The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Oduah conjures phantom, intransigent enemies

Responding to President Goodluck Jonathan’s pussyfooting on the bulletproof cars scandal involving her and the Aviation ministry she heads, Stella Oduah has embarked on a frenzy of public relations propaganda to shift the blame away from the scandal to the doorsteps of her ‘enemies.’ It took nearly two weeks after the scandal was exposed before the president set up a panel to look into the disgraceful buck-passing enacted by Ms Oduah after it transpired she had knowingly sanctioned, some said inspired, the purchase of two armoured cars at inflated prices. It took more than two weeks after the panel submitted its report for the president to angrily acknowledge he had received the report. Now it is taking forever for him to do something about the report. Unlike the Justice Ayo Salami case, in which he agreed to suspend the jurist with alacrity, he is in no hurry to lay a finger on the special woman, Ms Oduah.

After it became clear the president would continue to dither with scant regard for the dignity and nobility that should accompany his office, Ms Oduah opportunistically launched attacks of her own against those she described as her long-standing enemies. The reprisal attacks are coming after many solid weeks of extraordinary lobbying to save Ms Oduah’s job. But if the president couldn’t save Bamanga Tukur’s job, even though his fault was nothing more grievous than serial indiscretions and tactlessness, it is hard to see the president saving Ms Oduah’s job when her failing is obviously one of atrocious disregard for truth, general and particular mischief in aviation matters, and obscene and indifferent embrace of luxury at a time of great national deficit and scarcity.

But it gratifies and promotes Ms Oduah’s spuriousness to confuse two entirely distinct issues. Only a confused mind could juxtapose the problem she has with her supposed enemies with the self-made scandal of flouting budgetary restrictions and corruptly inflating car prices. Hear Ms Oduah: “For over 38 years that our airports remained damning commentary on our status as part of the civilised world, or when our airspace existed without the modern and workable equipment and facilities to make the airspace safe, these category of persons saw no evil and heard no evil while they happily clapped their way to the banks. This group has carried on with bitter venom, throwing decency and honour overboard, lying and misleading the Nigerian populace even when they knew the truth, because my team and I changed the game in favour of Nigeria attaining her pride of place…They are the entrenched, corrupt and profligate individuals and entities that have caused the serious rot in the aviation sector.”

Having failed to lather her case with ethnic jostlings, she now refers to the implausible and arbitrary figure of 38 years ago, when both she and her traducers were probably just emerging from their teenage years. Whether Dr Jonathan likes it or not, Ms Oduah’s position is no longer tenable. She will have to go, of course without the honour that should normally accompany a decisive president, or the sense of shame a dignified woman should never lose. Ms Oduah is not plagued by enemies, for she is too insignificant to have any notable one; she is undone by shamelessness, an affliction that is now evidently an integral part of the Nigerian presidency.

January 26, 2014
The return of the master spook

Old soldiers never die, as they say. Neither, it seems, do old politicians or illustrious spymasters. In fact, it is now safe to assume that all old masters in their fields never die. To be truly distinguished in your field of human endeavour you need to be truly obsessional. All great people are obsessive characters. That is the secret of human distinction.

When Chief Obafemi Awolowo was asked by Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, the master columnist, whether he would return to politics on the return of the military to the barracks, the late sage fixed the younger man with a quizzical frown. “Gbolabo, you can only return to what you have left.” Awolowo noted tersely.

In other words, the old man never left politics, despite the gale of purported proscriptions and banning. You can only ban what is “bannable” or boycott what is boycottable. Politics is unavoidable warfare, and the brash generals have a lesson to learn from the old political warrior. No wonder, they eventually came up with the dubious doctrine of the new breed. Daedalus may develop artificial wings, but cannot fly for long.

In the past few weeks, there have been some significant moves on the political chessboard. There is some tectonic rumbling. The geopolitical power plates are violently grating. Nigeria’s power blocs are on the move again, like massive tanks crunching their way through difficult terrains. The whole land is quaking with fright and premonition.

It all began with the APC hurricane suddenly developing a seemingly unstoppable momentum as it blitzed its way towards the seat of power. The gale of swift and sudden defections blew open the rotting innards of the ruling party, exposing the political putrefaction of its stalwarts for the world to see. Nothing concentrates the mind of a moribund ruling party which has outlived all its usefulness more than the prospects of an alternative national platform which seems to have bought into the ancient tricks.

For once, the PDP appears ruffled and out of its depth. The executioner is about to be executed. For a long time, this power-holding and power withholding cartel appeared impregnable; immune to common sense and futile probing from the outside. But for once, it is now experiencing the kind of internal destabilisation which its vicious power masters and diabolical playmakers had reserved for other parties. The sharp blade was probing its own neck, like the endgame of successful armed robbers.

In the event, the long drawn internal squabbling culminated in the ouster and political defenestration of its former chairman, the hapless Bamanga Tukur. After briefly dangling juicier carrots before his covetous eyes, the old shipper was himself shipped to the moribund Nigerian Railway as its demobilized deity.

For a completely derailed country—or un-railed country if you wish—this was cruel and appropriate metaphor. But it is not a done deal yet. With the APC relentlessly raising the stakes, there will be more defections and defecations in the power sanctuary and the foul odour and odium of voluntary incontinence will continue to offend the tame nostrils until the very end.

President Goodluck Jonathan appears to have fastened on a twin-pronged strategy in the face of compelling adversity and adversarial circumstances. Dangle the prospects of a National Conference which will dissolve in a world-historic chaos and confusion resulting in dire emergency and automatic elongation of tenure, or in the alternative go all out to win the presidential election by all means and at all costs without minding whose ox is gored or whose back is broken in the process.

On paper, it looks very good: a brilliant and compelling battle plan despite Jonathan’s serial dereliction of state duty and middling competence. But as Mike Tyson famously observes, every boxer has a plan until the first blow crashes through the solar plexus. This is when hallucination and disorientation take over in the lonely ring. The great ear-cruncher and master of bodily harm should know.

The northern power brokers, Jonathan’s major political opponents, appear to be in a far more precarious fox hole. For them, it looks like a lose, lose situation going forward to be confronted by the organised anarchy of a National Conference for which they have no real appetite, or waiting listlessly to be electorally hammered by a Jonathan willing to deploy all the armada of incumbency in addition to facilitating the electoral suicide pill that the sustained insurgency of Boko Haram represents. For once, the hegemonic northern bloc has its back to the wall.

It is within the context of this life and death power struggle that one must situate the return of General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau to prominence and national relevance, this time as Jonathan’s Minister of Defence. It has been said by those who should know that Jonathan for a long time has been trying to enlist the Gusau-born spymaster, dangling juicy carrots before him all to no avail until he finally succeeded.

No one is sure of the private concessions or the secret pact cobbled together between the two. On paper, it looks like a devastating blow to the jugular of the old northern power bloc, capable of splitting its aristocratic military caste down the line. Is the remote and enigmatic master spook emerging from the shadows to play his own game once again, or is this an elaborate political bluff?

In the absence of an overriding nationalist ethos, the Nigerian political terrain is a spreading chestnut tree of mutual backstabbing. So in these matters, no one can be sure of who is playing for whom and against whom. It is a game of double and even multiple agents all tending to cancel each other out like an ancient Janus conundrum. The famous owl of Minerva can only begin its flight after the event.

On the positive side, Gusau should be able to leverage his powerful connections in the global intelligence circuits and his background as a devout Muslim to achieve a breakthrough in the Boko Haram deadlock. This is one feat that seems to have eluded both Sambo Dasuki and the late and much lamented Owoye Azazi. Coming from the same fraction of the military, the same royalist Fulani antecedents and with marital ties to boot, it should not be hard for Gusau and Dasuki to work together. But in these matters, the more you see, the less you know.

General Aliyu Gusau has been in the political game for a long time. Shy, shadowy and self-effacing to the point of complete self-erasure, the Fulani military powerbroker is justly celebrated as one of the finest and most accomplished products of Nigerian military intelligence. Known to be courteous and solicitous of the wellbeing of his friends, he is also believed to be a remorseless foe capable of lasting and long-distance animosity.

Well-regarded in northern power circuits, the military intelligence chieftain is known to have a formidable capacity and stamina for political intrigues and open-ended power conspiracies. As a political fixer, Gusau has become a permanent fixture of Nigerian politics since the Second Republic and in particular in the post-military period. He is widely believed to be one of the four leading northern generals that brokered the return of General Olusegun Obasanjo as civilian Head of State in 1999.

If there is one person who would be viewing the return of Gusau at this particular point with considerable consternation and unease, it must be General Mohammadu Buhari, his old military boss and former Commander in chief. And this unease must extend to the upbeat APC.

Almost thirty years ago, Gusau experienced the lowest point in his military career when he was purportedly pencilled for dismissal from service on the orders of Buhari over some import license palaver. The dismissal was swiftly countermanded by a triumphant Babangida who had tried in vain to safe the neck of his subordinate and devoted friend.

Almost three decades after, the body language suggests that the passage of time has not healed old wounds, and the relationship between the two Fulani generals appears frozen and frigid. If that were to be the case, it is unlikely that Gusau would lightly fold his arms and allow power to fall into the hands of Buhari and the APC except in the case of an unstoppable national avalanche.

Whichever way it goes, Nigeria is in for politically exciting and dangerous times. If matters come to a head early enough with the APC relentlessly baiting the expiring ruling party and obviously spoiling for an early bodily clinch, a constitutional earthquake might well render a political tsunami quite superfluous or surplus to requirements

But there are so many variables to this engrossing power tussle to make it an overdetermined totality, as a great French Marxist philosopher of power would put it. It is to be noted that as powerful as he may appear, Gusau himself is not invulnerable and invincible. At well over seventy, age is no longer on his side. If he decides to pitch for himself, he may well be consumed by the dynamics he has helped unleash.

Some people are born kingmakers and some are born kings. Both require different talents. On the two occasions that Gusau had tried to claim the crown for himself, it has ended as a derisive and risible anticlimax. First, when the duo of Generals Diya and Abacha hoodwinked him as Army boss into believing that the crown was his once Shonekan has been dismissed only for them to summarily remove the ground from under him.

Second, when a half-hearted effort to succeed Obasanjo collapsed on the fringes and peripheries of politics without making as much as a dent. Both were avoidable exercises in self-demystification. It is to be noted that after the second misadventure, Gusau’s political fortunes took a nosedive. The great spook from Zamfara State would do well to note that in politics, the very notion of third time unlucky is often a diplomatic euphemism for political suicide.

Good evening….

Darkness is truly visible these days. The millennial fog is very daunting and haunting. At night, the entire country darkens over like some vast prehistoric cave. In the blinding stillness, the few rays of light look like tiny glow worms in a vast jungle of forbidding blackness.
It is a truly historic eclipse, showcasing incompetence, fraud , sheer wickedness and the Blackman’s inhumanity to fellow Black people. This privatization thing is nothing but a transfer of sheer irresponsibility from the state to the private sector. Whoever is supposed to generate light now generates virtually 24/7 darkness. The informed wager is that it may get worse.
The dreaded apocalypse is probably here with us. And the boy-emperor smiles, with the sheepish mien of culpable flippancy. There is so much stress and unease in the land. Men and women are on a short fuse. Tempers flare in the most public of places. Citizens are sullen and surly-looking, like a historic mob waiting for the final signal. Twice in the week, raw anger threatened to overwhelm both the House of Representatives and the Senate. As often, the over-pampered haymakers may come to blows in the coming weeks.
In the midst of the confusion and looming conflagration, words went round that the divine creator of Nigeria and Nigerians will address the nation on the state of the union. At the appointed hour, people flocked to the appointed place. Besieged and berserk humanity struggled and jostled for space and the place soon became a Bedlam of sorts. People shrieked and howled at each other like denizens of a lunatic asylum.
Even in hell, there is a pecking order. The rulers of the nation— politicians, priests, soldiers, intellectuals, Muslim clerics, bankers, local kings, oil thieves, marabous and other junkies and flunkies of power— sat in the front row, beaming smiles of self-satisfaction. But there is plenty of opportunity in confusion.
The ranks of the new nobility have been infiltrated by some local thugs who were throwing unimaginable insults at them. Among them was the irrepressible Okon who eyed the rulers with scorn and contempt. “Yeye people, see di kind mess you don put dem Black people and una still dey smile,” Okon hollered.
“There is need to protect the species from the serpents”, a famous establishment lawyer noted, looking in the direction of Okon and other gangsters with considerable suspicion. All of a sudden, a celestial sandstorm began, thus heralding the arrival of the great One. The altercation immediately subsided. An ethereal figure could be seen wafting through the divine cloud.
“Good evening!!!” the voice suddenly boomed and then disappeared with the receding cloud. The crowd began to disappear in greater confusion and loss of lucidity. Thus ended the historic sighting of the creator of Nigeria. It will take another hundred years for the historic import of the message to sink in.

January 26, 2014
Flag-girls and unemployment in Nigeria

Who will rescue our ladies from Romeo employers?

Being a Sunday column, I normally submit my write-up for publication on Fridays. Usually, I must have started writing it as soon as I find any topic of interest. Sometimes, I even start on Mondays when I find something that catches my fancy, because writing depends on many factors; this moment you are in the mood, the next moment you are not. Sometimes it is the topic I start on Monday that I eventually conclude and submit. Sometimes too, I have had cause to change, even at the last minute, when stories of greater significance break. As a rule, whatever I write on must be topical. As writers know too, the pen flows better when one is writing on a topic of interest rather than on something one is writing on just to fill space.

Whilst I sometimes have a glut of what to focus on, depending on stories that break during the week, on a few occasions I have had to ‘scrap bottom pot’ (as we say) to find something worth commenting on. This past week was one such ‘dry’ week. It was not as if there were no significant stories, the problem was that there is nothing new to say on most of them. Take the Rivers State crisis, for example, over which there was rumpus in the Senate last week. Take also the story of the new Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu begging its governors that defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to return to the ruling party. Does any of them need to be told that that would amount to political suicide if they hearkened to such plea? Much as I would have loved to say something on this today in details, a comment by someone to the effect that Nigerian politicians are unpredictable made me change my mind and wait for the time they will commit such political hara-kiri before writing on the issue.

Or is it the story that President Goodluck Jonathan has said that corruption is not the main problem of Africa, but political instability and insecurity? Are you wondering where the President is getting some of these weird ideas from? Now, tell me, what new thing would one be saying that we have not said on corruption? On Stella Oduah alone, we have written the A-Z of corruption.

However, it was while flipping through the newspapers in search of what to write on that I stumbled on the story titled “Pathetic world of flag-girls on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”. The rider to that headline, “Where graduates work for 11 hours daily, earn N30,000 monthly” encapsulates the sorry pass that has been the lot of Nigerian graduates. In recent times, I have been plying that expressway somehow regularly and I have been seeing some of these ladies on the road controlling traffic. I never knew they were this underpaid, even though I have always known that such tendency is ever present in our society.

It is so sad that our graduates’ suffering is not only about not knowing when they will be graduating from the university, despite the fact that they signed a four-year contract when they were admitted. Only a few lucky ones make it within the four years; those who spend five years must be thanking their stars for being lucky.

Now, after going through these harrowing experiences, one should expect that the graduates would consider their suffering over. But the suffering proper begins after graduating. You see the apprehension on the faces of the youth corps members during their passing out parade, with many of them staring blank into space, and wondering what the future holds in stock for them.

It was when the reality of that gloomy future dawned on the flag-girls that they accepted the ridiculous offer in the construction company that they are presently serving. But the practice is pervasive in many other sectors of our economy. Go to some of these Indian as well as Lebanese companies, you find many of our young girls employed as casual workers. Yet, these companies make fortunes as profits from our economy. The sad aspect is that most of these companies regard these casual job offers given these girls as a favour. Some of their bosses even regard the girls as part of their unofficial ‘emoluments’ that they can turn to whenever they feel like.

What they do is to make the recruitment process look tedious for the girls and ladies such that those who eventually made it (sometimes after playing ball) will forever be thankful to whoever they thought was instrumental to their recruitment. Some were ‘duped’ in the process as they are still not given jobs after the girls had fulfilled all unrighteousness with some of the bosses, who sometimes happen to be Nigerians. Mind you, when we talk about ladies being duped, it is not about money. It will interest you to note that many of our banks and telecommunication firms that are reaping mouth-watering profits do same, with the supervising authorities pretending not to know, or accepting that there is nothing unusual about it.

A friend’s son was in these shoes until sometime last year when he was saved from that ‘Egypt’. The young man has a master’s from a university in London, but on returning home, the first job he got fetched him N10,000 a month; and N20,000 on a good month. After some time, he got another job from which he earned about N50,000 per month. He was still celebrating this when he got yet another for about double that amount. That is the extent to which exploitation has reached in the country.

What these girls have done is commendable; at least it is better, as some of them said in the newspaper report, than engaging in prostitution. But what of the attendant risks, with many inconsiderate drivers on our roads? Mind you, graduates employed as casual workers can never be entitled to any form of insurance. So, should anything happen to them even while on ‘active service’, they are on their own. Death will only be seen in the context of the company losing a ‘hand’ (hands is a derogatory term for workers).

There are many other examples of such demeaning jobs offered many Nigerian girls, with no one rising to fight for them. The politicians who should be doing that are part of the racket. They engage many of these girls who can find their way to Abuja as prostitutes, and while away their time and the time of Nigeria in-between the laps of these unfortunate ladies,their hearts humming and pounding like an over-flogged generator. That is when they (politicians) are not engaging in petty politicking, fighting political battles that have no bearing on the lives of the people, such that one cannot but wonder what these people have done with the power in their hands in years past, and why like Oliver Twist, they always want more. But we have to be careful to ask President Jonathan to solve the problem of unemployment. We first have to ascertain if he believes it is a problem. I said this with due respect, and especially against the background of his assertion that corruption is not an issue in Africa. Unemployment as a problem too, in the President’s eye, could only be in the imagination of those who are saying it is a problem here.

A reader’s musing

Did you hear Jonathan yesterday (Thursday, January 23)? He said the problem of Africa is not corruption but political instability and insecurity. Pray, what is the source of political instability and insecurity if not corruption? Why then are we expecting Jonathan to solve a problem he does not even understand? It is glaring we have employed a … to solve an electrical problem. The President is at home with corruption. God have mercy on Nigeria! From Simon Oladapo, Ogbomoso.

January 26, 2014
Strikes unlimited

First it was the Academic Staff Union of Universities ( ASUU) that was on strike for about six months over the non-implementation of an earlier agreement with the federal government.

It took the intervention of President Goodluck Jonathan to resolve the deadlock which is one of the longest strikes by university lecturers in the country.

Thankfully, lectures have resumed in federal and state universities and we can only hope that the federal government will not renege on any of the fresh agreement like before.

While the ASUU strike has been resolved, many other unions are either on strike or threatening to embark on strike.

Despite the assurance by the Ministry Of Education, negotiation with the Academic Staff of Polytechnic is still deadlocked after cumulative six months of strike which was suspended and resumed.

Officials of the union stormed out of a meeting last week noting that the government was not showing enough commitment to meeting their demands like it did in the case of ASUU.

Earlier in the month the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) suspended its planned nationwide indefinite strike to allow for full implementation of all elements of the agreement between the association and the government within set lines.

The NMA President Dr Osahon Enabulele said the strike was suspended to allow for full implementation of all elements of the agreement between the association and the government within set time lines.

The doctors had embarked on a five-day warning strike from 18 December to 22 December last year, over their demands and warned of an indefinite strike starting January 6 if their demands were not met.

They had demanded proper funding of health care in the country , provision of a regulatory environment for practice in the health sector and the expansion of universal health facilities to cover all Nigerians.

Others demands are the upgrade of health infrastructure, elimination of fundamental injustices done to doctors in terms of workplace conditions/conditions of service as well as other health sector challenges.

However while the nation was spared the doctors strike, the Joint Health Sectors Union and the Association of Health Professionals last Friday ended a three-day nationwide warning strike which paralyzed most health institutions nationwide.

The striking workers meeting with the Labour Minister, Chief Emeka Wogu and his counterpart in the Ministry of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, was inconclusive as both parties could not agree on how to resolve the crisis.

Except an agreement is reached and implemented indications are that the health workers may embark on ill scale strike which will definitely have disrupt medical services in the country since doctors cannot fully operate without other health professionals.

It is unfortunate that years of neglect and non implementation by past agreements has left the present government with the burden of meeting the demands of workers in various sectors.

The federal government however has to rise up to the occasion and take necessary steps to redress the worrying development where no one is sure which union will be the next to declare a strike.

Instead of waiting for unions to declare strikes, the government has to be pro-active in addressing some of the grievances of the workers. In some cases, what the workers are asking for are adequate funding of their sectors and policies to have an enabling environment.

It is curious that the government usually has to be forced to accept terms it had earlier rejected.

The situation where the President has to be dragged into negotiations with unions should not arise if necessary actions have been taken instead of allowing the situation to deteriorate.

January 26, 2014
National conference: towards citizens’ advisory

The president needs to pay special attention to recommendations that are likely to privilege some groups and marginalise others.

Now that the Main Report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue and the Minority Report of the same committee are largely available for perusal by citizens, it should not be out of place for citizens to add their voices to the recommendations contained in the two reports. In a democracy, the existence of a special committee set up to advise the president on how to go about anything should not rule out views from the general public, more so if reports from the formal advisory committee leave room for such interventions from citizens.

As the president is still in the process of digesting the reports, it is important to draw his attention to some aspects of the main and minor reports. With respect to the chapter on Methodology, it would have been more helpful for the committee to include in the detailed description of the methods of consultation a short analysis of the memoranda submitted and how the recommendations are derived from such memoranda. For example, such analysis would have given citizens an idea of how many of the 710 memoranda opted for the use of referendum; the use of an enabling legislation that empowers the conference to determine how to transform its recommendations into a constitution, etc. Such analysis would have communicated more effectively than just leaving the memoranda in an appendix.

Similarly, the chapter on Terms of Reference would have been more informative if it contained analysis of submissions to the committee on drawing up a feasible agenda for the proposed conference. It is not enough for the committee to affirm the commitment Nigerians expressed and exhibited throughout the exercise, it would have been more reassuring if the report had indicated the number of memoranda supporting this position. This inclusion would have further made the job of the president easier, as he would have been able to sense the percentage (even in the context of random samples made possible by the nature of the consultation across states) of states and groups that opt for just one No-go area: dissolution of the Republic. Analysis of memoranda would have given the president and citizens opportunities to tell the percentage of citizens and groups with interest in issues that are not constitutional, such as cost of governance, corruption, God-fatherism, de-militarisation of national psyche, restoring national ethics and values; institutionalising Almajiri and Nomadic education, as distinct from those that address issues of re-constitutionalising governance in the country, such as restructuring of the country, political and fiscal federalism, decentralisation of national education policy; decentralisation of national agricultural policy, etc.

The president needs to pay special attention to recommendations that are likely to privilege some groups and marginalise others. For instance, Recommendation 6.4.3 that says “the credibility of the Conference will be enriched by nominating representatives of the main regional socio-political organisations such as the Afenifere, Arewa Consultative Forum, Ohaneze Ndigbo, Middle-Belt Forum, South-south Peoples Assembly, etc., is capable of introducing avoidable problem in terms of fairness and equity. The fact that only five regional bodies are mentioned by name in the report for special inclusion suggests that there are many others that even the committee is unable to identify, hence the use of etc in the committee’s recommendation. Surely, mentioning five is enough for anyone to believe that the chairman of the committee has no intention to favour Afenifere, an organisation of which he is a leading member.

But many citizens and socio-cultural organisations across the country are bound to wonder about how the Conference committee arrived at the consideration that Arewa Consultative Forum is more significant than Northern Elders Forum or Arewa Youth Forum. The same point can be raised about the choice of Afenifere over Afenifere Renewal Group or Oodua Peoples Congress, both socio-cultural organisations in the Yoruba region. These five organisations are already part of at least five of the six regions or zones. What special purpose are they going to serve as special delegates to the conference? Nigeria is, first and foremost, a country of citizens, not of socio-cultural organisations. Each of the socio-cultural organisations mentioned by the committee is almost as partisan as regular political parties. Why leave out political parties while privileging partisan socio-cultural organisations?

Still on recommendation 6.4., the president should notice the temptation to load the conference with nominees of the president—direct or indirect. So-called Interest Groups should just be given the number to send to the conference, without having to pass their nominations through the presidency. Better still, it is better to leave socio-cultural organisations out of the groups to be given special status, more so that doing this is capable of avoidable politicisation of the selection process. Not too long ago, some socio-cultural organisations went to pay special visit to the president while others did not. Choosing an organisation that did that over the ones that did not or have not paid special visits to the president can raise the issue of partiality or favouritism on the part of the president. Special delegate status should be limited to professional groups whose membership is pan-Nigerian while socio-cultural groups that are region or state-specific should be encouraged to use some of the spaces given to states or regions. Equally unnecessary is the recommendation that the president shall have the power to nominate one delegate per state, should there be any governor that is unable to identify a representative for his or her state. Why should the president be given such powers in a pro-federal system in a bid towards full federalisation of the polity?

In addition, if the issue of referendum was predominant in the presentations made to the committee, how did the committee arrive in chapter 9 at leaving the matter of integrating decisions and outcomes of the conference into the Constitution and Laws of the nation in the hands of the conference, more so after recommending in chapter 8 creation by the National Assembly of an enabling legislation for the conference? If an analysis of the distribution of memoranda over what to do with the recommendations of the conference had been provided, there would have been no reason for any minority report, since the crux of the matter between the main and minor reports is the issue of giving the decision to ultimate owners of sovereignty in Nigeria. Another section that may be unhelpful to anyone being advised is the last recommendation under chapter 8: “In the alternative to the above, the president may exercise his inherent powers under Section 5 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and convene the Conference.” Using such powers had been done before. General Obasanjo did this and nothing came out of the conference he called. Encouraging the president to use this option is capable of making him play into the hands of Nigerians who have expressed serious doubts about his capacity to carry the national conference to fruition. Moreover, providing an analysis of the distribution of memoranda over creating a new constitution or recommending amendments to the existing constitution would have been more helpful to anyone that needs to know the scope of what the conference should do.

It may not be too late for the committee to let the president know the percentage of memoranda in favour of ethnic nationality representation, enabling legislation to allow the conference take its recommendations to the people in a referendum, and reserving seats for gubernatorial and presidential nominees. The resultant weight of evidence is likely to assist any advisee to opt for what majority of citizens at the interactive sessions prefer. For the president to have opted for a national conference that is not sovereign already limits the scope and power of the conference. To encourage the president to nominate up to one-third of conference delegates will be an overkill, the type that can produce an Obasanjo-type of conference.

January 26, 2014
Chief Bisi Akande: Celebrating a worthy leader at 75

It is a thing of joy that we still have in Yoruba land today, a distinguished leader of the calibre of Chief Bisi Akande,

This column opens up today with a portion that was guillotined from last Sunday’s article due to space constraint. It is a thing of joy that we still have in Yoruba land today, a distinguished leader of the calibre of Chief Bisi Akande, the Interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress to celebrate. In an age when all manner of characters are bandied about as leaders in the Southwest geo-political zone, and when ‘leaders’ are being trashed right and left in certain circles, no matter what high office they have held in the land, we of the APC, and millions of Omoluabi Yoruba and Nigerians in general, can truly celebrate one of our own. A man of impeccable integrity, variously tested and trusted, below is what I wrote about Chief Akande in the special publication for his birthday anniversary: ‘A dye-in-the- wool Awoist and an irrepressible student of the Uncle Bola Ige school of politics, Baba Akande has grown to become an indefatigable democrat. A tested leader in whom there is no guile, it is safe to say that with the likes of him leading the APC, it will yet be too early to declare Nigeria a failed state. Happy Birthday, Sir.

Fighting Executive Impunity In Nigeria: Dr Bashir Gwandu’s Example

“I see this case as part of my contribution towards strengthening of the rule of law and a decision meant to send message to investors that Nigeria has come of age and is a place where the law is applicable to everyone, including the president. The Nigerian telecom law is there and it contains adequate provisions to protect stakeholders and investment, all that investors need to do is to learn to stand and pursue their rights in defence of their investments. As for the young ones, never be discouraged, troubled, or get intimidated by powerful forces. There is an honour in public service, just do your part, and God is there to provide protection. Have faith in God and you will never be disappointed.’ – Dr Bashir Gwandu on his court victory.

Increasingly under the Jonathan administration, Nigeria and corruption are becoming Siamese twins. With executive impunity firmly in place, well-connected and high-profile fraudsters are guaranteed a safe passage, whatever their crime. By itself, the administration also routinely perpetrates corruption, as the case in which Dr Bashir Gwandu was unjustly punished eloquently demonstrates.

As reported severally in the media when the news broke in 2013, Dr Gwandu, former Executive Commissioner of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Chairman of the technical body of Radio communications Advisory Group (RAG), as well as Vice-Chairman Joint Task Group, JTG-4-5-6-7, of I.T.U, was summarily removed from office as Executive Commissioner of the NCC on 26th November 2012 for his principled stand against three major frauds committed in the commission by agents of the Jonathan government. Indeed, according to Femi Falana, SAN, who is Gwandu’s lawyer, Mrs Omobola Johnson, the Minister of Communications Technology, actually demanded, by a letter dated April 12, 2013, addressed to the Secretary-General of ITU, that Dr Gwandu be relieved of the positions he held at ITU. Such barefaced impunity will be hard to come by in any government that sets any stock by transparency and anti-corruption; two elements the Jonathan administration very sincerely abhors.

What then were Gwandu’s offences?

Of course, his sins against the innermost cravings of a corrupt government was that he spilled the bins on three main frauds committed in the commission, apparently on orders from above.

These, according to several news sources, are: selling of 450MHz Spectrum to an unlicensed company- OpenSkys Ltd reportedly owned by Mr Emeka Offor and some powerful associates who then connived to remove Gwandu, after paying only US $6 million for a licence that should have fetched the nation over $50 million. Second was reported to be the N1.029B waiver applied for by the Communications Minister ostensibly for three companies: Multilink’s, Starcomms and MTS, but was granted to only MTS – a company in which NCC’s Chief Executive Officer, Eugene Juwah, in two separate interviews admitted to having shares, at the expense of the federation account and those two other companies.

The third issue was Gwandu’s reported opposition to the sale of a 10MHz slot in the 800MHz spectrum-band without competitive bids, as required by law, to a South African company called Smile Communications Limited for about €13million while equivalent spectrums sold in Germany, Italy, France and UK for around €992million.

Till date, these weighty allegations have not been probed by the Jonathan administration.

But Nigerians must thank Dr Gwandu and his intrepid lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, who took his sack case to court as only this past week, the National Industrial Court, sitting at Abuja, declared Gwandu’s removal from office as Executive Commissioner illegal, unconstitutional, ultra vires, null and void and of no effect whatsoever. The court, therefore, ordered that Gwandu be paid his accrued salaries, benefits, allowances and entitlements up to 21st January 2014. The court further awarded him N100 million in damages.

Unless, and until Nigerians come to rise up to fight this thoroughly kleptomanic government, we as a country and people, will remain the butt of jokes the world over. Unfortunately, most of these frauds are perpetrated with the 2015 election in mind as the beneficiaries are all potential big election donors and for that alone, the Jonathan government will sacrifice anything.

It is the same amoral considerations that underpinned some of the names recently sent by the president to the senate for confirmation as ministers. While mercifully, Nigerians should see the back of Princess Oduah in the imminent cabinet reshuffle, some of these individuals should not be anywhere near a public office. It is extremely painful what messages President Jonathan is sending to Nigerians, as well as the outside world about how serious he is on fighting corruption. Even if the former PDP Chairman, recently forced out of office was not accused of any fraud, the fact that a man who could not manage a political party gets appointed to a very critical segment of the economy is also very uncomplimentary. One can understand jobs for the boys, but for a man of Alhaji’s Tukur’s age and accomplishments to have accepted his new job can only be a validation of his grovelling reluctance to leave the former. It equally says a lot about the PDP that it could appoint as its Chairman, a person who is not only wanted by the EFCC, but was adjudged by a seven-man panel set up by none other than Governor Yuguda who reportedly nominated him, to have misappropriated N20.4 billion while governor of Bauchi State.

Regarding Jonathan’s new ministers, Nigerians can only hope that this time around, the senate will truly serve the nation.

A hollow hope, many will say.

January 26, 2014
The Beautiful, the Ridiculous & the Sublime

The only lesson the people are learning is that it is all right to seek only the things of the self and let the country, and others, be damned

My favourite magazine last week featured a story of a new kind of computer printer that prints 3-D inanimate objects. Imagine that! All you need to own various objects like toys in your home is that printer called The Cube, your own imagination and a cartridge that spews plastic instead of ink, and hey presto!, you’re lost in the very depths of your own toy and object factory. You can print practically anything you want. Now, don’t get me started on just what I can do with that kind of machine, because that is one beauty I’ve been longing to see in my lifetime for many reasons. Let’s see why now.

     To start with, I have long had a hankering after serving plates that do not break or require too much care. Now, with a machine like The Cube, I will not only make my own plates, I can make them in shapes, sizes and colours I want. Should I desire to satisfy my palate for a large-sized plate of my favourite dish of good ol’ Amala on a particular day, I would first take my time to design the shape of the container; then I would choose the colour of the day, maybe marigold yellow with a hint of a rainbow mix rimming the edges. Then, I would make the food. With the combination of food and plate simmering in front of me, I can now sing, ‘I’m in heaven… This is the heaven…’ as one morsel follows another down the dark, dark tunnel. Then, when I remember that I can choose another plate design and colour for the next day’s menu, another song will issue forth, ‘It doesn’t get better than this…No, no, it doesn’t get better than this…’ Ah, that sure is the life! Hopefully, with enough coaxing, the machine will be able to print my lunch one day.

     Oh yes, I have also wanted to own something that I can stuff down people’s throats when they are saying what I particularly do not want to hear. Now, with that machine, all I have to do is look at the shape of the mouth of the speaker and design the appropriate object to fit it – round, square, triangular or slit. No problem. When someone around me is complaining about the fact that money is scarce in the town and so the housekeeping money is going to be… I quickly shut the mouth before the word is uttered. When someone in the vicinity of where I am standing is trying to tell me that the country is broke, would I mind a salary… I quickly shut the mouth before the unutterable word is uttered. Beautiful. Now, all I have to pray for is that someday, a machine will be invented that will print people, so that I can surround myself with only my kind of people who will only say things I want to hear.

      Now, I have always wanted a machine that can print me a new dress every day. According to the article that started all this wish list, someone is already thinking like me. There are designers out there, it said, who have printed a pair of shoes and a dress, using different printers. Now, that is music to my ears. No more can my tailor and cobbler be rude to me. No more will I have to grin and swallow their insults of ‘come back tomorrow…’ while the waters are roiling deep inside me worse than the Atlantic Ocean in a storm. Now, all I need to do is dream up a look for the day, and command the machine. Then, when I get to the end of the road and find that the look does not really work for me in broad day light as it did in my head, I can go back home and make the necessary adjustments. I command my machine. The only thing that would be left would be for that beautiful machine to print money for me…

     You’re right, we need money to design and build the machines that will make my dreams come true. Don’t I know it? But, seriously, where do you think the money to fund the technological drive in this country will come from when we are busy funding ridiculous projects? Just the other day, I read in the papers that Senator Abe of Rivers State had been flown abroad for medical attention after being allegedly shot by the police with rubber bullets! I ask you, I tell you! It’s people like these – the one who shot him, him that was shot and agreed to be flown out of the country, and the one who funded the trip – these are the ones who are standing in the way of making my machine dreams come true. They are the Dream Terminators! Honestly, I sometimes feel as if all our money is going into funding the expensive hobby the country is engaged in right now, politics. It’s a little like the head of a family who persists in finding the cure for hunger by locking himself in the kitchen conducting one experiment after the other. The rest of the family can be left to feel like orphans for all he cares. (Actually, he can feel like a childless father for all they care if he would just get out of the kitchen so they can feed).

      Anyway, I just hope this politics will not be the death of this country – through laughter. Take another news report I read the other day. The Speaker of the House of Reps read out a letter written by the chairman of DPP to the house complaining that one of its members had defected to another party. The problem was not so much the defection; obviously that did not rankle. What pained the chairman was the fact that the said member had disobeyed instructions. He had defected to APC instead of PDP as he had been directed to do! I mean, did a group of grown-up MEN seriously want us to believe that they sat down, deliberated and came up with this no-brainer? Unbelievable. It just proves two things. The first is what many people have said before: that this country has NO POLITICAL CLASS. We do not have men and women brimming with ideas, dreams and visions of how to rescue this country from certain doom and self-destruction. All the country has thrown up so far are CLASS 2004, ‘08, OR ‘11 OF CLOWNS AND MARAUDERS. The second point is this: that when I said the year was going to bring up much nuggets of laughter and you should get your sides reinforced so they don’t split, I was serious.

           The only problem is that while we are laughing, like Nero, Nigeria may burn. In the face of complete helplessness, however, what are we to do but hold on to our dreams? We have sublime notions of what good governance is like: politicians, not clowns, directing the affairs of the country; leaders keeping their pulses on the prices of garri, beans, oil and rent in the market so that when all else fail, the people can eat and sleep; leaders knowing the state of the national institutions under their care because they also use them – hospitals, schools, transportation systems, roads, recreation grounds, etc. Like I said, these are sublime dreams but it’s not as if they are not attainable. They are, if the leaders would just put their backs into the job and teach the people how to do it too. As of now though, the only lesson the people are learning is that it is all right to seek only the things of the self and let the country, and others, be damned.

January 26, 2014
‘BJ, what is it that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood films?’ (2)

[For Akinwunmi Isola, raconteur, master storyteller and cineaste]

It seems so obvious now that it surprises me a lot that I did not readily or easily realize as I watched Nollywood films with Mama Sagamu that the producers and marketers of Nollywood do not make their films for people like me who do not talk back to or with the characters in their films. More pointedly, it surprises me now why, for a long time, I did not or could not answer Sade’s question with the simple but irrefutable answer that Nollywood filmmakers do not care one jot about people like Sade who ask what people see in their films. I mean, let’s face the fact here squarely: if hundreds of millions of people in Nigeria, Africa and around the world are watching your films and talking to characters in those films, what does it matter if cultural and social elites who do not talk back at films raise questions about the value of your films? As I see all too clearly now thanks to the humility that Mama Sagamu rather unknowingly taught me, this matter is like asking the makers of Hollywood blockbusters what the millions of filmgoers who flock to see their films see in their products. Terminator 1, 2 and 3 – what do the hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide who have seen and continue to watch them see in these films? Ask such a question if you wish, but both the makers and fans of these films are completely indifferent to the question.

I make this allusion to Hollywood blockbusters deliberately. There is a vast commercial, cultural and cinematic chasm separating the world of the big mega-studios that produce Hollywood blockbusters and the universe of the producers and marketers of Nollywood video films. For one thing, Hollywood studios spend vast sums of money to advertize, promote and “hype” their films. Moreover, they do have a more or less captive audience that was created over several decades. By contrast, Nollywood producers and marketers are still in the historic process of creating and consolidating their audience base. And if the truth must be told, they are as surprised as everybody else that people like Mama Sagamu love to watch their films. But having admitted these huge differences between Hollywood and Nollywood with regard to the creation and consolidation of audiences counted in the hundreds of millions, there are certain common features that both traditions share that throw considerable light on that question from Sade: “what is it that you and Mama Sagamu see in Nollywood films?” Let me explain.

It is a fundamental aspect of cultural modernity in every part of the world that capitalism seeks to create audiences for the arts, for music, for sports and almost all other forms of entertainment and recreation in their millions, indeed in their hundreds of millions. The key thing in this is to find the winning and repeatable formula that will keep the audiences coming and watching in their millions or in some cases even billions. It is thanks largely to Mama Sagamu that I came to realize that before our very eyes and without anyone knowing exactly how it all happened, Nollywood filmmakers have found the winning and repeatable formula that puts them far ahead and above any other national film tradition in Africa in terms of attracting audiences across the whole continent and the African diasporas in Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean. This is why in last week’s opening piece in this column I made the assertion that the single greatest historic and cultural significance of Nollywood is the fact that, for good or ill, it has completely replaced Hollywood and Bollywood films as the preferred traditions of films that Africans love to watch.

There is a theoretical or philosophical principle behind this achievement, but I have no room in this piece to explore it beyond merely identifying and stating it. This is the principle of the fundamental cultural, human and existential right and need of all the peoples of our common earth to self-representation. In plain language, this philosophical principle implies that as much as people everywhere in the world like to see and watch images of peoples from other lands and cultures, people everywhere prefer images and stories of themselves written and told by and for themselves. This is what Nollywood has achieved by massively displacing Hollywood and Bollywood as the cultural and commercial forces that for a very long time dominated the cinematic images that people in our continent could see. The interesting thing is why it was/is Nollywood which effected this “decolonization” and not any of the other national cinemas and video industries in Africa. Again, let me say that it was Mama Sagamu that made this perception very apparent, very clear to me.

Let me put these observations and claims in some very concrete terms. On the MNET-Africa Magic channels that are broadcast twenty-four hours round the clock, Nollywood films overwhelmingly dominate the films that are watched throughout the African continent. I do not have the exact figures, but it would not surprise me to learn that the dominance is as great as a factor of five to one in favour of Nollywood films compared with films from other African countries. More tellingly, Nollywood film stars are the best known and the most talked about in Africa, many of them being household names, names that show up in reports and even in comedy routines in many African countries. Speaking for myself, apart from a few Ghanaian actors, I do not know the names of any stars from South Africa or Tanzania or indeed any other country that command the attention, the allure of Nollywood actors. Thus, we arrive at the very intriguing fact that just as millions of audiences of Nollywood films talk back to the characters, so do millions also talk a lot about and are obsessed with the actors themselves. Above all else and more subliminally, it is becoming more and more apparent that a Nollywood content and style, a Nollywood formula of video filmmaking is beginning to creep into the filmmaking contents, styles and techniques of films from many of the other African countries.

This last point is about the most challenging task that we face in coming to some kind of critical and productive determination of Sade’s question that served as the catalyst for this series. If there is a composite Nollywood content, style or formula that has Mama Sagamu talking with and to the characters of Nollywood films in the intimacy of her own home or at the Ogunbiyis in Victoria Island, what is it? In the present context and as preliminary interpretive act, I can only provide a very broad outline of this Nollywood formula of filmmaking that has been so widely successful as to effect that “decolonization” of cinema in Africa from the dominance of Hollywood and Bollywood. Thus, first, a gripping melodrama of good versus evil is a constant factor in the scripts and storylines of Nollywood films. This is important if we bear in mind that melodrama is the most successful and popularizing genre of the modern era, especially in cinema. Secondly, there is the fact that Nollywood melodramas are acted with great, perhaps even exaggerated emotion, far more than films from other African countries. Thirdly, the same actors show up again and again in variations of the same melodramatic struggles of good against evil in Nollywood films. Moreover, these actors have so perfected their roles and routines that upon their very first appearance in a film, they elicit instant approving or enthralled responses from their adoring audiences. But then, there arises the question as to how this combination of content, formula and routines emerged and crystallize as the winning hallmarks of the Nollywood brand. I raise this point not as something to be explored in this series but as a topic for further reflection in a future series in this column.

Melodrama, in every genre and culture in the world, provides a charged but extremely over-simplifying presentation and “resolution” of the problems and crises of society and life itself. Nollywood video films have taken this tendency of melodrama to new, unprecedented levels of moral, spiritual and cultural darkness and depravity. The “solutions” provided in Nollywood films are often stunningly naïve and obfuscatory. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the overwhelming pervasiveness in Nollywood films of witchcraft and the occult as active determinants of human motivation, behaviour and fate. Indeed, it is doubtful if any other national tradition of filmmaking in modern times has been as deeply immersed in witchcraft and the occult as Nollywood films. This prompts the tantalizing question: Are Nollywood films so popular in the African continent because of, or in spite of their immersion in the occult?

A lot is happening to and within Nollywood. It is almost safe to project now that from its present continent-wide popularity as the “decolonizing” nemesis of the dominance of Hollywood and Bollywood in Africa that is however very contradictory in its contents and styles, scriptwriters and cineastes are at work in Nollywood who are using the popularity and the impact of the tradition to provide equally entertaining but more enlightened, subtle and progressive films. To one such person, one such visionary this concluding piece in the series is dedicated. He is Akinwunmi Isola. I do not know if Mama Sagamu has seen any of his films. But I shall be sure to make available to her a copy of Isola’s most recent film, Ofinga, a powerful, moving and also highly entertaining drama on how moral and legal squabbles within an extended family threaten the sense of right and wrong, of the just and the unjust and indeed the very humanity of all the characters in the film. If and when Mama watches Ofinga, I promise for once to join her in her accustomed running commentary on films!

January 26, 2014
Southwest’s new paradigm

In the 1999 presidential election, the two leading contenders hailed from the Southwest, deliberately so because there was a general feeling of pacifying the zone for its loss caused by the annulment of the 1993 elections and the tragic death of the winner of that year’s presidential poll, MKO Abiola. The Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All Peoples Party (APP) reached an understanding to field Olu Falae, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fielded Olusegun Obasanjo. Chief Obasanjo won, but the nature of his win and the timing of the victory hid the emerging trend in Nigerian politics. That trend, which began to mature in 2007 and reached full bloom in the 2011 elections, affected the Southwest in more incalculable ways than it exposed the North’s impotence in zonal (extrapolative) politics. Henceforth, no zone could single-handedly determine who wins. The North had long ceased to be monolithic, especially politically. For its candidate to win, he would need a huge dose of inclusive politics that reaches out far and wide. The failure of the Gen Muhammadu Buhari campaign underscored this point. By accident rather than by design, or the factor of incumbency, the victory achieved by Candidate Goodluck Jonathan showed clearly what a candidate must be like to win. While it is important to examine the shifting trends in Nigeria’s presidential politics, my main concern today is the Southwest’s apparently surprising realisation (or new paradigm) of what Nigeria’s presidential politics has become and how the zone can best retain relevance. We are, of course, familiar with the Southwest’s long-standing approach to presidential politics. Between the 1950s and 2007, the zone repeatedly tried to produce a candidate that was deeply intellectual, principled, humanistic, ideological and popular. The candidate and the entire zone itself were projected in a way that made both to be anchored on solid left-of-centre, progressive ideology. The zone then reached out with that sacrosanct ideology to either like-minded progressives in other zones or opportunists masquerading as progressives. Because that ideology, now roughly cast as immutable, showed strong hues of Yoruba culture and history, it was often difficult to attract popular and credible politicians from other zones. In a highly competitive political environment, they feared being dominated, humiliated or even obliterated. The Southwest, it now seems, has begun to realise that it must quietly mitigate its messianic orientation to politics, sugar-coat its dominant ideological orientation of progressivism to make it less offensive, and when necessary be prepared to sacrifice its ambitions for the larger good. This discovery is, in my opinion, largely fortuitous, even as the zone’s leaders as well as the previously dominant Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) appear to define the ‘larger good’ in broadly philosophical and abstract terms. I say fortuitous because when the ACN opted to support the candidacy of Aminu Tambuwal for the post of Speaker, House of Representatives, in 2011, that choice seemed less strategic than political. It is unlikely the party already conceived at that time the grand coalition that has today metamorphosed into the All Progressives Congress (APC), nor imagined that the rainbow coalition, including the peaceful mass defections in the House, would be partly facilitated by the party’s inclusive politics, relationship with Hon Tambuwal, and a host of other factors. But even if the grand coalition was already conceived as far back as 2011, the scale of its success, not to say the structure of the coalition itself, must surprise those who inspired it. Part of the misunderstanding between the Southwest’s leading politicians and groups can be traced to this emergent trend. There are on one hand those who are still nostalgic about the Obafemi Awolowo days; and there are on the other hand those disillusioned by the impotence of the politics of the past. The first group, broadly speaking, is made up of the rump Afenifere and many opportunistic elements in the Labour Party (LP). They either describe themselves as the only truly progressive politicians in the zone on account of their association with the heirs of the Awolowo dynasty, or they sometimes see themselves as another progressive group outside the ACN component of the APC. This group still hugs the illusion that it could present a puristic and traditional form of Southwest progressivism around which a national coalition could be formed. The second group, now fully ensconced in the APC, believes that the puristic form of progressivism has over the past five decades proved either inadequate or at least problematic as a vehicle for winning the presidency. Like some leading political parties in the US and Britain, some of which had had to rediscover and remould themselves in order to achieve greater electoral appeal, this second Southwest group believes it must broaden its progressive ideological base by, if necessary, mitigating its form and structure to make it appeal to a wider swath of the country, especially to groups and zones not terribly averse to any left-of-centre ideology. It reasoned that if ethnic politics and divides were to be transcended, supporting Hon Tambuwal in 2011 was a good way to begin. It hoped that when it came to national politics, the Southwest electorate would understand why Hon Tambuwal was a better option to tear to pieces the iron curtain of distrust that had separated the North from the South for so long, and why supporting his Southwest opponent, Mulikat Akande-Adeola, was nothing but offensive and retrogressive ethnic politics. The Southwest’s new paradigm for national politics, and in particular, presidential politics, is based on very sound but evidently futuristic suppositions. Like anything new and radical, this paradigm will bring with it teething problems, especially because many of its leading lights simply lack the depth and perspective to appreciate the implications and benefits the major realignment being midwifed by the zone’s political iconoclasts will trigger. Already, it would seem the increasing fractiousness of the crowd in the APC is the logical antithesis to the grand coalition’s possibilities, stability and survival. But if coalition leaders at national and state levels could subordinate their ambitions to the common good, and grasp through their minds’ eyes the nirvana they seem at the threshold of midwiving, they might succeed in reinforcing the new trends Nigerian politics needs to survive as a nation, democratic, stable and free. In the new reality, the Southwest appears to be the zone making the hugest sacrifice for very little profit. In time, however, the zones in the North will realise quite clearly what they now suspect: that the only way to guarantee stability and eliminate bigotry and prejudice is to embrace politics of inclusiveness. In time they will also realise, just like the Southwest did when it favoured Hon Tambuwal over Hon Akande-Adeola, that what the country needs is not for politicians to seclude themselves in, and reinforce, their ethnic cocoons, but to embrace healthy politics even if it seems illogical and unrewarding in the short run. In time, too, the Southeast will recognise that it must open up quite courageously as the Southwest is doing, build politicians with crossover appeal, and begin to practice the politics of inclusiveness. It is unlikely that a time will come when by common agreement the presidency would be surrendered to a Southeast candidate. The zone will have to work for it by taking the new dynamics of zonal politics into cognisance or, like Dr Jonathan, hope to take the presidency by default, with all the accompanying uncertainties.

January 19, 2014
Transitions and transformation

When the freshly minted President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan announced that his regime would be marked by a transformative agenda, not many compatriots believed him. Nigerians have heard too much of such promises in the past only for them to turn out a damp squib. Let them just get on with the job and forget the stirring heroics, cynical Nigerians would be heard grunting. From Shagari’s Ethical Revolution to Yar’Adua’s Servant Leadership, our people seem to have heard enough.

So it is then that a prophet is not without honour, except in his own land. But it is also in the nature of prophecies to manifest in curious and unexpected ways. Last week as the shouting match in River State finally descended into a full scale shooting war, and as illustrious scalps tumbled from the Wadata Plaza and the military redoubt, the real transition and transformation finally unfolded before our eyes. It is not about the political and economic society. It is the transition and transformation of Goodluck Jonathan from a meek and diffident political apprentice to a full blown civilian caudillo.

The interesting thing about a fascist terror machine is that it acts with impersonal rigour recognising neither its original owners nor its temporary custodians When in a moment of vengeful hubris you hand over such a torture instrument to a man weighed down by the ancestral memory of persecution and torture, a man whose cultural conditioning has not accustomed him to an automatic obeisance and deference to hierarchy and a feudal pecking order, you must be ready to reap the whirlwind.

Jonathan may well be the nemesis of the old Nigerian power coalition, just as Abacha turned out its military nemesis. In human affairs, political advantages are not designed to last forever. Somebody is bound to lose concentration at a critical point and make a stupid mistake.

The Nigerian post-colonial state and its hegemonic power brokers have had it coming for a long time. Good luck normally intervened. Now, the real Goodluck has intervened, and it is about time, too. Even political insanity has its statute of limitation. You cannot spend decades preparing for madness. Madness does not condone permanent deferral.

As readers will attest, this column is not given to hurling invectives and personal insults. When we focus on particular individuals, it is to highlight their importance in and to the impersonal process of history. For many, Jonathan may appear as an errant personality and historic misfit, but sometimes individual actors are often helpless and hapless agents of the remorseless and relentless turns of history.

In order to understand just what is going on, we must return to the nature of colonial and post-colonial transition in Nigeria and the kind of anti-developmental state and nation we have been saddled with by both our colonial and post-colonial overlords. A state and nation do not exist in vacuum. They are products of a specific political and cultural milieu and a determinate historical process.

Last week, we noted in this column how the military transition programmes often mirror the colonial transition itself in their emphasis on continuity rather than radical change, and their obsession with personnel replacement rather than a fundamental re-engineering of the structure of the state and the nation itself.

It is therefore appropriate to look at the nature of the military rule that Nigeria has had and their fixation with the status quo rather than the radical agency which would have rapidly transformed Nigeria’s political and economic fortunes. We need to understand the nature and character of the millennial incubus we are dealing with. It will then be possible to situate the Jonathan presidency within the lineage of civilian despotism. General Obasanjo who has been directly involved in two of the transition programmes both as a beneficiary and benefactor is a central figure in the historical tragedy.

Two of the military regimes did not even bother about transition programmes. In the case of General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, he was completely consumed with tempering and negotiating the radical momentum the military uprising of January 15 1966 had unleashed. The fallout would eventually consume him. General Mohammadu Buhari could not care a hoot. His natural disdain for Nigerian politicians coupled with the violent mood of the country against politics and the political class at the end of the Shagari regime made the climate very hostile.

After initially agreeing to a broad based transition to civilian rule programme, General Gowon suddenly changed his mind in 1974 on the grounds that the political class had not learnt their lesson. We may never know the intelligence available to the temperate and mild-mannered general who had done extremely well in healing the hideous wounds of the civil war.

But with Chief Awolowo on the prowl and the Ikenne titan acting with the majesty and assurance of a king in waiting, the odds were too unpredictable. Gowon himself would famously admit that he had rebuffed all entreaties to put Awo away. Even after the civil war, the fear of Awo was the beginning of wisdom. The following year, Gowon was swept out of office by his colleagues.

Despite all the chicanery and grand deception of the Babangida Transition Programme and the frantic war-gaming on behalf of the status quo, the dominant military faction bared its fangs as soon as it was confronted with the unpredictable outcome of the end election. They panicked and summarily annulled the election as soon as it became clear that MKO Abiola and the coalition of unaccustomed and irregular fellows were coasting to victory in a momentous landslide. For his temerity, Abiola would perish in captivity.

In the case of General Abacha, the obsession with the military, political and national status quo assumed a venomous dimension. After forcing himself on the nation even against the wishes of majority of the armed forces, Abacha came to the conclusion that only he could succeed himself.

His self-succession project had developed an unstoppable momentum when it became obvious to the protocol of power that the cost of acquiescing in his murderous siege on the nation might prove prohibitive. A sultan’s scalp was already in the blood-dripping kitty among many other illustrious apparitions, and the goggled one was beginning to eye the hilltop castle in Minna for the definitive endgame. An outstanding military terrorist, Abacha had bludgeoned the nation’s traditional power centres into submission and was on his way to becoming the country first truly maximum ruler when death intervened.

The two transition programmes involving General Obasanjo are classic examples of how to politically railroad a whole nation into compliance using the military tactics of camouflage and deception. The hapless and clueless Nigerian political class allowed themselves to be led into a well-laid political ambush before being electorally slaughtered. Only the deeply cunning can call to the deeply cunning.

As it was in 1979, so was it the case in 1999. General Abdulsalaam Abubakar, who as a colonel commanded the hand over parade by Obasanjo in 1979, appeared to have mastered the ropes very well. As usual, the obsession of the military hierarchs was with continuity and the preservation of the status quo. The political class served as ancillary and accessory to a well-oiled plot which caught them completely flatfooted.

Like its NPN forebear, the PDP was designed as a broad based national party teeming with men and women of calibre and timber who could deliver the bloc votes while guaranteeing continuity and the status quo even as they indemnify the departing military against loss of face and humiliation. An ideological blueprint for the rapid development and transformation of the country was a less urgent and pressing need in the face of antagonistic and anti-military forces of change. As usual with “non-ideological” posturing, it is based on a masked ideology of a conservative stirring of the most virulently reactionary kind..

In 1979, Obasanjo famously boasted that the best candidate do not always win elections. Twenty years later, the same man after wondering aloud about how many times Nigeria wanted to make a president of him willingly yielded to a draft “ambush” by noting that generals do not walk away from an ambush. They romp through it. Unknown to the kingmakers, the king had already been chosen somewhere else.

With the benefit of cruel hindsight, it is now very painful watching the AD chieftains hopping from one party to the other when their fate had already been sealed. Their participation in the Abubakar transition programmes served to confer legitimacy on a chicanery concocted somewhere else. But it could have been worse. The 1999 cliff hanger was more dire than 1979, the military having exhausted its political and historic possibility as an agent of change.

If one takes a long term perspective or what the French call la longue duree on this matter, it may be possible to see some good in evil and some merits in the PDP, given the balance of power at that particular point. It was a holding device put in place to work out the contradictions of military rule as the army beat a disorderly retreat back to the barracks. It did brilliantly well in that. Only men of Obasanjo’s nerve and verve, T. Y Danjuma’s steely and strategic brilliance and Aliyu Gusau’s arm twisting spooky genius could have achieved that feat of demilitarization without provoking a monumental backlash.

But eventually, a monstrosity can only beget another monstrosity. In a cruel paradox, the same road that leads to demilitarization also leads to a democratic gridlock. A holding device is just that. It is not designed to move the country forward economically and politically. We can now see the trail and the obsession with “safe” status quo that led to the emergence of Goodluck Jonathan. The PDP military-inspired hoax has lasted fifteen years. The Jonathan presidency is its defining end product.

Being politically and ideologically bereft, the PDP can neither transform itself not to talk of transforming the nation. As it is at the moment, the party is a rudderless hulk that is about to transit Nigeria into another major disaster. The Titanic is approaching its titanic iceberg. Unfortunately having overdrawn their political and professional IOUs, the old Junker generals and masters of the Wehrmacht are no longer in a position to sort things out. Unless care is taken, it is going to be an apocalyptic meltdown and a nightmare for the Black race.

January 19, 2014