The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Jonathan’s confab and the paradox of petroleum

    Jonathan’s confab and the paradox of petroleum

    Nobody told the president that Nigeria’s challenge is not its diversity but petroleum in the womb of some parts of the country

    Pablo Picasso’s maxim: “Every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima” applies in an unmistakable way to Nigeria’s petroleum. There is no other object or action that explains Nigeria’s swing from unity to division than the existence of petroleum in the country put together about 72 years before the first exploitation of the black gold in the country. And nowhere is this pendulum more visible than in the design and implementation of President Jonathan’s idea of a national conference to cap the end of his first tenure as substantive president.

    Jonathan’s political opponents and some of his genuine political supporters said that a national conference was the wrong thing to convene towards the end of his tenure, whether he plans to renew his tenure or not. In the style of Cassandra, opposition parties called the conference a waste of resources and time and a diversionary move to tilt the citizens’ political gaze away from the crucial issues at hand. Apart from general condemnation of the conference, none of Jonathan’s opponents paid attention to specific aspects of the country’s experience that were likely to bring the national conference to a laughable end.

    Nobody warned Jonathan and his supporters about one product that simultaneously has the capacity to pull together and push apart the diverse groupings in Nigeria. Nothing in the narratives of caution regarding the conference referred to the one product that stands for blessing at the same time that it represents a curse for the nation. Nobody warned Jonathan and his advisers about a national conference to re-launch Nigeria about the country’s peculiar status as a country that has, since the civil war, been organised to see petroleum as the country’s life support. Nobody told the president that Nigeria’s challenge is not its diversity but petroleum in the womb of some parts of the country that has the power to seize the minds of most of its leaders.

    Delegates at the Jonathan conference were able to deliberate enthusiastically and come to conclusions when they considered peripheral issues: national anthem, immunity clause, local-governments in relation to the states that house them, creation of states, etc. But when the matter that touched the soul of Nigeria: revenue allocation came up, the delegates went into the mode of mfecane, the scattering of the tribes. All the regions (apart from some delegates in the Southwest shooting for regionalism or nothing) saw its survival as interminably tied to revenue from petroleum resources and descended into verbal war that compelled the conference to shut down, in order to avoid giving the impression of ending in a fiasco and thus proving opponents of the conference right and supporters wrong.

    It is too soon to classify the conference’s failure as total or partial. The final draft report scheduled for ratification on the fourth of August is likely to provide ample opportunities for public affairs commentators to grade the failure or success of the conference as a whole. It is instructive that the final decision of the conference to take the following matters beyond the ken of the 50 wise men is similar to what their counterparts in the Obasanjo conference of 2005 did. Justice Kutigi says in his final submission: Having critically examined the issues in contention, Conference recognises the need to a) review the percentage of revenue allocation to states producing oil and other resources; b) reconstruct and rehabilitate areas affected by insurgency and internal conflict; c) diversify the Nigerian economy by first tracking the development of the solid minerals sectors….Taking decisions on these matters require some technical details and consideration….The federal government should set up a technical committee to determine the appropriate percentage on the three issues and advise government appropriately.” Similarly, the National Political Reform Conference of Obasanjo ended on the recommendation to the federal government to establish an Expert Commission to make detailed and final positions on revenue allocation, after the conference was unable to take any firm position on the recommendation of 17% allocation to petroleum producing communities.

    Commentators have started to react to the decision to push the matter of revenue allocation to the same federal government that assembled some of the country’s most powerful men and women to serve as conference delegates. Although some of the delegates were in various ways part of the governments that eroded the revenue allocation upon which the country went into an independent federation, many of the delegates did not have such baggage. Some of the delegates were even leading figures in the anti-military and pro-democracy movements that catalysed the two post-military governments that had convened national conference since 1999. It is also uncharitable to conclude that most delegates selected by the president’s men went to the conference for the handsome allowances.

    A more fruitful way to enrich the country’s constitutional discourse is to stop paying a lot of attention to effects or symptoms of the country’s problems at the expense of the causes of such challenges. It is those who were over sanguine about the conference at the beginning that would feel disappointed by the failure of the conference to deal with the issue of a just and fair revenue allocation to states that are homes to exploitation of non-renewable resources, the exploitation of which destroys the eco-system of such communities and the livelihood of their population. It is also necessary to recognise that the president’s selection of delegates has left no room for them to consult with their communities. The president’s decision to handpick delegates must have left citizens out of the debate and deliberations on the conference floor.

    In addition, significant constraints were put in the way of the delegates. First, they were told to take the unity of the country as a given. If writing a constitution is finding ways to negotiate how to create or sustain a country that citizens believe would bring peace and a sense of belonging to all citizens, it is wrong for the conference to have been be told to refrain from debating the indivisibility or indissolubility of the country, regardless of the relevance of outcomes of deliberations at the conference. Delegates should have been elected by their communities and be given the chance to determine on the basis of feelings of representatives (if they were representatives) of federating units what is likely to make the country indivisible.  Second, the conference was asked to base any decision on consensus, barring which they must have 75% of the delegates to approve any decision. This was later negotiated down to 70% of votes, still very difficult to attain in most democracies of the world. Third, delegates were given an encyclopediclist of items—relevant and irrelevant—to establishing basic rules for a country. There were more questions about statecraft than about identifying rules and forms of government capable of sustaining a multiethnic federation. Fourth, the recommendations of the conference were designed to be made without enabling legislation to empower citizens to have any input in the process through a referendum.

    Furthermore, delegates did not have the kind of relationship capable of enabling citizens to know how much citizens believe petroleum defines the country’s presence and future. Most of the delegates, especially the 50 wise ones had gotten used to the belief that the country’s life force is the petroleum in the Niger Delta. Some believe that if Nigeria remains in its present form of collecting royalty from petroleum and doling some of the proceeds to states, territorial unity of the country would have been assured.  Others also feel that funds from the country’s largest revenue earner should be allocated to their sections to solve all problems, if peace is to be ensured.

    As pessimistic as it may sound, Nigeria is not likely to experience proper federalism until its leaders from the various communities are able to say No to social welfare funds oozing from the womb of the Niger Delta region.Moreover, because delegates were not elected, they did not have the benefit of knowing the kind of Nigeria that citizens want.With a referendum, people from various communities would be in the best of positions to determine the indivisibility of Nigeria without any prodding from those benefiting from Nigeria as it is presently constituted.

  • The principled satirist

    The principled satirist

    Ace journalism teacher, writer Olatunji Dare turns 70

    Unlike some of my colleagues who were taught formally by Prof. Olatunji Dare, I was not. But I had the privilege of benefitting from his wealth of knowledge somewhat fortuitously. The important thing though is that I (as his ‘unknown distant learning student’), and those who were taught by him in the classroom, have benefitted immensely from whatever we have learnt from him. And, as I used to tell another colleague, it is immaterial whether one is selling apples or oranges; what is important is that the two sellers are smiling to the bank! So, it is immaterial whether I was taught formally by Prof. Dare or whether I did it as an ‘unknown distant learning student’. I keep referring to myself as an ‘unknown distant learning student’ of Prof Dare because, unlike Jesus Christ who knew when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of his garment, Prof Dare did not know to what purpose I had put a beautiful piece he wrote in The Guardian condemning Decree 4 of 1984 promulgated by the draconian Buhari/Idiagbon regime.

    It was at an interview I attended when looking for job after my National Youth Service in 1985. About 44 of us were invited for the interview at The Punch, to fill four vacant slots. It was a marathon interview which lasted from about 10.a.m. till about past five in the evening. The written test was in two parts: newspaper production, and an essay/feature article. Right from my university days, I had always avoided the production aspect of print journalism, so I knew I must have had an average performance if that had been the only area of journalism that we were tested on. Of course an average performance could not have been of much use in a situation where about 44 graduates from various universities were contesting to fill four vacant positions. Obviously then, my saving grace was the essay I wrote on Decree 4.

    A few days to the interview, I had been trying my hands on everything I imagined could be asked at the occasion. Then it occurred to me that I needed to read up something on Decree 4 and Dr. Dare’s piece came handy. I digested it. It was divine direction as it ended up being part of what we were examined on during the interview. By the time I was through with the question, I was cocksure that if ‘performance infrastructure’ was the only criterion for selection, I had already made it.

    But in Nigeria, we all know this is not always so. You can imagine my fears and the fears of many of us who did not know anybody of substance at the company then, when we saw some of our colleagues entering the offices of the ‘big people’ there, some emerging with bottles of water, others with soft drinks. We almost concluded that the interview was a facade and that they already knew the people they were going to take. Anyway, we later found out that we were wrong by the time the result started coming out, same day. People were weeded out in batches of 10 and somehow, some of those we had thought were ‘well connected’ could not make it to the third round. Our hearts skipped a beat whenever the person announcing the result came into the office where we were awaiting our result. That was the way it went until about 14 of us were left. This was the most dreaded stage of the interview. Eventually, by the time they came to weed out the last batch, only four of us were left and I cannot remember if any of us knew anybody at the company then. Somehow, all of us were from the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos.

    Perhaps a major lesson for jobseekers here is that they need not lose hope simply on account of what they see around them during interviews. For me however, Prof Dare’s piece on Decree Four gave me the edge that I needed in that interview as I gave it back to the examiners almost in the elegant manner it was presented by Dr Dare. I itemised the points just as he did, i.e. that the decree was draconian; it was discriminatory (obviously for the private media as no government medium could dare to run afoul of it, etc.), and argued the points very well, thus giving me that needed added advantage.

    My close friends knew how happy I was because securing employment at The Punch then was an ambition realised. Up till the time I did my youth service, I had craved working only with The Punch and Newswatch magazine; I mean the original Newswatch of the Dele Giwa fame.  That should be expected, given the fire of the fresh-from-school radicalism that was burning in me. It was the paper’s radical approach to issues that kept me in the company for about 12 years, despite the fact that one had all it takes to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Don’t forget, that was a time the company could not pay salaries regularly.

    My patience paid off. And that was why I celebrated Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, the former chairman of Punch Nigeria Ltd. last week, and I am doing same for Prof Dare today. If we cannot celebrate such people who have contributed immensely to human and economic development, then we should have no business celebrating politicians who only compound our economic adversity. On a personal note, I can only imagine what would have been my lot if I did not rise to the position of editor of  the paper’s daily before leaving the company in 1997. Given my post-Punch experience, one might have ended up as a footnote in the long list of veteran journalists, in a profession that one governor described as having ‘no second-hand value’.

    Anyway, back to Prof Dare. I guess I must have met him for the first time at a function organised by the Lagos State Council  of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), sometime in the ‘90s. I can’t remember the details of what the programme was all about, but it was from Dr Dare at the event that I first heard the expression, the “social cost of  SAP’,  (Structural Adjustment Programme)  introduced by the Babangida regime. Dare was then Chairman, Editorial Board of The Guardian. I do not know what exactly happened, but I remember that he left the venue in the car of a comrade friend.

    Apart from being a journalism teacher, and a good one at that, Prof Dare is more renowned as a satirist. I have tried my hands on satire a couple of times and have always felt so happy when people like him commend my efforts. However, like the hunchback who does not know the enormity of what people who stand straight do until he tries to do same, it is not easy to be satirical, especially in this country. It is also a thankless job because many people don’t understand it. Some people sometimes rain curses on me. But such people give me both sadness and joy at the same time. Joy because they feel so strongly about what you also feel strongly about but which you have expressed differently; and sadness because their misplaced aggression is a reflection of the state of education in the country.

    Born on July 17, 1944, Prof Dare, a first class material of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, is extremely principled. It was on this matter of principle that he left The Guardian when the management decided to go and beg Gen Sani Abacha to reopen the newspaper following its proscription by the Abacha junta, alongside some other strong newspapers in the ‘90s. THe same demand, I remember quite vividly, was made of us at The Punch then and we also refused to go and beg. As far as we were concerned  then, it should have been the other way round. Rather than join the ‘we are sorry train’, Dare simply turned in his letter of resignation. Apparently, principle flows in their veins in the family.

    Prof Dare’s nephew, Colonel Abayomi Dare (rtd), who was my classmate and good friend at Crowther Memorial College, Lokoja, where we did our school certificate examination had been known as a principled young man since those days. It was on that same pedestal that he took the Nigerian Army to court after his premature exit from the army a few years ago. He eventually won the case. Yomi and I met again for the first time in a long time at Prof Dare’s birthday lecture where he told some of my colleagues that both of us “used to do some funny things together” in those days. But for our long-standing friendship, I would have sued him because in our kind of society where we have too many people with dirty minds, they could interpret those ‘funny things’ to mean something else, which may make me lose self-esteem in the eyes of right-thinking members of the society!

    Be that as it may, the fact that Prof Dare is never led by ‘toys’ (material attractions) has greatly helped his cause concerning principle. His other armour in this regard is his abiding covenant with simplicity.  These are twin commandments for people who want to stand for something.

    It is only a man like Prof Dare that could have attracted the kind of quality crowd that graced the public lecture and presentation of a book to mark his 70th birthday at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, on July 17. Prof Kwame Karikari of the University of Ghana, Legon, was the guest speaker. With General Theophilus Danjuma as chairman, other dignitaries included Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State; four other governors – Edo, Lagos, Ogun and Osun were well represented. It was an occasion attended by many media executives, students and people from all strata of the society.

    Life begins at 70! Happy birthday, sir!

  • Structural contingency and human agency

    Structural contingency and human agency

    As Justice Kutigi’s gavel brought the Jonathan constitutional conference to an abrupt conclusion, little would the eminent and distinguished jurist realise that there is a greater array of forces at play in this matter than the motley assemblage he had just dispersed. There is a touch of historical irony about all this in the sense that in the heat of human contention, a historical actor cannot see himself the way history sees him.

    An otherwise decent and fair-minded jurist, Kutigi was called upon to play the role of a political titan in order to midwife a new order for Nigeria against the run of play and the play of structural contingency. It was a role for which he was signally and historically ill-equipped. But he has wisely refused to play the political messiah, choosing to play along with avuncular relish.

    The witty Nupe man knows one or two things about bucolic wisdom. Those who are going to sell a tiger and those who are hoping to buy it must negotiate from a safe distance. Kutigi has truly and thoroughly enjoyed himself, passing the ball and the bait back to where it belongs. When the history of stumbling nations is written, it shall be said that the famed jurist and his colleagues played their part.

    The cost to the nation may be astronomical and prohibitive, but it is small beer compared to other fruitless chicaneries that have held the nation spellbound in the past. The Babangida Transition programme gulped a whole forty billion naira before it dissolved in a historic fiasco. The Obasanjo  Political Dialogue was equally prohibitive and given the underhand bribery and cajolery that characterized that exercise, nobody is ever going to know the cost. And it is morning yet on creation day.

    The Jonathan Constitutional Conference has ended as a damp squib, unable to touch the major structural disfigurations that afflict and hobble the nation. The major fault lines of the nation have surfaced once again in hideous relief. As this column has repeatedly predicted, nothing will come out of nothing. The conference was nothing but a diversionary ploy conceived as a crude weapon of consensus forgery but ending as a great charade.

    The confreres need to ask themselves why the nation is still roiling in monumental crisis with the ongoing armed critique of the state and nation by the Boko Haram insurgents assuming a national complexion, with electoral abracadabra in the air in Osun State and with a gale of impeachments turning many state assemblies into  a theatre of warfare. Surely, it takes more than additional state creations to address the issues.

    As this column has noted, Jonathan, before the conference, had two major political jokers in his possession. He could have used the conference to engineer a historic stalemate and chaos which would eventuate in a state of emergency warranting the continuation of his tenure. But judging from the way and manner the northern delegates steamrolled his core constituencies and their nominal allies forcing them into precipitate retreat each time they tried to advance, it should be obvious to the president that he has formidable adversaries who are past masters of attrition.

    Yet there is a paradoxical complicity of opposing forces in all this which speaks volumes for the impossible contradictions that beset Nigeria. While the old north wants the old structural status quo to continue, irrespective of the damage to the political fabric of the nation, the Niger Delta emergent hegemonists want the new political status quo to continue irrespective of the monumental costs of presidential incompetence to the nation. Since this is not about genuinely moving the nation forward but about maintaining privileges and advantages, there can be no meeting of mind.

    With their eye on the main centre as an avenue for primitive accumulation and an excellent weapon for launching punitive expeditions against the rest of the nation, neither Jonathan and his cohorts nor the northern power Mafiosi are interested in a radical restructuring of the nation which will lead to new fiscal equations. The major problem between the two factions is who gets what and when.

    While the northern power merchants insist that the north has been shut out of the power loop for too long and that Jonathan should leave very soon or at most at the next election, Jonathan’s supporters are insisting that he must stay put irrespective of actual performance in office because the north had in the past held on to power for too long.

    With nothing to play for, the usually visionary and proactive Yoruba traditional powerbrokers have been reduced to political contractors and wizards of the Australian season of political pools betting. These things cannot be settled at a conference. They can only be resolved by elite pacting or an outright showdown which can only encourage extra-constitutional forces always waiting in the wings.

    This is why one must feel very sorry for the few patriots who went to the conference thinking that it was a genuine call for the structural re-engineering of the nation. They have failed to factor in the role of structural contingency in human agency. Some changes are simply impossible in certain circumstances.

    Now that the conference has come and gone without making a dent on Nigeria’s numerous ailments, Jonathan has only one major joker left, which is the electoral subjugation of the nation by hook or crook without minding whose ox is gored. Even before the conference terminated in an abrupt and undignified manner, this strategy appears to have been operationalised and is already gathering fearful momentum.

    Anyone in doubt about the arrival of Jonathan’s juggernaut only have to reflect on the events of the last few weeks: the complete militarization of the election in Ekiti State in a way that suggests that the people behind this heist harbour no illusion about justice and fair play; the electoral larceny being cooked up in Osun; and, of course, the gale of impeachments which seeks to alter the political equation in states considered unfriendly or even hostile to Jonathan.

    Such has been the psychotic daring behind these political offensives and their sheer disregard for the cultural and political sensitivities of the nation that one cannot but conclude that Jonathan is determined to be the last president of Nigeria as we know it. Given the ongoing political rebellion in the north of the country and the growing economic distemper in the land, any other violent uprising of a cultural or ethnic nature may tip the country in the wrong direction.

    Jonathan may yet get his wish in any of the areas where the government is currently fishing for trouble. Nasarawa is already astir. Al-Makura is not a”Baba Mangoro” who is completely disconnected from the populace. Given the active cultural volcano in the state which simmering just below the surface and the capacity of the Ombaatse cult for maximum mayhem, one would have thought that Jonathan and his handlers would be more discerning in their choice of confrontation.

    This must now bring us to the central thesis of this intervention which is the play of forces between human agency and structural contingency. Perhaps in the end, nothing can beat this column’s description of Jonathan as a boy-emperor handed a toy rigged with explosives. Given Jonathan’s baffling lack of elementary state wisdom and his serial breach of the complex cultural sensitivities and contending political realities of the nation, one must marvel at the ironic mockery of national fate and the convergence between human agency and structural contingency which have made a Jonathan presidency an inevitability at this critical and very crucial period in Nigeria’s history.

    To perform this conceptual shifting of gears is to leave Jonathan momentarily out of the equation and see whether we can come up with some startling insights about the state of the Nigerian state.  Structural contingency is the constellation of social, political and historical forces at any point in the life of any political society.  Human agency is the capacity of humanity to determine their destiny through both collective and individual exertion.

    It is obvious from this that nobody can act in a vacuum. As it has been famously observed by Karl Marx, men make history but not under the circumstances of their choice. In other words, human agency is conditioned and in the last instance determined by structural contingency. It is only in extreme cases of extraordinary collective heroism that certain societies manage to transcend the material basis of existence to leapfrog into a new dawn.

    If we pursue this line of thought, we may come to the startling conclusion about the grim and chilling inevitability of a Jonathan presidency at this particular point in our history which is a judicious reflection of the balance of force between agency and structural contingency. Of course, it can be argued that Jonathan had been imposed on the nation by General Obasanjo. But that is only to confirm that we were powerless in resisting the imposition in the first instance.

    Going further back, it can also be said that even Obasanjo himself is a product of our powerlessness, having been imposed on the nation by a political mafia of northern generals to watch their back and protect their interests. By this arrangement, the electors choose the winning candidate while the electorate rubberstamp the decision in “elections”.

    The only time in history when the Nigerian multitude tried to act as both electors and electorate it ended in a historic melee with the electors stepping in to vaporize and abolish both the electorate and the putative winner. That was the June 12 1993 presidential election which threw up Abiola as winner and eventual martyr of the Nigerian military state.

    The beauty of it all is that there seems to be some logic in sheer illogicality and a fundamental order to disorder. Even when it appears to be stuck in a permanent groove, there are variables to structural contingency and some variations to human agency even when it appears to be rooted in powerlessness and paralysis of the will. In the Nigerian case, there may well be a divine instrumentality to national dysfunction.

    The northern power masters put Obasanjo there to protect their interest but Obasanjo had other ideas and swiftly went after them. Obasanjo put Jonathan there probably as a clueless rookie to be manipulated at will. But it should be obvious that Jonathan is anything but anybody’s monkey marionette. In act of filial gratitude, he has gone after the political jugular of both Obasanjo and the northern feudal barons, even as he fine tunes how to decimate the dominant progressive tendency in the South West.

    It is a war of all against all which showcases an inchoate and incoherent state formation that has proved incapable of an organic transformation from a national ruling class to a nationalist ruling class almost sixty years after independence. Unfortunately and given the structural contingency, the current opposition cannot fill this vacuum as long as it remains disarticulated from forces of civil society and other potent mass organisations. It is a loyal opposition; a national coalition rather than a nationalist formation.

    We are faced with a classic political and historic conundrum. While it appears virtually impossible to move the country forward given the current structural constraints and as the failed Jonathan Constitutional Conference has shown, there is absolutely nothing stopping the country from further regressing. Yet any further regression either at the economic, political or religious level risks putting the continued existence of the nation in grave doubt and jeopardy.

    All of this, including the dramatic ascension of Jonathan and its deleterious effect on our collective existence, may represent the final working out of some deep historical and political contradictions. Like a captive audience in a horror movie, let us ask ourselves what we happen to be doing in the cinema house in the first instance.

  • Jonathan, Malala and Chibok girls

    Jonathan, Malala and Chibok girls

    Newspapers missed both the strident tone and essence of the message Malala Yousafzai passed on to President Goodluck Jonathan during her visit last Monday. The Pakistani girls’ education advocate was in Nigeria for a two-day visit to further her global campaign, advocate urgent efforts to rescue the 219 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants, and ask the president to meet with the anguished parents of the abducted girls. She, however, managed in the process to lecture the president in surprisingly severe tones on his duties and responsibilities to his country and the girls in particular. Somehow, everyone seemed to have focused on her reprise of the discussions she had with the president, during which she donated $200,000 to girls’ education in Nigeria.

    Immediately after Malala met with the president, Dr Jonathan extended an invitation to the Chibok parents who had travelled to Abuja to meet the girls’ education advocate. But this invitation immediately became controversial because the Chibok parents declined to meet with the president due to extenuating circumstances. Prickly presidency spokespersons however misconstrued this snub as a plot by opposition forces who it claimed had hijacked the BringBackOurGirls protest. But it turned out that the few parents in question needed time to receive a fresh mandate from other Chibok parents to meet with the president. The meeting, it now seems, has been rescheduled.

    Two major issues come out of the Malala meeting with Dr Jonathan. First is the unfortunate fact, already highlighted in the ongoing controversy surrounding the presidential audience granted the girls’ education advocate, that it took Malala’s visit for the president to appreciate his obligation to meet with the Chibok parents. Second is the even sadder fact that the president does not appear to appreciate the irony, if not irresponsibility, of asking to meet a few of the parents in Abuja. Does he think a crash meeting in Abuja would obviate the need for him to visit Chibok? And does he hope that such a meeting, if it takes place, would atone for his unstatesmanlike behavior in abandoning Chibok?

    At the time of this writing, the Chibok parents do not appear to mind visiting the president in his office. But unlike the president, they give indication they know it is wrong to meet anywhere else but in Chibok. The Chibok parents travel to and fro Chibok, with all the security issues surrounding the trips. Why has it been impossible for the president to plan even a one-hour visit to the troubled town? The Chibok parents may be ashamed for the president and might honour his invitation, but they really do not owe him any obligation to save him from the global embarrassment of failing to visit the town, like any president would have done.

    More and more, Dr Jonathan proves himself unworthy of the country he presides over. First he didn’t believe there was any abduction, as if Boko Haram gave him the impression the sect was incapable of such overwhelming monstrosity. Then he rules out a swap arrangement to free the girls without replacing that option with anything tangible. Furthermore, citing security concerns, he has refused to visit the town or the anguished parents of the schoolgirls, and did not think it fit to invite those parents until Malala emotionally and almost disrespectfully spoke with him. Finally, he has started to blame his failure and negligence on the opposition, even as he plans four more undeserving years in office. But four more years of what?

  • Malaysia on my mind

    How much more can a nation and its stricken people take? Within a sadistic spell of six months, the good people of this beautiful and enchanting country with their quaint political institutions have suffered two major air catastrophes the likes of which are very rare and far between in aviation history.

    First, their plane flew into calamitous oblivion in an aviation mystery which remains unsolved despite feats of human endurance in inhospitable seas and the deployment of latest gadgets. Stunned and dazed by this chilling development, we mourned with the Malaysians and the rest of the world that lost human invaluable. All sorts of conspiracy theories have been flying about, but we are no nearer solving the tragic riddle.

    Now, another Malaysian plane with invaluable human capital has been shot down while flying over the apocalyptic meltdown of what used to be the Ukraine in a chilling presage of the new Cold War. When the old Cold War ended, we all rejoiced. But the new Cold War, because it is based on identity and barmy brotherhood rather than ideology, is going to be more vicious and marked by an unprecedented savage ferocity. Globalization and the democratization of the arsenal of cheap death will see to that.

    As we glimpse the site of horrific carnage and human wastage on an industrial scale, with international passports strewn all over, it looks more like a modern enactment of Dante’s inferno. Stunned and even more disoriented, we mourn with the good people of Malaysia and the world at large. It doesn’t rain but pours, and it has been pouring in the enchantingly named Kuala Lumpur.

  • Lecturer, journalist par excellence

    When in my final year at the University of Lagos I had to write my project, I instinctively chose one of the popular Mass Communication research topics.

    I opted for topics similar to projects I had read in the department’s library. I proposed using questionnaire to be filled by students since I wanted to write on newspaper readership in Unilag on an issue I can’t remember now. .

    My supervisor had no problem with my topic but was not sure if the data gathering would be thoroughly done in a way to justify whatever findings I would come up with.

    He suggested an historical research on a media-related issue on which not much has been written on which could be a rich source of information. For him, students should not write projects only for fulfilling the graduation requirement, but attempt to make a contribution to advancing the body of knowledge required in Mass Communication study and practice.

    His counsel has since proved true with the continuous citing of my project titled ‘30 Years of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ): Achievements, Problems and Prospects in researches and publications on the history of the union.’

    My mystery supervisor who I owe a debt of gratitude not only for supervising my project but for the thorough training I got in news and feature writing is Professor Olatunji Dare.

    Last Thursday he turned 70 and his birthday was marked with a lecture and book launch in Lagos.

    Like many who spoke at the occasion and in other tributes, I testify that Professor Dare belongs to the class of few communication scholars who combines first class academic with contemporary practical knowledge of media practice.

    That he has been teaching journalism in the United States for some years now and remains one of Nigeria’s leading newspaper columnists attest to the stuff he is made of and why he deserves all the accolades he has been getting at 70.

    Our university system needs lecturers like Professor Dare who are interested in giving students the required supervision and support to write projects they and their departments can be proud of years after graduation.

    We need more projects that can come up with findings to enhance productivity in the industry fresh graduates are supposed to work in. Student projects up to the doctorate level will not be worth the trouble and expense if they only gather dust in Libraries of higher institutions.

    We need more lecturers who are masters of the theoretical and practical knowledge of the subjects they teach. Many recent graduates are victims of the present system which allows some lecturers who have not practiced some profession to teach the qualifying course of study. University lecturers should regularly update their knowledge of the industry they are producing students for if the degree the institutions offer is to be worth the paper on which they are printed.

    Lecturers should always remember that whether they will be celebrated or not by their former students and colleagues like Professor Dare will depend on the quality of their performance in their various academic and professional assignments.

    They don’t have to wait to get to heaven ( if they make it there)  to get the reward of service, they can get rewarded while alive if they do what they are paid to do.

    Congratulations my dear  Professor  Dare. You are indeed a teacher and journalist par excellence.

  • This peace that passes all understanding is truly baffling

    Don’t get me wrong; we are not expecting them to give us fiction for facts. We just need them to share our turmoil, that’s all

    When all about you are losing their heads, so goes an adage, it is time to pick up your feet and run, particularly when you know and understand the cause of the general insanity. However, when you are the only one losing your head while all others around you are calm, it is time to quietly surrender your arm for that dreaded sodium pentothal injection. That injection is not called the truth serum for nothing. In no time, it will have you screaming ‘I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything’ as you begin to spew out the facts and fiction you have no idea reside in your brain like hidden germs. After that stormy outpouring comes the peace, the calm that sometimes ascends from the eye of the storm, so to say.

    Peace is supposed to mean tranquility, the absence of war, or a calm that signals an absence of violence or disorder. Peace is therefore not expected to spell trouble. However, there can be a peace that is disturbing and troubling when the expected relief does not arise from anywhere near sight of the peace. For instance, around our authorities here, there is a peace that passes all understanding because it is rather baffling.

    When one considers the behavioral pattern of the federal government and the Nigerian Army over what has come to be known as the ‘Abduction of the Chibok Girls’, one cannot help but be seriously baffled. When the story broke, I honestly saw a Nigerian populace gripped by a serious panic since that kind of brazen abduction had not occurred before in the country. No one could imagine anybody in his right senses, trucking up and carting away over two hundred girls in such a bold manner. It resembles too closely the manner in which cattle are rustled. Silently, like lambs, they go to the shearer; except that these are human beings. This is why this peace that has settled on us like a fog is so troubling.

    Normally, everyone has come to agree that this is a country where anything can happen and there would be no shocking tremors. This is a country where a presidential candidate has died in custody, a sitting president has died mysteriously, a sitting Attorney-general has ostensibly been murdered (wonders of wonders, and the nation never been told whodunit!). It is also a nation where the uncle of a sitting president has been kidnapped; the mother of a most powerful minister has also been kidnapped… Need I go on? So, yes, shock waves the sizes of tremors have been passed through our individual and collective bodies in this country in the process of making us talk. But, as they say in the movies, those events did not break us, until the Chibok girls came along.

    Something about those little mites got everyone’s attention. I think it began with their innocence. There is one truism they say about war: it is often the innocent who get caught and cut up in it. I think the innocence of the girls pulled at everyone’s heartstrings and played on them the tunes of love like no other victim has so far. Nearly everyone went up in flappers over their abduction when it happened; everyone, that is, except the federal government. Playing it cool, the government made it known it did not believe the girls were even missing in the first place until more hullabaloos were raised. Since then, the government has refused to let itself be hassled into rescuing the girls. No one understands why, but ours to ask the reason why.

    Even though there have been offers from various foreign bodies to intervene and come to the rescue, so to say, nothing has happened. All we see is a federal government neither flapping its wings in anxiety nor biting its nails in agitation. It is not even ruffled. With this government, everything’s cool even if its over two hundred innocent girls are imprisoned in terrorist camps. It’s wonderful. Something must be responsible for this peace, and I know it’s not Jesus Christ.

    Let’s take a few guesses. First, it is possible that the government really knows something that we don’t, such as whether or not those girls are really missing. It is just too much that the entire nation, nay world, has been up in indignation over this affair except our own government. Many people have indicated their disappointment, anger, annoyance or even irritation with the government’s response or lack of it over this matter, but not me. Me, I am just baffled by this peace; it is indeed a peace that I cannot understand. Here we are, all losing our heads, and the government is keeping its own; it is not picking up its feet and running. Something is not clear.

    I am also baffled by the military response, or lack of it. I have mentioned here before that I believed that the Nigerian Army was among the world’s best armies. I still believe it. However, it has not been up to the bar on this matter either. First, everyone expected the army to have immediately gone on the trails of the terrorists before they went cold. We are talking about over two hundred girls o! Not only did it not do that, it seemed to have waited for the terrorists to be long gone before appearing to swing into action. Wonderful, but it gets worse.

    Much later, after the hues and cries from all corners of the world, the army finally admits to knowing where the terrorists were and where they had kept the girls but would not go after them then for one reason or the other. It still has not gone after them. Now, I do not understand that kind of statement or what the army wants this country to believe. I cannot even begin to decipher it because it is full of pragmatic innuendos. For one thing, does it mean that the country can still be protected against external aggression even if the internal one has us scratching our heads? I’m only asking. Indeed, I believe only one person understands that equivocation – and that is the owner of the utterance. For that statement, the entire country has been losing its collective head, and the army is calm. I guess ours is not to reason why after all.

    Clearly, there are many things we are failing to understand about the government, the army and the Chibok girls. Unfortunately, we seem to have a governance style that does not explain things to the people unless it wants to engage them in fisticuffs over a real or imagined slight. The country therefore frequently finds itself resorting to rumours, and boy, are those things flying around or what?! But this is not the place to repeat them.

    All we are saying here is that there is so much turmoil in the land over the girls’ abduction, and the authorities are too much at peace with themselves. Don’t get me wrong; we are not expecting them to give us fiction for facts. We just need them to share our turmoil, that’s all. Let us end this peace that passes all understanding, bring in some credible action.

  • The Nasarawa formula

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s impeachment train may become stuck in Nasarawa, if the civil society in that state keeps its wit and determination not to be intimidated. Everyone knows that like Adamawa, the impeachment plan against Governor Tanko Al-Makura is inspired from outside. But unlike Adamawa, the people of Nasarawa appear unwilling to be taken for a ride. They voted for their governor and lawmakers; and they want to be involved in whatever direction the state would be taken. They have, therefore, risen in defence of the governor, without indicating whether they think he committed impeachable offences, and have threatened through demonstrations and legislative recall to punish those behind the impeachment drive. They should remain resolute.

    Legally speaking, there is no way the Adamawa impeachment can stand. I think it will be reversed. And I doubt whether that of Nasarawa could be procured as easily and as malevolently as that of Adamawa. But what is interesting about the whole affair is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) states facing the spectre of externally-induced impeachment moves now have a reason and a precedent to fight and defeat Dr Jonathan’s unconstitutional plans to undermine and overthrow the opposition. Nasarawa should begin a campaign to create awareness in their constituencies about federal political malfeasance and interference. As the state may yet prove, Jonathan’s hegemony is quite vulnerable.

  • APC juggernaut slows down

    APC juggernaut slows down

    The euphoric beginnings of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have all but given way to concealed despondency. In February 2013, four political parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – fused to become APC. Because the four were the leading opposition parties, there was hope that the fear of Nigeria becoming a one-party state would recede. A few months later, on account of the high-handedness of the then chairman of the PDP, Bamanga Tukur, and a number of other grievances, five PDP governors defected from the national ruling party to join the mega opposition party in November 2013. The defection gave hope that when finally the battle would be joined in the 2015 general elections, the outcome would not be the foregone conclusion the PDP hoped and predicted.

    Hardly had the euphoria over that sensational defection died down when some 37 House of Representatives members also joined the APC. Had the original 47 that promised to join the opposition done so, a leadership change in the lower chamber could have taken place and massively tipped the balance of power against the ruling party. In the Senate, fewer members than expected crossed the divide, and even among governors, about seven or so had seemed set to change affiliation. The defections and the second thought some of the defectors had gave the first indication that the APC juggernaut was not firing on all cylinders. But notwithstanding those minor setbacks, in March 2014, the opposition party went on to present its manifesto and code of ethics at a scintillating ceremony in Abuja that evoked the best political traditions in the world.

    For a brief moment, the APC had a nominal majority in the House of Representatives, and up till now still has some 16 governors to the PDP’s 18. But between that euphoric moment and now, the PDP recaptured the majority in the Reps, consolidated in the Senate, and looks set before the end of the year to gradually begin to turn the tide in other spheres, principally the governorship. Ekiti State has been lost to the PDP, Adamawa is under serious threat through impeachment proceedings and may be lost, and a few other APC states not yet lost are being destabilised by a combination of unconstitutional and intra-party shenanigans. The APC juggernaut is not only weakened or brought to a crushing and agonising halt, it is being forced to retreat on nearly all fronts under the most intense and brazen fusillade of unconstitutional measures designed to foster a one-party, if not fascistic, rule in Nigeria.

    Nigerians themselves seem inured to the mortal danger their country is exposed to. The APC’s reverses have occurred due mainly to the party’s naivety and apparent lack of cohesion, the willingness of the Jonathan presidency to undermine the constitution, and the ignorance and supine acquiescence of the electorate. For now, the future is indeed very bleak for the APC. It is expected to hold on to Osun by the skin of its teeth, though it should have had a walkover. It will have to fight desperately to keep Oyo without necessarily gaining Labour Party’s Ondo. It will need a miracle to keep Imo. If it is to keep Rivers, it will be because the Jonathan presidency is uncharacteristically unwilling to use federal might as lawlessly as it is accustomed, an altruism that is however not part of its fundamental make-up. Adamawa tethers on the brink of apostasy; so, too, do a number of other fringe APC states.

    In short, if the APC does not devise new and comprehensive strategies against the PDP between now and the end of the year, it will not just be in danger of losing its head and torso, Nigerian democracy could founder, perhaps irretrievably. The country, sadly, is not sensitive to the nightmare its people face, nor is it aware of just how precariously close to the cliff its people are. The PDP itself, being the inspiration and architect of the general maladies afflicting the country, is blasé about these dangers. The APC instinctively feels the troubles ahead, but it seems frightfully short of the decisiveness, innovation and derring-do required to break the mould. It surprisingly persists in misreading the electorate, which in the Southwest it dangerously overrates, as the Ekiti election proved. It hopes the people will cotton on to its fine ideas of nation-building and summon the patriotism and common sense necessary to combat and arrest the lurch towards fascism.

    The reality is much worse than the APC thinks, and the political health of the country even more precarious. What have the people done to remedy the judicial travesty unfolding in Rivers, a battle that seems to have boiled down to Governor Rotimi Amaechi versus the National Judicial Council on one hand, and Amaechi and federal forces on the other hand? What have the so-called powerful voters done to arrest the excessive conservatism, if not reactionary politics, of the Senate? Have the people stood up resolutely against the increasing partisanship of the Nigerian Army and the general abuse of the security forces promoted by the Jonathan presidency? What pressures have they brought on the president, considering how impotent his government has become in the face of the abduction of 219 schoolgirls in Borno State?

    Education is in absolute tatters with underfunding and misdirected students activism; healthcare is moribund and riddled by strike; electricity supply has diminished into nothingness; and the Boko Haram war has become shambolic partly because the president and his men lack a simple understanding of the complex currents and counter-currents of sectarian and extremist campaigns waged by fringe groups in many parts of the world. And at a time of increasing immiseration of Nigerians and imminent national implosion, the president is fiddling with bogus projects such as the centenary city project and other crazy and expensive schemes to destroy the opposition and wipe out dissent. What have the people done to mitigate these problems? The truth is that they lack the courage and knowledge to direct their energies and battles in the right direction. Before 2015, any hope that they will come to a sudden realisation of the apocalypse confronting them is slim. The APC will therefore need to devise strategies around these appalling shortcomings of the electorate.

    The APC has two crucial and pressing tasks to complete before the general elections. One, it must commission honest and genuine studies of the states under its control in order to discover what needs to be done to retain them. Ekiti should have taught them a lesson. Two, it must commission deep but practical studies of what it needs to do to win the centre. Much more than the volatile and swing states, the Jonathan presidency is probably the most vulnerable government we have had since Nigeria began practicing democracy. It has no accomplishments to boast of; it is weak on every front, whether in style or substance; and it is incapable of the inspiring and innovative governance great nations have benefited from their statesmen. If it failed woefully in practical governance, the kind any patriotic and diligent government is at least capable of, it is an even more woeful failure in the type of governance only philosopher-kings are capable of.

    For as long as Dr Jonathan remains in office – and four more years seem a likelihood if the opposition can’t get its act together – there will be neither understanding nor promotion of the higher ideals of a free, unfettered judiciary, of a vibrant and untrammelled press, of a professional and impartial military institution, and of a legislature dedicated to the great democratic ideals of checks and balances. In short, beyond the trickeries and hallucinations of Nigeria’s political barbarians, many of them skilled proponents of disinformation and propaganda, the country is facing its most trying time ever, one that will probably determine whether it prospers or fails. If the opposition fails to halt the drift towards chaos, it can rest assured it will not be the only victim; the entire country will be in danger of falling apart.

  • The changing nature of nationality

    The changing nature of nationality

    The world learns about itself in new and unexpected ways. While it is true that old habits die hard, new fancies tend to catch on very quickly, leaving everybody breathless. As the 2014 World Cup wings to a memorable finale this evening with Argentina trying its luck against a revved up German soccer wehrmacht, there are many things that would remind one of a changing world.

    One of these is the growing reality that soccer may become a simulated war game enacted by men with superior military brains and exceptional psychological stamina. If anyone was ever in doubt, the 7-1 vaporization of Brazil by the German soccer machine laid to rest forever the old notion of the beautiful game as a moveable feast of joyous passing, gyrating body movements and ecstatic acrobatics.

    The Germans play without frills or freebies, and with a ferocious focus on the empty space between the goalposts. The charming but naïve Brazilians often croon about the open and flowing nature of their game, and the fact that they could allow their opponents to score as many goals as they can as long as nobody held their own fleet feet in fetters.

    But that was before they invented spatial and structural marking which eliminates the old man to man marking but whose devastating oversight function is unprecedented in the annals of human hindrance. It is a tight and disciplined military formation which reminds one of a dragnet of limbs unfurling as they smother the solitary limbs in contention without any fuss or fanfare. More and more, the game relies on a moment of pure magical brilliance for the exceptional player to spring the tight cordon or some ruinous lapse of concentration which is punished with swift severity.

    Ironically enough, the most telling revelation of this war of the nations on the soccer pitch is the changing nature of nationality itself and perhaps of the whole concept of nationalism. All that is solid melts into thin air in the crucible of human evolution. For decades, the forces of globalization have been eating away at the certitudes and certainties of nationality and nationalism.

    International commuters switch and switch on nationalities with the ease and facility of free citizens of an increasingly borderless world. There are now people with dual and even multiple national identities. You leave Africa as a native in the morning and arrive at an international border post in the evening bearing a new identity, thanks to work and study, or some less mentionable means.

    Often, you strongly and stoutly support the soccer team of the home country that you left behind even though you know in your heart that these boys cannot pass muster on the truly international stage. But your children have no such inhibition or ambivalence. They belong to a brave new world. Where you bloom and blossom is obviously more important than where you were born. Origin is often a source of haunting memory and inconveniences best forgotten. But it may also serve as a site of rearguard bravado against the forces of western globalization and the whole project of modernity itself.

    When the Boateng blood brothers, Jerome and Kevin Prince, entered the soccer pitch again on opposing sides during the Ghana versus Germany match little would they have known that they have been making history as far as the confrontation between the nation-state and globalization, between locality and globality, goes. It was a repeat of their June 23rd, 2010 confrontation in South Africa.

    To be sure, there have been cases of blood brothers playing for or representing different countries at one time or the other. There have also been cases of brothers representing different clubs. There are instances of great athletes and martial artists defecting to other countries even while still under oath to defend the honour and integrity of the home countries. But it is in the epic tussle between the Ghanaian Boateng and the German Boateng that the poignant ironies of contending nationalities came to the fore as never before.

    Since the two Boateng brothers bear soccer arms for two different countries, it was to be expected that when they came face to face, they might not spare each other the odd ferocious tackle. There was always the possibility of one critically injuring the other. And if it came to a real shooting war between the two countries, the possibility of legal fratricide must be very high on the cards.

    The prospects of two brothers dueling unto death are rare but not a new historical phenomenon. This one, however, comes with a novel inflection which owes its historical possibility to the forces of globalization breaking down iron barriers and old binary divisions. Had the Boateng father not been granted the opportunities of international travels, the contradictions would have remained at the level of the nation-state paradigm.

    It is useful to note how the World Cup itself owes its rise and ascendancy to globalization which tends to abolish the ancient notion of time and space. The World Cup came on the heels of dramatic developments in human transportation, particularly aerial journeys which allow humanity to obliterate different and divergent time zones with the ease and facility of a fabled magician. Had humanity been stalled at the level of nautical journeys, the logistical nightmare of transporting people and players across seas would have made the World Cup an impossible dream.

    We may yet thank God for globalization, particularly the likes of Jurgen Klinsmann, the great German soccer hero and current coach of the US soccer team. Two centuries ago, it would have been considered the highest form of state treason for a German to coach another country, particularly the bumptious and insufferable Yankees, about how to upend the great German soccer machine.

    But treason itself has become globalized and this particular variant would cut no ice with a man of Klinsmann’s Teutonic thoroughness and contempt for idiotic waffling. Judging from Klinsmann’s boundless enthusiasm for his American team on and off the pitch and the clinical precision with which he has raised the American game, it is clear that the German icon has stuck to the clause of his American contract rather than a phantom obligation to the motherland.

    This seeming infraction is unlikely to diminish Klinsmann’s iconic stature in his motherland. He will still return to Germany as a hero, if he doesn’t decide to take up an American citizenship which will be readily available. He has already paid his dues to club and country. In any case, the ubiquitous and impersonal forces of globalization have made it easier for him. Take a look at the German team as well as all the European teams at this year’s edition of the World Cup in Brazil. It is a rainbow coalition of all colour, creed and complexion. Globalization is a homogenizing Leviathan which grinds everything into conformity. Everything and everybody is grist to its crushing and compulsive mill.

    It has, however, been noted that globalization is a decidedly one-sided affair; a one-way traffic which merely revalidates the overwhelming superiority of the west and western modernity over the rest of the world. How many people voluntarily leave the west for the Third World? The balance of knowledge production is grossly and grotesquely in favour of the metropolitan centre. The ceaseless and ruthless adaption of cutting edge technology reinvents capitalism in such a way that leaves the rest of the world gasping for breath. Globalization, they claim, is just another word for the Americanization or Coca-colanization of the rest of the world.

    We do not need to look farther than the outgoing World Cup for proof that the truth is more nuanced and the reality less heavily one-sided. Slowly but inexorably, the forces of globalization have been chipping away at America’s cultural and ideological rampart. The gradual build-up of a more confident and more assured immigrant community, particularly from Africa and the human armada from Latin America who never forgot the soccer-mad culture they left at home appear to have thawed America’s resistance to soccer and the widespread belief that its almost effeminate gyrations is a psychic assault on American Exceptionalism and its Roman notion of sports as an intensely physical gladiatorial affair.

    Before our very eyes, America has become a soccer loving country. This World Cup has witnessed an unprecedented rise in American viewership. Enthusiasm for the beautiful game exploded reaching a national fever pitch during America’s last game. From a superlative futuristic bar abutting into the Pacific Ocean in a Los Angeles suburb to a dark and dingy Nigerian drinking hovel in New York, they were watching football all the way. It helped that America qualified, at least. It also helped that modern soccer has witnessed a renewed athleticism and martialization  which is in consonance with American sports’ spirit. One way or the other in this de-Brazilianization of the game, globalization has done its duty.

    So has it for the continent of Africa whose two solitary survivors were dismissed in the second round of the tournament with the continent as usual holding the short end of the stick. The first wave of globalization led to the internationalization of slavery and the enslavement of a substantial chunk of the African populace. The second wave led to the forcible cooption of the continent into the capitalist orbit. With the latest wave, African nations are being frog-matched to the post-nation frontiers without having achieved the consolidation of the nation-state paradigm.

    In a delicious and sublime instance of historic irony, it is instructive to note Nigeria stumbled to defeat from France with the two goals scored by Africans. The first by Pogba and the second an own goal scored against his team and country by Joseph Yobo, the Nigerian skipper. In its crowded eighteen, and under grave historical and political pressures, Africa always scores against itself either directly or indirectly. Neither the changing nature of nationality nor the changing epochs of globalization will put an end to that. It will take a new breed of Africans. And we have been waiting for only six hundred years.