The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Ekiti and Osun: Nigeria’s make or mar elections

The fear today is that rigged elections in any part of the Yoruba homeland could provoke Yoruba reactions that could escalate into horribly wider conflicts beyond election protests

It has been the unalterable position of this writer that the Jonathan presidency’s main pre occupation with the 2015 presidential election is now how to vitiate the votes of key opposition geo-political zones, where elections hold at all, because as things stand today, the arithmetic, going by the population of each zone, is a major source of concern to it. These include the North West where there are now increased waves of reciprocal mass killings between groups that have, like forever, lived together in peace; the North East which, no thanks to years of internal misrule, has played into their hands by birthing the ferocious Boko Haram and, of course, the South west, which must reckon as the greatest obstacle to Jonathan’s 2015 ambitions. To take care of the Southwest, not only has the presidency assembled the usual political outcasts in the region, it has successfully breached what was hitherto an impregnable regional elders’ redoubt with the result that men you could count on a few years back have completely sold out.

The above scenario, especially in the Southwest, has yielded circumstances so bewildering a very respectable, completely apolitical Yoruba Diasporan Think Tank, the OODUA FOUNDATION, whose members are drawn from academics and the professions, and residing in various countries across the globe but with its international headquarters in the state of Delaware, United States of America, has cried out to draw attention to the likely, very grave consequences of allowing history repeat itself in the region. In its clarion call dated 4, May 2014 and titled DO NOT START VIOLENT CONFLICTS IN THE YORUBA SOUTHWEST OF NIGERIA, the group, in a powerful 1500-word statement that would have to be paraphrased here for lack of space, declared as follows:

“We are alarmed by the trends that we see in the politics of our homeland in Nigeria. We discern a truculent resoluteness to foment very tangled violence in our homeland in southwestern Nigeria in the months ahead. We Yoruba are an ancient civilisation; we had lived for over a thousand years in well-organised kingdoms and cities before the coming of European colonialism at the end of the 19th century. We command the cultural capability to change our rulers smoothly by conducting free and fair elections. In the decade before Nigeria’s independence, when the British overlords allowed all sections of Nigeria to elect their rulers, we ran free, fair and decent elections and became the pace-setter in the development of democratic politics in Nigeria. We became the first people in Africa to institute universal Free Education for our children, and the first people in Africa to make television available to our people. Our politicians are more than able to compete peacefully and responsibly at elections, to responsibly accept the outcomes of free and fair elections, and then to go on to give our people competent and accountable leadership and governance.

Since independence in 1960, we have constantly demanded that we be allowed to run the free and fair elections that the masses of our people desire. In resistance to the crudely and violently fraudulent elections that have become the dominant and abiding character of Nigerian politics, many of our youths lose their lives at every election. We want this kind of loss of lives at elections to end in our nation. In particular, we are desperate to ensure that, in the State elections that will come in our homeland between now and August, the machinery of federal power at the disposal of some powerful politicians will not be able to bring electoral fraud and its usual consequences over our homeland.

From various directions and sources, indications seem to be accumulating that the Yoruba homeland of southwestern Nigeria could be heading towards serious, cataclysmic, violence. This is easy to discern in the tortuous electoral politics being generated among the people, the worried looks among the people, their utterances, and their numerous writings in countless outlets.

The immediate backdrop to this picture is the approach of gubernatorial elections in two of the six Yoruba states of the Southwest in June and August 2014. The historic background is that the Southwest is the part of Nigeria where the common people have had, since the independence of Nigeria in 1960, to put up stiff, often violent, resistance to the brutal rigging of their elections by federal electoral agencies and officials, which acts of electoral fraud have often occasioned bloody conflicts, death and ruin.

Owners of an ancient political culture that was based on orderly selection of rulers, the Yoruba people of Southwest Nigeria have demonstrated uniquely high regards for free, fair and orderly elections in modern times. Unfortunately, they belong to a federal Nigeria in which the holders of federal power assume that it is part of their prerogative to rig elections in any part of Nigeria. Yoruba resistance to the federal acts of electoral fraud in the Yoruba homeland has produced some of the most serious uprisings in the history of independent Nigeria. Their epic three-month uprising against the federally backed rigging of their Western Region’s election in October 1965 was responsible for destroying the first government of independent Nigeria and ushering in the first Nigerian military coup and military dictatorship. Because the Nigerian federal rulers, agencies and officials have continued, nevertheless, to disregard Yoruba cultural sensitivities in the matter of elections, they have, in the years since 1966, pushed the Yoruba into many other serious acts of resistance. The fear today is that rigged elections in any part of the Yoruba homeland could provoke Yoruba reactions that could escalate into horribly wider conflicts beyond election protests.

On aggregate, the Southwest is about the only peaceful area in Nigeria today. It’s well-known culture of religious tolerance, and open-handed hospitality to, and smooth inclusion of, foreigners into society, has for decades made the Southwest the destination of most Nigerians fleeing from their poorer, insecure, or conflict-rattled homelands. For decades, Nigeria has increasingly experienced conflicts, violence, high crimes, inter-ethnic and religious blood-letting in most of its regions. These have reached a peak today, especially with the killings and devastation carried out by Boko Haram. More and more, the picture is that Nigeria lacks the capability to control these violent troubles.

Finally, we serve notice that we are hereby taking this important matter to the attention of the most important members of the international community – in particular to the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, and the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan and Canada”.

It is just as well that authentic Yoruba opinion molders, not some concentrated political outcasts and their newly acquired collaborators, have spoken. President Jonathan can, in all ‘innocence’, claim he knows nothing of all these shenanigans but we know their antics too well to be deceived all over again. We know, for instance, that those who announced their willingness to invest their billions in this looming ‘electoral heist’ are already, as has become the norm in the politics of their part of Yoruba land, in agreement with INEC and key security officials, to make available to them for use in the two elections, only those electoral officers and security agents who will be prepared to swear to oaths, probably lying naked in coffins, after which they will be handed huge bribes.

I would like to conclude by saying that given the circumstances in which the misuse of our security forces by the likes of the Minister of State for Defence has resulted in the United States, for instance, reportedly becoming rather reluctant to share intelligence with the entire Nigerian security architecture, it is hoped that the Commander-in-Chief will think twice before deploying our soldiers, especially, and policemen to unwholesome election duties in Ekiti and Osun states given the utmost certainty that such unedifying assignments will further compromise our military and bring our country to further ridicule in the international community. I think the Boko Haram war front is too bloody and sickening enough to dare open another with its ramifying consequences

May 18, 2014
State of emergency is an overrated panacea

Few expected President Jonathan not to seek an extension of the state of emergency he declared in the three north-eastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe a year ago. It was also always going to be difficult for the National Assembly to decline to support the measure, as indeed the House of Representatives has shown by voting in favour of the continuation of the drastic containment strategy. From all indications, and from their antecedents, neither the Jonathan government nor the National Assembly has at anytime in the past six or so years exhibited the courage or innovativeness needed to propound radical and unorthodox measures to combat serious national security challenges. They are unlikely to do so in the coming years without the deliberate and persuasive intervention of the electorate one way or the other. Unfortunately, so far, the government, the public and the National Assembly have not really offered compelling reasons for either the vacation of the emergency proclamation in the Northeast or its continuation.

But consistent with my views over the past one year, I am unable to support the continuation of a state of emergency. Yes, it is true that what Dr Jonathan declared is state of emergency and not emergency rule, but given the experience so far, the proclamation has not curbed Boko Haram militancy nor ended the revolt. I had always known that due to the inability of the Jonathan government to understand the nature and course of the revolt, not to talk of the government’s incompetence in devising the right mix of policies and tactics to combat it, the objective of dealing with and terminating the revolt was going to be a tall order. Declaration of a state of emergency in the three states was simply a desperate measure to deal with the burgeoning menace. In the event, it proved to be a futile measure. The war, I am persuaded, can be fought without declaring a state of emergency.

There have been consolatory talks and arguments about the emergency restricting the militants to a smaller area of operation, unlike in the beginning when the sect seemed to be spreading like wild fire all over the North. While this is true, it is also a fact, as argued in the preceding article, that the constriction of the revolt has not attenuated its social, economic and even political impact. Nor has it stanched the flow of blood nor repaired the damaged bonds and shredded fabric that knitted the society together for decades.

More importantly, the government erroneously believed that the mere declaration of emergency was capable of dealing with the menace and precluding the need for a proper and adequate understanding of the fundamentals of the revolt and the paradigms needed to reorder and remould the society. In addition, the ongoing demystification of the army in the Northeast, and the appalling show of tactical inadequacy, general disinterestedness of the officers and troops to engage the enemy, and insufficient display of patriotic spirit have all combined to render counterinsurgency efforts ineffective, if not quite useless.

Until the army is reformed in all areas of operation, including intelligence and tactics, and competent officers and adequate logistics are deployed in the war effort, the extension of a state of emergency will avail nothing. During his last media chat, Dr Jonathan argued that he needed the state of emergency to avoid litigations that could arise from the military taking extraordinary but litigable measures in the theatre of war. Well, those extraordinary measures cost the government huge support in the early part of the war and catalysed the insurgents’ recruitment efforts. Though the army has improved its relations with the people, and generally avoided the brutal reputation that horrified the rest of the world, it has still been unable to deal the insurgency a death blow.

What the government needs are better tactics, less corruption in the procurement and supply of war materials, committed commanders, better and brilliant tactics, and a patriotic determination to fight the sect. But these will not come except the fighting troops can see a total cleansing of the government in Abuja and the entire bureaucracy to rid them of the larcenous and domineering ministers and aides who live big at the expense of the country while expecting soldiers to sacrifice their lives. If Abuja cannot show the patriotic glow consistent with the concept of national sacrifice, it would be hard to expect the war against Boko Haram to be accompanied with the determination and sacrifice expected from soldiers. More, inconsistent with the optimism of the public, neither the state of emergency, as promulgated, nor the foreign expeditionary forces will make the huge or permanent difference necessary to end the insurgency and secure lasting peace.

May 18, 2014
The Amazing Dr Jonathan…

Like a trapeze artist of extraordinary facility, but more often like a motorised robot with a programmed destination, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has finally arrived at the pinnacle of power in Nigeria without fuss and with less fanfare. It is the stuff of tantalising fables. It is absolutely stunning. Even by the standards of political magic in post-colonial Africa, there seems to be an ultimate sorcerer’s apprentice at work here.

Less than twelve years ago, Nigeria’s new leader was a pliant and self-effacing lecturer in Fisheries in the provincial state of Bayelsa. But less than eleven years after he became deputy governor, a series of astonishing gravity-defying stunts has catapulted him to the highest office in the land. It is a dizzying rise, to say the least. With the possible exception of General Obasanjo, no other Nigerian political figure could be said to be more adept at being at the right place at the right time.

There have been persistent rumours that Goodluck’s name is also a talisman to that effect. Goodluck has been very lucky indeed. But it would be sheer folly and political imbecility to reduce this man’s spectacular ascendancy to sheer luck. In politics, opportunities are one thing, being able to profit maximally from them is another matter. Jonathan combines great guile with boyish coyness; grim survivalist instincts with a feigned cluelessness; calculating conviviality with wary alertness; and a meek and inoffensive demeanour with a ferocious focus on the bigger picture.

While the struggle for succession was on, Jonathan did not put a foot wrong or utter an inappropriate word. It was a chilling act of self-possession. It was probably not by happenstance that the former number two, like a lost kid, should wander back to his old seat on his first day in office as Acting President. It was a drama of fetching humility. The Acting President could have been acting. But it works. It cloaks Jonathan with an aura of child-like innocence even when the proverbial dagger is ready.

When a man is this lucky, it will be petulant and churlish to begrudge him his luck. But we hope that Goodluck is lucky for Nigeria and not for himself alone. The benevolent gods seem to have bestowed special favours on the fellow. They have cracked the palm kernel of good fortunes for him. The joke out there is that to be cursed with Goodluck as a deputy is not a laughing matter. It is not funny, and we hope that Goodluck does not turn out to be another curse on Nigeria.

Despite his valiant beginning, the omens are not very reassuring. The proclamation that brought Dr Goodluck Jonathan to office can be faulted on the grounds of constitutionality. It is a fudge. But it is a typically Nigerian fudge brimming with creative deviousness and anarchic brio. There are whispers of a constitutional coup, if ever there could be such a daring oxymoron.

Rather than being summarily impeached for violating his constitutional oath, President Yar’Adua has been left off without as much as a slap on the wrist. Baring a biological coup d’etat, the Katsina nobleman may yet return to office in triumph. Rather than being put in trial for serial disinformation and treasonable forgery his core supporters are being left off the hook. No member of the disgraced and discredited federal executive council has deemed it fit to resign for collectively insulting our intelligence. And where a clear case of presidential abduction seems to have been established, the perpetrators are being asked to take a bow and depart.

The negative equilibrium which holds Nigeria together and which prevents a particular faction from gaining permanent ascendancy over the other factions is still very much in force. There is as yet no critical linkage between potent forces of civil society and equally progressive fractions of the state which could tip the balance in favour of a radical resolution of the Nigerian Question. Alas, as it was in the beginning, so has it been at the end of the beginning.

Just as it was the case during the June 12 crisis, the Abacha Inquisition and General Obasanjo’s Third Term fiasco, valiant and patriotic protesters have protested and gone home while the power masters have once again pronounced. Everybody has done their duty to God and country. The protesting class has protested while the ruling class has ruled. If one were to put this in a cruel formula, there is a neat division of labour out there and professional underdogs must not aspire to become top dogs. This feudalisation of modern Nigeria is still very much a work in progress.

Given this inauspicious background and his own insertion in the crucible of contending forces, it will be foolish to expect political miracles from Goodluck Jonathan. No man can be greater than the sum total of the contradictions that threw him up. Like the Shonekan interim contraption which strategically prevented back to back military rule while allowing the army to purge itself of contrary elements, the Jonathan interregnum is another holding device which allows the dominant faction of the ruling class to reorganise and to strategically reposition itself in time for elections next year, or this year as exigency and opportunism may dictate.

In the light of this, anybody expecting Jonathan to touch such incendiary materials as genuine electoral reforms, fiscal federalism, political restructuring etc is living in a fool’s paradise. If absent-mindedness overwhelms him and he turns in the wrong direction, he will be met by a disobliging frown by those who have put him in the saddle. If a kind nudge is not enough, a rap in the knuckle will do. Or some non-elixir tea as a final solution.

But contrary opportunities do abound. The main problem is the very platform that has thrown up Jonathan. As a party, the PDP has so badly mismanaged the country, so serially bungled the sanctity and integrity of the electoral process that it cannot hope to win any free and fair election in this country for the foreseeable future. If it were to rely on its customary miscreant tactics, then we will be looking at another doctrine of necessity in the coming months. To appropriate the Greek gods, let no man count himself lucky until he has carried his luck to the grave. Good luck to Goodluck.

First published in April, 2010.

May 18, 2014
The Kalabalge effect

As with electricity and water, so it is now with security: the people have taken to looking out for themselves. This signifies a gradual descent to anarchy

Leader, these days, events appear to be tumbling over each other to be the first to break out. So, we heard about the soldiers who mutinied and shot at their commanding officer because that one somehow stood in the way of the soldiers’ remunerations for putting their lives literally on the firing line in defense of their country against the boko haram. Ha! As if we did not see that coming. Then, if you are a philistine like me, you’ll love the hearty news that came to break the clouds of despair and torpidity over our inability to bring back home the Chibok girls kidnapped about four weeks ago by the same ideologically vacuous boko haram. The village of Kalabalge dared to hold out against that gun-toting group because it was determined not to go down fighting. Forewarned of an impending attack by the boko haram, the villagers gathered all the weapons of war they could muster, such as sticks, and resisted the insurgents, killing many among them. That really brought home the meaning of the phrase ‘to be forewarned is to be forearmed’.

Honestly, I learnt a few lessons from that Kalabalge story. First, it taught me that in any engagement, it is not the sophistication of my armoury that matters but the sophistication of my will power over the situation. This means essentially that I should cease to despair henceforth when there is a coincidental emptiness in my pot and purse. With a great deal of will power, I can command a surprising effect greater than that of Kalabalge: I can get fish from my neighbour’s fishpond to jump into my pot by hook, crook or persuasion.

Have you ever tried to fish? Apart from the fact that you can sit for an entire day and catch nothing or a tiny thing, think about the cramps to your ol’ legs. Think about the time wasted. Think about the time you sit there with all kinds of thoughts chasing each other around your head like little monsters on legs called children; think about all the deadlines you are failing to meet because you are on a fishing expedition, all the appointments you are failing to keep, the people you are failing to see as you sit there all alone… Ah, you realise, that is the life!

Let me tell you the story of one fish that failed to swallow the hook, line and sinker thing. One kind neighbor once brought me some big fish. As soon as the fish was being transferred to another container, it leapt out and found escape from the basket, slam dunk on the kitchen floor! To get the fish back became a life and life struggle between man and fish. The man attempted a trillion times to retrieve the slithery thing while bending down but the fish found it easier to slide off everywhere across the wet kitchen floor. The crook! Eventually, the thirty-minute dance ended when it occurred to the man to cover the fish with a big cloth. Blinded, the poor thing stopped all struggles. It was downright lucky for my kitchen floor that he had his brain with him; the man that is, not the fish; and, on its part, when it was blindfolded, the fish was willing to be persuaded.

Secondly, the Kalabalge story taught me that you don’t have to grin and bear it, especially pain. Now look here, these boko haram fellows have been on a war path with the rest of the country over… nothing! Seriously! Worse, innocent people in the region are being killed while the warmongers are figuring out a good reason for killing them, and that’s just so unfair. Like someone said, if he is going to die, there must be a good reason: cancer is one powerful reason; diabetes is perhaps another very powerful reason if one is a little careless; so is hypertension, etc. What is definitely not a good reason to die is boko haram, for the entire lot does not make good sense. So, there is no more sitting, grinning and bearing it, according to these Kalabalge people. Good for them, I say. If only that philosophy could be taught to the entire region as it has been taught to me. Now, no more will I grin and bear this constant cut in electricity. I will no longer moan and sit in sadness. I have decided to whip out my own weapon of mass resistance in the shape of a thick, avenging stick of candle.

You would think here are the Kalabalge people and many others fighting for their lives, and there is my unholy self making jokes over their plight. No, not so. This is an attempt to celebrate what these people have done and hope others can do the same. However, we must sound a note of caution. Have you noticed the rate at which people are taking to self-help now? Whew, the thing is a wild fire now. Across different cities including mine, people are being lynched on suspicion of being kidnappers. All it takes is one cry of ‘Help, kidnapper’ and people’s anger foams and froths out quicker than you can say ‘Police’. It does not matter if the victim is a creditor come to collect his debt. Before you know it, the victim is down, beaten to a pulp before being set ablaze by everyone in general and no one in particular. This is called self-help, and what a dangerous thing.

There has always been an antithetical relationship between self-help and the law. Where one works, the other cannot. Self-help derives its powers from exigencies whereas the law derives its powers from laid down procedures. Self-help considers the interest of the holding party only whereas the law takes the interest of every party into consideration. Whereas the motive of the law is supposed to be justice for everyone, the motive of self-help is vengeance. The outcome of self-help is often chaos and anarchy, that of the law is a disciplined society.

Unfortunately, due to various failures across the board, Nigeria is moving into the uncertain sphere of self-help. When people began to forage around for their own electricity using all kinds of contraptions that spelt doom for the hearing of their neighbours and the breath in their own nostrils, the government kept mum and left them alone. Ditto for water. I bet you that seismologists cannot give Nigeria a clean bill of health now on account of the uncountable wells and boreholes that have been sunk irreverently across the land to provide water for the self. Yep, thanks to you and I, the ground under Nigeria is well and truly prepared for all kinds of quakes and tremors. As with electricity and water, so it is now with security. The people have taken to looking out for themselves, and the government should really be worried because it signifies a gradual descent to anarchy.

Anarchy is when there is a total loss of grip on governance. Then anything goes. I tell you, disorder is when the Kalabalge people can kill their attackers but the police dares not even approach the place to arrest them for murder. In the first place, those poor youths should not have had to soil their hands with such a heinous deed if the police or army did their work. In the second place, even the army is now helpless in that enclave for many reasons.

We should note two things. The Kalabalge people might need to vacate their village for a while for fear of a retaliatory attack by the blood-thirsty nihilists. The government also needs to bring things back under control before self-help takes over the streets or else no one will be able to predict where that might lead.

May 18, 2014
The President from nowhere

Gerald Ford is the perfect president from nowhere; a classic political and constitutional conundrum, and a major tribute to the lateral and vertical mobility available to virtually all Americans irrespective of race, region or religion. Although he was born in Omaha, in an area where his paternal forebears had settled, he moved on to Grand Rapids as a toddler and returned there after military service and law school. It was from here that he won elections to the congress several times as a progressive conservative even while having his immediate family roots in Omaha. In America, where you live and pay taxes is more important than where you were born.

It is intriguing and interesting that Ford never returned to Grand Rapids after serving out his term as president. He relocated instead to Palm Springs, California. But his presidential library, which is usually a triumphant monument to the great homeboy, is split between two locations in Michigan State. It is this kind of cosmopolitan rootlessness which tears up rigid regional divisions and obliterates spatial distinctions based on autochthonous settlers’ syndrome which has made America a land of glorious opportunities and possibilities.

Yet there was a time in the not too distant past when this kind of spatial mobility was possible in Nigeria. But that was before primitive accumulation became the prevalent ethos among Nigeria’s failed post-independence political elite and zoning became a concomitant do or die affair. When nation-building fails and the project of modernity collapses, zoning is effective as a primitive truce among hunter-gatherers on a feeding frenzy. You chop, I chop, shikena.

But Gerald Ford was not even the man we thought he was. He had not always been Gerald Ford. He was born Leslie King Jr and was adopted by his stepfather shortly after his mother remarried a salesman called Gerald Ford. In a Nigeria without social and psychological safety nets, a man so critically hobbled at birth could not have gone very far. In later political life, if Gerald Ford had any faults, it was ironically his placid equanimity and calm composure.

If these endearing traits carried him to the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth, they could not guarantee him re-election or a permanent place in the heart of his robust and rambunctious countrymen. It was an odyssey of good luck and great fortunes, but it is no substitute for canniness and “cujones”. Let Jonathan note as the sharks menacingly take up position.

He was chosen as Vice President when Spiro Agnew, the artist of alliterative acrimony, went under in a scandal in 1973. When the gale of Watergate sank Richard Nixon in 1975, Gerald Ford stepped into the Oval Office, the only man to have achieved the feat of reaching the presidency from lowly congress. Some people are even luckier than Goodluck Jonathan.

But luck can only carry one so far. The backlash against Ford began almost immediately. His pre-emptive pardoning of Richard Nixon who many Americans consider to be a psychotic political criminal deserving a long spell in jail was viewed by many as an act of presidential racketeering unworthy of the highest office in the land. To compound his problems, Ford, a supreme athlete in his prime, began physically and intellectually stumbling in full public glare. Among his unpardonable gaffes was the flat assertion that Poland was a free country even as it reeled under the communist jackboot. It was a bridge too far for the boy from Grand Rapids.

When he was asked why he thought he was never an astonishing success as a politician despite having served in the White House, Gerald Ford replied that it was because he was disgustingly sane. In other words, bland sanity is no match for the quirky irrational genius of the exemplary politician. Among crazy people, abnormality is the template for normality.

In the end, to be lucky is not always to be fortunate. When people are catapulted beyond their competence, they always end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Gerald Ford came from nowhere and ended up nowhere, so to say. But it is a rousing American story; a Gatsbyian extravaganza of orgiastic possibilities in a land of ceaseless self-invention. It is a stunning parable for Nigeria.

First published in 2010.

May 18, 2014
South Africa: The rainbow slowly turns to storm

A wise leader knows the poor by name but the wicked leader knows not the image of their face.

A few weeks ago, South Africa marked the twentieth anniversary of the formal end of apartheid and the beginning of nonracial democracy. Last week, South Africa also voted. This should have been a time of uplifting celebration of the triumph of justice and our common humanity over prejudice and racial oppression.

But these events transpired with muted resignation as if the nation were embarrassed by what twenty years has made of it. Regarding the election, the bulbous incumbent won handedly although the people were acutely underwhelmed by his threadbare performance. As such, the two dates were stinging reminders that, although nominally a nonracial democracy, things have began to turn as they were before. The people’s way of live runs low on hope, food and money. What now happens to them is not of their will or doing but dictated to them by forces much like the forces that defined their beleaguered past.

South Africa is seized more with a sense of forlorn nostalgia than of future hope. The mass of the people are like the person who came to the party five minutes before it ended. All they enjoyed was a brief taste before the moment passed. That they have been asked to clean up after the festivities only compounds insult with injury. The nation once beheld something precious and rare. The very thing they were looking at has vanished but they realized it not. They were so busy looking that they did not notice the valuable thing had gone. So transfixed, they thought they still saw it. Yet, what remained was but the impress of it on their minds.

Finally, the costly loss of just opportunity has become real to them and the pain of that reality runs deep like a subterranean river. South Africa was to be the rainbow nation. But, a rainbow is a beautiful but fragile thing. For it to persist conditions have to be nurtured.

This congenial evolution did not happen.

The rainbow has cracked and shattered. In its place, a storm gathers. The land of potential freedom and race equality is no longer. Apartheid was legally abolished but was given a reprieve so that it would still define the lives of most black South Africans.

That this mean turn happened was inevitable, given the genesis of the modern South African state. It was a nation built on fateful compromise. We were told South Africa had been freed from apartheid. That it had experienced a quiet and peaceful revolution. This was a half-truth. There is no such thing as a peaceful revolution. If it is peaceful, it is not revolution and if it is revolution, peace will take its holiday. While not necessarily violent, revolution mandates an upheaval of some type. And those benefitting from the status quo will find these tremors anything but peaceful.

What happened in South Africa was piecemeal reform dressed to look like something more universal than it was simply by the mire fact that race and color seemed to reverse roles in a world still shaped by discrimination. This statement is not meant to slight what was accomplished. What was done is historic and could not have happened without a large dose of heroism and sacrifice. Perhaps, it was even inevitable. The black architects of this compromise were faced with the certainty of gaining partial recompense without violence or seeking the uncertainty of a bigger reward through longer, more violent confrontation. In that confrontation, the weight of white South Africa and of the entirety of the conservative establishment of the West would be arrayed against the rag-tag black rabble. The battle would be tough and the outcome not amenable to guarantee.

Thus, South Africa was racially changed but only at the top. The compromised was to introduce the black elite into the ruling class. Theretofore, the black elite had been the leaders of the political opposition. In one fell swoop, they would become the political establishment. This must have been a heady, almost giddy elevation with regard to both power and responsibility. In exchange, they agreed to cordon the economy that it would remain in the hands of those who always held it.

Whites would control the economy and blacks the politics. Interracial integration and the sharing of power at the top took place. The poverty and misery characterizing the bottom of society would remain the sole possession of the majority of one race alone.

For all that he went through, Madiba was magnanimous to the extreme in forgiving the past but he was actually more tired and resigned to fate than he let on. By the time he obtained the highest office in the land, the years had robbed him of the ability and zeal to transform the nation into what justice demanded. He was wise enough to see into the past and place a brake on the temptation for revenge; but, having been separated from society that had changed dramatically in his quarter century of incarceration, he had not the intricate understanding of the political economy needed to shepherd its reform.

He accepted the economic mantra presented him and that was the conservative economics that have dominated the globe since Reagan-Thatcher era. Thus, Mandela was circumscribed by the limits of the predominant economic ideology and by the uncertain environment of the new republic from using his position to push the nation onto the path of reform that would reach the people. Instead, he was reduced to counseling the poor masses to exercise patience for those who would come after him would enact the reform he could not. In effect, his tenure was reduced to demonstrating a black man could hold power in a complex nation without the country crumbling to pieces. His was a caretaker role and he took adequate care. He delivered the nation from birth into infancy. One could not realistically have expected more from him. However, he would pass an enormous task to his successors. They would ignobly drop, then ignore, the baton because they would be seized in mind and heart by more selfish objectives.

Something insidious happened on the road to reform. Those into whose hands Mandela entrusted the nation would veer farther off the rightful course with the passage of time. The increasing comfort of their lives took the edge off their quest for social change. A subtle but momentous shift occurred. Instead of subsequent black establishment leaders honoring the sacrifices of the dead and their social contract with the living to use newly-gained political power to engineer structural economic reform, they boarded a luxury cruise and signed a pact of convenience while on board. They entered into a conservative deal with the white economic elite to use that new political power to tamp, and, if necessary, suppress black reformist agitation in exchange for a piece of the economic action. For them, the size of the hurting population was dwarfed in importance by the size of the beckoning checkbook. The former leadership of black liberation had been coaxed into a conspiracy to suppress those they once pledged to liberate.

Beyond the reach of most humans lies the ability to admit and see the injustice that abets their own enrichment. Once personally sated, many an activist becomes a guardian of the status quo. It is as if they believe what they eat also fills the bellies of others.

This tragedy has befallen black leadership everywhere. Weeks ago, I wrote how the reform movement in black America has been placed in deep freeze because of the emergence of a moderate black president and a black elite more linked to white money than the black community. The same forces now shape the South African landscape and that of many African nations. Our leaders would rather dance among the international elite than feed the people or create jobs for them.

Our leaders fall prey to this because, in reality, their racial pride and identification is weak and flagging. Because of this, they do not devote themselves to a deep understanding of the historic and present racial discrimination that exists and continues to shape how the global political economy works. Because of this, they are not ideologically equipped to construct a long-term strategy to develop the people and their futures. They have no guiding vision through which they view the world and on which they can focus so they stay true to a decided path. Because they have no lodestar, they can get tossed and misled by the strongest wind.

Those who now control the world’s economy are a strong wind. In addition to their hold on money, they control the flow of most information and thus shape the thoughts of most people. While this well-funded shaping of mind and thought may not be injurious if only restricted to the common person, it is disastrous when it shackles the leaders of nations whose genuine interests lie in reforming the system. Their leaders become sheep and their people become the sheep of sheep. Sadly, they follow not a benign shepherd. They follow the calls of the wolf.

In South Africa, the people are slowly devoured. The ANC standard bearer just won the election in a landslide but he would be sorely mistaken to see this as a ringing endorsement. The people voted his way because they saw no other electoral alternative. However, they know they have been sold a false bill of goods. They want a refund and will wait for it because they are used to suffering. But even a suffering people can be taxed beyond their forbearance. At that point, the suffering horde will no longer look to the established leadership. Their sense of injustice and pent-up frustration will become their guide. Hopefully, established leaders will sense the danger and rediscover the way of reform. If not they will have themselves to blame if the people eventually gather to upset the dainty banquet table in order to claim what is theirs. At some point, the people will claim the right to enact the second half of the national drama by completing the demolition of apartheid’s economic structure. Either this will be done with the black leaders in front, shaping the process, or by the masses dragging the leaders behind them. It may take years but the clock inexorably ticks.

08060340825 (sms only)

May 11, 2014
Jonathan and Chibok: the nonsense about conspiracy theories

Touched by massive and unalloyed support from more than five powerful nations, President Goodluck Jonathan has at last found his voice on the Chibok abductions. Addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Abuja on Thursday, the president declared that Boko Haram terrorism was in its last gasp. His latest hyperbole stands in stark contrast to his waffling and dithering at the height of the Chibok saga between mid-April and first week of May, when he, his wife and PDP women leader Kema Chikwe characteristically insinuated that the abductions, if they took place, were more of politics than reality. The president had pleaded for victims’ parents to cooperate with him, while his meddlesome wife and Mrs Chikwe suggested incredulously that there was probably no abduction anywhere.

It seems now that Dr Jonathan is finally persuaded that hundreds of schoolgirls were indeed abducted, even if he is uncertain of their number, and he is upbeat that given the magnitude of international support, the girls will be rescued and Boko Haram will be vanquished. World support has also seemed to galvanise Dr Jonathan’s men. The National Security Adviser, the Chief of Defence Staff and other security chiefs have visited Chibok, as they put it, on a fact-finding tour of the affected town. Perhaps they were accompanied by senior military commanders who in all the weeks the abductions struggled to arrest world attention failed to visit the scene of tragedy. Many more officials will probably be visiting the town in the coming days, in a sort of tragicomic tourism. Maybe, too, Dame Patience, who had threatened to march on Borno State Government House, will find the good grace to visit that state, if indeed her doubts have been finally dispelled. Then to cap a spectacular volte face, perhaps the immovable and often imperturbable Dr Jonathan will find the nobility to visit the afflicted parents of the victims.

With the acceptance of responsibility for the mass kidnap by Boko Haram, and given massive international support for Nigeria and the increasing number of grieving parents who have been interviewed by the press, it is likely that there will no longer be any debate as to the veracity of the abductions. From all indications, the debate may be moving towards a more sinister direction, one probably encouraged by the dithering Jonathan presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The new suggestion is that Boko Haram terrorism, not to say the abductions in particular, is a ploy by the North to pressure Dr Jonathan to abandon his re-election plan. This shocking argument is further divided into two areas: first is that the North, loosely defined, believes the presidency is its birthright and is therefore loathed to staying out of power for too long; and second is that there really is a subterranean religious agenda undergirding Boko Haram with the intent to annihilate other religions and helped the North promote Islam nationally.

Sadly, the Jonathan government has recklessly exploited these arguments and fears by adducing facts to corroborate the notion of northern and religious dominance. Only a few days ago, the Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly (SNPA), an amorphous group purporting to represent the South as a whole, underscored these fears by affirming its opposition to a government produced by what it described as the dynamics of insurgency and blackmail. The group boasts members like former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme, represented by Dozie Ikedife, Edwin Clark, an elder statesman, and Bolanle Gbonigi, a retired bishop of the Anglican Church. The group was in other words saying that Dr Jonathan was being pressured to either abjure re-election or, if he goes ahead to contest, lose on account of his failure to curb the insurgency. A former minister from the South-South zone, Alabo Tonye Graham-Douglas, also identified with this trenchant and rampant falsehood by suggesting that Dr Jonathan was a victim of orchestrated manipulations by shadowy northern forces.

The SNPA’s conclusion is inelegantly couched in uninterrupted fallacy. It said: “Let it be known that the people of Southern Nigeria shall not allow themselves to be ruled by any government that is a product of insurgency or blackmail if the sponsors of insurgency in this country think they can brow-beat and pummel the government of President Goodluck Jonathan to abdicate the authority and mandate freely given to him by Nigerians to rule this country.” This farcical reasoning is not an aberration. It is rampant even in the supposedly enlightened Southwest, where many have allowed themselves to be seduced by such far-fetched and unfounded ideas about the country’s power dynamics and power equation. In addition, this farcical reasoning forms the overwhelming logic and bedrock of the Jonathan presidency, where officials unable to provide answers to Dr Jonathan’s abysmal failure as president have sought diversionary and emotive explanations both to explain contemporary events and to anticipate and possibly deflect what looks certain to be an electoral disaster.

It is, therefore, clear that Dr Jonathan rests his present and future political fortunes on the divisive tripod of alleged northern hegemonic machinations manifesting through Boko Haram insurgency, religion, and his ethnic status as a minority. Both he and his supporters downplay, if not excuse, his failures, his lack of charisma, his stark inability to provide leadership in moments of crises, his miscomprehension of the economic and social dynamics engendering crises in the country, his poor judgement and uninformed choices, and his preference for insular, retrogressive and parochial company. Dr Jonathan has often accused his opponents of politicising the insurgency. But he is in fact more disposed than anyone else to evoking politics as an explanation for his lack of a sense of urgency in national affairs. It is not surprising that the world press has dismissed him as a weak and ineffective politician presiding over a massively corrupt government.

Examined closely, the silly argument that the insurgency is a ploy to weaken and discourage Dr Jonathan does not hold water. If Boko Haram was designed to undermine Dr Jonathan, why was it founded before he assumed the presidency? It is known that the group, which was first described as the Taliban equivalent of the Afghanistan Taliban movement, had its beginnings in the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. It later became virulent under the Umaru Yar’Adua government during which time its former leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was extra-judicially murdered by policemen. Not only was it clear that the last two governments misunderstood the sect, they also underestimated the social, economic and religious forces that drove it into extremity.

Dr Jonathan cannot also be exculpated from mismanaging the revolt. Apart from his failure in appreciating the threat constituted by the sect to national cohesion and stability, he also vacillated for a long time on whether to fight or mollify the sect. Even when he was encouraged by analysts to declare the sect a terrorist organisation, and foreign governments were prepared to take a lead in that direction, Dr Jonathan led a campaign to dissuade foreign categorisation of the sect as terrorist, while he also tried to pacify the group and describe it as a part of the Nigerian family. He left matters too late until the sect became a fierce ogre. Now he is encouraging the tendentious opinion that Boko Haram is a northern scheme designed to humiliate him as a southerner and Christian, an opinion strangely embraced uncritically by many in the South and elsewhere, an opinion that is sadly gaining foolish currency.

If indeed Boko Haram is a northern scheme to defeat or undermine Dr Jonathan, is the military also a northern army? Dr Jonathan has twice changed the leadership of the army. On both occasions, he opted for southerners. And since his army commanders and rank and file are not only northerners, why have they not devised brilliant tactics to defeat the sect? Are the factors hindering the army the making of northerners only? The truth is that the military is demoralised, and its equipment, sometimes in quality, and at other times in volume, do not match those of the insurgents. As testified by grieving Chibok parents, and contrary to what the military would have the people believe, when the insurgents raided Chibok, the army was forewarned and the detachment defending the town radioed for help. No help came. Soldiers have also told of tactical inadequacy and corruption in the war efforts, even as Chibok natives confirmed that the military never embarked on hot pursuit of the insurgents after the abductions.

Blaming intrigues and northern blackmail for Dr Jonathan’s evident inadequacies and poor leadership is an elaborate ruse. While it is true that some politicians might have connived at the insurgency in its early years and even sponsored it, and while religion and ethnicity have become depressing and distortionary factors in Nigerian politics, these do not explain the president’s idiosyncratic failures. And whether the schoolgirls are rescued or not, or whether Dr Jonathan gets a second term or not, nothing will redeem him from his staggering lack of vigour and accomplishment in the face of stirring national challenges. He is one of a few damned by both their successes and failures. Nor will the multinational help he is receiving rescue his presidency from total failure or even imbue it with the right mix of policies required to rebuild Nigeria and make it a great nation. If they are capable of it, Nigerians must assess the Jonathan presidency more scrupulously than ethnic and religious jingoists have done. If in spite of themselves they manage to do that, Nigerians will uncover unsightly evidence that would lead them to punish this failed government severely in the 2015 polls. But if they don’t, the consequences will be inescapable and dire.

May 11, 2014
Median age 19 and a great youth population bulge

Nigeria is not a poor country…If you talk about ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries, yet they are saying that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries.
•Goodluck Jonathan, May Day 2014 Speech, Eagle Square, Abuja

Most Nigerians don’t know the concept of national median age. In making this assertion, I include literate, generally well informed Nigerians. And when you explain what the concept means and what the median age for Nigeria is – as I have had occasion to do a few times – there is usually a profound surprise in the person to whom you have relayed the information. I confess that until about five years ago, I myself knew nothing at all about the concept. And when I did get to know about it and found out that Nigeria has a median age of 19, I was profoundly shaken by the discovery. As a matter of fact, it is more correct to say that I have not yet recovered from my shock, my discomfiture at discovering that half of all Nigerians are under the age of 19. For that is what the national median age concept and statistic means: whatever the figure is, it means half of the given country’s population is younger and half is older than the figure. A median age of 19!

As a sort of general or global background for Nigeria’s median age of 19, think of the following fact: at the present moment in world history, the range of the national median age of the countries of the planet stands at15 as the lowest (Uganda) and 45 as the highest (Japan). The general pattern is that the rich countries of the world tend to have much higher median age figures than the poor countries of the global South. Additionally, countries with low median age figures tend to have, almost in equal measure, high fertility and death rates, as if births and deaths more or less cancel each other out. In other words, with low life expectancy figures, countries with low median age figures seem to “make up” for what they lose through deaths by very high birth rates. At any rate, the most important consequence of having a very low median age is what population studies experts call the “youth bulge” in some countries’ population profile.

The best way to think of this “youth bulge” is to imagine a pyramid with a very wide base and a very narrow apex. As a matter of fact, the preferred image of population demographers in the graphic representation of the population profiles of the countries of the world is the pyramid. The reasoning behind this is obvious: at all times and in all the regions and nations of the world, younger people and generations tend to be more in numbers than the old and the aged. As we all know, as you go higher in a pyramid, you move from wider to narrower. So it seemed logical that the figure of the pyramid as we have come to know it over the ages in the materialized wonder of the pyramids of Egypt was the best figure for representing the population profiles of the countries of the world. That is until the recent past when, thanks largely to the combination of vastly improved standards of living and the miracles of medical science, a good number of the populations of the rich countries of the world are more and more living to ripe old age. This has led to interesting differences in the population pyramids of the countries of the planet. Some are very wide at the base and very narrow at the apex, while in some, the pyramid is neither unduly wide at the base nor particularly narrow at the apex.

As abstract graphs and schematic profiles, it is fascinating to ponder the wide differences between the population pyramids of each of the countries of the planet. For instance, the population pyramids of most of present-day African countries look nothing like the famous ancient pyramids of Egypt which, as everyone knows, did not have very wide bases. Similarly, the population pyramids of the rich countries of the world also do not look like the ancient Egyptian pyramids because their apices (plural for apex) tend to be not as narrow as we’ve come to expect Egyptian pyramids to be. Only countries in the middle range of the median age figures for the nations of the world look anything like the ancient Egyptian pyramids and that is because they neither have wide bases nor broad apices.

The most striking feature of the population pyramids of African countries is the very wide, very capacious bases that correspond to the over-concentration of young people at the base of the pyramid. Here are the median age figures for some African countries, from the highest to the lowest: Egypt, 24; Lesotho, 23; Ghana, 21; Nigeria, 19; Cote d’Ivoire, 19; Benin Republic, 17, Uganda, 15. In all these countries, the national population has an over-concentration among the younger generations. This over-concentration is what is known in development and population studies as the “youth bulge”. When one focuses one’s attention on this phenomenon of the “youth bulge” the fascination of abstract graphs vanishes and one confronts a statistic of potential doom. Let me explain the basis of this pessimistic assertion by indicating quite clearly what this “youth bulge” means in our present national and global historical and political circumstances.

As we may have gleaned from my remarks and observations so far in this piece, the “youth bulge” literally means that the overall population of a country has its most dense and most concentrated segment among young people below the age of 30. For Nigeria, this “youth bulge” entails around 70% of the population. Now, for Neo-Malthusian development sociologists and economists, a “youth bulge” in the population profile of any country portends grave danger because the normal levels of social unrest and alienation that go with joblessness and insecurity increase a hundredfold when the ranks of the unemployed are dominated by male youths. For such Neo-Malthusian thinkers, this holds true regardless of the economic system or political order: capitalist or socialist; democratic or fascist; rich or poor. While this generalization may in principle be true if only as a potentiality, it does not address the specifics of each national context of economy, politics and society. Thus, for us in Nigeria the question is, what does it mean to have a vast “youth bulge” in our national population when at a workers’ rally on May Day, President Jonathan can make the following declaration that serves as the epigraph to this essay: “Nigeria is not a poor country… If you talk about the ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries and yet they are saying that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries”.

For truth in accurate reporting, it must be admitted here that in his speech to representatives of Nigerian workers at the May Day Rally in Abuja last week, Jonathan did say that if Nigeria is not a poor country and if it has dozens of citizens that are among the most wealthy jet-set billionaires of the planet, the country does have a big problem with the redistribution of wealth. But the precise nature of that admission is very damning to Jonathan, to his party, the PDP and, to a lesser extent, to all the ruling class parties in Nigeria. For make no mistake about it: when Jonathan and the PDP talk about redistribution of wealth in Nigeria, they mean no more and no less than redistribution strictly among the political and economic elites of the country. In other words, “redistribution” for Jonathan and for Obasanjo and Yar’ Adua, the two previous incumbents of Aso Rock Villa before him, means not redistribution between the small band of the haves of all the parts of the country and the teeming masses of the have-nots spread over the length and breadth of the land.

As I write these words close to the conclusion of the Jonathan National Conference (JNC), the confab has come almost to a deadlock on the matter of resource allocation of our oil wealth from the centre to the parts of the federation. At one extreme end are the Northern delegations who are urging a scrapping of the principle of derivation through which the oil-producing states of the South-south currently get 13% of oil revenues. At the opposite end to the Northern delegation are those from the South-south and the South-east that are clamoring for an increase from 13% to 50%. Most commentators watching deliberations at the confab expect that the deadlock will eventually be broken by some compromise figure between 13% and 50%. But no commentator expects that whatever the figure eventually brokered as a compromise solution to the deadlock will even remotely affect the poverty that stalks and haunts all parts of the country, especially the North and the South-south, the two zones apparently prepared to go to war over the sharing out of the nation’s oil wealth.

As far as I know, the “youth bulge”, together with the median age of 19, have not been mentioned even once at the deliberations of the JNC. This is because our politicians and political parties, like the proverbial ostrich, have their heads buried in the sand, even though that invisible “youth bulge” has begun to make its presence in our politics and society felt with great violence and equally great fanfare – through Boko Haram, through MEND, through the dozens of marauding gangs and militias terrorizing many parts of the land. It is beyond the pale of mindlessness for Jonathan to say to workers – among all people! – that Nigeria is not a poor country because if you talk of countries with jet-set billionaires Nigeria will be among the top ten countries in the world. As the following two ubiquitous Nigerian pidgin proverbs have it, “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” but “who no know go know.”

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

May 11, 2014
The power of protests

This is something we used to do but abandoned; we must sustain it even after our girls have been brought back

With the global outrage over the abducted 257 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, (now popularly known as ‘the Chibok girls’), by the Boko Haram fundamentalists on April 15, President Goodluck Jonathan must by now have realised the sanctity of human life. Not even President Barack Obama of the United States, for instance, could have afforded to dance hours after the girls were abducted like our president did, unless he was not aware of their abduction because he knew Americans may not penalise him for that, but they could take judicial notice of it. But, let the American leader make the mistake of even laughing when the U.S. is confronted by such an issue, he would be in serious trouble because they value life in his country. Indeed, in that country as in other civilised countries, it is immaterial if elections are still about a year away, President Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would have known the election result by now. As a matter of fact, if it still participates in the election, it would be for the sake of it and not necessarily because it hopes to win.

The world’s reaction to the abductions might be coming late; it is still good. But then, can we blame the outsiders for this when, barely hours after two major tragedies (including the unfortunate abductions) befell the country, our president was dancing at a political rally? Why then would anyone want to weep louder than the bereaved? Why would anyone want to be more interested in rescuing the girls when their own president is enjoying himself (or is it deluding himself) at a political rally? But when the world saw that Nigerians of all shades sank their differences to ask for the release of the girls, and for the government to get serious about the issue, the world needed no one to tell it that it was time to act. Of course, the world must have seen that the issue was not getting the desired attention because it is the children of ordinary Nigerians that are involved. We must be grateful to the United Nations, the United States of America, Britain, France and others that have expressed readiness to help us in our search for and rescue of these young ones.

Even the president’s acceptance of the U.S. offer, good as it is, especially with regard to the possible rescue of the innocent girls, is also a minus for our national pride. One can only hope that President Jonathan would be deep enough to understand this. The way things are, though, there does not seem to be a choice but to accept the offer, with thanks to the Americans., to boot. But great presidents would vow within themselves that never again would their country ever be in that type of situation. Unfortunately, it does not seem that President Jonathan can ever make such resolve. Lest we forget, he once said that if ever he had the opportunity to lead the country, he would ensure that our elections are credible such that no Nigerian leader will go through the kind of embarrassment he went through, following the embarrassing questions he was asked whenever he travelled out of the country after the 2007 elections. We all know that he cannot live up to this promise, given what we have seen as his political desperation.

Anyway, for once since the fuel subsidy protest of January 2012, one is happy that Nigerians seem to be waking up to their civic responsibility of trooping to the streets once again in protest. The girls were abducted exactly one month after some 18 job seekers died in different parts of the country, in search of jobs in the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). Then, nothing happened.

Without doubt, these sustained protests have helped to internationalise the disappearance of these innocent girls and kept their issue in the front burner, not only of national but also international discourse. Nothing can be more gratifying because, but for our protests, the Nigerian government would have continued with its business as usual. If the girls are later found, fine; and if not, that is not enough to bring governance to a halt. That is the mentality of government and its officials, given the nauseating defence of the information minister and others in the government. Nigeria is one of the few countries where government could have continued business as usual in the face of the massive protests across the country and beyond, and with even outsiders getting more concerned about the abductions.

Many of us have always argued that our undue silence over, and carefree attitude to many of the ugly developments in the country today is the reason why our governments continue to take us for a ride. Just imagine how we have succeeded in bringing global attention to the Chibok girls issue simply because we have refused to let the dust settle. Even the Federal Government must have known that this is an unusual tea party; that is if it is a tea party at all. Honestly, Boko Haram must have overstepped its bounds by abducting those innocent students who have no idea what their grievances are (as if I know myself) because if the idea is to prohibit people from going to school, that cannot be a genuine grievance. It is even going to be more futile if it is to convert every northerner to Islam. Whoever does not want to go to school has a choice not to; but to now attempt to let everyone else see that blissful ignorance as utopia is simply impossible. In the same vein, it is absolutely impossible to turn everyone in that part of the country to Muslims. It is only that we do not have a credible and serious government; the one we have worsens matters for itself by bungling opportunities to rally Nigerians to its side. Of course this has to be earned; it is difficult for a government perceived to be corrupt and incompetent to get the people’s support.

But now that the world powers have promised to step in, the government is happy and has in fact jumped at the offer. Nigerians can testify to it that if anyone rides a horse in President Jonathan’s stomach now, it would be a smooth ride. But the reverse has always been the case when these powers rate our economy low or give us our true score card about human development index or other parameters of how we are doing; the Federal Government becomes uncomfortable, just like an old woman when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.

It is heartwarming that the Chibok girls’ abduction has united Nigerians; this is the spirit. And it should not end with this issue. There are many other issues that will require our collective effort and action to stem. For sure, the so-called fuel subsidy removal is still very much there. But for the Chibok issue, the Federal Government could have dared Nigerians by removing it, after all the governors have conspired with it so insensitively to ask that it be removed. The truth is that many of our elected officials are so desperate for power and money now. Indeed, one wonders the difference between these politicians and the ritual killers at Soka village in Oyo State, or elsewhere in the country. People Power has always worked when deployed rightly; it has worked in several places, including even Nigeria. It will work again. No government can be bigger than the people that put it in power. So, Nigerians should see the fuel subsidy matter when it eventually comes as a clarion call to action that it is.

The only alternative to that is for us all to keep praying that the heavenly hosts should find something that would keep the government busy such that even if Nigerians ask it to remove fuel subsidy, it would be the one to tell us that that is not a wise thing to do because, it will be tantamount to the government behaving like the proverbial greedy fly that follows dead bodies to the grave.

May 11, 2014
Sambisa and other Forests

The heart of a de-civilized person is a jungle of violent impulses. The forest outside is a reflection of the forest within. There is a Sambisa Forest in every one of us. It is a metaphor for deformed and dehumanized humanity. The forest takes over every patch of land that is uncultured and uncultivated after some time. The jungle must reclaim its own. In order to endure, civilization must be kept in a state of constant cultivation.

We have lost our civilization. This is why Nigeria is in desperate straits. No nation has ever been more profoundly unhappy in the real sense of absolute misery. There is a deep sadness everywhere. Savagery rules the land. Every day, we hear tales of unprecedented cruelty and sadistic behavior. Every day, we are regaled with acts of unimaginable barbarity.

We cry for the abducted of Sambisa Forest. We moan at night for our defiled daughters. Anybody who has ever fathered a daughter must shudder at the plight of these girls. After a month in captivity, what will their sanitary state be like? After four weeks in dazed detention, what is their psychological status? And now the dreaded question that torments one in the middle of the night: after four weeks with the hard men of this vile and vicious sect what else can one say about the virginal sanctity of these girls?

It is a good therapy, then, to cry and wail and roll over ourselves on the streets. But much sooner than later, Nigerians will have to confront the demon within that has given rise to such a demonic society. The evil empire outside is but a reflection of the evil empire within. Sambisa Forest is the evil manifestation of the forest of a thousand devils that is the Nigerian project. Let us dwell on a few of these forests.

The Boko Haram incubus did not suddenly jump on the stage from nowhere; neither did it come fully dressed. There had been frequent sightings and dress rehearsals in the Maitasine uprising in Kano, the Musa Makaniki revolt in Yola and the dramatic declaration of Sharia in some northern states that curiously coincided with the ascendancy of an admittedly bible-thumping Christian president from the South.

In its purest and most classical sense, the Sharia regime is a more extreme and total version of Boko Haram. While Boko Haram denounces western education, Sharia anathematizes western culture and political civilization beginning with its legal foundation. Both are bound to come to violent collision with the secular state and the paradigm of the modern nation which are underwritten by western civilization and its triumph over competing modernities. It is the military wing of this western civilization which conquered the Islamic conquerors of Northern Nigeria and forcibly brought them under the orbit of western political authority.

There is a Sambisa Forest in the heart of an indigenous ruling class which allows the living condition of humanity to deteriorate to the feral subsistence and unremitting harshness such as we find in certain parts of the north. It is this poverty in extremis and its attendant hopelessness that fuel the hallucinatory delusions, the murderous, misguided and misdirected deviancy of the Boko Haram sect. Until this internal Sambisa forest is cleared of its malignancies, the external Sambisa Forest will remain as its necessary corollary and dialectical mirror image.

The Northern Question is therefore an integral part of the National Question. The National Question has its social and geopolitical dimensions. On paper, political restructuring is easy. You can carve up a country into a thousand regions and prefectures. But how do we restructure the soul and mind of the contemporary Nigerian ruling class to make it amenable to the minimum standards of the political modernity that has been foisted on us? Can a ruler of Southern extraction have the temerity to disturb or disrupt the existing feudal relations of production in the core north without provoking a genocidal backlash?

Whatever the current grandstanding by a doomed ruling elite, there is a Sambisa Forest in the heart of a ruling class which steals and cheats its way to obscene and indecent wealth and opulence while the rest of the country wallows in hunger, poverty and biblical misery. It is called government without governance; or the management of mismanagement.

Now factor into this, the Sambisa Forest of pension thieves, the Sambisa Forest of fuel subsidy rogues, the Sambisa Forest of corrupt and untouchable ministers, the Sambisa Forest of religious charlatans of all creeds who feed on the misery of the disoriented populace, the Sambisa Forest of our elder “statesmen” who brought us to this sorry pass in the first instance, and the Sambisa Forest of economic cannibals in our midst, and you get a picture of a humongous monstrosity. Let us by all means bring back our girls. But let them come back to another country. Otherwise, they will be abducted again.

Last week, Balarabe Musa, the great Northern political savant and radical socialist, asked a vital and crucial national question to which no answers have been forthcoming. Why is it, Balarabe rued, that it is at this very time when we are said to be having a National Conference that our problems seem to be multiplying and atrocities against the nation seem to be proceeding apace? The answer is that we are not having any national conference.

The great charade ongoing in Abuja is not designed to move the nation forward. It is nothing but a holding device; a talking contraption hastily and clumsily glued together to provide a strategic respite for Jonathan so as to allow him get back to the drawing board of his presidential preoccupation with ruling Nigeria until something gives. But as we have noted in this column, whatever respite gained will be transient and temporary as the old problems return with malignant vigour.

If the gathering street demonstrations and the global attention being gradually focused on Nigeria are anything to go by, Jonathan will find himself and his presidency increasingly diminished and his remaining credibility and authority vastly eroded. There will come a time in the nearest future as the heat gets to the kitchen when a conclave of genuine Nigerian elders who have not sold their soul will pay him a crucial visit.

Any national advantage and value that would have accrued from the National Conference appears to have been stymied and squashed between two antagonistic forces in a state of desperate and paradoxical complicity: the forces of the old status quo who want Nigeria to remain as it is in structural stasis and the forces of the new ascendancy who want Nigeria to roil in democratic deadlock until something gives.

Taken together, the two forces constitute a structural and political Kilimanjaro for the nation. They have been carefully assembled by Jonathan and his men to make sure that nothing happens. The few voices of genuine patriotic concern have found themselves stranded by choice between the two reactionary behemoths. For some of them, this is a classic parable of how one can bring political peril on one’s self by the sheer irrational hatred of a particular individual.

So as we gather on the streets demanding the return of our abducted daughters from the Sambisa Forest, let us also not forget how we got to this sorry pass where Nigeria has become an international poster boy for unspeakable evil. We must redeem ourselves first before the nation can be redeemed. There is a Sambisa Forest in virtually every one of us.

May 11, 2014