The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Kindergarten insult in humourless Aso Villa

    Kindergarten insult in humourless Aso Villa

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s media adviser, Reuben Abati, is not sure whether to categorise the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman’s memorable putdown of the president’s leadership style as libellous and defamatory or as indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations. Whatever it is, the APC chairman, Bisi Akande, obviously ruffled the feathers of the presidency when he dismissed Dr Jonathan’s style, perhaps even the president himself, as kindergarten in grappling with national issues and problems. Dr Abati’s fiery and florid rebuke of Chief Akande, for reasons only the press can explain, received even wider publicity than the original attack, now famously dubbed the ‘kindergarten insult.’

    It is not known whether Dr Abati initiated the reply to Chief Akande on his own or whether he was prompted by the president. If the former, it is a depressing indication that the normally urbane and cultured media adviser has become infected with the melancholy permeating the humourless Nigerian presidency since the unsmiling and sensual Gen Sani Abacha took the reins of power, after an annoying hiatus, from the deceptively friendly Gen Ibrahim Babangida’s military presidency. But if the latter, it is a mere confirmation that redeeming Aso Villa’s deeply ingrained humourlessness may be an impossible mission. A smart president would have punned kindergarten and deployed it against Chief Akande.

    The APC chairman had two Saturdays ago described the Jonathan presidency in the following words: “I have my reasons not to admire President Goodluck Jonathan. I have not found him to be a serious-minded leader. Jonathan is Nigeria’s problem today. He is not a thinking leader. I have had two meetings with him since 2011. I have had a long telephone conversation with him. I have written him twice discussing the serious challenges facing the country, but he has not found the courtesy to reply. He has reduced governance to kindergarten level. He is not serious-minded.” It takes exceptional literary skills to turn this fairly harmless, albeit wounding, but descriptively accurate statement into a denigration of the Jonathan presidency. And the accomplished Dr Abati, as everyone knows, has more than a passing knowledge of literary facilities.

    Hear Dr Abati: “We urge Chief Akande and his fellow travellers to remember that there are laws against libel and defamation of character in this country even if there are no legal impediments to indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations. It is certainly rude, ill-mannered, uncharitable and hypocritical for Chief Akande to falsely and cavalierly allege that a President, who toils tirelessly every day of the week, evolving and implementing workable solutions to Nigeria’s problems, is handling national issues with levity. Also, nothing else but gross ignorance and lack of consideration could have led Chief Akande to refer to a President who, having served as deputy governor, governor, vice-president and president, has far more experience of governance at the highest level than him and his preferred “candidates”, as a kindergarten leader.”

    Dr Abati was not only a respected columnist, he was a leader writer and, if I am not mistaken, at one time a teacher of literature. He knows very well that describing a president’s style as kindergarten, while it may injure his pride and the collective pride of those paid to advise him, is certainly not unpatriotic, let alone amount to denigration. I could prove over a few paragraphs that Dr Jonathan’s style has truly reduced governance to kindergarten level, but why do I want to repeat Chief Akande or expose myself unnecessarily to allegations of defending the APC? I think it is sufficient to merely restate the indisputable fact that the Jonathan presidency has not offered a cerebral approach to Nigeria’s problems, just as Chief Akande poignantly concluded.

    Dr Jonathan is perhaps hard-working, as his media adviser said, and may even be toiling day and night to look after the welfare of Nigerians. The problem, however, is that his exertions, like Olusegun Obasnjo’s before him, have been altogether futile when not misplaced, and vainglorious when it manages a modicum of relevance. I recognise that in the face of the predatory invasion of his turf by the less scrupulous and more voluble Dr Doyin Okupe, a presidential assistant, Dr Abati has an increasing need to justify his relevance, if not his pay. But as a former columnist, and a brilliant one I dare say, Dr Abati ought to have his eye on history. He has the greater burden of sustaining the character of a fine writer and analyst, and the morality of one who has tried over the years as a leader writer to build himself into an agent of social change. Already, however, he has flip-flopped so precariously on account of his responsibility as a presidential adviser that neither he nor our long-suffering selves can recognise where he once stood, or understand where he now stands. He has purged himself of virtually every conviction in the service of a vacillating and equally unconvincing president that he would be lucky to recognise his own face in the mirror after he leaves the president’s employ.

    To the critical question of whether Chief Akande’s remarks constituted an insult or, as Dr Abati unabashedly and exaggeratedly put it, amounted to a denigration of the presidency, surely he has read wide enough to know that comparing the Jonathan style to kindergarten is tame in the extreme. It is obvious that in these parts, many unlettered and untraveled people regard the presidency as a sacred institution, and fawn over it with the impressionable boyishness of a primary school pupil. What if Chief Akande had described the Jonathan presidency as inept, a remark that would have been both appropriate and accurate? Dr Abati cites the president’s anti-insurgency efforts as remarkable and gutsy. Absolute nonsense. What was the president looking at as the insurgents raised their flags from one local government to another until they got to 10?

    But much more crucially, and in spite of our cultural sensibilities, I think that not only was Chief Akande mature and restrained in his ‘kindergarten insult’, Nigerians have indeed been extremely tolerant of their leaders’ indolence and ineffectiveness. This column is of course an exception. Palladium may not describe Dr Jonathan as kindergarten, or denounce him as inept, but he has used enough words and left no one in doubt, idiom by idiom and word for word, that Dr Jonathan’s puny talents are completely unsuited to a modern government, and that he himself is evidently anachronistic. Would Dr Abati consider me uncouth? What would he say then of the Chicago Times which deprecated Abraham Lincoln’s now oft-quoted Gettysburg address in the following terms?: “We did not conceive it possible that even Mr Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself. He has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it, mediocrity is superb.”

    What umbrage would Dr Abati take if he had been media adviser to former United States president Warren Harding when journalist H.L. Mencken described him unflatteringly as follows?: “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and tumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”

    Or what would he say to e.e. cummings’ description of the same president as “…the only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.” With what exuberant phrases would Dr Abati denounce Benjamin Disraeli’s notable putdown of former British prime minister Robert Peel as someone whose smile is like the silver fittings on a coffin? What of Winston Churchill’s description of Lloyd George as “The Happy Warrior of Squandermania”; Clement Atlee as “A modest little man with much to be modest about”; and Aneurin Bevan as “someone who will be as a great curse to this country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war”?

    Contrary to what Dr Abati thinks, I observe that we have been exceedingly charitable to our leaders. While it is true that there are many ways to skin a cat, politicians and writers have a responsibility, in spite of the gruffness and menaces of the Okupes and Abatis, not to so inoculate their phrases as to become ineffective in accurately portraying the indolence, incompetence and chicaneries of poorly endowed leaders.

    But here is a question for the APC chairman: if Dr Jonathan now runs a melancholic kindergarten, and Chief Obasanjo ran a medieval monarchy of Ottoman proportions, and Gen Abacha ran, well, a gigantic brothel and bazaar complete with paedophile rings, what kind of leaders should we expect from Nigeria’s leadership nursery in the coming years?

     

  • The Lagos deportation saga and 2015 politics

    Given the irresponsible and remorseless exploitation by Bode George and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of the controversy that arose from the ‘deportation’ of some Anambrarians from Lagos recently, it is guaranteed that the matter will linger well into the 2015 general elections. Even if we ignore the fact that the so-called deportation, or resettlement as Lagos described it, has been going on in some states for a while, the problem is sufficiently serious enough to alert the country’s leadership and all patriotic Nigerians to the potentially explosive problem of how to define an indigene of a state, and what his rights and obligations are. The problem has been left dangerously unattended to for far too long.

    I think the Lagos State government was not sensitive enough to the implications of resettling those it described as destitute. It must find ways of making amends, whether it meant well in taking the action or not, or whether others had done it before or not. But Anambra and all those prattling about the rights of the destitute must also understand the security concerns of Lagos, the limited resources at the disposal of the state, the fact that the federal government has irresponsibly not made any special allocation to assist Lagos in tackling its worsening social and economic pressures, and the fact that there is a limit to how Lagos can cater for the jobless and the dispossessed within its borders. In any case it is hard to see how resettling a little over a dozen people constitutes a deliberate and wide-ranging policy of discrimination against anyone or state, let alone an ethnic group.

    It is indeed a reflection of the unresolved national question, an issue that is worsening as the years go by, that the Igbo somehow inexplicably and hysterically rose up nearly in unison to attack Lagos for discriminatory practices. Very incendiary remarks have been made, and there are threats of political backlash against the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015. There has also been incredibly silly and inaccurate talk of Lagos being a no man’s land, especially by its nature as a former federal capital. In the past one decade or more, and as Lagos began to rebuild its collapsed infrastructure, it has become a magnet for millions of Nigeria, thus further putting pressure on its limited resources. The challenge before the state is how to cope with these pressures; and its dilemma is how to define the Lagosian within the ambit of the constitution.

    Lagos State is undisputedly the navel of the former Western Region. There is no conceivable ethnographic argument that will make it less so. Indeed, in the light of the crisis in Plateau State, it is irresponsible that any group could hint directly that it would introduce and even actively nurture ethnic politics in the 2015 elections in Lagos. This indicates that the controversy over definition of a state indigene in Nigeria is too urgent to be postponed or left to resolve itself. Time will not resolve it.

    In my numerous contributions on the Plateau crisis, I had suggested it was unrealistic, as the National Assembly has unwisely tried to do, to define a state indigene as the Americans do. Nigerian ethnic groups have an unbreakable and fanatical attachment to their lands and languages. It is pointless to make it otherwise. Unlike the Americans and Australians who shoved aside indigenous populations and virtually rewrote their histories afresh, Nigerians are unlikely to ever admit to that kind of novelty. I go as far as to suggest that linguistic affinity should be the basis of Nigeria’s federal arrangement if we really want to settle the national question and achieve peace.

    I sympathise with Lagos and appreciate the dilemma it faces in trying to provide the good life for its indigenes and all taxpaying Nigerians resident and working in the state. It should patiently and cautiously approach the problem and do its best to resolve all lingering issues and disagreements within the framework of a united country. It must learn to ignore peddlers of hate ideology as it strives to build a multicultural megacity and work out ways to resist and defeat those who try to exploit ethnic differences. The problem is, however, not Lagos alone, or first, to resolve. The initiative must come from the centre, and the problem must be tackled holistically. Sadly, the Jonathan government and the unconscionable leaders of the PDP in the state, as the last political campaigns showed, are more eager to fan ethnic hatred for political gains than provide the leadership these dangerous times need.

  • APC, Awo’s predicted synthesis, must walk the talk

    APC, Awo’s predicted synthesis, must walk the talk

    The starting point for the new party, therefore, is to ask: what do Nigerians want and what vision of this sleeping giant does it see a few decades down the line? 

    Time was 1983 and the NPN had just rumbled through the country courtesy its ignoble ‘moon slide’ victory of that year and, like Dr Reuben Abati just did, talking down to Chief Bisi Akande, the interim Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Chuba Okadigbo, himself then a presidential spokesperson, was waxing lyrical, calling both Zik and Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim, the highly regarded GNPP leader, unprintable names and asking them to shut up or be summarily dealt with.

    It was in that circumstances, the Avatar, the ever clairvoyant Awo, made the prediction, a whole 30 years ahead, which is today uncannily unfolding before our very eyes. Summarising the events of that year’s general elections, one in which the writer was an active observer-participant, Awo made it clear that by its own hands, the then ruling NPN has self-destruct by acting like the thief who took far more than the owner. NPN had then just rummaged through the length and breadth of Nigeria, even claiming to have won in Oyo and Ondo states, both in Awo’s impregnable Western Region.

    Consequently, at a well attended congress of the UPN in Abeokuta on Thursday, 15 December, ’83, he declared as follows: ‘The goal of dialectic process is perfection. It aims at the perfect attainment of all the virtues embodied in it. Whether we like it or not, all human beings are inescapably involved in the binary compounds of thesis and antithesis of the dialectical procession. In other words, all of us in the UPN and those of them in the NPN and other parties are already in the thesis-antithesis war. When the war is over, only the best of us will be accommodated in the synthesis, with the best in the antithesis in complete dominance’. Going forward, Papa said: ‘I do not hesitate to aver, in all sincerity and solemnity, that the NPN, together with its political regime and all that it stands for, symbolises the thesis, and that the UPN together with all those who are conscientiously and honestly opposed to the NPN, symbolizes the antithesis. The war between the two is already being waged with vehemence and inflexible resolve. Sooner or later, I believe much sooner than later -the figurative ‘explosion’ will occur in which the forces of the thesis and the antithesis, in their original forms, will disappear. Then the synthesis will appear which will embody the best in the NPN (thesis) and the best in the UPN (antithesis). But the dominant feature of the synthesis will be the best in the UPN’.

    As those words rang out that historic morning in the historic Olumo city at which the writer was present, what they poignantly brought back to me , especially when Papa talked of the ‘figurative explosion’, were my classes in Dialectical Materialism at the great university of Ife, Ile-Ife, as taught by one of the very best in the business, my teacher per excellence, Dr Segun Osoba.

    How prescient Chief Awolowo remains was beautifully captured by Chief Jide Awe, the Ekiti state interim Chairman of APC, as state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, hoisted the APC flag in the state to the great admiration and acclamation of a huge crowd of jubilating leaders, members and supporters of the brand new party on Monday, 12 August, 2013 at Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.

    In a recent article in The Nation of Monday, 12 August, 2013, entitled :’ History, civil war and haunted house’, The Chairman of The Nation’s Editorial Board, Sam Omatsheye, wondered aloud as to how today’s events uncannily mirror the immediate pre civil war events in our country.

    One good example of things remaining largely the same, apart from the crass insecurity that envelopes the country, was how egregiously the PDP, like NPN before it, rigged the 2011 presidential elections especially in states in the North where the CPC actually won and, to cover up, found a solution in discrediting a just and redoubtable Judge who they never wanted to head the Presidential election Tribunal which they knew would have exhumed their electoral malfeasance. The very first thing the reconstituted Election Tribunal did, therefore, was to upturn all the reliefs the earlier panel had granted Buhari , including access to election materials and presentation before it of the database of the voters’ register.

    That, however, belongs to history and what must now concern us is a determination not to let our inability to learn from history repeat itself. Not many believed that APC’s registration would ever see the light of day and what did PDP not do to make it impossible? Working through agents external, and lackeys within the top echelons of the Electoral Commission, all manner of spurious, wannabe political parties with the acronym APC sprung up, one of them hurriedly filed by a self-confessed baby lawyer. It would later go to court hoping that its sponsors would be able to orchestrate the type of legal shenanigans that ensured Justice Salami’s matter was permanently before the courts. Like baby Moses in the holy writ, everything was done to abort APC but it is now here and about. It is now it’s bounden duty to shoulder those critical responsibilities Awo foresaw in what he called the Synthesis.

    The starting point for the new party, therefore, is to ask: what do Nigerians want and what vision of this sleeping giant does it see a few decades down the line? The Yoruba say, if you do not know where you are coming from, you will, at least, know where exactly you are headed. PDP, as a party and government, has taken Nigeria through a rudderless decade and a half and if Nigerians do not vote right, come 2015, this visionless party may just achieve its hoped-for 60 years and more.

    Without a doubt, circumstances in the country today are much more perilous than in the days of Awo and his contemporaries as, though a civil war we may have fought, nothing compared then to today’s Boko Haram which, as Abuja slept away until Obasanjo reminded them of something called carrot and stick, had carved out for itself, swathes of territory in a part of the country. Indeed nothing, not our epileptic power situation, nor the ravaging unemployment, more poignantly demonstrates the utter vacuity of the Jonathan administration than what Boko Haram has done, and continues to do to this country. Without peace, no government can embark, talk less of achieving, any meaningful economic development. Today, both Syria and Egypt are in shambles and one needs no rocket science to know that programmes for economic development must have taken a back seat in both countries.

    There is, obviously a crying need for infrastructural development, for stable power to jump start industrial and other economic activities just as unemployment, especially among our young graduates has to be tackled head-on. Corruption too has become so systemic that some concerned Nigerians are now planning to go on demonstrations in both the U.K and the U.S to draw international attention to our circumstances as the federal government has proved completely incapable of fighting it since it is actually its mainstay and hope for 2015.

    In order to make meaningful corrections and achieve much more, however, leaders of the new party must realise that they have the daunting task of going far beyond the merger. Reactions to my last week article were replete with accusations of lack of internal democracy -they called it imposition of candidates, – of religious extremism and ethnicity, amongst the leaders of the merged political parties just as many felt sure the party will most probably collapse on the altar of uncontrollable self-interest, especially when it comes to choosing its presidential candidate. These are all very weighty matters and although thus far, these leaders have demonstrated considerable self abnegation, much more will- power will be needed in subsuming self interest for the good of this very unhealthy country. Ego must be scrupulously kept in check and the leaders must ensure unimpeachable process of choosing its candidates for all elections, state, federal and presidential. As I concluded in my article under reference, APC has a distinct, indeed, very good chance of, not only re-engineering, but completely re- branding Nigeria.

  • Obasanjo’s sociology zero zero zero?

    Obasanjo’s sociology zero zero zero?

    Who are the examples in Obasanjo’s generation that represent the norms subverted by the generation that succeeds Obasanjo’s?

    General Olusegun Obasanjo stood sociology on its head a few days ago when he posited that the younger generation (younger than his own) failed Nigeria and Africa. As reported in The Nation, Obasanjo theorised “that his generation led the way with purposeful, progressive, visionary leadership marked by accountability and probity while the younger generation of leaders failed to continue with the good legacy that his (Obasanjo’s) generation left.” It is what Obasanjo has refused to acknowledge that raises questions about his own sociological knowledge or imagination, more specifically, about what is expected in all societies to be the responsibility of the older generation in the development of the younger generation.

    Now that Obasanjo has identified the generation that has damaged the chances of Africa to grow and compete with the rest of the world, it is pertinent to ask some questions. How were the members of the generation after Obasanjo socialised? What is the role of Obasanjo’s generation in the socialisation of the generation that has, in the words of Obasanjo, become a generation of deviance from the norms embodied by Obasanjo’s generation? Who are the examples in Obasanjo’s generation that represent the norms subverted by the generation that succeeds Obasanjo’s?

    Historically, Obasanjo’s generation came to power on account of fighting corruption perpetrated by members of the generation before his own or of members of his own generation who happened to have had access to political power. Is this an indication that the generation before Obasanjo was also bad or did Obasanjo’s generation lie to citizens when they accused their predecessors of corruption? The regime that succeeded Obasanjo in 1979 was led by people in a generation older than Obasanjo. Again, this group was removed from power by members of Obasanjo’s generation on account of what they called corruption under the presidency of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Shortly after, another group from Obasanjo’s generation booted out the regime that was manufactured by members of Obasanjo’s generation to replace ShehuShagari, and the rest is history.

    Sociologists and anthropologists all over the world believe that it should not be easy for a generation to castigate the generation after it for not acting normatively. It is generally believed that no generation emerges on its own into a cultural space. Each generation is groomed directly or indirectly by the generation before it. Each citizen is believed to be a product of socialisation or enculturation. This process includes the transfer of values from one generation to the one coming after it. This is done through schooling, through transfer from the older generation of what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in society. In addition, members of the younger generation learn by imitating the actions of those before them. In effect, apart from whatever is induced by genes, enculturation accounts significantly for what a citizen does or fails to do in his adulthood. While some section of a citizen’s behaviour or misbehaviour can be blamed on genetic inheritance, so much of it is blamed on the values in circulation when a citizen is growing up.

    Going by elements of sociology and anthropology with respect to the role of an older generation in the moulding of the generation after it, members of Obasanjo’s generation cannot be absolved from dereliction of duty with respect to the values or lack of values passed to the generation after them, even if we have to accept without incontrovertible evidence the claim that Obasanjo’s generation was saintly and stellar as rulers of their countries.To beef up Obasanjo’s claim that the generation after his own prevented Africa in general and Nigeria in particular from growing up, it is important to examine the kind of legacy that the generation of the saints left behind.

    Under General Obasanjo’s supervision, the constitution of Nigeria was changed from a federal constitution to a quasi-unitary one. This meant that powers and responsibilities including moral supervision of politicians by citizens, possible under the regime of devolution of powers in the years preceding the coming of Obasanjo to power, were withdrawn from regions and concentrated at the centre. The centre with no direct relationship with citizens became at the instance of Obasanjo the locus of power and resources, and the site of corruption and impunity. Institutions of learning, a major agency in the business of socialisation, were summarily transferred from the supervision of regional authorities to a federal one that had no known values to protect and promote. Moreover, members of Obasanjo’s own generation also introduced a policy that prevented older politicians from seeking power, on account of their understanding that older politicians were attached to the cultures of the nationalities that constituted Nigeria before the coming of military autocracy and the imposition of a unitary constitution. The new breed political class was a creation of the type of military oligarchy presided over by General Obasanjo.

    Apart from General Obasanjo’s proclivity to praise himself, and by extension, his generation in politics, the matter of why Nigeria or Africa is in a mess today cannot be explained via generation bashing. It has to be viewed as a systemic failure. Mugabe belongs more to Obasanjo’s generation than Dariye does, just as Mandela belongs more to Obasanjo’s generation than Tinubu does. Generation bashing is an over simplification of the problems besetting governance in Africa. It is like profiling or stereotyping. Nigeria and most of Africa have had their own share of good and bad old and young politicians.

    If age is everything, Obasanjo would not have picked Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as vice president to UmaruYar’Adua in 2007, as there were many much older politicians with interest in becoming the vice president at that time. Not including President Jonathan in his list of young people who have failed Africa is an indication that, though Jonathan is one of the youngest presidents in the world, he is still considered a good choice bequeathed to Nigeria by Obasanjo.

    Sociology or Anthropology 101 links older and younger generations in the preparation of citizens for socially adjusted citizenship at all levels; for nurturing by the older generate of the younger generation to sustain the values that keep societies going and predispose them to improvement; for members of an older generation to accept their duties and obligations in the failure of members of the younger generation after them for any moral decline, caused by failure to transfer right values to the new generation. Social continuity in all societies does not derive from a saintly father having a satanic son to succeed him or from an angelic mother raising a devilish daughter.Social continuity thrives on a sociological understanding that comes to terms with the existence of an umbilical cord between generations. To praise a good father under whose nose a bad son has grown is to promote Sociology zero zero zero.

  • Impeachment without quorum

    Impeachment without quorum

    Legislators involved in the Rivers Assembly fracas should face sanctions too

    Many journalists readily agree, in defining the concept ‘news’, that when dog bites man, it is no news; but when man bites dog, then that is news. Of course, this makes sense because, what they are trying to say in essence is that ‘news’ properly so-called is usually about the bad and the ugly. Bad news is therefore good news. It is common to see dogs bite man but it is unusual for man to bite dog. Here, we are not talking about the Ondo people who see ‘lokili’ (dog) as a delicacy and the Calabar people who also enjoy its meat that they fondly call ‘404’. To eat something is not necessarily the same as biting it.

    This analogy came about in view of what is happening in Rivers State. That state has not known peace in the last few months and it is not likely to know it anytime soon. One of the major actors in the crisis has only recently boasted that he would make the governor uncomfortable, and perhaps the state, ungovernable. That tells us the extent that people can go when seeking political power in the country. In sane environments, the man would have been invited by the security agencies because his statement is self-explanatory. I have said it often, and it bears repeating, that this country would have been a far better place if those seeking public offices put in half of the energy they put into the struggle for the offices into governance when they eventually get into those offices.

    Imagine all the resources that have been wasted in the efforts to ‘overthrow’ the Rivers State governor just because of the personal ambitions of a few persons. A serving minister of state for education, Nyesom Wike, who should be overseeing the crucial sector is rather busy doing unimaginable things while thousands of our youths in the universities are on the streets when they should be in the lecture rooms, due to strike by their lecturers. Their colleagues in the polytechnics went on strike for weeks while Mr. Wike was in the forefront of the battle to remove the state governor by hook or crook. I wonder why it has not occurred to those who appointed Wike that something is bound to suffer when a man in such a crucial sector abandons his beat to lead a campaign just because he wants to become governor. In saner climes, it is only people who performed creditably in lower capacities that get promoted in government. This is a minister without any clear achievements already eyeing a higher office, putting his hopes on some benevolent cleavages. Again, in countries where the government is serious, it would have seen such a person as a liability rather than an asset and promptly shown him the door.

    But this is not where I am going today, it is nonetheless useful though in bringing into perspective the unfortunate developments in Rivers State.

    Chinua Achebe says in his celebrated Things Fall Apart that “if a man comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do? Shut my eyes and pretend not to see him?” He says that cannot be; he will rather carry a stick and break his head! Well, I may not necessarily be talking about physical retaliation. But, Achebe’s novels, as is the Igbo culture generally, are replete with proverbs which are like oil with which yam is eaten (again, apologies to Achebe).

    What happened in the Rivers State House of Assembly on Tuesday July 9 falls into the category of the defecation that I have in mind. But I must stress that I am also not talking about someone in whose house another man has defecated carrying a physical stick (as it were) to break the intruder’s head. But the man who has been wronged deserves some pacification. Now, when only five of a 32-member House of Assembly attempted to impeach the speaker, Otelemaba Amachree, whereas the constitution stipulates that at least two-thirds of the members is required for such to be legal, what did they expect? Did they expect to be pecked or kissed and warmly embraced by their colleagues who are in the majority?

    Certainly not. But the five must have been that audacious because of the ubiquitous ‘federal might’ that they thought they had behind them. With the police merely playing the role of observers, they had thought they would just carry out their illegality while Nigerians would make the usual noise over a period and the result of the illegality of impeachment without the requisite two-thirds majority would have stood, until a time when the courts will declare the action illegal and order a return to status quo ante. And, in Nigeria, that could take as long as the usurpers want and that is understandable; they have nothing to lose; it is only the person that has been cheated out of the office that has everything to lose. And, as we all know, justice travels at a snail speed in the country. Injustice travels faster!

    However, the miscalculation of the misguided five legislators led to (probably) unanticipated violence and now, we are talking about one of those involved in the illegal impeachment saga, Michael Chinda, lying critically injured in hospital. Interestingly, the same police that have been partial since the crisis started promptly ensured that the majority leader in the state house of assembly, Mr. Chidi Lloyd, was promptly arraigned for attempted murder.

    This is the kind of thing that happens in a country where might determines right. If legislators who did what the ‘Rivers Five’ attempted in the past had been made to face the full wrath of the law, it would have served as a deterrent to others. Unfortunately, they did not pay for it because the then President Olusegun Obasanjo was solidly behind them. This was despite the fact that fortunately, the judiciary in that era reversed almost all the illegalities, in Oyo, Anambra, Plateau where the governors were said to have been impeached without the required quorum in the houses of assembly.

    Perhaps it was because the ‘Rivers 27’ in the house of assembly did not want to take any chances that things went awry on July 9. This underscores the need for people to respect the sanctity of the law and due process. I am not opposed to justice for the injured legislator but I am also strongly of the view that something triggered the violence in the house. In my view, this too should be of concern to us. In the light of this, someone should also test the judicial waters to see if any case can be established; that is, if under any circumstance people can try what the ‘Rivers Five’ did without facing judicial sanctions. If we saw such in the Obasanjo era, it does not make it right.

    Whoever goes to equity must go with clean hands, remains the usual refrain. When someone causes rain to fall, it doesn’t seem right to me for that person to complain if the rain is eventually accompanied with thunderstorm. If sustaining of injury during an illegal legislative process is newsy, then, getting justice for those cheated by the illegality should be newsier. If five legislators decided to impeach a governor when between 20 and 21 members are legally required, they should know that whoever their godfather is, that action is illegal. I therefore see nothing wrong in their paying for it through the judicial process. It is high time Nigerians challenged such illegalities in court.

  • Meeting 2015 breakup prediction with presidential chutzpah

    Even if by his actions he manages to consistently undermine his own public optimism for a great society, President Goodluck Jonathan must still rank as one of the most sanguine leaders the world has ever known. While speaking with Muslim leaders who paid him the traditional Sallah homage last Thursday, Dr Jonathan as usual made a few memorable statements. He couldn’t imagine a Nigeria without Christians and Muslims, he said wistfully, as if the religious polarisation of the country conferred special advantages on all of us, and almost as if we should become inured to the pains they have caused us and even begin to enjoy them. If we were retrogressing, he suggested implausibly, it was because we failed to exploit the possibilities of our religious diversity. Once we found a way to harness the diversities, the country would enjoy peace and development. Never mind that in his nearly four years in office, his presidency never issued even one tested idea as to how that elixir would be brewed.

    Moving away from his strange theology, the president revealed he had observed the Ramadan like any other Muslim. His waist had trimmed down, he announced joyously, and he would perhaps in the short term need new pairs of trousers. If his visitors thought he would explain why he felt compelled to fast, or prove the relevance of his fasting to national development and policy purity, they were mistaken, for he wasn’t forthcoming at all.

    But perhaps the most memorable statement he made was in connection with the ballyhooed prediction of Nigeria’s breakup in 2015, a prediction authored by some United States military analysts many years ago. Those who made the prediction, said the president in reference not to the original authors but to Nigerians parroting it, would be disappointed. We must not assume that the president has not read the details of the prediction, or that when it was made, the intense religious, ethnic and social conflicts wracking the body politic had not even assumed dangerous dimensions. If he read the prediction, he should have seized the opportunity of speaking with his visitors to address two or three major factors raised by the analysts, and of course debunk them. Instead, the president met the prediction with his usual presidential bravado. It won’t happen, he thundered, and that was all.

    If structural problems anywhere, whether in a country or organisation, had shown a tendency to respond well to positive thinking, countries and enterprises would be easy to govern. Given the president’s logic, the more chutzpah you summon against a problem, the more likely your triumph. What is Dr Jonathan’s appreciation of the social revolt undermining the Northeast? It hardly matters; for the problem to him is one of law and order. What does he think of the great heist stymying oil exports in the Niger Delta? Just pay thieves to watch over the oil. What does he think about the collapse of education? Why, agreements, to him, are neither worth keeping, nor the huge education bill worth the trouble of addressing. What of unemployment? He has passed on that nuisance to the Minister of Finance and to the centenary committee.

    And what about the most important question of all – democracy? Its problem, he deadpans like the workaholic but yet cavalier Obasanjo, is that the opposition is too troublesome and unpatriotic. If everybody would cooperate with him, and critics practiced their sorcery softly, and the media were less sanctimonious, and on and on to getting God to be less fussy and rigid about principles and moral standards, Nigeria would be a great, united, peaceful and developed country. Perhaps, someday, we would pin the president down to telling us what he thinks of the complex problems besetting the country, and what bright ideas can be coerced from his vast kitchen midden, which he passes off as personal philosophy from a complex mind.

  • Wars without end… Victims without end…

    Nothing succeeds like good governance, fairness and justice. A good mixture of those elements can give us a world without wars

    What is with men and wars, I’ll never know, but records show that over ninety per cent of wars in this world have been initiated and executed by men. No, no, I am not starting an argument, just stating a fact. Just think, in the lifetime of any given male, the chances that he would initiate or help to execute a war is close to fifty per cent. Imagine that! I know that when they were little, my children initiated many wars against each other, mostly over nothing, but that doesn’t even count. The fighting gene nevertheless appears to run true and deep in all men.

    Most worrisome, however, is the fact that somehow, the fighting genes running loose in men are now being transfused into women and other things. Women, knowing no better and no different, proudly don the togas of war, supposedly for love and country and head out, leaving behind tearful babies, crying children and baffled husbands. Tch, tch. If those women only knew the truth – that they have been infected by the blood running in men’s veins – they would know better where to direct their heaving chests of indignation. All together, mankind has become like a couple of pigeons which seems to do nothing but flap their wings in real antagonism towards each other three mornings a week behind my fence. What the bone of contention is exactly, no one can tell, but all we seem to get from them are their emotions all flapped up.

    Actually, nothing excuses mankind’s behaviour which seems to stem from the belief that only the fisticuffs can settle any and all matters. This is why we now have community, civil, international, cyber, psychological and, most worrisome of all, domestic wars. And with the match of science, those simple fisticuffs have been translated into the rat-ta-tat-at-tat of machine guns or the booms of cannons aimed at other human beings just like them. I don’t know about you but anytime I have stumbled across TV programmes depicting war scenes, I have been struck by one question: to what purpose?

    Just recently, I read the story of a soldier who was shot at the war front but instead of falling and dying quickly, he got caught on the barbed wire that separated the two sides in the war. The war continued around him however with shots from the guns but now punctuated by his own groans of pain as he slowly bled. His own friends could not come to his rescue for fear of being hit. Finally, a soldier from the side which had hit him in the first place could stand the groans no longer so he put down his gun and ran towards the dying man. Both sides, seeming to realise what he was going to do, ceased firing at each other and watched him in disbelief as he gently disentangled the wounded man and carried him across to the enemy line and gave him to his friends. As he turned to go back to his side of the war, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the commanding officer of the enemy troop who removed a bravery medal from his own uniform and pinned it on the rescuer and saluted. Both sides then waited for him to run back to his side before they resumed their insane game.

    Today, the world remembers the millions and millions of victims of the World War 2 Holocaust but we are expanding it here to include all victims of the insane thing called war all over the world. Sources say that presently, there are one hundred and forty-six wars being fought and from these, over one thousand people are dying yearly. This gives us a very frightening picture indeed considering that it shows a considerable build-up of victims of war who are mostly women, children and the aged. The worst part is that these victims, and the wounded and dead soldiers, have no clear understanding of what caused the war in the first place.

    So, who declares a war and why? As a member of the human race, and a national of a country located somewhere on this planet, I think I have the right to know. Who the deuce feels he is obliged to declare a war where he does not often go to fight but only the young and able-bodied men (and now women) are obliged to go and be killed? I ask this because our lives, planet, children, and whether or not we wake up tomorrow depend on the answer. I believe that, and you can check this out, whoever declares a war must have a very little brain indeed, even tinier than mine, and he would be the kind of person that cannot even get along with his neighbour. Just watch out, next time someone declares a war around you, first interview his neighbour.

    There is a line that says that ‘Love has no religion, only God’. I don’t know exactly what that means but I can extrapolate that humans can choose the Christian, Muslim, Animist, Atheist, or the Love religion. Clearly, most people have not been choosing the Love religion because all wars in history have been started by someone from the other religions. This is quite different from the poster that reads ‘Make Love, not War.’ Again, I don’t know what that means either but I would guess that it still borders on what choices we make.

    I honestly don’t know what war-mongers are really after: plunder, fame or power. Whatever it is, I think we should all accept right now that none of that stays if built on the sacrificed blood of innocent men and women. One can get better plunder by raiding a rat’s hide-out. They are the only creatures I know who gather what they don’t need. Fame can come from a variety of other activities. Try calling the press to witness as you jump down from a ten-story building unto a bed of hot coals and sharp nails. I tell you, you will be toasted at every gathering in the country for years without end. And power? Why, have you tried to imagine a king testing his power by standing without his aides in the path of a herd of rampaging elephants? Again, should that king survive, he will be toasted for ever as a very powerful man indeed. That takes me to a second line I found: ‘We should realise that we have not been put here to rule the world – God does’. Anyone who feels compelled to test that theory is free to because my third line has the answer for them: ‘Those who thought they did had to leave it’.

    Most people agree that wars have never solved any problem; they are only indulgences for old men looking for their manhood. They do not consider that wars without end only create victims without end. They also do not consider that the only things that wars leave behind are victims who do not even understand why they are being called on to be victims. They are helpless against the insatiate appetites of men to seek and create drama everywhere. This column commiserates with all victims of war today; they are the ones who have to deal with, and pick up pieces of lives shattered by, the insanity of war.

    The long and short of it is that wars are not good; let us stop them. Only God himself can put out the flame of domestic wars, but we can try our best with the rest. Those do nothing but point to the failure of human intelligence. Nothing succeeds as much as good governance, fairness and justice. A good mixture of those elements can give us a world without wars, Amen.

     

    – This piece was first published on 27 January, 2013

     

  • Zuriel, Nigeria’s wonder kid

    Zuriel, Nigeria’s wonder kid

    Monday, August 12 is Daniel, my last child’s tenth birthday. He is indeed a special child for my family in many ways among which is the fact that he is what some people call the ‘extra or bonus’ child – the unexpected child when you think you are through with having babies.

    He was born seven years after my third born. His coming-however, caused some panic as I was barely managing to survive with my family. No thanks to my failed attempts to be self, employed, I didn’t have enough to pay my bills.

    I had disposed of my problematic car and the future was really bleak. However I had a revelation to name the expected child, Korede, which in Yoruba means bring fortune,.

    Thankfully, the young man that turns ten tomorrow true to his name, fortune,. I miraculously bought a car shortly before he was born. I later got a top editorial job I was not expecting, moved to a better accommodation and the story of my family has been from one level of glory to glory.

    So much for Korede, who is really not the focus of this piece. My real focus is another ten year-old; a Nigerian girl, Zuriel Oduwole who last week made history as the youngest person ever to be interviewed in Forbes, the global iconic magazine title, in its almost hundred years of publication.

    Zuriel the award winning documentary film maker, conference speaker and writer who featured in the August 2013 edition of Forbes Africa is touted by some as the next Larry King, considering her record of interviewing leading African business, political, and sports personalities, including eight  current African Presidents, Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, and Tennis super stars – Venus  and  Serena Williams.

    Zuriel is committed to Rebrand Africa by showing the positive things about the continent, and making the case for education the girl -child in Africa and Emerging Markets.

    For her age and notwithstanding that she lives in America, Zuriel’s story sounds like a fairy tale but it is true. She is not only a whizkid but a rare gem that has proved that accomplishment in life is not about how far but how well.

    Her responses to my questions during an online interview I had with her which will be published on Tuesday confirms her incredible understanding of issues many of her age cannot comprehend and boldness not expected of a ten -year- old.

    She recalled that during her interview with President Goodluck Jonathan, she asked him how much goodluck his name has brought to Nigeria. All the heads of states she interviewed must have been expecting some ‘childlike’ questions from her, but she shocked them with her very articulate questions.

    Though as a girl-child living in the comfort of America she could have chosen not to be bothered about the plight of the African girl-child, but Zuriel’s campaign is commendable and deserves all the support she can get to get her message through to all who need to hear and do something about it.

    Africa must have many other Zuriels waiting to be discovered and encouraged to fulfill their visions. The challenge is that we need to provide an enabling environment for them to thrive and accomplish their goals in record time.

    Zuriel should be an inspiration to all, not only kids of her age, including my Korede, but all youths who desire to impact on the present and coming generation.

  • Some PDP’s frailties that should leapfrog APC to power

    Some PDP’s frailties that should leapfrog APC to power

    Billions, no longer millions at which eyes used to pop and for which a distinguished FEDECO Chairman said he would have collapsed, now reads like pennies in PDP’s corruption odyssey.

    Corruption in Nigeria diverts financial resources from building roads, and bridges, curtailing the development of infrastructure that is needed to make Nigeria more competitive. It drains the federal treasury of funds that could do wonders in expanding and improving the education provided to millions of Nigerian children which, in turn, would enhance Nigeria’s economic future. Corruption forestalls additional spending on medical clinics and preventive health-care spending that countless studies have shown reap long-term economic rewards for a country when properly implemented. In short, corruption is a scourge that undermines virtually everything that could move Nigeria towards a brighter economic future.’ – Jeffrey Hawkins -U.S Consul-General

    For its frailties, which I define as inherent moral turpitude leading to inability to resist evil, top of which is corruption, of both material and the entire Nigerian governmental apparatus, the Peoples Democratic Party ought to have been dead a thousand times and more. That the party, consisting of an amalgam of those elder statesman Tunji Braithwaite described as ‘rats and cockroaches’ during the Second Republic, is still alive and kicking is due, not to the patronage and racketeers which cohere it, but the in-explainable inability of the opposition political parties to have massed against it when that was the earnest wishes of a majority of Nigerians.

    One thing that needs be emphasised from the very beginning is that this has little or nothing to do with the person of President Jonathan, a decent gentleman, as corruption is ingrained in the party’s DNA. Nobody within PDP today can tame it. It currently has very experienced octogenarians at its policy-making levels which should ordinarily translate to a more nuanced party management but what do we have? As the Yoruba would say:’kaka ki ewe agbon de, lile lo nle si’, meaning that, rather than the coconut leaf getting softer, it’s getting tougher by the day. Corruption has become the party’s raison d’etre and this manifests in every segment of our national life.

    The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), under the lead of a very forthright Nigerian attorney, Ledum Mitee who, but for God’s mercy, would have long been consumed by the forebears of these roaches, has again presented its Audit Reports in compliance with the requirement of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) covering the period 2009-2011.

    It reeks of nothing but corruption. And as is usual, the culpable government agencies, NNPC and PPRA, the latter in particular, have been fighting to the death to salvage what remains of their integrity coming on the heels of the massive oil subsidy scam in which scions of PDP leaders turned out the major culprits. Meanwhile, as has become the norm, both the EFCC and the judiciary are playing poker over that serious matter such that by the time they came up with their slaps on the wrist, Nigerians, weighed down by their daily gruelling toils, would have forgotten all about it.

    The report covered physical and process issues that characterise business activities in the industry with a view to establishing if companies actually paid what they were expected to pay and if government indeed received what it ought to receive. The report recommends that the NNPC should: ·’settle domestic crude liability of N842.7 billion adhere to due process in accessing subsidy deductions out of crude oil proceeds;. carry out a comprehensive documentation system of the records and reconciliation of volumes and value of PSCs and Carry transactions; design a system that suitably controls gas income to the Federation; confirm remittance of $3.789billion (dividends from NLNG) to the Federation Account; strengthen controls over product importation and distribution and specify a unique methodology for managing crude sales during a Trial Marketing Period’.

    It should be noted that some of the above, where they are not direct thefts, are wonky systems put in place to facilitate stealing from the national treasury. PPRA is to remit N4.423 billion to the Federation Account for the period in review; a report which Reginald Ibe, its Executive Secretary, as should be expected, has disputed as if Nigerians do not know that agency enough.

    As is now well known, the PDP, for purposes of 2015, will never have the political will to deal appropriately with these well documented acts of non-transparency. As with the pension fund and the humongous oil subsidy fraud, so shall it be with the NEITI Audited Report.

    Nor is corruption the only issue APC should leverage on to send PDP to where it rightly belongs in historical infamy.

    The other day I laughed my heart out at the spectacle of our dear President at the wheel of a Land Rover besotted by a swooning array of well decorated PDP women in a scene so reminiscent of Mr Bode George’s court days. A few questions immediately crossed my mind about this ‘Sagamu road-show’, as my brother, and colleague columnist, Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan, has described it: Don’t these otherwise innocent women know that their zone of the party has long been forgotten by the powers that be in Abuja? I also wondered what became of then President Obasanjo’s no less imaginative ‘road show’ as he flagged off the Ibadan-Ilorin road as Baba Adedibu held court in Ibadan and elsewhere? Is the road now completed a decade after? Then I remembered the delectable and hard-working Mrs. Deizani Alison-Madueke then of the Works Ministry who, overcome by her lachrymal glands, cried like a baby whose milk was snatched, bemoaning the sorry state of the Ore-Benin Road post N300Bllion.

    Honestly, in ‘Mummy land’ – apologies music impresario Lagbaja, I think our ‘mumu e don do.’

    Worse though is the fact that nothing suggests,given PDP’s track record, that the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way project will ever be competed even if it rules for its chimerical 60 years. I quote Oluwajuyitan, again,to buttress this view point. Wrote Jide in his column in The Nation of Thursday , August 8: ‘The Presidential Projects Assessment Committee (PPAC), set up in March 2011 to look into cases of abandoned federal government projects claimed that there were 11,886 abandoned projects that will cost an estimated N778 trillion to complete…’ More interesting is the fact that many of these abandoned projects are located within the really favoured territories of the PDP , namely: the 400 metre long Utor bridge along Asaba-Ebu-Uromi road awarded in 2006, the 36 kilometre Bodo-Bonny road in Rivers state, awarded in 2002, the abandoned 285 NNDC projects not to mention the never- never East-West road which has not only pitted the Rivers State governor against the Niger Delta Affairs Minister but has ensured that foot soldiers have already been conscripted in Burutu, Warri, Ughelli, Ozoro and Asaba, in what should be the mother of all wars between respected Chief Edwin Clark and his son,the wannabe governor, Godsday Orubebe, two unmatchable supporters of Mr President.

    If all these are happening in the President’s geo-political zone, I do not think the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway stands a ghost of a chance of completion. After all,morning, they say, shows the day, and we already saw enough ruckus on that road. What that expansive ceremony and project would most probably achieve will be easy campaign funds, nor would that be the first time.

    If the above are material and measurable damages to our common wealth, the PDP had also ensured they damaged Nigeria so morally that an international pariah like Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean owner, could, with a wave of the hand, reject the African Union’s appointment of PDP’s one-time Chairman, Board of Trustees, and Nigeria’s, unarguably, most remarkable living statesman -Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, to lead its observer team to that country’s recent election. Mugabe did not have to think twice – no thanks to PDP’s record of ignominious election charades.

    The above are obviously only a small fraction of the multitude of PDP’s infractions which the new party should adroitly exploit in getting rid of PDP; a party which inner peace has long deserted as there is no moral authority within it any longer. Billions, no longer millions at which eyes used to pop and for which a distinguished FEDECO Chairman said he would have collapsed, now reads like pennies in PDP’s corruption odyssey.

    APC leaders, officials, members and Nigerians in general, must rise up like one man/woman, as has been elegantly canvassed by Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila,leader of opposition in the House of Representatives, and take ownership of this party which is destined to re brand Nigeria.

  • How flammable is Nigeria?

    How flammable is Nigeria?

    Nobody wants to leave Nigeria for as long as the oil continues to flow, regardless of predictions from prophets inside and scientists outside the country.

    In the last two days, leading politicians in our country have been reacting to predictions that Nigeria stands the chance of internal combustion. In 2013 (a few weeks ago), the United States’ Army College suggested that nothing in recent times has changed the prediction in 2003 by the US Intelligence community that Nigeria might break by 2015. Local geopolitical forecasters have also been worrying that Boko Haram also has the capacity to accelerate Nigeria’s disintegration. But in response to the end of Ramadan celebration (Eid-el Fitr), President Jonathan and one of the founding leaders of All Progressives Congress (APC), have taken their time to reassure Nigerians that there is no cause for alarm, despite the country’s appearance of flammability.

    In his own message to the country’s Muslims, President Jonathan reassures citizens of the country’s stability and ‘unbreakability’: “We are not even exploiting our diversity because of the myopic views about situations. Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters and we must live together. Those who are predicting that this country will separate based on our fault-lines as at the time of amalgamation by 2015, they will know that these predictions will not be true.” Correspondingly, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu called for prayers to ensure that “the predictions of doom, hardship, political instability and religious intolerance will not come to fruition,” adding: “Nigeria is not a broken case. It is redeemable and only the people can make this change happen by voting right and wisely.” Nigerians must feel encouraged that two of the country’s leading politicians are not cowed by predictions about the country’s break-up.

    A recent book by John-Andrew McNeish and Owen Logan, titled Flammable Societies: Studies on the socio-economics of Oil and Gas includes an essay by Femi Folorunso: “A country without a State?: Governmentality, Knowledge and Labour in Nigeria.” Flammable is used in the book to refer to the socio-economics of oil and gas. But Folorunso in his own essay uses flammable in two senses: metonymic and metaphoric. He addresses the metonymic dimension by underscoring the impact of exploitation of oil and gas on the life of the average Nigerian. He also uses ‘flammable’ connotatively when he addresses the theme of a country without a state, a political space that appears bound to failure because of bad governance.

    Predictions cannot break a country. It is the action or inaction of those charged to govern a country that can cause its disintegration. Nigerians have no reason to be afraid of predictions coming from home or abroad about the future of the country. Several soothsayers and prophets in Nigeria have predicted doom for too long, without any of their predictions coming to pass, particularly predictions by religious prophets who are wont to laying claims to prescience and clairvoyance. Nigerians have gotten used to local Cassandras whose forecasts of doom for politicians and the polity have generally come to naught.

    What Nigerians have not gotten used to are predictions from outside the country by professional analysts who attempt to bring the predictive power of science on their forecasts. The prediction in 2003 from the U.S. Intelligence community and the latest one from the U.S. Army College must have gotten the attention of Nigeria’s leaders. When the 2003 prediction first came out, General Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed it as nothing for anyone to worry about. Again, the recent one from the U.S. Army College seems to have gotten to our leaders. This explains why two of the country’s most important politicians, Jonathan and Tinubu, have chosen to use this year’s end of Ramadan festivities to reassure citizens not to panic and to remain as optimistic about the territorial integrity of their country as they have always been since 1960.

    Citizens ought to know by now that Nigeria cannot disintegrate, despite the recurrence of political, social, and economic storms the country experiences intermittently. The reasons are not far to fathom. oil and gas, natural causes of combustion, serve as lubricants to oil and grease the creaky joints of the Nigerian State-nation. There are two sides to the coin of greasing of the engine of the Nigerian State. On the one hand, members of the ruling class derive too much benefit from oil and proceeds of oil for them to want to push the country into the sea. Those from various parts of the country who own oil blocks and have acquired property in prime lands in different parts of the country from oil and gas know better than they show when they threaten fire and brimstone. The saying that Nigeria knows how to avoid disaster and disintegration is not an exaggeration. Most of the country’s political and cultural leaders know where their bread is buttered. Many of them will even be afraid to want to rule a Nigeria without petroleum.

    On the other hand, the average Nigerian is able to live on just one dollar per day, not because of efforts by the government, but as a result of the existence of oil and gas in the country! Without oil and with the kind of government the country has been saddled with since the 1970s, it would not have been possible for any Nigerian to eat on a daily basis a loaf of bread or a plate of rice without any form of protein. The little that trickles down from the class that perceives itself as the owner of Nigeria is another thing that has prevented disintegration. It is not surprising when scholars raise the issue of Resource Curse in relation to Nigeria’s petroleum and mismanagement of the country that both leaders and followers retort with: “Thank God there is oil.” Nobody wants to leave Nigeria for as long as the oil continues to flow, regardless of predictions from prophets inside and scientists outside the country. And no matter how hard the polity is heated or security is challenged by Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, and even the country’s Kidnappers Incorporated, nothing untoward is likely to happen to our republic of petroleum. Nigerians have reasons to believe their president when he says there is no cause for alarm. They should know that it is a waste of intellectual and emotional energy to think or write that Nigeria is on the brink, on account of its many crises of bad governance and under-development.

    The country’s political rulers and their cultural counterparts know that it does not matter what they do or not do, the country has come to stay, for as long as oil flows from the wombs of the land and its adjoining sea. Our leaders know that they do not need to respond to what Femi Folorunso characterises as the impact of governance on sovereignty, citizenship, and development in a country troubled by resource curse. Even citizens themselves have been numbed or dumbed down by the manna from petroleum and gas. It appears that nobody needs to worry about anything, for as long as Nigeria is able to sell enough oil to lubricate the engine of its continuity as a state-nation. The country’s (taken for granted) territorial integrity will be further guaranteed by free and fair election in 2015, if only to give citizens unfettered choice to choose those to govern them.