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Category: Sunday

Are there any signs or resources of hope in this troubled land (and this earth)? (2)

On last week’s opening essay in this series, we critically explored the over-saturation of signs and markers of religious hope and faith in our country, an over-saturation which, in my opinion, leads to their neutralization. In this week’s continuation of the series, we shift to secular, rational and idealistic perspectives that base their projections of hope and faith in our capacity to work in our own best interest with the use of our minds, our rational critical faculties. I can think of no better way to start an exploration of this subject than to use a brief outline of a rational, scientific metaphysics of nature and existence as an analogy for the topic of this series.

We live in bodies and on a planet in which things are perpetually in flux and nothing is static, even if for the most part we are rarely ever in full consciousness of this fundamental principle of Being. All the time and in waves, blood courses through our arteries and veins. All the time we breathe, inhaling and exhaling air in reverse oxygenated and de-oxygenated rhythmic flows. Though silent and hardly perceptible, these flows are essential to life, so much so that it is only when we are have difficulty with breathing that is so bad as to be life-threatening that we become aware of them. Moreover, the heart itself never stops beating as long as we are alive and it too, beats in reverse rhythmic patterns of systole and diastole. And then there’s the fact that we live – we are both condemned and lucky to live – on a planet that is perpetually in motion, at once rotating on its axis and orbiting endlessly in space around the sun. Moreover, this planet, this earthly home for our species travels around its orbit at a speed of about 1670 kilometers per hour. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum; to this we should add that nature also hates stasis.

Pondering the ramifications of this profile, it would seem that Nigerians are the perfect incarnation of nature’s abhorrence of vacuum and its disdain for stasis. With our simultaneously notorious and celebrated restless and anarchic energy, we always very quickly move to fill any vacuum, real or imagined. We seem perpetually in a hurry, even if where we are headed is often obscure, both to ourselves and to others subjecting us to scrutiny. Nearly all visitors to the diverse countries on the African continent will tell you that Nigerians are a special breed in their volatility and their over hastiness. We seem wired to a sense of flux, a sense of “bo lo o ya (fun) mi” (if you have nowhere to go, get out of the way for me!) as if at its inception, the nation took its being from that axial tilt on which the earth rotates in its eternal orbit around the sun.

But this analogy is erroneous. There is order, there is system, there is logic in the tilt of the earth on its axis and in its speed around its solar orbit. By contrast, with Nigerians it seems that all you see and get is a sort orbital flight and axial rotation without rhyme or reason. But this also is not exactly true. There is no complete absence of logic or, more pertinently, no total absence of intervention of critical intelligence in our national mania for volatility and frenetic excitability. The sad fact is that it is fitful, inconstant; and it too easily peters out. Let me explain what I mean by this and in the process bring these reflections closer to the question of real signs and resources of hope in our country.

All the characteristics of the profile that in this essay I have designated the scientific metaphysics of Being are not just mere facts of nature and the universe; they became known to us through patient and rigorous study over thousands of years. It was through this unceasing study over the ages that humankind has been able to make use of the processes and forces of nature to our benefit – the nature inside and outside our bodies. We have penetrated deep into the internal organs and processes in our bodies and as a result we have come to have fuller and better knowledge of who and what we are. And this rational and critical knowledge has enabled us to intervene so as to make the work of these organs and processes better for our heath and our longevity.

The same thing is even more dramatically truer of the study of the earth and the heavens in the planetary system. Finding that our eyes and brains are not adequately equipped to effectively tackle the awesome challenges of observation, calculation and calibration over vast distances and spaces, we have fashioned instruments that can compute faster and better than the sum of the intelligence of all human beings alive now in combination with the intelligence of all those who have ever lived. If, as we take stock of our place in the universe we are no longer terrified of all that we are yet to know, it is because our knowledge, our rational faculties have given us hope that we have the capacity to successfully confront present and yet to be discovered frontiers.

The analogical corollary to this observation is that it has been only when Nigerians have taken critical stock of the restless energy and the volatility that seem so characteristic of the national psyche and redirected them to purposive ends that they have served as resources of hope. Without interventions of this purposive order, our restless energy and our volatility can be and are often turned to either negative, destructive ends or are domesticated and manipulated by charismatic religious zealots. Nigerians like to boast that the citizens of most of the other countries in Africa seem “slower”, seem more lethargic by comparison with us. If all that was needed for the unity, peace and progress of nations was restlessness and volatility, we would long ago have emerged as the most developed and the most just nation on the African continent which is most definitely far from the state of things in our country.

In case some readers are inclined to see these observations and reflections as too speculative, let me put out a reminder to such readers that at critical moments since the return to civilian “democratic” rule in 1999 when deep political and constitutional crises seemed about to bring the present Fourth Republic down and plunge us back to either disintegration of the country or a return to autocratic military rule, it was the redirection of the volatility and restlessness of the masses of ordinary Nigerians to purposive ends that saved the day. Let me rephrase this claim: since 1999, every time that it has seemed that members of the political class were not only about to collectively self-destruct but also to take the entire country down with them, it has been the redirection of the volatile energy of ordinary Nigerians toward restitution that has made the difference. That is one of the most important sources of hope for our country, especially as we approach 2015 and the next circle of national and state elections. Let me put some flesh on the bare bones of this contention.

In 2006 and 2010, the ruling party, the PDP, more or less imploded, taking most of the other political parties with it in crises that brought the country to the edge of catastrophe. In both instances, all the constitutional and institutional provisions for democratic governance proved useless in resolving the respective crisis and the ruling parties could no longer govern with anything close to legitimacy. The first case had to do with the so-called “Third Term” attempt of Obasanjo to perpetuate himself in power. His efforts to carry the PDP with him and his use of national coffers to offer colossal bribes to members of the National Assembly both failed, but Obasanjo was unrelenting. In the second case, a dying Yar’ Adua left a vacuum that was quickly and unconstitutionally filled by his soon to be widow, Turai, together with some accomplices. The power which they then arrogantly exercised was as illegal as it was corrupt and nation-wrecking. In each of these two instances, it was not until the masses of ordinary Nigerians, under the guidance of activist groups like SNG, patriotic professional associations like the NBA, civil society organisations and trade unions, intervened that the National Assembly found the spine, the backbone to rise to the demands of the occasion.

There is a third case that is even more eloquent in its illustration of our central claim in this series that the restless energy, the volatility of our peoples, supervened by the application of rational and visionary patriotism, constitutes one of the best sources of hope for our troubled homeland. For in this particular case, the masses did not intervene to clean up the mess, to avert a drift to national catastrophe caused by the political elite; they intervened on their own behalf and in their own interest. Who, among the readers of this piece does not know that I am referring here to the massively successful nation-wide strike in early 2012 against the attempt to remove fuel subsidies? And who does not know that this particular mass intervention in their own interest so frightened the ruling party that it brought out troops to suppress the strike?

About four years ago, on one unforgettable evening in Akoka in Lagos close to the gates of the University of Lagos, I sat with my friend, Femi Osofisan in his car for nearly two hours as an endless sea of humanity coming from a mass religious revival meeting held by the MMF completely stopped all traffic, vehicular and non-vehicular. I swear that prior to that occasion I had never seen anything like it. But Osofisan had and indeed, he was a bit bemused by my utter surprise at the phenomenon. Only when I explained the source of my surprise, my bewilderment, did he enter into a conversation with me on the event.

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 MMF 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? This will be our starting point in next week’s conclusion to the series.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

April 14, 2013
In Nigeria, the Lord is (truly) our shepherd

Its seems govt is merely paying lip service to improving police force

If God cannot go on strike, Nigeria must be one strong reason why. Indeed, if God goes on strike, then we are doomed in this country. What I am saying is that if the Lord has not been for us, the country’s security situation would have been worse. I said this because, in spite of pious statements of commitment to improving our police force by the Federal Government, these statements, unlike effective demand, do not seemed backed by the required action, given the unsavoury reports coming out about the force in recent times; from the Channels expose on the Police College in Ikeja, Lagos, to the ridiculous posting of police personnel to far-flung places without making any provision for them in those stations.

But, a report in Daily Trust of April 8, merely confirmed why all these are happening. Headlined “Police stations run on less than N2,000 daily’ – Senator. According to the report, quoting Senator Gyang Pwajok (PDP, Plateau North), the police force remains grossly underfunded such that some police stations and divisions do not even get as much as N2,000 a day. Let’s hear him: “In the 2013 budget, for instance, the police force has a total vote of N300billion. Of that amount, N293billion is for recurrent expenditure like salaries for the more than 400,000 police personnel. It is from the balance of N8 billion that the 1,115 police divisions, 5,515 police stations and 5,000 police posts are run”. Before President Goodluck Jonathan characteristically wonders how Senator Pwajok ‘penetrated’ the force to get these figures, it is pertinent to say that what the senator did was simply to divide the N8 billion among these police formations; and it is this that translates to about N2,000 per day or less.

I am going to quote the senator extensively, not for lack of a better way to paraphrase what he said, but because sometimes, it is better to hear from the horse’s mouth Senator Pwajok should know, as a member of the country’s upper legislative chamber. From his statements, Nigerians can now understand why policemen in some stations ask them to bring their biros and paper to write statements in the police stations. So, when next you have the (mis)fortune of going to a police station and the policemen there behave in an unfriendly manner (despite the fact that they are said to be our friend), you have to bear with them. The fault is probably not in them; but in the system that we are all guilty of not being in a hurry to change.

Senator Pwajok added : “I think we have the qualified personnel to do the job, but the Nigerian system has failed the force because we do not give them what they require to excel…. A police station is expected to source intelligence report and ensure effective communication between teams on the field and those in the offices’. ‘The station officer is also expected to get informants and fund them. He is also expected to ensure the smooth and speedy movement of men and materials from one point of need to the other. No one can do that on N2, 000’.

’It is the least funded of the security outfits. The office of the National Security Adviser has about 100 advisory officers, but it has a vote of N100billion in the 2013 budget. The police force is wider but is not considered for such effective funding’. Senator Pwajok is not done, ‘From the 2013 budget, the nation spends an average of N1.6million annually on a soldier, N9.8million on a sailor and N7.1million on the air force man or woman; but spends N0.078million per police personnel… In effect, the running cost of each naval staff is equal to that of 12 policemen, while each airman is nine times as important as a policeman’. How can we sleep with our two eyes closed in this kind of situation?

I hear the Police College in Ikeja is now wearing a new look, barely weeks after the damning Channels Television story that depicts the rot in the place. Now, the questions: has the government released new funds to refurbish the college? Or, were those supposed to act woken up from inertia by the story? Where has the money now being spent on the college been stuck all this while? Could it be that some people would have ‘chopped’ it if Channels had not spilled the beans? These are questions that would be making the rounds in saner countries where people are shocked when the issue is fraud or corruption.

Be that as it may, what is needed most is not necessarily the rending of the clothes but rending of the heart. The environment has to look good, no doubt; but beyond that is the welfare of the police officers undergoing training in those colleges. How many policemen and women in training now share one fish head? Water is a basic necessity; are the young men and women on training still going across the Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way in Ikeja to fetch water? I feel somehow seeing them dash across the popular road, which also leads to the local airport, in their green shorts and white vests, with buckets of water on their heads. This in Lagos; and in the twenty-first century!

For me, Pwajok’s revelations have opened more cans of worms than the several seminars and symposiums that have been held on the police force. What they simply tell us is that we have been deceiving ourselves about improving police welfare. We know what the problem is yet we have been beating about the bush, wasting money on seminars and workshops ostensibly to improve the force.

David, the psalmist, must have had Nigerians in mind when he composed Psalms like 27, 46 and 91. And it is these I recommend to our people whenever they are going to bed at night. And, when they wake up in the morning in one piece, they should not forget to read Psalm 23 before venturing out of their homes. The Lord, indeed, is our shepherd.

April 14, 2013
Three long goodbyes

First published on December 30, 2012, this essay is reprinted today as a reminder of the salient contributions made to national and world affairs by Mandela, Bush and Thatcher. The three leaders, one of whom has just honoured the last call, bade us long goodbyes when they were hospitalised about the same time late last year. With the passing of Baroness Thatcher, it is time to remind ourselves once again what the three stood for, good or bad, and how their transformative and charismatic administrations underscored the salience of strong leadership, especially one imbued with sound judgment and unexampled patriotism

It was an unplanned but remarkable coincidence around the Christmas holiday period. Nelson Mandela, 94, Margaret Thatcher, 87, George H. Bush, 88 all found themselves in hospital to receive medical attention. Mandela went in to treat a stubborn lung infection, Bush the Elder to treat a fever and other associated ailments that kept popping up one after the other, as his doctors ruefully observed, and Thatcher to remove a growth on her bladder. The Iron Lady, as Thatcher was nicknamed by a Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper in 1976 even before she became prime minister, had in 2001 and 2002 suffered mild strokes. Even though all three leaders are alive and may yet live on for many more years, they are, however, enfeebled by age and are facing a countdown in the closing chapters of their lives. I therefore find it hard to resist the temptation of making a few observations on these iconic leaders whose idiosyncratic rule exemplified the leadership panache and resilience of the last century.

In a way, however, and no matter how much we still want the three leaders with us, I think they have started to say their long goodbyes. They left power a long time ago, and so their final departure may not have the same dramatic impact their exit from office had, but there is no doubt that much more than their countries, the world will be sad to see them go. They were not just iconic, brilliant, prescient and charismatic – Mandela and Thatcher more so – the breadth and content of their leadership, the visionary quality of their administration, and the continuing relevance of their policies, ideas and styles have combined to imbue them with a freshness and permanence that belie their age and health. Thatcher vacated office 22 years ago, Bush Snr 19 years ago, and Mandela 13 years ago. But it seemed like only yesterday.

The health of the three leaders will be monitored closely and carefully by both analysts and doctors: by the former because of the relevance of the leaders to the health of their countries; and by the latter because of the personal health of the three leaders themselves. Clearly, the more important of the two types of health conditions is the relevance of the leaders to their countries’ wellbeing. Leaders are seldom measured by their personal longevity, but by either longevity on the throne or, more appropriately, the quality and impact of their policies, and sometimes, too, their ideas. As a former US President, Richard M. Nixon, succinctly observed many years ago, “When the curtain goes down on a play, members of the audience file out of the theatre and go home to resume their normal lives. When the curtain comes down on a leader’s career, the very lives of the audience have been changed, and the course of history may have been profoundly altered.” This observation is true of Mandela, Thatcher and Bush the Elder.

But I am drawn into writing about the three ailing leaders today in the hope that serving Nigerian leaders would learn a thing or two about leadership mystique and relevance from those who have personified the two attributes so inimitably and so daringly. Mandela’s successors obviously do not take after the great man, perhaps because by having him so close to them, they have taken him and his qualities for granted. Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s immediate successor, for instance, could hold himself anywhere in the world intellectually, but he exhibited none of the charisma, joie de vivre and general humanism that hallmarked his predecessor’s leadership. In addition, his detached and sometimes woolly style, his seemingly non-partisan politics of expressive sombreness that grated on the ears of the South African rabble contrasted with the welcoming, lively and eccentric style of his successor, Jacob Zuma.

Mandela in office sometimes seemed a paradox, with a half of him oozing gravitas, and the other half skirting close to an inscrutable form of libertinism that made him contradistinctively sociable and prudish. But the real paradox of South African politics is the unexampled fashion Mbeki took Mandela’s cerebral endowment without the redeeming and tempering influence of the great man’s sociableness; and Zuma took and embellished Mandela’s love for life without the catalysing and uplifting influence of Madiba’s deep longing and respect for knowledge. But much worse are the Nigerian parallels. Had ex-President Umaru Yar’Adua not been hobbled by illness, he in fact seemed the only Nigerian leader since independence capable of grasping the weight and content of the challenges the country faced. Either because of his nature or poor health, even he proved absolutely destitute of the high principles and nobility that underscored Mandela’s life and politics. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, it will be recalled, was advised or indirectly encouraged by those who installed him in office to embrace the Mandela option of serving for only one term. If he had the good sense to do that, we would not have known how unprincipled he was and still is. But at least, he would have become a statesman par excellence and a reference point for continental and regional leadership. Instead, he chose to amass wealth and to open himself to the corrosive influence constitutional subversion naturally denotes.

Of the three great leaders, Mandela is probably the most solid and respected, Thatcher the most impactful and iconoclastic, and Bush the most measured and influential. Thatcher was not just the longest serving British prime minister of the 20th century, she remains the first and only woman to have occupied that office. Neither of the two achievements can be belittled. Like Churchill, she understood very quickly the ideological temper and irredentist proclivities of the Soviet Union, and from day one cobbled together a foreign policy designed to respond harshly to the menace she believed the Russians represented. More than that, it is doubtful whether since Churchill any prime minister had projected British confidence and power as brilliantly as she did. Recall the Falklands War of 1982, barely three years after she assumed office, and the surefootedness with which she approached the disagreement between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Faced with the prospect of fighting a war thousands of kilometres away against an enemy fighting next door, she retained admirable sang-froid throughout the period the dispute lasted and even confidently declared that the possibility of defeat for British arms did not exist.

With the exception of former head of state, Gen Murtala Mohammed, no Nigerian leader has projected Thatcherite confidence of any significance. However, Thatcherite policies were underlined by incredible astuteness, sensible economic policies that remoulded British industry and enterprise, and sound judgement, particularly in politics and foreign policies, that yielded fruit without dissipating British power. Compared with most of his successors, Murtala was indeed a detribalised and unfettered patriot, and a confident leader who would probably have achieved a different and better outcome had he seen his transition programme through. But his appreciation of external responses to his domestic and foreign policies was fairly idealistic. That poor judgement cost him his life and handed over the rest of the transition programme to the far less ethically resolute Obasanjo.

Bush the Elder gives us a signal lesson in restraint, which habitually meddlesome Nigerians may be culturally unsuited to appreciate. By making no public attempt to influence George W. Bush’s government on the question of Iraq, the senior Bush was merely underscoring the advancement of the American constitution and system. Indeed, as we gleaned from the statements made by the recently deceased General Norman Schwarzkopf, the US allied commander during Gulf War I, the presidency of Bush the Elder was unsure of the propriety of overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein, unsure whether the implications of such an overthrow had been fully studied or whether such an overthrow would not create a chain reaction that would be difficult to manage. This was why during Gulf War II, Schwarzkopf declined to support the regime change Bush the Younger had enunciated. He and Bush the Elder have been proved right.

Nigerian leaders rarely appreciate that their country is like a political, economic and cultural smorgasbord so complex and variegated that it requires a deep grounding in logic and history to decipher. Obasanjo made an unpardonable mistake by failing to lay a solid and ethical foundation for the Fourth Republic. And though Ibrahim Babangida did the country so much harm by failing to seize the opportunities offered by the 1993 general election, the wobbly foundation of the Fourth Republic is the sole responsibility of Obasanjo. Like South Africa’s Zuma, Obasanjo was so entranced by the frills of office that he could not gauge its responsibilities, and too fixated with the scaffold to pay attention to the creaky building. Even the more sensible Yar’Adua surrendered to base passions and allowed the country to drift and be held hostage as a result of his poor health. As incompetent as Nigerian leaders have been over the decades, nearly all of whom cite extenuating circumstances to justify their lack of administrative acumen and futuristic thinking, that ineptitude has worsened over the years, unmitigated by the passage of time or the advancement of science and knowledge.

Going by the remarkable conjunction of three ailing leaders around the Christmas holiday season, Mandela, Thatcher and Bush may already be saying their long goodbyes. This fact gives the world an opportunity to begin reflecting on the unremitting leadership failure confronting us today. By American standards, one-term presidents seldom rise to greatness, but Bush the Elder provided leadership at a time Americans needed it, even if for economic reasons, and exercised restraint at the right moment and place. Two-term President Bill Clinton made the world to love America as Bush senior and junior could not manage, but it is a matter of debate whether he has been as impactful on the world as Bush the Elder. Since 1990, Britain has struggled with leadership. Thatcher’s immediate successor, John Major, proved middlingly insecure, and both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in spite of their best efforts, neither rose to inspiring level nor were they able to hold the candle to the Iron Lady.

With each passing day, Mandela has seemed to loom even larger than most world leaders, becoming an example of a statesman growing in stature and relevance, like a good wine, as his years out of power increase. He embodies the aphorism popularised by the US Army General, Douglas MacArthur, that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. More and more, as Africa produces mediocre leaders by the dozen, the power and nobility of Mandela are reinforced by his canniness in foreshadowing the problems of multiculturalism in a way even Europe has not come to terms with. Imagine if the superficial Zuma had taken over from F.W. de Klerk! Indeed, the long goodbyes of the three statesmen speak more to the leadership tragedy faced by Africa in general and more poignantly to the appalling refusal, not to say criminal negligence, of Nigerian leaders to learn both from the ancient history of their country and the modern history of the world in relation to the issues and phenomena that drive, sustain and shape great leadership.

April 14, 2013
Waging peace and forging wars

Let us not wage peace, just because Boko Haram is forging wars.

It is a truism indeed that if one stares at the earth long and hard enough, it will yield its stories. It will tell the stories of all the good feet that trod it going to and fro. It will even tell of the not so good feet that stamped it frothing to and fro like the devil’s nostrils. More importantly, it will recount the tales of the incredibly brave and stupendously stupid acts of men (and women) who marched on it with wanton gusto, shed blood and sweat, routed friends and enemies alike and generally carried on as if the world was their oyster. It will tell of feet that traipsed and skipped in the purity of joyous men (and women) made happy. These are the tales that the earth tells when one patiently stares long and hard at it.

The earth in Nigeria is right now recording for posterity unprintable tales of purposelessly and wilfully destroyed lives and properties. It is recording into its cracks now how people have been widowed and orphaned for reasons no one can comprehend, least of all the victims. Even though the nation is not at war, the earth is recording how a group has decided to wring one out nevertheless. It is silently recording how a war is being forged right before everyone’s eyes.

The situation resembles a story I read about a long time ago. It concerns a war general who was said to have been a very good bungler. Indeed, it was said of him that he could be relied upon to wring out a problem from the most peaceful situation. Once, while at a war front, he was said to have been so close to victory he could practically taste it if he aimed for a frontal attack. That was when he developed the brainwave to ask his men to aim for surprise attack instead by going around the enemy, thus ensuring their spectacular defeat. Another general was said to have commented wryly on the situation thus: ‘You can always rely on General X to wring a spectacular defeat from the tight jaws of victory!’

Nigerians are experiencing a situation where the clenched jaws of peace are being obviously and tearfully prised open to release a war which nobody wants, likes, or even understands. Oh yes, there is some peace in the land, the kind of peace which allows you to go out in the morning and come back in the evening and thank God that you were not hit by government drivers driving government vehicles at breakneck speed or youngsters barely out of diapers zooming crazily in and out of traffic. Yea, you also thank God that at least your salary can still buy a pot of soup that lasts a few days and the peace allows you to spend the remaining days of the month in a compulsory period of fasting and prayers. Yea, the peace also allows you to watch Abuja women and men glitter in diamonds and gold and dresses that you know can only have come from Alladin’s cave. Then you are allowed to go and dream about all that glitter in peace. Yes o!

Now, Boko Haram is rudely waking us from our blissful dreams of the Abuja glitter. Imagine that! Nobody is allowed to tamper with my dreams of women wearing diamonds so costly and heavy they practically droop through the ears of the wearer, causing it to threaten to fall (the eras, that is, not the earrings). Nobody, just nobody is allowed to wake me up when I am dreaming of people wearing gold wristwatches so costly they can ransom a state’s budget (nation I mean, not a Nigerian state). Don’t let us mention their shoes. Anyway, Boko Haram is forging a war that only it understands out of the tight jaws of our blissful dreams of what can or might be.

Now comes the tricky part. First, the government declares unequivocally that whoever has fallen victim to the antics of the war forgers should not look onto the government for compensation. Translation: should you be stupid enough to be bombed or gunned, you are on your own. Now, isn’t that just so unfair, you think, as you shrug, dust yourself, try to grin and try to bear it, thinking someday, you’ll be the one throwing the bomb too.

So, you hope someone will wake up and start making calls that the victims of these incomprehensible acts be taken care of by the country through compensation, if it’s not too much to ask, thank you. You just sort of hope that someone will understand the horrors of having a life uprooted in such a mercilessly violent way and cry ‘Foul! Foul! Alas!’, and that the government should not turn a cold shoulder to the plight of such a victim.

No, sir, the country instead is recording shrilly cries of amnesty to the ones who handle the guns that turn the innocent lives upside down and make wretches of orphans. It is so strange, don’t you think, that rather than find a better solution, all that our northern leaders can think of demanding is amnesty. Obviously, as I mentioned before, that must have been the grand plan all along. If the government can grant amnesty to the Niger Delta boys for picking up arms to ask for an end to the desecration of their land, why should the government not be able to grant amnesty to a group whose agenda have shifted as many times as their feet have shuffled. Oh please!

Leaders calling for amnesty should first realise what now goes for Boko Haram is not as coherent as when it started. There are now as many splinters of the group as there are ideologies to fit the yearnings of any group willing to be handed freely procured guns. What we are saying is that the guns are first given out, and then the reasons for killing follow. So, granting amnesty will probably not solve the problem because too many issues have been confused together in this phenomenon. These issues must first be taken apart and tackled one after the other or else it would amount to waging peace on the nation, a case of the more you see, the less you actually understand.

More importantly, the country still does not know who the members of boko haram are. Are they Nigerians or Nigeriens or Martians in human form? Well, if the last, it would explain a lot. It would explain their complete desensitisation to the feelings plaguing human beings. It would explain why they do not know the meaning of their actions. It would also explain why we cannot understand the meaning of their actions either.

I have a take on this. Let us not wage peace, just because Boko Haram is forging wars. Leaders calling for amnesty are only waging peace, not forging it. Let us all sit down and talk about this country so that we can stop stabbing around in the dark like the six blind men grabbing at the elephant and not knowing what they were touching. Should anyone be thinking of giving amnesty, however, they should also think about giving compensation for the victims of Boko Haram antics. What’s good for the goose is good for all, and posterity will have better things to record about us for the future to read.

April 14, 2013
Boko Haram: the case for peace and justice

Now that the Boko Haram group has rejected the proposed amnesty for its members who have been responsible for killing of hundreds of many innocent Nigerians and destruction of property, we seem to have come full circle in our dilemma of how to resolve the dawn of terrorism in the country.

The northern leaders who proposed the granting of amnesty through the setting up of the amnesty commission may have to advice the federal government on what next to do since the fundamentalist group says it has not committed any offence and does not require any pardon.

I would have been surprised if the group accepted the amnesty which would have forced them to ceasefire in their violent activities. They have never left anyone in doubt about why they have literally declared war against the country. In its latest broadcast the group repeated that its members are fighting to create an Islamic republic in particularly the northern parts of the country.

Terrorist groups are known to go to any length to advance their cause, and from all indications the Boko Haram group which has continued its killing spree amidst discussion of amnesty being granted its members is obviously not in any mood for peaceful negotiation.

The northern leaders and others who have backed the granting of the amnesty to Boko Haram and other terrorists groups in the country no doubt mean well. The level of violence in the north and fear of spreading to the south is such that we need to quickly find a solution.

Despite assurances by the federal government that it has taken measures to stop the endless killings, the reign of terror by the Boko Haram group has continued unabated. Killing by faceless gunmen has become so common that we have lost count how many have so far been killed.

While the number reported in the media may be alarming, those who know what is really happening up north insist that many other killings are not reported.

However, like those opposed to the amnesty have argued, much as we need to seek peaceful resolution of the crisis, the atrocities of the terrorists groups should not be swept underground. They have caused so much grief for many families and indulged in unprovoked killings that there is need to be careful in offering all the members blanket amnesty. Like the National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, stated, those with blood on their hands should be tried.

Before the pro-amnesty proponents started mounting pressure on the federal government, they should have been advocating for adequate compensation for victims of past violent activities of the Boko Haram members. The Christian Association of Nigeria recently had to launch a fund to cater for some victims.

For the committee set up to consider the requests for amnesty to approve the call, the concerned group must show enough sense of remorse. If the group has come out to reject the amnesty offer, there is no point considering the call by the northern leaders.

We must be careful not to further play into the hands of the terrorists by offering them amnesty they are not keen on having. We need peace, but we also need justice like Peter Tosh sang.

Twitter: #lotufodunrin

April 14, 2013
Jonathan: Pressed on every side

The Boko Haram insurgency in the North and the renewed Niger Delta hostilities are threatening peace and economic progress in the country, subjecting President Goodluck Jonathan to mounting pressures, writes Sunday Oguntola

Amnesty! The six-letter word was the magic wand many northern leaders had thought would abate the spate of attacks that have embroiled that part of the country courtesy of the fundamentalist group, Boko Haram, in the last four years.

Perhaps because it ‘worked’ in the Niger Delta to rein in the militants, they thought it was the same wand that would do the work for the group. Due to the growing clamour, especially from the north for such an offer, President Goodluck Jonathan who had on a visit to Yobe and Borno States insisted that the government could not grant amnesty to “ghosts” had to eat his words, or so it seems.

But since the federal government announced the constitution of a committee to consider the possibility of granting amnesty to members of the group, events have proved the option might not work. The committee, which was set up in response to growing demands by political and traditional rulers in the north was yet to turn in its report before Abubakar Shekau, said to be the leader of the group said it was not ready for the offer.

The northern leaders who had argued for amnesty had said it would not only assuage members of the sect accused of killing thousands of people in countless suicide bombing attacks but also usher in the much-needed peace in the region. They readily point to how the same exercise ended the Niger Delta militancy in 2009.

No to amnesty

In rejecting the amnesty offer which was still in the works, Shekau, who appeared in an audio recording was quoted to have said: “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 (a) pardon.”

He insisted that the federal government has committed several atrocities against Muslims, vowing to continue the attacks largely targeted at churches and security operatives in the region. In line with this, the sect over the weekend engaged operatives of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in Kano in a deadly confrontation that left at least a soldier dead.

In Yobe, a fresh curfew was imposed yesterday from 6pm to 7am following the killing of four policemen by the sect in Babandiga, the headquarters of Tarmuwa local government, about 50km from Damaturu, the state capital. The Boko Haram insurgents have shown that they have no intention in slowing down or engaging government in dialogue of any form.

The rejection of the olive branch waved by the federal government has become the latest biggest headache for President Jonathan who is desperate to find a political solution to the insecurity challenge that has crippled economic and social activities in most northern states.

Since the rejection of the offer, many have also turned around to blame the federal government. According to them, the offer was given in a wrong way and in bad manner. So, as it is now it seems whichever way it goes, the president gets the blame.

For instance, the apex Muslim body in the north, Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), has blamed the federal government for rejection of the amnesty by the Boko Haram. According to its Secretary General, Dr Khalid Aliyu, the government should have held dialogue with the sect before considering amnesty.

Aliyu said: “Even the amnesty itself must have preparatory steps before it is granted. First is finding them, second is to ask them to come out and then dialogue with them. I think that these are the most important ingredients that are supposed to come first.”

Shehu Sanni, a human rights activist also blamed the government for what he called “putting the cart before the horse” in the offer.

Meanwhile, the Niger Delta, which many thought had overcome its worst moments also appear to be falling apart. Last weekend, 11 policemen were killed by gunmen suspected to be sympathetic to jailed leader of the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah.

MEND had threatened to resume hostilities in the creeks after Okah was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment by a South African court. The policemen were killed while in a boat heading to Azuzuama, Southern Ijaw LGA for the burial ceremony of the mother of Kile Torughedi.

Torughedi, a former MEND militant leader who embraced the federal government’s amnesty, is a Special Assistant to the Bayelsa Governor on Maritime Security. The policemen were attached to provide security during the trip.

MEND said it carried out the attack because government forces refused to take its threat seriously. “For dismissing (our statement) … as an ’empty threat’, heavily armed fighters from … MEND intercepted and engaged government security forces in a fierce gunfight at Azuzama,” an emailed statement signed by Jomo Gbomo, a pseudonym the group uses, stated.

It added: “All oil companies and the public are advised to ignore the false sense of security being peddled,” it said, maintaining that the attack had been carried out on Saturday, rather than Friday it earlier advertised.

A shocked Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, described the incident as “most tragic, shocking and disheartening”.

The resurgence of militant activity in his home region is a massive blow to Jonathan who helped to negotiate the amnesty deal in 2009. It is coming at a time the nation’s security forces are already overstretched by the Boko Haram insurgency in the north.

Already, leading oil-producing firms are already reeling under serious theft in the region. Armed gangs have reportedly been stealing one fifth of the nation’s two million barrel-a-day output in the region, forcing many of the oil firms to close down operations.

Though attacks in the Niger Delta region have dropped since the amnesty programme took off, kidnapping, piracy, large-scale oil theft and pipeline sabotage remain pervasive.

The amnesty deal, which kept the restive ex-militants at bay, is also running into troubled waters following paucity of funds. Government is bent on discontinuing the programme that has consumed billions. This has kept the ex-militants at an edge, a development that reportedly caused the Bayelsa killing.

As violence returns to Niger Delta and the continued attacks by the Boko Haram group and rejection of government’s olive branch, President Jonathan is certainly a man pressed on all sides. It would be interesting to see how he will navigate himself and the nation from the seemingly intractable security challenges ahead.

April 14, 2013
Aborted Lagos bomb: Another good luck for Nigeria?

The country cannot afford any bombing in Lagos

The Guardian’s front-page story on April 9 about the escape of Lagos from massive bombing of its Third Mainland Bridge must be good news to many of the 18 million people living in the state, otherwise referred to as a megacity of many towns joined by highways and bridges. Apart from the spirit of ‘thank God it did not happen’ that is expected from the lips of millions of indigenes and residents of Lagos State, there must be millions that must have been losing sleep since The Guardian broke the news that the weapons of mass destruction unearthed in Ojora-Badia a few weeks ago were made to bomb and destroy Lagos. There are others who are already saying: ‘How lucky is Nigeria again!’

Of course, there must be questions on the lips of many patriots about the shroud that has been used to cover the story, especially the magnitude of the intention of Boko Haram terrorists that planned to hit the Third Mainland Bridge. Was the silence intended to keep troubling information from citizens and thus avoid panic? The fact that traffic has been unusually light on the bridge and in Lagos in general since Tuesday is an indication that people are already panicking. Would it have been better for the country’s security minders to have grades of alert about the danger posed by Boko Haram for citizens, the way it is done in other countries bedeviled by terrorism and suicide bombers?

Even if we succeed in appeasing the current initiates of Boko Haram with amnesty, it may be necessary for the presidency to find ways of warning citizens about the degree of danger facing them, as there is likely to be another group of BokoHaramists after the ongoing amnesty process, should the sect that has confessed to turning the North of Nigeria into an Islamic state agree to monetized amnesty. Has the country not known threats from Niger Delta militants after the first amnesty which has now become a model or precedent to borrow in fighting the greatest threat to the country’s unity since the pogrom in the North in 1966 and the civil war that the killing of Igbos in the North generated.

As scary as the news of plans to bomb Lagos is, security chiefs and the average citizen should not be surprised that Boko Haram finally came to Lagos to deploy bombs. It would have been surprising if it never got to this. The Yoruba have a saying: Aladugbotio n koasoara re siabatako le ma yaasoenielenisiwewe (A neighbour that puts his own clothes in the mud should have no qualms shredding other persons’ clothes). Apart from killing Christians in the North, Boko Haram terrorists also killed fellow northerners in bars. Many of them even killed themselves in the process of suicide bombing. Why would they not attempt to do the same in the nation’s commercial and cultural capital?

Still on why no one should expect the terrorist sect to stay away from Lagos, Lagos is the most graphic illustration of the impact of Western civilization or education in the country. Why should anyone be surprised that proponents of Education is Sin have planned to destroy the most convincing evidence that western education can also bring as driver of progress to parts of the country that appear to be addicted to western education? It is good for everyone that members of the Islamist terrorist group that came to Lagos to operate have been foiled and their plans aborted. But it is not yet Uhuru. Security and non-security workers in Lagos and other cities should not rest on their oars yet. Boko Haram is not dead yet. The Boko Haram imagination is not likely to die so readily, not even after Boko Haram in all its manifestations: religious, criminal, and political, to borrow the categorization of General Buhari, would have been appeased or assuaged with offers of amnesty.

Boko Haram illustrates some of the ironies in the Nigerian polity and society. It is an organization that hates western education but relies in its operations on products of western education. Boko Haram was birthed in the section of the country that believes that the unity of Nigeria is the only issue worth paying attention to, even if doing this is at the expense of the happiness of many sections of the country. In addition, the Islamist terrorist group is native to the section of the country that is mortally opposed to multilevel policing and law enforcement in the country. It is the same group that has hobbled the presidency and the country’s mono-level security architecture that is being appeased with offer of amnesty before any negotiation. It is the same sect that is driven by religious bigotry that is being cajoled by leaders of an admittedly secular or multi-religious country.

It would have been the mother of ironies if Boko Haram had succeeded in bombing the Third Mainland Bridge while the rest of the country was busy bending over backward to appease the terrorist sect with amnesty. There is no doubt that the people of Lagos must be expressing in their private spaces gratitude to the nation’s security group after the news that they were saved from mass murder by Intelligence workers that napped the suicide bombers waiting in Ijora-Badia to hatch their nefarious plans.

But gratitude to security staff may not be enough to save Lagos or any other city for that matter. What is needed is for every Lagosian to see himself and herself from this moment on as security intelligence staff. The country cannot afford any bombing in Lagos. This may be too dangerous for the unity of the country, as Lagosians and their relations elsewhere are likely to go berserk if any of the three bridges is destroyed with motorists on them.

This may be the best time to stop sectionalising the call for state and community police as the Constitution Technical Committee did when it reported that it is only the Southwest that is asking for state police. The same trivialisation occurred when leaders of major Nigerian nationalities dubbed NADECO’s struggle for restoration of democracy a Yoruba affair, but the rest about that is now history. Nigeria cannot afford to wait until everybody in the Southwest, Southeast, South-south, and even in the regions of birth of Boko Haram become his or her own police.The process of dialogue and offer of amnesty to Boko Haram must include calling other Nigerian nationalities to a conference to agree on the way to make the nation’s unity sustainable and pleasurable to citizens from all sections and religions in the country.

April 14, 2013
Moremi-Ekiti goes home

The late Mrs Olayinka lived a life of service

Uncle, your article today is a masterpiece’; ‘egbon, an absolutely brilliant piece, e ku’se ilu’ and so on and so forth. That was how I got this riveting encouragement, week in, week out, from none other than the Amazon herself; the young, totally irreplaceable Moremi-Ekiti , Her Excellency, Mrs Funmi Olayinka, the Ekiti State Deputy Governor, who translated to higher glory exactly a week ago. Tell it not on Ekiti streets; let it not be heard in the redoubtable Famuagun family house in Ado-Ekiti which has since turned a centre of pilgrimage. Nor must her ‘twin-sister’, the woman who stood ramrod beside her all through those agonizsing years of chemotherapy, and yet more chemo; whilst some idle, ignorant do-nothings gossiped endlessly about a so-called portfolio hijack, remember that her sister is gone, never to be seen on this side of the divide.

Moremi- Ekiti, the woman who stood, unwavering, beside Dr John Kayode Fayemi throughout those nervy, energy sapping years of a titanic struggle against Nigeria’s men of illicit power, was as brilliant as she was radiant. Loyal to the end, our departed Amazon was a study in reliability. ‘Obirin bi okunrin’ – a she-man!

Mrs Olayinka neither wavered, nor was she ever discouraged even as she got thrown into the jungle that Nigerian politics has become; a whole world away from her serene banking profession where she had risen to lofty heights in some of Nigeria’s leading banks. Such was her steely nature and single-mindedness, even at the height of serial treachery when otherwise respected ministers in the temple of justice , and their ignoble soul-mates in judicial merchandising, thought nothing of selling their conscience to the highest bidder, that she soon became a Job’s comforter to her leader and other distraught party members on those occasions when justice was shamelessly trampled.

But nothing encapsulates our departed titan more than Senator Femi Ojudu’s tribute to her, quoted here mutatis mutandis. And the senator should know. Once it was decided, on the advice of Erelu Bisi Fayemi, that the Deputy Governorship candidate should preferably be a woman and the party added the additional proviso that she must come from Ado-Ekiti, it became Ojudu’s task, given by the party, to head-hunt a candidate who, like Dr Kayode Fayemi, is well-educated, independent-minded, decent and of impeccable integrity’. Wrote Femi: “We lost an asset. A consummate administrator, an unparalleled image maker, radiant, brilliant, self-confident, and a quintessential Ekiti woman who gave a good face to Ekiti State. Without the slightest hesitation, continued the senator, she left her plum bank job and went headlong into the murky waters of politics, determined to give of her best to her people. I will miss you.” He continues, Kayode and Bisi Fayemi will miss you. The entire Ekiti people will miss you. Ado Ekiti will miss you. Both E11 and the Afenifere Renewal Group, of which you were a pioneer member, will miss you. And most importantly, Lanre, your better half, will miss you. Yeside and her sisters, your three adorable daughters, will miss you dearly. Papa and Mama Famuagun and the entire Sasere clan will miss you. You gave our struggle and the one you waged against that debilitating disease all you got. You never wavered. Rather, you were courageous, full of hope and kept reassuring me that all will be well even when I had to apologise to you at those low moments for bringing you into the rough and tumble of partisan politics.”

It has been a stream of tributes, from far and near. As at the last count, almost all the state governors or their emissaries had visited to commiserate with their brother governor and the family of the late Mrs Olayinka. Both Ekiti Elders Council, under the lead of our highly regarded Papa, Chief J.E Babatola himself, and Christ’s School Elders forum led by Chief F. A. D Daramola, have been here too, and on the occasion, Chief Dele Falegan, on behalf of the Special Intervention And Empowerment Programme (SIEP), which he chairs in the state, said as follower of the late Deputy Governor: ‘she came like a meteorite, fulfilled her early call with elegance, diligence, confidence, humility and honesty and, disappeared from the stage at her appointed time like a meteorite. You lost a partner in progress and we all lost her. She died at the flower of youth, loved, renowned, honoured and celebrated.”

And, paraphrasing the authors of THE LONG WALK, a book which details the odyssey of Dr Fayemi’s mandate retrieval battle, themselves active participants in the seemingly intractable struggle, the departed Deputy Governor was born in Ado-Ekiti in 1960 and attended both Holy Trinity Grammar School, Ibadan and the Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, before travelling abroad for further studies. She holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration and a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from the Central State University, Edmond, Oklahoma, United States, where she was three times on the Dean’s Honour’s roll. A Marketing Analyst & Strategist, she started her banking career at First Bank Plc and later worked at both Access Bank and the now defunct Merchant Banking Corporation. In UBA she served as Head, Brand Management & Corporate Affairs and left the industry as Head, Corporate Services Department of Ecobank Transatlantic Inc.

Of the departed Mrs Olayinka, they further wrote: ‘the late Funmi Adunni Olayinka was a highly personable woman, a mobilising impresario and motivational speaker. So concerned was she that in the man- eat- man phenomenon that Ekiti politics became, she regularly kept in touch with the spouses of those involved in the struggle without the knowledge of their partners. She always encouraged party supporters, assuring them that all would be well as victory would certainly come the way of the ACN. She regularly enjoined Ekiti women to be steadfast in their support for justice as by so doing they were securing the future of their children.”

Brilliant, prayerful and untiring, she took her courageous single-mindedness into fighting the punishing disease that she had, since 2009, been diagnosed with. She gave it no quarters and did not slow down at work either, always saying it would be unfair to the Ekiti people who entrusted Dr Kayode Fayemi and herself with their mandate to do otherwise. Her’s was a life of service. Even as she would not inform family members of her medical travails lest she put them in unbearable torture or even earlier death for her aged parents, she had the unstinting empathy and unqualified support of the governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, and that of her friend, and sister, the First Lady, Erelu Bisi Fayemi. While Erelu gave her unceasing emotional support, the Governor ensured that the best oncologists in the world , whether in the U.K, U.S or India attended to her in search for the elusive cure.

It has been tears galore all over Ekiti, if not in the entire country since she passed on. But truth be told, seeing what I have, whether in her Lagos house, in the Famuagun family house, not to mention the indescribable scenes in the Ekiti State House, I dare say her departure could not have been more momentous and glorious even if she had lived three lives. Therefore, we must all take heart, accept that God is the all-knowing and infallible one who knows all and has chosen to call her home. For our departed darling sister and Ekiti’s second ranking citizen therefore, it must be a celebration of life and thanks galore to God Almighty as the Holy Writ has enjoined us to do in all circumstances.

Mrs Funmi Olayinka touched lives and was an integral part of what the state Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, calls his Collective Rescue Mission. What remains for us to do is pray for her sweet repose at the feet of Jesus and eternal grace on all she left behind, especially her very aged parents, her husband and the young girls she was blessed with. At a time like this too, we must all remember Ekiti State in our corporate and individual prayers and ask that the Almighty God continues to guard, and guide our Governor and his family. We must specifically ask God to continue to uphold and renew him so that he will neither fail nor falter in his determined effort to uplift Ekiti. Adieu, our adorable, totally committed Moremi, a name Ekiti people had long given her in sheer admiration of her service and commitment ala an earlier Moremi whose votive sacrifice saved her Ile-Ife Yoruba ethnic group from annihilation by the invading Baribas.

Adieu, dear Avatar, rest at the feet of your Lord and savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, till we meet to part no more.

April 14, 2013
Still on ‘The Faleye metaphor’

Last week, I carried the pathetic story of a young Nigerian, Oluseun Samuel Faleye who is studying electronics and telecommunications engineering in Shenyang Aerospace University (SAU), in China, on this page. He had obtained his diploma at the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, and proceeded to the Chinese university for his degree programme. Those who read the piece last Sunday would have seen the sequence of events that led to his being stranded just about four months to the end of his degree programme. His programme ends in July; but the efforts of the last20 months in China might be in vain unless he is able to get about N1million needed to complete his course.

As a matter of fact, the money must have increased as we speak because I gathered his visa expired at the end of last month and this means an additional N9,000 per day, since the policy in China is ‘no school fees, no visa’. This means an additional N277,500 per month until and unless he is able to pay the fees.

This recap is necessary for two reasons: first, because of the seriousness of the matter and second, for the sake of readers who felt I should have left an account number in Nigeria where people touched by the young man’s plight could give their widow’s mite. All the contacts I gave last week were in China so that those who might want to verify the genuineness of the case could easily do so. We thank the professor who set the ball rolling by giving N100,000 to alleviate Faleye’s plight. His name and other donors will be made public at the appropriate time, unless they choose to be anonymous. You want to help? Please pay into the following account numbers: Samson Adewole Faleye, A/C No. 3027450379 First Bank, or Samson Adewole Faleye, A/C No. 0112611856, GTB. Thank you.

April 14, 2013
Are there any signs or resources of hope in this troubled land (and this earth)? (1)

Religion is the opium of the people; it is the soul of a soulless world.

Karl Marx

I admit it. Something seemingly inconsequential or even embarrassing prompted the series of reflections that begins this week on whether or not there are signs and sources of hope in our troubled nation, especially as we approach the year 2015 and the next cycle of presidential and gubernatorial elections in our country. That “something” is the acronym, IJN. I suppose everyone in Nigeria but myself knew what it stands for: In Jesus’ Name. For a long time, every time I saw the acronym – mostly through phone text messages sent to me by relatives and friends who refuse to give up on me even after futile years and decades of trying to reconvert me to Christianity – I wondered what it stood for, this IJN. Then one day last week, someone actually sent me a text message that combined both the acronym and its meaning. IJN, In Jesus’ Name: All will be well; whatever the problem whether personal, familial, national, continental, global or intergalactic, all will be well. God is in control. Christ is the answer, whatever the question.

I intend no sarcasm in starting this series with this wry observation concerning the links between religion and hope, with particular regard to contemporary Nigerian Christianity. Like most religions, indeed perhaps more than most religions, Christianity has extraordinarily a powerful and evidently efficacious array of rituals, symbols and parables that produce indomitable hope in periods of great personal and/or collective privation. For this reason, for most members of the Nigerian Christian community, especially those of the Pentecostal persuasion, the question that serves as the title of this series – are there any signs or resources of hope in our troubled land? – is almost completely redundant, if not even blasphemous. If you have Christ, if you are born again in His name, if you serve Him faithfully and put all your trust in Him, you are not without hope and He will not fail you.

This is both an article of faith and a materialised sign that is inscribed on countless billboards, posters and advertising slogans and legends that we see everywhere in our country, perhaps more than in any other nation on earth. Apart from the innumerable churches and mosques in our towns and cities, you will also see these materialisations of hope and faith in shopping plazas, in roadside shops and stalls, and in even ramshackle shacks of dealers in articles of commerce of every kind: “Salvation Bakery”; “Revelation Pharmacy”; “Second Coming Welders”; “Everlasting Shopping Plaza”; “Blood of Christ Nursing Home and Infirmary”; “Omo Jesu Barber”; “Hope and Mercy Hair Saloon”. A recent visitor to Nigeria who has done much traveling in our continent and other parts of the world informed me, as she was about to leave the country, that the thing she found the most intriguing about our country was the fact that, more than any other place she had ever visited in the world, the sings of religion are everywhere, to the point that not only is this reality inescapable, it is in fact a superabundant facet of the physical, social and existential landscape. If this is the case, if the physical and expressive landscape of our country is so massively dotted with the ubiquitous signs of hope and faith, on what basis can I then pose the question that gives this series its title: Are there any signs and resources of hope in our troubled land?

The answer to this question is simple and unproblematic: Without discountenancing the importance of religion, I am referring to secular, rational and idealistic signs and sources of hope. Let me put this as sharply and as provocatively as I possibly can. Without leaving Jesus in particular and religion in general out of the equation, the question I am really posing is this: How and where can we find and expand secular, rational, critical and idealistic signs and sources of hope in our troubled country at the present time?

We cannot leave religion out of the equation, not because the signs and markers of religion are everywhere on the horizon of the present, and not because of the undoubted God-obsession that has gripped the mass psyche of Nigerians in general, but because historically, religion has been both a source of hope and liberation for the enslaved and the powerless and a bulwark for the tyrannical social power of oppressors and exploiters. In other words, if you leave religion out of the equation, if you don’t try mightily to nudge it in the direction of social justice, peace and progress, it will, at best be neutralised and at worst be co-opted by the enemies of human equality and progress.

This last point compels me to be completely honest about my feelings and thoughts on both official and popular contemporary Nigerian religiosity on the matter of hope and faith. In this piece, I have commented rather extensively on the fact that the signs of materialised hope and faith are so ubiquitous on the expressive landscape of our country that we can validly talk of an over-saturation. Is this not an indication of the thoroughgoing domestication or neutralisation of religion as a potential force for beneficent social transformation in our country? Everywhere you look there are all these signs of robust religious hope and faith, and yet there is a surfeit, a perpetuity it seems, of so much irreligious stealing and looting, so much unholy use of state and non-state violence and terror, so much ungodly spreading of desperation in the land. Short of a massive and totally unprecedented irruption of a miraculous or mystical transcendentalism in the economic and social affairs of our country the type of which has never been recorded in history, is there the slightest doubt that the overwhelming majority of the thousands of small business enterprises that boldly display signs of religious hope and faith in our country will never in fact ever make it to the big league of the rich and powerful in the land? Do these ubiquitous signs of religious hope and faith not in fact mystify and confuse praying with preying in the ways in which they ignore or hide the real means by which wealth and power are in reality cornered by the few to the detriment of the many in our country at the present time?

Karl Marx, in one of the most often quoted remarks in political and intellectual history, famously remarked that religion is the opium of the people. What is often ignored is the fact that this is only half of the full sentence, for in the other half of this often quoted sentence, Marx also observed that religion is the soul of a soulless world. Side by side with often being a metaphysical opiate that deadens the traumas and sufferings of unrelentingly harsh economic and social conditions for most of our peoples, if religion is to become a real and powerful resource for hope in our country it must also begin to act as the soul, the conscience of the nation – as it has historically done in many other nations and regions of the world.

As I have remarked earlier in this piece, in this series my emphasis will be on secular, rational and idealistic signs and resources of hope in our country and the world in which we live, the world that constitutes the outer boundary of the conditions of possibility for justice, peace and progress in Nigeria and Africa. Let me put this observation in the form of a question, though in very concrete terms: How can mystification and superstition, religious and non-religious, that are so prevalent in our country at the present time, be contained by the rational exercise of the collective mind, especially with regard to the knowledges available to us in the world of the 21st century? This question may at first sight seem laughably audacious. Our country may be world famous for the number of its churches and mosques and the size and variety of its denominational congregations, but it lags far behind countries that have solid infrastructures and institutions for teaching, research and inventions. Without such infrastructures and institutions, the gifted, active mind works in isolation, bereft of the kind of supports that make the mind – any mind – productive and socially useful. Since we do not have such infrastructures and institutions in place, how can I seriously or realistically hope for the rational exercise of the mind in our country in line with the great advances in knowledge in the 21st century?

This question is falsely put and this is the fundamental basis of this series. There are no reasons in the world why, under the right socio-political conditions, we cannot rapidly but solidly build and maintain infrastructures and institutions of genuine learning, research and innovation that will in no time at all dissolve the fogs of mystification and superstition that now almost completely becloud the operations of the collective mind in our country. Thus, my question really boils down to this: Are there women and men in our country, are there currents of thought and action that could coalesce into a powerful movement that would fundamentally change the socio-political order in our country such that the institutions and infrastructures that seem so impossible for us to build and sustain at the present time will in short but effective order become a vital part of the exercise of the mind in our country?

My answer to this question is, of course, yes. But I admit that it is a tentative, unsure and provisional yes. Without being sectarian or dogmatic, let me say that the reason for this tentativeness lies in the present almost comatose state of the Left, the democratic, egalitarian and humanistic Left that was a very big movement in our country in my youth and that has been the most dominant ideological, ethical and emotional force in my public and private life. Without that movement – in whatever form or expression it is reinvented as long as it is mature and genuinely humanistic – the signs and sources of hope in our country will remain very dim, very weak and impotent, if in fact things do not get far worse than they are now.

Perhaps there is no need for me to explain why this observation is, for me at least, not sectarian or dogmatic, but I shall do so anyway. Quite simply, I am not talking here of a Left that has a monopoly on moral rectitude, patriotism and dedication. As a matter of fact, it could be said of the Nigerian Left, of the Nigerian progressive movement that it has perfectly mirrored all the social pathologies of the ruling elites in the post-civil war period. I would even go further to say that it has also been as infected with the malaise of mystification and superstition as the rulers and the ruled in our country. The apple does not fall far from the tree: the Left, the progressive movement in our country has been, in the last two or three decades, a perfect mirror of all the social ills that bedevil the country. In fact, this is the reason why, in this series, I decided to start, through an exploration of contemporary religion and the operations of spirit and psyche in Nigeria at the present time, on the subject of mystification and superstition. In next week’s continuation of the series, we shall move to the more secular domains of the operations of the secular mind and the imagination as resources of hope in our troubled land.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

April 7, 2013