The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Why June 12 still matters

(An almanac of national folly)

June 12!!!! Spring is in full spring. But it is not yet summer, at least not officially. There is something profoundly mystical about this date. There is something grandly metaphysical about its provenance. It feels very good around this time. But it also feels eerily daunting and tasking. The human fear of the after effects of climatic good fortunes has kicked in. Had General Babangida and his cohorts consulted astrologers, they would have been told to beware of the Ides of June.

Let us play some zodiac games. In the Gregorian calendar we have 12 months that make up a year. June is in the middle, and the middle of nowhere. The twelfth day of June is in the middle of June, but not quite in the full middle. In other words, June 12 is in the near middle of the middle of nowhere. The in-between nature generates its own astral tensions. The twelfth night after Christmas is when merriment officially ends and serious business begins. Twelve is double six, and yet they say there is no difference between six and half a dozen.

The number 12 has played a significant role in the political evolution of modern Nigeria. Just before June in 1967 and on the eve of the civil war, the then Major General Yakubu Gowon restructured the nation into a twelve-state federation. Twelve years later, it was the magical legal formula known as 12 2/3 which prevented the Murtala-Obasanjo Transition from achieving full integrity and fidelity to democratic norms. The military and their civilian accomplices had insinuated the virus that will destroy their own baby.

General Babangida probably never gave any thought to the zodiac import of the date when he lighted upon it. It was going to be another day for the permanent shuffling and reshuffling of the cards of transition which this author described then as “transfiction”. But there were enough astral signals to warn even political novices about the danger of toying with the destiny of the greatest conglomeration of Black souls in the world.

As usual, it was the Americans that first picked the scent of political perfidy. Acutely aware of the political shenanigans going on in Abuja and the reality that IBB was about to abort the election , the Washington authorities caused a certain Mr O’Brien, their USIS chief of Bureau, to issue a stern warning that America would view such a move with great displeasure. For his pains, the USIS Bureau Chief was summarily expelled from Nigeria. The transition had arrived at terminus.

The actual date itself was full of portents. The elements and the god of nations were warning those who had held Nigerians in military thralldom to let go. For a normally watery eyed month of June, not a single incident of significant rainfall was recorded anywhere in the nation on that day. And for a country with a global reputation for electoral mayhem, there was no record of any significant political disturbance throughout the length and breadth of the nation. Nigerians put up their best behavior to see off their military overlords. Everywhere was eerily calm.

It is useful to situate this strange calmness on June 12, 1993 within the explosive and combustible background of the country’s political evolution. Twenty three years earlier in January, 1970, the country a three year civil war which was as bitter as it was savage came to a sudden end. The casualties figures were high and alarming . Thereafter, the country lapsed into hard-fisted military rule which many believed was necessary to lay the foundation of a strong, virile and united nation after the ravages and ruination of the Civil War. Between January 1970 and June 1993, the military had ruled Nigeria continuously with the exception of a brief civilian interlude of four years between 1979 and 1983. Between December 1983 and June 1993, military officers from a particular region ruled the nation continuously as a result of the overwhelming domination of the officer corps by that region.

But there is time for everything. By 1993, a significant section of Nigerians, particularly the educated elites, were saying no to military rule in any guise or hue. But in spite of all the warnings and ominous portents, history teaches that those who play the game of domination and hegemony never know when and where to stop. In the first instance, if they are weak-willed, they would never have been able to retain their hegemony. But as compulsive political gamblers, they never know when enough is enough. In the process, they tend to lose everything.

Are there lessons to be learnt from the June 12 fiasco? Of course there are signal lessons to learn and the tribal henchmen of the current hegemony must read the following carefully. Twenty years after June 12, 1993 and 43 years after the end of the civil war, an Ijaw president rules over Nigeria, taking his turn after presidents of Yoruba and Fulani extraction. Pontificating over the length of tenure of each is a foolish political exercise. What is significant is that 20 years ago when a structurally lopsided military was at the zenith of its power, such a development appeared impossible and in fact unthinkable.

This significant political development would have been impossible without the struggle for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The symbol of that struggle, M.K.O Abiola, was a most unlikely hero. The late business mogul was not everybody’s cup of tea, even among his fellow Yoruba political elite. There were many who hold the view that the tragedy of Abiola was the tragedy of a man who forgot his origins. He was a creation of the military that eventually destroyed him.

Yet in a significant respect, Abiola typifies the saying that it is not how you begin that matters but how you end up. Abiola has ended on the right side of history. Erupting from the ranks of villains, Abiola ended on the side of saints. Martyrdom, especially with the eyes wide-open, is not an easy proposition for people of money and means. Abiola took his own on the chin. As he gradually passes into legend and folklore, he will be better remembered and much better regarded than most of those who have actually ruled Nigeria.

It is important to restate this fact particularly in the light of those who will reduce the June 12 struggle to an ethnic affair, or are wont to see the continuing celebration of its memory as the annual ritual of Yoruba political disturbance of the nation. June 12 is about firm and founding principles without which a nation may never know peace, order and prosperity. The presidency of a country is not the birthright of an ethnic group. Neither is it the permanent possession of an ethnically derived political and military caste.

It would have been easier for everybody and the nation if this lesson had not been learnt the hard way. But just as there are obstinate people, there also obtusely obstinate nations that can only learn the hard way. The struggle to establish foundational principles can be very ruinous for a stubborn nation. The casualties are often horrendous. The June 12 struggle cost Abiola his life.

On June 8, 1998, it also led to the dramatic termination of General Abacha’s life in famously sordid and sorry circumstances. It led to the ruination of the old military establishment and its professional demystification. It led to the humiliation of the Sokoto caliphate and the decimation of its political authority. It has consigned many formerly powerful people to political irrelevance and a few self-important actors to figures of national scorn and derision.

But as an avenging talisman for foundational principles, June 12 is not finished with the nation. As a direct and indirect consequence, 20 years after June 12, 1993, 43 years after the end of the civil war and 47 years after Isaac Adaka Boro’s rebellion was swiftly put down, a president of Ijaw extraction is presiding over the military and political pacification of the old north. Its hegemony having been exposed as a pious fraud by a radical internal rebellion, the old northern establishment is in a shambles.

To anybody who had lived in this country prior to June 12 1993, particularly before and after the annulment of the presidential election, the current development would appear strange and inexplicable, the stuff of the fictional subgenre known as magical realism. To a political Rip Van Winkle who has slept for the past 20 years waking up to the vastly altered political landscape of Nigeria, the situation would have been as bewildering as it is disorienting. In ordinary political perception, it would have taken a major political earthquake to bring the mighty north so to heel.

The irony is that the real earthquake occurred on June 23, 1993 when the military summarily annulled the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation thus setting the stage for prolonged and protracted national instability. The arbitrary decimation of the sovereign will of the fourteen million Nigerian electorate that performed their civic obligation 11 days earlier set the stage and opened the gate for radical and armed interrogation of the state which has proved very costly to the country’s dominant political structure.

In retrospect then, perhaps the most significant lesson of June 12 is that those who cling to power in the name of privilege are destined to lose both power and privilege. If the establishment and enshrinement of the first principle of a level playing ground for all ethnic groups proved so costly to the nation, the second, which is the establishment of a level playing ground for all Nigerians irrespective of religion, creed or class, is about to prove even more costly.

This is the second foundational principle that now has to be established, that all Nigerians irrespective of race, region or religion have a right to aspire to rule and preside over the affairs of Nigeria provided the electorate relinquish their sovereign authority by endorsing the aspiration. It is to be noted that while the first principle involves an inter-elite but intra-class struggle and contestation for power, the second involves an anti-elitist and inter-class struggle for power and hegemony. Nigeria cannot be said to be truly and fully democratic until the second principle has been established and the transition/transfer of power to the citizens has taken place.

To our ultra-radical compatriots who pooh-poohed the June 12 struggle as an elite affair, we say that it amounts to infantile radicalism to believe that in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural nation with multifarious modes of political and economic production concurrently playing out, it is possible to crash the historic gear to the second stage without going through the first. If the dominant political elite of a nation can deny other members access to power based on narrow ethnic affiliations, one must shudder at the fate of the ordinary people. Struggle must flow from concrete and material reality and not from idealist constructs in the head.

It is this second transition that must now take place under Jonathan’s watch. We can no longer rail about a feudal oligarchy. But the atmosphere is so fouled up that even normally liberal-minded Yoruba elite view the seeming chummy relationship between the dominant political tendency in their region and the old north with wary unease, wondering whether they are about to be sold to the “aulde enemy” all over again by a bewitched political leadership .

If gold can thus rust, one can imagine the fate of iron. The ironic reality of the nation today is that the ethnic injury and abiding trauma of the transition from military despotism to civil rule has made the next potentially more costly and ruinous. But this transition must now take place. Fortunately for Goodluck Jonathan, he has two more years to convince Nigerians that true democracy has finally berthed on their shores. Unfortunately for him, the ethnic sabre rattlers surrounding him are urging him to resort to anti-democratic self-help on the grounds that having suffered the yoke of oppression for so long, the Ijaws must also hold on to power for as long as possible.

Evil is permanent but truth is also constant. There are some prominent Nigerians who have become permanent fixtures of evil, having fought against the restoration of Abiola’s mandate, even as they are currently urging Jonathan on. But there are also many patriots who fought against the annulment of Abiola’s mandate who are also involved in the current struggle to deepen democracy in Nigeria. If Jonathan succumbs to the first mindset, he will most likely leave Aso Rock as a tragic failure, a principal beneficiary of a process who also became one of its principal casualties.

We can now see why June 12 mattered and still matters. Perhaps the most significant lesson is that like human beings, nations also make history and progress but not under the circumstances of their choice. Societal evolution progresses by detours, diversions and digressions. It is often circuitous and mind-bending, but most of the time it is not without its own peculiar logic. May the noble soul of Moshood Abiola rest in peace.

June 16, 2013
June 12, sociopaths, and the many plagues of Nigeria

The annulled June 12, 1993 election stands for many things to many people. To some people, the date is all about M.K.O. Abiola’s unrealised mandate. To others, the date is a reminder of loved ones lost and gone: the ones who died when news of Abiola’s win was being relayed, the ones who died when the tanks were rolled out on the streets in the protests that followed the annulment, and the ones who died when the resulting upheaval necessitated some travelling to ‘go home’. To the surviving relatives of all these departed ones, that date will continually bring sad memories. To many of us ‘others’, it stands as a continual beckon of ever receding hope, still there, still being chased but getting ever fainter and fainter. That fading light is no other than that Nigerians can manage to agree on something when they put their minds to it. That something could of course be an election candidate (like Abiola), a pet peeve (politicians), a favourite colour (food), or a ‘national’ dish (pounded yam I think).

The trouble is that we have failed to move from the point at which June 12 met us. At that point, we were wondering who we were as a people, either just odious or plain ogres. Then, we killed and maimed each other recklessly in the name of God, and we starved ourselves of needed development for ethnic reasons. Life after that point has been no better; we are still wandering around our national sub consciousness as the Israelites of yore wandered over Palestine, only now without their shame and repentance. We are still killing and maiming each other, and still starving ourselves of much needed developments; the only reason for that now is that we have collectively adopted the psychology of sociopaths.

A sociopath, says my dictionary, is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, exhibiting antisocial behaviour that usually is the result of social and environmental factors in the person’s early life. The only common factor I see in the early life of us Nigerians is this high level of ignorance mixed with a little bit of poverty. However, I don’t think poverty has much to do with the monumental waste by people in positions of authority that we are witnessing in Nigeria today; I think it’s all that very, very toxic ignorance that got mixed into our corn cereal when we were young. It has made us all sociopathic.

That’s right; the nation has been seized by many sociopathic plagues, as it did Pharaoh’s Egypt. Shall I name them, or have you been reading the handwriting on the wall too? For exercise, oh do let me; I promise to make it more fun. Our first plague is the government that perpetually oscillates between somnambulism and somniloquism. It jerks its knees only when you hit it with a patella of criticism. Seriously, I know my medical subject, thank you very much.

The problem is that everything revolves around good governance, and it is not coming from our government. Good governance interrupts evil instincts and directs us all to what is good for the sake of everyone. It insists that everyone tempers his/her sociopathic tendencies with something closely resembling good sense. Rather than slap my neighbour with a law suit for leaving his tree branches to shed leaves into my compound, therefore, I learn to grin, bear it and plant my own tree near the wall. When I find that the driver of the car in front of me has stopped to hold a meeting with his long lost friend coming in the opposite direction, I don’t ‘accidentally’ run into the said car from behind. If I do, I’m only giving way to my sociopathic tendencies. Instead, the government should help me to be able to point him to a law that says I deserve to get home early too after a hard day’s work without anyone stopping in front of me to talk about their village. So, please help us government to help ourselves because sociopathic tendencies have got us something terrible.

The second plague is that this country is peopled with monkeys with fish brains who have absolutely no inkling of what it means to be real human beings. That includes me of course. Just the other day, I heard the story of how an Okada man hit a taxi and, rather than apologise, hid his fault behind the support of his fellow Okada riders who one by one stopped by to lend a hand in the quarrel. The union support was so much that another Okada rider was said to have pulled up on the opposite side of the road, jumped across and slapped the taxi driver before asking what happened. We have become that lawless.

Can you also tell me why else someone would take a look at his parent’s house and set fire to it because his parents refused to give him a certain amount of money? Or, how can one explain why an individual would spend his section’s entire subvention on a car for a girlfriend? Yesterday, I heard a new one. A man, someone said, would even go so far as to buy an air-conditioned car for his girlfriend while he and his family would use a non-air-conditioned one. Now, I have heard the common saying that people give out only what they have but surely this is loving one’s neighbour more than oneself.

My third plague? Take a look at the Nigeria Police Force. Why would our Nigeria Police perpetually confront unarmed protesting civilians with heavy artillery that are usually not available when armed robbers strike? Even though the University of Uyo incident is still not clear (no one seems to be able to tell with any certainty whether Mr. Kingsley was killed within or without the campus), it has happened too many times. It is certain though that there have been too many other loose-trigger incidents involving the police. Why, the Kwara State affair, in which a police bullet said to have been meant for a taxi driver who did not leave the way in time for a bullion van, found a Polytechnic student instead. I say that affair is still fresh in every one’s memory, and so is the young man’s wound for that matter. Now tell me, how much more sociopathic can we get?

Shall I go on with the plagues? Try the (un)civil service… the (a)public service… teachers… students… politicians… Niger Delta… boko haram… and… Oh, what’s the use; it will just be one plague after another and we will be no wiser at the end of the day, like Pharaoh. We are in dire straits then, caught between the absence of good governance, and those plaguing plagues. A shucks to them things!

Many of us have carried on as if this fourth republic democracy is built on the blood and sweat of June 12, and so it is. Actually, to claim otherwise would be hypocritical, and we get enough of that from our pastors and Imams and other religious pundits, thank you. Let us wise up. One would have thought such monumental losses of human resources as happened around the June 12 matter would sort of knock some sense into us and bring us, at least, to the edge of self-realisation instead of down this labyrinthine path of self-interest and self-gratification. Self-realisation as a people is the only way we can define who we are as a nation, a people and a kind. Hopefully, it would also assist us to determine our goals, purposes and place amidst this troubled brood of vipers and generations currently peopling this world.

June 16, 2013
O’odua children’s day celebration: Aregbesola dazzles them again

The world should expect more monumental innovations from ACN governors

It is settled amongst progressive academics and intellectuals, of not just Southwestern Nigeria extraction alone , but the world at large, that the fundaments of Yoruba politics remain: A liberal, democratic state governed by competent, cerebral leaders, founded on social justice, equity, equality, enlightenment and freedom. Look around today, even in the non-conformist Ondo State, and you will see that deep down, this is an undeniable truism though some basic differences remain, especially in the latter’s obvious readiness to play the spoiler to mainstream Yoruba sociopolitical aspirations.

That though, is for another day.

Today, we are celebrating a key member of that class where the Lagos state governor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, is captain. Go to Edo, find your way to Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos and you will not but be euphoric at the multi-sectoral building blocks being laid by the clear-headed and focused leaders the good Lord has gifted Yoruba land with, especially at a time the country, under a dissembling PDP, is itself weighed down by totally avoidable crises, and visibly tottering. I speak here of none other than the Ogbeni governor, Engr Rauf Aregbesola, the restless, prodigious and ever thinking governor of The State of Osun, who seems daily to come up with something new.

In his article of June, 9, 2013: ‘Is Osun Truly At The Onset Of A Revolution?, my friend, Tunde Fagbenle, the withering journalist and farmer rolled into one, wrote: ‘There’s been a flurry of activity in the State of Osun in the last few weeks to invite the attention of Nigerians everywhere and raise the curiosity of many a serious thinker – what is all these about? Is there much substance to it or is it more of noise and make-belief?’. Tunde is from Osun State but because I have a bragging rights here, I can tell him without equivocation that he is seeing the real thing. Here, without a scintilla of doubt is a revolution, albeit in the making, because you dare not take a bet on what next is coming from that prodigious mind. Ogbeni is simply unfathomable, and here I do nothing of making him a god.

My bragging rights? Okay, I know Engr Aregbesola a long way back and even as the marauders held tight to the mandate the good people of Osun had long given him, he never stopped engaging me with his plans, not only for the state of Osun but the entire Yoruba land. You see him at his most enthusiastic and gregarious, telling you what a million things leadership can do in this clime to banish poverty from our midst and make us count among the civilized world where he contends the Yoruba nation rightly belongs.

These discussions therefore led me, way back, 12 January, 2011 to put my views of Aregbesola on paper in this very column in an article I titled: AREGBESOLA: Osun State Has Turned The Bend. I shall quote moderately from that article because today’s focus is the totally unprecedented, culture ennobling O’Odua Children’s Day the State of Osun celebrated on Monday, 27 May, 2013 with children and royalties from as far afield as Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Lagos, Kwara, Kogi, Edo and Delta States of Nigeria; West African countries of Benin, Togo, Ghana and Sierra Leone; South American countries of Brazil, Argentina and Colombia; Cuba; Caribbean; and the United States.

It will be interesting now to know which of these countries Osun PDP clowns would say Aregbesola wants to overrun Nigeria with. Last year it was Cuba..

That article began as follows: ‘

‘Given the breath of fresh air in Osun state today, all its citizens, young and old, must thank God that He made nonsense of the counsel of Ahitophel on the state of the living spring. They must not even begin to imagine what the state would be like today had the PDP succeeded itself in the 2011 general elections. Just cast your mind back to the era of Senator Iyiola Omisore as Deputy Governor in the state; recall the many horrendous consequences of a young man’s unrestrained political ambition and begin to imagine him as state governor.’ We cannot thank God enough.

The article goes further: ‘Go to Oshogbo today and you will not believe this was the ‘gangster’ state where a poor 16- year old girl was serially gang-raped by political roughnecks, with neither the First lady nor the Deputy Governor, mothers for that matter, saying a single word in condemnation. Nor will you believe that mere queuing up at the gas station to buy fuel had once become fatal in the state, courtesy the same PDP political thugs’.The article then went into a discussion of the governor’s plans for agriculture; how he had built up a synergy between the state and the Nigerian railways which will evacuate farm products as well as bring to the state manufactured goods that would sell at Lagos prices. He was not only keen but eager to get the state to supply a huge chunk of the billions worth food items consumed in Lagos daily. On another occasion, as a member of the Afenifere Renewal Group delegation to present the Dawn Document to him -we could not see him in his office until about 11pm – he dropped snippets of the Opon Imo – the revolutionary, standalone learning tablet that provides the senior secondary school students with the contents required to prepare for the school leaving examinations and providing 3 major content categories in text books, tutorials and past questions. A total of 150,000 students will benefit in the first instance and would thus have access to learning regardless of means, location or status. Like Chief Awolowo’s free primary education programme, the Opon Imo will be talked about for generations. But I am probably the very first columnist to ever write about it because it is so unique I could not hold on to the newsbreak and promptly wrote about it in the article under reference, even at a time Ogbeni was still holding it to his chest.

I wrote as follows on Opon Imo:

‘As the governor told a recent delegation of the Afenifere Renewal Group on which I was present, his government will soon unveil what it calls OPON IMO (Tablet of Knowledge). This is a computer system, in the mold of an IPAD which will contain the curriculum of about 39 subjects offered at the School Certificate level complete with past questions and answers and divided into subject areas with students accessing relevant course areas. Apart from exposing these young minds to basic computer literacy, the Opon will enable students study anywhere without the burden of having to carry text books around.

To this year’s children’s day celebration then.

The purpose of this year’s O’odua Children’s Day celebrations according to Ogbeni’s are multifarious:

The State of Osun, has decided to give their children the solid educational and moral foundation that will enable them to be well-rounded adults in the future.

**They are of the conviction that the realisation of the sociocultural and economic integration of the Yoruba race can be greatly enhanced by imparting that vision into the children. Indeed, such a cultural renaissance agenda, they believe, cannot succeed without including the children, for they are a key factor in its success. The Yoruba cultural integration can only be meaningful if the children, who would carry on the culture are properly socialised into it, along with the inculcation of value underpinning it.

** They also want to deliberately re-awaken the cultural and value consciousness of Yoruba people to make them realise the beauty of Yoruba virtues and to give them a sense of pride in their culture. It is such consciousness and re-awakening that can generate the willingness to reach out across the barriers of space and borders to others with the same culture and thereby foster integration among the Yoruba peoples, home and abroad. Children are therefore given their pride of place in the agenda.

Like his other colleague ACN governors, sans those of Lagos and Edo, Aregbesola is only in his first term. From these men, like the stratospheric Fasola and awesome Oshiomhole, the world can only expect much more monumental innovations as they do not believe in the ‘share the money credo’.

For any of them, there is going to be no dull moment.

June 16, 2013
The functions of state dysfunction

(A call for a sovereign summit)

Recent events, particularly the bizarre developments of the past fortnight and the unfolding fratricidal bloodletting within the ruling party, the PDP, make it mandatory to focus once again on the state of the Nigerian post-colonial state. The danger is not that the PDP might implode but that it might take nascent democracy and the nation itself along with its misbegotten debris.

As it is today, the PDP is in total shambles, a power consortium bristling with buccaneers, political cannibals and other consorts of patronage and unearned privilege. It has never pretended to any higher ideal or superior nationalist agenda. It was born in perfidy and is dying in felony. Even by the miserable standards of party formation in post-independence Nigeria, this is quite a new low.

At least its forebears withstood the ravages of their internal contradictions and remained essentially as parties until the military summarily disbanded them. But this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a party is openly disembowelling itself for all to see. It is quite a gory sight, a gruesome enactment of political seppuku on a national scale. But as a people and a nation, we owe it a duty to posterity to prevent ourselves from being consumed in the inferno of its infamy.

In its classical ideal, the state embodies and encodes the society along certain stern and immutable principles which guarantee the stability and survival of its territorial reach.. This means that the state orders and organises society for optimal self-actualisation. The more impersonal and transcendental the ideal, the more the state is able to function with impersonal rigour and transcendental efficiency.

In some extremely well-organised and disciplined nations, the state radiates and emanates such rigour, ruthless efficiency and quiet terror that it often comes close to an Absolute Spirit or deity. In such societies, state worship becomes a national religion. The state is the Father and Law-giver. For the citizens, the fear of the state is the beginning of wisdom.

The entire society is suffused with its ideological apparatuses. It is the ultimate Kabiyesi, firm but just and fair. In the old Kongo before the Belgian king arrived to do his genocidal bit, it was not for nothing that the state was known as Bula Matari or crusher of rocks. Anybody that stood in its way risked being crushed. But it also acted as a benevolent and indulgent father. .

The perversities of the Nigerian state in its current incarnation make it imperative to raise a few posers if only for the mental health of those trapped in its territorial hellhole. Is state disarray a cover for something far more sinister going on? In other words, can a modern state benefit and in fact profit from its own disorganisation and disorientation?

In a cheeky and perverse manner, this seems to be the case with the contemporary Nigerian state. The more disorganised and dissolute the state appears to be, the better organised and resolute it is in discharging its primary obligation and fundamental raison d’etre of plundering and evacuating the resources of the nation. Those who designed the colonial state as a vehicle of metropolitan predation must be chuckling in their graves. The Africans have managed to stay one step ahead.

We have now come to the juncture in political theory where a functional value must be allocated to dysfunctionality whereby state dysfunction obeys only the logic of its own inner function as a scientific machine for primitive extraction and expropriation of national resources. A nation under such historic affliction acquires the veneer of modernity and civilisation whereas social cannibalism and Stone Age political savagery are the order of the day.

Archaeologists of the future, while excavating the ruins of a gifted but doomed Black society, will be amused to no end at the remains of primitives clutching modern GSM phones or of some later day Rasputin still clasping at indices of phenomenal economic growth even as supervised carnage and spiritual barbarity were the norm.

Contemporary Nigeria is a classic illustration of state dysfunction as the organising principle and primary function of the state. We have left behind the concept of the order in disorder so beloved of some prominent African political scientists. In that scheme of things, the disorder is often accidental, purely without design and the culmination of a march of folly of intellectually challenged rulers.

In any serious and properly functioning democracy, a state of emergency is an emergency for the state. It means that the nation has entered uncharted waters, requiring extraordinary and out of the normal routine and measures. The entire political class and not just the ruling party must coalesce in a bipartisan front to confront the threat to the nation. But to treat a national emergency with the kind of grandiose buffoonery we have witnessed in the last fortnight points at some sinister war-gaming.

At the last count, three northern states have become a theatre of war and emergency. This is in addition to several economic, political and religious flashpoints across the entire country. With this dire exigency, you would have expected those in power to stop digging. But they have been digging furiously.

Last week, they added the scalp of the Sokoto state governor, Magatarkada Wamakko to the hunter’s bag. What this means is that the entire northern fringe of the nation is a roiling cauldron of insurrection and insubordination. The Sokoto state chapter of the PDP is in open revolt.

The PDP northern senate caucus is up in arms. Governor Aliyu Babangida is rampart against federal authorities and rearing to go, even as Isa Yuguda of Bauchi makes discordant noise. As the entire north dissolves in political combustion, total emergency and possible civil war loom in the region. And this is going to be supervised by a Southern Commander in Chief and a Southern military commander.

The ethnic sabre-rattlers and assorted power mongers who seem to have captured Goodluck Jonathan are egging him on. Their claim is that what is happening in the north is good and desirable for the nation, since the north has supervised the mismanagement of the country for so long. In the process, they have turned what is supposed to be a pan-Nigerian mandate into a narrow ethnic platform for the domination of Nigeria in perpetuity.

Even if it were to be so that some northern leaders mismanaged Nigeria, the purveyors of this abject and objectionable canard have forgotten that their own forebears were permanently in bed with the oppressors while the particular ethnic nationality they now openly revile and traduce were in open and permanent revolt against injustice for as long as it lasted.

In any case and unless their closet agenda is the balkanisation of Nigeria, they should realise that the current closure of the Nigerian state under the guise of equalisation of oppression can only lead to permanent warfare and instability. It will open the door to a new Robin round of terror whenever Jonathan leaves or is forced to leave power.

The question that should now concern all patriotic Nigerians is why the nation is prone and vulnerable to periodic closures .under each ascendant group, particularly in post-military Nigeria. We saw this with Obasanjo and the pan-Nigerian cult of personality that finally unravelled his administration. We saw this with Yar’Adua and the provincial and backward looking feudal clique that attempted to seize power in the name of a mortally afflicted man. Now we are seeing its ultimate manifestation in the somnambulist farce of the Jonathan administration. History repeats itself indeed.

We cannot blame a state for becoming a burden on a nation when this is what it was designed for in the first instance. This is the historic conundrum before Nigerians. The state is an alien contraption forcibly grafted on diverse and mutually incompatible nationalities and has continued to be so in all its post-colonial transformations and mutations.

We must warn once again that elections alone cannot resolve the conundrum except as a tentative and token holding device to ward off the inevitable. In such circumstances, no genuine transformation can also take place without a fundamental reconfiguration of the state and a redesign of the nation. A sovereign gathering of nationals is inevitable for Nigeria. Whether we must continue to postpone it and prolong the misery and the biblical suffering of our people is an entirely different matter.

June 9, 2013
Welcome, Opon-Imo; goodbye, Igba Aimo

As Osun people take ‘Tablet of Knowledge’, they should say ‘never again’ to PDP-type ignorance

Even Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo would have turned in his grave on June 3, when Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State presented ‘Opon-Imo’, the magic computer tablet that his administration has been working on for quite some time, to the world, at a well attended ceremony in Ilesha, Osun State. Not a few persons have acknowledged, and rightly too, that since the introduction of free education in the defunct Western Region by the late sage, Chief Awolowo in 1955, ‘Opon- Imo’ remains the second most revolutionary project in education, not just in the geo-political axis, but nationwide.

The point is that only the mischievous will see an elephant and say it seems they just saw something; when we see an elephant, we should say so. ‘Opon-Imo’ is a milestone. That explained why Nigeria literally stood still for Aregbesola when he launched the computer tablet. The array of personalities that graced the event cut across ethnic, political and religious divides, which is something to cheer in a country where politics is being introduced into virtually everything, and in the most cynical, if not outright damaging manner. This was something that was killed in the June 12, 1993 presidential election (that would be exactly 20 years on Wednesday), but which was annulled by reactionary elements in the country.

The Aregbesola administration has no choice but to be creative in its handling of education in the state, if it must live to its billing as a progressive government. The government inherited a situation where only about three percent of secondary school leavers in the state had the requisite pass for admission into tertiary institutions. This was an unusual situation in a south-western state which called for an unusual answer. The government quickly held a summit of education stakeholders which looked into the state of education in the state and made far-reaching recommendations. Needless to say that ‘Opon-Imo’ is one of the major responses by the government in tackling the problem.

So, what is ‘Opon-Imo’? I do not know whether it has a parallel in the world, but I know it is novel in the country, at least no government in the federation, whether federal, state or local has done such a thing. According to Aregbesola, “It is a virtual classroom containing 63 e-books covering 17 academic subjects for examinations conducted by the West AfThe Yoruba, Sexuality Education, Civic Education, Ifa on ethics and life’. This section also contains an average of 16 chapters per subject and 823 chapters in all, with about 900 minutes or 15 hours of audio voiceovers”.

Aregbesola added, “In the integrated test zone of the device, there are more than 40,000 JAMB and WAEC practice questions and answers dating back to about 20 years. It also contains mock tests in more than 51 subject areas, which approximates to 1,220 chapters, with roughly 29,000 questions referencing about 825 images”.

In fact, there is so much to say for this computer tablet. But I would not dwell much on that because so many people have discussed these in some details. Suffice it to say that power supply is not a problem for those who might want to look at that aspect of our national life. Already, the UN organisation has said it would adopt ‘Opon-Imo’ as one of the major tools of its West African regional harmonisation efforts in education. This, as well as how ‘Opon-Imo’ affect governance is my concern. A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.

But shouldn’t charity begin at home? You can be sure it won’t, at least not when the issue has to do with progress; and especially so that the charity is coming from an opposition political party. It is instructive that this all-important computer tablet was launched at a time the country’s ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was busy doing nothing, or at best going after some of its leading lights, celebrating and covering its laggards with the ubiquitous ‘federal might’ that the party’s leadership and the presidency keep demystifying by the day with their actions and utterances.

Rather than bring innovativeness into governance, the ruling party has continued business as usual. The other time we were debating how much to spend on the vice president’s lodge. At a time when the government should be busy dreaming dreams for national development, the whole machinery of government was deployed to ensure the government’s favoured candidate won the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election. Just last Thursday, the PDP suspended another governor (in line with my prediction last Sunday that the party would deal with governors who refused to team up with it in voting for its failed candidate in the NGF election, Jonah Jang). We should expect more of such sanctions over frivolous matters, including governors being nailed over the inability of the party’s leaders to successfully perform their conjugal responsibility on bed, should that suddenly happen. And this is the attitude that the party would carry to 2015 and still expect to win the election.

If indeed knowledge is power, then one can start imagining what the impact of ‘Opon-Imo’ would be on educational performance in Osun state in the next few years. And, for the benefit of many of our youths who mistake Obafemi Martins for Chief Awolowo due to our shambolic educational curriculum, it is important to stress that what is happening, especially in the south-western part of the country today is not novel to the region; they have their roots in the past. The former Western Region (now Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ekiti and Ondo states) was the pace setter under Chief Awolowo’s premiership. The region has many firsts to its credit: the first skyscraper in the country (Cocoa House); the first region to implement free education; the first stadium in West Africa (Liberty Stadium, Ibadan; the first television station (WNTV) in Africa (forget the attempt by the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the ’80s to turn history on its head by claiming that the first TV station in Africa was established in Libya). We still have such people in the country today who would want to rewrite our unfolding history in their own image rather than in the image in which it occurred.

If indeed Victor Huho is correct that ‘He who opens a school door, closes a prison’, then we can imagine how many prisons the Aregbesola administration must have succeeded in closing with its giant strides in the educational sector in Osun State. ‘Opon-Imo’ must necessarily remind one of the years of the locust that the PDP rule in Osun was. With ‘Opon-Imo’, ‘Igba aimo’ (the time of ignorance) must have been over in Osun; it must never return. Osun people are not dogs that will always return to their vomit. This, the people will confirm when they go to the polls next year to retain their governor. Goodbye to jati jati.

June 9, 2013
The “Arewa” North and our parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy (2)

The gains evidenced by the creation of the NDDC, Niger Delta Ministry, Amnesty Programme, 13% derivation and even the Jonathan Goodluck Presidency have only meant more wealth for a handful of individuals in the region. Overall, the average Ijaw youth, for instance, is as distant from better life as he was when Major Isaac Boro was in the swamps fighting to defend the autonomy of the Niger delta Republic which he proclaimed. And therein lies the danger. A more ferocious army is gradually building up as the little gains from the long years of struggle continue to move in concentric circles of a greedy and insensitive elite class.
Abraham Ogbodo, “New Militants For the Niger Delta”, The Guardian, Sunday, May 26, 2013

Dear Itse:

Last week, I rather very briefly touched on an observation that the fiercest opponents of fiscal federalism based on resource control are Northern conservative supremacists, while Southwestern and Southeastern conservatives and centrists tend to be its lukewarm supporters. Permit me to now expatiate more substantially on this observation, given my strong belief that it’s historical and current ramifications lie at the heart of the crises of nationhood and community that not only threaten our existence as one country but is also at the base of the horrible economic and social conditions of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians in every single part of the country.

As you pointed out several times in your piece that prompted this series, Nigeria at the moment of its emergence after political independence from British colonial rule was based solidly on fiscal federalism and resource control by each constituent region of the nation. I would add that as a matter of fact, this claim has a longer history, for Nigeria at the point of the amalgamation of the North and the South in 1914 was also based on fiscal federalism and regional resource control. Indeed, this historical fact is so central to your arguments in your article of May 26 in particular and, more generally to your thinking on fiscal federalism that you insist absolutely that we must revert back to this long history before our country took the wrong turn of doing away with fiscal federalism and constitutionally enshrining and politically enthroning the bloated federalism that has turned the states into fiefdoms controlled by a bloated and infinitely corrupt and wasteful federal government at the hegemonic centre of affairs in the country. Since this view or position is so central to your thinking as well as the thought of nearly all fiscal federalists, whether conservative or progressive, let me repeat it: we must go back to the long years and decades when the constituent, federating regions were considerably autonomous of the federal government that in fact substantially depended on contributions from the regions in form of taxes.

In all seriousness and without diminishing the case for fiscal federalism at the present time, I wish to argue strongly that reverting to the past on the matter of fiscal federalism needs far more careful thought, far more rigorous theoretical analysis and historical interpretation than most fiscal federalists, whether conservative or progressive and democratic, have given it. To put the matter as simply and as concretely as possible even though we are dealing with a very complex set of issues that altogether have caused so much destructive violence, unsustainable and maladjusted development and crisis-ridden disruption of peaceable community in so many parts of the world, we did not move from the fiscal federalism of the past into the bloated and parasitic federalism of the present peacefully and in full possession of the best parts of our human nature, individually and collectively. This is the heart of the matter and democratic and progressive fiscal federalists must realize that they must not – and indeed cannot – leave this issue out of their consideration. Permit me to expatiate on this observation, this claim as graphically as possible.

Dear Itse, please let us consider the not so curious fact that the two most opposed regions of the country when it comes to fierce opposition versus equally fierce support for fiscal federalism in our country also happen to be the poorest and the least developed parts of the country. I speak here of the North and the South-south or the Niger Delta respectively. Additionally, let us think of the fact that these are the two regions of the country that have given rise the deepest and most ferocious armed insurrections against the Nigerian state, specifically in its incarnation in the bloated and wasteful presidency. I speak here of Boko Haram in the North and the “militants” in the Niger Delta. It so happens that these are also the two regions of the country with the widest gap, the deepest chasm between a demographically tiny but unspeakably wealthy elite and the rest of the population of the region. And let us not leave out of the equation the fact that the North and the Niger Delta are, in these matters, merely the worst manifestations, the most egregious instantiations of what is true of virtually all the other regions of the country: a small obscenely wealthy elite; extreme poverty and economic hardship for the vast majority of the population; insecurity of life, property and personal possession for all, rich and poor, the powerful and the marginalized. Democratic and progressive fiscal federalists cannot afford to make light of or worse, completely disregard these very widespread and even defining features of the political economy of our country that came into existence with our move from the fiscal federalism of the past to the thieving, wasteful “barawo” and “jaguda” federalism of the present.

Dear Itse, I write of these issues with a sorrowful but not pessimistic consciousness of the historic fact that these things that we are experiencing with our imploding and wasteful federalism have happened and are still happening in so many parts of our continent in particular and in other parts of the developing world in general. Nearly everywhere in our continent where an extractive economy has become predominant over either agricultural production of export crops and/or middle grade industrial production of light consumer goods for export, these same distortions of community and development have come in their wake. South Africa under apartheid and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in almost the entire period of its post-independence existence are the worst examples, but the list contains other serious cases like Gabon, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, Liberia and Guinea Bissau. And if the historical allusions in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Nostromo, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, are to be believed, this matter of extractive economies and the violence and disruption that come in their wake have deep roots in the 19th century in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America.

I hope that the readers of this piece can deduce from the discussion so far that there are no easy solutions, no beguiling nostrums available to us with which to deal with the crises and challenges that we face in the historic transition from our past of fiscal federalism and regional resource control to the present nightmare of our bandit republic, our kwashiorkor democracy. The image of kwashiorkor appeals to me because of the symbolic meanings that we can extrapolate from the bloated stomach juxtaposed with a main trunk and limbs that are atrophied, all supplanted by an oversize head. Both the distended stomach and the misshapen head contain no sustaining food for nourishment or thought; they become massive precisely on account of a deprivation that is so severe as to be almost inhuman. I cannot think of a better image or metaphor for the real “democracy dividends” our peoples have been given since the transition to civilian rule from the preceding military autocracies that were the dress rehearsals for the post-1999 period. Again, let me say that this kwashiorkor democracy finds its worst deformations in the North and the Niger Delta, the two extremely opposed regions of the country on the all-important issue of fiscal federalism and resource control.

Dear Itse, let me in conclusion say that nothing I have said in this long open letter to you is a repudiation of fiscal federalism and resource control. My central argument in the series revolves around two major issues. First, I strongly believe that fiscal federalism cannot credibly and productively be invoked in our country without giving due recognition to the extremely violent conditions that accompanied and still sustain our historic transition to the present bloated, wasteful and exploitative federalism. When we had a truly federal system and the regions were relatively autonomous, this was largely because the surplus that sustained each region of the country and made them self-dependent came from cash or export crops produced in the regions themselves. With the emergence of an extractive, offshore and foreign-dominated industry as the mainstay of the economy, the basis of the regions’ and states’ self-dependence and relative autonomy have been more or less almost totally eroded. And we must never forget for one second that this historic transformation was accomplished by great violence, a violence that continues to this day in both statist and non-statist expressions.

The second of my two concluding issues is far more complex than the first one. Let me state this as simply as I can without oversimplifying things. I believe that the only truly helpful and productive way that we can invoke fiscal federalism as an issue that can unite all true progressives, radicals, democrats and patriots is to link it with the fate of the vast majority of the poor, the looted and the marginalized of all parts of the country. I say this without sentimentality, with my feet planted firmly on the soil of realism and hope, pragmatism and idealism. If I am not mistaken, fiscal federalists and their opponents, routinely, even emphatically base their claims and counter-claims on the either principle of derivation (pro) or national unity (con). As far as I am aware, the only notable radical and progressive intellectual that has tried to combine these two principles of derivation and national unity is the late Yusuf Bala Usman. But he did so on the basis of an argument that was so bizarre that it more or less divided progressives of the North and the South. This argument rested on the claim that Niger Delta crude oil belonged to the North as its point of derivation because the oil of the Niger Delta creeks actually had their deep geological origins in the North, even though their point of extraction is in the South. It is significant that in this argument, Bala Usman never talked about those whose lives and futures have been blighted by crude oil extraction in the South and the North. Also significant is the fact that Usman made this argument in a debate with G.G. Darah who on that occasion did speak on behalf of the poor and the exploited, but only of the Niger Delta.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

June 9, 2013
Now, who’s going to call us back from the brink?

This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face

Whenever I have reflected on the skeins of sordid threads being woven into what goes for governance, particularly our democracy in this Fourth Republic of Nigeria, I feel more and more certain that the trepidation in my heart is not coming from too much coffee. I think it is because my ears are hearing too much, my eyes are reading too much and my mouth cannot say enough. So the surplus sordidness passes through my veins and arteries into my circulating blood, gives a thousand excuses for disturbing the blood flow, goes into my heart and makes it go ‘Thump, Thump, Thump!’ The other day, I had to go to the doctor to complain about those thumps, and I don’t even live in a story building, I told him. Reader, I cannot begin to describe for you the mortifications I was put through to get to those thumps. First, I was poked beyond description, then half stripped (don’t you go getting things into your head!) then told to begin to ride a stationary bicycle like the little boy I was, all in the semi-toto. Anyway, the good doctor, finding nothing, began to shake his head in perplexity. That was when I told him not to worry, he should just take the pulse of the nation’s politics for a clue.

Yes, things just seem to be going from worse to worse these days, don’t they, particularly over this NGF thing? Really, the whole mess has left me wondering about a lot of things. To start with, when I began to hear about the Governors’ forum, I thought it was to enable the governors to come together, compare notes over a bottle or two of beer and generally wind down after a good quarter’s hard work. Then I began to hear that just about everywhere has one governors’ forum or the other – national, regional, parties, gender … What? No gender based forum – That’s because many of them are in mufti. Anyway, I really did begin to wonder – what the deuce are we doing with all these forums? Is that part of governance? Is it in the constitution? For goodness’ sake, who is looking after me while their excellencies are busy seeing to the affairs of their forums?

Forgive me. I err, I think, in thinking that these forums have not served a single purpose. If we look at it objectively, I’m sure we will find that they have been useful. Let’s see. Have you noticed that in nearly all the states, minus a few serious ones, nearly nothing is happening except for a few stabs at governance? The lives of the people remain unchanged. Every morning, families still load their cars with jerry cans in search of water like in the primordial times (yep, they had some kind of mobility then); candle factories and lantern companies are still surviving though in fierce competition with generator companies for electricity just as in the cave times (they also had some kind of fossil energy then); and yes, people are still moving around on pothole-filled roads (just as they were before those roads were made). So, mercifully, those forums are keeping our dear governors so occupied that they have not had time to look into these things. Who knows, if they had had the time, might they not have made things worse? So yes, we like our pain, thank you.

The story I am about to tell you is true, painful and I have also told it umpteen times, but at this point, I don’t care. There was a man who went to his Rabbi to complain that life was too difficult; nine of them lived in a room. The wise Rabbi asked him to go take in a goat and after one week, he should return. One week later, the man was prostrate. Nine of them plus one goat in a room was pure hell. He was asked to go and take out the goat and return after a week. He returned to exclaim that life indeed was beautiful; just nine of them in a room, no goat. So you see, it’s all a matter of perspective. Let the governors have their forums and let us have the devils we all know so well. Life is beautiful, no electricity.

Those forums also tell me that our governors are using their time most judiciously. The fact is that most of them have at least twenty or more commissioners, a hundred plus special assistants and about two hundred senior special assistants. Now with all those hands (and legs), what on earth is left for the governor himself to do? As Obasanjo himself used to say, his ministers’ achievements were his own achievements. So there, those blessed forums help to get them governors out of our hairs so we can go about our daily scratching. Thanks to our otherwise preoccupied governors, many really oouuuld women are still gathering a few firewood pieces they no longer have the necks to carry; families are still bearing the burdens of looking after their terminally sick relatives without governmental assistance, and much more. What do these matter, when the governor needs all the time he can get to travel abroad and see to those newly purchased houses, golf courses, girl friends, etc.

Then, those forums actually help to protect our governors against sudden attacks of say … poverty. Everyone knows there is safety in numbers. When they all know what the other is doing through those get-togethers, there is little chance of anyone straying too far from the fold and doing too much good for his people. Oh no, not a chance. Such a one can quickly be reined in and told in very certain terms that governance is not about governing but appearing to govern. That one is quickly shown that governance is about motions and gestures rather than achieving. Achieve! What is the world coming to if governors are now to achieve?! I tell you, those forums are super useful.

There are many other reasons but don’t let us waste time on any more except this last one. Have you noticed how they all have kept us riveted to the news these past few days, so that we all are more concerned now about which governor is really the chairman of the NGF rather than what each governor has done for his people? Have you? We all are now so distracted we can hardly eat. Many of us cannot believe that our governors cannot count; many of us cannot believe that the president would have a hand in joining others not to be able to count that we let our foods burn on the stove, poor as they are (the food that is, not the stove). We are all seeing that nineteen votes are counted for one person, and sixteen for another and who struts around with the president’s medal of recognition? Your sixteen, of course. Now, imagine James Earl Jones intoning this: This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face. Newton’s Law of gravity also don’t mean a thing. Just because a building falls and hits you on the head does not necessarily mean it is obeying the law of its weight. It may just be obeying our president.

So, what does it matter that the role of those blessed forums does not exist in the constitution? They can still take our time, wring out our hearts, confound our senses and generally distract all of us to a point of frenzy where we chew out our heads and pull out our hairs. Problem is, who is going to pull us back from the brink?

June 9, 2013
Why teachers matter

I was recently invited to give a talk to some English students at a University on career prospects for them. Their first option should be teaching but I know it is the last option for many graduates. Even for some who read Education related courses, they would do anything to avoid taking a teaching appointment except they have no other choice.

In listing my options at the lecture, I said l would like to start with the one I know they don’t like to hear about and asked the students if they could name what it is and expectedly they all chorused ‘teaching’.

At one stage or the other, we have all been taught by teachers and want good teachers to teach our children, but ironically not many graduates want to become teachers. Most parents, even teachers themselves dream that their children become Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers and some other choice professions for reasons not unconnected with the poor image of the teaching profession and the poor remunerations they earn.

The on-going strike by members of the Nigeria Union of Teachers in nine states which have not paid the 27.5 per cent Teachers Enhanced Allowance, and the minimum wage of N18,000 is indicative of the contempt the affected states have for teachers.

According to the National President of the NUT, Micheal Olukoya, “while some state governments, after much struggle, have come to terms with the provisions of the agreement, it is regrettable that 5 years after, nine states are still in their season of prevarications.”

Considering the crucial role of teachers at all levels of education, teachers need to be adequately and promptly paid to ensure that they perform their duties. Unfortunately, teachers are one of the poorest paid professionals. The joke has always been that teachers have to wait till they make it to heaven to get whatever reward they are entitled to.

It is indefensible that the nine states in question have taken this long to implement the demands of the teachers. All state governments always claim to be committed to improving the standards of education but what this strike has shown is that they may well be paying lip service to whatever commitment they have or are not getting their priorities right on education.

If some state governments have complied, there can be no justification for others not to do so if they appreciate the need to have well motivated teachers who will not be forced to resort to staying away from classroom to get what they deserve.

For the affected state governments, their lukewarm response to the strike suggests that they don’t care for how long the strike continues. They probably would have taken the strike more seriously if some other workers in their states like civil servants and doctors were the ones on strike.

Academic staffs of polytechnics nationwide have also been on strike without the federal and state governments seeming too bothered about their complaints. The strident pleas of the students who are the worst hit for an amicable resolution of the disagreement have fallen on deaf ears.

We need to stop treating teachers as second rate professionals. But for teachers, many accomplished professionals, including the governors may not have attained whatever status they lay claim today.

The defaulting states should pay up and not complicate the already sorry state of education in the country.

June 9, 2013
Now, who’s going to call us back from the brink?

This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face

Whenever I have reflected on the skeins of sordid threads being woven into what goes for governance, particularly our democracy in this Fourth Republic of Nigeria, I feel more and more certain that the trepidation in my heart is not coming from too much coffee. I think it is because my ears are hearing too much, my eyes are reading too much and my mouth cannot say enough. So the surplus sordidness passes through my veins and arteries into my circulating blood, gives a thousand excuses for disturbing the blood flow, goes into my heart and makes it go ‘Thump, Thump, Thump!’ The other day, I had to go to the doctor to complain about those thumps, and I don’t even live in a story building, I told him. Reader, I cannot begin to describe for you the mortifications I was put through to get to those thumps. First, I was poked beyond description, then half stripped (don’t you go getting things into your head!) then told to begin to ride a stationary bicycle like the little boy I was, all in the semi-toto. Anyway, the good doctor, finding nothing, began to shake his head in perplexity. That was when I told him not to worry, he should just take the pulse of the nation’s politics for a clue.

Yes, things just seem to be going from worse to worse these days, don’t they, particularly over this NGF thing? Really, the whole mess has left me wondering about a lot of things. To start with, when I began to hear about the Governors’ forum, I thought it was to enable the governors to come together, compare notes over a bottle or two of beer and generally wind down after a good quarter’s hard work. Then I began to hear that just about everywhere has one governors’ forum or the other – national, regional, parties, gender … What? No gender based forum – That’s because many of them are in mufti. Anyway, I really did begin to wonder – what the deuce are we doing with all these forums? Is that part of governance? Is it in the constitution? For goodness’ sake, who is looking after me while their excellencies are busy seeing to the affairs of their forums?

Forgive me. I err, I think, in thinking that these forums have not served a single purpose. If we look at it objectively, I’m sure we will find that they have been useful. Let’s see. Have you noticed that in nearly all the states, minus a few serious ones, nearly nothing is happening except for a few stabs at governance? The lives of the people remain unchanged. Every morning, families still load their cars with jerry cans in search of water like in the primordial times (yep, they had some kind of mobility then); candle factories and lantern companies are still surviving though in fierce competition with generator companies for electricity just as in the cave times (they also had some kind of fossil energy then); and yes, people are still moving around on pothole-filled roads (just as they were before those roads were made). So, mercifully, those forums are keeping our dear governors so occupied that they have not had time to look into these things. Who knows, if they had had the time, might they not have made things worse? So yes, we like our pain, thank you.

The story I am about to tell you is true, painful and I have also told it umpteen times, but at this point, I don’t care. There was a man who went to his Rabbi to complain that life was too difficult; nine of them lived in a room. The wise Rabbi asked him to go take in a goat and after one week, he should return. One week later, the man was prostrate. Nine of them plus one goat in a room was pure hell. He was asked to go and take out the goat and return after a week. He returned to exclaim that life indeed was beautiful; just nine of them in a room, no goat. So you see, it’s all a matter of perspective. Let the governors have their forums and let us have the devils we all know so well. Life is beautiful, no electricity.

Those forums also tell me that our governors are using their time most judiciously. The fact is that most of them have at least twenty or more commissioners, a hundred plus special assistants and about two hundred senior special assistants. Now with all those hands (and legs), what on earth is left for the governor himself to do? As Obasanjo himself used to say, his ministers’ achievements were his own achievements. So there, those blessed forums help to get them governors out of our hairs so we can go about our daily scratching. Thanks to our otherwise preoccupied governors, many really oouuuld women are still gathering a few firewood pieces they no longer have the necks to carry; families are still bearing the burdens of looking after their terminally sick relatives without governmental assistance, and much more. What do these matter, when the governor needs all the time he can get to travel abroad and see to those newly purchased houses, golf courses, girl friends, etc.

Then, those forums actually help to protect our governors against sudden attacks of say … poverty. Everyone knows there is safety in numbers. When they all know what the other is doing through those get-togethers, there is little chance of anyone straying too far from the fold and doing too much good for his people. Oh no, not a chance. Such a one can quickly be reined in and told in very certain terms that governance is not about governing but appearing to govern. That one is quickly shown that governance is about motions and gestures rather than achieving. Achieve! What is the world coming to if governors are now to achieve?! I tell you, those forums are super useful.

There are many other reasons but don’t let us waste time on any more except this last one. Have you noticed how they all have kept us riveted to the news these past few days, so that we all are more concerned now about which governor is really the chairman of the NGF rather than what each governor has done for his people? Have you? We all are now so distracted we can hardly eat. Many of us cannot believe that our governors cannot count; many of us cannot believe that the president would have a hand in joining others not to be able to count that we let our foods burn on the stove, poor as they are (the food that is, not the stove). We are all seeing that nineteen votes are counted for one person, and sixteen for another and who struts around with the president’s medal of recognition? Your sixteen, of course. Now, imagine James Earl Jones intoning this: This is the Federal Republic of Nigeria where black is white and white is black and Galileo’s mathematics falls flat on its face. Newton’s Law of gravity also don’t mean a thing. Just because a building falls and hits you on the head does not necessarily mean it is obeying the law of its weight. It may just be obeying our president.

So, what does it matter that the role of those blessed forums does not exist in the constitution? They can still take our time, wring out our hearts, confound our senses and generally distract all of us to a point of frenzy where we chew out our heads and pull out our hairs. Problem is, who is going to pull us back from the brink?

June 9, 2013
Okon romances Bigfoot at Ife

To the lush, alluring and eternally enchanting OAU campus at Ife and its celebrated Staff Club with Okon in tow. Nestling among giant trees and overlooking a magical mountain range straight out of the fabled Igbo Irunmole, the OAU Staff Club remains a tribute to Hezekiah Oluwasanmi’s visionary genius.

It was here in the seventies and eighties that some of the most brilliant debates about military rule and the fate of the nation took place under an iconic almond tree. The almond tree was still there this Friday afternoon—or was this an optical illusion? But the presiding deity was nowhere to be found. The deity in question, Professor Akintola Aboderin, a.k.a Akin Abod, supervised the debates under the tree while beer and much bile flowed. Aboderin was a Yale prodigy who was already turning in research papers as an undergraduate. But all that now belongs to institutional memory and aborted hopes.

Okon had been dazzled and dazed by the architectural beauty of the landscape, But not to be fazed, the rummy lad immediately began running errant commentary.

“Chei, Oga na god go punish dis wicked Yoruba people. So na here dem come sink all dem Oyel money?” the mad boy crowed.

“Okon, watch your tongue. This is an important place.” Snooper admonished the mad boy.

“So na important place go mean make man see dem truth make man no talk?” the rogue charged back.

“Okay then” snooper said ominously. This seems to have quietened the boy a bit. But all hell was let loose as soon as we entered the club\s premises.

“Wey all dem yeye professors, abi werepe don finish dem for dem farm?” the mad boy charged. An embarrassed snooper tried to hush the boy up.

“You lunatic, I have told you these people are eggheads,” snooper cautioned.

“Ah oga,” “na true, he get one of dem I dey see and him head come be like dem tolotolo egg.” The mad boy jeered. It was at this point that Luke, a veteran staffer of the club, hailed snooper.

“Ha Mr president.” Luke saluted. But the satanic boy quickly picked the scent of blood.

“Chei, we dey pray make god give us better pikin. Oga, so na for here you come be president?” Okon chortled to snooper’s seething rage. It was at this point that Charles Ukeje, an Associate Professor, reverentially guided snooper towards a row of immaculate whitewashed chairs. Charles’ father, the late and much beloved Animalu Ukeje, a,k.a Comrade Animal, was Vice President to snooper.

“This is the elders, corner,” Charles intoned.

“No wonder, but why dem chair no get wheel?” Okon grunted sarcastically. It was at this point, and as if on cue, that the elders started trooping in. Welcome, Mr Sagay a.k.a S.O.G, welcome Professors Adewumi and Monone Omosule, welcome the ever urbane and courteous gentleman, Professor Aduayi, welcome snooper’s buddy, Professor Owolabi Ajayi of Cobra fame and ,of course, welcome Dr Bunyamin Kukoyi, a.k.a Bigfoot, prizefighter and inimitable master of urban affray. It was Bigfoot that immediately caught Okon’s fancy.

“Do you remember the day I wanted to beat you up at Ifewara for rowdy conduct?” Bigfoot asked a bemused snooper without any sense of irony. The old pugilist immediately began regaling us with his duelling exploits, particularly his encounters with local thugs who always ended in hospital. One of these, a local toughie called Agbo, fouled his trousers after Bigfoot administered physical therapy.

The most hilarious was the occasion in secondary school when he was sent home to bring his father after a nasty fracas. In place of his real father, Bigfoot rented a local Ijebu man who wasted no time in slapping him several times as the principal reeled out his offences. Okon was immensely impressed. He never uttered another word that afternoon. The fear of Bigfoot is the beginning of wisdom. It has been a wonderful afternoon, folks.

June 9, 2013