The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Abuja protest ban: what on earth were the police thinking?

    Abuja protest ban: what on earth were the police thinking?

    Early last week, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, banned further “Bring Back Our Girls” protests in Abuja. They had become a nuisance, he said irreverently. But in reversing the order a day after, police spokesman, Frank Mba, a chief superintendent of police (CSP), offered an oblique and unconvincing interpretation of the ban. He said that the FCT police boss merely advised protesters to watch out for fifth columnists and other troublemakers who were out to foment trouble or cause general disaffection through the protests. Given the directness of Mr Mbu’s order and the simplicity of his language, it is unlikely Mr Mba was telling the truth.

    It is incontestable that Mr Mbu gave an order that violated the constitution. It was typical of him, of his general political irreverence, of his absolute disregard for lawful authority save his direct masters, of his single-minded desire to serve only those who pay and promote him. Unlike what Mr Mba tried to convey, the FCT police chief did not mince his words. Indeed, what Mr Mbu had to say, he said it with absolute contempt for the public and the constitution. After an annoying preamble, he had said: “Accordingly, protests on the Chibok girls are hereby banned with immediate effect…As the FCT police boss, I cannot fold my hands and watch this lawlessness. Information reaching us is that soon, dangerous elements will join groups under the guise of protest and detonate explosives aimed at embarrassing the government…People have been protesting over a month now…it is the issue of terrorism, it is not solved in one day…Then, when you continue to do it persistently, it becomes a nuisance to the government.’’

    What worried Mr Mbu was not whether anyone was undermining the constitution or whether he was violating his oath as a police officer. What worried his servile mind is that someone was trying to embarrass the government. In his distorted professional opinion, protests are coterminous, if not interchangeable, with lawlessness. While most responsible, educated and adult Nigerians have struggled to wean themselves off military trappings and behavior, Mr Mbu is still evidently trapped in Nigeria’s militaristic past. He is unperturbed that he predicates his ban order on nothing but a clumsy rationalisation of his powers and the impotence of the constitution. The anomalousness of his order did not occur to him; that it was inconceivable to ban protests in Nigeria when leading rights groups and other activists in other parts of the world were still on the streets shouting and singing Bring Back our Girls.

    Mr Mbu is, however, not to blame, even though in his inimitable anti-people orientation he tried to personalise the order by saying he could not “fold his hands and watch this lawlessness.” It is obvious he could not have woken up one morning and felt the capricious need to ban the Bring Back our Girls protests. If he was neither directed to issue the order nor given the clearance to take that step, then discipline in the police must have broken down dangerously, and the country is badly misgoverned to boot. I believe he was ordered to do what he did partly because the disgraceful order suited his personality, and partly because, at bottom, the government itself is fed up being reminded of its unremitting failure.

    But does it not worry Mr Mbu and his bosses that Nigeria would stop showing their displeasure against the abductions when the world was still outraged? Does Mr Mbu not care what image of Nigeria we would be projecting should we keep quiet in the face of that Boko Haram affront to the dignity of our people and the chastity of our daughters? Are they so insensitive that they have become unmoved by the anguish of the girls’ parents? What on earth came over them to issue such a nefarious order?

  • Four years later, still at the mercy of Lionel Messi

    The modern game of soccer has a canny way of imitating politics. What with its offside traps, its sudden deaths, its professional fouls, penalty-inducing dives and injury time simulation of death. Like liberty-watch, football is a game of eternal vigilance. The exceptional footballer is often a great political general: technically accomplished, tactically sound and strategically alert. Bill Shankly, the great Liverpudlian coach, once noted: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

    As an equal opportunity theorist, Snooper has been pondering the great interface, the organic connection, between a nation and its footballing fortunes ever since Henry Kissinger made the connection between football and national character. But national character, like culture, is not a fixed and permanent affair. After Paolo Rossi taught them a memorable lesson in 1982, the Brazilians have since learnt the hard way. But not so the Nigerians. In any society where a culture of impunity prevails, it is almost likely going to be reproduced in the sphere of soccer. No lesson is learnt because no lesson has been taught.

    We are still on the connection between national pride and soccer. When Brian Clough, a.k.a Cloughie, the great coach of the fabled Nottingham Forest club, was asked in 1982 why he was so cocksure that England would demolish West Germany in the world cup duel, he retorted that England had already beaten Germany twice. The whisky-besotted hell-raiser was not referring to football games. He was darkly hinting at the two world wars in which the less fancied English took the Germans to the cleaners. In the event, it was the Germans that sent the British packing.

    It was not until four years later, and at the next World Cup final in 1986, that Brian Clough, the super-English patriot, would meet his nemesis in the department of rabid nationalism. It was the legendary Argentinean soccer genius, Diego Amanda Maradona. When he was asked which of his two famous goals against England gave him the greater pleasure, you would have thought that the impish urchin from the slums of Buenos Aires will plump for the second which till date remains the purest expression of soccer genius on display. But the crazy one went for the first, on the grounds that scoring the goal was akin to picking the pocket of the plodding and clueless English.

    For the former pickpocket and denizen of the Argentinean underground, it was no doubt an enriching experience and one made infinitely more satisfying by the way and manner the Brits had trounced and humiliated Argentina during the Falkland War. You can win the actual war by military hook and political crook, but you can be defeated and outclassed in the soccer war. Till date, and in a spirit of comfortable national delusion, the Argentines still refer to the Falkland Island as the Malvinas.

    As history evolves, totems of national prestige and feel good often change and today the god of soccer has replaced the old god of nationalism which stalked and abraded Europe in the early twentieth century. Soccer is now the opium of nations, particularly underdeveloped nations. In Latin America, nations have actually gone to wars over soccer. In Nigeria, children do not remember Obafemi Awolowo as a hero or role model, but they worship “Oba-goal” Martins.

    The Americans have a great but troubling reply for their country’s seeming underperformance in the soccer department. The nation, they argue, cannot afford to have poor and underprivileged children practising soccer on the vast beaches when they should be in school. Neither can they afford potential real estate in the inner city converted to instant soccer fields. The vast sandy beaches and open ruins of the inner city are nursery beds for future footballing geniuses but they are also epicentres of disequilibrium and dysfunction.

    Unhappy indeed is the land that needs soccer heroes. For the past six weeks, Nigerians have worked themselves into a state of frenzy about how to stop Lionel Messi, the pint-sized Argentinean football prodigy, from inflicting maximum damage on the national psyche when the two soccer-crazy nations clash in the forthcoming final in South Africa.

    Smallish, sharp and built like an eel, Messi is the ultimate nightmare for the opposing player. Nimble of feet and supple of body, Messi glides effortlessly through defence ramparts like a fish in clotted ocean often leaving his opponents in humiliating and embarrassing circumstances. How to stop Messi has become a national obsession. Nigeria, it seems, is at the mercy of the merciless Messi.

    Messi has already stopped Nigeria once in the final of the FIFA junior world cup a few years back. In full flight, Messi resembles a play station, according to Arsene Wenger, the cerebral coach of Arsenal, after watching the ruthless runt single-handedly destroy his hapless team in a one-sided encounter a few weeks back. Messi punishes every single mistake with cruel precision. Give him half a chance and he converts. Run into him in the box with clumsy resolve and it is a penalty. Tackle him in frustration and the exit tunnel beckons.

    Anybody thinking that these are ordinary games is not conversant with zodiac signs and the science of political astrology.  Like great football teams, nations rise and fall following certain astral signs and signal occurrences in the universe. It was on November 25, 1953 that the magical Magyars, the great Hungarian football team, finally put an end to the English boast that because they gave football to the world, they were still the incomparable masters. Ferencs Puskas, a.k.a the galloping major, Kocsis , Nandor Hidegkuti, the unmarkable, deep lying attacker, and co made a mincemeat of the English.

    It is a cruel and exacting irony that the Green Eagles should lock horns with the Argentines on June 12, 2010. June 12 again?  That is not a date to be toyed with. It resonates and rubs the Nigerian psyche the wrong way. It was the day the modern Nigeria nation snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Whoever gave the Green Eagles that date is either a master of sly symbolism or a bearer of metaphysical portents. Iran, the other nation that toyed with that date, is still busy clearing hostile crowds from the streets almost a year after.

    But it is not as if Lionel Messi and the Argentineans cannot be stopped. Once again, it is the Italians who show the way. The Italians play highly technical and tactically proficient football. By resorting to structural and spatial marking, Inter-Milan were able to put Messi literally in his place a few weeks back. It was not a question of arduous man to man marking but of an intelligent cluster which unfurls like a well-primed fishing net trapping Messi in a seamless web of limbs as he begins his approach to the eighteen.

    Famously, Marco Tardelli, a principal architect of the glorious Italian winning squad of 1982, once noted of Maradona’s spectacular run on the English flat-footed defence which culminated in the most spectacular goal ever seen in a world cup. “If Diego had started that run in an Italian league, he would have ended it in a hospital”.

    In other words, if Maradona had managed to evade the close attention of Tardelli himself, he would almost certainly have run into the robust, hospital-friendly tackle of Franco Baresi or Antonio Cabrini; or the stretcher-inducing brutish double stud of the hugely misnamed Claudio Gentille, or the hard-hitting brace of Giuseppe Bergomi, an Italian of Libyan extraction. If all else fails, the final solution would have been left to Papa Dino Zoff, the forty two year keeper-slugger, who would have matched Maradona altitude for altitude and criminal attitude for criminal attitude.

    So let us thank god for small mercies and the Italians for little Messi. Perhaps a short spell in Italy before the commencement of hostilities would do the eagles a world of good. It has also been duly noted that since Lionel Messi does not attain his sublime club form while playing for nation, Maradona should be put on retainership by the eagles. The Italians also know one or two things about match-fixing, after all the great Paolo Rossi himself would end his career in disgrace as a result of match-fixing.

    He was known to have rued that everything was alright as long as he was allowed to score a couple of goals.  If all this should fail, then Monrovia beckons. The only African player who seemed to have actually prospered in the Italian league is the Liberian libero, George Weah, who went on to become a World Footballer of the year. Perhaps Weah should be contacted to serve as ancillary coach for the eagles.

    If a country cannot produce the political genius that will solve its problems, or the soccer prodigies that will lift its spirit and pride, then humiliation in both theatres of human exertion is inevitable. When the Americans allegedly proposed to Golda Meir that America and Israel should exchange two of their most famous generals, the Yankees went ahead to name two of modern Israeli’s most illustrious warlords. Feeling short changed, the great woman famously retorted: “In that case, we shall have General Electric and General Motors.”  The Americans duly withdrew.  Whether in football or politics, it is all about human capital.

    First published in June 2010 on the eve of the World Cup in South Africa)

  • Now we know where all the children have gone

    Children should please be allowed to be children: learning about life through school and play, play and school, in those orders

    Giving on this planet does not come cheap. One, you have to pay for the food you consume, and two, you have to justify the space you take. Now, you can imagine that that will be a problem for some of us large ones. Generally, though, labour is the accepted means of obtaining getting payment. However, it is well agreed that the age of labour onset varies from how deviant to how devious a society is.

    You know the deviant society, don’t you? It is that society that resists the natural instinct of kleptomania, sociopathy and psychopathy. In short, it helps its citizens. Likewise, you can recognize the devious society. That’s the one that knows and willingly yields to the natural instinct of kleptomania, sociopathy and psychopathy. However, its citizens are not helped; so they are mostly sociopaths and psychopaths. We are going to talk about the latter, an example of which is Nigeria.

    Coming hard on the heels of the World Children’s day anniversary is yet another set aside for marking child labour day in order to, well, draw attention to the right of the child not to be forced to work. It is most worrisome indeed, when children are put to work that is more serious than eating, playing and schooling. You have no idea how hard it is to cope with learning to add two and two for a child of three or four or whenever it is they are supposed to learn to add two drops of water to another two drops and make … em… four. One child was so proud of his six out of six score in arithmetic one day that he came home practically gloating and jumping around. After everyone in the house had admired it, he himself settled down to admire it some more, running his fingers over the page and telling everyone who cared to listen how he worked so hard, thought so hard, and wracked his brain so hard to get the answers and no one can guess just how hard he worked on it. After all the gloating, he eventually went to sleep, exhausted.

    Oh, I’m sure you would say someone should have put the proud blighter to work. I have nothing against putting children to some kind of work if it keeps them engaged and prevents them from scampering forever in between people’s toes. The question is what kind of work?

     Over the centuries, history has regaled us with accounts of how children as young as seven have been put to labours as intense as sweeping soot-filled chimneys, shining shoes in thin clothes and thinner shoes in all kinds of weather or employed… for robbing people. Around here, the labours vary, but no less intense. Well, there is hawking, there is houseboying or housegirling, there’s early marriage lopping, shop-keeping, etc. Thing is, as the ads go, no age is too small for these jobs, as long as the child is weaned.

    It was in the course of doing some research around this topic that I came across a piece flying around the internet purportedly written by Prof. Wole Soyinka. The piece gave details about the various ages in which many of the first/second generations of Nigeria’s leaders assumed national responsibilities. For example, so goes the piece, people like Okotie-Eboh, Enahoro, Nzeogwu, Mohammed, Danjuma, Babangida, Abacha, Buhari, etc., were all in their twenties, while people like Awolowo, Akintola, Ahmadu bello, Balewa, etc., were in their thirties when they assumed national offices. The piece now went on to ask why today’s youths in those age brackets have not assumed such responsibilities as leading their country and generally doing better than they presently are doing. I have a few things to say about that.

    Actually, when I saw the list, I heaved a sigh of relief. I felt like the man who went to the doctor to complain about an ailment, only for the doctor to examine him and look perplexed, before asking, ‘Have you had this problem before?’ ‘Yes’, said the patient, writhing in pain. ‘Well’, said the doctor, ‘you’ve got it again.’ A disease that has no name has no cure, like Nigeria’s. To my great relief, though, we have found a name for what is wrong with Nigeria: it is called Youthocracy – being thrust into the hands of irreverent youths.

    Just look at the age ranges again, and you will see the origin of Nigeria’s problems. True, there have been many countries whose leaders have been about as young as these. There was Napoleon Bonaparte; there was Alexander the Great; etc. Those two were clearly under thirty when they went conquering the known world. However, such leaders had been thoroughly grilled in the philosophy and wisdom of the ages. For instance, Alexander had so much philosophy poured into him by Aristotle that he was practically pouring the stuff out through his ears. Not so our own young ‘uns. Obviously, they had need of more maturity and more aging to be able to carry the responsibility they thrust on themselves, mainly through coup d’etats..

    Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that Nigeria is exactly what it is today because these early leaders were not much out of their diapers before they were thrust forward. They thus had not outgrown the passions of youth such as ill-temper, greed, intemperance, exuberance, etc., that normally blocks one’s vision and prevents clear-sightedness. They were not old enough to even have visions In short, in such untrained, dead-from-the-neck-up youthful hands, Nigeria was doomed from the beginning and practically dead on arrival. The only thing those ones learnt how to do was satiate their lustful appetites.

    And have you noticed that that same group has been recycling itself in leadership since that time? Seriously, talk of presidency list, the same group; talk of ministerial list, the same group; talk of senatorial list, the same group; and house of reps list, the same group! HABA! NA DEM ALONE WAKA COME NIGERIA?! The worst part is that they have no idea of nation building. Honestly speaking, I hold them responsible for Nigeria’s woes – they did not lay any solid foundation for social engineering, and the woes of the youths today – they have stood solidly in front of everybody. They are like the proverbial tortoise – they can’t move, and they won’t let anyone else through.

    Now, what were we talking about before we veered off? Oh yes, clearly, there’s a lot to be said against child labour. All you need to do is look at the Nigerian situation. Seriously, though, employing children may be a cheap means of solving problems, but the long-run costs are huge. Besides, it’s actually taking undue advantage of the wee toddlers. Parents solve their economic problems by engaging children to hawk and the day’s earning becomes food for the family. I told you once of a family of able-bodied fellows which comes every evening to the soliciting point of a mentally disabled young beggar to collect their pocket money from him. There are countless other families that depend on these poor little blighters who hawk things around or look after ailing parents.

    It is time that this devious country came out with a definitive statement on child labour. It is wrong, wicked and inhuman and people should be compelled not to do it. I once came across a child, who could not be much older than four years, wandering around the roads and highways hawking some nonsensical thing or the other and I wondered if the value of what he hawked was equal to his life. His parents seemed to think so, or else he would not be out on the roads. Children should please be allowed to be children: learning about life through school and play, play and school, in those orders.

  • Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (2)

    Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (2)

    I ended last week’s beginning essay in this series with the assertion that the Jonathan National Conference (JNC) is premised upon and bases its deliberations entirely on one half of the story of federalism and its problems and challenges in Nigeria while completely ignoring the other half of the story. In the part of the story that drives all the deliberations at the JNC, we are told that the great problem with federalism in Nigeria in the last three or four decades is the fact that the center is too strong, too bloated, too “imperial” by contrast with the federating units comprising all the ethnic groups and religious communities of the country. But in the part of the story that is never told and has in fact been completely left out of the deliberations at the JNC, there is no “strong” centre in Nigerian political governance; where such a centre should be we find an extremely weak, mediocre and dysfunctional system that has been remarkably incapable of controlling itself let alone controlling all the challengers to its power and authority, be they political elites or marauding bandits and jihadists from the lowest social order. In this concluding piece in the series, I would like to start from this observation, this assertion of the two halves of the bitter and tragic story of federalism in our country.

    Every Nigerian knows only too well the first half of the story, together with its plotlines and themes. In the context of this discussion, let us highlight some of these plotlines and themes. First, the central government based at Abuja takes the lion’s share of oil wealth, the principal source of revenue for the country as a whole. Secondly, having done this, Abuja and its potentates then distribute what’s left to the states and the local governments of the federation. Nearly every month, all the states have to go cap in hand to Abuja to receive what the almighty centre gives to them within the terms of a sharing formula determined by the centre. Thirdly, the most important functions of governance, both within the country itself and in relation to the rest of the world, are exercised by this same central government. The armed forces, the police, the uniformed men and women guarding our borders, ports and airspace, together with public officials vested with powers to license companies, issues passports and travel documents, and certify the legal existence of  voluntary and civil society organizations, they are all controlled by this same central government.

    Even if it is only one part of the story of the kind of federalism that has been entrenched in Nigeria since oil wealth replaced cash or export crops as the principal source of revenue in our country, this story is valid and is not without some merits. This is because even in countries like Turkey or Lesotho that are, for the most part, nearly ethnically and linguistically homogenous, control over such over-concentration of resources and power at the centre of governance is full of potential for abuse and misuse. In a multiethnic, multilingual and culturally diverse country like Nigeria, a center of governance that is so strong in relation to the federating units is nothing but a recipe for economic and social crises so deep, so endemic that the nation is forever on the brink of disintegration. This is why we have been through a bitter civil war whose aftermath and legacies still haunt us. This is why our ethnic, regional and religious differences are so heavily politicized that it is part of normal political discourse for threats of war and catastrophe to be issued in the name of the diverse ethnic communities of the country. Finally, this is why 2015, the year of the next cycle of presidential, state and local elections in our country, has emerged as yet another horizon of great fear and anxiety about the survival of the country as a federation. This particular point brings us to the profile of the other half of the story of federalism in Nigeria in the last three or four decades.

    It takes no great powers of observation and discernment to see that where there is said to be a strong and imperial center in political governance in our country, there is a bottomless pit of weakness, ineptitude and mediocrity of the highest order. The signs and expressions of this state of affairs are legion. All the incumbents of the presidency since the return to formal democracy in 1999 have been exceptionally weak and indecisive in their execution of all the things that matter in the processes of governance. Yar’ Adua was at first satirically given the nickname of “Baba Go Slow”. By the time of his death while still in office, that nickname had been changed to “Baba Standstill”. Jonathan, as the whole world knows, is so clueless about how to contain challenges to his authority both within his party, the PDP and from other sources outside the formal or “legitimate” governing process that his wife has emerged as the “strongest” person in his administration. But far from being perceived as a “strong” person, she is for the most part seen as an object of ridicule and derision.

    Some might exclude Obasanjo from this pattern of weakness, mediocrity and ineptitude in the supposedly “strong” centre at Abuja, but this is only because they mistake his blustering, vindictive and megalomaniacal style of governance with strength and decisiveness. For in all the things that matter and matter greatly, Obasanjo was as weak as Yar’ Adua and Jonathan. At the beginning of his presidency, he boasted that inadequate and epileptic supply of power would be a thing of the past within two years; at the end of his two terms in office eight years later, the billions of dollars that he poured into the project had produced no change in power supply in the country because he simply could not deliver on this promise. The two elections that he supervised as President stand as the worst in brazen fraudulence, violence and vote rigging in the country’s political history. As a final measure of his ultimate weakness and ineptitude in things that really matter, there is the evidence of the failure of Obasanjo’s well publicized campaign against corruption, even though he had much help from the credibility and charisma and of his anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu.

    Dear reader, please remember this particular anticlimax to Obasanjo’s anti-corruption crusade: In the year 2006, he went to war with his Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, over allegations of corruption which Obasanjo backed up with a surfeit of documentary evidence; Atiku did not deny the charges; he simply countered with charges of Obasanjo’s own corruption that Atiku also backed up with copious documentary evidence published in prominent advertorials in the national press. After this, stories began to circulate both about Obasanjo’s own corruption and his embrace of the campaign against corruption, not because he was fundamentally against corruption, but as a tool against his real and imagined foes. No, Obasanjo was not a “strong” leader in the things that mattered; he was merely a pompous praetorian autocrat dressed in the garb of a born-again civilian democrat.

    It is not as difficult as it seems to bring these two contradictory halves of the tragic and also farcical story of federalism in our country together to form a whole. The basic requirement is that one must see that the fight for equality of opportunities and access to power and resources must be made simultaneously on two fronts: one, between all the federating ethnic groups and communities in the country; two, between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots of all the communities in the land. If you concentrate on only one of these two fronts, your perception of the problems and challenges of federalism in our country will be skewed toward either the one or the other of the two halves of the story – a strong centre with weak federating units; or a weak and ineffectual centre that cannot guarantee, in a land flowing with oil wealth, even the barest minimum of the basic necessities of life to the vast majority of Nigerians in every part of the country.

    I would like to end these observations and reflections by using the example of the bitter opposition between the so-called “Core North” and the South-south as a way of bringing the two fragmented halves of the story of federalism in our country together. At the JNC confab, these two groups are the most antagonistic, the most seemingly irreconcilable on the issue of fiscal and administrative federalism. The “South-south” which more or less corresponds to the Niger Delta wants the share of the revenue that comes to it from oil wealth to be increased significantly; and it wants greater autonomy in resource control. All this boils down to a centre that is weaker than what we have now. In contrast to these positions, the “Core North” wants to abolish the principle of derivation in the sharing of our oil revenues; for this reason, it wants the “strong” centre of governance in Abuja to be preserved or even strengthened. Well, it so happens that these regions are the two poorest and most economically depressed areas of the country. The years and decades of a strong grip on power at the centre by the political elites of the “Core North” has enriched a few hundreds of enormously wealthy and powerful people but has done nothing to improve present conditions of life and prospects for the future for the vast majority of the peoples of the region. In the “South-south” the same pattern is beginning to emerge: the struggles of the militants of the Niger Delta, together with the principle of derivation, has brought untold wealth to a handful of people while the great majority of the peoples of the region continue to live in conditions of unimaginable immiseration and deprivation. Thus, the delegates from these two areas of the country should be natural allies, not bitter foes. But this is only on the condition that the “federalism” they are fighting for is a federalism founded on the solid rock of justice, with equality of opportunities and access to the necessities of life for all, not just for elites speaking for and on behalf of “federating” ethnic groups and regional communities while all the time cornering the good things of this life for themselves, their families and their cronies.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Jonathan in the eyes of Kagame, Mugabe, Museveni

    Jonathan in the eyes of Kagame, Mugabe, Museveni

    It is rare for African leaders to turn on themselves, except perhaps over border disputes and maybe ideological disagreements. It is rarer still for more than one African leader to come together to take a fellow leader to the cleaners. But when the number of attackers rises to three in the space of a few months, the victim of their merciless putdowns must feel dejected, assuming he has the capacity to appreciate insult. If there is proof President Goodluck Jonathan recognises the burden to his presidency of the disfavour he has fallen into in the estimation of many of his fellow African leaders, and the image crisis their very frank verbal putdowns has caused him, he has not shown it. Alas, in less than three months, Dr Jonathan has been brutally excoriated by no less than three African leaders, to wit, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

    Contributing to a panel discussion on “Solving conflicts and peace building in Africa” organized by the African Development Bank (ADB) during its recent annual meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, Mr Kagame came down hard on West African leaders who travelled to Paris to discuss perspectives on Boko Haram as a regional terror menace. It was clear the Nigerian leader was his real target. Said he: “I think we must take responsibility and accept our failures in dealing with these matters…When I am watching television and I find that our leaders, who should have been working together all along to address these problems that only affect their countries, wait until they are invited to go to Europe to sit there and find solutions to their problems…it’s as if they are made to sit down and address their problems…Why does anybody wait for that?…In fact, the image it gives is that we are not there to address these problems…they are (African leaders) happy to sit in Paris with the President of France and just talk about their problems…It doesn’t make sense that our leaders cannot get themselves together to address problems affecting our people…African leaders, we don’t need to be invited anywhere to go and address our problems, without first inviting ourselves to come together to tell each other the actual truth we must tell each other.”

    Mr Kagame’s sarcasm must rank as one of the most elegant president-to-president broadsides ever. He was gentle on Nigeria; indeed, he was mindful of pushing the knife too deeply into the malleable backs of West African leaders. Nevertheless, he made the point very firmly that the leaders who gathered in Paris at the patrician behest of French President Francois Hollande to discuss the Boko Haram problem were vacuous. Nigeria has done its incredulous best to paint the Boko Haram nightmare as a West African problem, nay even a global (al-Qaeda) disease, but Mr Kagame wondered why neither Nigeria, which is buffeted by terrorists, nor West African leaders who were half-expectant the Nigerian disaster would come knocking at their doors, understood that their inability to provide leadership was more to blame for the morass than the resolve of the insurgents to subvert the sub-region.

    Mr Mugabe had earlier given Nigeria a good hiding. Like Mr Kagame, the Zimbabwean leader was chary of mentioning Dr Jonathan by name. But though he generalised, the target of his abusive remarks was undisputable. Speaking in the presence of his military chiefs at a luncheon given in his honour on his 90th birthday, the ageing leader delivered this rasping invective against Nigeria: “Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach your pocket to get anything done? You see we used to go to Nigeria and every time we went there we had to carry extra cash in our pockets to corruptly pay for everything. You get into a plane in Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly-dallying without taking off as they wait for you to pay them to fly the plane.” Dr Jonathan disputes the semantic certainty of what constitutes corruption and stealing, but there is no disputing the revolting image of Nigeria that he carries with him.

    Perhaps the most galling and injurious insult against Dr Jonathan came from Mr Museveni, himself an aficionado of leadership and a connoisseur of the rigour and mystique of power. Addressing a political event in Kampala, and eager to win the approval of his country’s electorate, the intemperate Ugandan leader offered this memorable lampoon directed mainly at Dr Jonathan: “I have never called the United Nations to guard your (Ugandans) security. Me, Yoweri Museveni, to say that I have failed to protect my people and I call in the UN….I would rather hang myself…We prioritised national security by developing a strong army; otherwise our Uganda would be like DRC, South Sudan, Somalia or Nigeria where militias have disappeared with school children. It would be a vote of no confidence in our country and citizens if we can’t guarantee our security. What kind of persons would we be? It would be a mistake for the government of Nigeria to negotiate with these people. The most important thing is to defeat them; then negotiations can come after that.”

    Mr Museveni of course exaggerates his distaste for Nigeria’s weakness and his approbation of Uganda’s capabilities, but he nonetheless conveys his exasperation with Nigeria’s leadership failures in unmistakable terms and telling language. Coming at a time of universal disapproval of Nigeria’s lack of decisiveness in the face of grave terrorist challenge, as well as Dr Jonathan’s languid response, the opinions of the three African leaders, not to say the overwhelming media disapprobation of Nigeria’s leadership elite, can hardly be faulted. The three leaders are themselves not unimpeachable. Mugabe has done more damage to Zimbabwe than Dr Jonathan has seemed capable of doing. In fact by refusing to lay a solid foundation for Zimbabwean democracy, Mr Mugabe appears to have set the stage for a very turbulent post-Mugabe era, perhaps far worse than Dr Jonathan’s lack of vision.

    On his own, Mr Museveni may have offered Uganda a fairly intellectual and effective leadership, but corruption, authoritarianism, extra-judicial killings, lack of true democracy and poor handling of the Lord’s Resistance Army revolt in the northern parts of the country do not give the impression he stands on a higher moral ground to lecture Nigeria. But neither Mr Museveni’s egregious shortcomings nor Mr Mugabe’s intransigence and political short-sightedness, nor yet the sometimes strong-arm tactics of Mr Kagame, vitiate the force and moral impact of their criticisms. More, their opinions accurately reflect the dismay the whole world feels about the shocking incapacitation of the Jonathan government in tackling Boko Haram, and especially in effecting the release of the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by militants on April 15.

  • Ukraine: Befuddling those who would rule the world

    Ukraine: Befuddling those who would rule the world

    The wise man knows the limits of his power but the powerful man rarely knows the limits of his wisdom

    Presidential elections took place in Ukraine last week.  The elections did nothing to quell the growing unrest. If anything, the elections exacerbated the tension between Kiev and the eastern region. The nation has graduated from the stage of violent protests to open fighting between government forces and eastern insurgents that have all the trappings of incipient civil war. The new president, a manufacturer of confections, seems destined to have his administration defined by the sourness of war. Meanwhile, the United States and other Western democracies oppose the quest of the easterners to seek greater autonomy or liberty from a central government that they believe means them no good. On the other hand, Russia, never known to be gentle in its conquests, now bristles at the Kiev government’s strong-arm methods to impose its will on the easterners. All along the battlements, irony abounds.

    I have written extensively about the Ukrainian predicament because it conglobates the major currents in the global political economy into one rotund mess. While the crisis plays out in the Ukraine, it has much to do with how the world order will be defined in the coming years and thus has much to do with all of us. This global dimension makes Ukraine the most important and, potentially, the most dangerous of our day’s conflagrations. While other conflicts stand more violently, this particular dispute is freighted with deep consequences the others can never portend.

    First, this is a battle of large powers for influence and control over a rich, and fertile but weaker nation. Second, it is a contest to reestablish the contours of a balance of power in Eastern Europe. A balance of power is only required where there are two or more rival powers. Implicit in this new reality is that Russia now asserts her traditional role as the Czar of Europe’s eastern reaches. However, this affronts the American/Western European myth of the Cold War permanently resolving the issue of a European balance of power in their occidental favor. For Russia to challenge this is to unfairly challenge the verdict of history, the West believes.

    These nations arrogant assume a fortuitous chain of events is to forever be recognized simply because those events placed advantage in their hands. They want every other nation and their peoples to believe history should now and forever stand still. They fail to understand as long as man exists, history will be made and unmade, not necessarily in their preferred image.

    Third, this is a battle to dominate the flow of oil and gas on the Eurasian land mass. Fourth, it is a battle whether America can continue to exploit the dominance of the dollar not only to control economic matters but to reverse the strategic foreign policy of another sovereign nation via imposition of sanctions. From the Russian viewpoint, it is an attempt to free itself from American “dollarism,” plotting a course where it and other nations begin to conduct their international transactions without absolute reliance on the dollar as the means of global exchange.

    Fifth, and most importantly, this is a battle whether the world will remain a “unipolar” one dominated by the lone superpower or will it revert back to the more historically-common multipolar constellation where several powers hold sway over their geographically limited (regional) spheres of influence. Again, America seeks to overrule the normal dynamics of history by demanding that history stand still and that other nations acquiesce in this static appointment for history. In this, American policy makers regrettably mistake the exceptional but transient factors leading to its global dominance as evidence America shall forever be the sole global power.

    America’s rise to power was an incident of history. Protected by two oceans from the incessant conflict of the old world, America developed economically in relative peace. It then uses its access to those two oceans, in combination with its colossal economic power, to spread its economic tentacles far and wide. While Europe and Asia destroyed themselves in two gruesome World Wars, distant America entered both conflagrations late. It was able to obtain the fruits of victory without experience the devastation of fighting a protracted war on its own soil.  The power and wealth differential between America and the rest of the world was a vast expanse as a result of these global wars. America stubbornly insists the gap should be maintained. In this, it fights the futile fight. In the long-run, the power differential must decrease.

    The factors that led to America’s ascendance are no longer operative to the same extent. Moreover, no country has an overriding concentration of human genius and industry to justify such a gap in perpetuity.  Many these rival powers own an enviable history of achievement, progress, prowess and power. Some of these nations were major contributors to world history for centuries. In the case of China, for several millennia, before America was a glint of an idea in the eyes of its rebellious founding fathers. As irony would have it, America now occupies a place similar to the British Empire against which it rebelled.

    Today, America uses its might to stop other nations from rebelling against its global domination. In the end, America cannot win this battle; it cannot hope to simultaneously contain the ambitions of Russia, China, India, Brazil and others. Implementing such a policy against an amalgam of nations with populations and landmasses several fold larger than America’s will be exorbitant madness born from ignorant arrogance. Yet, at this stage, America attempts this impossible feat. Ultimately, it will resign itself to the futility of the objective. This may take awhile. As the world awaits this prudent enlightenment, America may do much damage to itself and other nations in the process of trying to hold to an exalted yet intrinsically fleeting global position.

    In trying to simultaneously thwart numerous rivals, America ironically accelerates its own diminution by compelling these nations to cooperate with each to a degree that would not have been achieved had America embarked on a more nuanced strategic policy. Due to Ukraine, Russia has angled closer toward China, moving fast to establish a strategic partnership challenging America’s geopolitical, military and financial might.

    As intriguing as all this is, much of it lies in the uncertain future. The building blocks of that future are now being shaped in Ukraine.

    From the limited perspective of holding an election, the West gained a victory of sorts with the election of their acolyte, Petro Poroshenko, as the next president of this self-embattled nation. The election lends greater legitimacy to the government in Kiev. Weeks ago, Presdient Obama referred to the then government I Kiev as elected. His statement was a lie when made. If made today, it would be true. However, this change may be more semantic than substantive, for, on the larger chessboard, where grand strategy is played, the West continues to be outwitted by the Russian leader.

    The Western-backed coup that overthrew the elected Yanukovych government ignited unrest in eastern Ukraine to the extent that the Crimea seceded from Ukraine to cohere to Russia. Obviously, Russia helped instigate this move.  The change served Russian interests all too well for Moscow to have left such a thing to chance. In one quick grab, Russian regained a peninsula that it previously owned. Russia also preserved its Black Sea fleet, instrumental in projecting power into the Balkans and beyond the Dardanelles into the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean where the Syrian coast lies.

    Often what is not readily seen is the most important thing. By snatching Crimea, Russia more than doubled its shoreline on the Black Sea. Under the murky waters of that sea are great oil and gas deposits. Those deposits that once belonged to Ukraine are now, by virtue of the Crimean secession, Russian assets. The deals Western oil companies where to strike with the Ukrainian government are no longer to be unless the secession is reversed.

    The West thought the coup strengthened its hand against Russia. Instead, the coup strengthened Western influence in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, but weakened the West’s influence over how Russia would react to events in Ukraine. To regain its leverage, the West has embarked on a dangerous policy that can no longer pretend to be anything but anti-Russian. Western policy is two-fold. First, impose sanctions to weaken the Russian economy with the thin hope this will undermine Putin and begin the process of his demise. Second, cause such havoc and violence in eastern Ukraine that Putin is forced to intervene militarily to protect the Russian-speaking populace of that region. If they can entice Putin into the snare, they will inflict grievous sanctions on Russia and flood military help into Ukraine. The desire is to heap such an inglorious defeat on Putin that the walls of his Kremlin will crack from within and without.

    Understanding the limits of his power and the extent of his nation’s interests, Putin refused the bait. Again, the West miscalculated. They believed Putin craved eastern Ukraine so much that he awaited the slightest pretext to annex the region. They thought his annexation of Crimea had revealed unrepentant land lust. However, the strategic, economic and historic importance of Crimea is vastly greater than eastern Ukraine’s.

    Putin does not want to own eastern Ukraine. He would rather have it as a buffer between him and the West. To seize eastern Ukraine resolves no strategic question for him. All it would do is to draw a stark dividing line between EU/NATO Europe and Russia. This would be a line of friction, compelling Russia to devote tremendous resources to that border. It is more advantageous to have a buffer state between Russia and the West’s sphere of influence. Provided Russia maintains influence, such a buffer insulates Russia from Western provocations. It provides Putin breathing room.

    The West hoped Putin would salivate over Eastern Ukraine and leap at it like a starving man at a buffet table. He did not bite because he realized the meal was not for him. The more the West goads him, the more he backs away. He removed troops deployed at the border so that a border incident could not be manufactured. Then he asked the eastern provinces to suspend their autonomy/secession plebiscites. The regions proceeded with the referenda notwithstanding the lack of formal Russian imprimatur.

    Certainly, Putin did not try to bring the anvil down on the eastern secessionists in a way that they would be forced to terminate their insurgency. Additionally, he has likely looked the other way as Russian irregulars join to aid their kinsmen in eastern Ukraine. All this is allowed because the eastern Ukrainians are allies who serve his purposes. But he does not want them under his roof. He would like them in the outer tent. Putin would rather Ukraine remain whole, but in an unsettled condition, with the eastern region looking to him as its benefactor. In this way, he always has a hand in Ukrainian events while maintaining the buffer between him and EU/NATO. This scenario secures his interests better than expanding his border westward only to abut a rump western-leaning Ukraine completely in the EU/NATO orbit.

    This is not to say that all Western nations are as seized with confrontation as America. While German Chancellor Merkel maintains a public face of solidarity with the American policy, German officials are unhappy with America’s hardnosed policy. They feel it is bellicose. German newspapers have carried stories of German intelligence leaks revealing that hundred of America intelligence, security and military operatives have clandestinely been inserted into Ukraine to help Kiev suppress rebellion in the eastern region.

    This help may have come with unjust and lethal results.  During unrest in Odessa, groups of peaceful anti-Kiev protestors ran into a government building to hide from marauding pro-government skinheads. As police and army stood aside and watched, the skinheads tossed Molotov cocktails into the building until it was alit. Dozens of innocent people were killed in the ensuing fire. While trying to escape the flames, others were shot by the vigilantes.  All of this was captured on videotape. No one was arrested for the gruesome massacre of people simply exercising their right to protest against government. The West did not issue a diplomatic protest or make a peep.

    This incident raises an interesting point. The West fervently accuses Putin of orchestrating eastern events. This could well be. However, justice requires that the West is measured by the same stick by which Putin is judged. If so, then the West must be complicit in fomenting trouble since the presence of American clandestine operatives has been revealed by one of America’s staunchest allies.

    Here, something must be said of mainstream electronic media. Their beating the drums of war has become shameless. They have abandoned all objectivity in the matter. They have carried the storyline of the American government as if they were America’s private-sector Ministry of Information. When the Odessa massacre took place, international television stations had the information about culprits. Yet, they purposely distorted their reporting so the

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    general public would be confused as to who did the dying and who did the killing.

    Beware of what you see on television regarding the Ukraine. So much is at stake; the controlling powers will not leave world opinion to be shaped by the truth. That would leave too much to chance. Instead, they have rigged their news accounts to direct our minds to an appointed end. There was even a CNN report lambasting Putin for purportedly being friendly with the “Italian Scandal,” former PM Berlusconi. Such a report would seem scurrilous and not even worthy of comment except that this is the same negative rollout deployed against Libya’s Gaddafi before sending him to another realm.

    However, Putin is not Gaddafi and Russia is a much heavier load than Libya.

    We must keep our eye on Ukraine. It is a cautionary tale for nations seeking to ply the path of independence in their foreign policies. If a nation opposes western foreign policy, the West’s reaction may be a muscular, military one although the offending nation never issued a threat of a martial nature.  The present crisis also reveals a dilemma in the concept of democracy. Is it equally important to have democracy and equality between nations as within nations? The West has mastered the ploy of attacking its international foes on the grounds that these nations are undemocratic. In claiming to promote democracy within nations, America and its allies seems to have scotched the notion about democracy and equality among nations. Instead, if a nation does not behave as they wish, they are primed to toss sanctions or worse until that nation repents. Thus far, Putin has danced around their clumsiness to avoid major confrontation. Should he maintain such poise, he will deserve a peace prize that he will never get. Should he misstep, he will have war instead.

    Against this backdrop, Ukraine trembles as potentially the most dangerous spot on earth. While Russia plays the traditional amoral game of power politics, America and its allies claim a moral superiority that affords them the right to do whatever they wish, including the incitement of violence in one nation to set a trap goading another nation into war. Through such machinations are great wars started. Conservative American militarists would like nothing better than fight Russia in order to finish through firepower what the Cold War partially accomplished by attrition – the destruction of Russia as a competitor. However, the disastrous Afghan and Iraqi military campaigns demonstrate that, for all her power, America is not very good at finishing wars that it starts. More importantly, there is nothing great about war except the enormity of the destruction it visit on the unarmed and innocent.

     

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  • Exploring all options to end Nigeria’s afflictions

    Exploring all options to end Nigeria’s afflictions

    Many Nigerians are already displaying naïve patriotism that is blind to the new global governance ethic which enjoins each nation to respect the human rights of its citizens;

    It is gratifying that one of the points made by President Jonathan on the occasion of the federal government’s Democracy Day is his commitment “to continue to partner with the civilised world to confront international terrorism and every other challenges with patriotic zeal and determination.” The president is certainly not alone; he must be echoing the determination of many Nigerians that the coming of foreign powers to Nigeria must be put to strategic advantage for the peoples of Nigeria.

    Not since 1960 has Nigeria had the blessing or misfortune of serving as host to international powers being referred to in President Jonathan’s speech as partners from the civilised world. In its infancy as a state-nation, Nigeria was even so ‘patriotic’ to the effect that it rejected offer of a Defence Pact from its colonial master, Great Britain. Just about fifty years later, the world’s hegemon, the United States, the creator of Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Britain’s colleague in the scramble for and partition of Africa, France,  China that was not a power when Nigeria became independent, are all here  to help Nigeria solve its daunting security problems.

    Many Nigerians are already displaying naïve patriotism that is blind to the new global governance ethic which enjoins each nation to respect the human rights of its citizens; prevent its citizens from falling into the pit of poverty; and promote citizens’ life, property, and happiness. What such Nigerians are invoking is the spirit of patriotism that was in vogue in the middle of the twentieth century when Nigeria was born. In those days, it did not matter how uncaring or effete a country’s governors were, leaders of other countries had no right to intervene in what was considered religiously as a country’s internal affairs. Nobody at that time ever thought that the world would advance from enclaves of power captured by strongmen through rigged elections or military takeovers to the point when democracy, especially freedom for all, would become the reference point for countries that require respect from the international community.

    When formal globalisation as an economic system emerged, several dictators thought it would stop at encouraging trade across nations without insisting on any global ethical framework to make such economic interaction across borders mandatory on member states. But with the coming of UN Millennium Declaration, leaders of all countries in the organisation signed on to a document that enjoins them to accept “a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level,” with all member countries accepting the duty to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.”

    Many Nigerians have started to think aloud about the mess their country is in. Some people are already blaming President Jonathan for throwing the country’s doors open to international powers, saying that he is encouraging the United States that predicted the fall of the country by 2015 to come and do the job of undertakers while others say that the United Kingdom has come principally to protect the interest of those to whom it handed Nigeria in 1960. France’s presence is being interpreted as one to ensure that the colonial project is not dismantled overnight by the United States and China, two countries that did not ‘sacrifice’ to create the colonies that morphed into neo-colonies all over Africa. On the other hand, many Nigerians are castigating Jonathan for waiting too long to ask for help from those who have the wherewithal to help save a country from its own internal afflictions that help sustain its failed-state status and are thus capable of bringing an end to its status as Africa’s largest multinational state. Both groups also claim to be ‘patriotic’ Nigerians. Still, many others are saying that the international powers now in the country to save it from destruction by Boko Haram should be given no more than three months to complete their assignment and leave the country to its ‘patriotic’ owners.

    Even though citizens are not privy to the internal workings of Jonathan’s government that encouraged him to finally accept the offer of special assistance from U.S., U.K., France, China, and Israel, it is not unlikely that Jonathan must have re-read the contents of the Millennium Declaration and its demand on heads of state or government to recognise the need to protect vulnerable citizens, such as the 200 Chibok girls kidnapped by the country’s most intolerant and vicious Islamic terrorist sect or hundreds of innocent citizens gunned down or destroyed by bombs in Nyanya, Borno, or Jos. We should leave the assessment of Jonathan’s decision to welcome many of the world’s military powers to the shores of Nigeria to professional historians and pay attention to how the country can take strategic advantage of the presence of these countries at a time that its security appears to be in shambles.

    If this country seriously needs to stay together as one, it certainly needs to look beyond nineteenth-century notion of statehood. It needs to recognise that the problem threatening its unity is not just Boko Haram. Without doubt, the violence being perpetrated by Boko Haram makes it the most fiendish of Nigeria’s challenges; however, there are other challenges that are being swept under the mat by those who have benefited (or still benefit) from governance of the country since 1960. With a terrorist group that successfully attacks army barracks with rocket launchers, armoured cars, and keeps hundreds of school girls captivity for over thirty days, it should not surprise genuinely patriotic citizens that the curtain of the play of the Nigeria project is about to close.

    Anyone quick to cite the issue of puncturing of Nigeria’s pride to support calls for withdrawal of Western powers from the country’s shores must be overlooking the fact that Nigeria had lost its pride long ago. It is not in any way one of the countries on any of the positive lists of states that are meeting the demands of good governance. While Jonathan may be the leader under whose charge Nigeria deteriorates to an abysmal level, it is honest for all of us to admit that he is not the major author of the myriad problems that threaten the country’s peace and stability. Nigeria’s problems derive from decades of a manipulative political culture that privileges a section of the country over others. The root of Boko Haram and other forms of criminality including compulsive corruption in the country cannot be divorced from a political structure that imposes internal imperialism in the name of national unity or uniformity on a nation-space that requires respect for diversity.

    A time that two of the countries that colonised most of Africa and created most of the countries with the continent’s serious political and cultural problems choose to come to Nigeria to chase out Boko Haram and rid the country of the scourge of international terrorism is a good time for the world’s hegemon, the United States, to confer with various vested interest groups recruited to fight terrorism on how to support Africa’s political structures and institutions for the benefit of its citizens, not just its leaders. Getting rid of Boko Haram may not be enough to bring peace, stability, and development to Nigeria. Assisting Nigeria to come to terms with the requirements of sustaining a multiethnic and multi-religious country and thus provide a conducive environment for sustainable democracy and development may, in the long run, be more important than just driving out the violent Islamic sect.

    Regardless of the primary reason for Western powers to come to save Nigeria from Boko Haram, being here may be a rare opportunity for genuine friends of Nigeria to give teeth to the UN’s Millennium Declaration on meeting the special needs of Africa: “supporting the consolidation of democracy in Africa and assisting Africans in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world economy.”

  • In memory, and for memory

    In memory, and for memory

    (On the passing of Yoruba Paterfamilias)

    Once again, the Yoruba people have been thrown into a state of joyous mourning, if ever there could be such an oxymoron. They are mourning the passing of some of their most respected and revered fathers who recently joined the ancestors. But at the same time, they are celebrating the lifetime achievements of these Yoruba avatars, and the honour and respect they have brought to their ethnic group and their nation.

    The grim reaper has been busily at work. One after the other, the old men have been falling, like the last lap of honour after a great race. At the last count, there were five of them who had bid the nation a final farewell, and in quick succession, too. When shall we see the likes of these great men again?  When shall the Yoruba race be host to such exemplary individuals who made a shinning difference to their community and country at large?

    The youngest of them was the legal luminary, G.O.K Ajayi , who was buried at Ijebu Ode on Thursday on what should have been his eighty third birthday. Next was the urbane and quietly cultivated Sir Michael Otedola, a former governor of Lagos state, who was interred in his idyllic village of Odoragunse on Friday. Then there was Chief Degun, the distinguished civil servant.  After them the duo of the nonagenarian OtunbaO.A  Osibogun and the centenarian Professor C.O Taiwo.

    In Godwin Olusegun Kolawole Ajayi, you had the exemplary legal genius who deployed his formidable forensic endowment in the service of progressive social engineering. In Chief Degun, you had the quintessential technocrat and unblemished public servant who joined others in laying the foundation of Yoruba bureaucratic modernity. In Otunba Osibogun you had the exemplary community leader who left his society much better than he met it.

    In the refined and ever urbane Sir Michael you had a man of amazing grace and courtly civility who retreated in retirement behind a wall of statesmanlike rectitude and almost prudish decorum. In Pa Oledele Taiwo, you had a man who refused to deploy his outstanding intellect for selfish personal gains.  They no longer come like these avatars.

    Of all these titans, it was perhaps G.O.K  Ajayi who struck the cord of affection and wild adulation with the Yoruba public imagination. Yet he was ever so retreating, so self-effacing and so modest. He was a star lawyer in every material respect. He brought class, elegance and a natural distinction to bear on the profession. With his quiet imperial carriage and aristocratic bearing, there was something about the man which reminded one of an ancient Roman proconsul. He looked noble and acted like a nobility.

    His dazzling gifts could have propelled him to the highest echelon of politics. Yet he shunned partisan politics like a plague. After the epic battle to restore Chief Ajasin’s stolen mandate, snooper recalled the great man warding off with a polite but firmly disobliging frown the mob that wanted to carry him shoulder-high.  He had merely done his duty to his profession, his community and country at large. It was time to go home. Thirty one years after, G.O.K has truly gone home to join his ancestors but the Yoruba people would not be in a hurry to forget this man particularly when recalling their electoral traumas in the hands of a diseased Nigerian post-colonial state.

    Yours sincerely attended Professor Taiwo’s final burial rites in his Oru Ijebu homestead. It was like the departure of a major royalty. The crowd would have been unprecedented for that rural community. From Ijebu Igbo through Oru and on to Ago Iwoye and Ilishan, the entire Ijebu outpost rose as one to give their departing illustrious son a resounding send off. The reception that followed interment would have made even a bi-centennial egungun cringe in envy.

    Yet, It says something about the seemingly Sisyphean fate of Nigeria that after contributing so much to the development and upliftment of their fatherland these titans should depart at a time of great stress and strain for the nation. Nigeria is in desperate straits. The omens are not too good. The tumult and turbulence arising from the abduction of the Chibok girls is merely a sub-text for something far more threatening. These are mere symptoms of a deeper national malaise, an organic crisis of the state in which the main actors appear perplexed and disoriented, in which the very structure of the state is in danger of being overwhelmed by forces of adversity.

    As we have had cause to note once or twice in this column, an organic crisis of the state occurs when the ruling class fails in a fundamental national project. It may be failure to safeguard the territorial integrity of the nation, leading to widespread insurrection. It may be due to failure to sustain or valorize democracy leading to a situation of anarchy and disorder. It may arise from the endemic inability of government to satisfy the basic yearnings of the populace for food, shelter and transportation manifesting in widespread discontent and edgy distemper. It may also arise from the inability of the state to protect the citizens and the failure of the army to uphold the territorial sanctity of the nation.

    To be sure and to be fair, this organic crisis of the state preceded the Jonathan administration. In a sense, it can actually be argued that Jonathan himself is a product and manifestation of the crisis. To be precise, Jonathan himself looked originally like a polytechnic pawn on the vast chessboard  of political intrigues. It is therefore no surprise that under him the organic crisis has worsened to include all the major indices of state failure.

    As usual with every major crisis of the state in post-independence Nigeria, the Yoruba have been caught in a double-bind in this one as well. It reflects a deep ambivalence about a Nigerian project that has turned into a horrific human abattoir; a roiling hell on earth. Going forward and oscillating between a rationally conservative Pentheus and a radically idealistic Prometheus, the Yoruba character as it has evolved over a thousand years of empire-building and empire-dismantling is also marked by a deep ambiguity.

    It is this ambiguity which is often a source of deep frustration and perplexity for their ethnic cohabitants in the Nigerian nation-space . It often leads to charges of double-dealing and perfidy. Historical evolution often determines national character.  For example, as empire builders themselves, the conserving and conservative aspects of the Yoruba character may lead to the conclusion that not everything about empires is evil and abhorrent. It is not impossible that the Yoruba aristocracy nurse a deep fascination and even respect for the Hausa/Fulani power masters and their hankering after order, stability and societal coherence.

    But the obverse of the coin is that the libertarian and forward looking side to the Yoruba nature also harbours a deep admiration and approval of the fiercely republican ethos and the revolutionary dynamism of the Igbo society. No society can progress without its revolutionary firecrackers. Where the Yoruba seem to part way with the Fulani oligarchy is in the stagnant and stagnating vision of human society which abhors inevitable change and the transition to modernity. It is sheer bunkum to imagine that some group of people are pre-ordained to be slaves. On the other hand, the Yoruba will balk and shudder at the radical disorder, the anarchic steamrolling, the sheer human wastage and perpetual convulsion of the Igbo permanent revolution.

    It will be stupid in the extreme to argue for the superiority of one social model over another. Such analysis always comes with a freight of primordial prejudice. Nevertheless, it is often crucial and even critical to isolate these traits with as much analytical integrity as possible with a view to throwing light on the social contradictions that drive contemporary Nigeria. Had these major nationalities been independent nations, they would have found within themselves the inner strength and internal resources to overcome these internal contradictions.

    For example, the flame throwing Yoruba dissidents of the First Republic had virtually succeeded in overthrowing their local tormentors but for the Federal might which kept the local tyranny going. But flame throwing was not nearly going to be enough to throw off their tormentors hiding under the federal might. It would require the radical republican daredevilry and fire power of mid-ranking Igbo officers whose worldview could not abide stability and order anchored on feudal injustice.

    Yet a few months later when the Igbo leadership wanted to bid a precipitate goodbye to Nigeria, Chief Awolowo demurred. It was either out of the Yoruba traditional fear of the unknown or fear of radical anarchy precipitated by a revolutionary rupturing of the old order. This tact and restraint when the chips are down and the temple is terminally threatened, the measured discerning to know when to pull the plug on the rampaging mob, is what many neutral observers see as a reflection of Yoruba political sophistication. Others not so sanguine are not impressed. They see it as evidence of rank dishonesty.

    It is a classic conundrum. Since they know how much it takes and costs to conjure order and stability in any society, natural empire builders can never be natural revolutionaries. No one can accuse Awolowo and his lieutenants of political cowardice. They were very clear in their mind about the radical frontiers of human endeavour to be traversed in the Yoruba march to full modernity. Yet It is also the law of nature and logic of human evolution that in any society at a given point, the most radical segment and most natural agents of change are those with little or nothing to lose.

    This classic conundrum and historic ding-dong in which conservative fear of the unknown mixes with radical optimism about the future has shaped and framed  the nature and terms of Yoruba engagement with Nigerian post-Independence politics. By paradoxical default, it is what has ensured a measure of stability for Nigeria and boosted its chances of survival. In times of stress, the howls of secession may loudly emanate from certain Yoruba trenches, but it is also the very moment the hegemonic political leadership of the race act in concert with others to find a way forward for the nation.

    In coming months as the crisis of the state deepens, the Yoruba political leadership will be forced by historical pressures to take some decisive steps which may well affect the stability and continued survival of the Nigerian nation. For example, it is well known that the dominant faction of the Yoruba leadership has been trying to forge a fraught alliance with the core north in order to heave the country forward.

    But it is becoming clearer by the day that the forces of entrenched status quo in the old north are bent on frustrating this alliance by insisting it is either their way or the highway. With its political back to the wall, the old north is in no political shape to give preconditions or to suborn attempts to craft a consensus from contending contraries. The west has nothing to seriously gain from this alliance. It is borne of the typical Yoruba obsession that this nation can still be fixed. But if the west were to pull out of the alliance, it will leave the road very clear for the return of the inept and clueless PDP piranhas. Whether the country can then survive another four years of such rule is another matter.

    From a different perspective, is also clear that the few patriots who went to the so called National Conference with the forlorn hope of radically restructuring Nigeria have had their balls smashed by the forces of entrenched status quo. It is now clear that if Nigeria is ever going to be genuinely restructured it is not going to be at a tea party. With the hope of radical restructuring dashed and the door of political redemption closed, the continuous slide into anarchy and anomie now appear to be irreversible. The Yoruba mob is already abroad. The nostrils pick the familiar smell of Mushin circa 1965 with much trepidation. There may just be a new Omo Pupa around the corner. Oh Yello!!!!

    It is just as well that these Yoruba exemplars have gone to join their ancestors. They have made their mark. Only a glutton for punishment would insist on living longer with such grim conditionalities. It is well. Goodnight sirs.

  • Ekiti/Osun 2014: PDP to import Niger-Delta militants

    Ekiti/Osun 2014: PDP to import Niger-Delta militants

    The president should know that he can only ill afford another theatre of war, especially in a multi-ethnic geo-political zone like the Southwest

    If there is any doubt about the Peoples Democratic Party playing games with the nation’s security, the involvement of a Niger-Delta militant, one Okubo Robert, as coordinator at the meeting to finalise the security plans of the Southwest PDP for the forthcoming gubernatorial elections, with both Fayose and Omisore reportedly in attendance, should blow away such doubts. That the soldiers reported by newspapers, in a story that is yet to be refuted, as accompanying the militant could shoot at demonstrating students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, is proof positive that President Jonathan will think nothing of deploying militants from his home base to shoot, maim or kill Yoruba people in the course of the coming elections in the region.  Also, the fact that Okubo Robert could order soldiers to shoot at defenceless students shows that a Boko Haram variant is taking root in that part of the country: otherwise why shoot at university students? The presidential assurances of peaceful elections delivered through his Special Adviser on Inter-party Affairs, Senator Ben Obi, at a meeting with the U.S Consular General, Jeffrey Hawkins, should therefore be taken with much more than a pinch of salt. Truth be told though, it is not that the president cannot be trusted as a person, but in the Southwest, he is at the mercy of absolute desperadoes who will do everything to misuse the sacred offices of both the Police Affairs Minister and that of the Minister of State for Defence as we have already seen serially. The president will therefore be thoroughly mistaken to trust these and other ‘do and die’ politicians that populate the Southwest PDP.

    It is obvious from the dangerous involvement of these reconstructed militants that there is a coincidence of interests between members of the power-mongering Southwest PDP caucus who have been shoved aside into political Siberia since 2010, and the president’s intent to do whatever it would take to guarantee his victory in 2015. Nigerians could not have forgotten so soon how Chief Bode George, as then President Obasanjo’s Man Friday, for instance, rode roughshod all over Yoruba land. That he has now been out-muscled by the ‘soldier-recruiting’ Kashamu means that should the PDP ever get a toe-hold in the region again, Yoruba land would be engulfed in a massive turf war reminiscent of what happens among the Italian Mafioso or the Mexican drug barons. To have a glimpse of what that would mean for the entire Yoruba land in terms of socio- economic development, is to take a retrospective look at the confusion and rudderlessness that have characterised PDP in Lagos State for over a decade and a half. This is one more reason Ekiti and Osun must vote right to ensure that Yoruba land never returns to the locust years.

    As already publicly attested to by former Ekiti State governor, Engr Segun Oni, those boasting to invest billions in the Ekiti election, and their infernal acolytes, are so desperate and dangerous that even if President Jonathan were not minded to personally approve of their evil designs, they could still go out, in his name, to infiltrate Niger-Delta militants into Yoruba land as we already saw in Ekiti with the influx of thugs coming in through Ondo State. The campaign of the Labour Party candidate, who is himself a PDP ally, is now not complete without an orgy of bloodletting. Being an accomplice, the Labour Party campaign has become a theatre of war, with thugs and fake police men shooting and maiming APC members as well as onlookers.  A victim of such at its Ikere rally is currently lying critically ill at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti. In contrast to that, the APC candidate has taken his campaign to the entire 131 towns

    and villages in the state without a single incident of thuggery; the only exception being when thugs in Fayose’s campaign office shot at a passing APC  campaign convoy and they had to be repulsed. PDP members and sympathisers in the Southwest may continue to bury their heads in the sand, living in denial, but they will wake up to reality the morning after, when some rag tag Niger-Delta militants would have devastated their homeland. It is then they will realise the futility of evil. Nwon ni nwon o fe o nilu o ni o fe da orin –You are not wanted in a community, yet you want to be a lead singer; who will sing along with you?  The Yoruba people remember, as if it were yesterday, the total ruination the PDP brought upon them in those seven years of the locust after President Obasanjo had successfully messed up the country’s entire electoral system and inflicted that clueless party on an unwilling people. It was a period of unmitigated blood, tears and ruin, as well as the total despoliation of our entire road infrastructure, with the Ile-Ife-Benin Express Road broken in two at Igbara-Oke, just as education reached its very nadir in the region. Insecurity, like we now have nationally, was the order of the day throughout Yoruba land, as epitomised by the activities of the late patron of amala politics in Oyo State.

    It is hoped, in the extant circumstances, that Yoruba elders, especially our revered royal fathers, as well as our other cultural icons, will draw the president’s attention to this looming danger for the Yoruba nation. It is far beyond partisan party politics or elections though these militants could also be used to ferry stuffed ballot papers into both Ekiti and Osun with unimaginable consequences. Nearly half a century back, and in similar circumstances, the incomparable Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, declared as follows: “The truth about the people of Western Region (Yoruba People) is that they are sufficiently enlightened and bold to refuse to be led by the nose by any person or group, however sophisticated such person or group may appear. They are slow to anger, robust in contentions, alert to their rights, and will fearlessly resist and combat evil, whenever and wherever they discern it, with all their might and resources.” One can only hope that our elders will see the larger picture and plead with the president to restrain these Delta Boys and warn their patrons, the PDP hawks and power mongers in the Southwest, and those others, who have declared the Ekiti and Osun elections as war zones, to sheathe their swords. The president should know that he can only ill afford another theatre of war, especially in a multi-ethnic geo-political zone like the Southwest  as that will tantamount to literally writing the country off the world map.

    It is apposite to mention in this regard, and as hinted here some two weeks ago, that the Oodua Foundation, a U.S-based think-tank of the Yoruba intelligentsia, has made good its promise to bring this looming danger in Yoruba land to world attention.  Led by its chair person, Professor Adeniran Adeboye, the group consisting of its patron, Senator (Prof) Banji Akintoye, Legal Counsel, Ayo Turton and the Liaison Officer, Wale Adelagunja, visited the United States Senate on the invitation of the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on African Affairs, Senator Chris Coons, this past week almost the same time as the Consular General was giving his own warnings about the importance of the Ekiti/Osun elections. That certainly was no mere coincidence. Having thanked the U.S for her assistance towards securing the release of our stolen Chibok girls, the delegation tabled the all-pervading fear that the PDP-led federal government was determined to rig the forthcoming gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun states and urged the U.S to impress on the Jonathan government, the inevitability of a free, fair and transparent election which the Senator promised to facilitate.

    Those who, having seen the futility of their chimerical ambitions and now want to play the role of ‘agent provocateurs’, in the manner of  kaka ki eku ma je eree a fi se awadanu , i.e wanting to work towards the Ekiti election being declared inconclusive by instructing their imported thugs to cause massive unrest, should be careful if they do not want to put a peoples’ cultural curse upon themselves.

  • A protest and its politics

    A protest and its politics

    Imagine if there were no relentless #BringBackOurGirls protests, the unfortunate 276 Chibok schoolgirls whose story has captivated the world would have long been forgotten – another statistic in an brutal insurgency which government informs us has claimed 12,000 Nigerian lives.

    Imagine if the hashtag activists and the local and foreign media had not stayed on this case, the Chibok girls would have disappeared from the radar of national discourse to be replaced by politicians jostling for 2015 ascendancy.

    Who, for instance, remembers that a few months ago 19 job-seeking youths perished after a badly-bungled Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment exercise? One or two weeksof outrage and a country used to Boko Haram killing hundreds for fun, quickly returned to business as usual.

    In some other land someone would have taken responsibility for the scandalous exercise and done the decent thing by resigning. In April, South Korea’s Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won, quit over the ferry tragedy in which over 180 died. He offered his resignation over criticism of the government’s handling of the sinking of a passenger ferry.

    Announcing his departure, Chung said the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”. The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.”

    Both President Goodluck Jonathan and his Minister for Interior, Abba Moro, consider it a light thing that 19 Nigerians are killed by the acts of omission and commission of government officials. That is why no one has been called to account.

    All over the world whenever a politician or government is caught up in some damaging scandal or controversy, their desire is that the issue quickly disappears or that the media would lose interest. Sometimes they get their wish as something more newsworthy breaks and the media moves on.

    But it doesn’t always work that way. Occasionally the public is transfixed by an issue and once the press sinks in its teeth it doesn’t let go easily. When that happens, those on the receiving end quickly resort to blaming imaginary enemies for their errors of judgment.

    The Chibok schoolgirls saga is one such matter that is not going to disappear from the front pages irrespective of what the president, his party or the military think of the #BringBackOurGirls protests and those they imagine are driving it.

    Nothing will please the president and his party men more than if the protesters disappeared from Abuja parks where they have been keeping the plight of the girls alive in the world’s consciousness. Their persistence is so un-Nigerian given that we are a people blessed with conveniently short memory. We hardly fight for anything – especially if the process would cause us pain.

    That is why a succession of rulers who understood our psyche never took our “uprisings” over petrol price hikes and sundry matters seriously. They always took the cynical position that in a mere three days people would run out of steam. As hunger pangs begin to bite the ranks of the would-be “revolutionaries” will start to crack. In these instances mass poverty in the land became a tool in the hands of the rulers.

    Now that the hashtag activists have refused to stop making government uncomfortable with their protests, the tried and tested Abuja formula is to use thugs ostensibly exercising their own right to protest to muscle out the original demonstrators. That was essentially what played out last week when a bunch of clowns parroting the narrative of the government set upon #BringBackOurGirls protesters.

    After Oby Ezekwesili’s group decided to march on Aso Villa with the campaign to free the girls, President Jonathan headed off a potentially awkward confrontation by sending his Minister of State for Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and a couple of others to tell the protesters that they had better address their demands to Boko Haram.

    It was also not surprising to find Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Alexander Badeh, addressing very supportive “protesters” last week. The very friendly bunch he spoke with bore banners singing praises of the military and denouncing its critics. It all lines up perfectly with the narrative emanating from Defence Headquarters which views every unflattering portrayal of its handling of the war in the North East as part of some dark conspiracy.

    To top it off, everyone from the president to very senior figures within the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have reverted to the old line that the insurgency was not only manufactured by the opposition, the undying global #BringBackOurGirls campaign was another sinister maneuver by the ever resourceful All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Information Minister, Labaran Maku and Senator Ita Ennang have suggested, incorrectly and mischievously, that the protests have been led largely by members of APC. They also claim that they only happen in states controlled by the opposition!

    The other day I noticed Mrs. Maryam Uwais, wife of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, speaking for the campaigners. That clearly means she’s picked up an APC membership card unbeknownst to many! There are lots of decent Nigerians backing these protests and they should feel offended by this attempt by desperate Abuja politicians to dismiss their genuine concern for these innocent children who are in their second month of captivity.

    In any event, being a member of the APC does not strip a Nigerian of his constitutional right to protest. Since the ruling party insists on pushing this ludicrous line, I would suggest they start their own global #Boko HaramReturnOurGirls campaign. That will put APC in its place, give Jonathan a good night’s sleep and make Abubakar Shekau drive back to Chibok to deliver the girls posthaste!

    First Lady, Patience Jonathan, obviously ventilating what the thinking in the corridors of Aso Villa was, famously set the tone when in the early days of the protests she warned demonstrators to “keep it in Borno State.” Unfortunately for those who would like the protesters to disappear even when the Chibok girls have not returned, the dog has long bolted from the kernel.

    This thing can no longer be contained by the usual crude strong arm tactics or by demonising the opposition. The powerful human story of these girls still trapped in the grip of an unstable terrorist has become an international cause célèbre. The only thing that will end the protests is the safe return of the girls. Those who say we should direct our protests to Boko Haram just don’t get it.

    As terrorists the group has done its ugly bit by snatching the girls. It is the responsibility of the government to protect Nigerians and to bring the girls. The buck stops at their table and it is to them that our demands will continue to flow. The direction of the calls for action can only be reversed once the government says it has ceded its constitutional responsibility to the sect.

    License to torture

    It’s been a long time since I looked with such anticipation to getting my picture taken. In the age of the selfie you would think that a snap or two would be no big deal. But this was no ordinary photograph. I was rushing to a Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) office on Lagos Island to get my visage “captured” as part of the final phase of the long process of renewing my driver’s license.

    I had heard horror tales from many who had managed to snag the new license, but nothing prepared me for the sight that greeted me that wet morning. My heart sank as I entered a hall where a tense crowd of between 200 and 300 persons was anxiously waiting for proceedings to take off. Helpfully, the official directing affairs assured that some of us might be there till 8.00 pm!

    As the process chugged along slowly, I tried to make sense of the seemingly chaotic comings and goings – convinced there had to be method to what was unfolding before our collective eyes. Predictably, it didn’t take long for frustrations to boil over.

    The longwinded official was having a hard time controlling a bunch of obdurate Nigerians who wanted to be served immediately. But even the more amenable were getting irritable because they had been coming and going, and today did not look like it was going to end well.

    At some point, a bunch of us were asked to return later in the afternoon. I dashed across town only to return to be confronted with a crowd that had only marginally shrunk. By this time some were already cursing a country where nothing works – wondering why they had to spend days just to get a picture taken.

    When it was 4.00 pm a group of us were informed that it was in our best interest to return the following Monday. Shoulders drooping we trooped out dreading the prospect of another day going through the same process.

    There is something dreadfully wrong with the way the driver’s license is currently being processed. It is crying for urgent reform. Whatever it was designed to achieve, it is also resulting Nigerians being treated in way that is akin to torture. Valuable man hours are being wasted on the process and it doesn’t have to be so: except if we are being told that making the process cumbersome is an end in itself. FRSC help!

    Rebasing revisited

    I am one of those who took a positive view of the rebasing of our GDP – an exercise that saw Nigeria overtaking South Africa as the continent’s largest economy. That said I refuse to get carried away and join those who now think we are a rich country because a handful of individuals own private jets.
    Perspectives like this one by British Member of Parliament, John Redwood, might help. In a blog not too long ago, he said: “We have recently learned that following a recalculation of GDP for Nigeria, it emerged last year as Africa’s largest economy with a GDP of $509 billion. It overtook South Africa in terms of total output, but still remains a long way behind in per capita income given the much greater population in Nigeria.
    “What should give us pause for thought is how small this output still is for a country of 170 million people. It means Nigeria’s output is still lower than London’s, with just 8 million people. It should put our criticisms of the UK economy into context, and reminds us how much more there is to do to tackle poverty in other parts of the world.”