The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Requiem

    Just call her Angel of the morning. She came, she saw and touched the lives of many. May the gentle and generous soul of our own heroic Diva of Ekiti dawn, Funmi Adunni Olayinka, rest in peace. Snooper mourns a great fan of this column and a devout follower of the saucy antics of Okon. She was refinement, good breeding and civility personified, ever so polite and courteous, ever so solicitous of one’s wellbeing. In a crowd, she would go out of her way to ask after the crazy cook.

    The world is a stage indeed. The last time Snooper saw her she was dancing on the stage to the mellifluous music of the Highlife maestro, Victor Abimbola Olaiya. It was at the Lagos City Hall on the anniversary of Olaiya’s 60 years on stage. Little did we know that while we were celebrating one icon, another was bidding the stage a long goodbye. The delectable damsel was a paragon of beauty and noble virtues.

    Avid readers of this column should remember that last September when snooper complained and moaned endlessly about spending his last birthday alone in bed amidst a crushing avalanche of books, magazines, journals, periodicals and quarterlies, she promptly responded by sending some rare gourmet’s delight from Ekiti with the stern instruction that it was not for the proletarian palate of the Okons of this world. Alas, both delicacy and delinquent disappeared in a midnight heist the like of which has not been seen before. It was a beautiful soul in a beautiful body. May her kind soul rest in peace.

  • The Thatcherian Spirit

    The Thatcherian Spirit

    I have always thought that the best job is one that involves travelling all over the world and reporting all you see for the media. Just imagine: you are paid to feed your eyes with the most beautiful sights, indulge your palate with the most delicious dishes, relax your body with the most sensuous experiences, and still have your salary waiting for you. Is that the life or what?!

    Don’t know much about her but the life and political times of the former British Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher who died earlier this month, have always fascinated me. So we are going over to Britain today to see what lessons we can learn from her, hoping that someone will cover my expenses.

    I believe Mrs. Margaret Thatcher provides a good example for us in Nigeria of what to do or not do with public office. She is said to have started early in politics, from the 1950s, yet, she never allowed herself to be cast in any political frame other than that of a reformer. Till she left office, she never stopped seeking how to change people’s perceptions, carve a comfort zone where people and the government could meet, and to forge a higher level of Statecraft.

    Funny thing. I have lost count of the number of times I have been referred to as ‘Thatcher!’ for being a little forceful. But that’s nothing. For ages now, any woman who so much as gives an order in the slightest of peremptory tones is also instantly branded ‘Thatcher!’ Make no mistake, that is not meant to be approbatory; it is actually a complaint. Obviously, only a male is allowed to give orders; so I say, let’s see how much male order can make a pot of soup.

    To the people in Britain, the former Prime Minister stands for many things, most of them controversial mainly because she undertook policies that put the interests of Britain on top of a few of the people’s comforts. She took Britain on for Britain’s good. Need I draw the contrast to our country for you? Aren’t we surrounded by a president’s office, state governors’ offices, local government chairmen’s offices and all kinds of offices preferring to sit atop state funds instead of really being on top of situations? Ha!

    There are so many lessons to learn from this Thatcherian spirit, the iron lady’s no nonsense approach to governance. To begin with there was her unalloyed, unparallel and unquestionable allegiance to everything Britain. Her patriotism not only gave her momentum, it was her enablement, her strength, her push. Leaving Britain better than she found it was her goal.

    In the course of that, she did make some mistakes. For instance, she was said to have admitted that the public uproar that followed her stopping free milk in a section of public schools was not worth the political cost. So yes, she was human, but a realistic human. She stated: ‘… It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also help to look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.’

    Naturally. People anywhere are more interested in what they can obtain from the government. While most people have an eye to lifting up their country through patriotic actions though, any blind man can see that Nigerians, au contraire, jostle for ‘positions of power’ to be able to embezzle and don’t care a fig if the place dries up after them. This is why practically all our public institutions and infrastructures have collapsed.

    Then there is the matter of her famed frugality. Oh boy, this is certainly not for Nigerians. According to reports, she is said to have even paid for her ironing board while in government. Once, when a governor in my state had to leave the government house on account of expiry of term, he not only went with everything in the blessed house, even his towns’ people came to his assistance by literally sweeping the place dry on his behalf. Their rationale? ‘Government house belongs to everybody. This is our time to eat. We don’t know when it will be our turn again, so let us pack as much as we can now o.’ Oh well, who can beat that kind of logic?

    Then there’s Mrs. Thatcher’s resoluteness to make a difference. Her history shows that since going into politics, she has been the author of so many policies. True, many of these policies have not gone down well with her peers and country men and women; she nevertheless, has made her mark in education, politics, economy, European Common market, and other social concerns. Obviously, she was single minded in any and everything she did. This we really could learn. Just look at us in Nigeria. We not only sit on top of national funds, many of us in politics have no idea what we are there for. To most Nigerians, being in government is an invitation to ‘come and eat’, so now we are busy eating the state dry. Most of us think that governance is all about acquiring all the women (if we are men), or all the diamonds (if we are women), or all the houses (if we are both) there are in this world.

    Listen people, I remember reporting here once what one of the richest men in the world said. When asked how many houses he owned, he replied, ‘just one’. Then he explained that it was a lot easier to pay hotel bills for one or two nights in cities here and there when he travelled than to look after two houses. What does one need two houses for? Yeah, what on earth do Nigerians have to go hankering after one hundred houses for? The spirit of competition? A decidedly destructive one that surely is!

    Let me tell you what unhealthy competition does. Once, two men found themselves in a fierce tussle for the obaship of their little town. One was already the Oba and the other wished to unseat him because everyone agreed the Oba was very wicked and no one liked him. However, no one could do anything about their dislike except this man. The Oba hopeful then consulted the best, oldest and wisest medicine man he could find to make for him a magic powder or concoction that would unseat his rival. But the wily Oba loved his seat and watched it carefully. He had every powder to counter any his rival could bring. Obviously, the medicine man’s powder did not work.

    Quite desperate now, the hopeful had to do some thinking, and to do that, he consulted an old wizened man to help him. One fine morning, the Oba woke up and found a mound of human waste in front of his palace. Since he knew he did not do it, it had to be from his enemy. So, they want to try me eh, he thought as he stormed back inside to fetch his most potent retaliatory powder. This he proceeded to sprinkle on the mound in great malevolence to ensure that whoever produced it would not live to see the next day. Looking up, he saw his only enemy smiling in front of him, and that one made only two statements as he turned away, ‘The waste is yours. I followed you into the bush to bring it back’.

    So, folks, that is what competition does: No one wins, neither the victor who finds his soul stooping to conquer nor the loser who may be made to descend into the earth. Rather than compete to amass mounds of unneeded state funds, let us adopt the Thatcherian spirit. It stands for patriotism, frugality, resoluteness and great achievements. It will help us learn to put the country first and ensure we live through posterity.

  • God bless America

    God bless America

    For days, I have been following with great interest the developments in the Boston Marathon blast in the United States in which three persons died and about 180 were injured.

    Again, America, the world’s most powerful nation literarily came under attack. Though not of the magnitude of the 9/11 attack, the incident reinforced the danger of terrorism globally despite the efforts to curb the disturbing trend.

    An otherwise peaceful event which has held annually for years turned tragic just when some of the runners started crossing the finish line. While one of the suspected bombers was killed in a shootout, there has been a massive manhunt for the other as at press time.

    My heart goes to the victims of the attack and their families. One can only imagine the agony the victims are experiencing considering the components of the bomb that sprayed nails, ball bearings and other metal fragments into the crowd. I listened to the head of the medical team in one of the hospitals where the victims are being treated and remember him talking of a number of amputations that have been done to save lives.

    I am still haunted by the smile of the eight year old Martin Richard who was killed while standing by the finish line with his family when an explosion tore through the area. Richard’s mother, Denise, suffered a brain injury and his 6-year-old sister, Jane, reportedly lost a leg.

    It’s difficult to understand why some people will choose to cause grievous harm to others to make whatever point they have or protest against anything. We can only hope that the security agencies will get to the root of this particular case and prevent a reccurrence.

    One particular thing that has struck me about the whole incident is how the efforts of the first responders, rescue team, medical team and others have been repeatedly acknowledged by all, including President Barrack Obama.

    Unlike in our country, their ‘heroic sacrifice’ did not go unacknowledged. They must be very proud of themselves and will not hesitate to rise up to the occasion if they have another opportunity to do so.

    America and other developed nations have a way of demonstrating that the life of every of their citizens matters through the way the governments respond to crisis. This is what is evident in the handling of the Boston blast.

    In an incident in which only three persons died, the response at all levels has been massive. President Obama has not only spoken on the matter, he has been part of the special service for the victims during which he assured that the bombers would be found and held ‘accountable’.

    In order to get the only two suspects, security agents have launched a manhunt for them with the Boston city almost shut down. I have been intrigued by the amount of information that has been shared with the public by the security to get the suspects. The access given to the media during the operation has been incredible. The willingness of the people, including their families, to speak on what they know about the suspects is very commendable.

    There is indeed a lot for us to learn on how to handle situation like this. The lessons must not be lost on us as we join the world in sympathising with America over this unfortunate incident.

  • Democracy without choice?

    Democracy without choice?

    The words that are needed from political parties are words that assure voters of a level playing field for all parties

    Apart from the traditional definition of democracy as a government of the people, by the people and for the people, one abiding dimension of democracy is that it is a system of government that is driven by choice on the part of the electorate, the traditional owners of any democratic nation-state’s sovereignty. Looking at Nigeria’s democracy two years before the 2015 election, it appears there are serious challenges to the choice aspect of democracy in the country.

    What is on the electoral horizon barely two years before the 2015 election is a politics of fear or fear mongering. Before President Jonathan came to power in 2011 on his own steam as presidential candidate of the PDP, Nigeria’s political space was free and agog with political campaigns by several presidential candidates that got narrowed down to three candidates from three distinct parties: PDP, ACN, and CPC. However, there was no clear manifesto from the party that brought President Jonathan to power. The closest to a plan of action on his part was the promise of transformation. Transformation was a word that was attractive and even intoxicating to voters, who had lived for decades under various military and civilian rulers that did not bring noticeable progress to most citizens.

    For anybody to promise transformation in a country with about 20,000 kilometres of tarred highways, with a railway without coaches; with houses and factories powered by generators; with an educational system on its knees; and with a security architecture unfit for a federation of nationalities; it was as good as promising a government of miracles. Millions of voters crossed party lines to vote for President Jonathan, the presidential candidate of the PDP. It will be uncharitable to say two years on the throne that the rest is history on politics or ethic of transformation.

    Now five years away from the 2015 election, President Jonathan’s party men are effusive in the use of vocabularies that are reminiscent of President Obasanjo’s characterisation of the 2007 election as do-or-die. Vocabularies attributed to the President and leaders of his party smack of fear mongering. Instead of giving Nigerians any indication about what PDP is committed to do for Nigerians between now and 2015, PDP leaders are deliberately heating the polity with military diction: capturing 32 states; accepting the challenge of the 2015 election as war, etc. It is not democratic to give voters any reason to be afraid of elections.

    Furthermore, at the national level, efforts by opposition parties to merge and give the electorate two major political parties to choose from in the next election are perceived to be frustrated by the ruling party, at whose door step opposition party leaders put the blame about the sudden emergence of political parties and organisations with the acronym APC. The effect of the perception that there are invisible government hands behind the birth of several organisations to snatch the acronym APC from the party to emerge from the merger of ACN, CPC, and ANPP is that there are politicians that are afraid of new parties that are big enough to give the ruling PDP stiff competition in 2015. If a new party with the right size and spread to challenge the ruling party is frustrated in any way, it is the voters that are disrespected. Democratic political competition for votes is generally one that is driven by ideas and performance of parties in competition for citizens’ votes. President Jonathan has promised many times that he wants to be remembered as one president that has encouraged free and fair election. Free and fair election is not just about what happens in polling booths or at vote counting stations; it is also about readiness of party leaders to present their ideas and records of performance to the electorate while leaving the voters to make their choice without intimidation, coercion, or cajolement of opposition parties.

    The country needs to hear what each political party has to offer as vision, strategies and policies to achieve direly needed change. It will need a political party that is not afraid of coming to terms with Nigeria’s diversity, not a party that sees development and unity as synonyms. Voters need to hear from political parties that are willing and able to address the problem of infrastructure head-on, without having to blame power outage on too much or too little water in the dam or no natural gas to power the turbines, etc. Voters are waiting to hear from all parties that have plans and methods for addressing the problem of limited spaces for thousands of post-secondary students that desire to obtain tertiary training, instead of the millions of students that now roam the streets in search of visa to North America, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and even Ghana in search of university education. The Nigerian electorate will need to see from all parties willing to rule Nigeria in 2015 blueprints for reducing the number of able-bodied young men and women that roam in the millions the streets or offices of unemployment. Voters need to hear from all political parties what plans they have for preventing the death of 1,000 Nigerian children from malaria every day.

    Millions of Nigerians who asked for political re-structuring of the federation are still craving to hear from political parties that want to work towards purposive unity among Nigerian nationalities through a programme of equal opportunity for all citizens and all cultures; of equity and justice in revenue allocation; fiscal federalism; sustainable appropriate security architecture for the country; infrastructure renewal that covers the whole country; free and compulsory education for the first twelve years of schooling in public schools; strategies for achieving nation-wide religious tolerance and harmony; unapologetic attitude towards any form of terrorism, etc.

    These are some of the issues that voters are craving to hear political parties and their leaders address with honesty and sincerity, not bellicose words that evoke two years before 2015 the picture of war and blood. The words that are needed from political parties are words that assure voters of a level playing field for all parties, respect for the rights of all parties to contest for power; and respect for citizens’ right to choose the leaders they desire.

  • Intellectual fraud is stealing your economic future

    Intellectual fraud is stealing your economic future

    •  The rich purchase the truth; the mighty take it; the poor must suffer it.

    War and ideas are the primary factors determining the cast and color of human history. A bad idea is often more dangerous than an army. A terrible idea, widely accepted, can inflict damage no weapon can achieve. To achieve military victory, an army must assert itself to subdue the foe. One who plants a wrong idea in the head of an adversary need not spend a drop of sweat. He can enjoy the luxury of watching his victim self-destruct.

    Because of the minatory quality of erroneous economic concepts, this column often focuses on this theme to warn against the indoctrination the world attempts against you. Money Power, the global elite, claims it wants you to prosper. They lie. Your prosperity would require they forget their economic mastery of you. Forfeiting their mastery means to forfeiting their profits and exalted station. Why would people whose economic creed is the utility of greed suddenly turn selfless to benefit weak and imperfect strangers? They preach you may reach prosperity only if you do as they say. They hire smart people to write books and craft elaborate theories to convince you about the veracity of their assertions. What they neglect to tell you is that the advice they provide you was not the advice they followed. The books and theorems they recommend you digest are such that you eating this select diet will nourish them more than it does you.

    In 2009, Ivy League economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff authored a book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. They also wrote a paper Growth in a Time of Debt. Both works contend slow economic growth always plagues nations with debt-to-GDP ratios exceeding 90 percent. Put another way, economic growth depends on national governments running no or low deficits. Their work becoming an intellectual chevron for the conservative elite worldwide, the two authors were instant darlings of the corporate media, the establishment intelligentsia, and international financial institutions.

    The authors proudly hawked their wares on CNN and other stations. The book received the 2011 Gold Medal Award from the Council of Foreign Relations, America’s most prestigious foreign affairs organization that heavily influences government policy. The book garnered accolades from USA Today as “One of the Best Books to Make Sense of the Financial Crisis.” Moreover, their paper has become one of the most cited economic short pieces of the past quarter century.

    The fanfare would not have been so disastrous had it been limited to this intellectual exhibitionism. Purporting to expose and explain financial folly, their works would be used to justify financial policy folly worse than any since the 1930s Great Depression. The IMF and EU would seize upon their work to cram fiscal austerity down the throats of the member states along the northern tier of the Mediterranean. England would voluntarily minister the loopy tonic to itself courtesy of a Tory government with the flinty predilection for believing anything that imposes hardship on the poor must be good. Governments around the world slashed budgets, believing this exercise in “fiscal consolidation” would miraculously unleash growth. They were correct.

    Several economic indicators did grow. The length of unemployment lines grew. The number of people living in poverty’s harsh domain grew. Business failures grew. The number of people who went without food, school and medical care grew. The number of people made homeless grew. The number of people who tossed themselves from windows or put guns to their head from sheer financial hopelessness grew. The living conditions of most residents in the austerity nations grew worse. These were the growth aspects of the Reinhart-Rogoff principle. In other words, the fiscal austerity their conclusion supported also caused the list of nations suffering economic recession or depression to grow.

    While the two authors raked in handsome payoffs for their work, people suffered and died because of their twisted contribution to economic alchemy. In an earlier column, I offered a brief critique of this and related economic works that seem to celebrate the prospect of cutting off money to the poor.

    First, the authors likely inverted the causal relationship between growth and debt. High debt ratios are not the likely causes of low growth. Low growth causes high debt more so than the obverse. If the authors had embraced the more accurate cause and effect relationship they would have arrived at policy recommendations materially different from the austerity they came to espouse. A more accurate view of causality would have led to the conclusion that high growth is the predicate to debt reduction. Sustained growth becomes unattainable when government spending is slashed at a time when the private sector remains too frail and fragile to expand by its own accord.

    Second, their research was dubious because they failed to differentiate between eras when nations were constrained by the gold standard and the modern era based on national currencies with flexible exchange rates. Today, most sovereign money is fiat currency. This currency is not pegged to gold. Nations have an unlimited ability to issue currency. Insolvency and default are not their problems. Such nations can always pay provided their bills are denominated in local money. Sovereign debt ratios may have been important in earlier times but are less important today. Thus, the USA Today award crediting the duo with explaining the recent financial crisis is a demonstration of well-heeled ignorance. If this duo adequately explained any financial crisis, it was not the one of a few years ago. It was one of a few centuries ago. Their book has little relevance to modern economics. At best, it is a work of economic history. As you read further, you might conclude it belongs to that arcane, little known literary genre, economic fiction. As a manual for modern economics it constitutes the abysmal triumph of prejudice and bias over truth and objectivity. Its solutions are akin to caring for a hemophiliac by bleeding him with leeches.

    Third, designating a 90 percent debt ratio as the breaking point smacked of intellectual caprice. No empirical evidence warrants this designation. This designation was not an objective finding intended to illuminate how things work. It was an arbitrary decision meant to advance a subjective purpose.

    These flaws render their influential work suspect. However, a more detailed analysis of their mathematics expose the work as an emblem of gross incompetence or outright fraud. After writing their book, Reinhart and Rogoff were highly reluctant to release their data. Today, the two probably wish they had behaved more like seasoned confidence artists who always destroy the incriminating paper trail. Had they not begrudgingly released their data, they might have gotten away with their delinquency.

    A few weeks ago, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts published a document titled Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. After a thorough scrubbing of the data, PERI concluded the duo’s thesis contradicts the information used to support it. In their work, the tandem asserted nations with debt ratios exceeding the 90 percent threshold suffered -0.1 percent negative GDP growth. In recalculating the data, PERI found Reinhart/Rogoff were wrong to the point of indecency.

    Reinhart/Rogoff’s research stumbled upon data showing high growth but highly indebted nations. The authors merely ignored these nations and tossed aside the associated data. This allowed the writers to continue on their merry way to the conclusion they preordained. Include these inconvenient nations in the analytic mix as PERI did, the tale is a different one. Nations exceeding a 90 percent ratio attained 2.2 percent growth rates. This pace approximated the rate for nations below the contrived threshold. In short, the threshold is a meaningless contrivance. The Reinhart/Rogoff thesis is good for nothing except to fill a waste receptacle.

    Truth has been revealed but will quickly be ignored because those who control the truth don’t want you to learn of it. Reinhart/Rogoff’s work will still be widely cited by the establishment and its agents. They want you to accept an untruth as truth. They want you to live by it although there is no real life to it or in it. Their work is a dead letter masquerading as a parade. Conversely, the astute PERI refutation will not make the front page. Its authors will not be guests on internationally televised talk shows. At most, their findings will be a short-run ticker at the bottom of the television screen. In the main, it will never be considered by policy makers who remain committed to Reinhart/Rogoff notwithstanding that the duo represents financial scholarship’s equivalent of Typhoid Mary and Blackbeard.

    For the damage done, the couple should be run out of town. Had they been physicians, they would be in court on charges of negligence. Instead, they still participate in the elite cocktail circuit as respected academicians.

    Their misconduct is not a fluke. It is part of a systematic distortion of the truth in the service of a financialist elite and ideology that abetted the destitution of billions of human beings in order to elevate the profits of a few hundred thousand people. In its paper Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers, even the IMF finally admitted austerity was a draconian cloud with a jaundiced lining.

    Following the Reinhart/Rogoff postulate, the IMF forced nations into austerity, claiming reduced governmental expenditures would stimulate growth. Reality has forced the IMF into a semi-public mea culpa. In this recent paper, the Fund acknowledged its woeful underestimation of government expenditures multiplier effect on economic growth. Due to its ideological bias, the IMF arbitrarily assumed a dollar of government spending would contribute less than a dollar to economic growth. This fiction enabled the IMF to press governments to cut their budgets. Under this scenario, budget reductions would not impair economic growth. Sadly, this scenario existed only in the IMF’s mind. It had no place in reality. The multiplier effect of government spending was of a magnitude significantly higher than the IMF’s assumption. Now, the IMF admits to a government spending multiplier of 1.5, meaning every dollar of government spending produces $1.50 dollars in growth. By any standard, this reveals government spending as an effective catalyst for economic growth. It also means reduced government spending would cause overall GDP to drop more precipitously than the cut in government expenditure. Thus, when the IMF muscled nations to reduce government spending, GDP growth would not occur. The tactic would precipitate a downward spiral, immersing whole nations in recession or worse.

    The EU apparently did not want to be outdone by the IMF and the Reinhart/Rogoff tag team. When shoving the misnamed “bailout” down the Cypriot throat, the EU claimed the impact would be negative growth of -4.9 percent over two years for the island nation. With the bitter pill now swallowed, the EU readjusted it forecast. The new two- year projection is negative growth of -12.6 percent. The difference is jarring. The first is staunch hardship. The second is sheer doom. To call this a rescue package is to invest in the humor of the gallows. The Cypriot economy will be compressed like an overripe pea smashed by a falling anvil.

    Objectively, the victims of this grand theft should be in hot revolt. Instead, they accept it as fate inescapable. They believe what they have been taught without realizing what they have learned enchains their minds with the densest of fetters.

    Despite the ample economic wreckage visible all around, most people embrace the elite fiction. Africa’s leaders are most taken by the formulas and theories of this mean elite. Too many of our people want to be accepted into the international club. They will sell both soul and nation for a rear seat at the festivities. They want to appear to understand the events vaticinated by the financial world’s high priests and their missionaries stationed in our nations. The extent to which we believe the disciples of austerity is the extent to which we have been led to lead ourselves to the slaughterhouse. To do what we are told is to seal our fate to its worst version.

    A fundamental economic truth is that nations with weak, collapsing private sectors must resort to government deficit spending to pull them from deflation’s gravitational pull. Innovative, targeted government deficit spending is the best and almost only resort for nations where the bulk of the population suffers chronic recession and high employment. It is an inanity to believe less money and reduced aggregate demand will blossom into greater economic growth. This only happens in books written by the like of Reinhart/ Rogoff. However, we don’t live in books. We exist in the real world. Until we learn this key lesson, real world prosperity will evade us just as much as the truth evades Reinhart/Rogoff, the IMF and EU.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • Are there any signs or resources of hope in this troubled land (and this earth)? (3)

    Are there any signs or resources of hope in this troubled land (and this earth)? (3)

    I begin this concluding piece in the series with the very last paragraph in last week’s column which ended with three questions that will frame this essay. Here is the paragraph:

    We can be sure that no ruler in Nigeria will ever bring out the tanks and the troops to stop the vast throng of worshippers, the sea of humanity going to or coming from an MFM revival; as a matter of fact, this is something that would warm their hearts. We can also deduce from the two cases of Obasanjo’s “Third Term” bid and the Turai Yar’ Adua “palace coup” that when the masses intervene to clean up the mess created by our political class, the powers that be will also not bring out the troops and the tanks. Since they did so when the masses were on the move during the fuel subsidy removal strike, three questions arise. One: Which of these instances of mass movement and action constitutes a real source of hope for our country and its teeming masses of the looted and the disenfranchised? Two: Are these three different cases in fact unrelated? Three: What is the point in asking this sort of questions?

    My answer to these questions may surprise many of my readers and it is this: Each of these three instances of mass movement and action in Nigeria is potentially a valid source of hope for our country. Freedom is indivisible and hope exists on many levels and wears many masks. The true mark of democracy in our country and our world is that people must have the freedom to assemble, to march and to act in the public sphere for religious, ceremonial, festive or political reasons, as long as they do so without hindering or negating the freedom of others. For this reason, it is a very retrograde thing, a mark of the sorry state of our current experiment in non-military democratic governance for one kind of mass movement and action to be allowed while another kind is met with maximum use of force and intimidation. Let me put this contention in concrete terms.

    In last week’s column, I mentioned the endless sea of worshippers coming from a mass revivalist meeting of the MFM. To this I added the observation that no government, no ruler in Nigeria would ever dare to bring out the troops and the armored tanks to stop this endless throng of the faithful giving expression to their deepest faith and hope in God and divine grace, even if they stop the flow of traffic in a major city for two hours. To this we can add the fact that that all travelers on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway routinely encounter even a much bigger assemblage of communicants at the altar of religious epiphany at the “Redeem Junction”, an assemblage so vast that quite often all traffic on the most important artery of the national highway grid comes to a complete stop for hours on end. Again, we can safely assume that no government, state or federal, has it in mind to put a stop to this phenomenon that is probably without any parallel in our country or our continent.

    By contrast, consider this: In early January 2012, at the height of the very successful nation-wide strike against the removal of oil subsidies by the administration of Goodluck Jonathan, an equally mammoth procession of protesters that started at the Lagos State House of Assembly and headed towards the Gani Fawehinmi Park at Ojota was met by the troops and tanks of the 9th Brigade of the Nigerian Army that was personally supervised by the brigade commander, Brigadier-General Sani Muazu. Not only did the general and his men stop the march, Muazu, as reported in The Guardian of January 17, 2012, actually stated that once the government and the trade unions had declared that the strike was over, the protest march had become illegal and could not be permitted to take place notwithstanding the fact that this was a completely peaceful protest march that was led by legislators, academics and very prominent citizens.

    It is heartening to report that this extremely warped and stunted definition of the democratic legality of mass protests and marches in our country was vigorously contested by many prominent politicians and citizens, among them Governor Fashola of Lagos State. But there is more to this matter than verbal condemnation of the severe restriction placed by the Nigerian state on the freedom of the Nigerian masses to organize protests against the horrific conditions and realities that they face on a daily, even hourly basis. Let me explain what I mean by this assertion and in doing so bring the discussion closer to our fears and anxieties about the forthcoming state and federal elections of 2015 concerning statements that have been made – and are still being made – by many of our politicians that these may well be the last set of elections in the country we currently know as Nigeria.

    Basically, to me this state of affairs means that, once again, we are at a conjunctural moment in the politics of democratic governance in our country. There are three principal features to this conjuncture. We can deal quickly with the first two of these features. One: Only on the basis of another implosion will Jonathan get the nomination of the ruling party, the PDP; if internal democracy prevails in the run of primaries within the party before the general elections, he will not get the nomination for another term in office. But internal democracy has never been a notable feature within the PDP and we are not about to see a reversal of this defining feature of the party. Two: The other parties confidently expect that even with its looming implosion, the PDP will still rig the elections for the simple reason that it will use its incumbency and its control of the apparatus and the instruments of “legal” violence lodged in the armed forces to cow the opposition parties and the populace into submission. Against this, the opposition parties are readying themselves for a “final showdown”. Three: In neither of these two scenarios of the ruling party and the opposition parties respectively is the generality of the Nigerian masses, acting in their own interests, a factor of any real significance. Permit me to elaborate a little on this third feature of our conjuncture which, as I have observed, is, in my opinion, of far greater import than the other two features.

    The PDP, with its abysmally poor record in office, knows only too well that with the exception of a few places primarily in the South-south, it will never win nationwide on the basis of the popular support of the generality or plurality of the Nigerian masses. Furthermore, with its incumbency and its control of the apparatus and instruments of “legal” violence, the PDP is near absolute in sidelining the masses of Nigerians acting in their own interests. In contrast to this, the opposition parties are counting on the hope that the masses will not stand for another rigging of the elections and will rise up in revolt if the attempt is made once again by the PDP. However, in the meantime in the run-up to 2015, these opposition parties are doing little or nothing to prepare the Nigerian masses to intervene decisively in 2015 by taking up and fighting for their cause, their interests. In this, I think the opposition parties are putting their faith, their hope in the fact that every time that the ruling party has more or less imploded and brought the country to the edge of catastrophe, it has been the intervention of the Nigerian masses that has saved the day. In other words, one side, the side of the ruling party, has no place for the interests, the intervention of the masses of Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country; the other side, the side of the combined forces of the opposition parties, has only a very limited place for mass or popular intervention, this being on the day of judgment in 2015.

    As I reflect on these matters, my mind goes to an allegory in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus that is based on a fascinating analogy between the human body and the body politic. In this allegory which Shakespeare in fact borrowed from ancient Greek and Roman sources, all the other parts of the body – the head, the arms, the ears, the eyes and the tongue – stage a revolt against the belly on the bitter claim that, unlike each of these body parts that has a vital function for the health and well-being of the entirety of the body, the belly does nothing but simply consumes all the food that enters the body. In vain did the body protest that it does not merely consume everything that comes to it but actually processes all its intakes and converts them to nutrients that it then redistributes to all the other parts of the body. In their revolt, the other parts of the body withdraw from participation in transmitting food to the belly. Soon, however, they begin to wither, to atrophy because they find that each body part alone by itself cannot complete the cycle of consumption and redistribution that keeps all the parts of the body healthy and fit for performing their allotted functions.

    I have drawn attention to the fact that Shakespeare borrowed this allegory from ancient Greek and Roman sources. To this I must now add my feeling that Shakespeare’s Greek and Roman sources themselves were drawing on oral, popular sources that we find in almost every society and culture in the world in which a bloated stomach that is counterpoised to atrophied limbs is the ultimate mark of the diseased body, whether of the physical body or of the body politic. The kwashiorkor belly is of course the most grotesque mark of this kind of diseased body in which consumption has gone totally askew of redistribution. I don’t think I am overstating the case if I describe our current experiment in democratic governance since 1999 as a “kwashiorkor democracy” in which the collective belly of our political elites is a grotesque counterpoint to the shrunken, misshapen limbs of the masses of our peoples.

    Do I also overstate the facts if I say, ruefully, that most Nigerians in all parts of our country see nearly all our politicians and political parties in the image of the bloated belly that consumes everything and leaves nothing to the limbs, the other parts of the national body politic? The intervention of the masses of Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country is one of the few sources of hope for the country as we look ahead in anxiety and fear to 2015. For this hope to be realized, the work of preparing the masses for that intervention must begin now. Let us begin to see this not only in words but also in deeds, in policies and practices that make the crucial link between consumption and redistribution not a dream, not a fantasy on the horizon of the future but palpable realities in the lives of the vast majority of our peoples.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Nigeria: Before amnesty becomes amnesia

    Nigeria: Before amnesty becomes amnesia

    Had government gone the way of dialogue it should not have been difficult for it  to see the reasonableness of all that Malam Shehu Sani had been saying

    I will, forever, be proud of our web portal: ekitipnupo@yahoogroups.com, an Indigenous Think-Tank and Intellectual Round-Table, agglomerating no less than two thousand Ekiti compatriots, both at home and in the Diaspora and on which no single issue, however supposedly minor, concerning the state, in particular, and Nigeria in general, passes us bye.

    Witness the following remarks by two members of the forum, distinguished Professors in their own right, one of Chemical Engineering, and the other of Agric Economics, on the topic of the moment in Nigeria –Amnesty.

    First: ‘My heart nearly stopped beating yesterday when, listening to local Nigerian news, I heard that the Governor of Abia State was asking for amnesty for the 5000 kidnappers in his state, and that they should be paid compensation or monthly wages “like is being done in the Niger-Delta.”

    5000 kidnappers in Abia State alone? I asked.

    And already identified?

    And it was no April Fool, or an Onion radio station…

    Is this is a sick joke or what? What now does amnesty mean in Nigeria? How do you give amnesty to:

    1. Those who have not accepted that they are criminals that must be “amnestied”?

    2. Those who have not asked for it, even if they accept criminality?

    3. Those whose total number at a point of amnesty you have not identified?

    4. those whose stream of replenishment – after granting some amnesty that must be based on certain terms – you are not able to stem?

    I don’t understand it – ” – but this Orji’s request takes the cake.

    o mebiri emebi, biko nu…’

    And second one, on the same Orji macabre request:

    ‘We are gradually descending from being ridiculous to being insane, playing politics with everything including precious human lives. The logic, as warped as it may appear, is that if the northern leaders are getting money for their Boko Haram (terrorists), he can as well ask for his kidnappers too. After all, terrorism and kidnapping are both crimes and the funds to be used will come from the commonwealth – the theory of ‘whatever is good for the goose should also be good for the gander’.

    Preposterous, I dare say but then, is n’t this our friend of the popular shrine?

    Both quotes point to how serious, or otherwise, a country we are as well as what manner of leaders we have but , more critically, it calls to question our process of leadership recruitment which is as warped as we are rudderless.

    What then is amnesty?

    Generally, amnesty is defined as any governmental pardon for past offenses or crimes, especially political ones. Granting amnesty goes beyond a pardon, in that it forgives the said offense completely. Indeed, a key part of the definition is the fact that amnesty is granted before any trial or conviction so Asari Dokubo could not have been right with his postulation that “the government can only put in two things – exercise prerogative of mercy after a person is convicted or when a person is under trial to put a nolle Prosequi but you cannot see somebody and declare him a criminal and give him a pardon’.

    Amnesty has also been described (Tom Tancredo, for instance, a Colorado, U.S politician, and former Presidential candidate) as a terrible policy, as well as terrible politics because by offering it you are rewarding people for breaking the law.” Please note though, that this unrealistic G.O.P politician had American illegal immigrants in mind.

    Nothing demonstrates the wrongheadedness of President Jonathan’s amnesty offer than the following response by the Boko Haram leader, Abubjakar Shekau: “Surprisingly, the Nigerian government is talking about granting us amnesty. What wrong have we done? On the contrary, it is we that should grant you pardon,” and followed it up by listing what he called the state’s atrocities against Muslims.

    Were the Jonathan government serious, that was the point at which it should have realised that what the problem called for, was dialogue, rather than any sterile offer of amnesty. I have, on this page, been an unrepentant advocate of dialogue even when it was neither trendy nor politically correct to, as much, as mention it. I recently upped the ante by asking for an all-inclusive National conference at which Nigeria’s many demons can be objectively and critically interrogated.

    Had government gone the way of dialogue it should not have been difficult for it to see the reasonableness of all that Malam Shehu Sani had been saying, ad nauseam.

    Shehu Sani, prominent civil rights activist, who single-handedly interacted with Boko Haram up to a point former President Olusegun Obasanjo did not mind joining the chorus, has literally been having a dialogue with the deaf on the issue of Boko Haram. Before he respectfully declined to serve on the Jonathan Amnesty Committee, he had warned endlessly that the first step was to establish a credible link with Boko Haram through those who know the group and who they, in turn can trust. Given the literal ribaldry going on, Sani has ruled out the possibility of Boko Haram leadership accepting the proposed amnesty because you cannot give amnesty to a people who do not want amnesty. Said Sani, “First of all, government set up a committee whose members nobody knows -(that has since been corrected) – but he went on: “If you set up a committee with big people who do not have access to the leadership of Boko Haram, you are simply wasting your time.” He even doubts whether the cheer-leading Northern governors are in touch with Boko Haram at all. The last I remember, personally, were some groveling Northern governors, serving and past, literally on their knees, begging Boko Haram leaders, asking for forgiveness. The manner in which they pleaded, you would have thought they took any of Shekau’s many wives!

    Nor was Sani done. He alleged that the motivating factor in all this talk about amnesty is money –kudi – which some Northern leaders are already eyeing. And he cautioned: ‘the Federal Government must not dangle money before Boko Haram as money cannot solve the problem of Boko Haram. They have not made financial request and secondly they are not fighting because they need money’, he concluded.

    And I say it would be such a shame if these Northern éminence grise have forgotten so soon that, driven by religious fundamentalism, Osama Bin Laden thought nothing of his riches but how to cause maximum damage to humanity. He was known to have spent copious time in the desert where he had work camps and led a totally ascetic life style. How come any government would wish to grant these his ‘evil’ heirs, tonnes of money which would most probably end up in arms procurement and more havoc. (Evil – not my word, but that of respected Alhaji Bamanga Tukur of the Gen Murtala/Nigerian Port Authority fame, a happy throw back to the days Nigeria had leaders.

    The fact that highly regarded Dr Datti Ahmed, President, Sharia Supreme Council in Nigeria has also declined participation in the committee work says much about its reasonableness long term usefulness. Without a doubt this will also go the way of other actions and promises of President Jonathan, and here, power readily comes to mind.

    I will therefore respectfully suggest to Mr President to immediately disband this ill-advised Amnesty Committee, and in its place, commence two quick processes, namely, inaugurate an appropriate committee to commence a discreet dialogue and negotiations with Boko Haram leaders through those individuals they trust, and put in place, a tidy and efficient enumeration of ALL the victims of Boko Haram’s unmitigated terrorism with a view to cogently assisting them or their dependants . Government should also draw up a Marshall plan which will, unlike these loquacious governors, aggressively infuse real socio-economic development in Northern Nigeria which age long feudalism has brought to its knees. The plan should aim directly at tuning the youth around because they constitute the literally rootless, and mostly illiterate, field from which they recruit suicide bombers on the titillating promise of heavenly virgins.

  • State foreclosure in Nigeria

    State foreclosure in Nigeria

    Foreclosure stares the Nigerian state grimly in the face. It is a terrible irony that our endlessly squabbling politicians do not yet appreciate the dangers to the nation. Their attention is completely fixated on the elections coming next year and in 2015, even as the object of their fixation is slowly yielding to the forces of internal strangulation.

    At no point in its history, either colonial or post-colonial, and certainly not even during the civil war, has the Nigerian state appeared more fragile and vulnerable. Trapped between two extreme and extremist cultures of political violence, the Boko Haram insurgency in the north and the MEND insurrection in the Southern creeks, strafed by a thousand armed gangs bent on bringing to heel its remaining emblems of power and authority, the state appears powerless and paralysed.

    Like a solitary schoolboy ambushed by bigger bullies, the state offers its drink to one and its victuals to the other, hoping that they will go away and leave it in peace. But they are not about to. Inflation is the natural law and logic of bullies. When you appease, you must be ready to yield more appeasement. This is because the more you try to give, the more they demand. Appeasement without a demonstration of strength and resolve, and without compelling evidence of your own minatory deterrence, is a voluntary suicide mission usually dead on arrival.

    This week even as the Boko Haram sect continues its routine devastation of the north despite the prospects of amnesty dangled before it, the MEND opened a new front by threatening and actually carrying out its threat despite the substantial economic and political pacification from the government. The decomposing bodies of 11 policemen must speak volumes for the dire straits in which the state has found itself..

    The powerful Nigerian military has battled valiantly and heroically to confront and contain these nation-destroying demons, but it is also beginning to show signs of weariness and demoralisation. As this column has repeatedly cautioned, this kind of well-heeled insurgency fired and inspired by ideological zealotry and operating in an economically blighted region suffering from political disorientation, is not in the conventional military manual.

    Without a conventional order of battle (ORBAT), the military will have to learn its lesson on the hoof, and as the war without defined fronts progresses. In addition, the military is hobbled by overriding political considerations and the inconsistency and feeble-minded opportunism of government policies. Saying one thing today and doing the very opposite the next day, Goodluck Jonathan himself comes across as a tragic comedian in a perplexing political tragicomedy.

    But it is not a funny matter when the state becomes a big joke despite its awesome powers of enforcement and coercion and when the bully finally becomes the bullied and the tormentor the tormented The problem of the post-colonial state in Nigeria is compounded by its vanishing legitimacy and authority even in the areas where it holds unchallenged sway.

    For many Nigerians, the state is seen as incapable of projecting itself as a true defender of national interests. It is so grotesquely corrupt and inefficient that its moral authority over its own citizens has evaporated. This is in addition to its military incapacitation in the face of armed critiques of its existence. Although this did not begin with Goodluck Jonathan, he seems bent and destined to drive the logic to its ultimate summit and summation.

    When a state loses its power of moral and ethical suasion over its citizens and when the power of its apparatus of coercion has dramatically diminished in addition, that is state failure looming. It is now too late in the day to begin to suggest measures to shore up the authority and legitimacy of the government. This will involve a drastic self-purgation, and with its eyes fixed on the election of 2015, the Jonathan administration cannot even afford to toy with these measures.

    Unfortunately, it is not a problem that can be wholly redressed or addressed by elections. As it has been demonstrated so many times in the history of post-colonial Africa and Nigeria, elections superimposed on seething national contradictions do not solve or resolve anything. In most cases, they worsen the contradictions and exacerbate the national fault lines.

    It is the business of recreating the Nigerian state and nation which the political elite shy away from that is the hardest task. Yet without this fundamental shift in the paradigm of state-making and nation-building, there is nothing to stop this embattled nation from eventually dissolving into anarchic bloodletting the like of which has never been seen before.

    The old African pre-colonial political elites seemed to have managed the contradictions of society-building and state-making very well. This was because the old African state was an organic outgrowth of pre-colonial African society and there was therefore a uniformity and homogeneity of political culture which allowed for faster consensus building, the odd tension and political dissonance notwithstanding.

    This is quite unlike what obtains in colonial and post-colonial Africa where the state largely remains an alien and alienating contraption forcibly grafted on disparate and often mutually contradictory political, economic and religious cultures which makes national consensus very difficult except when it comes to stealing which wears a universal mask and does not require any mental rigour or highfalutin ethics.

    Where the state-nation is lucky to have a visionary founding father who can skilfully weld and fuse the disparate ethnic strands together to achieve a homogeneous entity, it is easier to fashion and fabricate a national consensus. Unfortunately, most founding fathers in Africa left their nations writhing in the debris of political and economic chaos.

    In its classical incarnation, the state was the most powerful embodiment of national aspirations surfeit with mystical notions as the ultimate guarantor and protector of the sacred destiny of the people and the society. This is true of any pre-colonial society. In royalties, monarchies, empires and fiefdoms, state actors are carefully groomed and nurtured through a rigorous and painstaking selection process.

    When and where a mistake is made, it is left to other powerful countervailing institutions to correct the anomaly with speed and utmost discretion without destabilising the polity. This is unlike what obtains in post-colonial Africa where tyrannical and unjust rulers often manage to circumvent elections as the expression of the sovereign wish and will of the populace.

    Africans must find some redemptive resources from the pre-colonial past. African elites, unlike the Chinese, the Indians, the Japanese and the Arabs, do not consider themselves modish and sophisticated until they have started casting aspersions on their pre-colonial culture. Yet as we demonstrated in this column last week, the continuing virility and potency of some of these institutions long after the subversion of their political and material base ought to serve as a cautionary reminder.

    In a famous passage on Greek Art, Karl Marx, the grim materialist and patriarch of periodisation, wondered aloud why artistic products from ancient Greece have continued to please and intrigue us long after the superannuation of the material culture that supported them. “The difficulty is not that they pleased us but that they continue to do so”, Marx rued. It was surely an affront to materialist logic.

    The same logic should now be extended to post-traditional societies. Why do certain institutions, rituals, emblems, sacred totems and tropes from the pre-colonial order have a lingering efficacy and potency long after the colonial amputation of the political and material basis of their existence? These are powerful ideological apparatuses of the old pre-colonial state and they will continue to be for a long time until they are overtaken by a combination of events. The death of material base does not automatically translate into the demise of superstructure.

    However that may be, all of this must indicate to us why the Nigerian state faces grave problems. It is a state that has been unable to grow any authentic national institution with the possible exception of the military which has also had its misadventures. It is a stunted state suffering from pedological leprosy. Nothing will grow on nothing. The political elite are riven by primordial fissures. The national psyche is centrally fractured. The state preys and predates on the nation directly leading to armed objections to its existence. .

    We have been careful to distinguish between state foreclosure and total state failure. Let no one at this point come up with the bogey, the blackmail and the buncombe that all this may lead to military intervention. In any case, military rule is preferable to the apocalyptic meltdown and the genocidal bloodletting looming. If the Boko Haram sect had succeeded in bringing down the Third Mainland Bridge, it would have taken some extra constitutional measure to restore parity to the nation. The mere threat, which is not over yet, brings the national tragedy to sharp relief.

    Whereas state failure compels a drastic and radical re-composition of the state and reconfiguration of the nation, state foreclosure, like a foreclosed property, demands immediate change of ownership and perhaps ownership restructure. The revolutionary turmoil in the land ought to tell the PDP that it has nothing left to offer the nation. Despite payment rescheduling and mortgage modification, the ruling party has failed to meet its obligation to the nation. Urgent repossession is the only solution.

    Since it has proved incapable of internally reforming itself, not to talk of coming up with the visionary policies to move the nation forward beyond the initial demilitarisation, all Nigerians, including patriotic members of the PDP driven by enlightened self interest, must rise up in one guise and under whatever national platform to see off this pernicious party before it sees off the nation.

    When compared with other grave possibilities facing the nation at the moment, this is the equivalent of mild surgery and a compromise in favour liberal democracy. Otherwise, state failure will accelerate at full throttle. The hazy outlines of radical anarchy are already with us.

  • Mourning Margaret, the Dowager of Downing Street

    Mourning Margaret, the Dowager of Downing Street

    Margaret Hilda Thatcher, who has just died, was arguably one of the greatest and most impacting leaders of the twentieth century. But she was also one of the most divisive. Even in death, she continues to provoke bitter divisions and controversies. While world leaders fell over themselves to pay her deserved tributes, the streets of Buenos Aires in Argentina and Brixton in Britain lit up in instant rejoicing and jubilation at the passing of the woman they love to hate. Thatcher, the milk-snatcher and the conqueror of Argentina, has shed mortality for immortality.

    The basis of her greatness lies in simple but stout convictions which she was ready to pursue to their ultimate end without caring whose ox is gored. She would not be crossed lightly. When truly roused, observers have noticed a lunatic glare in her eyes which hinted at deep psychological instability, but which also explains her deep reserves of strength and character. She was a long distance runner when it comes to feuds and friendships.

    There can be no doubt about her strength of character and steely resolve. The daughter of a Methodist alderman, the former Ms Roberts brought certain Christian fundamentalist principles to bear on politics. Among these are the virtues of thrift, prudence, restraint and self-help. Let those who do not work not eat. It is as simple as that, or is it? Ironically when these noble virtues are pushed to their ultimate logic, they lend themselves to the berserk individualism of an uncaring and deeply divided society. Thatcher herself famously posited that there is no such thing as society.

    This glorification of individual strength and personal salvation at the expense of communal care and affection was the ultimate chink in her formidable visionary armour. Thatcher’s fundamentalist zeal as well as the limits of her messianic certitude rose to the fore whenever she brusquely informed critics of her economic policies that there was no alternative, a mantra which earned her the nickname of “Tina”.

    In the end and even for her long-suffering party colleagues, there was no alternative to dumping the Iron Lady. It was a typical British political coup which was brilliantly effected in an autumnal morning of long knives. With tears in her eyes, Margaret Thatcher headed for Buckingham Palace in a lone funereal procession. The Iron Lady had become history.

    Margaret Thatcher was an unusual and atypical figure even by the standards of British politics. She was a profound anomaly for a political society which prides itself on its tolerance and the gentle virtues of pragmatic compromise. But there can be no doubt that the moment chose its Margaret. Before her, there was a historic deadlock. Britain had become a huge economic almshouse disposing munificence while Authur Scargill and his unionists held the nation to ransom. Britain needed an unusual political figure to drag and handbag it out of the millennial rut. Thatcher frogmarched Britain to her neo-conservative version of economic modernity. She earned herself an “ism” in the process.

    While her greatness is not in doubt, snooper regrets a certain gleeful insularity about Thatcher which lends itself to a racist smugness. Her support of rightwing regimes called her political judgement to question. Her dismissal of the ANC as a terrorist organisation which would never come to power was cruel and obtuse.

    In a befitting historical irony, snooper monitored Margaret Thatcher as she journeyed to South Africa much later to negotiate with the new authorities an escape clause for Mark, her wayward and accident-prone son. The ANC government obliged. It was a touching demonstration of the superiority of traditional African values. May Margaret find sweet repose.

  • Between the devil and the deep blue sea

    Between the devil and the deep blue sea

    Until President Goodluck Jonathan buckled in spectacular fashion and surrendered to the amnesty lobby following a late night visit to Aso Rock by selected Northern elders, the growing impression was that the shadowy characters in Boko Haram-land were all falling over themselves to embrace peace and dialogue.

    Apologists for the terrorists suggested that the hardline positions adopted by many in the leadership of the security agencies was down to the fact that certain powerful persons were profiting financially from the continued conflict. We certainly cannot discount the fact that where there’s war, people will make money prosecuting it. But that clearly is not the entire story.

    Some reports even suggested intriguingly that when the Sultan of Sokoto came out strongly in support of the amnesty, Jonathan missed an opportunity to quicken the journey to peace and quiet by not inviting him for further discussions. Instead, he headed to Maiduguri to make his uncompromising speech about not doing business with ‘ghosts.’

    Those who created the impression the Sultan had the Boko Haram hierarchy on speed dial, as well as a clear sense of their thinking and mindset must surely now be cringing in embarrassment. Would the traditional ruler have stuck out his neck if he really knew the sect’s high command will pull the sort of stunt they just did? I doubt not.

    Now, the spine of the extremists for whom the amnesty is being sought has come out openly to throw the deal in the faces of their potential boosters.

    But rather being a tragedy, I take the position that Shekau and his goons did everyone a favour by spurning a government amnesty that is yet to be formally made. Their action will reduce pressure on Jonathan and help him retrace his steps to the right course in tackling the North-Eastern insurgency.

    I expect the government will continue with its wrong-headed amnesty process since it has committed itself in that direction. Ultimately, a declaration will be made that will draw in elements in the faction led by one Sheik Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulazeez which has said they are fed up with the bloodletting and now want peace. What no one has told us is how many people this fellow has under his wings.

    You also have to factor in the Ansaru faction which claimed responsibility for the execution of seven foreign hostages a few weeks ago, and still shows no indication of wanting peace. With Shekau and his team still at large, the amnesty rejection means a large number of anarchists will still be out there bent on perpetrating mayhem.

    Again, we don’t know how dominant or large these forces are. But the government will have no option than to confront them because they will be outside the amnesty net – meaning a return to the military force option that many in the northern elite are increasingly leery of.

    Unfortunately, in our confusion we begin to get things muddled up. For instance, the greatest obstacle to dialogue and negotiations has always been the intransigence and unrealistic positions taken by the Islamists, not the reluctance of the Jonathan administration to do a quick deal. And let no one deceive themselves; these outlandish demands are not negotiating gambits – but clear statements of belief by a band of people dancing to a different beat.

    This is Shekau in his latest video spurning Jonathan’s hand of fellowship: “Surprisingly, the Nigerian government is talking about granting us amnesty. What wrong have we done? On the contrary, it is we that should grant you pardon.”

    This is coming from the leader of a sect that has killed over three thousand people in the last three years. Some of their victims were unarmed combatants worshipping in churches; some were travelers like those blown to bits at the Kano bus park not too long ago. With so much blood of the innocents on his hands, this fellow has the gall to ask ‘what wrong have we done?’ That statement couldn’t have been made by someone with a grip on reality.

    Negotiations and amnesties are not the sort of things you offer to the likes of Shekau. What will you give him in exchange for peace? A fistful of naira in order that he renounces his belief in jihad, or repudiates his demand for Sharia law in the land? Will Jonathan’s deal get sect members to disavow their belief that Western education is sinful? Will you get them to drop their visceral hatred of Christians because of the promise not to prosecute? Not likely! The demands of Boko Haram are non-negotiable.

    I can understand the fear and frustration up north, and appreciate how desperate people are for a return to normalcy. However, we need to address our minds to the reality that there begin to will be no pain-free way to deal with this problem. That is why those passing off the amnesty as a sure-fire cure are guilty of selling their people a badly-packaged brand of false hope.

    Ultimately, some form of talks will take place between the Islamists and the authorities, but that will only come after they have been significantly broken militarily. It will take time, and the traumatisation of local communities by the actions of both sides with continue, until the forces of law and order prevail.

    It happened in Algeria. Some estimates say between 70,000 and 150,000 lives were lost as the government battled Islamists in war that lasted between 1991 and 2002. No one is wishing that sort of calamity on Nigeria.

    What started with legitimate grievances following the annulment of elections which the Islamists looked set to win soon snowballed into something else. The terrorists launched a brutal campaign of bombings and indiscriminate slaughter not just against security forces, but against unarmed villagers in the countryside. Several presidents came and went while the war lasted. In the end, the commitment of the security forces led to the collapse of the insurgency, and the unilateral ceasefire by some of the more notorious bands of Islamist guerillas.

    Some form of amnesty was introduced towards the tail of the conflict, and it is credited with hastening the end of the violence, as the holdouts could easily be isolated for the security forces to deal with.

    And that is part of the problem with our so-called amnesty. In our indecent haste to buy peace at all costs we are offering deals to a group that still feels it is in a position to call the shots – a clear case of insult compounding our injuries.