-fated vessel over a nation wrenched by civil war. It was a callous decision.)

    Next week, I will return to write in full about the American border crisis. Here, I just want to deposit a few thoughts. In other strife-torn areas around the world, America presses nations to accept refugees. This in consonant with international law. When the stream of desperate, brown-skinned people appear at its border, the American government behaves as it has no international obligations. No American politician, not one of them, has the courage to stand before the television camera and explain to the people that the nation has an international treaty obligation to protect bona-fide refugees.

    Instead, the sojourners are all called migrants. The word “refugee” is off-limits. Instead of understanding their legal obligations, the average White and Black American is kept ignorant and in the anger gestated by that ignorance, many protest against the refugees and come to hate them. Both political parties exploit the tragedy to their electoral ends.

    Thousands of people have surged from Central America to the U.S. border. Some are gang members and drug dealers who should be turned aside. Most have been unaccompanied minors, released by their parents for the dangerous trip to the border because life has grown too dangerous where they live and where too many like them have died too young. Three Central American nations are a lethal mix of gangs, drug wars, ruthless militaries/paramilitaries, and harsh governments. American foreign policy is almost as culpable for this cocktail as are the leaders in these nations. Honduras suffers the highest murder rate in the world, with El Salvador number four and Guatemala right behind it.  Danger in these nations is of the same league as in other nations formally at war.

    Many of the desert walkers now on the border are not idlers out for a perverse stroll. They flee for their very lives.  These are refugees in the truest sense.  To turn them away is to violate international and domestic law. It is also inhumane. Yet, this is being done because current American political leaders believe they and their nation live above the law. They have become a law unto themselves, and this arrogance begets a multitude of sins. More next week.

    08060340825 (sms only)

  • External loan to fight Boko Haram a hard sell

    External loan to fight Boko Haram a hard sell

    If proof is required to show how and why Nigeria has been misgoverned, last week’s request by President Goodluck Jonathan to the National Assembly to be allowed to borrow one billion dollars from external sources is indisputably the most convincing. Writing to the National Assembly, the president had reasoned: “You are no doubt (familiar) with the ongoing and serious security challenges which the nation is facing, as typified by the Boko Haram terrorist threat. This is an issue that we have discussed at various times. I would like to bring to your attention the urgent need to upgrade the equipment, training and logistics of our Armed Forces and Security Services to enable them more forcefully to confront this serious threat. For this reason, I seek the concurrence of the National Assembly for external borrowing of not more than $1bn, including government to government arrangements, for this upgrade.”

    Predictably, the request has stirred controversy. The government apparently banks on the fact that everyone will be so worried by the security situation in the Northeast and elsewhere that the country would be compelled, if not blackmailed, into granting quick and easy approval. In particular, the presidency hopes that no one in the National Assembly would like to be seen as standing in the way of equipping and motivating Nigerian troops in the anti-terror war. But if approval is secured as fast and as easy as the presidency hopes, it would be a mockery both of legislative processes and citizen involvement in governance. Both civil society and the parliament should press the government for full explanations on why the Jonathan government thinks the nearly one trillion naira it has budgeted for defence this year is inadequate, and why an estimated 10 percent only is allocated for capital spending.

    Importantly too, the government needs to provide adequate proof it has not been profligate with public funds. In my opinion that proof would be difficult to provide. For instance, rather than offer proof of prudence in the use of public funds by the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, especially as it relates to the chartering of aircraft for the use of its minister, the government has engaged in vexatious subterfuge. Then there is also the about $20bn the former Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, alleged had not been accounted for by the Jonathan government in the past few years. All the government has said through the Minister of Finance is that only about $10bn or $12bn is yet to be accounted for. Let the government find the missing money and take one billion dollars out of it for the purposes it is seeking authorisation.

    By every yardstick, the Boko Haram war cannot be compared with the Nigerian Civil War. While the current anti-terror war has lasted for about five years, it only assumed the dimension it has become in the last two or three years. Conversely, Nigeria’s finances were so well managed during the civil war that no penny was borrowed from outside the country. There is nothing to show that the Jonathan presidency has managed the finances of the country and run the military efficiently to guarantee that in borrowing more money we would not be throwing money at the problem. For instance, the government wants more troops, and has begun a recruitment exercise, yet it could spare troops to seize newspapers from vendors in parts of the country, while it also needlessly deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and other security forces to police election in only one small state, Ekiti.

    Reports from the Northeast do not indicate that the government has managed the Boko Haram war as efficiently as Nigerians have demanded. Giving the government more money other than for developmental needs would amount to an indefensible waste. In his justification for the loan request, the Coordinator of National Information Centre, Mike Omeri, offered this trite argument: “Even the United States goes for this kind of facility. For any country involved in such military expedition, not just the Boko Haram issue, but engaged in a number of military exercises, its stock will deplete. Every country must restock to reinforce its capability.” He also tried to link the request with the need to expedite action in rescuing the abducted Chibok girls. No one is convinced. The schoolgirls have spent more than three months in captivity because the government approached the problem wrongly and incompetently. The public should not be made to underwrite the government’s wastefulness and slothfulness.

    If the Jonathan government cannot explain where the $10bn missing money has gone, nor bring the wasteful Petroleum minister to account, nor give infallible proof it is capable of running the military efficiently, it should not be allowed to commit the country to more debt or be allowed to blackmail us with the rising spectre of insecurity. What the country needs is probably not more money, but more sense in managing its affairs and the many challenges confronting it. As the May 1970 lecture given by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the University of Ibadan shows inferentially, the quality of Nigerian ministers and public servants has declined horribly. Their arguments, appreciation of issues and understanding of the social contract are so elementary that it is not surprising the country is plunging into more mess by the day.

    The Awolowo lecture in reference showed how, without external borrowing, Nigeria financed the civil war. The late sage estimated that in terms of the ‘calculable and visible cost of the war’, about three hundred million pounds sterling was spent, and it was made up of two hundred and thirty million pounds sterling in local currency, and seventy million pounds sterling foreign exchange. In his opinion, the country shunned external borrowing in order to save ‘national honour and pride, and (avoid) corrosion of our sovereignty and self-confidence.’ The question today is, where is our national pride and self-confidence?

    It is not certain how the National Assembly will treat the Jonathan request for foreign loan to prosecute the Boko Haram war, but Nigerians must urge their lawmakers to ask Dr Jonathan to instead plug the leakages in the military itself and especially in the NNPC. Enough money has been declared missing or embezzled to finance more than five Boko Haram wars. At any rate, it must be remembered that when Nigeria financed its civil war without foreign loan, the size of its military concomitantly grew from less than 20,000 before the war to about 250,000 after the war. A proper audit of the current personnel strength and finances of the military may even show that it is unnecessary to engage in any recruitment exercise. If Dr Jonathan can’t run Nigeria, and can’t get the people who can do it to join him, and can’t muster the patriotism, vision, and determination to do what is right, he should step aside rather than seek to commit the country to fresh debt and insolvency.

    Boko Haram war is the creation of this generation; it must not pass the financing of it to future generations. One stupidity, if my readers will forgive this coinage, is enough for one generation.

  • Getting 2015 debate back on track

    Getting 2015 debate back on track

    If one week is a long time in politics, then one month is an absolute life time. In the space of 30 days the All Progressives Congress (APC) which has in the last few months positioned itself as a credible alternative to the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), has had some wind knocked out of its sails.

    In that time it lost Ekiti State in circumstances that can only be described as stunning and mystifying. It has had Adamawa State pinched from under its nose. But the fate that befell it in the latter has been one of the worst kept secrets in political circles. For ages the media has been reporting that at the right moment the PDP would move against ex-Governor Murtala Nyako.

    The ruling party’s goal of recovering the ground lost to APC following the ‘New-PDP’ rebellion has moved on to the next stage with the impeachment notice served on Nasarawa State Governor, Tanko Al-Makura. It is also said to have Imo, Osun and Rivers States in its sights. Whether these states will meekly surrender as happened in Adamawa remains to be seen.

    What is not in doubt is the fact that the ruling party members and some pundits would see the opposition reverses as a clear portent for PDP victory at the center in 2015. But that would be presumptuous, just as it would be foolish for the APC to start feeling sorry for itself. There is still so much to fight for going into the next general election. What we have witnessed so far are just skirmishes: there’s still the war to be won.

    What needs to change if the opposition is going to prevail is a redefinition of the terms of engagement. Several months ago I wrote in this column that the APC needs to quickly move beyond celebrating the number of ruling party deserters joining its ranks, to highlighting the abysmal record of the Goodluck Jonathan regime, as well as setting out the alternative it offers.

    Nigerian politicians are fickle. They will jump ship at the drop of a hat and not because of any deep principle. We have seen that play out with the shameless crisscrossing between the two camps by those who would offer as an excuse such inanities as: ‘Our people have always belonged to the ruling party.’

    It is not surprising that where no principle is involved, it has been very easy to reverse the direction of defections in favour of the ruling party. The opposition has cried out that its ranks were being depleted by a desperate government using mindboggling sums as inducement. But did they expect a regime that has shown itself willing to use all means necessary to achieve its ends to play fair?

    Those presently locked in a power struggle with the administration make several mistakes. First, they underrate Jonathan. He has shown that he’s no longer the timid, tentative player of the early years of his presidency; he is a wily operator who can play the power game with the masters.

    Secondly, people underestimate the crowd that has the president’s ear. They fail to understand that the level of desperation we see in the abuse of the instruments of state is driven not just by Jonathan’s second term ambition, but also by the fact that those who are relevant today are in no hurry to become irrelevant if they allow the opposition seize power. Such people would do things Jonathan would not even dream of – in the president’s name.

    Thirdly, what looks like a bastion from which an opposition onslaught to unseat the government can be launched – the North – is just an illusion. If you thought the North was split in 2011, now it is virtually fragmented.

    The likes of former minister and Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Prof. Ango Abdullahi, may rage all they like and declare with ‘certainty’ that the region is taking back power, the reality is its elite are so divided that coherent regional action is virtually impossible.

    Never before has the ‘One North’ myth been laid bare than in today’s Nigeria. The Boko Haram insurgency, with its diabolical efforts to set Muslim against Christian, has driven a sharp knife through communal bonds that used to unite the people. Anyone who thinks that the death of thousands felled by the insurgents in minority areas of the region, would not affect the political picture is naïve. It is the very reason the ruling party is making the outlandish claim that the insurgency is a creation of the opposition.

    The disarray in the region is made worse by the typical nature of the political elite to be found anywhere in Nigeria. No one can come out to say there’s a consensus for power to return to the North in 2014. For every Ango Abdullahi who insists that it must be so, there are scores of others who are willing to live with another four years of Jonathan if that will clear the way for their own presidential bids in 2019. In the meantime, they will remain relevant. Acquiescing to an opposition takeover, however, would be tantamount to committing political suicide.

    So on the face of it the decks appear stacked in favour of the incumbent. But as we have seen in the Ekiti election this year and in the past, incumbency can be a vastly overrated factor in determining which way a Nigerian election would swing. Dr. Kayode Fayemi lost to Ayo Fayose, but we must not forget also that Fayemi as challenger also toppled the then PDP governor, Segun Oni.

    Some would say that a state governor’s incumbency advantages are greatly vitiated by the desperation of federal forces who manipulated the polls using cash and soldiers. But it should also be pointed out that Nigeria doesn’t have enough soldiers to intimidate every voter when the nation would be voting as one in 2015.

    So what can the opposition do if it really wants change? It must quickly change the narrative. APC is not going to prevail in a slanging match. That suits the PDP perfectly because it takes away the focus from Jonathan’s Achilles Heel which is his record.

    That is why rather than discussing its record, the ruling party has been more concerned with painting the opposition in terms which strike a chord with our most primordial instincts. That is why APC is being defined as an anti-Christian, pro-Muslim and therefore pro-insurgency party.

    It was no help that the party in its drive to strengthen its ranks opened up to all and sundry – something that is unavoidable for a public institution like a political party. One of those ensnared in that recruitment drive was former Borno State Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, under whose tenure Boko Haram really took off as a malevolent organization.

    The PDP used his membership of APC to telling effect as it tried to tie the opposition to the insurgency. Now that he has defected to the ruling party can we then conclude that PDP is for Boko Haram?

    Those in APC who blithely dismiss the PDP charges as silly and worthy of being ignored would be shocked at how the undiscerning are lapping them up and accepting them as gospel truth.

    Jonathan will not be dislodged just because someone says power must return to the North. There is no consensus around that idea. Add to that the fact that the Boko Haram insurgency has so polarised the nation along ethnic, regional and religious lines that any bid for power that is driven by what is perceived as some sectional agenda will founder in today’s environment.

    The only way change will come in 2015 is by focusing like a laser on Jonathan’s record. In 2011 he swept into office on a crest of sentiment – the self-effacing politician with humble beginnings. He was a breath of ‘fresh air’ with a story that tugged at our heart strings.

    Four years later a chunk of the country has become a war front, millions are unemployed, the economy is prostate, personal freedoms are being rolled back in an unprecedented manner, democracy is being given a black eye as the military stages a comeback into our everyday life, and Obasanjo-era impeachments have become the order of the day.

    Do you reward a man for this kind of demolition job? In any other country on this earth such a record will topple any incumbent.

    Whether at state or federal level we must ensure that the next elections are determined by the records of the incumbents. Let us not be duped by the sleight of hands by political con artists, nor should we be impressed by stage-managed impeachments which may yet be upturned in the courts of law.

  • Of the nobel laureate and the emerging emperor

    Of the nobel laureate and the emerging emperor

    From Adamawa to Nasarawa, from Edo to Rivers, and presumably to many other destinations yet unknown, President Jonathan’s paid agents are on the loose

    “Amid the swirling mess in Berlin of political intrigue, rumours, and disorder, the SA, the Nazi storm troopers, stood out as an ominous presence. In the spring of 1932, many in the German democratic government came to believe the Brown shirts were about to take over by force’.

    The last time I saw Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, up close, was when he visited with his young protégé, the Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, at Ado-Ekiti sometime in 2011, shortly before the general elections of that year. Naturally in tow, were his younger friends – Drs Yemi Ogunbiyi and Olu Agunloye. As we sat at breakfast that morning ra-con-teur-ing over a wide canvass, a lot was going through my mind. Suppose the Nigerian  military buccaneers had seen the last of this gem of a man;  suppose he had not survived his many incarcerations, suppose Abacha had been able to feed his flesh to marine creatures or just suppose that goggled butcher  had succeeded in making ‘Beokuta, in  faraway West Indies, his resting place as he once conjectured. Suppose, suppose, suppose. My reverie was interrupted when his son showed up with dad’s coffee which has to be ‘cooked’ in a special way and I just wondered which of his wine or coffee he liked better the way he relished and doted on it.

    At 80, Professor Wole Soyinka, a world citizen in his own right, can be said to have seen the world, if you will pardon the tautology.  He is every mother’s child, the type a father goes on his knees everyday praying to sire. He could also, with ample justification, be said to have impacted life to the limit though the way Nigeria is going, with the president eagerly being made into something of a rambunctious  emperor, we may still, and very soon too, see the Laureate again at the barricades.  In the hope that good sense will prevail and the president will himself see the rocky road selfish politicians after their own ‘stomach infrastructure’ are egregiously dragging him, and beat a retreat for the sake of Nigeria, here is wishing the Lion a happy birthday and many happy returns.

    No two historical epochs are exactly the same but events in our country in recent times have sent me hurrying back to my history books to familiarise myself again with the history of Germany, especially between the years 1932 -34; a period which saw a former Austrian Corporal become the Führer of Germany, with dire consequences for Germany and the entire world.  When at a church service in September, 2011 President Goodluck Jonathan told Nigerians he was neither a Pharaoh nor a General, little did we know that the pious product of the ‘doctrine of necessity,’ for whom democracy activists lined the barricades when he was being severally upended, would one day mutate to worse, to become like the proverbial bull in a china shop.  And to imagine that Nigerians are only just beginning to see the very genesis of a metamorphosis that has the distinct possibility of atomising this country beyond recognition!

    From Adamawa to Nasarawa, from Edo to Rivers,  and  presumably to  many other destinations yet unknown, President Jonathan’s paid  agents  are  on the loose, feverishly  impeaching state governors, dismantling  settled  state structures, misusing sensitive  agencies of state like the military and the entire security apparati,  all in  the attempt to whip everybody into line ahead of the 2015 presidential elections.  October 1931 marked the beginning of the political intrigues that would destroy the young German republic leading to the emergence of the Führer. In circumstances which so uncannily mirror today’s Nigeria of Boko Haram,  of several presidential infractions, among them deliberate,  state-sponsored  disruption of  other tiers of  government,  murder and violence as we saw in Nasarawa this past week, Germany  soon erupted into  a scale of lawlessness never before experienced. Roaming groups of Nazi Brownshirts walked the streets singing Nazi songs and looking for fights. “Blut muss fliessen, ‘Blut muss fliessen! Blut muss fliessen “Knuppelhageldick! Haut’se doch zusammen, haut’se doch zusammen! Diese gotverdammte Juden Republik!”, they sang, meaning: “Blood must flow, blood must flow! Blood must flow as cudgel thick as hail! Let’s smash it up, let’s smash it up! That goddamned Jewish republic!” That was the circumstances that led to the event which came to be known as the ‘Bloody Sunday’ which resulted in the death of 19 and about 300 wounded. Today in Nigeria, the military is involved in all manner of things  which bear no relevance  to securing the territorial integrity of the country: closing down airports, swarming  and putting under siege states where elections are being held thus  diverting soldiers from the ferocious  terrorist  war in the Northeastern corner of the country where over 200 young Nigerian girls are in captivity,  and putting a major Lagos road to rout because of an unfortunate fatal accident, smashing cars and causing more fatalities. Not even in the dark days of General Abacha were soldiers brought into such odious duties  that has made the  Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) to cry out warning President  Jonathan  against using the security establishment to persecute Nigerians; a situation  which it says has the capacity to completely demystify the military. It was good news, however, seeing the Chief of Army Staff this past week deprecating indiscipline in the military which this also constitutes. Nigerians can only hope it won’t happen again although it will be very much unlike this government not to go back on its word.

    As Vice President  Sambo predicted, elections have since become war as we saw in Ekiti even  before the election day and despite the pillory  and citizen’s overwhelming disapproval of such extreme militarisation,  everything  points to  Osun State being put under no less a suffocating siege on 9 August. It should therefore be expected that, as in Ekiti, these men, paid from the public treasury, will again be used to arrest and incapacitate APC chieftains. And this by an insecure government that claims its party is the choice of the people!  Apparently unknown to President Jonathan, the Nigerian army, as well as the entire government, will continue to lose respect both here at home and abroad as we recently saw in its complete put down by the United States.  Nigerians can only hope that this eager, and unnecessary involvement of the army in matters that should not in any way concern it will not lead to elements within it getting other ideas because Nigerians will, to the last man, reject any military misadventure.

    It is gratifying to note that at a time when elders, especially former Heads of State have become so tongue tied  they cannot utter a word of caution against PDP’s continuing  endangerment of the polity,  the Catholic Bishop of Abuja, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, has again cried out asking  the Goodluck Jonathan administration to be tolerant of opposition. Said the Bishop: ‘the politicisation of Boko Haram, in which the government in power sees anybody who disagrees with it as a Boko Haramist’ (as it has done futilely concerning the APC) ‘is very serious and dangerous’.  Indeed, with Modu Sheriff who has severally been invited by security agents on matters relating to Boko Haram now firmly settled in the PDP, it will be interesting to hear its loquacious Publicity Secretary’s new slant concerning APC and Boko Haram. After all, Sheriff was considered that important that the president had to order the re opening of the Borno airport for him even if it was denied to intending pilgrims who had to undergo what the NSCIA described as a ‘tortuous and agonising journey by road to Kano on top of their being subjected to physical and psychological grilling by security agents.’

    If President Jonathan, in his second coming, does not intend to rule over a conquered territory  of a supine and contrite people, if he does not intend to transmogrify into His Imperial Majesty of an unknown, endless tenure, if he sincerely craves a country where not only he, his wife Patience and members of his ubiquitous demolition teams will be able to freely express themselves, then he certainly must soft pedal, climb down  from his high horse and allow his campaign to spread and showcase what he considers the good works of his transformation agenda to Nigerians because, without a doubt, he will have to run on his record, and not on how far he can mollify us. We pray good counsel prevails.