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Category: Sunday

  • Writing, as if life itself depended on it (1)

    Writing, as if life itself depended on it (1)

    Talakawa Liberation Herald 41

    [For Festus Iyayi: radical humanist; writer; neorealist artificer]

    Note: 

    This tribute to Festus Iyayi as writer is excerpted from a much longer essay that I wrote for a collection celebrating his 60th birthday six years ago. In the essay, I paid exclusive attention to Festus Iyayi the writer. In this excerpt, I have stuck to that decision. I do not know whether the collection for which the essay was written was ever published as I was never sent a copy by the Editor, Professor Wumi Raji. Raji did tell me that Festus saw and read the essay. As I mourn his transition with his family and other comrades, it gives me some consolation that he got to read some of the things I say in the tribute concerning how belated the essay was. The title of this tribute is the same one that I gave the longer essay for the collection. There was not the slightest intimation that he would be gone so soon! Thus, I have left intact the present tense of the active verbs that I used throughout the tribute. Festus is not completely gone from us; may his writings be a lasting, imperishable legacy to us and those that shall come after us!

    It is a challenge for me to give a precise, easily comprehensible sense of what I have in mind in the title of this tribute: writing, as if life itself depended on it. Writing is of course one of the greatest cultural inventions of all time. At different times and places human life, especially when conceived in terms of human progress, has received a tremendous boost from powerful or momentous written documents. But unlike verbal speech which is both a primary cultural activity and a social act that almost always entails trans-individual and intersubjective negotiation between two or more persons, writing is a secondary cultural activity; in all its most significant expressions, it is a profoundly lonely activity. For this reason it is not easy to think of any act of writing of which it could be said that life itself depended on it – except perhaps in a figurative sense. Of course more prosaically, life could be said to depend on writing if a particular writer’s psychological or even physical survival in a period of an exceptionally brutal incarceration literally depended on his or her writing. But in neither of these two instances, one figurative and the other literal, am I using this loaded, pregnant phrase – writing as if life itself depended on it – in this tribute to Festus Iyayi. Rather, what I have in mind here is a combination of both the subject matter and the effect of that extraordinary kind of writing in the presence of which the reader is taken (back) to the very roots of being. This is what one confronts most powerfully and unforgettably in perhaps the best among Iyayi’s works, the book of short stories titled Awaiting Court Martial. But this effect of a kind of writing that subliminally expresses what the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, has famously described as bare life is already present, already an insistent intimation in Iyayi’s works from the very first title, the celebrated novel, Violence. In other words, I am suggesting that Iyayi is a writer in whose best stories one confronts a kind of imaginative, belletristic writing that subliminally takes us back to the roots of Being, close to the edge of what it means to live without the illusions of religious or ideological mantras, or the blinkers people often desperately snatch from the pieties of conventional morality in order to shield themselves from the savage truths of an often cruel and unforgiving existence.

    Sometime in June 2006 at one of the many events organised to celebrate Femi Osofisan’s 60th birthday on the campus of the University of Ibadan, a fierce verbal controversy over the writings of Festus Iyayi took place between me and Pius Omole, then a Senior Lecturer at the University. Now, I should perhaps state that I am quite deliberately identifying Omole by name and institutional affiliation here when tact or simple courteousness demand that I keep his identity unrevealed. I am departing from that protocol of civility because the view of Iyayi’s writings that Omole expressed at that gathering, while very common among the mainstream of conservative or liberal literary critics and scholars in Nigeria, nonetheless enjoys the “protection” of anonymity. In other words, while most conservative and liberal critics privately express this view of Iyayi as a writer and some even express it in their classes, no one has publicly owned up to it.

    Now, it is precisely because I do not wish to perpetuate this anonymity of a view that I consider both lacking in any demonstrable basis in the corpus of Iyayi’s fiction and over-simplifying about the nature of engaged, committed writing in our country that I have put a particular name, a specific, individuated identity to it – that of Pius Omole as publicly stated in a verbal exchange between us. Thus, it is useful to give a profile of this view of Iyayi’s writings from the Right and the Centre of Nigerian literary-critical discourse that led to that vigorous controversy in June 2006, right in the midst of the celebration of Osofisan’s works.

    On one level, this view can be simply and unambiguously stated: Iyayi is a writer of the radical Left with an overriding, urgent social cause; for that reason, the value of his writings rests primarily on the Cause (deliberately capitalised) for and about which he so passionately writes. At face value, this view is factual and perhaps even unexceptionable: Iyayi, as the whole world knows, is indeed an engaged, committed writer and the causes for and about which he writes matter greatly to him. And if his writings have, in one way or another, served to advance greater critical awareness and discussion of those causes, so much the better for Iyayi himself and those on behalf of whom he writes.

    But this is all rather facile and this becomes clear the moment you bring into the discussion those who are either critical of the causes about which Iyayi writes or are indeed dubious about, or even downright hostile to those causes. For as soon as you bring into the discussion this perspective of fragmented or multiple readerships of Iyayi’s writings, then the matter gets very complicated. And this was precisely Pius Omole’s tactic in June 2006: he vigorously insisted that Iyayi’s value as a writer is determined solely by his value for those among the Nigerian reading public that share his social and ideological views. In other words, this implies that while Iyayi’s writings are obviously very important for radical-leftist critics and activists, they don’t hold up well outside the fraternity of the Left. Expressed in other words, this implies that with Iyayi, the imaginative works are little more than an extension into the realm of fictional writing of Iyayi the activist, the passionate and uncompromising Leftist who stands tall and implacable among the country’s radical intelligentsia.

    Of course, I immediately took Omole up on these assertions. I vigorously insisted that similar to what obtains in the works of other progressive, leftist writers like Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare and Odia Ofeimun, Iyayi is one radical writer about whose works no scholar or critic could be condescending. I stated that I was making this point emphatically because there are indeed radical Nigerian poets and playwrights the quality of whose writings invite and have indeed received a surfeit of patronising critical commentary, the kind of critical condescension that any self-respecting, sophisticated author would reject. But Iyayi, I insisted, is not a progressive, leftist writer of that kind. Resting my “case” on an exposé on the underlying, though unspoken assumptions of Omole’s assertions, I argued that Iyayi is one of the great radical humanists of postcolonial African literature, a writer whose passionate and eloquent advocacy of the revolutionary transformation of our society did not in any way compromise the quality of his writing, especially with regard to the dominance of realism in its diverse forms and expressions in our literature across the entire ideological spectrum occupied by our major authors.

    Of the underlying assumptions of Omole’s assertions during that verbal joust between us in June 2006, the most crucial is the idea that a work of literature or art cannot simultaneously serve a social cause and be a significant or even outstanding work. But this view, I countered, is refuted by innumerable works of literature and art from diverse cultural traditions of the world, from antiquity to modern times, and from classically realist to bracingly or joyously modernist and postmodernist styles and forms. In different times and places, I argued, works that were produced to protest war, slavery, the oppression of women and the poor, and the tyranny of specific social orders and institutions have been very successful in pursuit of those causes at the same time that they have moved even readers who were not particularly open to the causes advanced by the works.

    The refutation of this fallacious claim about Iyayi as a radical writer is what drives this tribute. This I intend to do through a particularly focused attentiveness to a major shift in fictional form, style and themes that occurred in Iyayi’s writings in the 1990s. This radical shift in his writings has very rarely been noted; for that reason, it has not been subjected to critical inquiry. I am using it as a point of departure for this tribute because, as I hope to demonstrate, it says a lot, heuristically, not only about Iyayi’s own writings but also about committed, radical literature in Nigeria in the postindependence period. I must emphasise here that it is a deliberately symptomatic cognitive mapping of this decisive shift in Iyayi’s writings that I carry out in this tribute because, as I shall be arguing, what at first sight appears to be so particular, so striking in Iyayi as an engaged writer, is indeed highly revealing of broader currents in Nigerian writings of a distinctively radical, leftist orientation. This is the interpretive burden of my central arguments in this essay, this claim that the shift that appears so marked, so distinctive in Iyayi’s writings is in fact symptomatic of a whole shift in radical, engaged writing in Nigeria in the last three decades. Before coming to it, a few words about the belatedness of this essay are perhaps useful.

    Writing now for the first time ever on Iyayi as a writer, I am struck by how odd, how strange it is to me that he who should have been the very first about whom I ought to have written is the last, using that word “last” in its specific connotation of something that comes as the latest in an ongoing series. This is because, simply stated in its most essential aspect, no other Nigerian writer of imaginative works, either of my generation or within the ranks of self-identified progressive authors in our country, has been closer, in theory and praxis, to my own ideological and political views and to my work as an activist than Iyayi. I shall have more to say on this point later in this tribute. For now, let me simply say that I am so amazed at this belated realisation of this silence of mine on Iyayi’s works – which I have admired for a long time and which I so vigorously defended in that verbal exchange with Pius Omole in June 2006 – that I am moved, probably as an act of symbolic reprieve for the oversight, to raise here the shades of that biblical saying in Matthew 20, verse 16: The last shall be the first and the first shall be the last!

    To be continued

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Abysmal statistics, facts and realities that define and yet do not define us (3)

    Abysmal statistics, facts and realities that define and yet do not define us (3)

    In bringing this series to a conclusion, the opening section of the famous first sentence of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities comes to mind:”It was the best of times and it was the worst of times”. The “two cities” of Dickens’ novel are London and Paris in the months and years of the French Revolution, one of the most earthshaking events of modern history. Perhaps when a novel of comparable power and popularity comes to be written about the pre-revolutionary times we are living through in our country at the present time, its opening sentence will be, “it was the worst of times and it was, yet again, the very worst of times”. That opening section of Dickens’ novel applies to everybody who was alive in the period, rich and poor, the powerful and the downtrodden. If, heaven forbid, that novel comes to be written about Obasanjo’s, Yar’ Adua’s and Jonathan’s Nigeria and it opens with “it was the worst of times and it was, yet again, the very worst of times” this will also apply to all Nigerians alive now and living in the country.

    Yes, a few thousands of the 170 millions of Nigerians are immensely wealthy. And yes, our political and public officeholders, especially our parliamentarians, are the best paid, the most handsomely remunerated in the world. But don’t we all live in a society in which the conditions of life, in its bare, irreducible essentials, are dire for everybody? Heaven help any Nigerian, rich or poor, who gets very sick and needs the most reliable and efficient facilities that modern medicine can provide, for they are either completely absent in our hospitals and clinics or, in the few hospitals where such amenities can be found, they are so expensive that even the very wealthy among us find it better to go to India if they wish to survive. The education that our schools provide is generally so poor in quality that even moderately well-off Nigerians who really cannot afford it nonetheless invest their life savings in sending their children abroad if they want their offspring to have the kind of education they had in this very country in their youth.

    As I have been arguing in this series, perhaps the most confounding manifestation of these evil and unhappy times that have befallen our country lies, I strongly believe, in the collapse of every mark of meritocratic values and practices in all aspects of our collective existence as a nation, a society. Ability, talent and merit now have little or nothing to do with how the majority of our wealthy got rich and with how most of our professionals got the certificates they wield as passports to good, superannuated jobs. For the most part, the majority of those who rise to immense political power and authority in our country have little ability, imagination and vision to show for their success – as everyone can see from the quality of the present occupant of Aso Rock. There are examination malpractices galore in private and public examinations conducted to test the ability and training of the pupils of our primary and secondary schools; and sometimes, when a diligent invigilator spots the miscreants and tries to “book” them, violence is visited on that would-be conscientious examination official. Even in the religious institutions, in churches and mosques where an inordinate amount of moralizing and sermonizing goes on, pastors and imams, church wardens and imams’ assistants are known to lend their seal of approval or, indeed, sanctification on very wealthy members of their congregations that are known to be openly and brazenly corrupt.

    At the end of last week’s piece in this series, I promised to conclude the series with a reflection on the few hopeful signs and portents that indicate that things could be far better in Nigeria than they are now. I intend to keep that promise, even though I also said that there are no easy solutions to the immensity of the crises traceable to the collapse of meritocracy – in those of its forms that are compatible with popular democracy and social justice – in our society. In three discursive steps, I now wish to enter this concluding and cautiously optimistic section of this series. In the first step, I give some comparative statistics and figures to show the roots of the problem. In step two, I argue that Nigeria was very, very different about four decades ago than what the statistics and figures in step one reveal. And in step three, I argue that logically, if things were actually quite different in the past, they could be also very different in the future, given an honest, courageous and, let us admit it, probably very painful encounter with the past and the present.

    Step One

    With a population of roughly 1.3 billion people, a land area of 1.26 million square miles, India has only 28 states (plus 7 so-called “Union Territories” that do no have the political and administrative status of states). Moreover, the political heads or chief executives of India’s states are not called Governors; their designation is “Chief Minister”. Now let us consider the figures for Nigeria: land area, 356.7 thousand square miles (less than a third of India’s land mass); population, 160 million (less than one-eighth of India’s population). How many states do we have? 36, with agitation still going on for yet more states to be created! Moreover, the political and administrative head of our states are called “Governors” (In Ghana, they are called “Regional Ministers”)

    In case there are readers of this piece who wonder what’s in a name, what’s in a designation, the answer is that a “Governor” (Nigeria), unlike a Chief Minster (India) or a Regional Minister (Ghana) combines the post of head of government with that of head of state. Thus, while the Chief Ministers of India’s 28 states are no doubt powerful politicians, singly and collectively, they do not remotely come near the influence, authority and powers of patronage concentrated in our Governors, all of whom are no less than mini heads of states. This is why in relative administrative cost of governance, Nigeria is second to no other country in the world, with the probable exception of only the United States of America, the richest country on the planet, the center of gravity, at least so far, of global capitalism. The colossal waste and squandermania that is constitutionally woven into political governance in Nigeria at the present time is not only the worst in the world, it is the structural and material base of all the corruption, all the rot that pervades all aspects of our collective existence. It must be terminated and soon, because for as long as it remains, the corruption, the rot in our country will not only persist, it will grow ever bigger and bigger. Why is this so? For an answer to this question, let’s move now to step two

    Step Two

    At one time in Nigeria when the country was administratively divided into three regions and the economy was based on a combination of export crops and a nascent light consumer goods industry whose market was the entire West African region, we did have Governors in this country. But they had no political or administrative power; their posts were mostly honorific and symbolic, corresponding to that of a head of state that is not also head of government. I recollect here that for the most part, the occupants of these positions were highly respected and/or beloved officials: Sir Kashim Ibrahim in the North; Sir Francis Ibiam in the East; Sir Adesoji Aderemi, the then ruling Ooni of Ife in the West. It so happens that all this took place before Nigeria became awash with oil wealth, with a near mono-culture economy based on a mainly offshore extractive industry that requires little or no value-added production in the hinterlands of the country for the oil wealth to continue to flow to the benefit, mostly, of the oil conglomerates and a just few thousands of Nigerians.

    I recall these facts here not for nostalgic or sentimental reasons but simply to make the following crucial point: with the change of the national economy to an offshore extractive industry that is not primarily based on developing the infrastructures and human capacities necessary for value-added production deep in the hinterlands of the country, we began to have Governors who are both heads of government and heads of their states. With one or two exceptions, none of the thirty-six governors (including the President himself) has a fraction, an iota of the enormous respect that Governors had back then in the First Republic. Indeed, for the most part, and again with only a few exceptions, most of the Governors now care not one jot for the respect or love of their people. As a matter of fact, many of them do everything, it seems, to attract anger, shame and disrespect from their peoples!

    Step Three

    We cannot go back to that past when Governors were only 3 (later 4), not 36; that past in which the Governors were highly respected public appointees. For one thing, the economic and structural basis of that past is gone, seemingly forever. The benefit that we may derive from reviewing that past is this lesson: we must design our mode of political governance with a keen eye to the economic foundations of the society. Waste and squandermania were not unknown in the First Republic; but they were nowhere close to being the worst in the African continent, not to talk of the whole world. To put this in the language of political economy, waste and squandermania were not (yet) a significant part of capitalism as it was then known and practiced by the ruling class parties of the country. And if waste and squandermania have become so colossal now, it is because the capitalism now practiced, now regnant in Nigeria is one of the most backward and unproductive forms of capitalism in the world: an economy dominated by an offshore extractive industry that seems to have no compelling need for development of infrastructures and human capacities in the country’s hinterland. There is nothing inherently Nigerian in this extremely backward form of peripheral capitalism; it simply the case that none of our ruling class parties, I repeat none at all, has shown a real interest to do away with the present economic order in which, with very little infrastructure and human capacities developed in the country’s hinterlands, the oil wealth continues to flow and their Excellencies continue to live and act as the lords of universe.

    No developing country in the world can afford the level of waste and squandermania in the Nigerian socio-economic and political order of the present historical moment, especially because this (dis)order serves as the foundation of all the corruption and rot in the country. Seen in the light of what the totally needless and voidable suffering that this (dis)order imposes on lives of the majority of our peoples now and potentially in the future, it is arguably one of the most stupid forms of governance on the planet. This is not an act of gratuitous abuse on my part; it is simply an assertion, a proud one at that, that we are not a stupid people! We are only, for the present moment, governed by political elites most of whom are completely unembarrassed by stupidity. The darkness and suffering caused by this stupidity will not last forever; only we must hope that they don’t last for too long. The more enlightened, patriotic and egalitarian among our political and business elites will – must – eventually separate themselves from the presently dominant crowd of greedy, barawo cretins who, for want of a better term, I call “Obasanjo’s political brood”. Capitalism will then enter a new phase in our country. I say this with full knowledge of the fact that constitutively stupid political rulers never give up their misrule voluntarily or easily. Let us just hope that it will not be too violent, too self-maiming, the process that will lead us out of the present darkness and stupidity.

  • The tautology of politics

    The tautology of politics

    The crisis bedeviling the nation is not just a crisis of politics but a crisis of the grammar of politics, or political grammar, if you like. As Albert Einstein has noted, insanity is doing the same thing all over again and expecting a different result. In grammatical tautology, there is an unnecessary repetition of meaning, using multiple words to effectively—or ineffectively—say the same thing.

    In political tautology, the same actions are repeated all over and we are told to expect a different result. The result is a crisis of political disorientation or mental disequilbrium in which the actors are conditioned by a stubborn mindset to believe their own lies no matter how outlandish and to seek to inflict same on a cowered populace. As everybody knows, incantation and political magic thrive on repetition and the linguistic violence of formulaic bombardment.

    Let us now begin to plot our way out of this jungle of post-colonial political tautology. The greatest and most compelling argument for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference is the brutal abrogation of the political rights of Nigerians by colonial and post-colonial administrations, whether military or civilian. But this is also the greatest and most compelling incentive against its convocation.

    Nowhere in the world has the sovereignty of a people or nation for that matter been ceded lightly. It must be demanded or fought for; or there must be some compelling disincentives which force the hands of the rulers. The struggle for sovereignty affirms the sovereignty of struggle as the organising principle of all emancipated human societies. From Magna Carta to the Chartist movement, from the world-historic revolutions to the American Civil Rights protests, it is the struggle to affirm the sovereignty of the people that turn the habitants of a nation-space from inert, passive entities and nonentities to full blown citizens . This is when the nation in itself becomes the nation for itself.

    As it can be seen from the recent Delta Central Senatorial abracadabra, the brisk abolition of the electorate in Offa and the programmed electoral anarchy in Anambra State, Goodluck Jonathan , while paying lip service to a National Conference, is also relentlessly steamrolling the country towards a historic catastrophe that it cannot survive in one piece. What then is the purpose of a National Conference when evidence abounds that rather than attempt to solve the National Question the powers that be are working towards a predetermined National Answer and final solution?

    All over the world, national conferences are always an elite-driven affair. They are a specific mechanism to redeem and retain elite control of the levers of power. In the total absence of pressures from below and the margins, this is not a bad thing, and since current politics in Nigeria is a play of giants disconnected and disarticulated from the populace, Jonathan may yet get away with blue murder. But this is going to be a temporary respite until there is some fundamental retribution which will alter the character of the current political class.

    While waiting for this world-historic rupture and disruption of the mental conditioning of the political elite, it is appropriate to add that in the dispiriting fog of political tautology, nothing can be more refreshing than a fresh breath of scholarly analysis and its illuminating insights. This is the time for our thinkers, philosophers and intellectuals to rise above the fog of mental debilitation in order to fashion a new order for the nation.

    Ben Nwabueze, distinguished professor of Constitutional Law and a foremost legal theorist, is without any doubt the leading illuminati and intellectual star of our current political curfew. Snooper is not always on the same political page with the cerebral titan, but whether you agree with him or not, Nwabueze is a serious reader’s delight any day.

    Approaching his mid eighties, it is obvious that Nwabueze’s capacity for hard work remains undimmed and undiminished by advancing years. There is a seminal rigour to even his most casual pieces and an analytical clarity which marks him out as a master of clinical exposition. In the current depressing state of the nation, there is something to be cheered or even wildly applauded when a man of such age and distinction devotes all of his God-given sterling intellectual talents to solving the problems of his beloved nation as he deems it fit.

    Yet there is the troubling and persistent feeling that current favours, current partisanships and current passions often get in the way of the analytical rigour and seminal exposition. Despite the forthright eloquence, the radical fervour and the simmering contempt for the inanities of the Nigerian political elite, one often goes away with the impression that the distinguished legal theorist is nothing but a defender per excellence of the ascendant political status quo.

    His latest outing, defending the proposed Jonathan National Conference, gives the game away in all its damning and tortured ellipsis. Nwabueze is right to affirm that all the so-called conferences we have had so far are nothing but elitist conclaves which have never given the Nigerian people the right or choice to determine their sovereign destiny. He is particularly spot on in dismissing the 2005 Obasanjo National Dialogue as a sham, or charade lacking in immanent integrity and seriousness of purpose. Nwabueze believes, and tries to make us believe, that the proposed Jonathan Conference would be quite different.

    Yet the main plank and platform for staking his considerable integrity on Jonathan’s fidelity and seriousness of purpose is based entirely on faith and the fact that his group had submitted a draft proposal to the government, and not on a rigorous analysis of the political antecedents and current inclinations of the said administration. Last Thursday in a moment of late lucidity, Nwabueze seemed to be backing away in anticipatory disapproval.

    There can be no doubt about Nwabueze’s sterling standing with the administration. His nominee, Solomon Adun Asemota, the equally distinguished lawyer and respected advocate of a sovereign conference of ethnic nationalities, was eventually coopted after the Nyiam fiasco. But when matters as critical and crucial as this are entirely judged on the basis of cronyism and mutual back-rubbing, one must begin to wonder about the integrity of the whole process.

    In any case, let us not press our luck too far on this ethnic nationalities business. It is one of the pious myths of the decolonising project and the post-colonial nation process that the native people were not consulted before they were boxed into a colonial cage. The reality was that there were no people to consult as such. Force is the organising principle of the colonial project. Nigeria came into being after numerous native armies and economic conglomerates were put to sword by the colonial overlords or militarily browbeaten into submission.

    If we are looking for the real pre-colonial owners of what became Nigeria, we will have to search for the relics and debris of the ancient Ibadan army, the Ekiti insurgents, the Niger Delta barons, the Ilorin army, the Arochukwu magnates, the Nupe generals, the caliphate troops who took a shellacking in 1903, the abducted king of Benin, Jaja of Opobo, the Ijebu armed forces and many others.

    These are the lost and lapsed sovereigns of the numerous pre-colonial states in what eventually became Nigeria and not some mythical, fluid and flux nationalities. In a multi-national nation, there is nothing wrong with ethnic identity politics, but the unpleasant fact we are trying to avoid is that Nigeria, like all colonial nations, is a creation, concoction and contraption of state violence. And violence has been its organising principle ever since. This is what explains the centrality of arms and their bearers, despite the civilian lulls and lullabies.

    How then do we humanise this violence-suffused entity and make real life livable for its stricken and afflicted denizens? As a corollary to that important question, what are the possibilities of a sovereign national conference? Pray but keep your powder dry, says the famous admonition. Nwabueze is surely right in vesting the Jonathan administration with full sovereignty. There can be no dual sovereignty in a functioning state except as a precondition for anarchy.

    It is interesting to note that all the African countries listed by Nwabueze where sovereignty was seized by national conferences are Francophone nations. The French, taking a cue from their own history, imposed a system of presidential monarchy on their African holdings. The idea is to let an authoritarian strongman rule as father and founder of the nation until a biological coup d’etat intervenes and blows the lid off the roiling cauldron. This is what has led to civil wars in the two Congos, Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea and simmering discontent in Togo. The current harshly monarchical presidential system which does not take into account the fact that Nigeria is powered along by a negative equilibrium and by competing and countervailing centres of power is bound to end in similar grief.

    Nwabueze is at his most bearish and bullish when it comes to the vexed issue of the permanent conflict and endless contestation between legal and popular sovereignty and between the people or forces claiming to represent them and the ascendant sovereign authority. This is also where the political and intellectual contradictions appear in boldest relief. The legal titan is of the opinion that if Jonathan reneges on his promise, if he decides to play hanky-panky by throwing the buck back at a delinquent National Assembly, then the proposed National Conference can assert its authority and seize sovereignty.

    This is a direct and dire warning to the Jonathan administration. The patience of its most ardent intellectual supporters is wearing thin. Nwabueze does not tell us how this will happen, and probably rightly so. But if history is our infallible guide, it is a damp squib. On the few occasions when the Nigerian people have acted with a pan-Nigerian concert to assert their sovereignty, sections of the elite have always moved in to scupper the nascent national consciousness, leaving room for the best organised power cartel to seize sovereignty. It is unlikely to be different this time around. The constitutional pundit ought to know. But this is the bane of political tautology. Professor, welcome to the political laboratory of the great scientist Albert Einstein and his theory of insanity.

  • Okon to convene his own conference

    Ever since President Jonathan , in a sudden Damascus-like conversion, decided to convene a National Conference, the entire country has been agog with intellectual and political excitement. The presidency must be enjoying itself. It is like throwing a scrap of meat at the whippersnappers of change and asking them to get on with the feral scrape or get lost.

    Pundits have been moving from one television station to the other. Nobody now seems to remember the Indian origins of that word. Of great concern to an ageing snooper is how some of these chaps always manage to arrive at the station in the early hours without appearing bleary-eyed even as yours sincerely battles with insomnia. It doesn’t add up, or do the stations have five-star suites? This is what George Lukacs, in a famous swipe at Theodore Adorno, calls the Grand Hotel Abyss.

    But while snooper is wallowing in self-pity, you can trust the irrepressible Okon to cotton in on the latest road show in town. The boy has been assembling a truly historic cast of rogues, ragamuffins and other riff-raff on the margins of society for what he called a Conference of Real Ethnic Minorities of Nigeria, CREMON. One morning, the affable crook , drunk with self-importance, walked up to snooper.

    “Oga, we wan start. As dem fly dey chop madman, madman fit chop fly too”, the mad boy crowed.

    “Start what, and where?” snooper snarled.

    “Dem conference of dem real people of Obodo, all dat one wey dem yeye Yoruba lawyers dey blow grammar na wetin Fela call dem army arrangement. We no dey for mala magomago and dem Yoruba monafiki”, Okon calmly submitted.

    “I see. Have you obtained Police Permit?” snooper demanded.

    “Oga, we don get dem Learners’ Permit from dem license office.” Okon snorted with criminal relish. Before snooper could respond to this outrage, an irate Ibo who had been stomping and stamping around with a scowl suddenly exploded. “Nna, make we begin to fire now, now. If not for dis confluence I for don sell ten tires for Ladipo since morning.”

    “Stupid Ibo man. Na so, so money, money, money”, one man spat with contempt.

    “Watch your tongue. I come from Onitsha and I no be Ibo man”, the man screamed. A call to order suddenly rang out amidst the din. It was James Henshaw, the old Calabar aristocrat and hell-raiser ,who claimed to have seen action as a submarine crew during the Second World War. He had arrived on the premises a day earlier with a retinue carrying his fresh supply of crocodile and hippo meat. When he was not reading old newspapers or sniffing from an enormous pouch of snuff, he was eyeing everybody with a supercilious frown which could be quite unnerving.

    “I hereby declare the conference open. The mistake of 1914 is that the Brits didn’t make Calabar the Federal Capital. We will sue them for reparations”, the old bandit declared. A burly Ijaw man with rippling biceps suddenly jumped up.

    “I am not a Nigerian, and I don’t speak English, period”, he announced in English and with a ferocious scowl. The Ijaw stalwart then ordered his aide to translate what he said for the benefit of everybody. As the chap started speaking in some ancient Old Testament tongue, there was pin drop silence.

    “Kai, this is what they call Lingua Fracas”, Baba Lekki rumbled from the depths of slumber. Pole-huggingly drunk as usual, he had fallen asleep on the sofa while claiming to take minutes. It was at this point that an old Godogodo soldier who had been watching the proceeding with barely concealed irritation let go a brisk volley from a concealed revolver which sent everybody scampering for safety.

  • Seventy salutes to the people’s admiral

    General ignorance should not be an excuse for the ignorance of generals. While majority of Nigerians, disoriented by poverty and the trauma of worthlessness, are being programmed to celebrate fake and phony heroes, one of the greatest products of the Nigerian military, Admiral Godwin Ndubuisi Kanu, recently turned 70. In keeping with the man’s modesty, humility and self-effacement, the day passed quietly and without any funfair or futile fireworks.

    A longstanding friend of column and columnist, Kanu is wonderfully cerebral and even his most casual thoughts are marked by painstaking rigour and analytical sophistication. As they say, it is not where a man stands in times of comfort that attests to his true worth but where he pitches his tent in times of discomfort. Twice in his lifetime, Kanu has turned his back on the very institution that produced him, and at grave personal peril and discomfort. The small measure of freedom Nigerians enjoy today and the return of professionalism to the military are due to the quiet labours of many unsung military heroes. Snooper salutes this illustrious son of Ovim and Nigeria and wishes him many more years of heroic services to the fatherland.

  • Anambra poll: An opportunity missed

    Anambra poll: An opportunity missed

    The forces malevolently interested in the November 16 Anambra governorship poll were much stronger than the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could withstand or manage. No matter what INEC did, the election was bound to fail; for the stakes in that poll were so high that even if the electoral body had mustered enough administrative acumen and integrity to superintend the election, the political dynamics in both the state and the country had already spawned too many sinister factors capable of undermining the poll.

    Much attention has been paid to INEC’s failings in that election as an explanation for the almost comprehensive failure of the governorship poll. Because of this failure, the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, has himself been described as a failure. In addition, many have called for the cancellation of the poll since it could not be guaranteed that the pollution and manipulation noticed in some polling areas had not affected the entire process. Professor Jega himself acknowledged that in some parts of the state, his men sabotaged the election. He was thoroughly disappointed, he said, that in spite of all the preparations for that poll, the election still miscarried badly. And though he didn’t quite say it, it appeared that the sabotage he talked about was aimed at the feisty All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Chris Ngige.

    The Anambra poll miscarried for two main reasons. But before considering the reasons, it is important to make one or two observations about the election. First, I think it was unwise of Professor Jega to have drafted so many top level INEC staff to supervise the poll, and also encourage the overwhelming policing of the same poll. By taking these extraordinary steps in the hope that he would deliver a near perfect election, he robbed himself and his commission of the opportunity to know how they would have performed were the 2015 polls to be held all over the country on November 16. In 2015, it is evident that neither the commission nor the security agencies would have the benefit of the number and stature of the officials deployed in Anambra for the inconclusive governorship poll of two Saturdays ago. The poll should have been used as a dress rehearsal for the 2015 polls. Second, by now Professor Jega and the frustrated electorate will have realised that it takes more than an INEC chairman’s well-meaning disposition and the deployment of overwhelming force to deliver a free and fair election.

    The failed Anambra poll can be explained in two ways. First is the simple fact that the Jonathan presidency has no interest whatsoever in ensuring a free and fair poll, notwithstanding its repeated homilies on the sanctity of the electoral process. Judging from the spectral silence of the presidency on the obvious and deliberate sabotage of the poll, and the effusive and exuberant praise of the same poll by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it was clear that from the perspective of the Jonathan presidency, the goal of the election was to defeat Dr Ngige, not to ensure fair poll or give victory to the PDP candidate. The obsession against Dr Ngige is in turn informed by the overall strategic interest of the ruling party to checkmate the rising profile of the APC and stall, if not completely weaken, the opposition’s increasingly shrill and critical voice. This explains why the PDP was eager to endorse the misshapen poll and give the impression of being detached from crass partisanship, though its candidate lost in questionable circumstances.

    As part of this strategy of weakening, stalling or reversing the power of the APC, the PDP will next year attempt to take at least one state from the APC in the Osun and Ekiti elections and ride that momentum towards the 2015 polls. Two main factors underscore the strategy against the APC. One is the fact that Dr Jonathan himself lacks the intrinsic depth and vision to remake the country as a virile, progressive and pacesetting nation. Two is the fact that deliberately or accidentally, Dr Jonathan has managed to assemble a group of Machiavellian advisers and close aides who have gross loathing for principles. They are adept at reading the lips of the president and sabotaging every law and constitutional provision militating against the president’s re-election. Therefore, between Dr Jonathan’s surrender to devious politics and the energetic enthusiasm of his aides to foment trouble, everything, including the laws and constitution, not to talk of elections in particular, is fair game for subversion.

    The second reason the Anambra poll miscarried is the connivance of the state’s elite. No one denies the atrocious manipulations that undermined the integrity of the poll. But to remedy these atrocities, INEC plans a supplementary election slated for the end of this month. While there are calls for total cancellation of the poll from among a not-so-substantial number of Anambrarians and an overwhelming number of non-Anambrarians, the state’s elite have indicated the poll is not so irredeemable that a supplementary poll cannot correct. In media comments and television discussions, as well as jurisprudential expositions, the said elite have struggled to justify the poll and denounce the APC, its candidate, and any other person bold enough to dismiss the election as a sham. It is not surprising that such connivance offers endorsement for the electoral chicanery of two Saturdays ago and also provides adequate grounding and philosophical underpinning for the subversion of the electoral process.

    One of those philosophical underpinnings was the incredulous argument that Dr Ngige represented the face of the Southwest’s expansionist agenda. The state’s ruling party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), was the only surviving Igbo party that must not be humiliated, they said. It no longer mattered that APC’s Dr Ngige was their son, or that he had ruled the state meritoriously and can probably do much better than his rivals, or that his competence could not be doubted at all. The unabashed suggestion that Dr Ngige represented outsiders harked back to the Yoruba/Igbo rivalry of the 1950s and 1960s, and gave the impression that little progress had been made in Southwest/Southeast relationships. To these conniving analysts and amateur philosophers, it does not matter how the APGA candidate wins.

    But such dangerous reasoning carries equally dangerous drawbacks. It shows that the Southeast has learnt nothing, forgotten nothing, and has all along been an impassive observer of the changing dynamics of Nigerian politics and geopolitics. Even though Dr Ngige’s candidature was the best opportunity for the Southwest to build a credible and durable bridge to the Southeast, it was even a much better opportunity for the Southeast to expand its reach nationally and also break the implacable iron curtain that has seemed to divide the Southwest and the Southeast. For a region desirous of winning the presidency in the years ahead, it is strange that the lessons of MKO Abiola’s victory in the 1993 presidential election are lost on them.

    It is also surprising that they fail to understand that while the Southwest intelligently preferred Olu Falae in the 1999 presidential election, Olusegun Obasanjo enjoyed the better crossover appeal which propelled him into Aso Villa. More crucially, it must be understood that the seeming consensus that appeared to produce a Yoruba president in 1999 could not be divorced from the 1993 presidential election annulment. Such a consensus is unlikely to be built again, and each party and ethnic group will have to explore sensible and multipronged strategies to win the presidency.

    If the partial results already sanctioned by INEC are taken into cognisance, and given the way they are skewed against the APC candidate, it is hard to see Dr Ngige winning. If he loses, it will not be because he failed to run a credible and efficient campaign, or because the electorate didn’t vote for him. It will be because he ran against a manipulative and amoral federal government, an unscrupulous Governor Peter Obi who pays only lip service to democracy, a short-sighted and parochial elite anxious to protect imaginary boundaries, and an unconscionable public who can’t seem to understand the fuss over an unfair electoral process or the principle of fighting for and defending truth and justice.

    It is also quite remarkable that some of those who denounce the APC in the Anambra election and turn a blind eye to the corruption that accompanied it come from the Southwest. Their reasons are totally unrelated to the noxious details of the electoral manipulations observed in the Anambra poll by everyone. Indeed, the unusual Southwest support for injustice is merely a reflection of the divisions that have now become integral to Southwest politics, one in which everyone defines progressivism according to his taste and embraces it according to his whim. The bitter political struggle in the Southwest, which always spills over to other parts of the country, will continue for some time to come, for it has become burdensome and discomfiting for those who had associated with Obafemi Awolowo in the First and Second Republics, and long ago passed themselves off as progressives, to mollify the pangs and reproof of conscience triggered by their betrayal of democratic principles.

    Those who suggest that the Anambra debacle presages a catastrophic 2015 are right. The Anambra poll failed because there are fewer people today in the country with the character and principles that conduce to good electoral behaviour. Anambra has probably sealed its fate. But the buck-passers of INEC, the vicious and amoral presidency of Dr Jonathan, and the shallow and sentimental analysts crawling all over Nigeria with spurious logic will guarantee that this long-suffering country, not just Anambra, inexorably moves closer to meeting its fate in two years’ time.

  • Oduahgate, a hesitant president and Gov Amaechi

    Oduahgate, a hesitant president and Gov Amaechi

    Nearly one month after President Goodluck Jonathan set up a panel to probe the scandal surrounding the two overpriced bulletproof cars allegedly bought for the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), and more than one week after the panel reportedly submitted its report, the president has not said a word. No matter what his aides say about his fidelity to both the truth and the anti-corruption war, Dr Jonathan is clearly reluctant to act on the matter, for Ms Oduah is said to be a favoured minister, one quite important to the president’s election in 2011 and his re-election plans in 2015. But act he must, notwithstanding speculations that he seeks a way out for the embattled minister. This column has no inkling what the panel’s findings are, but whatever happens, and given what we already know, the president will be demonstrating unparalleled audacity not to give Ms Oduah more than a slap on the wrist.

    As far as Dr Jonathan is concerned, and in spite of his often buoyant sermonising in speeches and in churches, his presidency has formed a pattern of never meaning what he says, and of damning the whole world when his critics become too impassioned against his puny virtues. To be fair to him, he has not been inspiring in waging war on corruption, but he at least gestures in that direction and frequently pretends to be earnest in facing the problem squarely.

    As if to reinforce the perception of the moral aimlessness of the Jonathan presidency, his Special Adviser on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, last week explained why Dr Jonathan turned down the invitation by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) to deliver a keynote address at its Sokoto retreat. According to Alhaji Gulak, the president turned down the invitation because he did not recognise the NGF led by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State. The president, he said unashamedly, recognised a faction of the NGF created and led by Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State.

    In May, the NGF had conducted its leadership election in which Mr Amaechi emerged winner with 19 votes to Mr Jang’s 16. Many observers saw a direct and uncomplicated election; but the president chose to recognise the loser who was his candidate. Other than the 16 governors who recognise Mr Jang as NGF chairman, no other sensible person does. But what does the Jonathan presidency care? He sees no paradox in lending presidential weight to open indiscretion. If he finally and reluctantly chooses to punish Ms Oduah for her errors and lies, it will not be because he thinks it is the right thing to do; it will be because he has no choice. As for the NGF, don’t ever expect him to recognise the truth, no matter what loathsome impression it creates of his presidency. He abhors the upstart Mr Amaechi too much to give a damn. After all, in these parts, the impression presidential aides have of presidential power is that no president must ever lose an argument to anyone, let alone lose a deathly political struggle with a lowly governor. In their view, democracy endows a president with far more power and glory than a monarchy or outright dictatorship.

  • Our wanton, wayward ways translate to national rascality

    You and I know where rascality will lead so I implore you, let us take ring-side seats and watch in discontent

    Anyone who says that life is a school has never met an earthquake, a volcano or Nigeria. Listen, I am whistling and mopping my brow as I tell you this. Nigeria has this powerful, schwas buckling, rodeo-rider life style that takes the breath away from the rest of the free world and proves to all that it does not necessarily need to learn a thing. And I am talking about both living and governance styles. Seriously, any observer of events, natural occurrences and manipulated natural occurrences around these parts will whistle and conclude that every Nigerian is a moving volcano and is completely detached from history. A volcano is never aware of its history; never tracks its own course; and does not ever, ever remember swallowing up anyone. No volcano ever goes ‘I do remember flowing down this path before; it certainly won’t do to flow over this village again.’ Thoughtless, that’s what it is; and unfortunately, that is also what Nigeria is. Nigeria has never once said to itself, ‘wait; we don’t think we should do this again because we did it before and lost so much.’ Oh no; it’d rather go, ‘this is so wrong; how come it feels so good?’

    Just look at the news as they have unfolded lately. First we heard that the funds conned out of our already impoverished pockets by the federal government in the name of fuel price increase had been kept in an account to grow mould and become nothing but filthy lucre which they call SURE-P! It sure rhymes. Anyway, tired of seeing it sit there all day many days doing nothing, some clever fellow had gone and dipped his filthy hands in the filthy lucre and suddenly, eighty billion, nay, fifty billion, nay, only eight billion was said to be missing! Phew! For one minute, I actually feared they would say the bank was missing!

    That only proves the point Nigerians have been making all the while. The government has never needed to increase fuel prices because it has never needed the money. The subsequent pilfering of those funds have certainly shown that the government did not have plans for the funds before gathering them and has been too hazy to sit at the drawing board to fashion out any judicious uses for the funds afterwards. Now, look, those funds are sitting out in the sun moaning off siren music, beguiling passing itching fingers and luring them to their doom.

    Then there was the news that it hath pleased some people in one of the security outfits to amass properties unto themselves with the funds of the said body. And I thought, come, how old is that body that it has settled so easily into the Nigerian system? Anyway, clearly, Abuja, we have a problem. How is it that the entire nation cried foul when a woman beat all men to the game and acquired over a hundred houses illegally within the first half of her lifetime and we still feel compelled to repeat that rascality? Why can’t Nigerians ever repeat the wanton ‘mistake’ of the person who discovered penicillin or waywardly tested anaesthetic gas on himself for the sake of humanity? Why is it that, at the first sign of success, it is money we feel compelled to wantonly help ourselves to? Oh yes, I forget; we also steal votes too.

    Now, one of my favourite persons is Prof. Jega mainly because he manages to keep his cool even when everyone else is poking their dirty little fingers up his academic nose. But I don’t think I want to be him right now. I think I’d rather keep my skin mostly because everyone who has done anything wrong in the Anambra elections is looking for someone else to blame. You guessed it; their favourite person of blame is the poor ol’ professor. I’m sure many of us are even blaming Jega for Jonathan’s win at the last presidential election, even though we all near-massively voted for him – you know, young blood and all. I think it’s mostly because we are so disenchanted with the guy now. My point? – it is only convenient to let Jega be our fall guy right now.

    But let us look at our antecedents before we cast stones carelessly. I honestly do not know what right Nigeria has to conduct any election in Anambra State when she has not solved the debacle created over the Governors’ Forum elections. Heaven only knows I have no iota, drop or gout of interest in any governor or their antics. Yet, principles must be allowed to be principles. If any ol’ body of people get themselves together and conduct that kind of election in the name of democracy, then all observers must be helped to understand the results. Till now, the presidency has not informed the rest of the known world why sixteen is greater than nineteen, making the part to be greater than the whole. Oh yes, there is a world that understands that election but you and I don’t live in it. Obviously, when the governors were voting, and when all of us were watching, we were all under the illusion that the person with the greater number would win. Now the presidency is acting out its own belief by recognising the lesser number as the winner, leaving the rest of us eating the bottom of our pens in perplexity while gazing at the greater number.

    The same federal government that has trouble recognising numbers is now conducting elections in Anambra State. Now, tell me, what are we expecting from there? Clearly, not much, and indeed, we have got ‘not much’. Not only are we told that all kinds of anomalies pestered that election, no one can believe the results. All the excuses – voters’ register being incomplete, voting materials arriving late or not at all, agents being manhandled – point to one thing. Nigeria is not ready to let go its rascally ways. Have you noticed? Only those who understand the country’s rascally ways become politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. So, with so many such rascals – politicians, chiefs of the economy, contractors, government personnel, etc. – interested and involved in the Anambra elections, how do we come to expect miracles from the professor?

    Clearly, there is a great deal wrong with the Anambra elections but calling for the head of the INEC chief is nothing but scapegoatism which, in itself, is a symptom of escapism, a very grave disease. Escapism gets one nowhere. Nigeria is to blame for those elections, and with any other elsewhere in the country. There has developed a tendency to see a post as a winner-takes-all ticket to wealth in this environment of impoverishment; and this in turn has tended to wake up the disorder gene which is normally dormant in all humans. Sadly, this will continue until Nigeria is able to look itself in the eye and agree that somehow, it has over the decades, donned the garb of a wayward, wanton and schwas buckling rodeo rider in the way it conducts everything – business, government, traffic or politics. And that garb speaks nothing but thuggery and gives fine colours to rascality.

    As a country, Nigeria must make a successful and conscious u-turn and agree to embrace order in every way. Since you and I have an idea where rascality can lead and we certainly do not want to go there with those who insist on going, let us then, I implore you, take ring-side seats and watch in discontent as the wanton and wayward lead the country on or off, depending on what’s in the charts. Do please bring an ice-cream along to offset both the boredom and gripping fear as we watch and learn in this hard school of life.

  • Anambra: President Jonathan’s ‘Ondo Model’ fatal flaw

    Anambra: President Jonathan’s ‘Ondo Model’ fatal flaw

    Did the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?

    Somebody once called him a snake. The more you look at President Jonathan the more you are amazed at his ability to distant himself from activities he inspired; the Anambra fiasco being only the latest of so many. What is playing out, before our very eyes, whether in the Delta Senatorial bye election, the Edo Local Government election or now in Anambra, is nothing but a test run for the 2015 presidential election. It started with the re-election of Governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo State. I have written about this in the past, but let me recap the basic ingredients of the ‘Ondo Model’. It starts with a massive sexing up of the voters’ register into which hundreds of thousands of fictitious names are imported. If in the Ondo case the other candidates didn’t get to know this early, in Anambra it was a complicit INEC Chairman, who ‘promised to clean up the voters’ register, but which he deliberately never did. When then he said a single INEC official sabotaged the election, I merely laughed. Did the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?

    Jega should please show Nigerians some respect.

    The compromised register secured, the next is ensuring that security agencies are primed for rigging the president’s preferred candidate to victory. This, of course, as we also saw in Ondo State, is never the official PDP candidate which I described elsewhere as caricature, but that of either the Labour Party, especially, or of whichever other marginal party is equally programmed to do some dirty electoral job, come 2015. This, then, is their authority for police men thumb printing ballot papers, and providing cover for ballot box snatchers, multiple voting and sundry other illegalities. This has, in fact, worsened since the new Chairman of the Police Service Commission came on board and the Nigeria Police transmogrified into a gun-bearing wing of the PDP.

    This should not surprise us since the Nigeria Police, long before the present Inspector- General, have become more than attuned to slave-like labours. You only have to remember Obasanjo’s use, and misuse, of that outfit which saw one of its leading lights end up in jail.

    But the army?

    I am completely flabbergasted by the reported involvement of men of the Nigerian Army in anti-democratic incidents for three main reasons. The Nigerian Army is a truly distinguished service which lost men and limbs but fought gallantly to keep this country together. Here is an army that continues to demonstrate incredible discipline and expertise in the many international peace-keeping exercises it has participated in since the ’60s, beginning in the Congo. Thirdly, the Nigerian army today parades, amongst its retired top echelon, some of the most patriotic Nigerians and here, I have in mind, the T.Y Danjumas, the Alani Akinrinades, the Y.Y Kures, to name a few. But I have a troubling fear. If current leaders of the service will not be able to resist the anti-democratic uses to which it is currently, egregiously being pushed into, the time will come, much sooner than later, when soldiers from civilised countries will refuse to participate alongside Nigerian soldiers in any peace-keeping exercise.

    While Governor Adam Oshiomhole decried the ignominious police role in a mere LG election, the army was accused both in the Delta Senatorial Bye Election and the Anambra, of being used for illegal electoral duties.

    There is a myriad other ways the ‘Ondo Model’ is consummated; from non delivery of election materials at all or ensuing they come very late, to opposition strongholds. Of course, as APGA Chairman Umeh confirmed, writing election results far away from voting centres has always been the trend in the South-East. This too must have been put to work in the Anambra election.

    All these would have been tolerable if limited to a money-driven state like Anambra, with its thousands of competing billionaires, but from what is fast becoming the norm, PDP is furiously spreading bile, anguish, even insecurity, all over the country. In Ekiti State which, in the past three years of the Fayemi administration, had been widely regarded as one of the safest and most peaceful states in the country, we have seen the results of their crookedness. Having forsaken its 23 aspirants for a consensus candidate from outside the PDP, it has now become the style that aDid the Anambra shambolic election look, by any means, like a one-man, one-day job?nytime Opeyemi Bamidele comes to town, or his Bibire micro group is having any event, there must be a massive breach of peace most probably to confirm that he is such a big fish .

    The fact that PDP routinely abandons its own candidate to line behind another, on a different party, has outrageously played out in the same Anambra conundrum when, like a programmed robot, Olisa Metuh, its Publicity Secretary, peremptorily started praising not only INEC, but the president, for doing a great job at a time his own party’s now abandoned candidate, Tony Nwoye, was boycotting the rescheduled election and joining two other candidates to denounce the shambolic election. I hope the presidency knows by now that it no longer matters a thing whether the APGA candidate is declared winner a thousand times.

    The Anambra fiasco has also demonstrated the awesomeness of God. It has shown that God cannot be deceived by puny man. He has made mincemeat of any ‘erusalem Accord’, just as He did Ahitophel’s counsel.

    Somebody should please inform them of the Yoruba saying that you can deceive a woman to have intimacy only once. We have seen their hands nearer home in Akure and we wait patiently to see what shenanigans they intend to unfold in both Ekiti and Osun, the REAL targets of all these serpentine schemes. Ekiti is a state of eggheads, not money bags, and we wait to see how they intend to manufacture supporters for their consensus, non PDP candidate.

    In the meantime, all the 23 aspirants from the party have been whipped into line and you no longer hear a single one of them breathe a word of his gubernatorial ambition about which they almost shattered our eardrums a few months ago. The enforcer, Chairman Tukur, must have seen to that. Of course, the party is nowhere on ground in the state as recently confirmed by none other than Olatunde, its State Vice-Chairman, when he said candidly, that ‘there was no way the PDP can dislodge Governor Kayode Fayemi in 2014’.

    And it is a certainty that once PDP makes its choice of a candidate in Ekiti public, a deluge of unprecedented proportion will hit the PDP. In the meantime, former governor Segun Oni has pitched tents with the New PDP and it sounds quite logical to suggest that APC will be the party of choice for aggrieved PDP members rather than team up with an imposed, outsider.

    Without a scintilla of doubt, the ‘Ondo Model’ will be DOA -dead on arrival- in both Ekiti and Osun.

  • Why confab of local governments is dangerous

    Why confab of local governments is dangerous

    Most of the local governments in existence today are creations of military dictators

    An important confession: the title of today’s piece is partially taken from Mohammed Haruna’s title in The Nation of last Wednesday, “Why Confab of ethnic nationalities is dangerous.” The borrowing is not designed to critique Haruna’s thesis about the fluidity of ethnic identity in Nigeria and elsewhere for that matter. If there are as many ethnic groups in Nigeria as Haruna has identified in his essay, then it may be more difficult (but not necessarily any less dangerous) to use ethnic nationalities than the current local governments or federal constituencies as basis of inviting delegates to the conference.

    There are some verities that those privileged to represent Nigerians from various parts of the Nigerian territory must deal with. One of these is Haruna’s thesis that identity evolves over time for all groups: Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Ijaw, Edo, Idoma, Yoruba, etc. For example, Ondo, Ijebu, Egba, Oyo, Ekiti, Ijesha, Igbomina, etc have been evolving and may still evolve over time into something different from what exists at present. At some point in history, those referred to as sub-Yoruba groups today considered themselves as nations and even presented themselves to British colonialists as such and to the Portuguese before then. The experience of today’s Germans and the German language is similar to that of the Yoruba. One of the many German dialects was chosen to become the standard German language, just as the Oyo dialect was, at the encouragement of Bishop Ajayi Crowther and further encouragement later by Chief Awolowo’s Universal Primary Education, chosen to serve as the language to unify and prepare the sub-Yoruba groups for Christianisation and modernisation.

    Despite the rightness of Professor Peter Eke’s observation that “an Ekiti man would have been astounded if he were called an Oyo man in 1820,” it is not true that an Ekiti man would have needed an interpreter in order to communicate with a Yoruba (Oyo) man in 1820. A cursory reading of Biodun Adetugbo’s linguistic study of Yoruba dialects and some familiarity with the most trans-ethnic Yoruba discourse, Ifa, would be enough to confirm that the Ondo, Ekiti, Ijesa, Ijebu, Oyo, Egba, Oyi, man would not have had any major trouble understanding an Oyo man in 1820, particularly as members of communities of primary orality at that time. No doubt many of the sub-ethnic groups would have had difficulty in written Oyo (now standard Yoruba). In addition, Yoruba pre-colonial historiography that recognised the Ife ancestry of all Yoruba sub-ethnic groups was and is still used to underscore the reality of diversity in unity among those that call themselves the Yoruba today after the scattering of Oduduwa princes across what is known today as the Yoruba section of Nigeria.

    Those going to the national conference need not know a lot of pre-colonial Yoruba history to make rational contributions to the dialogue on how to construct a federal system that creates affection and not fear among the ethnic groups in today’s Nigeria. In fact, such a union of affection, rather than one of sectional domination bequeathed by decades of military autocracies, is the one that is likely to aid the process of Nigeria’s version of the Melting Pot or massive acculturation that will create a truly Nigerian persona, if this is found by conference delegates to be a desirable goal. Even if Nigeria’s ethnic diversity disappears today, such disappearance does not automatically make nonsense of demands for territorial federalism, such as exists in the United States of America and in the United Arab Emirates, for example. Such demands, even after a thorough homogenisation and pasteurisation of Nigeria’s ethnicities, would still form part of the expansion and extension of the culture of freedom and liberty, namely decentralisation and devolution of power with the purpose of enhancing participation of the governed and expanding the rights of citizens in their governance at the subnational or local level.

    Let us now address why it will be dangerous to use existing local governments or federal constituencies as basis of choosing delegates to the national conference. Most of the local governments in existence today are creations of military dictators. They were created at a time when the revenue allocation formula was changed by military autocrats away from the principle of derivation in existence until 1966 to the principle of even development and national unity manufactured by military autocrats. After several decades of military rule, dominated largely by generals from what used to be the northern region up till 1966, military dictators created more local governments in the north than in the south, basing their argument on land mass and population.

    This was despite the fact that Nigerians were and are not convinced that the population figures given to the country at the end of several censuses are accurate. Those who argue that Nigeria’s population pattern is the exception that confirms the rule of population spread in West Africa may be wrong. However, to use a figure that does not enjoy the confidence of citizens to determine the number of local governments at the same time that local government is promoted by military rulers to a tier that attracts allocation other than what is given to states that encompass local governments is to create suspicion among citizens from different parts of the country who want to live together as friends and partners, rather than as overlords and underdogs.

    Just as more funds currently go to the north from the federation account on account of the number of local governments, so will more votes go to the local governments from the north at the national confab, thus making it possible for the north to use the principle of majoritarianism to prevent any changes to the status quo created by unelected soldiers. No section of the country should have the power to prevent the north from having as many local governments as it desires for its own pace of development. Correspondingly, the over 400 local governments in the north should not have the power to use their majority at the national conference to prevent any section of the country from opting for another structure that is different from the current one that gives the north over 400 local governments and makes it hard for the south to increase its number of local governments. In other words, the opportunity for each region to have the number of local governments it believes it needs for its development should not be tied to money sharing from the federation account, nor should it be tied to the fact that any region currently has the advantage of more local governments created by military autocracies.

    Similarly, using existing federal constituencies to determine number of delegates and voters on issues at the national conference is fraught with avoidable danger. Like the local governments, the current federal constituencies came out of decrees and constitutions created by military dictators and on the basis of the census figures, the veracity of which has been questioned by citizens that include former leaders of the population commission. With almost 200 in the north out of a total of 360 federal constituencies, it is understandable for delegates from the south to feel that the power of majority can also be invoked by the north to keep the status quo intact. To have a frank dialogue that can help to enhance the unity of the federation, it is important to avoid all of the fetters created by military dictatorships and allow a level playing field for all parties to the national dialogue, be they spokespersons for ethnic federalism such as exists in Ethiopia or advocates for territorial federalism such as the one in the United Arab Emirates.