The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Education and democracy: training the future generation 2

    Education and democracy: training the future generation 2

    It is clear that the power of a properly educated and trained citizenry to increase the competitiveness of Nigeria in the comity of nations cannot be ignored without devastating consequences for the country and its citizens.

    Following the conclusion to last week’s piece, today’s column will be devoted to fuelling public debate on how to address the failure of the education sector in the country. Today’s emphasis will be on ideological underpinnings of education in a ‘federal democracy.’ Efforts will be made to spell out what should be done to bring education back to the front burner, not only in terms of policy making but also in terms of school/college effectiveness.

    Given the dismal statistics about low learning outcomes in WAEC and NECO, it is safe to assume that the foundation for higher education in the country has been compromised by the failure to create effective primary and secondary education culture in the country. The failure of the education sector is similar to that of the energy sector which provides electricity for less than 25% of the population less than 25% of the time. The decline in education should be worrisome enough for the federal government to declare an emergency in this sector. But lessons learned from declaring an emergency in the energy sector years back are too clear for the federal government to take a similar risk with education. The provision of electricity has been getting poorer since the declaration of an emergency in the sector. But no problem goes away by itself. There is a need for human intervention in any institution created by human beings.

    The major problem facing the education sector is how to achieve and sustain quality and equity at the same time. For example, ongoing efforts by the federal government to achieve quality in secondary education has led to the abandonment in a democracy of the principle of equality of opportunity for all citizens. With about 100 Unity Secondary Schools across the country, the federal government has for decades believed it is possible to provide quality education that can bring about what W. E. B. DuBois once characterised as the Talented Tenth that moves society to higher achievements. Admission to Unity Schools has, as Femi Folorunso observed in a recent lecture in Lagos, generated suspicion and resentment on the part of southern Nigerians whose children with higher scores could not get into the same Unity School that children from the north with far less points than their southern counterparts easily got admitted to, on account of keeping Nigeria united.

    As bad as that situation is for achievement of a union of affection in the country, another related problem is that it is generally only children of the middle class that get admitted to Unity Schools. Where the admission policy or process does not openly endorse discrimination, exclusion of children of the working class or under class have no access to even sitting for entrance examinations to most of the Unity Schools. Most of such children have been restricted by material poverty and lack of access to middle-class influence peddling to neighbourhood primary and secondary schools, most of which may not even appear on the register of schools in the federal ministry of education.

    In addition, efforts at the private level to provide quality teaching in primary and secondary schools have resulted in mushrooming of private or fee-paying schools in the nooks and corners of the country. Again, it is parents with material resources that can afford to send their children to private schools. Thus, the children of majority of Nigerians are left to choose among neighbourhood primary and secondary schools funded through a combination of efforts by the federal, state, and local governments. If there is any noticeable quality being offered in the private schools, the exodus of children of middle-class background that go to Ghana every year for primary and secondary education, (not to talk of those who go to the U.S., U.K., and now U.A.E.) does not show any durable confidence in the education provided by most of the fee-paying schools in Nigeria.

    To say that the country is at a cross-roads in terms of education provision is an understatement. With about an average of 40% success rates at the end of secondary education and a university system believed by many federal ministers as producing unemployable graduates, the country is in deep trouble that can affect its foundation, not necessarily in terms of disintegration that has become a popular bogey in the mouths of politicians and cultural leaders from the north and the Southsouth in recent years, but in terms of not transcending its present status of the world’s dumping ground for all goods from pasta to plasma television. Any further lowering of the competitiveness of the country will be enough to make the country import more than it can pay for, even now that oil is enjoying the benefit of a seller’s market. The situation will be worse for Nigeria when oil in the next decade or two becomes an item in the buyer’s market with the resultant falling of oil price.

    It is clear that the power of a properly educated and trained citizenry to increase the competitiveness of Nigeria in the comity of nations cannot be ignored without devastating consequences for the country and its citizens. Like everything else, organising provision of education to respond to the fear that allowing states and regions more freedom to determine how to refine their culture and advance their development, is not likely to achieve anything more than the organisation of the Nigeria Police Force has done: inefficiency and ineffectiveness. It is indeed safer to believe that encouraging all parts of Nigeria to develop ways of providing quality education to citizens without excluding any group or class directly or indirectly has a higher chance of enhancing the country’s unity than holding parts of the country down from getting imaginative about how to solve the problem of education provision for citizens.

    What is needed is for the federal government to leave the running of schools to local governments, as Folorunso recommended in the lecture referred to earlier. This will allow states and local governments to collaborate on curriculum development and inspectorate system. The current system of allocating funds to states and local governments from the revenue from rents collected on oil and gas may need to stop, to allow local governments and states to collect taxes from citizens and in the process create a bond or contract between the two sides about how to solve the fundamental problem of training children that can keep Nigeria going beyond the decades of oil.

    What the federal government needs to do is to work out in conjunction with the federating units a vision of what type of Nigeria we plan to create. The present mantra that Nigeria is being prepared to become the 20th largest economy is too vague to base an education development strategy on. Whatever number Nigeria occupies at present in the ranking of economies has not come from its efforts as much as it has from the oil in the womb of its soil. Now that it is becoming clearer by the day that the century of hydrocarbon may be coming to an end, the preparation for the century of knowledge as the source of wealth and employment requires that the current system of a big federal bureaucracy directing national education for the purpose of keeping the appearance of national unity will be unable to face the challenge of designing an effective education provision for all citizens. Since most citizens attend public primary and secondary schools, it is no use pretending that the problem of quality and equity will go away by either sending children abroad or allowing private vendors of education to operate with little or no monitoring from the governments with jurisdiction over their locations.

    To be continued.

  • As PDP unravels, where is Ekiti PDP?

    As PDP unravels, where is Ekiti PDP?

    If Ekiti PDP has always been fractious, its problems have now quintupled as the falcon can no longer hear the falconer.

    It the best of times, it is the tradition of the Ekiti PDP to have no idea about any matter, however serious, or pedestrian, until they have visited Ota.  Even at a time when former governor Gbenga Daniel gave Obasanjo, even as President, no quarters whatever in the affairs of  his native Ogun State PDP, our friends in Ekiti would still first visit with Baba or, at the very worst, divine his innermost cravings. Thus, at a point, it became impossible for Ekiti to nominate a candidate as federal minister on its own; and once, when they went beyond their bounds and nominated Dayo Adeyeye, it only took President Obasanjo enough time to remember that the prince was his nemesis as Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, and so, promptly collapsed the party’s temerity and Adeyeye’s earnest hopes.

    These were the thoughts running through my mind this past week as I posed the following question to the ekitipanupo web portal: Wither Ekiti PDP, as the ‘largest rally in Africa’ unravels?

    As I tried to sketch above, at no point in time had the party in Ekiti being as free as you found in Oyo, Osun, Ondo or in Gbenga Daniel’s Ogun. The few times President Obasanjo busied himself with state matters, any of Bode George, the late Baba Adedibu or Senator Omisore took charge; took as much contracts as he wanted or arranged charter flights  for the current governor, however transient. Indeed, when matters came to a head, our dear governors were not unknown to have run to a paramount ruler outside the state to help out. An instance was when an overbearing chieftain of the party was going to overawe the state governor with his  relationship with a top Abuja government official to get a seat on the National Executive Council of the party and the governor had to dash to Kabiyesi for succour.

    It must be said though, that at that time, all Southwest chapters respected the former president as it predated the current Buruji Kasamu’s suzerainty which has seen leading lights of the Obasanjo group shoved aside, even from posts to which they were elected.

    No thanks to a combination of President Jonathan and a rambunctious Chairman Tukur.

    Therefore, with the Presidency reportedly of the view that Obasanjo is behind the present crisis ravaging the party, whither Ekiti PDP?  Kasamu’s desire to add Ekiti to his Ogun conquest must have informed his boast to spend a billion naira on the Ekiti election, knowing full well that once his PDP people hear about money, all sense is lost.

    So what exactly is their permutation; which of the Tukur /Baraje groups offers the best for their chimerical hopes, for 2014 in Ekiti? This is the problem that must literally be eating them up now and I won’t be surprised if all manner of diviners, soothsayers and marabouts are already smiling to their banks. It becomes worse when one remembers that there are no less than 16 wannabe governors within their ranks.

    Writing in answer to the question was Wale Adeoye, a brilliant journalist, and Senior Special Assistant in the Fayemi administration. I shall quote him at some length. Wrote Wale: ‘The Ekiti and South West PDP are in a fix. It is unlikely they will come out unscathed. The Tukur faction, by crook and arm-twisting, will dominate the scene. The two sides are not fighting any ideological war. The Tukur faction wants the President, probably because he has paid his material price for the bidding or the pudding. The Baraje group, in turn, wants power so as to enhance the diminishing influence of the northern (Hausa-Fulani) oligarchy. Neither Tukur nor Baraje has told us that the battle is informed by the interest of Nigeria or Nigerians; neither has either disagreed with the ruinous economic policies of the PDP at the national and local frontiers. The devil is split in two: one is a rattle-snake, the other a scorpion. None is useful to mankind, not even for the eating, except to isolate and kill them before they finally pour their insidious venom on society. The Ekiti and South West PDP are split along the two divides: OBJ is an opportunist, trying to exploit the crack to full advantage. In reality, he is a vocal, devilish authority, but in praxis, he lacks any compelling political structure. Atiku, the knight of treacherous adventures, is using the PDM as a platform to destabilise the setting; to pave the way for his personal ambition or, at worst, to ensure the emergence of his crony as the next president. OBJ is not comfortable with Atiku, but for the plot against the President, he needs to surge at the hawk first, before he could chastise the rebellious, back-stabbing musketeers on his heels. This crisis has exposed the barrenness of the PDP, its lack of tact, its destructive antics, its lows, its self-seeking man-oeuvres and the imminence of its collapse as one of history’s most heinous political institutions.’ He then warns: ‘Let the progressive forces be aware: we need a movement; a movement in alliance with labour, students, workers, seafarers, haves and havenots, rich and poor, dregs and royals, to rise up and agree on the need to stop the PDP in all its deceitful shapes, come 2015.’

    If Ekiti PDP has always been fractious, its problems have now quintupled as the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. If the Oni group can be said to have been weakened by the vicissitudes Obasanjo suffered in the hands of Buruji Kasamu working as a Jonathan/Tukur hireling, the Fayose/Olubolade group, which won its rancorous convention, has uproariously atomised, with both men sparing no lurid word in publicly describing each other. While Akin Omole of the Oni group, who lost the chairmanship election, has since been in court asking it to send packing the incumbent state chairman, Makanjuola Ogundipe, on the grounds that members of the state executive committee came in through a manipulated congress election, as if rigging is not their party’s middle name, Ogundipe has, in turn, threatened to haul Omole before the enforcer, Chairman Tukur, for anti- party activities.

    Things have gotten even worse. There had been serial mutual suspensions of party chieftains, including both Fayose and Ogundipe.  Fisticuffs, cutlasses, guns and charms have also been brought into play with a former Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly a major victim. Abuja has, as expected, done its usual abracadabra; rescinding Fayose’s suspension while tenaciously holding to the consensus arrangement which is the very reason Fayose is fighting to the death. In the meantime, the Oni group has been further affected by the publicised exit of Professor Lola Borisade to energise the PDM which is guaranteed to be Atiku’s next platform to confront the Obasanjo/Lamido group. And that will be the duel! Therefore, even if the Oni group, which is the single most cohesive group, joins the new PDP in the meantime, the romance will most likely be short-lived as most of the 16 aspiring to win the guber slot are likely to tilt towards the Jonathan group which, with power behind it, will most probably thump the new. But, in the meantime, fearing a mass defection into the new PDP in the state, the President will most probably go back on his erstwhile support for his Police Affairs Minister who, of course, has nowhere else to go besides the president’s group.

    That exactly is where the Ekiti PDP is today; their jigsaw puzzle, in no man’s land, marooned and, literally leaderless. Even then, in the most unlikely event that the party resolves its many problems, national and state, where is the PDP going to start from in Ekiti? Is it from its dismal failure to attract any meaningful federal project to the state in 14 years of their party’s stranglehold on the country? Is it in the federal government’s pernicious marginalisation of the Yoruba in the affairs of the country such that you cannot count a single Yoruba man in the topmost 10 jobs in the country? Is it the fact that nothing of substance stands to the memory of PDP’s seven years of locust in Ekiti? Compare that miserable record with the exploits of the Fayemi administration which, in under three years, has touched every nook and cranny of the state, having a minimum of at least one project in EVERY town, village or community; continuously impacting every segment of governance and very positively presenting the state to the world as a caring government via programmes like the monthly stipends to the elderly and the multi-birth care, to mention but a few.

    So to the question, I answer: Ekiti PDP is certainly in the doldrums.

  • Jonathan goes for broke

    Jonathan goes for broke

    Last Wednesday, President Goodluck Jonathan suddenly and unexpectedly axed nine of his ministers, all of whom, it appeared, were appointed through those now ranged against him in political battle. It is instructive that when the president was finally persuaded to substantially reshuffle his cabinet, he did so in defence of private political objectives and in ways that baffled presidency watchers. We do not know whether Dr Jonathan appreciates the irony that dogs his presidency; but to many of us it is clear that whenever he projects power it is mainly to advance ignoble causes. Indeed, I add that anytime the president yields to his often overpowering inclination to do wrong, it is in spite of the loftiness of the cause before him and to the detriment of his imposing and outsized office. It was with characteristic surliness, for instance, that he deployed the military to crush the January 2012 nationwide fuel revolt when all he needed to do was placate the electorate and gain political capital as he grudgingly reduced the price of a litre of fuel from N145 to N97. In last week’s cabinet reshuffle, Dr Jonathan adds imprecision to surliness.

    Perhaps tired of being punched and wrong-footed by his enemies, Dr Jonathan finally felt compelled to respond in a way that has left his aides struggling to rationalise what is obviously a baffling political move. Except newspaper reports quote presidency sources wrongly, it is known that the president and his aides are still negotiating with the Group of Seven governors and others sponsoring or inspiring them into intra-party revolt. But by moving against the G-7 nominees in his cabinet, it is not clear which the president values more: to root out those he suspects are disloyal to him; or to reconcile with the G-7 and restore peace and order in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His priorities, however, seem already self-evident. It is obvious he intends to continue indulging his counterproductive pugnacity, a contentiousness that has been given fillip by the gerontocrats surrounding, captivating and seducing him to war. The president has enormous powers, they say, and it is both presidential and fitting to use them in such a manner that no one will be left with the mistaken belief that Dr Jonathan does not understand the nuances of power.

    Dr Jonathan does not interpret the grievances of the G-7 governors as proceeding from their exasperation with the leadership style of the PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur. Nor does he think those grievances, even if they were substantial or potent enough, were genuine. Indeed, with the presence of the intrepid Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State in the ranks of the so-called rebels, the president is sufficiently persuaded to believe that rebellion, rather than grievances, was the bane of the party. The president also gives the impression, without saying so, that the rebellion is driven by a combination of irreverence (some call it rudeness), opposition machinations and deliberate contempt for his person and ability, all of which are summed up in the unflattering and insulting opinion that he is unfit to rule. But rebellion, as he and his aides also secretly hold and whisper in pianissimo tones, should be crushed rather than mollified.

    When political battles are cast in military terms and symbols, such as Dr Jonathan and his brash aides have done, it portends danger for both the state and the combatants. For even harmless feints, which former President Olusegun Obasanjo is besotted to in his uncalculating and continuing obsession for relevance, can easily become a gritty test of wills from which it is impossible to climb down. Dr Jonathan has faced many tests since he assumed power some four years ago, but none of those tests has produced in him the maturity, reflection, astuteness and perspicuity great leaders acquire after passing through trials. On the contrary, every notable test he has faced and every dubious victory he has achieved has made Dr Jonathan more intransigent, less contemplative and given to romanticising brute power. Having thus allowed himself to be persuaded that he faced war against the rebel governors, and after having cast himself obliquely as a war leader who needed to take decisive and powerful steps to rein in dissent, Dr Jonathan has decided to go for broke.

    While it is incontestable that the many haphazard and unthinking policies of Alhaji Tukur spurred rebellion in the party, and while the president was more careless in overseeing the affairs of the party than he has deliberately courted trouble and disaffection, it is fair to say that his current temper is a reaction to the impertinent goading of the G-7 governors. By coming out with an alternative power structure on the day the PDP held its special convention in Abuja, and doing so with such secrecy as ridiculed, if not humiliated, the presidency and its coercive agencies, few failed to notice that the G-7 governors had also gone for broke. Given the stiffness of their conditions for peace in the party, it seems inconceivable that the rebellious governors left room for any peaceful settlement now or in the future.

    There is little doubt that the aggrieved G-7 governors drew first blood, and the president had to respond whether he liked it or not. What is in dispute, however, is whether in the circumstances the president has reacted with the decorum becoming his office and the restraint and circumspection he has claimed for himself for so long. By any standard, sacking nine ministers in one fell swoop is not only excessive and inexcusable, it is indicative of the president’s poor judgement in cabinet selection. It is also doubtful whether Dr Jonathan can convince himself, let alone the country, that the ministers he sacked were either incompetent or underperforming, or whether they were the only guilty ones. More crucially, even if he wishes to assemble a war cabinet for Poll 2015, as some now speculate, it is hard to see from where he would recruit those field officers who can deliver the easy victory he covets and who would not succumb to the rabidness and thoughtlessness of his man Fridays. Yet, it is well known in Abuja that it is his leadership style, not to say his lack of visionary depth, that predisposes his presidency to repeated mishaps, humiliation and crushing defeats.

    Any rebellion, such as the one triggered by the G-7 governors, is not strange in politics. In fact many established democracies, which run the parliamentary system, have witnessed the kind of political rebellion that is making Dr Jonathan froth at the mouth with rage. There will, therefore, always be rebellion, and presidents and political leaders must have the common sense and moderation to tackle it when it arises. Sadly, Dr Jonathan has approached the rebellion in his party with unseemly and demeaning comportment. Because he and his predecessors unwisely personified party leadership and have accreted enormous party powers to the presidency, it has been difficult for him and his predecessors to confine party disagreements to party boundaries. Instead, they have formed the bad habit of transferring disagreements to the presidency and foisting a needless crisis on the country, thereby threatening not only good governance, or indeed governance of any sort, but also peace and stability.

    Encouraged by sycophants, jobholders and some insensitive South-South political leaders and herdsmen of jaundiced votes, Dr Jonathan has embraced a fanatical and unyielding style of crisis management. We always knew he was not a democrat, nor, like Chief Obasanjo, can ever be, but his ham-fisted manner of conflict resolution and his monarchical approach to general politics have so polluted and prejudiced the atmosphere that for the first time, this column has started to fear that the foundation of Nigeria is threatened. The threat, it must be reiterated, is not because there is crisis at all, but because the men in power lack the reasoned agility to respond in ways that will reassure everyone that those in power are rational, patriotic and civilised people. One of the variables in the crisis is the 2015 presidential poll. Dr Jonathan, of course, has the right to contest in 2015, and that right can be advanced and defended intelligently; but his opponents also have the right to discourage him as much as they can without being subjected to unconstitutional, not to say autocratic, measures.

    I suspect that no one but fate itself can restrain Dr Jonathan. He will fight everywhere and every person, and he will spare nothing, not even the constitution, in waging his self-inflicted war. Democracy and its spinoffs are dispensable to him, for after all, he has never shown he understands what they mean. He has a vague notion of the greatness of the country he presides over, but that notion does not include its peace, stability, growth or superiority over other African nations. He knows a thing or two about what the presidency stands for, but his perception is coloured by the traditional African system of hero-worship, superstition and idolatry. This was why, for instance, he and his men took umbrage when his opponents described his style as kindergarten. So, let us brace ourselves for the worst or be prepared valiantly to reclaim our democracy, or what is left of it, from the hands of charlatans. Dr Jonathan, it is clear, is incensed by the seemingly harmless effort to limit him to a one-term president. He will do everything to destroy his opponents, and if need be, the country, not only because he has taken the fight personally, but also strangely because, for a 20th century man, he views politics and leadership from an antediluvian prism.

  • Fifth anniversary of the global economic meltdown of 2008: counterintuitive anti-capitalist reflections (1)

    Fifth anniversary of the global economic meltdown of 2008: counterintuitive anti-capitalist reflections (1)

    Greed is good.

    Gordon Gekko, the protagonist of the 1987 film, Wall Street.

    This week five years ago, the world was stunned by an economic meltdown that was worse than any previous worldwide downturn since the crash of 1929 that led to the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s. And indeed, comparisons with that crash of 1929 were made in September 2008, though these did not come immediately; they came gradually and fitfully as analysts and pundits slowly realized the scope of the crash. This slow pace in coming to a full comprehension of the humungous scale of the collapse was not unusual since capitalism routinely goes through the so-called “boom and bust” cycles. Rather like the biblical “seven fat years and seven lean years” of the dream of Moses, this cycle implies periods of relative growth and wealth that are typically followed by periods of hardship and scarcity. Because of this cycle, it takes a while to perceive whether a particular meltdown is a mere cyclical recession or a full-blown depression.

    By December 2008, it was clear to most analysts that the unfolding economic crisis was far worse than a mere recession. Not just individual banks and financial institutions like hedge funds but the whole financial services sector, the driving engine of 21st century capitalism, came crashing down. Within the space of a few weeks, millions of workers and pensioners lost their entire life savings. As if that was not bad enough, workers began to be sacked in their millions as massive retrenchments in both the public and private sectors descended on the workforces of the rich countries of the world. The housing industries of European and North American countries, together with their central location in the available or disposable loans and credit in the global capital pool, came unstuck. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners not only lost their homes, but they were also sucked into loan portfolios whose value sometimes quadrupled the amount they had initially borrowed as principal.

    As a consequence of these and many other extremely frightening crises, a specter descended on capitalism in all its formations, national, regional and global. But that specter was not socialism or communism. Rather, it was the fear of something not outside it but within capitalism itself, something like a cancerous growth, a corrosive toxicity, a suppurating rottenness. This spectral, profoundly destabilizing element within capitalism itself is the subject of this “commemorative” essay on the fifth anniversary of that meltdown of 2008. However, before I come to it, permit me to make a few remarks on the personal and social location from which I observed that meltdown five years ago. These initial remarks hinge on the supposition that the privilege – or, conversely, lack of privilege – with which one surveys the globality of economic and other relations in our world ought not to be taken for granted but should be woven into the fabric of our analyses and reflections.

    The first direct personal encounter that I had with that global economic collapse of 2008 came from the shock waves that it sent throughout the ranks of administrators and faculty of Harvard University, the richest university in the world, my employer and the community of teaching and research in which my professional life is based. As if in one fell swoop, Harvard lost about a third of its endowment. As a result, a regime of very stringent austerity measures were put in place drastically downsizing the budgets of departments, schools, colleges and institutes of the university. Development projects that were designed to place Harvard at the forefront of 21st century transformations in academia were put on hold indefinitely. In all this, the great fear was that no one knew where it was going to end, together with the great worry that the university’s endowment could shrink further and may even disappear completely and with it all that Harvard thinks of itself and all that the world thinks of Harvard with regard to the upper stratospheres of meritocracy.

    But in spite of the seismic scale of this worry, Harvard actually continued to be a place of great privilege and opportunity for its faculty and students. As a matter of fact, the third of its endowment that the university lost through the meltdown still left it with financial resources far in excess of what most of the other universities and even nation states of the world could count on in the lean months and years ahead. In this respect, the “view from Harvard”, if one can call it that, is only one view among many others from which one can take stock of the globality of affairs in our world. Another way of expressing this idea is to say “globality” does not imply and can never yield a single, overarching vantage point from which everything can be seen in totality. There is no neutral or God-like viewpoint available to any of us. The 2008 economic crash proved that beyond any shadow of doubt.

    Ironically, it was actually within the portals of Harvard itself that I first directly and without any mediation encountered this dimension of the specter unleashed by the crash of 2008. In my classes, and from my advisees, I began to hear expressions of deep anxieties and uncertainties about the future. The jobs were vanishing quickly while student debts were mounting. Where they had been eagerly looking forward to leaving their parents’ homes as soon as they finished their college education and striking out on their own as did most of the members of nearly all previous generations of college-educated youths, my students could only look forward to living with their parents as grownup dependants well into their late twenties or early thirties. Caught between, on the one hand, the shrinking ranks of the very rich and, on the other hand, the expanding masses of the working poor and the permanently unemployed and “unemployable” underclass of the inner cities, many of my students at Harvard felt powerfully drawn to the “occupy movements” even in cases where they did not actually join them. It is no small matter for a whole generation to suddenly come to the realization that everything it had been told, every promise that the society had made to it either had no solid foundations or was based on deceit, cheating and greed. Let me make an elaboration on this observation carefully.

    It took little or no time after September 2008 for it to com to full public knowledge all over the world that the crisis had largely been caused by legal but extremely cynical corrupt practices in the financial services industry. The technical term, the special jargon for this was something known as the “securitization of debts”. In layman’s terms, this means bunching together millions of individual and group debts and using these as not only an article of trade but the prime article of trade in the whole economy. For once you have “securitized” and thereafter own a bundle of debts, you can speculate endlessly with it: buy out your competitors; buy or sell ailing factories at a profit without having really rescued them; declare huge profits without having ever produced anything of value; buy or sell insurance to the tune of billions of dollars (credit default swaps) without having the means to redeem the premiums should the need to do so arise; and resist or even defy the efforts of regulators to rein in your activities. It is no accident, no misnomer that these “securitized” debts became known as “toxic assets” when the bubble bust. But true revelation came only when the managers and chief executive officers of the banks and financial services enterprises that caused the meltdown continued to pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses even after they had been rescued by bailouts from the governments of the rich countries of North America and Western Europe; even after hundreds of millions of people whose lifetime savings they had wiped out were reeling from the shock. As Gordon Gekko, the unscrupulous protagonist of Oliver Stone’s 1987 Hollywood film, Wall Street, declares at the climax of the film, “Greed is good”!

    To or for whom is greed good? To or for whom are the toxic assets of securitized, over-leveraged debts good? The economic crash of 2008 provided an unambiguous answer to that question. Greed is “good” when it is either completely unregulated or only minimally regulated. But this unregulated or minimally regulated greed is good for only a tiny fraction of humanity in every nation, every part of the world; it is calamitous for the vast majority of the denizens of the planet, seen as the homo economicus of a greatly interdependent but vastly unequal world order. Unregulated, rampaging greed, this is the Achilles heel of contemporary global capitalism as revealed to us in the weeks and months following September 2008. If meaningful change for most of humankind is to come on the heels of the current economic downturn in the world, this is one of the catalysts that will cause such change.

    Historically speaking, it is a great departure from the received wisdom of progressive politics and revolutionary anti-capitalist consciousness to assert that the specter that haunts contemporary, 21st century capitalism is neither socialism nor communism but a malaise, a rot within itself. The only remaining officially “communist” states in the world are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba and the People’s Republic of China. Not a singe one of them poses any real challenge or threat to capitalism. As a matter of fact, China and Cuba have both made significant compromises with capitalism; in the case of China, the compromises are very big and very far-reaching. The DPRK is a caricature, a grotesque deformation of the communist states of the first half of the 20th century. Socialism remains on the horizon of historic possibilities but it is presently locked into seemingly inevitable or compulsory compromises with capitalism. We must think carefully through the complex, tangled webs of these negotiations between socialism and capitalism in their diverse expressions and incarnations, paying special attention to the concrete effects on actual human lives beyond the abstract, reified formulations that we give to either capitalism or socialism.

    Five years after the crash of 2008, the struggle over who or what structures shall regulate the operations of capitalism and to what extent continues to dominate the political and economic affairs of almost every nation in the world. The market or the state? If one or the other, to what degree? Remarkably, after an initial retreat, the apostles and warriors of an unregulated market have risen up again and are indeed on the offensive in many countries of the rich nations of the global north, especially in North America and Western Europe. In Nigeria, free and completely unregulated capitalism is enjoying its most successful ideological and political successes at the present time, especially since the institution of the Fourth Republic in 1999. Is this because the market has proved superior to the state? Or because the state has generally been so lackluster, so comatose that the market has made the most of the opportunities open to it by default? What of the tremendous strength and resilience of the almost completely unregulated parallel market in which millions of Nigerians make their living? These and other issues will be our point of departure in next week’s concluding essay in the series.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The king’s goats

    The king’s goats

    President Jonathan on Wednesday sacked nine ministers. Good news? Bad news? Mixed bag? 

    King’s goat. That was an expression I heard, probably for the first time when I was a student of Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, Ijebu-Ode, in present day Ogun State, sometimes in the early ‘70s. Then, one of our students, Lekan Fenuyi, a table tennis star of global acclaim did the school proud in one of his outings and the principal declared him a ‘King’s goat’. The implication was that the young Lekan was to, henceforth; enjoy certain privileges that should accrue only to ‘kings’ goats’. King’s goats are untouchables. Many of us wished we could be like him. That has ever since been my idea of what should qualify anyone for that appellation.

    But, as it is with many things Nigerian, especially these days when we no longer have standards, we have turned many things upside down. Even when we lack the capacity to manufacture things, we specifically ask the manufacturers to produce less potent ones for fellow Nigerians. It is almost in this cynical context that I use the concept ‘king’s goat’ to refer to the sack of nine ministers by President Goodluck Jonathan on September 11. The ministers are  Prof.  Ruqayyatu Rufai (Education);   Okon Ewa-Bassey (Science and Techology);  Olugbenga Ashiru (Foreign Affairs);   Hadiza Mailafia (Environment);  Shamsudeen Usman, (National Planning); and  Ama  Pepple (Housing, Lands and Urban Development). The Minister of State for Defence, Olusola Obada, and her counterparts in the Agriculture Ministry, Alhaji Bukar Tijani and Power,  Zainab Kuchi, were also affected.

    There is no questioning whether the president has the right to re-jig or change his cabinet whenever he so chooses. Indeed, just as business enterprises or other bodies, presidents also rejuvenate their cabinets when the ministers are not pulling their weight or some of the aides have soiled their hands, or their actions or utterances are no longer in tandem with those of the government they are serving. The idea is to inject fresh blood into the system and make the impact of government felt better. On this score therefore, one would welcome the president’s decision to give the nine ministers the boot. Unfortunately, there is nothing to suggest that this was the main reason the ministers were sacked, notwithstanding the Presidency’s reasons as to why the nine had to go . Nigerians should therefore not celebrate too soon because they were the least in the calculations of the ministers’ sack.

    No doubt, some of the ministers deserve the boot; but the irony is that there are even some ministers that have been retained who ought to have been fired a long time ago. I am not sure many Nigerians are going to lose sleep because Prof Rufa’i, for instance, has been relieved of her appointment, considering the way and manner she handled the education sector, particularly the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Again, one might argue that all she did was to articulate the government’s position on the ASUU demands; the lesson in it is that her successor as well as other ministers ought to know how to be their own in dealing with matters such as this. I do not believe whatever Prof Rufa’i did as minister, including her position on the ASUU strike, was her personal decision.

    The import of what I am saying is that if she did not agree with the government’s position, she had a right to quit, citing irreconcilable differences, or even simply quitting without giving any reasons. But here, people don’t quit; they rather wait until they are sacked. Prof Rufa’i has been sacked now and may become the fall guy in the crisis. Meanwhile, she has, according to some report, indicated she would return to her job as Professor of Curriculum Studies at the Bayero University, Kano. Will she now join the strike by her (former) kith and kin, ASUU? I cannot wait to see how she would fare in her new position and whether she would get a heroine’s welcome from ASUU.

    Quite ironically again, as she is leaving, her minister-of-state, Nyesom Wike, the one that has been spearheading the crisis in Rivers State on behalf of the powers-that-be has been promoted. Wike is now to oversee the education ministry. Could that be the reward for his ‘meritorious service’ in Rivers State, because it cannot be a reward for his stellar performance in the ministry? Even Labaran Maku, the information minister, is now to oversee the defence portfolio. President Jonathan apparently has been pleased with the way the two have carried out their respective assignments. Pity Nigerians who had hitherto thought that Wike has not delivered when they did not know the brief he got from his principal. Now that his principal has promoted him, it should be clear to all that the man has done so well in the eye of he that sent him, which is the most important thing.

    It is for the same reason that we should not wonder far as to why super ministers like Diezani Alison-Madueke (petroleum), Stella Oduah (aviation), and finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a woman many Nigerians know more as an apostle of the West rather than their minister of finance, are still waxing strong in the government despite public perceptions of them.

    What this tells us is that Nigerians are least in the calculation concerning the ministers’ exit. The reasons are clear; yes, some may have to do with corruption, but I have a feeling many of those sacked got the boot because of the ongoing crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). President Jonathan is easily predictable. Without saying it, he acts as if vengeance is his and he would almost always revenge, never mind his seemingly harmless looks. Like former President Obasanjo, he appears poised to take his pound of flesh from those behind his travails. Just on Thursday, Governor Rotimi Amaechi ‘heard’ from him again, when he was stopped from passing through a particular route to the Government House in Port Harcourt. I am sure someone from the Presidency would soon issue a release to the effect that the president knew nothing about this!

    But, wait a minute! Could there be something that the generals in the PDP are seeing that the president is not seeing? When army generals, including those who received bullets with their chests and those who received them on their buttocks begin to scamper in search of solutions to a particular problem, particularly one that they are very much involved in, couldn’t it be that there is something that they know that the rest of us do not know? As I have always argued, it is only those who know what wicked things people do with spittle that quickly rub their feet on theirs whenever they spit. Are our generals being guided by that great teacher: experience? That could be food for thought!

    Without doubt, the question as to whether the ministers’ sack should not have been all-encompassing, given that the entire government itself appears colourless, is not misplaced. But, since the president has both the yam and the knife, he decides who to call to ‘come and chop’. Those who have not yet known those who may contest the presidential race in 2015 by now will forever remain in their blissful ignorance. What we may not know, for now, perhaps, are those who may not.

    But some things are already crystal clear: One, ‘We, the people’ are clearly out of the calculations. Second, the era of ‘super perm secs’ may be over but we are now in the era of ‘super ministers’ or ministers with nine lives, if you like, so super that whatever they do cannot be with blemish. The king’s goats!

  • Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    Stumbling out of war? Syria, the media and lessons learned

    A mistake timely made can often be more profitable than a perfect answer tardily had.

    Syria remains at the point of war and thus continues at the tip of global attention. There are important lessons embedded in this crisis that transcend the art of war and touch on how we come to know what we think we know. We should use this crisis to examine how we fashion opinions on public matters. I raise this issue because of comments received from among this column’s readers.

    Many readers oppose the position I have staked on Syria. That does not trouble me. My weekly expositions are not draft that you might agree with them. Their greater utility is in offering an alternative, progressive viewpoint. This column’s perspective differs from mainstream media but is equally valid. I like the back-and-forth of keen discourse. Sharp debate adds more than it ever subtracts. The disquieting thing is that almost all opposing comments were emotive outbursts. Disagree; yes by all means, but have reasons that reason can articulate.

    Most comments favoring American intervention were of this variety: “If your family was being gassed you would bomb Assad!” or the slightly less ad hominem “How can you stand to watch people be gassed to such a grisly death?”

    These are expressions of emotion not of reason. As a race, we must do better in how we make decisions. If not, we will not recover lost ground in our race for political and economic development. For instance, in a government worth its salt comprised of leaders worth theirs, an officeholder would recuse himself from the matter if his family were place in unique danger different than that of the rest of the nation. Otherwise, he would be acting under duress. Nations are not to be governed in such an unstable fashion. To do so would be to exalt frailty and rashness over caution and wisdom.

    Here, I assume these comments roughly parallel overall opinion. If my assumption is true, good percentage of us do not sufficiently scrutinize the information transmitted to us by global corporate media. For a race and people who have been subjected to an encyclopedia of negative stereotypes and half truths, it is startling how easily we imbibe the message of the very same global informational condominium that has libeled us. This informational architecture historically has been erected against our interests yet we so easily believe rather than question it. Thus, my fear is not that we disagree over Syria. My fear is that if this same machine that can so easily persuade so many o f us to become emotional over Syria it may be able to accomplish the same feat on matters more germane to our political and economic fortunes as Black people.

    I have assiduously watched mainstream media coverage of Syria for weeks. Not once have I heard any news reporters or the hirelings paraded as neutral experts question whether Assad’s government actually committed the attack. It is treated as incontrovertible as a mathematic proof that Assad’s is the guilty hand.

    Western governments and the vested economic interests they serve have wanted to topple Assad for years. They certainly want to prevent his imminent victory over the weakening rebels. These same economic interests own the news networks. The media houses work not to disseminate truth, advance honest debate or promote objective analysis. Their task is to promulgate the opinions of those who fund their payrolls. Such is how the world currently turns.

    The media houses are the butlers and stevedores of the powerful and mighty who seek to perpetuate their control of the world by controlling a good portion of our mind and opinions.

    At this moment, I am skeptical about the claim against Assad for particular act. He has done enough to consign himself to a terrible afterlife. There is no need to attribute to him the wrongs of others for he has enough of his own. The evidence adduced against him is not wholly convincing. There is also a quantum of evidence leading to a different conclusion but that information has been embargoed by corporate media.

    In the end, I could be wrong. However, I might be right. The bigger point is that we should allow reason and facts to guide us and forbid propaganda-fueled emotions from turning us into the instruments of other people’s designs. As much as possible, I came to my position based on the facts as I know them.

    That Assad would plot such an attack is illogical. He was winning the war and decisively so. Also the opinion the rebels had not capacity for this atrocity is unfounded. The UN already concluded rebels used sarin gas months ago to lethal effect. Neutral military analysts also believe rebel arsenals possess rockets with gas-filled warheads.

    America claims over 1400 people were killed in the incident. However, the France-based medical NGO, whose doctors were on the ground, estimates fatalities at 350. The discrepancy is too large to ignore.

    American political leaders have stood before the world claiming the evidence against Assad is “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Yet, the American intelligence community is divided because there are many shadows and even more doubts. Some believe Assad is the culprit. Yet, some analysts working in the American government believe their own clandestine agency, in league with the rebels and other dark operatives, concocted the incident to pull America into the conflict. Yet, corporate media has boycotted this jarring news because it does not fit their thematic narrative and the rush to war against Syria.

    Last week, a group of retired intelligence officers, Veteran Intelligence Officers for Sanity (VIPS) sent President Obama a disquieting memorandum. The missive’s dozen signatories warned the President not to embark on war based on dubious conclusions founded on incomplete evidence. VIPS members claimed contact with intelligence analysts still in government employ. These analysts have informed VIPS that the preponderant evidence points to a conclusion contrary to the one dominating the airwaves. The memo mentions a subtle but important point the laymen would overlook. The non-classified document the American government published to defend its push for military action was released by the White House and not an intelligence agency. This is not standard procedure. The deviation is because the American intelligence community is strongly divided on the matter. Thus, the White House made a political decision against Assad but that decision might not accord with the true facts.

    The memo also reveals a secret meeting in Turkey on August 13-14, the week before the fateful incident. The meeting was attended by American, Israeli, Saudi and Turkish clandestine officers as well as by rebel leaders. Allegedly, the rebels were told they would soon benefit from a massive influx of weapons and war materiel. There was talk of a mysterious event that would soon occur in Syria, bringing America actively into the war.

    If this report is true, the intelligence agents at the meeting apparently are as gifted in prophecy as they are in dark operations. The simpler explanation is that they could forecast this peculiar future event because they were its authors.

    The VIPS memo is not to be summarily dismissed. VIPS wrote a similar memo to President Bush cautioning against the dash to war in Iraq based on dissimulation. Bush ignored the advice. He was wrong. VIPS was right. Ten years later, Iraqi is mess. Perhaps the most strategic military blunder of the last fifty years, the primary result of the war has been to turn Iraq into a client of Iran. Rarely has a nation so unnecessarily and unwisely expended so much just to benefit a mortal foe.

    If media houses were objective, they would report the VIPS memo. They would investigate the claimed divergence within the intelligence community and the secret meeting in Turkey where intelligence agents demonstrated a remarkable clairvoyance. However, corporate media has buried these and other reports that don’t mesh with the yarn they want to spin. As such, they act not as objective news outlets but as instruments of government. They are the private sector equivalent of a ministry of information.

    In the end, Assad may have committed this atrocity. However, the evidence is not as convincing as portrayed. There is substantial evidence pointing in the other direction. Yet, global corporate media has no stomach to show us things that may lead to independent thought and weighing of complex facts. Instead, they show us videos that may be staged in whole or part. Then point and keep pointing an accusatory finger at the sinister figure we all love to abhor. This rouses emotions yet dulls the mind. They manipulate our decency and humanity to make us feel Assad must be punished in the worse way. We have been manipulated into a subtle trap where our emotions work against our mind.

    Another important lesson is that we must adjust our perspectives of America. It is a great nation but one with a government handicapped by narrow-minded, often banal politicians. The current crop of leaders is so much less than the nation they lead. Statesmen are few; political journeymen abound. Ambition is more abundant than wisdom. We are used to looking at a nation’s leaders as a symbolizing the nation’s greatness. This is no longer the case in America. Collectively, the nation’s leaders are the most ineffectual group since the Vietnam War. They do not represent greatness’s continuity. They prove greatness is not guaranteed even to the high and mighty. It is a rarity to be nurtured and cultivated, not a commodity to be purchased at auction by the highest bidder.

    America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. However, this week’s events affirm that those controlling the American helm are not the wisest of statesmen. Thus far, only one American looks wise, almost prescient, in this matter: Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State had the presence of mind to refuse a second term as the nation’s top diplomat. She jumped ship before it ran aground amid a storm much of its captain’s own making. She did not foresee the approaching squall. In fact, her diplomacy or lack of it contributed to the desultory course the American ship has meandered. However, the consummate political survivor if not an astute diplomat, Clinton exited office unscathed if not free of culpability. At times, it is better to be the recipient of good fortune than it is to be skilled.

    Her successor John Kerry will not be as lucky. His name forever shall be tarnished by his bombast and inconsistency during this complex international crisis. A diplomat’s inherent responsibility is to tongue and measure his words. Kerry evidently misread that section of the diplomat’s handbook. Here is a man who measures his word by how far he can sling them, not by how closely he holds them to his chest or limit them to their precise meaning. America has selected as its head statesman a person who splashes words about like an avant-garde artist does paint. In the average man, the consequence of this condition is his alone to bear. In a diplomat, the condition portends trouble for his nation. In the primary American diplomat, such a condition causes the world to shudder for it could bring us all close to the lips of steep crisis that need not be.

    Thus, we had the spectacle of Kerry attempting to be two men at once. Responding to questions about the efficacy of America’s intended strike, Kerry said the attack would be sufficient enough to degrade Assad’s capabilities and deter future chemical weapons use. Responding to those wary of America entering headlong yet into another war, Kerry promised the threatened strike would be “incredibly small.” The statements reveal a man who responds to the moment not a person with an intimate relationship with veracity. Both statements can be false but both can’t be true.

    This is the rustling of an awkward but powerful man trying to thread the delicate needle. However, he is abjectly ignorant the needle can only be coursed by wise, truthful policy. Instead of navigating the narrow channel with truth, he has tried to thread the needle with two plumb lies. The man was making a grand mess of this affair.

    Fate sometimes smiles on those who don’t deserve its benevolence. It has come to Kerry’s rescue in the nick of time. During a press conference, Kerry blurted Assad could avert the military strike if he relinquished the chemical weapons. Kerry meant the statement as a lark. The Russians seized his unguarded utterance as a basis for a new policy, thus corralling the American war machine by the words of its very own public embassy.

    As I write, American military action has been forestalled by the Russian initiative that Syria quit its chemical arsenal. The outline of an agreement between Russia and America has been reached. Syria will hand over its chemical weapons and America will sheathe its sword. If the deal works, Syria will still be at war with itself but the world will be safer. The possibility of the conflict growing will be forestalled for the moment.

    The reluctant warmonger, President Obama, will get a fortunate reprieve from lunging into war as did his predecessor. John Kerry can return to re-reading the diplomat’s handbook or a work on the finer points of circumlocution. Meanwhile, a formal KGB agent and hatchet man will emerge as the man who out maneuvered America’s best and brightest. While Russian President Putin acted in his national interests and not for any utilitarian motive, he has been the peacemaker. On the other hand, America claims a humanitarian motive for its incessant talk of war. On this occasion, American leaders slipped on their own arrogant inconsistency and the Russians took advantage this clumsiness to outwit them with their own words, thus averting a broadening tempest. Putin is far from an angel; he is the quintessential anti-hero but what he has done is to counterbalance the American government’s militarism.

    In the end, the cold-blooded Russian prevented the American Nobel Peace Prize winner from attacking a nation that posed no threat to his. This is the elemental truth of the matter. This is true news because it shows a steady reshaping of the global configuration and roles of nations. America has been too quick to pounce on nations it considers its enemies. Wisdom dictates one should not war with all those whom you dislike. It makes for a rather dangerous neighborhood and an unsettled world. Hopefully, America has learned this lesson. Sadly, the lesson the American government will likely glean is not this pacific one. The American war machine bristles at being stalled. The next time it will leap faster to the attack. The world may have dodged great danger this time but danger shall return and the warmongers will be poised to take quicker advantage of it. And that is the real news!

     

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  • Blame not Jonathan

    Proverbs in African culture speak louder and clearer than a thousand words. Among the Yoruba, it is often said that if a household is peaceful, the illegitimate child there has not reached adulthood.

    You may wish to interpret this proverb the way you like after reading this piece.

    Since the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election widely acknowledged to be the freest and fairest in the history of general elections in Nigeria by the then military rulers in 1994, the Lagos State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) had set aside June 12 of every year to commemorate this historic day that Nigeria’s democracy came of age with the jettisoning of ethnic and religious politics that had always impeded our development as a people and a nation. The day is always marked with a lecture among all other activities.

    The 2013 edition was not different and I could recall listening to the guest speaker, Comrade Frank Ovie Kokori, the General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG) during that period in our history when Nigerians fought the military not only to restore our democracy but also to revalidate the mandate given to late Chief MKO Abiola in that election as Nigeria’s president-elect.

    Needles to recall here the heroic role played by NUPENG, Kokori and other pro-democracy groups and activists in the struggle that eventually culminated in what we have today, in Nigeria, as democracy.

    At the event also were Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State and erudite lawyer and activist, Chief Femi Falana (SAN). One after the other, they all lamented and expressed regrets that most of the major actors that fought and drove the military out of power in Nigeria then were nowhere to be found at the outset of this democracy in 1999, hence the problems besetting our democracy now.

    Before the politicians hijacked the struggle around 1998/99, the battle against the military junta and restoration of democracy was largely being fought by the activists working together with the Nigerian Press. When the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) came it was heralded across the land as the vehicle to rescue Nigeria from the military usurpers of power. Among the signatories to its declaration that included revered statesmen were some journalists including then rookie editor Labaran Maku. Yes, you guessed right, Labaran Maku, Nigeria’s current Information Minister.

    But because the “boys” so to speak were cruising home to victory in the battle to save Nigeria, the “big boys” had to step in and the politicians hijacked the process. In came second republic vice president Alex Ekwueme and some of his colleagues in that era including founding chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Solomon Lar. The G-57, a seemingly pan-Nigerian group, the mid-wife that gave birth to the PDP also sprung up with Ekwueme as the leading light, of course with former military president Ibrahim Babangida and his likes pulling the strings at the background.

    Virtually all the activists and the other patriots in the media, save a few, who actually fought the battle retreated to the background maintaining a puritanical stance, insisting on the military convoking a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) before participating in the emerging democratic process. That was the opportunity the politicians and some apologists of military rule were waiting for and they seized it with both hands. That was an opportunity missed by the pro-democracy groups and activists to shape the future of this country in their own image so to speak; to mould a better democratic future for Nigeria.

    This was the opportunity that Osoba and Falana were rueing at that June 12 lecture. They lamented not listening to the advice of former South African president Thabo Mbeki who came with a message then from then President Nelson Mandela to the pro-democracy camp in Nigeria not to boycott the emerging democratic process. They half listened.  They even ignored the time tested admonition of late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo against election boycott. Those old men; they stubbornly stuck to their guns allowing the political opportunists backed by their retiring or retired military rulers to take centre stage. Only a few, especially the younger ones among them shunned the boycott advice and embraced the then emerging democratic process. The rest as they say is history.

    But then with the seeming ‘A’ list of those that fought the military to surrender government to civilians sitting on the fence, what did we have?  The hijack of the process by those who sold their conscience to the military for a mere pot of porridge. Those that betrayed the people’s mandate of June 12, 1993. Reaping where they had not sowed, these people came together under an umbrella called the People’s Democratic Party and took over virtually everything, especially at the centre.

    Give it to them, the Chief Tony Aninihs of this world; they knew what they wanted and how to go about it.  They are veterans. They quickly sew together a pan-Nigeria coalition and easily grabbed power from the departing soldiers. They have since monopolized it to their advantage and almost total exclusion of the generality of Nigerians.

    But because their sole motivation was to grab power, they had no plan of how to use it to serve the interest of the majority hence Nigeria under their watch has been taking one step forward and two steps backward. Now there past is beginning to haunt them as Nigeria slip from one crisis to another as they bicker over who becomes Nigeria’s president in 2015.

    The house they thought they were building in 1999 when they dragged recently released from prison and hurriedly pardoned Olusegun Obasanjo into the presidential race and handed the presidency on a platter, is now crumbling. Obasanjo we now know was a mistake, even though not a few, especially those that fought the military for this democracy, warned then that the former military ruler was not the best to lead Nigeria into democracy in 1999. Now they have been proved right.

    But one would have expected that having discovered the mistake in the making of the Obasanjo presidency the PDP would think Nigeria before installing his successor, but no. In their greed to hold on to power they brought a dying man and paired him with another who didn’t and still doesn’t seem to know his left from right into the presidency in 2007.

    The story of the Yar’adua/Jonathan presidency we all know. It was one of those reluctant presidencies that Nigeria has been producing since independence. But if there had been relative peace with this kind of leadership since October 1, 1960, that ‘peace’ is about to be shattered now as that child, remember, the one I mentioned earlier, seems to have reached adulthood.

    The deception called PDP is unraveling and disintegrating now before our eyes not only because of President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 second term ambition, but also because the party was built on falsehood. And as the Yoruba would say, any house built with spittle would be demolished by dew.

    The founders of PDP never fought for this democracy and they and their party deserve what is happening to them now. And they deserve to be punished by Nigerians at the polls next time for reaping where they had not sowed. There is no way they would get it right because they are not deserving of the power they are holding. If they had fought for and earned the right to our presidency, they wouldn’t have punished us with an egomaniac as president in 1999, an infirm as our leader in 2007 and a colourless, clueless and dangerous man obsessed with power as president 2011.

    Those who brought him, first with Yar’Adua in 2007 and as the lead candidate in 2011 deserve what they are getting now. Don’t cry for them, but cry for Nigeria. Do we deserve a Jonathan and what PDP is doing to us now? I don’t know. But don’t blame the man, blame those that brought him. As the saying goes you can’t give what you don’t have. The man has given everything he has and capable of, but regrettably, his best doesn’t appear good enough for Nigeria. That is what you get when you promote someone beyond the level of his/her competence. Jonathan wanted to remain a governor, you promoted Vice President and mother luck made him President. And now he can’t live up to that office. What else do you expect?

    And with the handwriting clearly on the wall, the man, like the Biblical Samson, wants to bring down the roof on his/our head(s). God forbid. Nigeria will not die. PDP can disintegrate. Nothing spoil.

  • G-20 summit: More questions than answers

    G-20 summit: More questions than answers

    The St. Petersburg G-20 summit will be recorded as one of the recent history’s most important non-events. Nothing happened at the summit which is par for these gatherings. But the diplomatic context of this summit was material different than most others. President Obama needed action at the summit to halt the quickening erosion of his domestic and international standing precipitated by his awkward Syrian policy and his increasingly incoherent rationale for that policy. President Obama came to the fine old city hoping to gain the endorsement of most summiteers. He fell short of that aim.

    The summit took place in the most inauspicious venue possible for the American. Summit host and Russian President Putin has been the most vociferous international opponent of America’s Syria policy calling for military action against the Assad government for purported misuse of chemical weapons. Breaking normal diplomatic etiquette by calling America’s top diplomat Secretary of State Kerry “a liar,” Putin declared the rebels, aided by foreign clandestine agencies, deployed the chemical weapons so that America and other western nations would blame Assad. Putin claimed it insane for Assad, who had gained a decisive strategic advantage in the war, to use chemical weapons. Assad surely knew deployment of said weapons could bring American involvement in a way tipping the balance of war against Assad. It was more probable the despairing rebels, losing ground by the day, concocted this situation to give America a colorable pretext to intervene, literally saving the rebels at the final moment of the eleventh hour, according to Putin. As evidence of his position, Putin pointed to the UN report attributing a prior incidence of chemical weapons use to the rebels.

    Despite the usual primacy of economics at such gatherings, this summit’s climax came when participants discussed Syria. President Obama stated his case as did Putin. President Obama sought to isolate Putin in his own house. It did not happen. Summiteers divided also equally between those supporting Obama and those holding closer to Putin. America and the richest western nations craved military action. Russian and the more populous nations rejected a forceful strike against Assad.

    The same dichotomy has been paralleled in American politics. The elite Washington-New York axis of political and financial power lusts for martial action as if addicted to war. Most ordinary Americans bitterly oppose war action in Syria as if tired of it.

    In his post-summit press conference, Putin barely concealed gloating over the turn of the summit. He talked with the roguish look of a burglar who barely absconded with the purloined booty the moment before the detectives could apprehend him. In front of the world, he had withheld something the most powerful man in the world dearly wanted. In most cases, a thief is morally and legally in the wrong. With allegations about Assad’s government culpability still unproven and with the wisdom of aerial bombardment less than certain, it remains an open question whether the thief is right this time. If this is one of those rare occasions where the thief is right, Putin might have saved the world from a nasty turn expanding the Syrian civil war into a regional conflagration or worse.

    In his press conference, President Obama looked tired, somehow appearing diminished yet swollen at the same moment. Clearly, he had been stung by the considerable domestic and international rejection of his Syria policy. He assumed he could convince the world of the rightness of his dubious cause by virtue of his eloquence and by basing his war appeal on humanitarian grounds. He has been taken aback by his failure to garner support despite the intense, high-priced public relations campaign mounted by Western governments and their agents, the largest global corporate media houses such as CNN and BBC.

    Even critics of President Obama must feel a certain sympathy for him. Before the world, stood a man stewing in a cauldron of his own design or, at least, one designed by the vested, penumbral interests he so faithfully has served. He struggled to construct persuasive arguments much like a drowning man clutching at straws, hoping the harder he clutched the straw might turn into the rope that could save him.

    He argued Assad’s purported recourse to chemical weapons was a dire breach of international law, warranting a martial reply. The assertion contradicts the predominant weight of international law. Chemical weapons use constitutes a breach but the breach is not the only pertinent legal factor. In its rush to action, the American government now behaves as if the weapons abuse is the only factor worthy of consideration. Fixated on punishing the terrible Assad, America caricatures the world as if it is based solely on one legal norm. That single norm, if viewed in isolation, would neatly place Assad on the scaffold constructed by America.

    However, the world is a complexity where almost nothing can be assessed in isolation. The prohibition against chemical weapons must be read in consonance with the larger body of international law. Here, America runs afoul of the very corpus of international law it purports to protect. There are tenets of international law more established and more central to the conduct of global affairs than the chemical weapons prohibition. First, the most well established principle in international law is the restriction against interference in the internal affairs of another nation. Second, nations are disallowed from unilaterally using force against another state except in valid self defense. Third, where the law of self-defense is inapplicable, military action must be sanctioned by the United Nations.

    America can’t claim self-defense; Syria poses less of the threat to it than America does to Syria. Under established law, America has no right to attack Syrian unless approved by the world body. Reading the prohibition against chemical weapons in harmony with other legal principles leads to one conclusion. To punish Syria’s purported use of chemical weapons, America can only unilaterally impose sanctions short of military action. If it seeks to legally apply a military sanction, America must gain approval from the global organization. However, since the world body rejects America’s position, America has decided to ignore canons of international law that America had previously authored in order to superimpose this presently favored legal precept over the entire body of international law. Because it believes Assad’s government has breached the law, America believes it has the right to distort that law for its own purposes. As such, both regimes are outlaws albeit committing somewhat different crimes.

    President Obama opined that other despots will rush to deploy illicit weapons if Assad is not quickly punished. This position is nothing but dangerous conjecture clothed as statecraft. America winked when Saddam Hussein used deadly gas against Iran and against portions of Iraq’s population in the 1980’s. The rest of that unfortunately large club of despots did not rush to deploy such weapons. If the evildoers did not break the door to deploy chemical weapons at a time when America seemed to approve their use why would they now do so when America now seems hell-bent in opposition?

    Despite the American political elite’s attempts to shape global opinion by depicting its enemies as evil incarnate, these enemy states have been more circumspect in the large-scale use of military power than has been the American government. Even the most wanton leaders do not frequently embark on large-scale military operations against their populations or against other nations. They would rather maintain power by employing the more mundane, daily tools of repression. Such tactics are less expensive and less of a gamble than massive endeavors that might backfire, squandering their regimes and lives.

    Sadly, President Obama has become too slick. The danger in becoming too well-versed in the arts of verbal fabrication is that the accomplished hypocrite becomes the last person to recognize his cover has been blown. During his press conference, President Obama likened the chemical weapons incident to the Rwandan genocide. Twice, he criticized that the world watched idly as Rwanda turned itself crimson. Shame on any American leader for drawing this analogy. Either America’s present crop of leaders is ignorant of recent history or they believe the world has a grave memory deficiency. During the Rwandan carnage, much of the world wanted to act in concert to halt the slide. The UN was poised to do more. It was President Obama’s political mentor, Bill Clinton, who made sure the UN remained passive. Clinton did not want to bear the domestic political costs of UN involvement in Rwanda. In that instance, the world did not prevent America from taking morally and legally responsible action. It was America that prevented a unified world from doing the right thing. Attempting to justify an illegal strike against Syria, America no tries to whitewash its sad history of tolerating inhumane atrocities where America has no economic or political interests in thwarting the nightmare.

    Further trying to justify his position yet absolve himself of personal responsibility, Obama had the temerity to claim he never said Assad government use of chemical weapons was a “red line” for him which if crossed would cause him to respond with muscle. Now, Obama’s tune is that the world community, America and the American congress drew this line and everyone’s credibility is at stake if no response is had. Someone should do him the favor for replaying his prior statement to him. He would quickly drop this revisionary tact as few leaders have publicly assumed such personal responsibility for a matter outside the ken if his country’s vital strategic interests.

    Sadly, Obama has gone so far as to assert, because of this fictional red line, America’s credibility and thus national security has been placed at risk. This argument diminishes the man’s personal stature and that of his office. Clearly, the localized use of chemical weapons in a suburb of distant Syria is not an imminent national security threat to America. In fact, Obama undermined his own argument in the same press conference by later saying the world would have forgotten about this issue had not his Administration pressed it to the forefront. If the issue was so compelling and important, his government would not have had to work to keep it newsworthy. In other words, Obama admitted that his government has overinflated a serious local issue to become one of artificial global importance. As tragic as the lethal incident was, it is equally troubling for the most powerful man in the world to say the death of 1000 people in a distant civil war constitutes a grave threat to his nation’s security and, in fact, global security. In that case, every war no matter where is a matter of grave national security for America. In that case, America should commit half of its military to single-handedly resolve the civil war in the Congo which has consumed the lives of over 5 million Africans. However, America remains opposed to funding a sufficiently robust international peacekeeping force to resolve that perennial crisis.

    Fortunately, most Americans and much of the world remain unconvinced by the hasty presidential expostulations. Opinion polls reveal the overwhelming majority of Americans regardless of race and party oppose unilateral action in Syria. Congress seems in lockstep with public opinion. President Obama has asked Congress to approve his desire to attack Syria. Unless the beneficiary of a political miracle, President Obama will suffer a dramatic, wholly unnecessary setback when the majority of congressional Republicans and a large minority of Democrats vote down his war request.

    This is the second week I have dedicated this column to the Syrian crisis. I have done so for two reasons. First, if handled imprudently, what is essentially a local civil war can transmogrify into something larger, more sinister, and much more dangerous. Second, I am concerned about how easily our people are taken by western media and propaganda. Nigeria and Africa will never develop as they ought unless we can think more independently and objectively. If our collective mind is so easily moved in the direction determined by the western press and the vested interests the western media represents, we are sunk.

    Last week, I received emotional comments that America was justified to seek retribution because of the civilian deaths caused by the incident. People just wanted to strike out emotionally, indiscriminately. These people uncritically swallowed that Assad’s government committed the crime. That allegation may eventually prove true. For now, it remains unproven. Thus, there should be no haste in action. In fact, the purported intelligence President Obama and his officials deem so convincing has been unable to persuade America’s own Congress.

    Moreover, Russian President Putin has released his own report implicating the rebels and anti-Assad foreign intelligence agencies. General Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff has implicated Israeli. An Associated Press reporter wrote a compelling piece wherein he interviewed people on the ground in the affected Damascus suburb. Rebel fighters and relatives rebels were interviewed. Although this area is in rebel control, the rebels and others admitted that the chemical weapons were in the possession of rebel factions financed by outside intelligence agencies. These agencies supplied the weapons which were inadvertently ignited by negligent mishandling by the rebels during an untimely conventional artillery shelling of the area by Assad’s forces. Why aren’t these reports being seen and considered as credible as the ones America backs? These and like reports never are revealed by the western media because that media’s primary mandate is not to present all or objective news but to project a subjective viewpoint promoting the interests of the vast powers behind the throne.

    For the second time in less than ten years, those entrenched powerful interests have enticed the most visible, influential Black American political figure to stand before the world to promote needless war or military action. Wanting so much to belong to the global elite, both Black men chomped the bait and got hooked. First, Colin Powell lied to the world for his masters. His reward was to lose his reputation and later to be dismissed from his post. Failing to learn the lesson, Obama has allowed the puppeteers to dance him before the world, placing false arguments for false war in his mouth. This episode will likely diminish him permanently. If he attacks Syria, the world will conclude that his Nobel Peace Prize was improperly given. He will join the ranks of American warmongers no different than those of Bush Administration infamy. If he fails to carry out the attack, the entrenched interests will turn their vast wealth and media against him. They shall whittle him down before our eyes. It shall be a painful thing to watch. Again, those Black leaders who seek personal gain by giving faithful, blind obeisance to established interests move smoothly along at first. However, the powers will ultimately ask the Black leader to sacrifice himself because they don’t want that leader to become an independent force. Thus far, Black leaders have sacrificed themselves for interests not their own. As it is with individual Black American leaders so it has been with Black African nations. When shall we ever learn?

     

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  • Arming ‘Civilian JTF’? Nothing can be sillier

    If not checked on time, the silly campaign to arm the ragtag militia formed by young, unarmed civilians in the Northeast to fight the Boko Haram Islamic sect could reach a crescendo and even persuade this sometimes brash government to accede to the request. Already, the Civilian JTF receives military escorts to conduct operations against members of the sect. It has achieved some notable successes, and there is hope in government and military circles that it could do much more if encouraged. For very sound reasons, I have never supported militias anywhere. I am unlikely to do so even now.

    It is bad enough that the Civilian JTF is receiving military help to conduct police operations, itself an admission of frustration by the military and a late concession to what many of us had argued was unproven allegations of large-scale support by the Northeast people for the violent sect. But to now suggest, as Mike Okiro, former Inspector General of Police and current Chairman of the Police Service Commission, does that the vigilantes be armed and kitted and placed under local police commanders is both derisory and irresponsible.

    The presence of the vigilantes is a reflection of the failure or inadequacy of the country’s security system. Mr Okiro opposes state police, but his call for the arming of the vigilantes and their placement under local police commanders is nothing but a call for the decentralisation of the police. Moreover, with all the training and discipline soldiers and policemen have received, they have sometimes worryingly displayed unmitigated cruelty and carried out extra-judicial killings. How would the country fare under armed and recognised vigilantes? In light of the activities of Niger Delta militants, openly repentant or surreptitiously active, and the Rwandan and Bosnian wars, could the Northeast vigilantes ever be successfully demobilised after the insurrection had ended?

    The Northeast Civilian JTF has no doubt proven their patriotism, even displaying unusual and remarkable courage under fire, and from ongoing military investigations, might have been betrayed once or twice. I applaud their courage; but I oppose the involvement of militias of any kind in security operations. Their involvement may thrill security men now, but it is a short-sighted thrill. It will boomerang in the long run. Surely we are not so bereft of deep thinking and of carefully working our way through crisis as to become enamoured of quick fixes and dangerously flawed solutions.

    What the Northeast revolt tells us is not just how inadequate our economic management is, but how anachronistic our security system has become. The revolt invites us to embark on urgent radical and comprehensive restructuring of the country; but we prefer to tinker. As the country’s leaders continue to dither, let us hope the day will not come when circumstances and other unforeseen dynamics would take the initiative from us and imperil our existence.

  • Humpty Dumpty falls at last

    Humpty Dumpty falls at last

    ‘New PDP’: Old things have passed away? I’m afraid, not necessarily 

    Wikipedia defines an umbrella as “a canopy designed to protect against rain or sunlight”. So, when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chose an umbrella as its symbol, the expectation is that come rain, come shine, Nigerians will be covered. And, with the emergence of the party as the ruling party in 1999, there were great expectations of an all-round protection from the party. Unfortunately, what Nigerians have been reaping is a bundle of disappointments. The optimism that greeted the return to civil rule on May 29, 1999 has given way to general discontentment. Things have been that bad; and there is no doubt that it can only get worse if Nigeria is left in the hands of the PDP beyond the expiration of President Goodluck Jonathan’s term in 2015.

    That was why Nigerians leapt for joy when on August 31, the party broke into two. It was an implosion foretold. On that day at its special convention in Abuja, some prominent members of the party pulled out of the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP to form what they called ‘New PDP.’

    Alhaji Abubakar Kawo Baraje, a former acting national chairman of the party is now the national chairman of the ‘new PDP’.  Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former national secretary of the party was named as its national secretary and Dr Sam Sam Jaja as deputy national chairman.

    Other leaders of the ‘New PDP’ are former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Governors Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (Kano), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), and Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto). Others are Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Babangida Aliyu (Niger) and Abdulfatai Ahmed (Kwara). Before the break-up, many of the members had been complaining about Alhaji Tukur’s leadership style, but President Goodluck Jonathan seemed not ready to do away with him. It was therefore imminent that a division was inevitable.If, therefore, there was any surprise about the party, it was that it could trudge this long before collapsing.

    For 14 years, there is nothing the PDP can point at as its achievement. It met Nigerians in darkness; it has not taken them out of it. All we hear is about the Federal Executive Council awarding contracts for this or that project; Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of such massive award of projects. Early last week, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, cried aloud about the worsening unemployment situation in the country.

    If President Jonathan did not know before August 31 that his presidency was standing on shifting sand, and if he is yet to acknowledge that fact even now, then he must be naïve indeed. It was clear that the way he is running his presidency; it is only a matter of time for the party to implode. His handling of the Rivers State crisis, where even ‘Oga madam’ wanted to drive a democratically elected governor out of town, was a thing that could only have been any other ‘politics’ in the queer ‘family’ called the PDP.

    I may be wrong; but something tells me that the break-up became inevitable partly because those behind it have read the handwriting on the wall and have seen that more Nigerians are disenchanted with the party. The implication is that there would be less pork to share after 2015; so, why not jump ship before it is too late? Unfortunately, Alhaji Tukur, with whom the president appeared to have covenanted not to separate, has not been helping matters. He appears not to understand the gravity of what has hit the party under his chairmanship. He is still threatening the arrow-heads of the ‘new PDP’, a thing which tells me that he is in no way about shedding his village headmaster toga.

    Yes, I am opposed to zoning; but no top shot of the PDP can say the same thing because they all know (if they want to be honest with themselves) that zoning is very much alive in their party. But former President Olusegun Obasanjo unilaterally ‘killed’ zoning just to satisfy one ambition: install Jonathan as president. The PDP had engaged in such dishonesties in the past without being bothered, in so far as it was convenient for the party. To the ruling party, everything is ‘politics’. Or, to use their catchphrase, it is a ‘family affair’. So much water had passed under this bridge of ‘family affair’ that the party, and by extension, many Nigerians, no longer know the difference between good and bad.

    Even when one of the party’s elders, former President Obasanjo went to the homes of the party’s top shots and ate pounded yam and egusi soup, or when he danced with them today only to get them removed from office the next day, we all see it as ‘politics’ because our psyche has been so conditioned.

    All these actions worsen the plight of a people who only about 14 years ago were freed from the jackboots. The many lessons that they were supposed to have learnt from the transition to civil rule were never learnt; as a matter of fact, they were never taught because the ruling party that is supposed to teach those lessons itself lacked the capacity. The party cannot give what it does not have.

    But only the enemies of Nigeria would weep for the PDP. What has happened is that the party has merely paid itself back in its own coin. It was a question of what goes around, comes around. The party led the way to balkanisation of some other structures by creating parallel ones. We have the PDP Governors Forum which it encouraged to spite the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) and reduce the influence of its chairman, Gov Amaechi. When this did not achieve the desired result, the party (presidency and all) infiltrated the NGF and attempted to break its ranks by sponsoring Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State to run against Amaechi for the NGF chair. In spite of the federal might, Amaechi defeated Jang by 19 votes to 16. It was obvious the Jonah faction characteristically slept off during the election, as it eventually claimed to have won after waking up from its deep slumber. It is instructive to remind Nigerians that the Presidency gave the loser a winner’s welcome!

    Honestly, I do not know how far the party’s elders can go now, when things appear to have been damaged irredeemably. If the elders had cautioned Alhaji Tukur before and he did not listen, then, they should leave him and his boss to their fate because that is what you do to a child that is behaving like a dog that wants to get lost. But if the elders kept quiet all through, either because of the spoils they are getting from the government or for whatever reason, then, we have to question their kind of elders.

    The point however is, even if the breakaway faction reunites with the old tomorrow, it can never be the same again. The camaraderie is gone with the winds because, as we say in Yorubaland, two people can no longer be friends after taking themselves to court. What has happened in and to the PDP is worse than people going to court. An umbrella is supposed to provide cover for people in rain or sunshine. This is a big irony with the PDP because the umbrella, its symbol, has exposed Nigerians to everything that it is supposed to protect them against. This is the disconnect between dreams and deeds; the tragedy of the big-for-nothing ‘largest party in Africa’. But nothing I have said here should be misconstrued as a celebration of the ‘new PDP’, as old things may not yet have passed away. However, the way the opposition parties react to this great fall will determine, to a large extent, how much of the spoils from the PDP crash they will get in the coming elections.