The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • A poem and Awo’s words on marble

    A poem and Awo’s words on marble

    A smoke must show up announcing fire and so it is now with MOB

    Under the lead of the inimitable Dr Segun Osoba, I first came across the book, WHAT IS HISTORY, which literally became my bible for the Philosophy of History class at the University of Ife during my final year in ’71. Originating from a series of G.M Trevelyan lectures given by the English historian, E.H Carr, it is a deep study in historiography; discussing facts, science, morality, individuals and society but, most importantly, moral judgments in history. It is a book I would like to recommend to all, especially, aspiring politicians who, unfortunately, find themselves vacillating between honour, integrity and crass opportunism. But rather than wade through pages I last read 42 years ago, it will suffice to teach the same lessons I intend to impart by this recall, simply by quoting a very apt poem from the ekitipanupo web portal and gloriously cap it with the immortal words of the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in circumstances not totally dissimilar from what we have in Ekiti today.

    Contributing to this same subject on the web portal, Tunji Orisalade, on Thursday, 7 November, 2013, wrote :

    How low can Mortals fall

    When it’s time for real test

    A test to detect their real personality

    Hitherto boxed under borrowed clothing

    Deliberately designed to deceive all

    But that can only be ephemeral

    It can never stand the test of time

    A smoke must show up announcing fire

    And so it is now with MOB

    All that dining and wining with Progressives

    Are all, but mere smokescreen?

    Bibire must necessarily involve Omoluabi

    An Omoluabi knows when right to dance

    Not dancing without music

    Or dancing in the Market Place

    EKITI is too much for that

    Hope Somebody regains consciousness

    And retraces several, several steps

    Before the political lights are out

    A word should be enough for the Wise.

    Interestingly, however, 30 years ago in 1983, when Opeyemi was but a child, Awo had, perspicaciously, mirrored today’s events when, in the heat of the Ondo State political crises of that year, in which this writer was more than a mere onlooker, declared poignantly as follows:

    ‘People who always want to have their ways at all cost and never provide better arguments but rather want to force their petty ideas on others are anarchists and pocket despots who will ULTIMATELY FAIL’.

    Awo did not stop there.

    Hon Opeyemi Bamidele must be to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the equivalent of what highly regarded Chief Akin Omoboriowo, of blessed memory, was to Awo. He loved Awo just as Papa loved him, even writing a book, Awoism: Select themes on the Complex Ideology of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, which we all trooped from Akure to Lagos to launch at an impressive ceremony at the Hotel Le Meridien, Victoria Island. How history repeats itself as tragedy simply because human beings refuse to learn from its lessons. Chief Omoboriowo’s decision to join the opposition NPN, led Awo to reflect as follows, as I suspect Tinubu must be doing under his breath about Bamidele at this moment:

    ‘My affection for Akin is undiminished. That is why I am anxious that he should be helped to redeem himself before he makes the final plunge. My concern for Akin is that he has worked himself up into an illusion (some prefer delusion) of grandeur: he now suffers from a kind of psychosis. He thinks and claims that he has majority following in Ondo State. He has nothing of the sort. It pains me much that Akin could be involved in this kind of mess’.

    Substitute Tinubu for Awo and Ekiti for Ondo in the above quote and you would be talking of Bamidele.

    What surprises really is exactly on what basis he reckons that he has a following at all, in Ekiti at this point in time. We do not only have a performing governor in Dr Kayode Fayemi, Opeyemi contested a senatorial primary election which, as a member of the Election Screening Committee in the state for the 2011 elections, appointed by the National Headquarters of the party, I knew only too well he did not win as he continues to claim. The first election was cancelled mid-way through a public announcement by the A C N State Chairman, Chief Jide Awe, on both the Ekiti Radio and Television stations when series of reports of fracas came from all over the state. The rerun, for which governor Adams Oshiomhole sent us five senior party men in Edo state to assist us, never saw the light of day as all we did the whole day was to join former state governors Dele Olumilua and Otunba Niyi Adebayo, Dr Fayemi and some state party elders to resolve the issues which arose from that first day in a marathon meeting that lasted for over three hours. Bamidele approached the matter like he would vaporize if he was not named the candidate.

    He would subsequently be gifted the House of Representatives ticket which somebody else had contested and won; a wholly undeserved ‘bending over backwards’ by the party, which I believe is the cause of all we are seeing today as it got him completely swollen headed. It is a part of that giddiness, that soul-less pride, that he believes, apparently without any reflection, that his town of birth could produce three governors in a state where a whole senatorial district has not produced one in decades and why his ‘popularity’ must be erected on a skirmish, any skirmish, each time he visits the state or anything is being done by his Bibire fraternity.

    Actually, unlike other would-be Labour Party governorship candidates in the Southwest, Opeyemi Bamidele is probably the only one who had to seek out governor Mimiko who nobody can blame for wanting a larger share of influence for his party in the geo-political zone except that he chose to do so working , unmistakably, for the PDP as a member of that party recentlyconfirmed.

    Ope had permitted himself to labour under the impression that the man who carried him on his shoulders throughout his senate odyssey, former governor Niyi Adebayo, was going to contest the senate seat in the Ekiti Central senatorial district. Fearful he might lose out completely since he comes from the same town as the former governor, and rather than seek Otunba Adebayo’s confidences, he had gone shopping for succour from wherever one can be found. From what we now know, PDP, even PDP, could very well have been his platform to become governor. Today, he does not even as much as greet Adebayo, all because he just must occupy an elective post, conveniently forgetting whatever relationship ever existed between them. That precisely is the nature of a vaulting ambition which, surprisingly, a columnist of The Nation’s Olakunle Abimbola’s prodigiousness , most probably for the sake of good old times as Asiwaju’s aides, sees as nothing more than an adjective. For him too, if a man cannot actualise his dreams in a union, he must be at liberty to rupture and cripple that union but , for me, what is bad is bad, and had Bamidele reflected deeply on his young life, especially his political trajectory, he should effortlessly have come to the conclusion that a shot at the Ekiti gubernatorial seat, in an election he can never win, whatever scientific rigging/ force PDP and Labour may be planning, was not worth his alienating Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu who took him from nowhere politically, and ensured he was in top posts for 12 straight years in Lagos state which, by the way, happens not to be his state of origin.

    Such bewildering ingratitude!

    Fundamental human/constitutional rights must be exhibited within limits of decency.

  • Let us have a good heave down, rather!

    This dialogue is a day late and a dollar short.

    National discourses are always very interesting to listen to. First, you are dumbstruck when you realise that, indeed, there are very many intelligent brains idling around the nation with little or nothing to do. Then you begin to ask yourself, why are these brains not in government changing things? Secondly, you are surprised at the vehemence with which people oppose each other, both sides presenting infallible proof that convinces you that the subject of discourse must either have come from the very bottom of Druid Socrates’ pot of wisdom or Satan’s brewing pot of infernal matters. Then you ask yourself, how can something be both wrong and right? Thirdly, you are struck dumb by the many ways people use public matters to serve their own varied interests. It just makes you want to go, how is it possible for so many colours to hide themselves in black and white?

    Take the matter of the current national discourse as an instance. When the calls began a long time ago, people asked pointedly for a Sovereign National Conference and the presidency ignored them, even completely turning its back on the vociferous ones bent on destabilising the state. Then suddenly, the presidency slept, woke up and declared it had had a rethink. Rather than grant a sovereign national conference though, it would remove the words ‘sovereign’ and ‘conference’, and grant a ‘national dialogue’. I’m quite sure it did not remove the word ‘national’ too for reasons of exigency. And I ask, what, pray, are we to do with that? It is a day late and a dollar short – too little too late.

    Calls for a sovereign national conference have been strident for as long as I can remember, and this elephant has a long memory, but this is no time to start boring into it. There are too many things I really want to forget. Let it suffice to say that past heads of state, including Obj., shied away from it. Indeed, Obj. went as far as watering it down and conducting his own conference where he and the members all mumbled together. I sort of guess that they all thought that somehow, with sufficient mumbling, the problems would go away.

    I think the major problem has been that these past heads had been reluctant to press on with a full-fledged conference for fear of what might have come from it, such as the breakup of the country. None of them had wanted the country to heave down for a cleaning under their watch: supposing the boat heaves down and cannot heave right up again?

    In response to such guarded responses, the problems have multiplied. Not only have the problems multiplied, they have developed many heads. Where there was one problem before, there are now two or three. When these calls began to be made, there was no boko haram insurgency; there was no Al-Qaeda terrorism; there was no real problem with religion; there was no uncontained militancy; and kidnapping was restricted to playful youths who were not allowed to marry the beauties their hearts throbbed after. Now, in addition to state-instituted problems of ethnic, political and linguistic bigotry, terrorism, insurgency, militancy, kidnapping, etc., have joined the fray to muddle the already nervous water flowing beneath Nigeria. The result of course has been more nervousness, hence the louder shrieks for a sovereign national conference.

    Yet again, the nation’s rulers have responded with more nervousness of their own. Still afraid the delicately balanced nation may break altogether under their watch, they have looked intently at that three-word call, spotted the real trouble makers among them, and have sent those ones to jail. In short, the two most important words ‘sovereign’ and ‘national’ are now in jail. The presidency is now calling for a national dialogue and I call it ‘not fair’! This amounts to sweeping the problems under the carpet yet again.

    Egad! Me thinks I can hear the president intoning, baso-profondo, that the results of his dialogue will surprise many. Indeed, I am willing to be surprised. Don’t call me a pessimist though if the reports, all one hundred tomes of them, do disappear into thin air as they are meant to. Oh yes, I can see that far into the future. Just a minute; let me clean my crystal ball properly again. Let’s see now. Oh dear, this is bad! I foresee that the presidency will swear that it sent them to the Assembly. And the Assembly will do a nice dissembling: poker-faced, it will swear it never received them! People, we need to be on guard, no, not en guarde! You see, thin air can be powerful; it eats up stuff that concerns the people, so we need to watch out, not draw swords! Phew, that was harder than I thought!

    Right, now where were we? Ok. This watered down version of a national conference is nothing but a mockery of what this country really needs. All the voices that have spoken on this thing agree that things are bad, very bad. People agree that the very structure of the country is a problem in itself: too few people feel any sense of patriotism, of belonging to the country, rather than to a section; and only direct confrontation can help us. Yep, I agree, confrontation can be on two levels: problems and people. The problems need to be confronted and the people need to confront each other. For example, there’s a great deal of anger in the land that needs to be managed, not petted. It’s a little like a disease that must be tackled to restore health; no one in his/her right senses will placate malaria by giving sugar to the sufferer instead of the required quinine. When a disease strikes, pain is the only way to good health. If the sympathy is too much, even the sufferer will be quick to declare: no thanks, I like my pain.

    Fear of giving the country pain has led many past heads of state to run away from declaring the conference a sovereign one. I have pored over, ruminated, reflected on, looked at and thought long and hard about the matter and have failed to understand why on earth we are having a dialogue and why the national assembly will have to vet what will be purported to be the people’s will. Truth is, people are not exactly besotted with today’s national assembly, what with the excessive emoluments of those assembly members which are not in tune with the realities of the people’s situations; and the fact that the assembly has really not impacted the people’s lives to any appreciable level. Now, the people that the people do not trust are the very people to decide on what the people have decided. Get my drift?

    Anyway, this conference thing is a simple matter. It should really be an opportunity to address and change so many things we are doing wrong as a nation, not cover them with concrete. It should address things like inequality, religious divides, adoption of wrong ideologies, the why, how and what of our co-existence, low interest in nation building even among leaders, etc. Seriously though, I think the first thing that should be addressed is why 18,000 Naira cannot be paid as minimum wage in some states and a leader in senate is purportedly earning 100,000,000 Naira a month. If we were to have a real conference that is the first question I would ask. But then, that is why we are not having one, and I am not taking part.

    Anyway, let the presidency think again. We need a sovereign (where the people have the rule) national (where everyone is carried along) conference (where we all speak frankly and seriously to each other). That is the only way to ensure that perfidious manipulations of the people’s will no longer rules, ok.

  • As I was saying………..

    As I was saying………..

    Obituarists beware. Reports about the death of column and columnist are wildly exaggerated. Snooper is alive and kicking. The celebrations are premature, not to say immature. Despite the announcement of a short exit, the disappearance of this column has given rise to wild speculations. A version had it that Snooper has disappeared in a Stalinist purge. Another held that the columnist lost out in a bitter power struggle and had been banished to the outer periphery of political Siberia. When yours sincerely appeared briefly in public sporting dark goggles, it was noted that he was recovering from the beating of his life.

    It was the late Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe who famously warned some foolhardy journalists taking potshots at him to learn from the fate of their predecessors. K. O ominously hinted that when a particularly newspaper and its editor were busy attacking him, he decided to ignore them. But six months later—according to K.O’s inimitable lingo—both the paper and the editor folded up! Talk of a chilling retribution and restitution.

    Still, it is with some trepidation that Snooper returns to these labours. The more things do not change in Nigeria, the more they appear to change. Nigeria reminds one of an old movie with new actors. One is left with a permanent feeling of Déjà vu. Since the script and the storyline remain the same, the great surprise is that one is often surprised, particularly by the new actors’ eerie fidelity to futility. There is no pedological alchemy that will turn cassava to yam. You must reap what you sow.

    And so like a captive audience watching an old movie in a dilapidated cinema house, we are sometimes forced to applaud out of sheer ennui or polite perplexity. The actors know that the audience cannot leave just like that, and the audience know that the show must go on if only to preserve both the order of illusion and the illusion of order in a collapsing theatre. To break the historic deadlock and this engrossing illusionist fantasia will take a great surge of the human will to create anew.

    So it is , then, that in a manner reminiscent of a gramophone record with the stylus stuck in a groove, we keep repeating ourselves even as we keep reenacting old scenes. Dear readers, the title of this column is not a new one. The original copyright belongs to an audacious and daring icon of resistance to tyranny. Our man was plucked from the rostrum as he was about to address a crowd only to be frog-marched to detention and jail. When he returned to the same rostrum a few years later, he began with the defiant words: “As I Was Saying!”.

    Twenty five and half years after Snooper first used this title in a column for Newswatch,it is appearing again. This was in March 1988 after military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, de-proscribed the great trending magazine. In a feat of extreme daring and feckless audacity, Newswatch had published the entire report of the Political Bureau set up by the military junta to midwife the transition to democratic rule. So incensed was General Babangida by this fundamental challenge to the predilection of military rule to secrecy and stealth that he summarily proscribed the magazine. After public pressure, the proscription was changed to a six-month ban. It was a crippling blow to a magazine that was yet to recover from the assassination of its founding helmsman, Dele Giwa.

    In Nigeria, comedy often interlaces with tragedy. For Snooper, the most hilarious aspect of the tragedy of proscription came in a little known incident which took place right inside the cavernous bowel of autocracy known as Dodan Barracks. While the nation waited with bated breath for the military’s response to Newswatch’s temerity, the young Dele Olojede, as at then a staffer with the magazine, sought an interview with Duro Onabule, Babangida’s press secretary.

    Onabule calmly obliged. After the interview and as Olojede was making his way out of Dodan Barracks, the man known as double chief called out to him. “By the way, where are you going to publish that?” Unknown to Olojede, his magazine had been proscribed by the military junta but the news had not been aired. Onabule should know.

    This incident showcases the awesome powers of a military oligarchy to not only to manage information but also to dominate its environment. But it also showcases the inch by inch, column by column, toe to toe and barricade after barricade nature of the protracted and costly struggle to rid Nigeria of military despotism and its noxious effluvium. Newswatch editors, to mark the magazine’s de-proscrption, published a rare editorial which courageously lambasted the tyranny and arbitrary nature of military rule and its stifling and suffocating breaches of the fundamental rights of the citizens. It was titled: Jogging in the Jungle.

    It is sad to note that a quarter of a century after, we are still jogging in the jungle of arbitrary and whimsical rule. The actors might have changed, but the script and story line remain the same. Despite the formal termination of military rule, succeeding civilian regimes have been characterised by paranoid secrecy, historic heists, lack of accountability, flagrant denial of the fundamental rights of citizens to freedom of association and a predilection for autistic and brutish violence against the populace. Despite oases of liberation and human advancement, we have, in the main, merely exchanged a civilian tyranny for military despotism.

    Looking back, it is hard not to feel a tinge of weary disappointment and terminal depression. It is hard not to feel that all the costly sacrifices have been in vain; that those who have died have died for nothing. But we must never allow temporary disappointment to lead to a permanent paralysis of the political will. We must always be guided by the longer and larger perspective. Nation-building is a permanent work in process, full of stunning advances and stinging reversals. It is important for people who come after us to know that there were people who were permanently and defiantly on their feet until they fell, like Babarinde Oluwide Omojola recently. So, folks, as I was saying…….

  • Worldwide, the jokes on our Glo NPL Table are mounting to the high heavens!

    Worldwide, the jokes on our Glo NPL Table are mounting to the high heavens!

    It was about three years ago that I wrote my one and only comment to date on the Glo Nigerian Premier League (NPL). At that time, this column, under a slightly different name, made its regular appearance in The Sunday Guardian. On that occasion, I was prompted to write by a news item that I heard on Lagos State Radio Service 89.7 FM that reported a bizarre incident that happened on the last day of the of matches played in the Nigerian premier league that year. As a sort of background to what I wish to write about in this piece, let me briefly state what was reported in that radio broadcast that was actually a news commentary that explored and decried widespread corruption in the NPL.

    It was a match on the last day of the season. One particular club needed to win – and win by at least 10 goals in order to secure both the total points and the goals average needed to avoid relegation from the premier league. To everyone, this seemed an impossible feat, especially in light of the fact that the opposing club was known to have a much stronger team that was indeed much higher in the league table than the desperate club hovering on the edge of relegation. Besides, who has ever heard of a club in a professional national football league being trounced by a margin of 10 goals? But lo and behold, relegation was averted because the desperate club won and it won by a margin of 13 goals!

    Now, I confess that for at least forty years, I have not watched any soccer match in the Nigerian premier league, either on the football pitch or on television. Moreover, Eyimba and Shooting Stars are the only teams about which I have any ideas at all that connect the NPL of today with the time in the past of nearly a half century ago when I had an active interest in professional soccer in our country. All the other teams and virtually all the names of top players and officials in the NPL of today mean nothing to me. Now this is regrettable, at least as far as bits of knowledge and information of this kind are necessary or even vital to making an informed and useful commentary on the current state of the NPL. For this reason, I must make a disclaimer here: this piece has a purpose different from giving an expert, knowledgeable opinion on the NPL and its weaknesses at the present time. What I wish to write about can be best be indicated by comparing it to something you write, or say, or do when you are trying to recover from a profoundly saddening and maddening experience before which you seem powerless, stultified, dazed. Monstrously corrupt and extremely backward things that can be found in no other country in the world are happening in professional soccer in our country and on a scale that was simply unimaginable some four decades ago when I was a keen fan of the sport. These things have just come to my knowledge. I write to take them in, to reflect on them in the hope that I may be able to shed some light on their connection to the huge matter of what it is to be a Nigerian in the world today.

    If he does not mind my drawing this attention to him, I must say that it was Akin Adesokan, a former graduate student of mine and now an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Indiana-Bloomington, that started the chain of action and reaction that ultimately led to the writing of this piece. Having read that column a few years back when I wrote on that affair of the 13-goal, relegation-averting margin of victory in an NPL match, Akin forwarded to me an article published earlier this week in The Guardian (U.K.) with a comment that what I wrote then was child’s play compared with the corruption and rot going on in the NPL now. I duly read the article forwarded by Akin to me and was left speechless. But as I soon found out, this particular Guardian (U.K.) article was just a starting point because from it, I was directed to other publications, in print and in the electronic medium, on the same topic of NPL and its League Table for the season just ended, 2012-2013. Virtually every piece to which I was directed got bigger and bigger in the scale of corruption and scandal said to be rampant in the Nigerian league. And so did the scale of disbelief and condescension with which the allegations were reported and documented. In the worst cases, one saw contempt bordering on reproduction of racist stereotypes of Nigeria and Africa, the Dark Continent and its allegedly most corrupt and rotten country. [Parenthetically, I might add here that it was a great relief for me as I perused these articles, that by far the best written and the most insightful was written by a Nigerian, Colin Udoh, Editor of the online journal www.kickoffnigeria.com in an article titled “Defying statistics, the NPL way”. For readers who wish to read Udoh’s article, it was posted on October 28, 2013] Now, what are the things that make the NPL League Table of the 2012-2013 season completely unlike any other league table of a national professional football league in the whole world?

    For readers who may be well aware of this mega-crisis of corruption in the NPL as reflected in its league table, it is important to bear in mind that what every single writer on the subject keeps repeating is that this is unique to Nigeria, that it happens in no other country in the world. And with regard to this unwanted “uniqueness” of the NPL League Table, two things stand out. First: a vast majority of clubs win at home and lose in away marches. Secondly: the points differential between the winning club at the head of the table and the relegated club at the bottom of the table is relatively insignificant. For an illustration of the first point: Kano Pillars, the NPL champion for 2012/2013 won all home games but won only 2 away games; with 3 away wins, only Kwara United did better in away wins, even though they were still relegated for being among the three clubs at the bottom of the league. And for an illustration of the second point, Kano Pillars, the champions, had a total of 63 points while Shooting Stars at the very bottom of the table had 46 points. As Colin Udoh remarks in his article, unlike other national soccer leagues in the world, teams in the Nigerian league hardly ever win away games: 3 was the highest number of away wins and the champions of the league won only 2 away games.

    Of the many causes given for this dubious uniqueness of the Nigerian football league table, two closely related factors are particularly disturbing in the way in which they remind one of how corruption is often closely linked with violence in the public sphere in our country. The matter here pertains to referees and refereeing: home teams openly bribe our referees and in an addition, home team fans regularly visit lynch-mob violence on referees who dare to rule against the home team. In one account, I read of a referee who dared to rule against the home team at a crucial moment in the game; instantly, without waiting for the game to end, the fans descended on the field with an obvious intent to do grievous bodily harm to the ref. Unknown to them, the man was a colonel in the Nigerian army who, wisely, had his service pistol on him. He drew out his pistol and with one mind, the crowd thereupon decided that cowardice was the better side of courage in numbers and gave up their chase. Indeed, all accounts that I read on this matter stated that Nigerian referees are beholden to home teams for their accommodation, hospitality and even remuneration. Thus, corruption is inherent in the system of refereeing itself; the thuggish mob violence of home teams is an icing on the cake, a jara that acts as enforcer just in case a referee decides to be fair and objective regardless of how much he has received from the home team.

    From regarding refereeing as the essential bane of Nigerian professional soccer, it is important to add that the clubs, the teams, the players themselves play an assigned or compulsory role in the rot. For one thing, it is said that for fear of home team mobs, visiting teams often decide to lose rather than win and face the ire of the mob. In one instance, because the foul was so blatant that nobody failed to see it, a referee awarded a penalty to a visiting team close to the end of a match. Right in front of the whole world, so to speak, all the other members of the visiting team begged their goalkeeper to dive in the other direction of the expected penalty shot so as not save the spot kick. The goalkeeper willingly obliged and nobody was hurt. The home team was not defeated.

    This profile of the rottenness of the NPL would be incomplete without dealing with the conditions under which most visiting teams in the Nigerian league have to play their away matches, conditions that reinforce the norm that ensures that clubs hardly ever win away matches. For the most part, visiting teams travel by bus by road, often in long journeys over extremely bad roads that leave the teams physically tired and hardly in a spirit to tackle a well rested home team. Sometimes, visiting teams find it impossible to arrive in time or even on the day of the match so that when they finally arrive, the game has already been lost to their conditions of travel. Meanwhile, their management typically does not house the players in decent or comfortable hotels en route. This is partly because there are no such hotels along the highways of Nigeria and partly because the players themselves would rather share the money for lodging amongst themselves than be housed in third rate hotels. In this particular respect, the conditions of work and remuneration in the NPL accurately mirror the conditions that all working and non-working poor Nigerians have to live or contend with.

    For most commentators on professional soccer in the world, these peculiar conditions under which soccer in Nigeria is (dis)organised at the present time are invisible. All they can see, all they hear and read about is that unlike any other national league in the world, home teams nearly always win and visiting teams nearly always lose in the Nigerian league, no matter how good a club is. Indeed, merit, skill, practice, effort, none of these has anything to do with the results displayed on the NPL table. The referees see to that; the fans see to that; the players themselves see to that. Above all else, the present state of things, of disorder masking as order and of misrule masking as legitimate rule provides very fertile breeding ground for the kind of professional soccer league that we have that is fast becoming the butt of jokes all over the world.

    It is not difficult to see that very soon the jokes about NPL will be about as widespread and regular as jokes about 419 internet scams which, in all parts of the world, are now regarded as primarily or perhaps even essentially Nigerian. As a Nigerian, I have always been indifferent to the jokes purporting that 419 internet scams are essentially Nigerian. Yes, most of those who perpetrate the 419 scams are Nigerians, but the scams and scammers themselves are not as deeply rooted in the organisation of life and work, of work and play, and of play and reward as professional soccer is in our country. We are a passionate people about football. And the world, generally speaking, regards us as one of the leading soccer nations in Africa and the world. If this is the case, why is professional soccer so corruptly run in our country, in conditions that are some of the most backward and unregenerate in Africa and the world? But isn’t this how politics itself is run in our country?

  • Osun, sukuk (Islamic bond) and relentless critics

    Osun, sukuk (Islamic bond) and relentless critics

    The plan by Osun to issue N10bn Islamic bond called sukuk has predictably come under fire from Christians in the state and, as expected, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). By some global estimates, Islamic finance, a $1.2trn market, is growing at some 50 percent more than conventional banking and could rise to become a $2.7trn market in the next three or four years at its current rate of growth. Sukuk runs on sharia principles, prohibiting interest and instead offering stakes in investments. If the bond is successfully raised, Osun will become a leader in the patronage of Islamic finance in Nigeria.

    The Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun, Kunle Oyatomi, was indeed right to point out that sukuk does not invariably translate into an agenda to Islamise the state, especially considering the fact that the United Kingdom is also planning to issue sovereign sukuk of about $323m. I also think that those who issue or buy sukuk have the forcible conversion of any state or people to Islam as the last thing on their minds. It is simply an economic activity whose profile is rising in the international financial market for its durability and ability to withstand global fluctuations.

    However, Mr Oyatomi’s rebuke of Christians and the opposition PDP over the sukuk matter gives the worrisome impression that the state is both unduly combative whenever it encounters opposition to its policies, and also fanatically desirous of winning every argument. But in a pluralistic society, elected officials thrive only when they are able to persuade the opposition by reason, not by browbeating them. For, indeed, whether the party in office is right or not, opposition exists to win over the electorate. After all, in the end, everything in a democracy boils down to winning votes.

    More crucially, Osun officials appear to have a rose-coloured idea of what governance is all about. Whether in the case of sukuk or the declaration of Hijrah holiday or the schools reform being undertaken by the state, Osun officials have approached matters legalistically, and have, perhaps inadvertently, further ossified the growing sectarian fractures in the state. They seem unable to appreciate that the problem is not that they are wrong to reform schools, or declare holidays as they deem fit, or take sukuk bonds at no interest in order to finance infrastructural development. The problem is that these issues all have religious overtones, are controversial, as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s failure to raise sukuk showed, and follow hard on one another. In a country where religious sensibilities have been stretched to breaking point, elected officials have a responsibility to weigh lawfulness against expediency.

    Osun gives the impression it has the courage of its convictions, and is determined to strive at all times to do what it believes is right. There is a sense in which this kind of approach to governance is refreshing, edifying and noble. But the state must not be surprised by the opposition it attracts now, or will attract in the coming months, as the public begins to bellicosely exercise its right to judge whether by being the first to daringly declare a holiday for traditional religion worshippers and adding a Hijrah holiday to other national Islamic holidays (among other things like schools reform), the state is not elevating courage disproportionately over wisdom and restraint.

  • The role of government: to roll over the people?

    The role of government: to roll over the people?

    Where the light of evil pervades, the people suffer life in the deepest darkness.

     

    My first intention was to write on economic theory and I hope to honor fully that intention – next week. I would be remiss if I failed to analyze the past week in American politics. Even though the past two articles have been about America, it may be instructive to again follow the unwinding strands in American politics. If perceptive, you will see clues that might help resolve some of inner mysteries impeding the just development of this political economy.

    Two weeks ago, President Obama held trumpet in hand, blowing notes of political triumph. He had finessed hard-line Republicans over the federal government shutdown and the deficit ceiling. Fellow Democrats barely contained their glee; many gloated like a Cheshire cat happening upon a saucer of warm milk. They shouldn’t have grinned and cooed so much. Fate never remains loyal to those who take it for granted. Fate always repudiates those who believe they have so won its full favor. To believe you have mastered fate is to become its next victim. The surest way into a sticky predicament is loudly to boast you have resolved one.

    The music of victory was sonorous to Obama and fellow Democrats. Yet, they erred by ceding to the temptation of listening to it. Their séance with fleeting victory deafened them to the footsteps of political calamity at their door. Even if they heard the stalking ogre, they could not have avoided its reproach for they had invited it themselves. They had given it birth. It bore their name: Obamacare.

    The initiation of Obamacare has been disastrous. Inexplicably, yesterday’s technology was used to launch the website for the millions of citizens applying for insurance. This was like asking scores of people to walk simultaneously through a narrow portal barely suitable for the passage of one person. The result has been frustrated hugger-mugger. Making matters worse by eagerly snorting profit when more profit stands in poor taste, insurance companies have cancelled policies of tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. The costs of subsequent policies will rise.

    Leaked, as well as officially published, government documents reveal the Administration knew these troubles would beset the public. Yet senior officials, including the President himself, publicly dissembled the new law would usher in a period of rainbows and tulips for the sick and uninsured in the land of the free and home of the brave.

    Obama and his health officials have been place on the defensive. Their excuses for the law’s technological and substantive defects are limp and unconvincing. There is a sense of unease. It is as if someone everyone thought was an outstanding student failed to complete his homework, not because he forgot the assignment but because he proved incapable of it.

    The Republicans have pounced like vultures on carrion. They complain the law went a stride too far; it is too grand a government intrusion into health care which they deem a private matter better left to marketplace. My grouse is the law does not travel far enough. The Republican notion of health care as an ordinary private commercial transaction is inapposite. A person can shop and compare prices among different sellers when purchasing a car, a coat, or leasing a residence. One can negotiate with the sellers. Still, the consumer gets the short end of the stick because the seller almost always has greater leverage.

    A sick person does not even have this poor leverage. An ill person can’t venture from hospital to hospital, doctor to doctor comparing who will give appropriate attention at a more modest price. In other transactions, the buyer can threaten to walk from the deal or buy a reduced amount, say 2/3rds, of the goods in question. Yet, few sick people can defy a hospital or a doctor by protesting that costs are too high. Imagine a bleeding man bargaining that they should reduce costs because he has decided he only wants 2/3rds of the complete treatment or that he believes he is only 2/3s as injured as they say. Such a conversation would be nonsensical; it would go far toward convincing the physician that his recalcitrant patient may have a psychiatric ailment more severe than the physical one in question.

    The best fix would have been a single-payer system akin to what exists in most other developed nations. Government simply should pay for a decent minimum level of health care for all. Sadly, the Administration tried to assuage vested interests more so than it tried to provide health care for the entire public. The byproduct is a bureaucratic web rich in complexity, lackluster in results. The thing is both fish and fowl yet it may never be able to swim or fly.

    For the sake of ordinary Americans and of the president, I hope the plan recovers from this fretful start. If not, the already cumbersome American health care system will become an unintelligible heap. People will suffer. The president’s legacy will be brusquely escorted to the gallows. People will be relieved to return to the old way although that way is a burden unto them. Conservatives will be seen as rescuing the nation from reformer’s folly. The idea of government-led social reform in any context – poverty and economic justice, education, environment – will suffer caustic defeat that progressives will be forced to chew for decades as if trying to eat a plank of hardwood. The aftertaste will be even more acidic because the health care plan was not reform in the truest sense. The plan has many parts and is highly complex but none of the parts was intended to move the process very far. The plan is one of great lateral motion and minimal forward advantage. This is not major reform; it is an elaborate complexity resulting in piecemeal refinement. However, it was labeled reform and the label stuck. Now it is in danger of giving genuine reform an unwanted reputation.

    The conservatives now stick hot pokers in this wound, trying to make President Obama wince without respite. They also take him to task on other issues with vengeful eagerness. They are keen to mount a frontal assault on his presidency the likes of which have never been seen. The theme of their attack is slick and vile-hearted attempt to cast a new perception of Obama based on historic racial stereotypes.

    The wrongs Obama committed in trying to convince the public that his flawed health plan was nearly perfect have been no worse than the usual hyperbole employed by conventional politicians when promoting their wares. However, the Republican machine casts Obama’s statements as things vitally sinister. They expostulate that his statements demonstrate a singular incompetence or craven dishonesty on a grand scale. In this vein, they have revived their investigation into the Benghazi consulate tragedy. They hope to obtain testimony from mid-level intelligence operatives that the White House left the slain Embassy officials to their saturnine fate. Given that most mid-level operatives are of the highly conservative bent and disdain this president for what they believe his skin color represents, such testimony will likely be forthcoming. Add to this the Administration’s waffling over the revelations of the National Security Agency’s global eavesdropping.

    The central theme of conservative attack is becoming pronounced and visible. It is a more subtle racism than that normally deployed but racism all the same.

    They claim Obama is incompetent because he pleads ignorance over the details of many of the current policy controversies. They say his lack of knowledge reveals a lack of commitment to the actual gruel and tasks of governance. He lavishes the limelight and knows how to talk sweetly but shies from the pedestrian hard work essential to good governance. In other words, the conservatives paint Obama as a lazy executive with a gift of gab. Thus, he has used his verbal gifts to bamboozle the electorate into buying a fraudulent bill of goods called Obamacare. As such, he is nothing more than an elegant confidence man, a refined street hustler.

    This portrait Republicans work at feverish pace to complete. They have the 2014 congressional electoral calendar in mind. In 2014, all House of Representative seats and 1/3 of the Senate are up for election. The Republican grand strategy is not so much to contest and highlight their differences with the Democratic candidates in each individual congressional race. Their plan will be to run against Obama, particularly given the troubles with Obamacare and other policies. However, they will not just run against Obama’s perceived misdeeds. They will cast his errors and omissions as so ominous as to define him as too incompetent to remain in office. The Black man is too lazy, dumb and unfit to finish his term. In all they do, Republicans cast the suggestion of impeachment. Rarely do their strategists meet without impeachment on the menu and in their minds. Increasingly, Republican officeholders publicly raise the prospect.

    Removing Obama from office via impeachment is as unlikely an event as a tuxedoed aardvark directing traffic at busy urban intersection. However, reality and logic have little to do with this effort. This is about a mean element called political ambition teamed with an even darker emotion known as hatred. Republicans have a few short- and longer-term goals. They want to maintain control of the House. Incidentally, presidential impeachment proceedings are initiated by the House. The Republican rallying cry for the 2014 elections will be the need to vote for hardliners eager to tar Obama with the brush of impeachment. Impeachment cannot be achieved without the Senate where the Democrats hold a slim majority over the Republicans. A change in two-three seats can make the difference there.

    Thus, the Republican political machine will now work overtime to highlight Obama’s personal deficits. They seek to paint him as so reckless and insouciant as to be criminally negligent and unfit for office. They care not that they lack provable legal grounds for the attempt. Racial hatred provides ample political staging for the turbid undertaking. Their objective is not to remove Obama from office. His removal is the pot at the end of the rainbow. If they don’t get the pot, the emotion and fantasy elicited by chasing the rainbow will suffice.

    The Republicans want to maintain control of the house. By rousing the hard-line electoral base in this crusade against Obama, they believe they will spur a coalition of arch conservatives, Tea Partiers and fringe racists to the polls that Republicans will maintain their hold on the House. If they perform this task with sufficient aplomb, Republicans may steal one or two Senate slots, changing the partisan balance of power in the upper chamber to their favor. Also, Republicans want to permanently taint Obama as a failure. By embroiling his name in protracted discussion or even the formal initiation of impeachment proceedings, they believe they will forever scar him.

    (They tried something similar against President Clinton who actually committed an arguably impeachable offense. The ploy worked in the short-term. Clinton was wounded and disgraced. He was only rehabilitated when the Bush presidency became a fiasco and people started longing for the halcyon decade of the 1990s. Moreover, Clinton is more of a natural politician than Obama and Clinton never had to face the racist undercurrent that stymies Obama’s walk.)

    Mainstream media now joins the Republicans in attacking Obama. Several weeks ago, this column predicted the media would launch an increasing stream of opprobrium. Indeed, the lever has been turned. The canal of adverse commentary has opened. Obama-bashing will become the cardinal pastime of many journalists, just a few weeks removed, appeared friendly to his cause.

    While the particular facts are unique to America, this situation offers lessons for all. Reform in miniature is always dangerous and rarely works. Lukewarm, minor reformers also are an endangered species as leaders. They get pilloried by those who think they have gone too far and lambasted by those who don’t believe they have ventured far enough. Those who support them do so from pragmatic, short-term self interests. However, such support is never deep or resolute. It wanes with the first sign of rain or strong wind. If problems with Obamacare persist, much of his support will evaporate because it was never fully committed to an overarching political cause or humanitarian effort. His health care constituency was the sloppy cobbling of numerous constituencies many of whose self-interests contradict the interests of other members of this improvised procession.

    Obama and his team erred by yielding too much to short-term expedients without gauging the longer-term substantive effects of these steps. Serial compromises whittled down reform until it became a motley stew of stale bromides and not a cohesive plan. Next week, I will do the piece on economic theory as it relates to government fiscal policy. But will offer a bit of a primer now. Obamacare’s core flaw is the malady of the economic theory buttressing this unwieldy construct. Obama and team believed the federal government could become insolvent in dollars. This is no more plausible than belief in the Fountain of Youth. However, this belief is a fountain of folly from which significant ill-advised policies can spring.

    Because of this error, Obama and team never felt confident in making a case for serious reform such an expanding government-funded Medicare/Medicaid to all. Believing themselves handcuffed by fiscal constraints, they hamstrung themselves by believing that the current private insurance based system was inviolate. Thus, the alleged reform because a paean to the insurance industry by mandating that everyone purchase insurance instead of mandating that everyone is entitled to health care. These things seem synonymous but are not.

    In the end, the Obama Administration constructed a system whereby the insurance companies get higher profits from a higher volume of coerced business. Government will spend comparably the same on health care as before. The public will be forced to spend more on insurance at a moment when the wages of the common man are stagnate and most Americans are worse off now than at the advent of the historic 2008 recession.

    In effect, the health care reform is an indirect tax on the people by transferring more money to the insurance companies. The measure effectuates this transfer more so than it expands and improves public health care. In other words, Obamacare needs some critical surgery if it is to work well. That surgery is unlikely in the current environment because the president will be preoccupied with guarding his political flank from nasty Republican assaults. So busy keeping the wolves from his throat, he will not have time for much else in the foreseeable future. Most of this predicament can be distilled to an error in economic theory and how that theory shapes fiscal policy. Next week, we explore how better theory can lead to better policies helping those who really need it.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • Confab and confabulations

    Trust President Goodluck Jonathan to pull a rabbit out of his Fedora cap in injury times. After months of shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying on the issue, he has finally agreed to convoke a National Conference to address the fundamental problems facing the nation. But this was after the security and political situation has worsened and a raging civil war in his party has all but ended his chances of unimpeded renomination, not to say reelection. If he was expecting to be universally hailed for this, he would have been startled by the gale of recrimination from some important and influential quarters.

    Perhaps the greatest irony lost on Jonathan and his formidable political adversaries is that he had decided to convoke a National Conference at the weakest moment of his presidency, when he has his back to the wall. Heralded by a bizarre speech of sudden apostolic conversion and capitulation by the inevitable David Mark which dripped with venom and anger for anti-national forces that have brought Nigeria to heels, it was clear that the government was at the end of its tether. President Jonathan reminds one of the great French general who conceded that even though his flanks had collapsed and the centre was giving way, he was nevertheless proceeding on a major offensive.

    It is a reflection of the sheer opportunism, the lack of official clarity and the arm twisting surrounding the whole project that Jonathan himself put the heavy boot in even as he was being hailed in some quarters. By insisting that the decisions of the conference would be passed to a widely reviled National Assembly for vetting, Jonathan has ensured that the whole thing is dead on arrival. As it is today, the National Assembly suffers from institutional delinquency. Institutional delinquency occurs when a combination of genetic, sociological and historic infirmities prevents a vital national institution from fulfilling its mission and obligation to the nation. But this is a topic for another occasion.

    Yet there is a deeper political logic to all this which seems to elude just about everybody. In the absence of a truly transformative and redemptive world-historic leader, and given the structural deformation that has crippled the nation from birth, it was clear to most discerning Nigerians that a genuine National Conference was a historic inevitability. It would have taken an exceptionally visionary and patriotic leader to conduct such a gathering when he has all the aces stacked in his favour, when his legitimacy and authority are intact and have not been battered into submission by adversarial forces.

    Obasanjo for one did not avail himself of the historic opportunity. Had he turned his attention to the structural debility that has hobbled the nation at the end of his great demilitarisation project, he would have emerged as the founder and father of post-military Nigeria. But he temporised long enough for his hideous leadership failings to come into bold relief and for almost everybody to see that his so called National Dialogue was a tactical ruse to prolong his misbegotten tenure.

    Jonathan has shown himself to be a poorer reader of historical currents than even his mentor and benefactor. As at the moment and under his watch, his party is hopelessly factionalised and deeply fractured; the country is trapped between insurgent religious forces in the North and economic rebels in the deep South even as the rest of the nation groans under the extreme pathologies of a truly dysfunctional polity. Fear and hunger stalk the land.

    The grim paradox of our situation is that had we been running a true parliamentary system, the government would long have been out of power. And in a true presidential system, no party or president that has presided over such a gargantuan mess would dare show their face at the polls. Yet it is clear that despite its obvious and insurmountable leadership deficits, the Jonathan administration hopes to use the opportunity of a National Dialogue as a strategic ruse to engineer a huge national confusion which will eventuate in the dismemberment of the country or the elongation of its miserable tenure through a state of emergency.

    Opposition figures and other concerned nationals who have poured scorn and vitriol on the dialogue surely have their political antennae properly tuned. But it would amount to a fatal error of political judgment to surrender the strategic initiative by boycotting the conference. Opposition should not be fixated on electoral victory because given the current circumstances, elections alone can no longer resolve the national conundrum.

    But there is often some meaning embedded in meaninglessness. It is in the interest of higher patriotism to help Jonathan and his politically challenged Ijaw hegemonists out of the historic quagmire they have trapped themselves, just as it is important to let a core North that has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing know that Nigeria can no longer survive along the lines of the old status quo. This is the only thing that makes sense in the pervasive senselessness of these terrible times.

  • Federalism and taxation

    Federalism and taxation

    Tax payers wishing to reduce their tax burden in a federal system should not need the intervention of the central government

    Most countries have a wide array of taxes, each of which is applicable in clearly defined circumstances. The proliferation may however be more noticeable in federalist countries like Nigeria. By virtue of powers conferred by the 1999 Constitution, taxes and levies in Nigeria are charged at three levels, i.e. Federal, State, and Local. This follows a demarcation of functions among the three tiers and the distribution of legislative powers between the Federal and State Legislatures—Ade Ipaye in 2010.

    The recent announcement by the Minister of Finance about the federal government’s intention to “streamline and harmonise taxation across the country” could not have come at a worse time. As is expected in a democracy, it is right for tax payers to ask for tax reforms that can lessen the burden of tax payers, be they individual or corporate. But for the federal government to be thinking of a major tax reform across the country after the leader of the federal government has called for a national conference to discuss the nature of Nigeria’s multiethnic federalism is to put the cart before the horse.

    Harmonisation of tax in a federal system is anathema, particularly to those who care about public finance for development, more so in a federal system that cannot develop solely on the strength of on revenue from non-renewable resources. A multiple form of taxation is an essential characteristic of federal form of governance all over the world. Over the years, Nigeria’s federal system has been watered down by decrees issued by military dictators to emphasize harmonisation, rather than accepting that a federal system must have diversity, to enforce homogenisation instead of appreciating heterogeneity. Efforts to harmonise tax across a federation is like attempting to “reform the irreformable,” to borrow some phrase from the Minister of Finance.

    Those who believe that the president is not sufficiently serious about the national conference cannot but smile to hear that his minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy is enthusiastic about harmonising taxation at a time that the president has asked the country to dialogue about what kind of future it wants. Is the intention of the federal government to harmonise the country’s tax systems another attempt to pre-empt the national conference, just as the intention of the president to submit recommendations from the conference to a national assembly that is clearly hobbled by the desire to keep Nigeria federal in name and unitary in structure?

    It is not expected that tax payers all over the world would readily resist multiple taxation. Thus, the recent call by The Tax Payers’ Association of Nigeria (TAPAN) is in order in a democratic system. It is a different matter whether avoiding multiple taxation is realistic in a federal democracy. Tax payers wishing to reduce their tax burden in a federal system should not need the intervention of the central government, as much as they need to negotiate with state governments. Any central government that promises to harmonise taxation in a federal system is either playing to the gallery or being deliberately unrealistic. For any central government to be in a position to harmonize tax across a federal political space, it will need to amend the current constitution to the effect of removing taxation from the concurrent legislative list. To attempt to do that is to call for an end to the federal system.

    Tax payers do have a right to expect that at all levels there is a correlation between tax paid and public service given by the government. But in a federal system, where most public goods and services are provided and delivered at the subnational level, tax payers should cry to the states in which they pay taxes for transparency, accountability, and equity. Crying to the federal government to harmonize tax collection is to undermine the country’s dwindling federal system and to encourage the central government to deny states and local governments of their right to raise revenue and responsibility to fund improvement of the quality of life of citizens in specific states.

    Even though efforts to water down the federal character of Nigeria has been on for over forty years under the inspiration of military dictatorships, it is now too late in the day for an elected government that has in fact announced convocation of a national conference to put energy into harmonising taxation in the country. This is a function that should be left to the national conference to decide. It is common knowledge that fiscal federalism requires more funds at the subnational level in a federal system, if regular and prompt good services are to be provided by the government for citizens and business communities at the subnational level. It is also true that the relationship between the citizen and the central government in today’s Nigeria is more of alienation than dis-alienation, for several reasons.

    One, the central government is overfunded and under monitored by citizens. In fact, public expenditure by the central government appears ‘un-monitorable’ in Nigeria, largely on account of the distance between the central government and the average citizen. Second, the central government relies for most of its expenditures on revenue from non-renewable resource— petroleum. This situation gives the central government a feeling that it is those in power at a given time that are principal stakeholders in the process of governance and that citizens are onlookers. For example, it is easier for people of Lagos State to demand for improvement in provision of public service in Lagos than it is for citizens to influence the federal government to make the country’s most important motorway, the Lagos-Ibadan-Benin safe for movement of persons and goods. L. Enrique Garcia’s claim that there is evidence to suggest that “greater natural resource revenue, by disconnecting spending decisions from the need to levy taxes on the population, contribute to a less efficient use of the extra resources in public service provision” applies to Nigeria as much as it does to Latin America.

    It is hoped that today’s piece will stimulate rigorous debates among tax specialists and federalists on the controversial topic of harmonising tax across the country in a federation. Such debates will help those planning to represent their communities at the national conference to provide realistic recommendations on how to address the issue of ‘multiple taxation’ in a country that appears poised for further federalisation, judging by the tone of presentations of most regions to the national conference advisory committee so far.

  • The Okon and Baba Lekki road show

    While Snooper was enjoying a well-deserved holiday, the dismal duo of Baba Lekki and Okon reinvented themselves as roadside philosophers dispensing nuggets of rare wisdom for a small fees to stricken and afflicted Nigerians. Among their favourite topics are: state abduction, power as aphrodisiac, armoured cars, prebendalism in the postcolony etc. On the last topic, Snooper understands that Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare a.k.a Ebino, sans topsy-turvy, serve as professorial consultants from the Diaspora.

    Last Thursday, Snooper watched quietly as a drunken Urhobo lady sidled up to Okon. After paying the “admission” fees, the woman wasted no time with customary formalities. “Okon, my name be Okiemute, and I dey sell fish for Ogba. My question be say wetin dis dem Jonathan man dey do for Jarusalem sef, abi enof wahala no dey home?”

    The mad boy looked at the woman with wry bemusement and then shot back with a pithy and pitiless Efik proverb. “ My sista, make una leave am. Dem thing wey drive monkey go climb palm tree still dey for the bottom of dem palm tree”.

    “Make dem man no go quench for Jarusalem ooo”, the woman drawled.

    “Why not?” Okon snorted.

    “No be for dem yeye place dem dey wake up after sotey three days?”the Urhobo lady noted with a devilish wink.

    “Sista, I hear you, I hear you” Okon croaked and waved off the naughty wench. It was then the turn of a Yoruba man in battered suit who stepped forward with professorial solemnity. With his tangled and unkempt hair style, he seemed on the verge of losing a long-drawn battle of the mind. The man lunged at Baba Lekki with cat-like agility.

    “Wo, Baba Elegiri, or whatever funny name they call you. Give me a sexual theory of armoured cars with immediate effect. I am tired of all this hilarious harlequinade”, the man screamed.

    Sensing a kindred soul, Baba Lekki eyed the man with tipsy affection and admiration. “Out of the welter of national confusion comes a sober and sane mind”, the old sage began and then suddenly lapsed into pidgin French with alacrity, “Mais mon ami, L’amour cest la paramour”.

    “Ha, ha mon ami, cest bon, cest bon”, the strange man nodded severally. It was at this point that a gang of irreverent urchins broke up the proceeding.

  • That pro-Oduah rally

    That pro-Oduah rally

    We should be worried that our youths are fighting for negative values

    Little did I realise, last week, that I would return to the Stella Oduah issue this soon. But there have been some disturbing developments since I wrote my column on it last Sunday. One of them was the pro-Oduah protest by some Igbo youths in Enugu penultimate Saturday. No doubt, protests are an integral part of governance. Even in autocratic societies where the ruler holds somewhat unquestionable powers, people have always protested, oftentimes at great risks to their lives. Thousands of South Africans were killed in all kinds of protests staged in the days of apartheid, to end white minority rule in South Africa. If people in undemocratic settings can express displeasure with government, it should be a given that those in democratic settings have much greater latitude to disagree with governments through protests. Protests should therefore be seen as an integral part of democracy if indeed democracy is the ‘government of the people for the people by the people’.

    The point being made is that governments are run by people, in which case the public officials can make mistakes in policy formulation or programme implementation. People have the right to express their displeasure about such mistakes, whether they (mistakes) are of the head or the heart. As a matter of fact, students in this country have had to demonstrate for very noble causes in the past. All said, there are some protests that are senseless because of their dysfunctional nature and should therefore be condemned by any right-thinking member of the society. The protest by some (apparently) misguided Igbo Youths in Enugu, under the aegis of Igbo Progressives Union, against calls for the sacking of the aviation minister, Stella Oduah, falls under this category. Hear their leader, Emeka Agbo, a student of the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu: “Before she came to office, we were hearing about international airport, but today, it has become a reality in Igboland. We are ready to swim and sink with her.” I have no quarrel with this because it is a matter of choice; people have a right to swim or sink with whoever they like. But my concern is that this was a major plank why the minister should be spared. And to think that it is coming from students in a higher institution?

    Yet, the issues in the Oduah case are simple and would even appear clear enough. She was alleged to have approved the purchase of two BMW armoured cars at a cost of N255million, whereas the market value of the vehicles should not be more than N75million. Worse still, the expenditure, according to reports, was not provided for in the budget, which is a serious offence. As at the time of the protest, the minister was yet to respond to the invitation of the House Committee on Aviation to shed more light on the issue. What was then in the public domain was the fact that the vehicles were bought to protect the minister whose life has been in danger from people who are not happy with the good works she has been doing and the changes she has brought to bear on the aviation sector, that have affected these people who would have preferred business as usual. Ms Oduah told a different story when she finally appeared before the House committee on Thursday. The impression she gave was that her aides who spoke earlier did not know what they were saying. Anyway, I do not want to jump to conclusion before the committee is through with its assignment, so I would rather stop here on her appearance before it. But, how does this matter become something which some youths would take upon themselves to defend simply because she is one of their own? Were the protesters instrumental in any way to her appointment as minister?

    Although in the Oduah case, the protesters were her Igbo kindred, it should not be taken to mean that the behaviour is only found among the Igbo or in the eastern part of the country. It is a behaviour sans borders, so to say. What, therefore, could be responsible for this? Illiteracy is a sure banker; poverty is another while a third could be ignorance. Perhaps the fourth reason, which is as deadly as the other three is the loss of values in the country. The situation has been deteriorating at an alarming rate. Otherwise, why would some secondary school students rise in defence of a monarch who was on trial for alleged rape? Yet, that was what happened last year, when about 35 pupils of Ifelodun Grammar School, Kiloru, Osun State, protested against the trial of the Alowa of Ilowa, Oba Adebukola Alli, for alleged rape. It was heartwarming that the state government which had keen interest in the matter promptly suspended the students and indeed asked them to produce their parents in school, in addition to the students signing an undertaking that they would not do such a thing again.

    The irony of it all is that in many instances, most of the protesters hardly understand the reason for the protests they are participating in. I remember in the Abacha years, some protesters who were part of the Nigerians earnestly asking Abacha to transmute to civilian president carried their placards upside down, an indication that they did not even understand the content. When reporters noticed this and asked them why they were part of the march, many of them had no answer. Some even said they were given some ridiculous amount to be part of the train. The same thing is being insinuated in the pro-Oduah protest by the so-called Igbo youths. Some reports said they were offered N4,000 each.

    In the Osun instance, those involved were children who should not have been involved in such protest. As at the time they protested, their Oba was still on rape charge. Yet, they stormed the court premises to protest the trial. Now, judgment has been given, and the court, even despite its convoluted judgment, did not say Oba Alli did not have sex with the youth corps member that he was alleged to have raped; it merely agreed with the Oba that the two of them were lovers. Now, in retrospect, can those students vouch that their Oba was right to have slept with the youth corps member, even if it was a case of two consenting adults? Does that not desecrate the throne? And, is that the kind of thing that well-brought-up pupils or students should be defending? Has it ever dawned on them that they too are not safe in the hands of an Oba that would not bait an eyelid to have an affair with a youth corps member?

    It is this type of protests that has made many Nigerians to conclude that there can never be a revolution in the country. They have carefully studied the tendency of the elite to appeal to parochial sentiments when they are in trouble. That is when they (the elite) remember that they are being persecuted because of the tribe they come from, or the religion they belong to, or whatever. I do not know how far this can be sustained; the fact that it has worked this far does not mean it will always work because, when the chips are down, poverty does not know tribe or religion; it is about the stomach. Most times when a baby cries, it wants food in its mouth. What we are familiar with is the saying that ‘a hungry man is an angry man’. Hunger does not know tribe or religion, when it comes, it wants to be assuaged, and it will get to a stage where hunger cannot be assuaged the way some people are plundering our common patrimony.

    These protests are depressing because they are carried out by youths who are the leaders of tomorrow. Apparently, we are not inculcating in them the right values that would empower them for that future that they are supposed to play leadership roles in. This is as bad, if not worse, than sitting on a keg of gunpowder.