The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • A long farewell from Allah De

    A long farewell from Allah De

    This column this morning mourns the passing of a great mentor, senior friend, ardent fan and journalistic icon, Alhaji Alade Idowu Odunewu. Allah De, as he was famously known, was easily one of the greatest columnists anywhere in the world in the last century. An illustrious scion of an illustrious family, the great journalist was a master of elegant prose and a man of outstanding personal polish.

    To have known Allah De was to know a man of culture, civility, restraint and gentlemanly sensitivity to others. There was about him the urbane self-mastery that go with superior breeding. True eminence does not push its pre-eminence. Self-assured and assured of his place in the ranking order, Allah De was an old Lagosian in the classic sense of that word: a combination of the fabled English gentleman who wears his hat and distinction lightly and the Yoruba Omoluabi who knows that what is left unsaid is also the most profoundly eloquent.

    Anybody who has come across the likes of Chief Folarin Coker who recently turned ninety, Mr Akintola Williams who is in his nineties, Chief Chris Ogunbanjo, the departed Chief Justice Fatai Atanda-Williams, the late I.S Adewale a.k.a “the boy is good”, the legendary Mobolaji Bank-Anthony and many others still living will know what we mean. These inscrutable, wise, unflappable, unfailingly polite and courteous gentlemen represent the seamless meshing of the very best of two global civilizations with a hint of Islamic chivalry.

    But they are a vanishing breed in a vanishing world. Allah De represents the last of the titans and the very last of the Mohicans. With his passing, Nigeria is a poorer place indeed. It is the last snapshot of Edwardian Lagos. For a long time, the old man had been hinting that he felt like an alien in an alien and alienating society.

    He could no longer make sense of the terrible fate that has overtaken his beloved profession and even more so his country. Despite his quiet visionary rallying of the remaining faithful, the old ethos had come irreversibly unstuck in a brave new Nigeria. Journalists have become business men and business men have become journalists. Consequently, the Fourth Estate of the Realm has become the Fourth Realm of the Estate.

    The whole world has gone out of joints. This was not the country they fought for with their pen and moral authority. Pirates, predators and other social piranhas have taken over the country. Like a bewildered but wise statesman, Allah De took solace in stoic, studied silence and solitary meditation, quietly waiting for the green light of terminal exit. It came at 2pm on Thursday afternoon.

    Snooper had been trapped in an impossible traffic snafu on the Gbagada loop when the news came. The tangled web of belching trailers, smoking and hissing petrol tankers and assorted automotive psychotics reminded one of the Abagana Civil War inferno. But this was a most uncivil war. Darkness had suddenly descended. Chief Adeniyi, retired FRCN director and loyal junior friend of Allah De, had been trying to get in touch with the dismal network not availing. He finally sent a text. The great masquerade had departed.

    It took quite a while for the news to sink in. Alhaji Odunewu was by no stretch of the imagination a young man. He had lived to ripe old age and had fulfilled his mission in life. Rather than mourning, it should be a celebration of a great life of glittering achievements and personal fulfillment. But death is death and the horror of terminal exit often leads to a temporary disorientation and the loss of customary rotes and routines.

    As yours sincerely was trying to come to terms with death in the tormenting tortoise of traffic, the phone rang and it was Lanre Idowu, one of the remaining stars and exemplars of the old school of journalism. “Lanre, don’t try to break any bad news to me”, snooper admonished him. Ignoring snooper’s disquiet, the notable journalist had gone ahead to confirm the news of Allah De’s passing.

    It was after this that Chief Adeniyi finally came through. He informed that the old man left in his usual quiet, peaceful and dignified manner, without any self-important fuss or fancy. He had tidied his earthly affairs and had scrupulously made arrangements for his own burial. It would take place the following day in keeping with the simple rites of Islam somewhere off Gambari Street in the very bowels of old Lagos. And that was that.

    Our paths had first crossed in disarming circumstances in late 1982. It was a most fortuitous encounter. A man of amazing grace and courtesy, the old man had journeyed all the way from Lagos to the great citadel of learning and culture to show his gratitude to a friend and colleague of snooper who had been of great help to his daughter in his tutorial classes. But the old Lagosian had lost his way in the jungle of pristine beauty and had showed up at snooper’s door. Snooper instantly recognised the great journalist and volunteered to take him to his destination. It was the beginning of a long relationship marked by strategic distance, discretion and mutual admiration.

    Famously dubbed the Dean of satirical journalism in Nigeria by the great Zik in the course of their epic duel over diarchy in 1973, Allah De was as sharp as he was witty. His limpid, free flowing, uncluttered prose was an orgiastic delight and vintage Fleet Street. On top of his form, Allah De recalls Baron William Rees-Mogg, the aristocratic British journalist, politician, editor and statesman, who plied his trade as a reporter-columnist into his eighties until he succumbed to cancer last December.

    Forty years on, snooper recalls the historic journalistic affray between Zik and Allah De, particularly with the wily Fabian lion and magnificent former prize fighter baiting the journalistic tiger out of his corner with the offer of some preliminary skirmishes before the main tournament. It was Fabius Cuntactor, the great Roman general and owner of the brand, who had famously noted that preliminary skirmishes must not be fought with major artillery. Allah De rallied heroically and the result was a memorable intellectual slugfest that reverberates till date.

    Great statesman versus great journalist, they do not make them like that any more in Nigeria. Forty years after, as Nigeria lurches between violent and autocratic military rule and equally violent and despotic civilian rule the debate about diarchy continues to resonate. About a fortnight ago, the whole concept was dredged up once again by a forthright columnist on The Nation.

    It would appear that Nigeria’s origins and inauguration in colonial conquest and armed subjugation have continued to haunt it. A century after forcible amalgamation and almost half a century after the conclusion of the Civil War, arms and their bearers continue to assume a tragic centrality in the framing and possible unfurling of the nation. At the last count, the military are involved in internal security operations in twenty eight out of thirty six states. It doesn’t get more dire.

    While the northernmost fringes of the country have become a no-go area due to a combination of political and spiritual insurgency, significant swaths of the south are under the siege of economic and social insurgency occasioned by armed robbery, violent kidnapping, ritual killing, sea piracy and other deviancies.

    Meanwhile to complete the armed entrapment of the entire country, the federal government, under the strategically misguided notion that it is important to secure the presidential backyard, is seriously and furiously looking for trouble by adding the explosive Rivers state to its shopping list of self-inflicted political disasters. Even the original owners of the game of programmed anarchy are shouting that this is going to be a bridge too far, but the government is saying not to worry, that it is a little local difficulty.

    What would Allah De, a staunch opponent of diarchy, say about this unfolding political nonsense? In 1983 while the NPN rigging machine was in furious progress in Oyo state, a much puzzled and bewildered Allah De noted in his column that the NPN scoundrels were not just content with ousting Bola Ige, they were also bent on loading the Oyo State Assembly with a “Balarabe-type” majority. A few weeks later, the bubble burst and the landslide turned into a gun slide as General Danjuma would famously put it.

    Thirty years down the line Allah De would even have been more puzzled by recent developments in the country. When shall we learn? It is just as well that Allah De has chosen this time to make his grand exit. Let the dead bury the dead. It has been a long farewell from one of Nigeria’s greatest sons ever. May the noble soul of Alade Odunewu rest in peace.. .

  • And a short farewell from snooper

    While we are still on the subject of death and departure, and of coming and going, it is meet to announce that this column is proceeding on leave. It is time for the masquerade behind the mask to take a well-deserved rest and to take stock of the future. For six and a half years beginning from January, 2007, dear readers, this column has appeared every Sunday. It has been a rich and rewarding experience. The more you know, the more aware you are of your ignorance. In the age of the dispersal of knowledge, the columnist as an omnipotent oracle is no longer feasible. A web of epistemic vulnerabilities binds all of us together.

    To our young readers who often marvel at its unstinting punctuality, let us say that the column is a triumph of the can do spirit which is typically Nigerian. This column is a testimony to the capacity of the human mind to push the body to the outer limits of punitive exertion and exhaustion. Before this column, the writer has never done a weekly column, preferring the fortnightly and monthly column which is more suitable to leisurely meditation and languid reflection. But certain political developments in the west in particular and in Nigeria in general changed all that.. Conceived as a light-hearted social diary, the column took on a life of its own and broke free of its handler.

    Snooper will miss our numerous readers and devotees of the column from far and wide, the parliament of pen-pushers , the web of warriors and the intensive care and caress of all those internees of the internet. Till we meet again, you can afford to sleepwalk with your eyes wide opened. Okon will be on long lease and a short leash.

  • Okon votes for child marriage

    It is not all over for All Over. While the distinguished senator from Idanre, Dr Ayo Akinyelure, a.k.a All Over, was weeping and crying like a baby as irate female members of his constituency pilloried him for rubbing them the wrong away over the child Marriage palaver, it was not only Senator Yerimah, the Oniyeri of Zamfara, that was having the last laugh.

    Okon had barged into snooper’s room with a strong message of support for the embattled senator from the rugged hills.

    “Oga, why dem Yoruba women dey shout about dem child marriage? Sebi dem dey do am too? “Okon demanded.

    “What do you mean?” snooper snapped.

    “Ah you see oga no vex.” The crazy boy began with a leer. “ When Okon first come Lagos as small pikin, he get one fat Yoruba woman for Mafoluku who dey greet me every morning and him dey say, oko mi o, oko mi o. I come ask dem wetin oko mi dey mean sef and they come tell me say na my husband. Naim I come pick race. I never even sabi piss proper not to talk of dem wire wire business, .so as dem mala dey do dem yanrinyan dem Yoruba women dey do dem yaro. Child marriage na child marriage. Equation don balance be dat, abi no be so:?”.

    “Okon, you are just a big fool. Get lost” snooper hissed at the rogue.

    “Oga I no be big fool. I be small fool for dem time. If to say na now now, dem fat Yoruba woman go smell pepper.” On that note, snooper kicked out the rogue cook.

  • The gathering storm

    The gathering storm

    At no time since the civil war was Nigeria in more perilous times than now. A new report entitled ‘Nigerian Unity in the Balance’, authored for the United States Army War College has, again, warned Nigerian leaders to beware of another civil war or an outright break-up following what it called ongoing divisive trends in the country. The report, released by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S War College, was written by two former American servicemen, Gerald McLaughlin and Clarence J. Bouchat. The foreword written by the Director, Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College, Professor Douglas Lovelace, observed that secessionist tendencies are endemic in Nigeria. Under such stresses, it emphasised, Nigerian unity may fail. Should Nigerian leaders mismanage the political economy and reinforce centrifugal forces in the country, Nigeria could break up along its previously identified fault lines, the report concluded. Unfortunately, in Nigeria where we are content with living in denial, presidential spokespersons will readily lecture you as to how ‘political wrangling among competing interests has no consequences on the nation’s political stability whatsoever’.

    Conversely, unlike us Nigerians, Americans scholars don’t just talk; rather they talk, based on observable and verifiable facts which are then subjected to serious interrogation at the end of which the most likely probabilities are drawn.

    In tandem with these American views, a Nigerian Oxford scholar, Dr Antony Akinola, recently observed as follows on our current circumstances: “At the national level, we are getting more and more divided on sectional, ethnic and religious bases during Jonathan’s regime than at any other time in our national history. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum is fractured; further bringing out the divisive tendencies in the polity. The governing party itself is fissured, wobbling towards collapse. The president has had to assume emergency powers, the most extreme of presidential powers, to provide security, failing even the most basic ingredient of governance, that of passing national budget,” even in the third quarter of the financial year.

    Neither Papa Edwin Clark nor Asari Dokubo is helping matters with their bellicose tantrums. The north is not sitting idle. But while the north is yet at the visualising stage, the presidency has moved, deliberately stoking the fires of avoidable conflagration all over the place. And to them it matters not if that move is the most banal or the most illogical, as long as they can show us they are in power. Therefore at the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the president is backing those who stand logic and common sense on the head, claiming, tenaciously, that 16 is greater than 19 and, funny enough, a whole state governor permits himself to be so paraded. From there their agents have gone to the Rivers State House of Assembly, desecrated it under the watchful eyes of a federal agent, doubling as a police commissioner. Also, in Rivers State, in what has become the norm, the presidency is earnestly backing those who claim that 5 is greater than 27 and Mr President is believed to have since received in the Villa that great joke – one Evans Bipi – who claims he is Speaker and mouthing the profanity that Mrs Jonathan, the President’s wife, is his Jesus, albeit with a small j. And you can bet that if push comes to shove, the state police commissioner will be backing him all the way in that ludicrous claim. But that wasn’t the first time either.

    Before inviting Gov Jang to the Villa Mr. President had first recognised him as his own NGF chairman at the PDP Family Dinner at which Baba Anenih pretended to be the seminal author of the automatic nomination idea even when he was nothing more than a puppet. A perspicacious scholar has recently asked if there would be a President Jonathan today if Chief Clark had succeeded in his ‘Gowon forever’ campaign of the ’60’s or Anenih in both his Abacha forever campaign as well as his support for Obasanjo’s ill-fated Third Term Project.

    Now, while the north is restive and both the east and the south south appear to be working in tandem, mum is the word in the southwest and since nature abhors a vacuum, the presidency is assiduously working on how to use the zone as its launching pad for 2015. Today, all manner of discredited politicians attend Afenifere meetings just as some otherwise respected elders, who had, without a doubt, rendered sterling services in the cause of the Yoruba, are being had on the cheap for no other reason than to weaken the region ahead of the 2015 agenda. How, for instance, were some of the elders going to fund the spurious ‘political parties’ they are exhuming or claim to champion if not through some underhand means like the so-called oil security contract, since hopefully successfully shot down, and, what electoral purpose are they supposed to serve other than act as agent provocateurs and spoilers of the majority wish of our people in the region? Today, no thanks to them, there is not a single Yoruba leader who can successfully call a meeting of Yorubas across the political divide except in a dire emergency which we do not pray for.

    But it would still have been tolerable if the presidency was content to stop at that. Rather, they have much more dangerous designs on the southwest beginning from the 2014 governorship elections in both Ekiti and Osun states during which they intend to test run their 2015 do-or-die but extremely risky electoral shenanigans, using none other than some Yoruba politicians, in the typical ‘use a monkey to catch a monkey’ scenario.

    As at the moment, the story in town in Ekiti is that the President is rooting for his one-time benefactor, and now Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Capt Caleb Olubolade, which we learn is why one of their candidates, former governor Ayo Fayose, who believes he stands the best chance to square up to the sitting governor in the election, is dead set against a consensus candidate. He has just now been suspended. But also going the rounds, is the whispering information that the President is keen on supporting Olubolade so that once the minister resigns, he would be gifted the opportunity to name a ‘do or die’ member of the colony of Ekiti PDP gubernatorial wannabes as the new minister whose primary duty, he would be instructed, is to ‘win’ Ekiti for the PDP, no matter how.

    This should not come as a surprise because Obasanjo had set that precedent. Determined to win Ekiti for PDP in 2007, he manufactured the inchoate impeachment of Governor Ayo Fayose so he could put his kinsman, the Emergency Administrator, in place to ensure that. The events of the night of the election, 14 April, 2007, when results dramatically changed when Ekitis were already dancing on the streets for Dr Fayemi’s victory, more than confirmed that. And Nigerians know all that followed.

    Today, things are worse for the PDP in the southwest and in Ekiti, in particular. Apart from PDP’s utter confusion as a party, Ekitis have come to see and know the meaning of multi-sectoral development and the finer differences between PDP and AC N. Thanks to the administration of Dr John Kayode Fayemi. It is therefore in the best interests of professional riggers, and do and die politicians, no matter how seemingly powerful, not to think of any ‘Fehingbepon’, meaning, there would be no room here in the southwest for any act of impunity.

    Two egregious errors

    Last Sunday, on the Law makers’ salaries the following explanatory words: “figures represent proportion of persons per GPD’, was mistakenly cut off.

    Also, I wrote that Professor Oritshajolomi Thomas was sacked on 17 November, 1973. No, it should have read 17, November, 1975.

    Both errors are duly regretted.

    Arthur Medeiros, adieu

    We lost a wonderful friend this past week. We are here referring to the likes of Chief Bayo Famotibe, Engr Dave Oni, the Oniwinde twin brothers, Taiwo and Kehinde (Junior), and, of course, Akin Medeiros, his own brother and Mrs Bimbo Johnson, his niece. Arthur, a dashingly handsome and absolutely gregarious young man in our Apapa road days, when COOL CATS INN was our watering hole, passed on as a result of complications arising from a stroke which he suffered some years back. We will sure miss him.

    We commiserate with the family he left behind: the wife, the children, Kemi and Femi, the grandchildren and his siblings.

    May the good Lord rest him.

  • Freedom of Information Act and Dictatorship of Corruption and Mediocrity (3)

    Freedom of Information Act and Dictatorship of Corruption and Mediocrity (3)

    It is time in this lecture to address the equation between corruption and mediocrity that is a central aspect of the undeclared ‘dictatorship’ that I am engaging in the lecture. Corruption and mediocrity in our country at the present time are symbiotic, they feed off each other. Extremely poor performance or even no performance at all is no barrier to becoming very wealthy and holding very high public office in our country – including the highest office in the land. According to the House of Representative Ad-Hoc Committee Report on the oil subsidy mega-scam we see “a gross lack of record keeping”, “decadence” “rot” and “entrenched inefficiency” in the work of the public officials that supervised the payment of those vast sums to the oil marketers.

    These epithets of abysmally low standards of performance and probity were addressed to the specific case of the oil subsidy scam but they might as well have been addressed to the generation and distribution of electricity; construction of physical infrastructures like roads, bridges, hospitals and schools; public sanitation and waste disposal; social services for children, youths, the elderly and the disabled. Federal and state governments don’t have to perform well or perform at all to generate the budgets on which they depend; it comes to them like manna from heaven even though we know that the source is the rents from the oilfields of the Niger Delta.

    At the centre of things in the government of the federation and the ruling party, the standards of performance in virtually all areas of governance are so low that almost any other party or phalanx of politicians can credibly claim that they can do better than the current incumbents, even though there is little to choose between all the ruling class parties in terms of their ideologies and their value orientations. Almost everywhere that you find corruption in our country, mediocrity is never too far behind.

    At this point and drawing from my professional academic interest in linguistic, literary and cultural studies, I would like to offer some thoughts on the separate and yet connected relations between the cognate terms corrupt, corruptive and corrupted. My intension in doing this is both to further clarify and broaden the ramifications of this link that I am urging between corruption and mediocrity in our country. Thus, when we say that a person, an act, or a process is corrupt we are alluding adjectivally to a quality, a disposition or an effect. The term corruptive adds a dimension that implies an active transformation that turns that which is not initially corrupt to that which becomes tainted with corruption. The term “corrupted” lends an even more dynamic, more perfected or completed dimension to the term “corruptive”. At this level, the term corruption that we so often use to describe our politicians and their habitual practices takes on the quality of a specter, a malaise, a generalized social pathology that reeks of rot, decay, putrefaction. On this basis, I would argue that in our Nigerian context, “corruption” is to politicians and political parties as “corrupted” is to virtually all our institutions, both religious and secular, both private and public, both local and nation-wide.

    Pushing further on this observation, I would argue that we tend to associate corruption primarily with our electoral process and our politicians and political parties, but who among us is unaware of the cheap, superstitious and facile religiosity that underlies the nairamania, the amassing of great wealth in our mega-churches and among our most prominent, jetsetter religious leaders? Who is unaware of the scale of examination malpractices in our primary and secondary schools? Yes, the corruption has its roots, its foundations in the political order and among our rulers, but almost every institution in our country has become corrupted.

    Since I am an academic, I am particularly interested in the decay, the unspeakable fall in standards that has befallen our educational institutions. Here, I will give only a few particularly shocking examples of this terribly corrupted state of things in our secondary and tertiary institutions. The failure rates in our secondary school leaving examinations are some of the worst in the world. In the last one decade, I don’t think we have recorded anything higher than 35% of passes in these exams. In one particular year, in the NECO exams, only 1.8% of those who sat for the exam passed, leaving a staggering failure rate of 98.2%. Our universities are poorly ranked in the world; not a single one of them is among the 2000 most highly rated institutions. Far more alarming is the fact that our universities are also poorly ranked among African universities. In the most recently released rankings, only eight of our universities were listed among the first 100 universities in Africa and only one Nigerian institution is among the first 20. Within the country itself in the business sector of the economy, potential employers of our university graduates are forever complaining that the instruction our university students receive are so appallingly poor that a lot of the graduates are simply “unemployable”. The list goes on and on with a depressing regularity that has a grim foreboding for the future of our country.

    I do not wish to empty out the contents of the special focus of this lecture – the Freedom of Information Act of 2011 in relation to the dictatorship of corruption – into an endless jeremiad about the things that are prematurely but utterly corrupted in virtually all the institutions of our society. The Greeks have a saying that is very pertinent here that I wish to invoke to underscore this point: When a fish begins to rot, the process starts from the head and it is from there that the decay pervades the entire body of the fish. From this, I wish to state with as much emphasis as I can muster that it is our rulers, our politicians and political parties that we must hold accountable if we wish to arrest the rot, the decay that acts like a dictatorship in our present political order.

    One aspect of a comparative, transnational view of corruption that we would do well to keep in mind in this respect is the fact that corruption is not always or even necessarily linked with mediocrity as we find it with our rulers. As a matter of fact, as big as corruption is in Nigeria, it is nothing in size compared with the corruption that has been documented and much discussed with regard to some of the biggest transnational business conglomerates of Western and East Asian countries. Without in the least bit offering an apologia for the scope of corruption among our rulers, I would insist that it ought to be pointed out that Transparency International is able to regularly rank corruption higher in African and other developing regions of the world than what obtains in the West only because its figures pertain to the countries and regions of the world, leaving out the big business empires of the planet who, between them, account for by far the greatest share of corruption in the world, together with the effects that corruption has on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable peoples of the planet. I repeat: corruption is not always and necessarily linked with mediocrity, with abysmally low or poor standards. The high incidence of corruption in the ranks of some of the smartest and most innovative corporations in the world is clear proof of this assertion. The movements and forces around the world that have taken on the corruption of these corporations have counted on rationality, legal and ideological, as weapons with which to wage their struggles.

    This is where, in my opinion, we must locate the potential of the Freedom of Information Act to make a difference in the struggle against corruption and the indifference to due process and accountability that reigns supreme in the highest corridors of power in our country. Like all other national versions of the Freedom of Information Act, ours also presupposes legal and moral rationality, especially as enshrined in the presupposition that the state, the liberal-democratic state, is founded on the rule of law, on the assumption that a country’s rulers, a country’s public officeholders and a country’s business enterprises must comply with the laws of the land, otherwise what you have is not a true democracy but a dictatorship hiding behind the outer forms and shells of democracy. Invoking the theoretical jargon of radical political economy here, I would argue that our Freedom of Information Act of 2011 presupposes that our country is on the verge of transforming primitive accumulation of the most vicious kind into a modern, market-driven economy in which, in conjunction with cutthroat competition, you have the supremacy of the law.

    It is doubtful that our press, our media houses have thought much of these ramifications of the Freedom of Information Act. This is because as much as they fought long and hard for the passing of this Act, they have been remarkably reticent in using it to compel our rulers, our public institutions and private business companies to comply with the provisions of the Act. Let me move to the conclusion of this talk by briefly engaging one of the few instances when the provisions of the Act was invoked – and met stiff, unyielding resistance from the powers that be in our country.

    This much is known about the scale of remuneration of the members of our National Assembly: Both in relative and absolute terms, they are the highest paid legislators in the world. Each member of our National Assembly collects far more in salaries, allowances and bonuses than the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world.

    In the face of the universal outcry in the country against the whopping scale of our legislators’ remuneration package, they have been extremely secretive about the precise figures. Indeed the lengths to which they are apparently willingly to go to keep the exact figures hidden from public awareness and scrutiny seems to have no bounds. Thus, when a former member of the House, Honourable Dino Melaye, began to go public with these figures, he was swiftly and severely dealt with by the leadership of the House. Indeed, the manner in which he was silenced was so effective that no other member of the National Assembly has since then ever dared to follow his example.

    Far more cynical and indifferent to its claims to democratic norms is how the National Assembly responded when a civil society organization, The Legal Assistance and Aid Project, LEPAD, invoked the Freedom of Information Act of 2011 to compel our legislators to reveal to the Nigerian people exactly how much they are paid. They refused absolutely. Consequent on this refusal, LEPAD dragged the National Assembly to the courts. In a suit argued by the frontline activist lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, a high court ordered the National Assembly to act in accordance with a law that it had itself passed by promptly releasing full details of the salaries and emoluments paid to members of the Assembly. They still refused and then took the matter to a federal appeal court. The case is still pending in the courts.

    I should mention that without being a lone figure crying in the wilderness, Femi Falana has done much to put the usefulness, the value of the Freedom of Information Act to test again and again since 2011 when the Act was enacted. He has invoked the Act in relation to a range of issues of public good that pertain to a whole group of governmental functionaries, parastatals, private commercial interests including but not limited to Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of the Federation; the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Commission; the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA); and the GSM/Internet Providers. I do not think that Falana harbors any illusions at all that by itself, the Freedom of Information Act will radically and positively transform the present endlessly corrupt and mediocre Nigerian political order. But he is taking this prevailing deeply unjust, wasteful and corrupted order to the very limits of its claim to being a democracy founded on the rule of law, not a failing state perpetually on the brink of becoming a failed state. Let Falana’s example be a wakeup call to our media houses and our journalists that they must rediscover the reasons why they fought long and hard for this Act to be passed. Quite possibly, the Freedom of Information Act is the only remaining legal and moral instrument that we have for making the revolution that is coming a peaceful one. But this line of reasoning requires another lecture, another set of reflections.

    Concluded

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Thoughts for teens

    It is that time of the year when valedictory services are held for final year students of secondary and primary schools. Last Wednesday I was guest speaker at the Convocation Day of Ebenezer Comprehensive High School, Agbado, Lagos.

    I spoke on Youth Empowerment and Job Prospects in Contemporary World. I found the topic very apt considering the poor state of our economy, which makes it imperative for youths to wake up to challenges that lie ahead of them.

    For crying out loud, as the youths like to say, they need all the support they can get, but they must know that their destinies are in their own hands. Excerpts;

    Youth Empowerment

    Youth Empowerment simply put is empowering the youths. It’s not about physical power but knowledge acquisition which is greater than physical strength.

    As youths your knowledge is limited. Because of the exposure some of you have, you think you know so much, but the truth is that there is still a lot you have to learn from your parents, teachers and the society at large.

    You need to be willing to learn for you to be empowered. There are so many life lessons you need to learn so that you don’t make the same mistake many of us made. You need to know that life is a long race, hence get the necessary strength for the journey ahead.

    Those who have the task of empowering the youths must not fail in this crucial task. The Bible says teach your children the way to go, when they grow, they will not depart from it.

    Career Opportunities

    Career opportunities are the various opportunities that abound. You need to know them before making up your mind on what you want to be. As youths many usually aspire for some careers because of what they see around them. Some of you want to be like your parents or people you know. There is nothing wrong with that, but you need enough information to know not only what you want to be but what you need to do to accomplish your career dreams.

    Every career has its requirements in terms of subjects you have to pass at SSCE levels and personal attributes you must have to succeed in your chosen career.

    You need to know all the subject combinations and pass them excellently because of the stiff competition to get admission into higher institutions.

    Let me make it clear that there is no alternative to education if you want to succeed in whatever career you want to choose. Even to be a Pastor, you need more than the Holy Spirit to succeed. Footballers and Musicians who are not educated don’t usually end well as they have nothing to fall back to when they are no longer as popular as they used to be.

    One clear advantage you all have is that careers have become more diversified unlike before when it was only prestigious to be a Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Accountant and a few other well known professions.

    My appeal, especially to parents is that we should not force our children to study courses they don’t have the capacity or passion for. They don’t have to study what we only think is good for them, but what they are excited about and can cope with. Of course we must guide them, give them the necessary information and prayerfully help them to choose careers of their choice.

    Contemporary world

    In our contemporary world, there are lots of challenges which the youths have to learn to cope with and overcome. This is why you have to be empowered not to be overwhelmed with the new world we live in.

    You simply must be the best to accomplish your goals.

    My advice is that at this stage of your life your academic pursuit should be your priority. Without education you cannot go far in the long run. Now is the time to acquire academic knowledge and other relevant skills that will help you. There is time for everything.

  • Renunciation of citizenship: matters arising

    Renunciation of citizenship: matters arising

    A central constitution should reflect core values common to all the parts of the whole

    There are minor and major matters arising from the Senate’s recent attempt to cleanse the 1999 Constitution of gender bias or discrimination with respect to constitutional provisions on eligibility of citizens to renounce Nigerian citizenship. Some of the matters address surface issues while others make visible some aspects of the constitution that stand federalism on its head.

    With respect to surface issues, one matter that has arisen is the attempt by Ondo Central Senatorial District voters to invoke the sovereignty located in the citizenry. They had rightly called their senator to order and to find out why he voted for an issue that attempts to subvert their long-standing values. On his part, the Senator has rightly opened up by acknowledging that he voted in error. As there is no human being that is above mistake, it is expected that the enlightened voters in Ondo Central would have no difficulty accepting their senator’s open acceptance of acting in error. What is reassuring about the Akure town hall meeting with their senator is that voters and their senator came to an agreement on whose views should determine representative’s voting pattern in a democracy.

    Unlike the focused discussion between the senator and stakeholders in his constituency, another matter pertains to the claim by senate spokesmen that the section of the constitution at issue is an innocuous one that has nothing to do with underage marriage, which is deemed to have been overtaken by the Child Act of 2003 which states inter alia: “No person under the age of 18 years is capable of contracting a valid marriage and accordingly, any marriage so contracted is null and void and of no effect whatsoever.” Section 29 (4) may not be as innocuous as senators who argue that the matter they considered had nothing to do with child marriage imagine. Is the section at issue not inconsistent with the spirit of the Child Act of 2003 or vice versa? If the act being invoked is superior, then the provision that a married woman shall be deemed to be an adult and thus eligible to renounce her citizenship should not have arisen, on the account that if the person wishing to renounce her citizenship is an underage woman who happens to be married, such marriage should in tune with the spirit of the Child Act of 2003 be null and void and of no effect whatsoever.

    If anything, the principle of constitutional supremacy well captured under the General Provisions section: “If any other law is inconsistent with the provision of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void. It is conceivable for constitutional strict constructionists to argue that the Child Act of 2003 that says any marriage by any woman under 18 is null and void and the section of the Constitution that says that a woman regardless of her age who is married shall enjoy the privileges of an adult: renunciation of Nigerian citizenship, are inconsistent. Should this happen, Section 29 (4b) might be deemed to be superior to the Child Act of 2003.It is, therefore, right for the senate to opt to remove the section 28(4b), to obviate any ambiguity and to also make the provision gender-neutral.

    Another matter that has arisen most recently is the acceptance by the President of the Senate that the senators were blackmailed into re-inserting the provision that women who are married regardless of their age should be deemed as adults, even when they are not up to 18 years of age. More reassuring is the Senate President’s promise that the senate would look for opportunities to reverse itself on the decision to retain the provision at issue in the constitution, after having failed to do so as a result of blackmail.

    One matter arising that appears to have escaped the attention of the media and media pundits is the confusion inherent in the 1999 Constitution itself, especially its unwillingness to reflect the federal character of the country. It is not surprising that this aspect is overlooked by commentators who do not want to be seen as raising issues about the country’s diversity and the possibility of such interrogation’s capacity to heat the polity. But the voting patterns have unearthed the issue of the failure of the current constitution to reflect the country’s cultural diversity. But the fact that only two senators from the South (one from Edo and the other from Ondo) out of the 73 senators voted to retain section 29(4b) indicates visible ideological or value differences between the North and South of the country, a natural illustration of cultural diversity.

    If the provision of this section pertains to religious sensibilities, many of the senators from the South are Moslems and should have voted for retention of section 20(4b). It must be cultural: one section of the country appears to believe that women should have the same rights as their male counterparts, including the opportunity to acquire education that can enrich their citizenship and humanity. The other section appears to favour a constitution that gives men the opportunity to marry women who have not attained the age of majority while also wishing that female victims of underage marriage should keep some of the privileges that accrue only to citizens above 18 years of age. It is important for a federal constitution to allow parts of the whole to keep values that are dear to them without giving the impression that such values apply to other sections of the federation. For example, in the United States, California does not accept capital punishment while Texas does. Conflict is prevented by allowing each state to have its own constitution.

    A central constitution should reflect core values common to all the parts of the whole. Embedding culture-specific practices of a section in a national constitution shows bias. The section that allows women who are married to have the privilege of renouncing their citizenship while other women or men of their age in other cultures do not have that privilege is clearly partial to the cultures of Northern Nigeria. Given the history of the current constitution as a document that was imposed on the nation by military autocrats, it is not unexpected that such provisions exist in a constitution authored by military dictators. What should not be expected in the second decade after the exit of military dictatorship is for elected lawmakers to assign a sacred status to a constitution imposed on the nation, even if this had happened through blackmail,to cite the Senate President’s assessment.

    The fundamental issue calling for attention is the rightness in having a federal constitution that reflects only the values of a section of the country. Whatever might have been the motivation for Senator Yerima’s objection to removal of section 29(4b), the result of the votes to uphold Yerima’s objection or blackmail suggests that Yerima must have spoken for about half of the nation, the section of the country that produced 71of the 73 votes cast to sustain Yerima’s position. If anything, what happened in the senate in respect of section 29(4b) indicates that the current structure of governance cannot be made any more federal by the lawmakers elected under the 1999 Constitution. It may be better for political leaders to stop playing the Ostrich on the issue of the demand for a properly negotiated constitution, first for the country as a whole and, second, for each of its constituent parts.

  • People versus power

    People versus power

    That which hatred does, compassion can undo

    The past two weeks I have written on the Trayvon Martin case. I did so for two reasons. One, the matter exposed the racist underbelly of American society. By extension, this episode warns that racism permeates all aspects of social and political-economic interaction Black people have, even among themselves. Global history has been unduly colored by racism; that morose legacy remains alive. The international political economy is more a product of racial competition than one of racial harmony. Much like Trayvon suffered on the isolated sidewalk in a small Florida town, to be Black is to be a potential victim in danger of being deemed the perpetrator of his own demise. Our color makes us an eyesore to others and thus harmful to ourselves because of the reaction of others to us. As it is with individuals so it is with us as a people and with our nations.

    The second reason was that Martin’s tragedy lifted the veil covering a human dilemma even more fundamental than racism. In almost every population, from the smallest, humblest village to large, prosperous nations, there are people who would rather lord over others than allow each to live as they should. As there are those of us who desire the dignity of freedom and independence of thought and action, there is a countervailing element. This element would rather enchain your mind, body or both. People of this ilk seek to bend your will to fit their designs. If your will refuses to bend, they resort to breaking your body. These people will neither stop nor ever question their need for dominion. They only will question why you resist them. This struggle is age-old and endless. It shall exist as long as mankind exists. It exists between races as well as within the races. Oppression is unfortunately versatile to a fault. It often takes the form of racism. But it can be colorblind. It can found itself on religion, ethnicity or on the amount of money in one’s pocket.

    Sadly, those who seek dominion over others spend inordinate time acquiring power then maintaining it so that they may perfect their schemes over others. We pray that we are governed by angels but history warns us to be prepared for the opposite. The man who lusts to have a gun, control an army, rule a land, or own the economy is more apt to use these instruments against your best wishes than to help you realize those wishes. Oppression of others is as much a human characteristic as breathing and eating. As long as this world exists, we are one bad turn from a loss of freedom if not of life. To be a person in this world is to be ever vigilant or a victim.

    This sounds gloomy. Here I confess a recent comment from a reader struck me. The commenter remarked my columns made him feel sad, as if hope had fled. The comment touched me to the extent that it became the impetus to what you now read. My writing tends to focus on tough issues and do so starkly. I do this not because I am forlorn or to deprive anyone of hope. My goal lies to the contrary. If I were devoid of hope and of the belief that people could have a better life, I would not expend my time in the futile exercise of writing. I would direct my energy toward other things that bring a more selfish profit. But I direct my efforts as I do because I hold the dearest hope for our people and for all of humanity. I believe the common person can face the swelling tide of power, arrogance and hatred yet withstand the awful might of these worldly, awful things. The odds say the poor and average should fold and break at encountering the great onslaught of wealth and power. Yet, I believe there is something that allows us to survive the odds and the powers arrayed against us. There is some thing that stops evil and wrong from claiming total victory. We survive the dark assault that we may join together in common, humane cause to claim a brighter day and just future.

    The great thing in which I invest my belief, I know as God. My Muslim and Arabic brothers call him Allah. He is known by other names in other languages and religions. I believe he wants as many of us to escape from perdition and destruction as is possible. Thus, we battle against those things that would drag us in the wrong direction or crush us between the pestle and mortal of hard experience.

    To believe in something higher and truer than our mortal selves is to believe we can reclaim our frail mortal beings from the grasp of the powers that would trammel us from reaching better ground.

    I write not to break your spirit or resign you to the graveyard. That is as far from my intention as east is from west. I write to warn and awaken you. In times of war and battle, a slumbering man is a corpse in prospect. Ignorance is bliss only for the dead or already defeated. If you have hope and fight left in you, ignorance is as grave an adversary as the armed enemy itself. I write to warn and bestir your mind and passions so that you are sufficiently roused to fight and claim that which by virtue of being human is inherently yours. If perchance anything I have ever written has led you to take a step toward the pit of despair, forgive me for it means my pen has failed in its mission.

    To any one whom any of my writings have lead to despondency, I ask that you discard the shrunken-feelings and revive your spirit. Our race, our people have great tasks ahead. There is no room for sadness or space for despair in the curative, collective endeavor we must undertake. We must go forward in the spirit that we live to live more fully despite the powers aligned against us.

    In all that I have written, I have tried to sound this warning not to douse your spirit but to arouse it. Sometimes, a topic may anger you. This is good because rightful anger in correct proportion can be a tonic for a people caught so long in stupor’s web. Sometimes a piece may bring some sadness, but that is not to induce a defeated spirit but to make you aware how far things have fallen from their proper place.

    A great storm has passed but it is not for you to relax. A greater storm approaches. Those who are not ready shall be swept aside. Each generation and each epoch has its own special characteristics and struggles. Some are times of peace. Some are times of learning and enlightenment. Some are times where little takes place as if history has reached a standstill. Yet, some are times where so much occurs that it seems fate and history never sleep. Some are times not of peace but of war and strife. We live in such a time.

    The harshest wars are not always sword against sword, army against idea. At times, the most trenchant wars are those of idea against idea, vision against contrary vision. These are not battles pitting corporeal army against army but are struggles pitting the mind and spirit of enlightenment against those invested in inequity and wrong. Today, we exist in an age where affluent privilege seeks to drive all others toward penury and the socio-political subjugation penury ascribes.

    We live in an age where technology and science allows man to do his best for his fellow man. Poverty, disease, hunger and many scourges that have plagued us can be decimated due to the advances in human knowledge. Unfortunately, our moral advance has not kept apace. Worst, not only has it lagged behind, the morality of the political economy has strayed far. Morally, we have entered an age as selfish and uncaring as any prior to it.

    Poverty is rife though there is enough food to feed the planet. Water is being hoarded to profit some while the livelihoods and lands of many are being desiccated. People in whose families land has existed before recorded time are being dispossessed. The urban poor and working class are being pushed to the limits of their endurance.

    Almost everywhere on the planet the powers of elite conservatism are on the loose, swallowing everything they can then blaming the victims for allowing themselves to be consumed by the merciless processes of a global political economy resentful of most of its inhabitants.

    We write not to bring to tearful resignation but to incite the maiden stirrings of renewed struggle.

    As Black people and Africans you must realize war is being made upon you. Thus, you will do well to wage your own war back against it. It is not necessary that you call the war upon yourself. War does not just come to the eager and willing. It more often falls on the weak, tired and unsuspected. To claim foul and unfairness will do little good; those that wage war against you will continue with greater relish the longer you ignore the reality of our situation. In America, Black people face resurgent racism. Trayvon’s case shows you can be killed in the middle of the street and your assailant be deemed the victim. Meanwhile, voting rights protection is being swept away. Black poverty and unemployment have escalated to Depression–era levels. That all this takes places under the first Black president only makes the caper sweeter for those effectuating it. American Blacks are being scammed of their hard won yet meager victories yet are mostly ignorant of the massive confiscation being enacted against them.

    Meanwhile, Africa undergoes similar assault. The historic forces that detest Black America hold similar content for Black Africa. Thus, rural land is being gulped by international agro-business while food prices climb as do poverty rates. The global economy demands Africa open its markets to international trade but the markets of established nations remain closed to the new types of trade that will assist Africa’s necessary industrial development. If we continue in this way, we will forever remain the lowest rung of the world economy yet they will tell us to be glad with the progress we are making. It will be true that we mark progress. However, that progress will be owned by others and not ourselves. The more we work and do as they say, the richer they become and the poorer you grow. During the coming decades, our commodity prices, especially oil, will stagnate or even lower in real terms. Our population and misery shall be the two things that are sure of rapid growth.

    Despite the talk of a world waiting for Africa to development, the world invests more heavily in Africa’s underdevelopment. As in the colonial era, the global economy will establish several outposts on the continent. These places will experience growth and dynamism. But it will not be growth based upon the growth intrinsic to Africa. These outposts will grow to the extent that they mimic how the global economy extracts Africa’s wealth from Africa. You will be told to look at these places as examples of what can be done for Africa when the reality is more akin to look at the harm being done to Africa.

    Again, this is why I write. I write to warn you of the war that comes dressed as a friend and that speaks the language of development. I write that you will know the powers with which we must contend and that you understand their strategies, tactics and wiles. This generation must do its best to lighten the burden of five centuries of pain endured by Africa and her children who have been scattered to the four winds. I write that the old sun might set on our broken state and that a new sun may rise on our dreams for equality and justice. As long as I sense malign forces seeking to harm us, I shall write as I do. I hope that you continue to read as you have.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • Of friends, girls and fat, old men

    Of friends, girls and fat, old men

    The idea of marrying some old man fills most girls with horror right enough that they close their eyes, throw back their heads, stand with arms akimbo, and pronounce with every little strength their puny chests will allow: NO WAY; HE-E-E-E-EAVEN FORBID!

    I still have a vivid picture in my mind of my growing up years in my village when we girls of roughly the same age (yes, age-mates, thank you very much for that word of dubious origin), would gather together to do things: fetch water from the stream, run errands, giggle at our elders or just share girlish giggles that no sane adult could put any logic to. We were young, foolish and free. We were girls. We were friends.

    I have stolen these two posters from the internet because they both illustrate today’s topic; that’s right, every bit of it. Now, I understand that the international day of the girl is supposed to be celebrated sometime in October (I assure you, we will mark the day here) but I could not resist the link between the poster on the girl-child and the poster on friendship, the international day of which is to be celebrated on Tuesday, July 30. If you’re reading my mind as surely as I am reading it just now, I think our little cartoon girl is demonstrating to her friends not only a picture of what she is but also what she wants to be in the future: a queen pronouncing OFF WITH HER HEAD! Trust me, when we girls get together, we fill our mutual heads with all kinds of dreams, hopes and aspirations.

    Funny thing is, some of our childish dreams come true. I know someone who declared when she was young that she was going to visit Europe and would even be paid to live there by that country. Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that the said lady did visit Europe on the invitation of the host country exactly as our little queen pronounced. I know another lady who said she was going to marry a real prince when she grew up. Hold your breath, reader, while I tell you that the little mouth did grow up to marry one. She still reigns as a venerable queen of her little kingdom somewhere in the… Oh, wouldn’t you just like to know! I tell you, there is no end to the dreams that ooze out of the heads of our young ones. But you will agree they are beautiful dreams, no? Te Hee! Hee!

    Anyway, one thing that is common to all the girls I have ever had the honour of speaking to, however is what is certainly an anti-dream for all girls: the idea of marrying any fat, old man is hideous. The idea fills most girls with horror right enough that they close their eyes, throw back their heads, stand with arms akimbo, and pronounce with every little strength their puny chests will allow: NO WAY; HE-E-E-E-EAVEN FORBID! Oh, yes, it’s just like the girl in our poster is doing right above.

    So, in this what is probably Planet Earth’s Last Millennium, when men of science and philosophy are busy scraping the bottom of their brains’ barrels for solutions to world aches and pains such as ozone layer depletion, AIDS, how to air-condition the roads, or make my computer go as fast as my brain (or is it the other way round now?), our esteemed but not inestimable senators here in Nigeria are busy elsewhere. They are very, very busy scraping the bottom of their brain barrels for only one thing: how to make it possible for fat, old, tottering men to legally get young girls into their fat, old, wrinkled arms in unholy wedlock! Now, who would ever think that such an important topic can be turned down? Certainly not me.

    Come now, sayeth the Holy Book, let us reason together on this thing. Does it seem right to continue to sacrifice the purity of our nation’s youths for the satiation of spent forces (terminology for old men) who have never been of any use to this country, their community or even their families except to attract infamy? Does it seem right for us as a nation to continue to watch while these bright young girls are condemned to lives of pain, diseases, discomfort, mutilation and sadness over some men’s senseless base needs in the loins?

    Many years ago, I watched in horror as a documentary detailed the very traumatic physical, psychological and emotional experiences that young girls given out in early marriage go through. I was surprised to find that the documentary had been shot in northern Nigeria. It was so bad, the documentary showed, that there is an entire hospital dedicated to the cases of VVF, the common problem that such girls have to endure as a result of early childbirth, often through their entire lives. Naturally, the indignation increases when one remembers that the problems are not only man-made, literally, but are completely avoidable. What kind of beasts lived in our men to cause such problems, I mused then?

    Obviously, the kind of beasts that lived in men then still lives in them now, going by last week’s announced gloss-over by the senate of the offensive section of the constitution which allows girl-marriage. Our Nigerian senators would no doubt like to be seen as wizened old foxes. That announcement, however, did nothing but show them up, particularly in those from the north where this culture of girl-marriage is prevalent, as devious, old epicureans that history can’t wait to quickly spew into Freud’s ‘Ich vergessen’ (I forget) zone.

    I think it is time to call in the exorcist. He is MR. FRIENDSHIP which we are celebrating this next Tuesday. Friendship is the kind of relationship which the heavens themselves rejoice over. It not only lets little girls dream, it lets them bare their dreams so that passing angels can work on them to bring them to pass. It is the kind of relationship that enables us all to view others as potential means of making our dreams come true. Friendship is the kind of relationship that allows everyone in the human race to meld into others in glorious connections with nothing in their minds but purity of purpose. Friendships allow the world to go on because they allow us a fodder to use, lean on, cry on, lift up, be lifted by, kick dust with, dream with, share with, give to, be given things by, laugh with, laugh at, and just generally share the sunset with. It brings out the best in us.

    It is not enough in this world to simply have friends. It is more important to be the friend that your friend has. The world needs good friends. Everyone needs good friends. Little girls, who are given out in marriage to old men who are in diapers for incontinence before the poor little things can finish counting the beads on a counting board, need friends. Our little princesses need friends right now among our senators, house of representative members, elders, elites, all over Nigeria, be they old, young, fat, thin, black, yellow, or red, in you and me. Let us be the voices for their dreams right now.

  • Clinging to the serpent for help

    Clinging to the serpent for help

    That govs had to rush to IBB and OBJ to save democracy shows the depth we have  sunk 

    In one breath, it is good to commend the five northern governors who, seeing the way the country is drifting like a rudderless ship, took the matter to three of the country’s former heads of state. Yet, in another breath, one could also query the wisdom behind the decision. In a country where birds are no longer singing like birds and rats are not crying like rats, that is exactly what to do: look for people with the experience to intervene and get the country back on track. It is only when there are no elders that a country goes into ruins; it is also when the family head is no more that the house becomes desolate. Nigeria, as it is today is like the proverbial child strapped into its mother’s back but with its head bent. When that happens, then the elders around have become the exact opposite of what true elders should be.

    The governors in question are Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano). Nyako was not at the meeting held last Monday, which lasted two hours at the Presidential Lodge in Minna, the Niger State capital as he was reported to have been held back in Yola by a meeting with a Camerounian envoy. He was however represented by his deputy. They met with Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar. The good thing about the development is that the five governors are all of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The governors had earlier paid a similar visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo on July 20.

    The visits afforded these former leaders the opportunity to play the roles they hardly could play well. General Babangida in particular must have relished the visit because it afforded him an opportunity to come into national limelight once again. Hear him: “I want to commend the governors and some of their colleagues. I was very impressed because they have seen the problem of the country as our problem and they have taken the right steps to consult widely in trying to find solution to some of these problems.

    “These governors are real patriots and I am very happy and I told them so,” Gen. Babangida said after the meeting.

    Now, what are Babangida’s antecedents? This is a man on whom we can write volumes without making reference to any library. This is a man who had all the opportunity in the world to write his name in gold but chose, rather, for selfish reason, to write it on the marble of infamy. If we look at his economic programme, the so-called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); it was a monumental failure. It was during his reign that the country’s currency lost its essence and it has never recovered from the slide of that era. In Babangida’s time, his go the slumber to talk about corruption despite the fact that the issue had become a cankerworm then.

    Babangida, perhaps, might have been forgiven for all of his maladministration if only he had honoured his promise to hand over to a democratically elected government. But, rather than do that, he chose to scuttle the process in spite of the billions that his government sank into a transition programme that failed, in line with the design of the evil genius. Babangida kept shifting the goal post, banning and unbanning politicians depending on his whims and caprices. As is usual with all evil geniuses, Babangida eventually shot himself in the foot when the June 12, 1993 election finally held in a peaceful atmosphere, contrary to the chaos that the Babangida government had expected. After failing to stop the election via a kangaroo court ruling on the eve of the election, and seeing that Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was coasting to victory, Babangida summoned the courage to finally annul the result of the election, adjudged the fairest and freest in the country’s history. Now how can a man with this kind of antecedent save democracy?

    In the same vein, if it takes the deep to communicate with the deep, I do not know what lesson someone like Chief Obasanjo wants to teach when the issue is democracy. His eight-year tenure, from 1999 to 2007 was replete with various acts that were detrimental to democratic ethos. Is it his seizure of Lagos funds for months that we want to commend? Or the illegal manner by which some governors were removed by people backed by the Obasanjo presidency.

    As a matter of fact, this is the script that his estranged political son, President Goodluck Jonathan, has been playing and which is now heating the polity unduly. He did it in his home state of Bayelsa and got away with it. Now, he is experimenting with it in Rivers State, where he wants to remove the democratically elected governor, Rotimi Amaechi, by hook or crook. Although Jonathan’s presidency has continued to deny its involvement in the Rivers fracas, the more it does that, the more opprobrium it gets from Nigerians who are seeing through the presidency’s hands in all the shenanigans going on in that state.

    When the president of the federal republic descends so low as to be involved in the politics of a mere governors’ club and he gets rubbished in the process, whose fault is that? And, if the presidency still has not learnt its lesson and be able to truly gauge its true worth in the eye of the average Nigerian correctly, then it should have no one but itself to blame for whatever disgrace it attracts to itself. It is this Dance Macabre by the presidency that has made the five governors rush to where there can never be salvation in search of solution to some self-inflicted crises.

    That is the kind of thing that happens when one is caught up in the circle of confusion. The tendency is for such a drowning person not to mind clinging even to a serpent for help. Going to Babangida and Obasanjo to help solve problems of democratic nature is akin to asking someone to give what he does not have. Clearly, these two generals do not have any answer to the problems we have at this point in time. The only good thing working for General Abubakar is the fact that he promised to hand over the reins of power to a democratic government and he did within what we considered a reasonable time. But the choice of the then powers-that-be (Obasanjo) has turned out to be a disaster. But, if we can give General Abubakar the benefit of the doubt; we cannot for Generals Obasanjo and Babangida. Indeed, but for our common resolve, Babangida would have returned after he was forced to ‘step aside’ in August 1993. Nigerians seem unanimous in telling Babangida that ‘you step aside today, ‘you step aside forever’. In like manner, Obasanjo would have got a third term through the back door if we were not resolute in saying ‘no’.

    Politicians in the country have to ponder this sad development. By going to Babangida and Obasanjo in search of solution to democratic challenges is indication of how things have degenerated in the country. It shows the depth to which we have sunk as a people because, apart from General Abubakar, the other two generals are in the red in terms of goodwill and can therefore not draw anything from its bank. We gave them enough rope to tie themselves and they did not disappoint us. How then can they be the ones to rescue democracy, the very thing on whose grave they danced naked in their eras in government and in power?