The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • The HND stigma

    My wife is a polytechnic graduate but if she has her way, she will not approve of anyone attending a polytechnic.

    Her reason is simple. She has experienced lots of discrimination in her working career which makes nonsense of the official claim that the Higher National Diploma (HND) is an equivalent of a university degree.

    Based on her experience and that of others she knows, she thinks polytechnic graduates are unfairly treated by employers both in the private and government establishments and I think she is right.

    “Why should we be qualified to serve together and yet our certificates are not equally rated at the point of employment,” she usually asks in discussion about graduate employment.

    When she was employed in a state teaching service commission, she and her HND graduate colleagues were placed on level seven unlike graduates who got level eight placements. She later got to know that HND holders have to acquire a Masters degree in teaching-related fields to aspire beyond a particular level, unlike degree holders.

    She eventually got admitted for a Post Graduate Diploma degree at the Lagos State University but the same university refused her admission for Masters Degree on the excuse of being an HND graduate.

    She had to opt for another state university outside Lagos for the required Masters course which lasted for almost four years instead of the stipulated one year.

    She is so happy to have finally overcome the stigma of having an HND, which according to her officially makes polytechnic graduates in government service feel inferior even with the staff number assigned to them until they get higher qualification.

    The private sector has apparently taken a cue from its government counterpart and it is usual for HND graduates to be discriminated against by employers who sometime don’t even employ non university graduates.

    My wife’s situation captures the burden of many polytechnic graduates which is rather unfortunate considering that but for the limited spaces for university admission many HND graduates would have preferred to get a degree. Some even have better secondary school certificates but have no choice but to attend polytechnics after waiting endlessly for university admission.

    The ongoing strike by polytechnic lecturers which has not attracted the same level of attention as that of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), by the federal government confirms accusation of government’s indifference to polytechnic education by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP.

    According to ASUP President, Chibuzo Asomuhga, even though the government agreed to implement four of their demands before the strike was suspended in July, none of it was implemented until the union resumed the strike on October 4 last year.

    Just as in the case of the ASUU, the government seems to have perfected the act of failing to implement agreements reached with unions which has always resulted in further strike.

    Polytechnics in the country are indeed in a deplorable state and there is urgent need as demanded by the lecturers to carry out a NEEDS assessment, as it was done for universities to determine the funding requirements and provide them.

    It is bad enough that the president now has to intervene to end strikes by some unions or associations in the country. If that is what is required in this case, so be it. The strike should not be allowed to continue to minimise the damage already done to the education sector in the country.

  • Matters arising from the national conference report

    Matters arising from the national conference report

    Not disclosing the details of the report to the public is capable of encouraging well-meaning citizens and groups to pay undue attention to speculations

    As should be expected in a country that has developed a unique trait known as the Nigeria Factor, the issue of a national conference promised a few months ago by President Jonathan has started to get compounded but not unavoidably. Instead of the public having a full knowledge of the contents of the report submitted to President Jonathan by the Advisory Committee, it is now being entertained with media presentations of personal disagreements between Senator Femi Okurounmu and Prof. Ben Nwabueze, two well-known advocates of political restructuring and two persons invited by the president to serve on the committee principally on account of their views on the need to restore true federalism after decades of constitutions authored by military dictators. If care is not taken, brickbats between Okurounmu and Nwabueze may degenerate into larger conflicts that may eclipse the real issue: What is in the report submitted to the president from views garnered from Nigerians across the country?

    Before such a thing happens, it is necessary for the presidency to share the report with citizens. There is the impression that because the committee is advisory, its report is meant only for the eyes of the advisee. Another way to look at this is that the committee was not appointed to advise the president as a private person but as the head of state and that the pre-report meetings of the committee were funded from public purse. Therefore, the principle of the need to know applies, without any prejudice to the president’s right to accept or reject the report. The right of citizens, particularly those who made presentations to the committee during its fact-gathering meetings in different parts of the country, to know to what extent the committee captured their views must be respected. It is only after the public is caused to know what the report recommends that it can assess on one hand the proximity or distance between the report and citizens’ memoranda to the advisory committee and, on the other hand, the extent of congruence or divergence between what the committee recommends and what the president eventuallyaccepts.

    Therefore, the ongoing media war between Senator Okurounmu and Prof. Nwabueze may be unnecessary until the presidency releases details of the report to the public. There is no good reason for any individual or group to start blaming the messenger before the message is disclosed. There is no good reason to encourage citizens and groups to start acting on conjectures. Not disclosing the details of the report to the public is capable of encouraging well-meaning citizens and groups to pay undue attention to speculations.

    Although the Igbo Leaders of Thought working with Prof. Nwabueze had raised many important issues about how to organise the conference, it is, however, premature to do this before knowing the contents of the report of Okurounmu’s committee. Without access to the full report, such issues as using existing federal constituency as basis for selecting delegates, turning the conference into an exercise to amend the 1999 Constitution, and throwing away the call for referendum as the basis for accepting or rejecting a new constitution are essentially academic. There is so much that the presidency can do to ensure that there is no drift from the real issue to interpersonal disagreements between two of his original nominees to advise him on the conference. Were Prof. Nwabueze not hobbled by age-related ailments, he too would have served on the committee with Senator Okurounmu.

    The first test of transparency is for the presidency to release the full report of the committee. This will allow citizens and organisations to participate in post-report thinking that can assist the president. If queries from readers of this column are anything to go by, citizens from across political and class spectrums are already anxious to know what the president intends to do with the recommendations they believe must have been derived from their memoranda to the committee.

    There are already too many ideas about the report and the conference that are likely to add to the view that the president may not be as serious about the conference as he must have come across to the general public. For example, the issue that the conference will not start until March 2014 is already giving some citizens a lot of concern, particularly that INEC has announced its intention to lift suspension on direct political campaigns around the middle of the year, preparatory to holding presidential and other elections in early 2015.

    Another controversy-laden issue being popularised in the informal media is the suggestion that the president may be nominating 120 delegates to the conference. It is only an early release of the full report that can stem such speculations and assure citizens that the 2014 national conference is not going to be a clone of the one held under the presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo.

    From the volume of memoranda submitted to the committee and given the enthusiasm demonstrated by citizens and groups at the presentation of such memoranda, it is saying the obvious to observe that citizens are craving for a transparent and credible national conference. There are too many important issues for discussion at the conference that certainly require time for serious dialogue and deliberation on how to enhance the country’s unity. Such issues include the following: At what point is the national assembly going to create an enabling legislation for the conference? How are delegates to be selected for the conference? Will the conference write a new constitution or is it to repeat what federal legislators have been doing in the last three years in respect of amending the current constitution? How long will the conference sit to enable it conclude its assignment before the 2015 elections? Will the conference give a voice to citizens through a popular referendum on its recommendations? Some of these issues must have been addressed in the report submitted to the president, but it is hard for citizens to discuss them without knowing what exactly the advisory committee has recommended to the President Jonathan. There is no good reason for the presidency not to share the report with citizens.

  • Jonathan versus Sanusi: Who is advising the president?

    Jonathan versus Sanusi: Who is advising the president?

    The presidency has not denied reports that President Goodluck Jonathan wants the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to resign. Perhaps they wait to see how the kite they are flying over the matter would soar before a statement is made denying or confirming the stance of the president. There is, however, no doubt that the presidency was unhappy that a letter written by the CBN governor alleging that the NNPC failed to remit over $48 billion to the federation account was leaked to the media. After reconciling accounts and suggesting that only about $10 billion remained creatively unaccounted for, the presidency is sanctimoniously gunning for the head of Mallam Sanusi. It is doubly strange that a presidency that permissively winked at the huge indiscretion of the Aviation minister, Stella Oduah, over the scandalous purchase of two bulletproof cars can ferociously pursue a CBN governor that waited for almost three months for the president to compel the NNPC to explain its clumsy bookkeeping.

    The Jonathan presidency is inoculated against logic, maturity and restraint. It has long appeared incapable of appreciating insults as it has been unable to understand how badly its officials, especially the president himself, damage the image and prestige of the presidency. It is still mired in the Ms Oduah scandal, and cannot extricate itself from the highly damaging impact of its misstep on the Justice Ayo Salami matter. Now it is plunging heedlessly into another self-created fray. If the president had immediately responded to the CBN governor’s September, 2013 letter and directed the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance to join Mallam Sanusi in resolving the matter, there would not have been a controversy, let alone a leaked letter. The Sanusi controversy is evidentially the creation of a slothful presidency.

    To worsen a very bad situation, the president is leaning on the CBN governor, who is due to retire in June, to quit immediately. Mallam Sanusi has of course not emerged from the letter controversy unscathed. In writing a misleading letter to the president, he had acted most impetuously. However the public rebuke he has received and the interminable snigger his arithmetical flight of fancy has elicited have unnerved everybody and affected the huge respect he has accumulated since he assumed office and made the CBN top post a very visible one. It is likely the president guessed Mallam Sanusi had lost the respect associated with that office, and believed he had become so vulnerable as to be unable to resist a sack. But against a presidency completely shorn of respect and gravitas, one that is now without a moral compass of any sort, not to talk of democratic or social values, Mallam Sanusi was always likely to receive fairer hearing and support, if not benefit of the doubt.

    The advisory unit of the Jonathan presidency and his entire cabinet are dismissed as third-rate. But even then, surely he could still have found a few among the uninspiring number to advise him against the misbegotten pursuit of the wounded CBN governor. From all indications, Dr Jonathan will end up appearing to persecute Mallam Sanusi. Neither he nor his cabinet, it is clear, had inspired anyone. Now, for a matter that should be left to resolve itself or die a natural death, this uninspiring government is set to make a bad situation worse and further rubbish the little prestige left in the Nigerian presidency. Indeed, if Mallam Sanusi does not heed the president’s advice to resign, it is inconceivable that Dr Jonathan can find the muscle to force him out, or secure the number in the fractured and dispirited Senate to unhorse him.

  • An evening of songs for the lady of the ports

    The don port oooooo! All good things must end, and everything that has a beginning must have an end. Some have a sense of an ending and some don’t. And so to the plush and magically enchanting Oriental Hotel this last penultimate Friday for an evening of songs and reception for Obiageli Anubi who turned sixty and retired as the General Manager (Legal Services) of the Nigerian Ports Authority after decades of exemplary and dedicated services to her fatherland.

    After the cold blizzards of Christmas in dreary England, and after ventilating on the dire plight of Nigeria for hours on end, snooper decided that a fresh breath of air was in order and in fact imperative. It surely takes a glutton for punishment to continue ruminating at the keyboard for hours on end about the woes and woe-betide misfortunes of Nigeria. If one does not want to go mad and start attacking the computer in misdirected anger, there must be a backup escape plan.

    And so the exquisite pile of Oriental Hotel beckoned on a cool and pleasant evening after a church service at TBS which snooper avoidably skipped. There was class and what the French called élan. It was a long time yours sincerely heard such beautiful and sonorous singing. The orchestra was as accomplished as it was sophisticated, switching fluidly and seamlessly from jazz, local music to the classical music of the haute couture. And yet it was an entirely Nigerian cast. Will good music eventually save Nigeria? A beautiful lady sitting next to snooper whose identity must remain a secret casually remarked that the enraptured pianist looked like he was about to have what the French discreetly and elegantly describe as la petite mort. Ou la la!!!!

    The National Youth Service is arguably the military’s greatest legacy to modern Nigeria. It all looks like yesterday, but it is almost forty years ago in Uwani, Enugu and the old East Central state that it all began. As usual, the ubiquitously urban snooper was drinking and philosophizing away at a nearby joint chillingly called Mess 87 when intelligence report came that a group of female undergraduates had arrived for a party at the youth corps quarters nearby.

    Yours sincerely, reeking of alcohol and cheap tobacco , rushed posthaste to the scene only to find that he had been comprehensively out-generalled by the duo of Jide Anubi and Sola Alabi a.k.a Shaft. One thing led to the other and Oby, one of the undergraduates from the Enugu law Campus of the UNN, eventually became Mrs Anubi.

    Almost forty years after, the sleek and elegant lawyer in training has transformed into the matriarch of the Anubi family and a proud and steely-looking grandmother to boot. Last Friday, Engineer Anubi, trying to rub salt in an old wound, cheekily reminded snooper of his mortal loss. Get off my back, young man.

    Perhaps the most pleasing and value-laden remark of the night came from a friend of the Anubis who noted that the celebrant radiated happiness and fulfillment because she left office with her integrity and reputation intact, unlike many of her predecessors in the same office. It will be hard to beat that as a testimonial. Here is wishing Mrs Anubi a great time in retirement.

  • A serious season of laughter

    Next time you see a baby kicking in the mother’s womb, check what the government is doing; there may be a connection

    Last week, dear reader, I told you to prepare to laugh a great deal this year. Well, hardly had my computer printed the word than I heard that a police commissioner lamented publicly in the media that the army was not assisting him to drive out a state governor. Ha! Ha! Ha! Good for those uncooperative boys. They deserve to be reported to the nation. Then I heard that some thugs caught with ammunition were ordered to be released on orders from above to go and be allowed to use their arms. After all, what are arms for, if not to be used against other people? Anyway, I actually wanted to title this piece ‘Season of Laughters’ but my dictionary protested, so I was forced to remain in the singular. I mean, when events and political somersaults are calling one to bare the teeth in wide grins, what is one to do but to go plural? However, the dictionary rules, ok?

    Obviously, there will be no shortage of hilarity this year. So, if you’re minded to, take your own stick and join me as we sit this year at the city’s gates, like those jobless old men in the Gaul tales, and pass not only the time of day but also run some good commentaries on the conduct of the ‘soldiers’ fighting life’s battles ‘out there’. Reader, you will notice as we go along that the said soldiers may sometimes switch sides during the battle depending on which side is paying them the most. So, let us pick our stout sticks (our survival may well depend on them), straighten our creaky backs, pick out a shady spot and some shining logs. Then we sit and watch. First though, we need some ground rules. Call them resolutions if you like, but we need those things to guide our behaviour here.

    For instance, we must resolve not to laugh too loudly. True, temptations will come, sometimes in hordes but we really must restrain ourselves, particularly when we remember that all our politicians’ antics may be borne out of ignorance, malice or just plain evil genius at work. More importantly, we need to remember that we can only laugh from one side of our mouths because we need the other side to cry for our beloved country. Ultimately, it is us, the poor, beleaguered citizens, who will have to bear the brunt of the actions of their ignorant excellences.

    Also, whatever we do this year, we must resolve to enjoy it seriously. Some days ago, I sat down to tally up the effects of bad governance on me as a person. I found first of all that I don’t eat as well as I should (my doctor won’t let me eat ice cream everyday), drive around in my choice car (the price won’t let me), drive all day on my choice road (the government refused to reconstruct it), read a newspaper containing only good news (the government won’t let me!), or sit in front of my house all day when I like (the armed robbers won’t let me!). And we call this a free country? Eh, eh, what’s this for a free country, eh?!

    Secondly, I find I have grown used to complaining. I think I was more or less complaining about the government even before I was born. What do you think all those kicks I gave out while in the womb were for? Next time you see a baby kicking in the womb, check what the government is doing at that material time; there may be a connection. Anyway, I find now that I have grown into a baaaad complainer. I complained about Obj. for eight years and the man left but the marks are still there; now it’s GEJ. I don’t know; maybe it’s all those whose names end in ‘j’ who just bring out the worst in me. (Nigerians, do please let’s vote in someone else whose name does not end in…) So, let us resolve to seriously enjoy our time on these logs and not soon descend into the Hall of Complaints. All we will hear will be echoes.

    I mean, what are we to make of the Sanusi-presidency spat over a close to 50 billion dollar fund missing or which the NNPC has inadvertently forgotten to account for? Is it not an echo of the same story of stolen billions? More curiously, why is the presidency speaking for NNPC? Is it that the presidency has become one with the oil company? So many questions, so few answers, because no one is talking who should, and everyone is talking who should not. When you ask about the oil company, the presidency (i.e. GEJ) talks; when you ask about the presidency, the party talks and when you ask about the party, the village talks. That brings us to another resolution. We must resolve not to ask any questions this year. Apart from the fact that no one answers your questions, you are really not better off at the end of the question than you were at the beginning of it. Take my house for instance. Any number of questions has never brought an answer to this vital mystery: why does the dog wear this satisfied smile on his face whenever birds’ feathers litter his environment and he declines his dinner? You see, questions have never got anyone anywhere because the more you ask, the less you understand.

    Then, reader, we must resolve to be well armed this year. Oh no, don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking about conventional war armoury. I’m talking about the resolve not to let anything surprise us too much. Remember I told you before that our foot soldiers may switch sides during battle depending on who is paying the most? Well, a great deal of it is going on even now. Is it not ridiculous to you and me that an army of foot soldiers in one state assembly should decide to decamp en masse from one political party to another in one single day simply because their governor has gone that way?!!! Haba! You know who they remind me of? The Pied Piper of Hamelin, that’s who. I’m not sure but I think that’s where they got the expression from, ‘whoever pays the piper calls the tune’ or something like that. Whatever tunes the Gov calls on his pipe, it appears the men must dance. I honestly do not understand this because they seem to have forgotten that the Gov does not pay them, the state does; and more importantly, they have the power of number on their side. Could they possibly have foot disease that compels them to dance en masse? I don’t know, but then, I’m no politician, so I can never understand these things.

    Finally reader, we must resolve to keep a well-guarded mouth this year. No blabbing off on anything we see. We can talk (not complain), we can comment (like Craig), we can cackle (like geese), we can guffaw (like donkeys), we can even yap (like your yaks) but we cannot blabber. For the sake of flag and country, land and the gentry within it, we must keep our dignity intact. Watch your words in this year, and let them be precious.

    So now, our behinds are perched on these beautiful logs of wood placed at vantage points at the city’s gates, we are holding onto our sticks and we are armed with our steely resolves, piercing eyes, suspicious noses and closed mouths (mainly to prevent flies from taking advantage of us). Let the year roll on, and may we have fair weather in this our outpost, whether or not we live in the same country as GEJ, Obj., Nigerian politicians, armed robbers, okada riders from hell, or even PHCN.

  • Sesan Ogunro: The advertising guru bows out in a blaze of glory

    Sesan Ogunro: The advertising guru bows out in a blaze of glory

    If the advertising industry had been hard hit, I am at a loss for words as to what hit the Christ’s School family where we are all like uterine brothers and sisters

    Not since we bade farewell to our late Deputy Governor in Ekiti, the late Mrs Funmilayo Olayinka, have I seen anything like it: the overwhelming outpouring of grief, the massive turnouts at all the events and the compelling consensus about how our late brother positively impacted lives and the advertising industry, in particular. Uncountable were the testimonies – from school mates, especially from Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which he attended from 1965-69, as well as from his colleagues in the advertising industry where he is rightly regarded as a pillar.

    Without the least doubt, Sesan Ogunro was a colossus.

    Until he was violently cut down, evening of Sunday, 23 December, 2013 at the Alausa Business District after attending a Christmas carol service at his church, Sesan, Managing Director of Eminent Communications, was everybody’s delight. Adroitly self-effacing, you would probably need to be told this is the man who had played such a huge role in putting advertising on its present pedestal in the country courtesy the several brands that emanated from his prodigious brain and his unstinting service in various committees, some of which he chaired. A Fellow of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON, he was one-time Chairman of APCON’s Advertising Standards Panel (ASP), Chairman of its Membership & Privileges Committee and Chairman of the Professional Practice Committee of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN, a position easily recommended by his uncanny ‘expertise, enthusiasm and objectivity’, to quote Akinde, his successor as Chairman, Adverts Standards Panel.At the industry’s special valedictory session for him at the Protea Hotel, Maryland, Lagos on Wednesday, 9 January ,2014 at which was present all the leading lights of the industry, Sesan was generously referred to as ‘Mr Brand ‘ himself. Tributes poured in ceaselessly from all sectors of the industry.

    If the advertising industry had been hard hit, I am at a loss for words as to what hit the Christ’s School family where we are all like uterine brothers and sisters. All of these two weeks had been hell on earth for us. There will be no words to describe what role Sesan played in revitalising The School. He has been a moving spirit and only a few weeks to his violent translation, he was being honoured by our Atlanta, U.S branch of the Alumni Association for his exemplary contribution to the school. You could call up Sesan at any time of the day or night for a Christ’s School matter. That we are seriously contemplating taking full responsibility for the running of the school owes largely to contributions by the likes of Sesan. Concerning The School, Sesan could very easily have been dubbed ‘Mr ever ready’. He was ever so unstinting in his support. And with him you knew exactly where you were. When my friend, a university Vice-Chancellor, intimated me with his university’s plan to set up an Advancement Committee and wanted a chair person, I hadn’t the slightest inhibition in recommending Sesan. I only asked my friend to let me consult him and his response was, ‘egbon, if you say so, who am I?’

    He was that humble.

    It will be appropriate at this point to hear the dirge from Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, as captured by Babatunde Faniran, a classmate of Sesan.

    Wrote Tunde:

    Our season and the two bullets

    He was a man of the people

    With his easy disarming smile and quick wit,

    Humour that penetrates and festers long

    His attributes all the way from The School on Agidimo Hills

    His legacy fit to cherish from now till Eternity

    He may agree or disagree with you

    But a ready smile of Tolerant Understanding

    He has for all on all occasions

    That indeed was our Sesan.

    Capable confident, a high- flier

    Humble beyond description

    A thoroughbred Product of Agidimo Hills

    Genius out of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria

    He rode the Advertising world like a colossus

    He built up the Nigeria Airways of old

    Just as he did Cowbell, “Our Milk”

    Sesan crafted the “MKO, Our Man” singsong

    The Award-Winning HOPE ’93 Slogan

    Which catapulted MKO to Nationwide Victory

    Nor can we forget “Pam Pam Pa Pa Pam Paam MILO!”

    Which still rings true and alluring To-day

    They all came out of his prodigious brain.

    He dined with kings and royalty

    His productive hands leaving indelible imprints

    Alas! Our prolonged rapport was not to be!

    Those wicked, soul-less miscreants from the very pit of Hell:

    They came, pulled the trigger and fired the bullet!

    With a bullet wound, our man sought medical Help

    To stop the Life-blood that was ebbing away

    But instead of Help, the Nation’s accursed Medical institution

    “Pulled the trigger” and fired a second”bullet” into Our man!

    It is finished!

    MOTHER-land snuffs out the life of her Worthy offspring!

    Alas, they knew NOT whom they have cut down

    Wicked, soul-less miscreants prowling our streets

    Products of an accursed, maladjusted Society

    Agents of the Cursed Spirit

    They will never escape eternal damnation.

    None of us you left behind is safe from these scallywags

    Even then we dare to say “SHAME on them!”

    They shall never know the Peace you NOW enjoy

     

    ADIEU! Sesan, Our Brother and Friend.

    Till we meet at the Feet of JESUS

    To part no more.

    Although I straddle Sesan’s two worlds of advertising, being a registered practitioner, and being six years his senior at Christ’s School, meaning he did not meet me there, I saw him always as my own younger brother; forever charming and his ready smile ever so captivating.

    When he was appointed Chairman of the Ekiti Sate Broadcasting Corporation the first thing I told him was that he had to put in place an aggressive training programme especially for the newscasters. Mindful of costs, I suggested he used one of our higher institutions’ Language Labs but Sesan’s uncompromising addiction to excellence would not permit paucity of funds stand between him and his determination to bring them to Lagos to have the very best from the best training school as well as get exposed to experienced practitioners as trainers.

    Completely devastated at hearing the news of Sesan’s untimely translation, the governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, was one of the earliest visitors to the family house to commiserate and give words of courage to Dupe, Sesan’s adorable wife, and the wonderful children . It was the worst end of year news for all of us from Christ’s School. And looking back now, how I wished Sesan had attended our own Lagos branch carol service which held at exactly the same time at the Archbishop Vining Memorial Cathedral Church, also in Ikeja bearing in mind he never misses any of the school’s events.

    But who are we to question God?

    I sincerely commiserate with Sesan’s family, the wife, the children and the siblings and do pray that the good Lord will comfort and strengthen them.

    And so shall it be in Jesus name. Amen.

  • Waiting at the departure lounge of life before our time in our 21st century world

    Waiting at the departure lounge of life before our time in our 21st century world

    Ask not for whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee
    John Donne, “Meditation 17”

    [For James Tunde Sawyer, alias “Sir Soul”, R.I.P.]

    It was Yemi Ogunbiyi that called me late last week to tell me of the sad, sad news of the death of James Tunde Sawyer. And after that, the phone calls and SMS messages started going out and coming in: from me to some of my classmates and members of my generational cohort of undergraduates at the University of Ibadan; and from them to me. As typically happens in such cases, we exchanged memories of the departed in these calls and text messages. Sawyer was quite easily one of the most witty, engaging and colorful personalities in our set at U.I. He was also the General Secretary of the Students’ Union Executive in which I was the Public Relations Officer. His sense of humour and capacity to make others laugh was without equal. Rotund, stocky and heavyset, he had a nimbleness of intelligence and a lightness of spirit that seemed at variance with his physique. He turned the lectures of our lecturers and professors on their head, transforming the lectures into parodic versions of the original in his inimitable and scintillatingly delightful extemporizations. He gave catchy nicknames to classmates that appeared too enraptured, too stricken by the great figures and texts of British literature. Personally, I found the nickname that he gave Jacob Tunde Somoye, also gone from us for more than a decade now and one of the members of the English class of 1967, the most inspired and inspiring. The nickname was – “Inspira!” [Pronounced In-spi-rah]

    Somoye was incurably intoxicated by the English Romantic poets, especially Keats and Shelley. He was also drunk on 20th Neo-Romantic writings in all the genres. He carried a copy of James Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with him everywhere he went. But the poetry of 19th century British Romanticism was his real love. He could and loved to recite dozens, scores of lines from Keats and Shelley. And as he did so, Somoye seemed to have been transported into another world quite separate from this world. Sawyer found this very theatrical and wildly funny and not without some admiration, he called Somoye’s recitations nothing less than the mark of unselfconscious and besotted “Inspiration”! And from this came the nickname “Inspira!”

    For some time before his transition in early December 2013, Sawyer had dropped out of sight. Nobody saw or heard of him. It appears now that he had been gravely ill and may in fact have been dying. I have not yet gotten details of either his final illness or the precise nature of his demise. Only, I know that it was quite unlike him to keep to himself, to fail to answer calls or even initiate contacts. And side by side with his death, this is what troubles me the most, this thought that the illness that took him literally away from this life had before his demise substantially taken him away from his circle of friends.

    There is a philosophical tradition that holds that dying is a profoundly lonely experience, even if and when one dies in a war or a disaster that takes away hundreds or thousands of lives. Just as we are born, we die alone, each person with his birth or death – so goes this grimly realistic eschatology on life’s final moments. The existentialists in particular believe that death is probably the most unique and sovereign act or experience available to each member of our human species. But I contend that death also has its profoundly social and even generational coordinates. And this aspect of death and dying is what came to my mind when the news of Sawyer’s death came to me.

    I had thought of giving this essay the title, “A plague or epidemic of deaths before 70”. For this is a prevalent thought, indeed a gnawing premonition of members of my generation, almost without exception. As an illustration of this observation, please consider the fact that with news of Sawyer’s death and exchange of memories about him and his life, we all, members of his generational cohort, expressed fears and worries that too many of us had gone and are going, year by year and inexorably. Moreover, a significant number of those of this generation who are living seem gravely ill. As a matter of fact, the title that I finally settled on for this piece comes from one of our classmates at U.I., Dr. Olugbemi Akinkoye, alias “Sir Koye”. As far back as nearly a decade ago when singly and collectively we were either in our late 50s or early 60s, “Sir Koye” had made that pronouncement that we were all in the departure lounge of life. To this pronouncement I had replied that if that was the case, then I should perhaps revert to a very bad habit of my early adulthood, the habit of arriving late at airports and thereby missing scheduled flights!

    It is necessary to recall here the grim wisdom of the existentialists that whether one dies old or young, at twenty or at eighty, one dies alone, each woman or man with his or her fate. But then, there arises the fact that the trope of the departure lounge of life applies differentially across the diverse regions and nations of our world. We have the statistics and figures of national rates of life expectancy at birth as corroboration for this claim. At the figure of 83, countries like Japan and Switzerland stand as nations with the highest life expectancy rates in the world. Other countries of Western Europe and North America also have very high life expectancy rates; even some Latin American countries have figures in the mid to upper 70s. But at 52 for the year 2013, Nigeria has the 17th lowest life expectancy statistic in the world. With 64, Ghana has a figure that is 12 points better than our 52. Overall, the average life expectancy rate for the whole world is 68, putting us in Nigeria clear 16 points below this historic figure. The conclusion is inescapable: thanks largely to the miracles of modern medical science and a worldwide revolutionary spread in public and private sanitation, human beings are living significantly longer than our distant and recent ancestors did; but Nigeria is still way behind this modern achievement of expectation of long and relatively healthy life for most members of humankind.

    Because I live both in Nigeria and the United States, I have a rich basis for comparison of the effects and ramifications of this highly differentiated generational arrival at the “departure lounge of life” in which the figure for one country is 79 and that for the other country is 52. The key question, as I see it, is the phenomenon of habituated expectancy itself. In the last one decade, every time that I see a doctor in Nigeria, the body language, quite apart from explicit statements on diagnosis and prognosis, makes it clear to me that since I have entered into the seventh decade of my life, I must not ignore the relevance of “old age”. Conversely, no doctor in the United States has ever even remotely hinted that he or she considered me an “old man”; rather than this, the clear message to me is that if I do what is right, if I cultivate a healthy lifestyle, I can expect to live well into my 80s. Without revealing too much of very personal information concerning my medical profile in the last 20 years, I can say that I have had a renal dysfunction that I am absolutely certain would have caused the doctors in Nigeria to more or less have given up on me a long, long time ago. In other words, I am strongly convinced that had I been at the “mercy” of Nigerian doctors, I would long ago have either had to depend on dialysis or even a kidney transplant to either keep me alive or in a state worthy of a tolerably dignified existence. But not the physicians and nephrologists in the United States. They have been sanguine – and very successful! – in trying to convince me that in all likelihood, when I take my exit from this life in my allotted time, it will be something other than my renal dysfunction that will take me away.

    It would be too easy, too predictable to say that with greatly improved quality in health care delivery and public sanitation in Nigeria, the life expectancy at birth figure for the country will rise, perhaps even exponentially. Of course, this is indisputable. If African countries like Ghana and Algeria can have much better figures for their respective populations’ life expectancy, so can Nigeria, a country far richer than either Ghana or Algeria. But the issues go far deeper than improved infrastructures and practices of health care delivery and the medical sciences and arts of healing. As a member of a generation that has outlived the nation’s life expectancy figure of 52 and is therefore considered voyagers to the great beyond in the departure lounge of life, I bear bitter and desperate testimony to the fact that in our country, life itself has become too onerous, too deadly for the great majority of Nigerians, old and young, rich and poor. Form this perspective, I bear witness to the crying need to make life itself worthy of dignified, fulfilling existence for all Nigerians.

    I think Jimmy Sawyer would have found the notion of our generation sitting out a long or short, desperate or resigned vigil at that departure lounge of life immensely hilarious. In fond and grateful memory of my friend and classmate and his vast appetite for life, I hope that to the end, his good cheer and his lightness of spirit did not desert him. Sun re o, Sir Soul!

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • 2014: Year of decision

    2014: Year of decision

    There is hardly any Nigerian who does not believe that 2014 is perhaps the most fateful year in their country’s history. It is not only the 2015 elections that will be decided by this year’s events, the country’s very existence, its peace, development, unity and stability also seem almost certain to be hinged on the political and social dynamics of 2014. But it is not certain that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is as clear in their minds just how portentous the year is as the All Progressives Congress (APC) appears to show with their desperate political re-engineering designed to pip the ruling party to the post in the next polls. By its attitude and methods, the ruling party gives the impression that what needs to change is not how it has governed the country since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, but simply how it can retain power, assured that it is too big to fail, too inclusive to be pigeonholed, and too long in power to be dethroned.

    On the other hand, and like the rest of the country, the APC appears to think that the ruling party’s methods have so undermined democracy, impoverished the people and stoked the fire of sectarian, ethnic and class revolts that the country seems assuredly headed for the precipice. It believes that the PDP suffers from intellectual paralysis and lacks the hunger to remould and redefine the country away from the mediocrity and stultification of the past years. I fear they may be right. My fear is worsened both by the low calibre of ministers President Goodluck Jonathan has assembled and the manner the president himself has subjected the presidency to unyielding policy inertness and lack of vision and innovation. If the APC should win the elections in 2015, there is a sense in which both the party and the rest of us expect radical changes that would permeate the entire body politic. But if the PDP should retain power, there is a sense in which they would see it as an endorsement of their jaded methods and sterile ideas.

    Clearly, whichever fork in the road we take will have monumental repercussions on the future and destiny of the country. Indeed, given the paralysis and retrogression of the past 14 years, it is shocking to still hear some enlightened commentators argue for continuity. I am convinced that the age of active or passive neutrality has long passed. At the risk of being labelled partisan, I am today advocating drastic and urgent change with all the fibre in my being. The PDP has outlived its usefulness; it is time to try the APC. But here is the dilemma we must confront. The PDP is no longer able to govern; can the APC get its act together to win office, and if it does, will the process of winning leave the party with a substantially sound party structure and a reasonably coherent ideological rampart to satisfy national expectations?

    I think 2014 will offer the PDP enough chance to demonstrate just how incapable it has become in governing, and enough room for the APC to prove that the process of cobbling a platform or a rainbow coalition together does not deprive it of the sound structure a party needs to win as a political party, and the rudimentary ideology it also needs to prepare a concise, practical and unique roadmap out of the hell the ruling party has driven the country into. The PDP needs little effort in reinforcing its infamous ways. The harder task lies with the APC, which has surprisingly managed to assemble under one roof what may pass as the most fractious, most disparate and probably the most cantankerous political leaders and followers Nigeria has ever seen. The party’s leaders must resist the temptation to see this observation as unduly harsh – for even their PDP opponents bank on the party’s centrifugal forces to manifest dramatically as the elections draw near – but as a challenge they desperately need to confront boldly and overcome with all the innovativeness, resilience and diplomacy nature endows.

    As every rainbow coalition knows from experience, and as the fractiousness in the states is already showing, the APC won’t find its task of unifying rebels from other political parties easy at all. What is even worse is that rather than embrace and project a brilliant ideology indispensable to the remaking and revival of the country, the APC will find itself in the ghastly and uncomfortable role of embracing and projecting a single-minded grab for power. Even if it manages to cobble up a platform for the elections, it will not be because its members believe the ideals the party purports to stand for. Compromises will be necessary to create a semblance of unity in the party, no matter how tenuous and disingenuous. Members will block their nostrils just long enough until the party takes office, whereupon the logic of being in office will either compel obedience down the rank and file or produce a sound party leader who will begin the arduous and thankless task of gently nudging the party in the right ideological direction, softly and gingerly. Any attempt to put the cart before the horse would spell disaster. So, when next opponents and commentators ridicule the APC for being insufficiently ideological, they should take the insult in their strides, for it is not only a true reflection of the party’s current make-up, it is also a political exigency the party should be glad to have the opportunity of riding into office.

    To win in 2015, the APC will have to overcome two main challenges, and either is capable of destroying the party or truncating its noble aspirations. The first is its ongoing effort to reconcile the contentious political structures forced by circumstances to coexist and cohabit in many of the states now under the party’s control such as Kwara, Kano and Sokoto, among others. The APC, it must be remembered, is an amalgam of three parties in its first layer, to wit, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Even before this layer of contrasting linear expansivities coalesced into a solid foundation, wider and more transcendental political goals compelled the amalgam to bear the additional layer of defecting PDP governors and lawmakers, with all their idiosyncratic foibles.

    The truth is that the APC is now indeed a boisterous and fragile mixture of incendiary elements with inadequate bonding electrons necessary to guarantee its stability. Whether its two or so mercurial leaders – both of whom are far more mercurial than anything we have ever seen in one party since the First Republic – can stabilise the party and steer it away from implosion remains to be seen. But the incentive to get it right is that if they do not manage the elements within the party well, subordinate their ambitions properly and also get other smaller party leaders to surrender their own ambitions for the common goal, they are unlikely to get another chance. Worse, their failure may also doom the country and render future coalitions difficult to cobble together.

    The second main challenge, which is closely leashed to the first, concerns how the party would manage the ambitions of its leaders especially at the candidacy level. Who should be the presidential candidate of a party widely expected to take office in view of the abject failure of the PDP? What of the running mate? How should power be shared between the political zones? What are their heads telling them about the kind of leaders the country is willing to vote for as distinct from what their minds are saying? Assuming the country is ready to put them in office, are they capable of providing the young and dynamic faces the country wants? In my opinion, this will be the most difficult challenge they will face. I expect them to surmount the difficulty of uniting their party’s many factions. But I am less sanguine about how readily they can read the mind of the country, not to say how easily and quickly they can get their powerful and notable aspirants to submit to new realities.

    However, I suspect that given the brilliance with which they have consistently wrong-footed the PDP, especially the Jonathan presidency, and the adroitness with which they have expanded the base of their party, not to talk of the uncommon passion with which they have approached the entire project of building a grand coalition capable of winning major elections, I am a little hopeful they will competently knit together a durable party structure ahead of the elections and balance the ambitions of their leaders to avoid a debacle. Their passion seems to suggest that their priorities, in descending order, are to legitimately defeat Jonathan in a free and fair election, take power from the PDP in order to effect change and foist new political and bureaucratic paradigms on the country, and put the right APC leaders in office. It is inevitable that such zeal should create the necessary conditions for the subordination of ambitions and the management of internal divisions and dissensions.

    I think they have gone too far forward to look back or to allow personal interests to stand in the way of victory. They will now need to work on the more unmanageable and excitable substrata of the party leadership to imbue them with the spirit of sacrifice without which it would be impossible to unhorse the PDP. I think the APC leaders will pull through and win, even if by the skin of their teeth. And who knows, 2015 could even turn into a rout.

  • Alien-Nation (1)

    Alien-Nation (1)

    (One Hundred Years of Solipsism)

     

    Solipsism is a condition in which a person regards his own thoughts, deeds and interests as the sole determinant of reality to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing else matters apart from this self-absorption, and the entire universe can go to hell. It is a situation of abysmal and irredeemable egotism.

    On the other hand, alienation can be regarded as a social condition in which the degree of estrangement is so severe that people become and feel like aliens in their own land. The nation itself comes to resemble an alien contraption, a medieval torture wrack, designed to torment its hapless citizens to submission.

    In an engrossing historical replay of the dramatic technique of estrangement and the literary theory of defamiliarization, what is familiar suddenly becomes unfamiliar. It is a war of all against all, and alienated nationals become enemy combatants in their own fatherland. The national fabric is fractured in an irreversible manner. Radical anarchy reigns supreme.

    One hundred years after Amalgamation, Nigeria has become a classic example of an alien nation. There is no disputing the fact. Everywhere you turn, you are confronted by the social pathologies arising from alienation: a deviant post-colonial culture of unprecedented impunity, anti-social behaviour ranging from armed robbery, kidnapping, ritual killing for money, official extortion, state burglary of the Exchequer all compounded by elite political delinquency.

    This is as close to hell on earth as it can get, more so since there are extant glimpses and vestiges of the paradise Nigeria could have been for the Black person had things gone alright and not awry. Even more so, when there is a persistent belief that there is an immanent rationality, a higher divine logic, which quietly guides human history to a higher and more beneficial order irrespective of the collective death wishes of certain societies and people.

    Although originating from the West after the horrors of the Dark Age, the modern nation-state paradigm is supposed to be a radical advance on earlier forms of human organisation of territorial space such as empires, fiefdoms, principalities, parochialities and kingdoms. The old monarchical states are forcibly and radically restructured and democratised to accommodate new talents and vibrant emergent energies.

    As more and more people clamour to have a better say in the way and manner they are governed and consequently as the divine sovereignty of monarchies gave way to the secular sovereignty of the people, human governance is infused with a new rationality in which the pulse of the people becomes the pulse of power itself. New institutions are put in place which emphasize the separation of power and which act with impersonal rigour and objectivity, recognising neither prince nor pauper in the pursuit of social justice, law and order.

    Unfortunately, modern Nigeria has failed woefully and lamentably in all the indices of modern governance. It is sad to note that the ancestors of modern Nigerians who lived in the territorial space cobbled together by colonial fiat would have been happier in their pre-colonial fiefdoms despite the wars, famines and internal slavery. For example by 1904, the Egba city-state had solved the problems of sanitation and misappropriation of state funds.

    Although premised on a dubious civilising mission, the colonial conquest and subsequent amalgamation of the territories that make up modern Nigeria was not done to ameliorate the living conditions of the natives. It was principally an act of imperialist aggression designed to expropriate the abundant resources of the periphery for metropolitan prosperity.

    But let us be brutally frank with ourselves. This was also an act of compulsory globalisation which was virtually inevitable in the absence of a local, African or West African, seafaring global power which could have validated these local resources in the international market. Without such inter-continental validation, these native resources to which no human value and labour have been added are next to useless, a paradoxical tribute to nature’s subversive generosity and ability to play a spoiling mother to her tropical children.

    Globalization in one form or the other has always been the first condition of mankind, depending on the stage of history and the state of technology. The caravan route that stretched from ancient Kano to Baghdad was an earlier and rudimentary form of globalisation. It brought the wonders and magic of Mesopotamia to the African hinterland. At a point in history, the basin of the great rivers of Babylon was at the centre of human civilization and advancement.

    Centuries later when Mansa Musa set forth on a journey to Mecca taking all the gold in his empire with him like a footloose vagabond, he was obeying the logic of globalisation albeit with ruinous consequences. But from the eleventh century, it was the emergent seafaring powers of Portugal, Spain, Holland and England that led the rest of the world in the race to modernity.

    Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity. Although colonisation originated from base economic motive, it did leave some beneficial effects and benign legacies. Among these are modern literacy arising from the alphabetisation of the local languages, modern educational systems, modern communication system, a good road network, a modern railway system and above all a desirable ethos of transparency and accountability in fiscal management. The post-colonial conquerors of Nigeria must go into hiding when their achievements are compared with those of the colonial interlocutors.

    In some ways, then, Nigeria, despite the inglorious circumstances of birth, is , and remains, a tribute to the colonial imaginary and its profoundly self-subversive genius. Although often described in colonial exchanges as an arbitrary block hewn out of the heart of Africa, there is also evidence of a romantic colonial vision which saw the creation of such a large, sprawling Black conurbation as the possible future catalyst and saviour of the entire continent.

    In other words, if the idea of a huge and formidable African country like Nigeria did not exist in colonial imagining, it would have had to be willed into existence by the post-colonial imagination. The heroic efforts of some visionary African leaders in this respect, notably Kwame Nkrumah and his pan-African dream, Sekou Toure, the early Zik, Julius Nyerere and even Muammar Ghaddafi and Gamel Abdel Nasser, despite their pan-Arabic narcissism, cannot be easily ignored.

    One in every four persons of the Black race happens to be a Nigerian. With its huge and largely arable landmass, its prodigious human and natural resources, the vibrant collective memory of its people and their sheer spunk when compared to other Africans, Nigeria ought to become the Mecca of the Black race and a medicinal haven for its tortured psyche.

    But something went catastrophically wrong. We are still searching for the Black box of the most astonishingly talented Black nation. Even if we ignore the discreet obituaries already making the international round, we cannot ignore the telltale signs all around us that this nation is about to collapse and die.

    Once again, the international community is concerned not because they love Nigeria but because its huge carcass will constitute a catastrophic global health hazard. If you don’t dispose of a dead person on the basis of sanitary hazard, you must do it on the basis of enlightened self-interest. In sheer magnitude, the humanitarian catastrophe arising from Nigeria’s possible disintegration is better than verbalised.

    The good news is that unlike biological organisms, dead nations can actually be revived and resurrected. But it will take a colossal willpower on the part of the doctors and the doctored. While most nations are willed into existence by a few individuals, it usually takes the collective efforts of many to transform the imagined community into an organic reality. Few are called but many must volunteer.

    No matter the nature and manner of its coming to be, a nation is never given. It is usually defined and refined in process, a process which is a Homeric battlefield; a site of perpetual conflicts and ceaseless overcoming of contradictions. In order to properly focus on what went wrong, we must go back to where the rains started beating us. (To be concluded next week).

  • Okon becomes a public letter writer

    It is the season of letters. Missives have become missiles flying all over the place like weapons of mass destruction. The gentle and polite art of belles-lettres has been transformed in post-colonial Nigeria to a weapon of political offensive often with chilling prognostications. Over Christmas, snooper received a letter from his daughter which began with the ominous opener: before it is too late. The heart froze at the looming prospects of literary fratricide. But it turned out to be a merely mischievous but arresting opening gambit of seasonal felicitations.

    Looking for a theory of political letter writing, Baba Lekki, the old crusty contrarian, calmly explained that the word “lethargy” which he described as the principal ailment of the Nigerian ruling class has now transformed into the exact opposite of its original meaning. According to the crazy old man, it now means “leta ji” or the awakening of letters.

    When the dust has settled a bit, perhaps a young researcher in one of our universities will conduct a scholarly inquisition into the Impact of Letter Writing on the Politics of The Fourth Republic. There can be no doubt that the old profession of public letter writing profoundly affected the literary and political development of modern Nigeria. Those ones were a breed from another planet: fierce, fearsome patriots who took no hostage and were walking dictionaries in their own right. There are at least three famous Nigerian writers whose fathers were public letter writers.

    But while we are still on this subject, it is appropriate to report that Okon has cottoned on the act by becoming a public letter writer. He had set up shop in the garage with a rusty, antediluvian computer which he probably stole from the warehouse of a defunct newspaper in Majidun owned by the one with the deathly grin. A rapid queue soon built up. It was a distraught woman that first came forward.

    “Oga Okolo, abi wetin dey call dat yeye name? I wan make you write letter to dem yeye NEPA people. Before, before dem dey produce 12 hours of darkness, now dem don increase am to 23. Ask dem make dem add the rest one hour so dat katakata go scatter dem mama”, the woman screamed.

    “I hear you my sista”, Okon nodded in agreement. Another woman came and asked Okon to write a love letter to her banker lover.

    “Ha mama, I go begin dat one with osculate me, my bobo”, Okon sneered.

    “Osculate ko, ejaculate ni. Weeree. He be like if say your head no correct sef”, the woman snapped and left. Then it was the turn of a distinguished Lagosian-looking man in three piece suit and colonial bowler hat. He had an aura of authority about him which was quite unnerving.

    “I was a colonial PLW, which means public letter writer, but these days if you send a private letter to these ones they will respond with a public letter bomb.”, the man opened..

    “So baba, wetin you want me do with dat one?” Okon queried.

    “Ha, that is not why I am here. I want you to write a letter to Vanguard demanding for the true paternity of Iyabo’s letter.” The old man suddenly exploded.

    “Ha baba, on dat one I dey maternity leave”, Okon quickly retorted and began packing his computer.