The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Whenever the truth hurts

    Whenever the truth hurts

    Nigerians at home and abroad  need to accept that the truth can liberate while it can also hurt.

    One popular lesson learned from Christian scriptures is that the truth shall set people free. In other words, the truth shall liberate people troubled or otherwise from their inhibitions and put them on the road to salvation or redemption. This has not happened in the case of truth that Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale shot and chopped Drummer Lee Rigby a British soldier in Woolwich, north-east London last week. The fact that the young men are British citizens of Nigerian descent had caused ripples in the country in which the crime was committed and where the parents of the two young men were born. This tragic and barbaric act has left so many lessons to be learnt in different parts of the world.

    The truth about the parentage of the two latest members of the world’s newest international terrorists has raised the adrenalin of Nigerians in diaspora in the United Kingdom and in the birthplace of the parents of the two Michaels. Those in the United Kingdom who perceive themselves as possible or potential targets of vengeful looks and deliberate profiling from people in their host community have cried foul about the characterisation of the two Michaels as Nigerian, stressing that by any stretch of imagination, Adebolajo and Adebowale are British one-hundred per cent.

    The truth has been hurting Nigerians in Britain noticeably. Living in a country where, apart from regular racism-institutional and inter-personal, subtle and overt–Nigeria had acquired too many stigmas: Advanced fee fraud (alias 419), drug pushing, credit card crime, identity theft, undocumented stay, etc. it is understandable if no one chooses to blame Nigerians for denying the two Michaels the opportunity to be defined in relation to their ancestry? It is perfectly within human character to invoke a popular Yoruba proverb: B’ina baa jo ni jo omo eni, taraeni laa ko gbon danu (if a person and his or her child becomes victim of fire attack, the person is obliged to first ensure his or her own safety before attending to the child). This principle is even emphasised planes where passengers are advised to first put on their oxygen mask before attending to their children.

    Here in the ancestral home of the two Michaels, feelings are clearly mixed. Many opinion leaders, especially Yoruba pundits who have written extensively on the issue of the Yoruba being the most religiously plural and tolerant in the world are covering their faces with their hands, as if their own children had killed Lee Rigsby. Others are quick to conclude that of any attempt to attach the origin of the parents of the two alleged terrorists to their identities is overt racism. In other words, people in Nigeria are unhappy that the two young men are being connected to Nigeria, a land with too many dark spots that are visible to the international community. Many of such people prefer to be in denial about this barbaric act in a country that is 3,000 miles away from Nigeria.

    Major politicians in the two countries linked by the shame of the moment have spoken effusively. President Jonathan has spoken in the tone of a sociologists: “Each environment presents its own unique challenges and peculiarities and actions taken by affected nations may differ, yet the resolve to confront and defeat this threat should never be in doubt.” Nigeria’s President has spoken bluntly like a person who is suffering a fate similar to Cameron’s at the hands of Boko Haram, but clearly as a politician dealing with the problem of insecurity, a major threat to stability of political power. On the other hand, Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has stressed: “This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life; it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country….” Cameron has spoken frankly like a politician who is preoccupied with search for economic security that requires regular import of petroleum and capital from oil-rich Islamic countries.

    But close to the scene of the crime that had turned the two British citizens of Nigerian parentage into new protagonists of terrorism a few years after the case of Muttalab, the failed under-pant bomber, there are many British citizens who are eager to think beyond domestic and international politics and economics by stressing factors that predispose young men to Islamic radicalisation. One of such persons is a Labour parliamentarian, David Lammy. Lammy hasexplained susceptibility to extreme Islamism thus: “If you have not got a major father-figure in your life, if your parents are first-generation immigrants and there is a sense of detachment for you as a second generation immigrant, if you are unemployed, if you are looking for some sense of belonging and then you are potentially seduced by all forms of extremism and possibilities that are criminal or dangerous in intent.” In other words, there is a need to recognize the possibility of a victim morphing into a viper.

    Some lessons are being overlooked by those who are preoccupied with face saving on both sides of the Atlantic. If Adebolajo and Adebowale had won the Nobel Prize for physics or medicine, it is certain that Nigerians abroad and at home would have claimed them as their own. No one would have accused the British media of stereotyping with the intention of adding to the stigma attached to Nigerians. It is also conceivable that the British media could have been silent on the parentage of the two men if they had won a prestigious international award. Similarly, Nigerian media pundits would have accused the British of subtle racism for not mentioning the Nigerian ancestry of Adebolajo and Adebowale were the two slated to receive Nobel Prize. No denialism can fly on this matter: the two young terrorists are partly Nigerians; they in fact qualify under our constitution to obtain Nigerian passports. It is re-assuring that the two men had chosen to stick with just British passport, a choice that makes it easy for Nigeria to share the shame of the week with the United Kingdom. The two ‘mujahids’ have also made it easy for the Yoruba of Nigeria to share with the English of Great Britain the shame the two friends have engendered with their murder of an innocent British soldier.

    The ignoble act of the two young Nigerian-British murderers of Lee Rigsby has thrown up several questions. One of such questions is what would make persons of Yoruba descent, wherever they may be resident, to kill fellow human beings in the name of God? It is necessary to unpack the socialisation that the parents of the two friends must have given them. Isn’t it curious that the parents of the two partners in crime migrated from a Yoruba world that adores religious plurality and says unequivocally that God (believed in all religions to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient) does not (and should not) require any human being to fight for him or her. Is the reality of postmodern multiculturalism, particularly the practice of absorptive and additive assimilation of immigrants now taking its toll on Yoruba culture? The signs are already there that intolerance of religious plurality, best prevented from damaging social relations through the principle of political secularity, is gaining ground even in the Yoruba homeland in Nigeria. Politicians, school administrators, and parents of diverse religious persuasions are engaged in media war on the subject of wearing religious costumes to public schools, an institution that results from sociality that joins individuals together, rather than from religiosity or spirituality that connects individuals to their gods. Nigerians at home and abroad need to accept that the truth can liberate while it can also hurt.

     

  • NGF’s show of shame

    There must be something about the Nigeria Governors’ Forum that other Nigerians don’t know about apart from the governors. If not, it is difficult to understand why the battle for the chairmanship of unconstitutional forum has become so fierce that the two factions of the body are literarily dancing naked, not minding the damage being done to their image and the implication for the nation’s polity.

    It was bad enough that 36 governors who are supposed to showcase what it takes to conduct a free and fair and rancor -free election could not and there have been claims and counter claims about what happened during the election.

    Not even when the video of the election has been released and the truth of the proceedings is now public knowledge, Governor Jonah Jang who was defeated by Governor Rotimi Amaehi with 19 votes to 16 has insisted on being the winner of the election.

    While the Amaechi group is hoping that reasons will prevail considering the public outcry that has greeted the show of shame which the NGF election has become, the Jang faction has carried on as if what is in contention is the chairmanship of a motor park association.

    Not only has Jang attributed his ‘victory to God’, he has gotten his supporters to place newspaper adverts congratulating him and last Thursday, he inaugurated his own secretariat in Abuja with the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP , Bamangar Tukur, and 15 other governors in attendance.

    Given the present acrimony, it is unlikely that the two factions will be able to resolve their differences and have one chairman. It is indeed a shame that the governors have chosen to wash their dirty linens in public and proved that some of them are not as honourable as they are supposed to be.

    From the build up to the election day, it was clear that there were many forces at play but one was hoping that the crisis would have been managed and whoever emerged as the winner would have been acceptable to all.

    Considering that the NGF is a voluntary association of the governors, there should have been no need for the hullabaloo over the election result. Those not pleased could have stayed away from the activities of the group instead of the embarrassing power tussle they are now engaged in.

    But for personal aggrandizement, I don’t know why it is a big deal to be the Chairman of NGF. The decisions of the forum is not binding on the members and for whatever it is worth, it could best serve as a platform for peer review and collaborative efforts on issues of joint interest.

    Governors don’t need to be members of NGF to give Nigerians the good governance they are yearning for.

    At a time when the President and the governors should be working together to address the myriads of problems facing Nigerians, they have allowed narrow political interests to divide them.

    Instead of being distracted by the battle for the leadership of the forum, the governors should call themselves to order and face the primary task for which they were elected.

  • The “Arewa” North and our parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy (1)

    The “Arewa” North and our parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy (1)

    [Being an open letter to Professor Itse Sagay]

     

    All the big guns of Arewa North were resolutely committed to this project – Malam Adamu Ciroma, Professor Ango Abdullahi, Alhaji Lawal Kaita, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, Malam Tanko Yakasai, etc. In addition to these gentlemen, the Northern Governors and virtually all the political elite of the Arewa North believe that only one of themselves is entitled to be the president of Nigeria, based on where they come from, and as a group representative, regardless of merit, quality, qualification or track record. [My emphasis]

    Professor Itse Sagay, “The Appropriation of Nigeria by Northern Irredentists”, The Nation, Sunday, May 26, 2013

    Dear Itse:

    I don’t know if you have ever heard of a wisecrack that used to be told at the expense of Professor Ango Abdullahi, one of those you identified as the core group of Northern irredentists that you subjected to a blistering critique in your article in The Nation on Sunday, May 26 2013. That devastating critique is of course what prompted this open letter to you. The wisecrack I am alluding to here concerns a satirical nickname by which Ango Abdullahi was known by many of the radical lecturers and students of Ahmadu Bello University when he was the Vice Chancellor of that institution. The nickname was “VC-without-CV”. The nickname arose from the rather very well known fact that Abdullahi became a professor and later Vice Chancellor with a curriculum vitae (CV) that was so mediocre that, but for his connection to powerful conservative forces in the North, he could not have become a Senior Lecturer, let alone a Professor and Vice Chancellor with that kind of “CV”.

    Our tertiary educational system has fallen on bad days and North and South, East and West, many academics with poor or grossly inflated CV’s have become professors and vice chancellors, at least since the early 1980’s. Indeed, the crises of quality and relevance in our tertiary educational system is so bad, so acute that it is nothing short of miraculous that we still have professors and some Vice Chancellors that are of world class stature, that are indeed a match for their counterparts in other parts of the world – the world in general and the world of academia in particular. I make this observation so as to let you and my other readers know that it is not my intention in this open letter to you to make a singular or exceptional case of Ango Abdullahi as the infamous “VC-without-CV”. Far from singling out Abdullahi, I start this letter with his case only in order to draw your attention to a very crucial fact of our national political history that was almost completely absent from your article. This is the fact that Ango Abdullahi and the other scions and kingpins of the Northern irredentist or conservative establishment that your article so scathingly and mostly justifiably pilloried, were fiercely opposed in the North itself. This is not the only issue that I wish to take up in response to your article, but it is a central issue, one on which, in my opinion, hangs many of the other issues that I wish to raise in this two-part series. For this reason, permit me to dwell for a little while on this Ango Abdullahi case and the special circumstances that made me become aware of it. As we shall see, these circumstances as a matter of fact constituted a vital part of the activist lives that you and I and other colleagues lived when we were colleagues at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife in the early to mid-1980s.

    Dear Itse, you perhaps sense that I am adverting here to ASUU in which we were all very active in that period, so much so that that organisation was the linchpin of the progressive and radical struggles that we waged within the universities and beyond the walls of academia in the struggles for the political and ideological soul of our country. But what you may not immediately recall but would hopefully accept as a true account is the fact that whatever we achieved, whatever valuable lessons we learned came from the fact that we managed to forge powerful, almost unbreakable links, North and South and East and West of the country. And we managed to forge those links in spite of the extremely vigorous efforts of the powers that be within and outside the universities to keep us from forging those links by playing upon and manipulating differences of region, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and culture.

    I speak here with the authority and special experience of having been the National President of ASUU from 1980 to 1982; Immediate Past President and member of ASUU’s National Executive Council from 1983 to 1986; and Representative of ASUU on the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the Nigerian Labour Congress from 1984 to 1987. Absolutely everything conceivable and practicable was used to divide and keep apart radicals and progressives from the North and the South. Ango Abdullahi, as Vice Chancellor of ABU (one of the major first generation universities in the country) and a core member of what you call Northern irredentists in your article was one of the resolute opponents of ASUU radicals and progressives. I must add that here that as an opponent, Abdullahi was also urbane and articulate. But his opposition to radicals and progressives of the North and the South working together in unity and common purpose was unwavering. Thus, ASUU in particular and the country in general were extremely fortunate that in ABU radical and progressive activists, Abdullahi met his match: He was vigorously opposed within ABU itself; and his attempts on behalf of conservatives and irredentists of the North to prevent a link up with radical and progressive activist lecturers and professors from the South were soundly defeated. Moreover, this is still true of ASUU today as it was true of ASUU 30 years ago when you and I and other colleagues at Ife were stalwarts of the organisation.

    Dear Itse, with the profile of ASUU then and now that I have sketched in this discussion, you can understand why, as I read your engrossing article with many of its valid and original ideas and suggestions for justice, progress, peace, and development in our country, I kept asking myself why you almost completely left out this dimension of our political history in which irredentists and conservatives of the North have always been opposed within the North itself and more generally in the country by an alliance of progressives and radicals of the South and the North. I was in particular worried by the implicit notion in your article that the only opponents that Northern irredentists have historically had to contend with consist of only two formations: Southern irredentists and conservatives on the one hand; and on the other hand democratic fiscal federalists like yourself. In your article, Is’haq Modibo Kawu, a columnist of the Vanguard Newspaper stood for Northern irredentists and conservatives while Kingsley Kuku, President Jonathan’s Adviser on the Niger Delta stood for their Southern counterparts. [By the way, you might be interested to learn that as an undergraduate, Kawu was a dedicated insider within the countrywide movement of radical and progressive university students in our country]

    For those reading this piece that did not read your article that prompted this open letter, I find it necessary to emphasise the fact that even though your main quarrel is with “Arewa” or Northern conservative supremacists, you made it absolutely clear that you are no less opposed, no less wary of the malign politics of Southern irredentists in general and their diehard Niger Delta fellow travelers in particular. What I particularly found uplifting in your article was the clarity with which you linked both Northern and Southern irredentism to the destructive brinksmanship of the do-or-die, all-or-nothing struggle for control of the bloated, infinitely corrupt and wasteful Nigerian Presidency that is at the heart of the parasitic federalism and kwashiorkor democracy that currently has our country and its teeming masses in their iron grip. In my opinion, every democrat and progressive in our country should take to heart what you say in the following cautionary words from your article: “The bloated, corrupt and inefficient federal government (has become) the centre of titanic and destructive struggle for control. States’ indolence and parasitic tendencies follow, resulting in an unproductive and underdeveloped country. This destructive template must be reversed”.

    Needless to say, these observations show that I found much to admire and endorse in your article under review in this series. And this is consistent with much that I have read of your views and positions on the political, constitutional and social crises bedeviling our country at the present time. In my review of these views and positions of yours, I can say quite candidly that I consider you one of the most productive thinkers on democratic federalism in our country at the present time, with special emphasis on where federal jurisdiction and spheres of authority and control stop and states’ rights, obligations and responsibilities take over. I do not agree with every single one of your views and positions, but in general, I find that like many other progressive scholars and public intellectuals from every part of the country, you are driven by a passionate disdain for our political elites and their corruption, their narrowness of vision and their lack of the imagination and the will to do what is right and in the interest of the country and its masses of the disenfranchised, the looted and the marginalised. But I do have one big caveat and it is this: You seem to place all your hopes for the future of our country in one factor, one factor alone above all others and this is – fiscal federalism (that you also often call resource control). Indeed, perhaps it is useful in the present context to quote what you actually say regarding this particular article of faith of yours in your article of May 26, 2013:

    “Clearly, instability, tension and crisis will continue to bedevil Nigerian politics as long as the Federal Government continues to control and disburse states’ resources. Introduce fiscal federalism and allow states to retain their resources in return for payment of taxes for the operation of the Federal Government and immediate peace will descend on the country and everyone will head for his state for the generation of revenue and for the promotion of development. All will be quiet on the federal front and the desperate do-or-die battle to have the Presidency will abate”. [Page 22]

    One does not have to be an opponent of fiscal federalism (as many Northern conservatives are) or even its lukewarm supporters (as many Southwestern and Southeastern conservatives and centrists are) to know that by itself alone, fiscal federalism will never even remotely come near a just, honorable and productive resolution of many of our most serious crises. In other words, ours is not a crisis of nationhood and community in which we can say seek ye first fiscal federalism and all else shall ne added to you. Yes, fiscal federalism is necessary, and vitally so, but it is a beginning, not an end, a point of departure, not a port of arrival. In next week’s continuation of this series, we shall expatiate considerably on this observation, with special emphasis on the issue with which I began this piece: the links as well as the discontinuities between radicals and progressives of the North and the South in their confrontations with local and national formations of conservatives and irredentists.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Awada Kerikeri in Abuja

    Oh boy, oh boy, whilst we are still on the subject of political drama, has anybody watched the travelling video of the elections conducted by the Nigerian Governors Forum to elect its own leadership? This is what happens when the people infiltrate one of their own authentic leaders, Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, into a forum of feral carpetbaggers who do not care a hoot about democratic decorum.

    Snooper has watched the video several times and feels very sorry for Nigeria. It is an unworthy political melodrama. Their Excellencies behaved like cads and political bounders. They should not be proud of themselves. People should keep that video for posterity in case democracy unravels once again. The shame of it all has led Tunde Fashola, the cultured and civilised governor of Lagos State, to tender an apology on behalf of his errant colleagues. This will not prevent Snooper from wielding the heavy lash

    It was Raymond Williams, the famous British literary critic of proud Welsh extraction, who noted that one should not bother about what goes on in a church if you are not a member. Snooper has never hidden his distaste and contempt for the Governors’ Forum. It is an anti-democratic cartel of strange bedfellows. It has offered a platform for some of its past leaders to talk down on Nigerians with fatuous pomposity. It has supported many anti-people measures such as the removal of the phantom fuel subsidy. It parades and has paraded many undesirable elements that should be in jail rather then preening and strutting about the gubernatorial mansions.

    But fair is fair. When such an ethically challenged forum cannot obey its own rules or the basic tenets of democratic conduct all for reasons of political expediency, then democracy is on a life support. These monkey marionettes and their master puppeteer in the background will be held responsible if anything untoward happens to democracy in Nigeria.

    There can be no doubt that Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi won the election fair and square. The whole process was clean and transparent. The federal authorities should be embarrassed that the video recording has gone viral and they ought to have done something to halt the post-election charade, if they are not behind it in the first instance.

    The resort to a larcenous fabrication of a phantom majority after an election has been won and lost must rank as a new low even by the infamous standards of electoral banditry in Nigeria. No matter what happens next, it is a win win situation for Rotimi Amaechi. He has shown true grit and courage in the face of state persecution. Nigerians will surely hear from the fellow again long after his assailants have returned to penal obscurity.

    If there is a clear winner in this matter, there are also clear losers. It was sad to watch the elderly Governor Jonah Jang defending the indefensible even as his strange and convoluted logic descended into arrant blasphemy. Jang, a former Commodore of the Air Force, a presumed gentleman and a man with the mien of a pious priest suffering from ethnic persecution complex, has obviously struck a deal with the devil.

    But for this column, the greatest loser is Governor Olusegun Rahman Mimiko of Ondo State. Is Iroko beginning to politically unravel? He appeared nervous, fidgety, uncomfortable and ill at ease among the hard people of the PDP. Snooper’s good friend and former comrade in arms in the students’ struggle against early military despotism in Nigeria should know that his people, the Yoruba, detest injustice in any form and manner. They are watching and taking note.

    For some time now, Snooper has been observing Mimiko flip and flap about like a huge fish that has thrown itself out of water. In the run up to the Ondo gubernatorial election, this column had argued that even if Mimiko won, he would have exhausted his historical and political possibilities by not aligning himself with the current mood and dominant political tendency of his people. Every passing day confirms the potency of that political prophecy, and every critical misstep of Mimiko points at a political tragedy in the making.

  • Let our rich be

    Let our rich be

    Whatever our rich do, the poor protest: From generators to private aircraft. Now, it is bullet-proof vehicles. What is it?

    I used to think it is only our students that do not rest, be they of the UI of Ibadan, or UI of Lagos, or UI of Ife, Kano or what have you! But no! Our rich too cannot rest. No thanks to our over-pampered but unappreciative hoi polloi a.k.a. the poor masses. In fact, I am beginning to think that our common man is suffering from the Pull Him Down (PHD) or Be As I Am (BAIA) syndrome. The other day, it was about Nigeria being one of the highest importers of generators. Sometime ago, the story changed to our being the country with the highest number of private jets. Just a few weeks back, the poor (as in the poor masses) in the country were angry when it was reported that we were number two in champagne consumption, worldwide. I had to passionately appeal to our President that he should not worry about that disappointing report card; I assured him that our country, in its characteristic fashion, will soon elbow out France, the leading consumer of champagne, so we can get our rightful title in the comity of champagne drunkards. Sure, something must have gone wrong somewhere to put us in the second position. In all these, and in their characteristic soft-heartedness, our rich never lifted a finger. Mum has been the word from them.

    So, what is the bile this time around? They say Nigeria is the largest importer of bullet-proof cars! How is that a problem, except to the poor? Isn’t this a sign of good living? This was a position hitherto enjoyed by Iraq, Afghanistan and Latin American countries. Isn’t it cheery that money is not the problem of our rich but how to spend it? Isn’t it good enough news that we could import this number of armoured vehicles even when we are not in a war situation? And, what, in concrete terms does this boil down to?

    They say in the last few years, about 800 to 900 (only) armoured vehicles have been imported into the country at a cost of about N60billion. Isn’t this chicken change to a major oil-producing country like Nigeria? Apparently one of our great musicians who sang years back that he was only poor; he was not crazy did not know that there is hardly any difference between both. Is it not better for one bullet-proof car to absorb the bullets that some 200 poor people could have been hired to absorb in the course of protecting our rich if our rich are not the considerate and godly type? All the rich have to do is replace the hapless poor with another batch once one batch has been exterminated. You see, a ngba adiye lowo iku, o ni won o je ki oun lo si akitan lo je (whereas we are preventing the chick from death, it is angry that it is not allowed to go looking for food on the dunghill).

    Honestly, I am beginning to lose my temper. And, if I can feel this bad about these unsavoury developments, I can imagine what could be going on in the minds of our big people. I wonder when the poor will ever allow our rich a breather. These are the same rich people that allow our poor, alternatives to whatever they (the rich), enjoy.

    When the rich take tea, the poor take pap. Even the poor acknowledge that both of them are drinking hot water. When the rich travel abroad for medical care, the poor also travel to the village for home-grown solutions to some of their chronic medical challenges. Our poor people have access to Egbesu Boys, Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) for their security when the rich go for police escorts and expensive body guards. When our rich fly in their private jets, the poor also travel in Keke Marwa, Okada, Molue, Danfo and all. In all these, how many times have we seen the rich giving themselves headache trying to find out how much per annum, the poor spend on pap, or OPC, or Keke Marwa, etc.? As far as the rich are concerned, they are satisfied classifying all these activities of the poor as informal sector of the economy which they cannot lose sleep over. The rich simply don’t care even though many of us believe that there is a lot of money in this informal sector.

    The point is that our common man does not seem to know that people who are mute when pilloried as we are pillorying our rich are the most dangerous. Remember the tale of the man who took the duckling. He had to quickly return it when he told an elder that the mother duck did nothing after he had taken the duckling, and instead picked a chick. The hen reacted violently and the elder said the chicken was better material for pepper soup. I cannot understand the basis of this resentment for our rich; when in actual fact, it should have been the other way round. I mean, it is the rich who should have been wondering of what benefit are the poor beyond just clogging the space and constituting environmental nuisance. The silence of our rich is only not golden; it is also ominous. These are people who have almost all the dossier on the poor at their finger tips but do not care about such inconsequential details.

    But the poor (when the rich buy generator, or exotic cars, exotic wines, or bullet-proof cars) sniff for information on the sum total on each of these items bought by the rich. They do not care if their nostrils gather dust in the process of sniffing for the information. They are so idle that they even compare and contrast and come to the conclusion that the country is first in terms of spending on these expensive items.

    Honestly, these poor people have to be careful. The fact that we have the kind of God-fearing rich people that we have should not be taken for granted. Not all countries are that lucky. The poor here should not overstretch their luck because if these rich people change their mind, the result would be too unpalatable for them to bear. Anyway, in their own interest, the poor should call an emergency meeting where they would elect their executive officers so that we will all know their chairman who we can call (to order) whenever their members misbehave again. Things cannot continue like this. My fear is that if we do not have a leader that the rich can call to account for the misconduct of their members, the rich might one day be tempted to do the ultimate: ask that the poor be wiped out from all parts of the country or be dropped in the lagoon or the nearest Osu River; that mere seeing the poor makes them (the rich) want to throw up. I do not want things to degenerate to this extent.

    Our poor should know that in most other places, whatever the rich do has to be applauded; no matter how silly it may seem. Even our revered Williams Shakespeare attest ed to the fact that the rich and the poor do not belong in the same category when he said: “When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes”. Have the poor ever seen comets when beggars die? Have they ever seen where the heavens blaze forth the death of their ilk? Please, please, for God’s sake, let our rich be. Rather than be sad that they are doing well, we should be glad and grateful to God for their lives.

    Uneasy lies the head that wears the riches! We cannot leave our rich to the vagaries of the insecurity in the land.

  • That the children may live…

    This soulless nation has governors who take champagne for breakfast, lunch and supper. Yet, there are children with holes in their hearts who have to beg good hearted people for hand-outs

    To celebrate this year’s Children’s Day Anniversary, dear reader, we focus on the question ‘What do our children mean to us as a nation?’ The answer will determine how much we are ready to ‘Stop Violence Against Children’, which I think is one of the themes this year. All I can come up with is ‘Nothing!’ Hey, listen a bit, will you; just let me lay out my reasons for this. I suspect though that there be some among us trying to swallow me up with their yawn because the subject holds no magic for them. I forgive them.

    To start with, violence surrounds the little tots in this country from birth. Facts, figures and indexical studies have shown that Nigeria has one of the highest maternal/child mortality rates in the world. Indeed, it is so bad I am told that for every other breath I take, a poor mother somewhere is losing either her child or her life through labour. Now, if I can just hold that breath … Any hows, the world knows that the situation is indeed grave, and so does Nigeria, but what has the country done about it? Again, Nothing! Nigerian hospitals continue to snuff the life out of people because of broken down or non-existent vital machines, God Almighty continues to take labour deliveries while doctors and midwives continue to throw up their hands in despair crying, ‘Whatever happened to the Pied Piper of Hamelin?’

    Now, let’s move on. The world knows, and so does Nigeria, that Nigerian children are regularly used for cheap, and I mean very cheap, labour in this country, and what does the country do about it? Nothing! Each day, a little boy of no more than ten years passes in front of my house hawking his ware at the top of his voice. On bare foot. Indeed, he has become such a master of his trade that he has turned his hawking calls into song. Each morning, therefore, he goes ‘Com-m-m-me a-a-a-a-a-and bu-u-u-u-u-uy ma-a-a-a-a- pa-a-a-a-a-p!’ That sure takes me to only one conclusion: he should be in my choir because he sings tenor. Seriously though, children are killed, maimed, sold or kidnapped in this country because they are sent hawking each day by their mothers and fathers who are too indifferent to get up and fend for them. That is the kind of violence that has made many among us to take a very drastic action: we look the other way.

    Sometimes, though, looking the other way is not so easy because you soon find yourself suffering from neck cramps. We then do the next best thing, and that is to cringe before the situation. ‘My child, why are you hawking so early this morning instead of going to school?’ ‘I will go to school when I have finished selling this’, he replies. ‘But why must you be selling this so early?’ ‘My mother asked me to.’ Naturally, that silences those of us who are excessively greedy for information.

    I think though that the period of silence should be over right about … now. Listen to this tale. A monk joined a monastery of two where speech was forbidden because he wanted to devote himself to God completely. For a year, no one said a word in the monastery. At the end of that year, one of the monks spoke. ‘What month is this?, he asked. After another year, the other monk said, ‘November.’ Yet another year passed before the monk who spoke first said, ‘Pea in shoe is pinching. Worn it for three years.’ At that, the new monk packed his bags. ‘I’m going’, he said, ‘You two talk too much.’

    I think we have talked too much already on the status of children in this country, and none of it has brought any relief for my early morning pap crooner. He is still compelled to hawk wares (of no more than one thousand Naira) before he can go to school. Now, after crawling through the neighbourhood all morning, what do you think he’ll go and do in school? Sleep in class, like everyone else, that’s what. So, no thanks, no more talk. Now, it’s action.

    Let’s begin with the child’s education. It is time we enacted a law that makes school truancy a punishable offence to both parent and child. A young boy of about twelve that I know can neither read nor write because his parents need him more on the farm than in school. His father is too sick to farm, but he eats manageably well, thank you for asking. That law would not only compel every child to go to school but also stay in school. Every child must be given a chance to have meaningfulness in his life and hope in a future.

    While we are at it, let us also enact a law that says no child below the age of fourteen, including babies on their mothers’ backs, will be allowed to ride on commercial motorcycles (popularly called Okadas) or in the front passenger’s seat in a car while in traffic. If the country cannot enact laws to protect the child’s safety in traffic, however, at least let the IG give me the right to arrest such erring parents. I promise to use it carefully though I have one or two parents in mind.

    We would thank you very much indeed, dear government, if STREET HAWKING BY CHILDREN CAN BE BANNED BY LAW. Hawking on the streets is decidedly going out to meet violence. God alone knows the number of children who have gone missing from that exercise alone. Nothing justifies asking a little child to put a little tray of wares on his head and move from one neighbourhood to another hawking those things before he/she can have breakfast. That law would remind us all, literate and illiterate alike, that a child is entitled to reasonable food, shelter, education and clothing from his parents up to a certain age. Those are his rights. That law would also remind us all that having children is a great privilege. So you see, violence seems to surround our little tots everywhere in this nation.

    Yet, we have not mentioned domestic violence. We are lucky in these parts though; our communal living style effectively guards against the maniacal tendencies of psychopathic and sociopathic men and women masquerading as parents. For as long as that communal living is in place, the tendencies can stay in check. Now you see how useful the endless uncles and aunties are. Make room for them, will you, in that little bungalow of yours. Ah hem!

    The country appears to be waking up from its slumber though. Now, it has enacted laws against child labour and child slavery. The only thing is that now, it finds itself dealing with baby factories. The ingenuity of Nigerians appears inexhaustible, right?

    Pardon me, but what laws have been put in place to protect children who are handicapped, sick or with special needs? What laws are in place for children whose parents cannot meet the health bills of such children? There is no greater violence against these children than when we merely push a wheelchair in their direction and leave them to fend for themselves. The state needs to wake up to them.

    This soulless nation has governors who take champagne for breakfast, lunch and supper. Yet, there are children with holes in their hearts who have to beg good hearted people for hand-outs in the media. It is time to really mean it when we say the children are our future. We must work now, while there is time, to build the Nigerian child. It is time we gave our children life.

  • Details of emergency proclamation deepen anguish

    Details of emergency proclamation deepen anguish

    Riding on the crest of a wave of popular approbation on the declaration of emergency, President Goodluck Jonathan is all the more convinced that he took the right step in his effort to pacify the restive Northeast region. The details of the proclamation, which were not immediately available but came many anxious days later, show conclusively how far-reaching the provisions are, and how fateful they could become in the coming months and years for the sustenance of democracy. Notwithstanding which part of the divide we find ourselves – for or against emergency – or how uncritically we embraced the panacea even before we knew the details of the proclamation, it is time for us to move on to even more germane but troubling matters, especially considering that emergency has become a fait accompli.

    I suspect that the president took a few more days than he planned to transmit the proclamation to the National Assembly because he was astounded by the overwhelming support Nigerians gave him. He probably felt he would not injure his goals, whatever they were, if he tweaked the provisions of the proclamation to tighten his hold on the Northeast. Any sound democrat – and there are few of them in Nigeria – or sound thinker should be alarmed by the provisions of the proclamation. Sadly, neither the public which whooped for emergency nor the National Assembly saddled with the greater responsibility of safeguarding democracy, has shown any disquiet or even discomfort with the details. The mostly conservative Senate has raised barely a whimper against emergency, and the often populist House of Representatives has only offered feeble protests.

    So, for now, we are stuck with emergency in the Northeast, even as fears grow in sane quarters that given Dr Jonathan’s constant immoderation and propensity for brinkmanship, he could yet widen the areas under emergency proclamation. Before the details of the proclamation were made public, this column had concluded that the governors of the affected states would become ceremonial rulers and the military commanders the de facto rulers. This observation flies in the face of the president’s pronouncement that he had not tampered with the democratic structures in the three states, and that the governor, Houses of Assembly and the local government areas were intact. It was inconceivable that the said democratic structures could function in the teeth of emergency, I warned. Surprisingly, lawyers, academicians and newspapers argued that by leaving the democratic structures in place, the president was jeopardising the success of emergency and prolonging the misery of the Northeast.

    Such undisciplined reasoning was not totally unexpected, considering that there had been a progressive attenuation of disciplined thinking and research in Nigeria for many years. I had nothing to base my suspicion on, of course, other than my intuitive distrust of Dr Jonathan’s bona fides, whether in relation to his depressing political pragmatism, his lack of ideological persuasion, or even his annoying abjuration of the role and place of philosophy in the government of any society, ancient or modern. When he finally publicised the details, it was clear that Dr Jonathan, like his superficial mentor, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had unlimited contempt for the principles and practice of democracy. He entertains the quaint belief that it is sometimes necessary to destroy a thing in order to save it. The unsuspecting National Assembly, the bewildered public, and the querulous press apparently agree.

    In the proclamation, Dr Jonathan has completely and undisguisedly subordinated the governor, local government chairmen and, by implication, the Houses of Assembly in the affected areas to the military commanders in the three states. The military commanders, as emergency rule in Ekiti showed in 2006, are in turn subordinated to the president. In short, Dr Jonathan has the distinguished Lugardian honour of imposing indirect rule in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. The National Assembly’s harmonised version of the proclamation tried to circumscribe the subordination of governors and LG chairmen to the president’s whims by limiting the orders he could issue to matters relating to “maintaining and securing peace, public order and public safety in the emergency areas.” The reality is, however, far different, and this needn’t be argued.

    But if this was the only evidence of power grab in the Northeast, it could be pardoned. In another far-reaching provision in the proclamation, the president is empowered to utilise the funds of the affected states for the purpose of executing the state of emergency. The president’s original proposal to spend state funds is truly frightening. But the National Assembly’s harmonised version futilely attempts to limit the usage of the funds to “provide for the protection, documentation, return, re-integration, resettlement, rehabilitation, compensation and remuneration of persons affected by this order.” It is hard to know exactly what was on the minds of the framers of this provision, for the responsibilities listed in that clause are actually much better performed by the states and LGs than the federal government, let alone a military commander. In fact, it is clear that the president originally intended this provision to underwrite the cost of the emergency itself.

    This column had warned last week that, “The governors will be ceremonial leaders throughout the emergency, even as the affected states may be coaxed into parting with a part of their monthly allocations to the war effort.” That warning was neither prescient nor comprehensive enough. There is nothing in Dr Jonathan’s proclamation or the legislature’s harmonised version to indicate the degree of tampering allowed the president. The governors are already browbeaten, and the public mood against them unsparing. They will, therefore, tamely submit to all forms of violation and indignity.

    The president already has enormous powers to do anything he wishes with the country, and is more powerful than any democratically elected president anywhere. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, no president has been circumspect or innovative in the use of those powers. Emergency in the Northeast now indirectly deposits more powers in the hands of the president than he used to have. He will henceforth begin to see all sorts of possibilities in accreting in influence and control in hostile states. He now understands how to grab power and how to fund that grab, irrespective of what positive ends he puts the grab to. Technically, he now knows what to do to extend emergency rule, and he will not be incommoded by shortage of funds, nor, quite embarrassing to every Nigerian, will he be in short supply of support.

    The Joint Task Force has proudly announced its troops have completely overrun Boko Haram camps in the emergency states. No less was expected. It would be stupid of the militants to stay and fight. The only time they did so in 2009, they were worsted, and their leader, Mohammed Yusuf, extra-judicially murdered. Since then they have adopted guerrilla tactics and war of attrition that enervate even the most sophisticated army. When emergency was proclaimed it was expected that the Boko Haram militants would flee their camps, regroup at a future date, re-strategise, and re-launch their terror war in more lethal fashion. It is that uncertain and sanguinary aftermath that the JTF and the Jonathan presidency should be worried about.

    I restate my perspective once again that Dr Jonathan’s leadership style is inconsistent with the highest ideals and principles of great leadership. State of emergency is superfluous in the circumstances of the rebellion in the Northeast, as it was superfluous in Plateau and Ekiti States under Obasanjo and in the defunct Western Region under Tafawa Balewa. If Dr Jonathan had not taken a dim view of the matter by embracing melodrama, he would have discovered that deploying additional troops and pacifying the region did not need the agency of a state of emergency, not to talk of needlessly and surreptitiously weakening democratic structures in the affected areas and indeed everywhere, tampering with the fundamental principles of federalism by proposing to spend state and LG money, and unjustly and unfairly blaming and subordinating elected governments to military commanders.

    Moreover, there is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the crisis facing the country in the Northeast. The rebellion in that region may have socio-economic undertones and a veneer of politics, but it is also much more disturbingly a potpourri of sectarian and class revolts rooted in malformed medieval ideologies. Such revolts, which often come and go within a generation, do not respond to force as facilely as many hope. But to the consternation of the sober and the mirth of the hysteric, Dr Jonathan has reacted to the crisis simplistically and imprudently. On its own, the National Assembly, in particular the Senate, has failed to react to the president’s prognosis with the kind of legislative aplomb a modern and activist legislature should summon.

    Giving free rein to the president’s subversion of democratic structures in the affected states is bound to have repercussions in the near and distant future. Obasanjo was not checked in 2006, though he never imposed emergency in more than one state at a time. Now, Jonathan has imposed emergency in three states at once, and seems set to foment trouble in a fourth, Rivers. And by harshly and abruptly discarding the little progress the country has made in consolidating democracy, and by stifling opposition efforts to propound alternatives, the president and his supporters have injured the body politic much more obnoxiously than Boko Haram is ever capable of doing.

  • Amaechi and the NGF: An election so disgraceful, so contemptible

    If anything indicates very starkly the hard temper of Nigerian democracy, last Friday’s election of chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) showed why and how. A day to the election, indeed hours before, no one, not even any of the governors, was sure who would win the election, in view of the base emotions that sometimes propel Nigerian politics. But it was always clear that whoever won would find it difficult to rally all the governors behind himself. Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State won by 19 votes to Plateau State’s Jonah Jang’s 16 votes, showing how divided and divisive that pressure group has become and how keenly the election was fought for a post that carries no constitutional significance, and is indeed superfluous to the needs of the country, not to talk of the desperate needs of the people of the 36 states.

    It was not as if the sorely tried winner was intrinsically divisive or even controversial. The problem with him, and which his victory evinced, was how, due to no fault of his, he was perceived in the presidency as an upstart and a troublemaker. In saner climes, his commitment to development, his doggedness, his courage and his eloquent grasp of issues should make him a rising star in his party. It is indeed no credit to the image of President Goodluck Jonathan that he and his men virtually demonised the Rivers governor, cast him in the shape of a radical and rebellious outcast, and were prepared to gleefully and unconstitutionally subvert Rivers State and deliberately divide and destroy the NGF.

    The import of the NGF election is not that some governors are miffed by their candidate’s loss, or that the president’s objectives seem for now to have been truncated. (Dr Jonathan is famous for not taking no for an answer). The import is that much more than the president, the country’s 36 governors theoretically form the bulwark of Nigerian democracy, yet many of them have become ardently contemptuous of the elementary principles of democracy. Though they represent the country’s collective political achievement and ideological stability, they have shown a disgraceful incompetence to manage an election in which only 35 people voted. How could a group of top politicians who find it difficult to summon the common sense to win or lose a small election with dignified calmness superintend state and national elections in which tens of millions of Nigerians would vote? How could a group of senior politicians who find it difficult to acknowledge their colleagues’ point of view find the grace and wisdom to tolerate dissent in their own states?

    It does not bother me who won or lost, though, because of the president’s meddlesomeness, I would rather his candidate lost; but I am worried that the governors played infantile politics, politics without principles, politics without nobility, politics without character. I am in fact deeply disturbed that a man of Governor Godswill Akpabio’s moderate accomplishments and admirable eloquence (he talks nineteen to the dozen) should lend his exertions and modest gifts to anomalous and ignoble ends. Where is his soul, and can he call it his own even if it were thrust under his nose? Not only is he disputing what was apparently a transparent election, he has taken incredible and laughable steps to make the NGF self-destruct. Had he offered himself entirely to, say, a great president, we would still have condemned his servility; but at least his faults would be redeemed by the great and noble purpose he wilfully and reckless spent it on. Unfortunately, he has devoted his every talent to the wrong cause and the wrong man.

    Amaechi has won, but I fear he will not be able to unite the association behind himself, nor be able to deploy the group for any meaningful democratic end. I also fear that the presidency, which has become a vindictive and sterile bastion of futile politics, will rededicate itself to destroying Amaechi. Nineteen governors voted for Amaechi; he will be lucky to get more than 20 to stand with him whenever he needs them. More, because of 2015, and because Dr Jonathan cannot rise to a profound level, the presidency will make Amaechi’s remaining years in office a living nightmare. And given the shallowness of the Nigerian mind and the immaturity of their politics, it is not guaranteed that Amaechi will find the kind of support his hard work as a governor and his character as a person merit. And contrary to what he thinks, his victory has not tested and proven Nigerian democracy. His victory, which cannot be divorced from the politics that preceded it or the shenanigan that followed, has only shown how irresponsible and reckless most of those who govern the country have become.

  • Chinua Achebe: His wondrous passages

    Chinua Achebe: His wondrous passages

    [Being a revised version of a tribute written for Transition Magazine, U.S.A.]

    Chinua Achebe had more than the standard allotment of respect and fame for writers, including even those who in their lifetime achieve great acclaim. One of the most notable expressions of this respect bordering on adoration came from one who is himself a celebrity among celebrities, Nelson Mandela. In their long time in the prisons of the South African apartheid system, above all other writers it was Chinua Achebe’s works that sustained the spirit of Mandela and the other giants of the anti-apartheid struggle. “The writer in whose company the prison walls fell”: That is how Mandela described the liberation of psyche and spirit that he and his mates felt when they encountered Achebe’s brooding and deeply insightful novels on colonialism and its complex legacies for Africa, the West and the rest of the world.

    I had not yet read of Mandela’s uncommon praise for Achebe’s writings when, as a member of a volunteer team of professors of Cornell University that taught in both medium and maximum security prisons in Elmira and Auburn in upstate New York, I taught Achebe and Frantz Fanon to some inmates of these prisons. A disproportionately large number of these prisoners were African American, and all were men. I think these factors account for the fact that more than all the other Cornell volunteers, the inmates felt a very special emotional bonding with me since I was the only African male in the group. But beyond this, Achebe, shall we say, provided the real fulcrum for that emotional bonding – Achebe in dialogue with Fanon. Fanon was not exactly a hard nut to crack for the prisoners, but the mix of flights of spellbinding psychoanalytic and philosophical musings with visionary and prophetic prose was a bit too abstruse for them.

    With Achebe, things ware different. His stories, his prose style, and the depth of his wisdom made an apparently deep impact on the prisoners. With very little prompting from me, many of these prisoners – some of whom were lifers who were serving time for extremely violent crimes – used Achebe’s works to throw further light on my explications on the more schematic or programmatic aspects of Fanon’s theories of radical decolonisation. One surprising thing in this was the fact that the two Achebe novels that I taught the prison inmates, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, told harrowingly tragic stories of the failures of anti-colonial revolt, whereas Fanon’s books mapped difficult but ultimately victorious paths to decolonization. When I probed the sources of this deft move by the prisoners, they revealed their deep empathy with aspects of Achebe’s novels that I hadn’t at the time paid much attention to, aspects to which their own situation had apparently made them far more responsive. Chief among these was the startling fact that beneath and beyond the main plotlines of failed and tragically flawed nationalist revolt against colonialism, Achebe’s novels told scores of mini stories of ordinary men and women whose humanity, resilience, and self-empowerment were not crushed, could indeed not be crushed by the otherwise powerful and all-conquering forces of colonialism and imperialism. This experience, this revelation served as the catalyst for two of the most important among the half dozen essays and monographs I have published on Achebe: “For Chinua Achebe: the Resilience and Predicament of Obierika” and “An African Cultural Modernity: Achebe, Fanon, Cabral, and the Philosophy of Decolonisation.”

    The passage from the heroic world of Mandela and his prison mates at Robben Island to the world of hardened criminals and other carceral subjects in America’s prison colonies is typical of the centrality of passages between incredibly diverse spheres of sociality and community that Achebe as writer and public intellectual traversed in his life and career. One of the most portentous of these passages is the journey in his works in fiction and non-fiction into virtually all the literary languages of the world. He got extensive commendations, inquiries and plain “thank you and thank you again” correspondence from men and women, old and young, the highly literate and the modestly schooled. And these came from all the continents, all the regions of the world, and all stations in life.

    This liminality, these wondrous passages into nearly every corner of the world of letters on the planet pose tremendous interpretive challenges to us. Achebe is one of two or three of the most popular, most widely read contemporary authors and yet he is a writers’ writer, an author who was/is deeply respected by some of the most influential authors of the past half century like James Baldwin, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka. He is a towering pioneer figure in modern African literature but he is also in the front ranks of the rarefied canon of World Literature. He is a constant subject of discussion in the popular presses of Africa, Europe and America but he is also an endless source of debate and controversy among literary scholars all over the world.

    As much as these passages are constitutive of Achebe’s fame and renown, they cannot be taken as self-evident or self-explanatory. Of course it is not the case that “explanations” that don’t explain much, that are in fact rather tautological have not been proffered as interpretive keys for unlocking the enigma of these exemplary, border crossing passages of Achebe across the typically fragmented publics of writing and cultural production in the African continent, its Diasporas and the world at large. For instance, here is one such “explanation”: Both the popular mind and the world of scholarly researchers and exegetes have focused almost exclusively on Things Fall Apart, ignoring other writings of the Nigerian author like the infinitely more complex Arrow of God and the fascinating and reflexive meta-narrative that is Anthills of the Savannah, thereby making the passage from the “high” to the “low” and back again to the “high” a fairly easy one to make. Here is another “explanation”: Things Fall Apart cemented Achebe’s celebrity status among both “naïve” readers and the professoriate of letters because it enabled legitimacy for African writing in the upper stratospheres of academia to be tokenised without compromising that legitimacy with racial and cultural condescension which, for a long time in literary history, had been a constant, almost inevitable precondition for granting legitimacy for any intellectual or cultural production from our continent.

    These “explanations” are neither false nor redundant. But they are external to writing qua writing. In other words, they do not even remotely engage the fact that both the passionate enthusiasts and the sometimes equally passionate if more politely and discretely self-restraining opponents of Achebe as an author base themselves on his writing. And on this central issue of writing, and in particular on the nature and status of Achebe’s writing, we are caught between two fundamentally opposed notions or traditions of writing. Writing, the best writing, must draw attention to itself, to its forms and modes of self-constitution: this is the fundamental article of faith of modernists and postmodernists alike, even if both camps differ in big ways on the specific terms for self-display and self-reference in writing to be manifested. Conversely, writing must not unduly draw attention to itself; it must find a balance, an equipoise between what needs to be expressed and the formal and linguistic means for its expression. That is the classical and much older but still extant tradition of writing to which – so goes the determination of the arbiters of taste in the contemporary world of letters – Achebe putatively belonged. I would personally argue that Achebe actually made the passage to and from these two seemingly opposed traditions in several of his writings in both fiction and non-fiction. But that was not the judgment of the border guards of modernist and postmodernist literary culture and thought. This, it seems to me, lies at the root of why the so-called “highest” prize, the Nobel Literature award, was denied him.

    In all, I personally met Achebe only a few times, on four, perhaps five occasions, only one of which was at his home at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka when he taught and lived there. But among contemporary authors, he was among the select few to whom I felt a great closeness because I found myself returning again and again in the last four decades to his works. He was a master storyteller who had the quite unique gift for folding countless stories of ordinary women and men into the big, “world-historical” currents and forces of modern culture and society. In certain key areas of artistic vision and humaneness, I think he quite easily surpassed nearly all the other great novelists on colonialism – Conrad, Kipling, Forster, Orwell, and Ngugi. First of all, Achebe took the humanity of both coloniser and the colonised for granted; he neither deified nor demonised one or the other, coloniser and the colonised. By contrast, most of these other great novelists of colonialism could not, did not entirely escape this trap. Secondly, Achebe forcefully showed that both sides in the colonial divide were simultaneously subjects and objects of powerful forces whose outcomes they could neither control nor predict. And thirdly, Achebe had a deeply tragic sense of life and history that was however leavened by irony, wit, humor and a calm openness to the absurdities of existence. As perhaps the single most important historical force in the making and the unmaking of the modern world as a global community structured by and in inequality and interdependence, colonialism needed a master novelist and essayist whose works could resonate throughout the world in the West and the Non-West, among both the ex-colonisers and the ex-colonised. It was given to our own Chinua Achebe to be the novelist and essayist who rose to successfully engage that challenge.

    With his recent death, another passage, perhaps the most significant of all, has taken place. I once joked that Achebe was second only to his own creation, Okonkwo, the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, as the most famous Igbo person in the world. But that was about half a decade ago, long before Achebe’s demise. With the number and scale of the outpouring of the mix of grief and celebration from all parts of the world that followed the notice of his transition, Achebe, it now appears, is second only to Nelson Mandela as the most famous African in the world. I don’t think the near unanimous judgment that he has achieved immortality through his works is premature.

    In due time, Achebe’s works will undergo passage into the regime of posthumous commentary and debate, free of both the positive and negative consequences of their imbrication in the towering presence and subjectivity of Achebe himself. I am thinking here in particular of his last published book, There Was A Country. The anger, the bitterness and the outrage caused in many quarters by some of the views and claims made in the book will stay with us for some time to come. But I personally see no portent at all in the fact that this last book was the most controversial among all of Achebe’s writings. His legacy is much vaster than the controversies engendered by that book, just as it is also absolutely unconstrained by the Nobel Prize that was not awarded to him. Speaking about the loss of another great Nigerian, Wole Soyinka once remarked that that personage will walk tall among the ancestors. With my unabashed rationalist and humanistic idealism, I read that benediction as meaning that the departed had entered the hallowed ranks of the true immortals of all ages. So let it be with Chinua Achebe.

     

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • LIE and our ‘Oga at the Rock’

    LIE and our ‘Oga at the Rock’

    There is a particular road in the South West that tells the story of a leader that lacks vision, that has no style nor the grit and wits of leadership. This leader is not sagacious or dynamic nor does he have the capacity for service delivery. That road is the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. For the purpose of convenience, and possibly, some poetic mischief, let us call it LIE.

    In order to put the story of LIE in perspective, let us do a re-cap of its recent journey into decline. In May 2009, the Yar’Adua administration concessioned the road to Wale Babalakin’s Bi-Courtney and for almost four years the company exhibited its incompetence in road construction and its efficiency in propaganda management by installing bill-boards with nauseating and deceitful messages at different locations along the road. The bill-boards on the road were more than the workmen at the site. Press statements were more than asphalt. Visits to stakeholders to solicit their cooperation were more than the number of project inspections. The company was engaged in series of conflicts with the Ogun State government, a major stakeholder in the project. The company was visible, the CEO was ubiquitous. Wale Babalakin made so much noise in newspapers and appeared on so many T.V talk-shows flaunting his credentials on road construction and his company’s capacity to fund the project. It was not long before the entire nation came to discover that Bi-Courtney’s claim that it possessed the professional and financial capability to fix LIE was nothing but corporate lie.

    In November last year, the federal government told the nation the whole truth about LIE. The government not only revoked the agreement between it and the company, it went ahead to award the contract to Julius Berger and RCC even though the details were not made known. Since then nothing has been heard or done about LIE until about two weeks ago when the Federal Ministry of Works ran a full page advertorial in some national newspapers to explain the situation to the nation. It reminded the people that the federal government has not reneged on its promise to fix the road but that the delay in fixing it has been caused by government’s adherence to due process. Going by this advertorial, the nation should not expect any major work on the road this year. Because the next advertorial by the government will try to justify why the contract cannot be awarded during rainy season or why major work cannot commence on the road this year.

    LIE, as it is today, is a good narrative of national decay, leadership deficit and vacuity, contractual betrayal and failed promises, infrastructural paucity and visible depravity, political deception and economic declivities. Every inch of LIE soars in falsehood. It is meant to be an expressway but this is the most obvious lie about LIE. There is nothing ‘express’ about the road. The truth is that it has become a glorified service road for the scattered settlements and communities that line along its routes. And if we indulge ourselves in conventional delusion by calling it “expressway”, can’t Jonathan see that this ‘express’ is in serious distress? What is ‘express’ about a road on which motorists spend three to four hours on a regular basis for a trip that should not take more than 10 to 15 minutes? Or what is the distance between Mowe and Alausa that workers who live in Mowe and work in Lagos Secretariat, Alausa, will be spending two to three hours before getting to their office?

    What is “express” in a road that people cross every minute? Since there is no pedestrian bridge, it is a common sight to see people living in the communities crossing the road as soon as they are discharged on the road by the commuter buses. It is only normal for motorists to reduce their speed or stop for the people to cross. The situation becomes alarming during major programmes of the churches along the road. What is “express” about a road which the various settlements and communities along it use for their market day or where street traders hawk fried snails, plantain chips and other assortment of snacks?

    In which civilised country do you find an expressway with 20 to 25 bus stops in its first 50 kilometres? Between the Lagos toll gate and the Redemption Camp, which is a distance of 46 kilometres, you have virtually every settlement along the road having its own bus stop with “Berger”, Warewa, Arepo, Magboro, Ibafo, Asese and Mowe being the major ones. What can one also say about the trailers and tankers that park negligently and arrogantly on the road while the government feigns ignorance and helplessness.

    In which country do you find an expressway with such volume of traffic that is as high as 15 to 20 vehicles per kilometre? The rate of accidents on that road both major and minor is conservatively put at 5 to 7 per day. And in most cases when there is a major accident involving trailers or fuel tankers, the traffic is always at a standstill for hours with motorists on the alert to sprint in case of any explosion. I am sure the Federal Road Safety Commission would have lost count of the number of innocent souls that have been lost on that road.

    LIE is a strategic road of carnage ambience. LIE is a congested road of trucking carnival. LIE connects the South West to other geo-political zones. LIE unites the diverse nationalities in commerce, politics and facilitates social networking between the citizens in the North and the citizens in the South.

    The Fulani herdsman in the North moves his cows to the Yoruba man in the South West through LIE. The Igboman in the East moves his goods to the sales points in Lagos through LIE. Tankers from Lagos conveying fuel to other parts of the country do so through LIE. LIE has become an embarrassing emblem of unity binding us together as citizens of this country and bonding us to one another. LIE has become a metaphor of false oneness that makes it difficult for us to tell our leaders the truth about the sickening condition of LIE.

    For Jonathan, LIE is a symbol of failure. Those who flatter Jonathan with extraordinary wits need to see the condition of LIE in order to come to terms with the reality of Jonathan’s caducity. No serious nation, nay, no serious leadership that is desirous of development will watch helplessly for many years the deterioration of a road as strategic as LIE. On a daily basis, citizens waste many man-hours on that road because the government has refused to fix it appropriately. When a road as strategic as LIE drains between four to six hours of citizens’ productive time, there is a direct consequence of this on national productivity and the nation’s GDP. A responsible and responsive leadership should know that its economy is in serious jeopardy if its infrastructure is in a state of decay with no immediate remedy in sight. Between the government and the citizens, LIE is an incontrovertible evidence of a breach of social contract.

    This is the price a leader pays when he decides to play politics with Citizens, welfare. What stops Jonathan from convening a stakeholders’ parley comprising the presidency, the governors of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Edo, for the purpose of proffering viable solutions to the menace of the road? But Jonathan has decided to play the superman by trying to fix it all alone forgetting that LIE is a national burden that has held us hostage irrespective of our geo-political identities. And until we unlock the truth about LIE, everyone of us will remain captive to stagnation and hostage to progress.

    Agreed that LIE is a federal road, but are these states not part of the federation? So, what does Jonathan stand to lose if the federal government and these states come together to fix the road to international standard? Now, the greed and zeal to take the credit alone has caused him credibility deduction with citizens particularly those who use the road regularly tagging his administration a monumental failure for its inability to perfect an ordinary LIE.

    Of recent, I have developed an inexplicable fascination for roads, I mean good roads. This possibly explains why I have suddenly become an adventurous tourist visiting some of the states that have embarked on massive road constructions. I have gone round most of the roads in Lagos, Osun, Ekiti and Oyo. I am yet to go to Edo, Ogun and Ondo. But from what I have seen that the governors of Lagos, Osun, Oyo and Ekiti have done on roads, I am convinced that if President Jonathan shoves politics aside and meets with these governors, the whole problem of LIE will become history. For him to know that one is not exaggerating the performance of these governors in road construction, let him pay a visit to the Lagos-Badagry Expressway and see the magic Babatunde Fashola is working on that road. He will marvel at the transformation of a federal road by the Lagos State Government.

    A quarter of the energy and attention that Jonathan invests in the politics of Bayelsa and Rivers States could have been channelled to the rehabilitation or total re-construction of LIE. When a leader engages in diversionary activities by shifting focus from what is concrete to frivolities, it is either he has no idea of what to do or he has completely lost his bearing as a leader. All the distractions that Jonathan creates for himself show that he does not appreciate the enormity of leading a nation that is as complex as Nigeria. The challenges facing the nation are too daunting and do not in anyway leave space for the President to while away his time in scaffolding politics. Without attempting to exculpate Jonathan from his own unfitness, it is a shame that 14 years into democracy, Nigeria has no template for responsible governance and dynamic leadership that could liberate the nation from the bondage of LIE.

     

     

    •Thomas, A former Special Aide to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, teaches History and International Studies at the Lagos State University.