The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • An afternoon with Iku Baba Yeye

    An afternoon with Iku Baba Yeye

    What can we do without our royalty? And how will the world as we know it be without kings? Kingdoms and empires seem to vanish, but kings and emperors have remained with us forever. Radical historians and other intellectual regicides view them as risible relics of a feudal past that is better forgotten. But the joke appears to be on the revolutionaries. In traditional societies transiting to modernity, royalty seems to playa a critical and crucial role.

    For over three hundred years, the Yoruba have been engaged in a war of will and wits with theirs. Sometimes, they succeed in banishing a few or sending the odd royal to his maker. But as a long term strategy in a war of attrition, they seem to have settled for the policy of giving unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The king does not die, and neither does kingship. Please note that king, Caesar, Czar, Tsar and Kaiser are all etymological variations of the same word.

    The English succeeded in decapitating one of theirs in an epochal revolution. But after the Cromwellian levelling became a joke taken too far, they quickly signed on a new royalty. It might have been a typical English fudge but it works. The English royals are the nearest object of reverence and national veneration in Britain up to this point. Surprisingly, when the Spanish monarch asked the late Hugo Chavez to shut up in full public glare, the Latin American revolutionary promptly shut his trap.

    The French sent off their royal couple to the guillotine only for emperors and presidential monarchs to surface like social submarines. The Elysee Palace can only be occupied by royalty. After they blew up the entire royal family, the Russians found themselves cursed with Leninist and Stalinist Tsars until the revolution collapsed one sunny morning. Now, Vladimir Putin is behaving like another Russian Tsar, minus the pomp and pageantry and the Russians are not exactly resentful.

    In the case of the Americans, they, vowed from the word go never to have anything to do with royalty. They seemed to have learnt their lessons from the implacable tyrants they fled from in Europe. But with the regal Reagans and the kingly Kennedys, the Yankees appear to have spoken too soon.

    Always centralise! If this is the motivating motto of all modern societies, it also tells us why we seem to be stuck with kings. There can be no centralisation without a central figure. As long as this remains the preferred mode of human organisation, revolutions and the dissolutions of empires may consume royalty but only for new royalties to emerge. Napoleon acidly noted that a throne is but a bench covered with damask, but the sly Sicilian eventually ordered one for himself too.

    Snooper spent last Thursday afternoon watching a grand royal opera. It was as magnificent as it could have been in the ancient times of magical lore. The event took place at the Wallan Hall of D’Rovans Hotel, Ibadan. It was at the formal presentation of a collection of essays on chieftaincy laws in Nigeria in honour of his Imperial Majesty, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111.

    The Oyo monarch is a principal emblem of royalty in Nigeria and Africa and one of the most sacred totems of the unyielding potency of the institution. When it is said that Africans cannot build durable institutions, you can always point at the institutions of obaship which has survived and thrived for centuries. It is colonial and post-colonial disorientation which have made it impossible for Africans to adapt to western institutions.

    Built like a compact but supple prize fighter and without any hint of mechanical inflexibility, his Royal Highness exudes supernatural self-assurance. With his charisma, carriage and comportment , the Oyo monarch is a royal showstopper any day. The finely chiselled features hinting of centuries of breeding and genetic refinement, the Alaafin is the ultimate advertisement for royalty anywhere in the world.

    Like most exceptional kings, the Alaafin is many things rolled into one: scholar, diplomat, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, raconteur, warrior, political strategist, traditional savant, writer and supreme athlete. In these days of sharp and severe division of labour even within the same profession, this kind of royal polyvalency is a throwback to some earlier times of superhumans.

    Ironically because of its virility and continuing efficacy, the obaship institution in Yoruba land often feels like a jungle of royal adversaries with our traditional fathers often jostling for supremacy and superiority of dynastic lineage. Snooper does not have the capacity or sagacity to dabble into the cloak and dagger world of Yoruba royal politics..

    Suffice it to say that while Ile-Ife was, and remains, the ancestral homestead and originating sacred site and spiritual shrine of the Yoruba race, it was the old Oyo Empire that took the race to the pre-colonial zenith of its military, political, diplomatic and economic genius.

    All the children of Oduduwa must be grateful to both founders and pathfinders alike for bequeathing a sophisticated culture which has transcended its origins in the forest to become a global brand. While it was the centralising genius of Oduduwa that cobbled and fused the disparate strands into an organic ethnic group, it was a succession of Oyo kings that expanded this into an empire with sub-continental reach.

    Like his martial ancestors, the incumbent Alaafin has phenomenal guts and what they call plenty of cujones to spare. It was an unusual act of personal bravery for a prince of Oyo to train as a professional boxer. The boxing ring does not recognise royalty. You are all alone and on your own. Only the handlers and the proverbial towel can save a prince from punitive pounding, particularly from adamant regicides on the margins of society roused by class hatred and envy. For every prince, there is a waiting pauper.

    The early life of the future Oba is the stuff of magical fables. Like all prize fighters, the Alaafin has taken a couple of hard blows. But he has also managed to deliver some sledgehammers. By his own public admission in Ibadan on Thursday, Oba Adeyemi has been involved in about a hundred litigations, ninety five of which he won by technical knockout and a few through lack of diligent prosecution on the part of his opponents. In boxing parlance, this is the equivalent of an opponent not answering the bell for the next round.

    It was as if from birth, his father, a strong-willed monarch, strenuously prepared the young prince for royal ascendancy. From early childhood, he was sent off as a royal apprentice to serve in the household of foremost traditional rulers and notables. It was an exacting and tasking royal journeymanship/.

    A series of character-steeling adversities ensued. In the event, his father was deposed and banished by the then Action Group government. Inevitably, the new political elite thrown up by the colonial irruption came into conflict and collision with the old traditional class. Oba Adeyemi became a principal casualty of this shift in the locus of power.

    In the north, the same dynamics was to see to the removal and banishment. of the old Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi. Whereas the ordeal of Sanusi exemplified the tension between the old Kano metropole and the new Sokoto caliphate which began with the Othman Dan Fodio conquest, in the west there was a hint of old sub-ethnic rivalries and pre-colonial animosities about it all.

    Ahmadu Bello had fought with his cousin, Sultan Abubakar for the Sokoto throne and even after becoming the de facto ruler of Nigeria, this was still the prize he coveted most. Obafemi Awolowo, on the other hand, belonged to the new ascendant class who owed their hegemony to the colonial disruption of the old order.

    But looking at a king’s mouth, one would never have imagined that he ever sucked at his mother’s breath. At seventy three and after forty two years on the throne, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has worn very well indeed. The entire hall erupted in swooning adulation and veneration as the royal retinue, replete with dancers and drummers, heralded the arrival of his imperial majesty. Resplendent as usual in fine native plumage, his royal highness was quite a sight to behold.

    Perhaps one was going to get a gift of royal dancing. Like all gifted musical artists, his royal highness has a supreme sense of inner rhythm which translates into exquisite fancy footwork and the inimitable regal trot. But it was not the time for royal cantering. This afternoon, his imperial highness seemed to have weightier matters on his royal mind. The scholar and the cultural warrior were ascendant.

    As he sat impassively on his chair behind a wall of practised silence like an all- seeing, all-knowing, all-hearing deity, you get a sense of why the Yoruba consider their kings as being next to their traditional gods. The ways of these deities are truly mysterious.

    You got a sense that your number was up when a native enforcer informed snooper that the Alaafin had ordered that he should be brought before his royal presence. But it was to exchange witty banters. As the king would later publicly reveal, he keeps a file on all major writings in the country. Needless to add that he has a capillary network of informants where it matters most. It doesn’t get more chillingly impressive.

    It has been an engrossing encounter in Ibadan with a worthy embodiment of arguably the most durable and viable institution thrown up by the ancient Yoruba society. In his rigour and painstaking devotion to duty, this remarkable traditional ruler shows just how sophisticated and socially advanced the pre-colonial political order could have been. The life of the Alaafin teaches us two important lessons: The immutability of destiny and the fact that it is not life that matters but the courage you bring to bear on it. Here is wishing the Iku Baba yeye many more fruitful years on the throne of his ancestors..

  • Whoever believes in Nigeria should please stand up!

    Whoever believes in Nigeria should please stand up!

    Today, reader, I am not talking about anything in particular; I am just going to ramble on and on about a topic dear to my heart: why no one seems to believe in Nigeria. Indeed, everyone appears to be filled with doubt about the survivability of the country and then do everything they can to make sure it does not survive. Get me, I hope so, because sometimes, I can hardly catch up with my own thoughts. Sometimes, they seem to run away with me, sometimes they just seem to fly from me.

    Anyway, doubt, like a yawn, is contagious. For example, whenever there is a couple to be joined together in holy matrimony, just watch the face sitting next to yours as it goes all wrinkly in doubt as the owner is obviously thinking: will these ones make it past their second year? They are hardly even talking to each other at the altar! You also take a second look at the front and find that only the pastor is smiling; the couple is all frowns and wondering why the pastor is smiling. But that doubt is nothing compared to this one: let your kitchen plumbing go all kaput and let your man pick up the hammer and wrench. A mighty but wisely unspoken doubt seizes you as you watch him knock the sense out of the pipes, wrench the life out of the pumps and drain all the blood out of your own veins as you hope there will still be a kitchen to use after he is through. That is still nothing yet compared to this. Now, should there be a knock on your door at midnight and a voice asks you to open the door for you are about to be robbed and the head of the house marches forward in great indignation holding nothing but a cudgel, I think the mother of all doubts will seize you at that scene. The prospect of anyone successfully confronting guns with a cudgel is nothing but hilariously doubtful, I think.

    Truly, doubts tend to creep up on us whether we want them to or not. In a well-known and widely circulated joke, a jury was once said to be confronted by the strong arguments of a defence counsel who vehemently denied that his client was responsible for a murder. In just one minute, he confidently told the jury, the dead man would walk in. The jury expectantly looked towards the door. There, triumphantly cooed the counsel, you looked because you doubted.

    One of the major things occupying the mind of every thief, I guess, is to ensure that their crime scenes are wiped clean. One man was so incensed at his son for stealing jam that he called him to reprove him. Son, he said, I am not mad with you for stealing the jam. But why on earth would you leave your fingerprints at the scene of the crime? Create reasonable doubt, he admonished!

    The British architects of what we regard today as ancient and modern Nigeria (oh yes, there is an ancient one) deliberately planted reasonable doubt as to the possibility of the new nation surviving by forcefully fusing three completely parallel nations together and choosing doubtful leaders. Monumental doubts seized then them, and have continued to trail all leaders ever since. Since independence, successive leaders have adopted an attitude towards nation building that only a one-eyed giant can have: keep one eye on the eventuality that the contraption may collapse. This means there has been no eye to keep on the development road since then. Like Moshe Dayan, who wore an eye-patch said, with one eye on the road, which eye can I now keep on the speedometer? So, for want of a good second eye, our leaders have not worked since independence. Most have been too preoccupied with saving for that rainy day of eventuality, when they expect Nigeria to break up.

    This is why I believe that Nigeria has the highest number of plunderers of any country on earth. And no nation that has such a vast number of people more interested in taking than in giving has been able to survive. Nigerians have indeed turned themselves into worms eating out the core of the national apple (or national cake as we love to call the metaphor) that my fear is that sooner than later, all the core will be gone and we will be eating each other. Perhaps then, we can sigh and begin again. Indeed, the fact that Nigeria continues to survive today amazingly defies logic, my logic, that is. You see, in my logic, no nation governed by half-literates can survive; no nation ruled by self-absorbed neonates more interested in owning the best shoes and handbags can do a thing about its future; no nation standing on its head, with the best visionaries hidden at the bottom of the heap and the little men who cannot muster half a cow’s brain between them standing at the top, should survive. But then, that’s just my own logic.

    So, here we are, all logic is thrown to the wind, and the country only just plodding on because everyone is too distracted to do the right thing. Governance, right now, is comparable to chewing a piece of rock with one’s teeth. In that set-up, no one is comfortable; neither the teeth, nor the rock. Neither the government nor the governed can claim to be comfortable in this hot-bed called Nigeria. And there is only one reason for this: Nigerians do not believe in Nigeria.

    The various levels of unbelief are too apparent to even the blind. It is in the fraudulent voting system, the corrupt civil service system, the ineffective federal, state and local governance system, the fallen educational system, and even the rural system. Did I tell you that even the village chiefs have now perfected their own system of exacting tax from the wealthy surviving relatives of deceased members of the village? Oh ho, you will not believe it, but you better pray that you don’t lose any member of your family (as I also pray) so we don’t fall into the hands of the village mafias.

    On the other hand, it is not too difficult to know a believer. Just look around you at your typical religious pundits, which we are not going to do here. Anyone who believes in Project Nigeria can easily be known. First, let’s shop around among our leaders for a good example. Err… err… Ok, let’s not shop among our leaders; let’s go into the civil service for a good example. Err… err… Ok, let’s not go into the civil service; let’s go into our religious institutions. Err… err… Ok, let’s not go there; let’s go into our tertiary institutions. Err… err… Oh dear, where then shall we go for a true believer?

    Reader, Nigeria is in dire straits because we all to a man and woman, who should be strenuously working at nation building, are more interested in pocket building. The fact that Nigeria has not collapsed in spite of all these shenanigans may be telling us something: it is time to get serious because we’re going nowhere. Let’s get serious with the transportation system; let’s get serious with energy production; let’s get serious with leadership and begin to hold everyone accountable. Above all, let’s get serious about changing our attitude and begin to think that the country may not disintegrate after all and we may end up passing it to our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Oh, please!

  • What is Professor Jega up to at INEC?

    What is Professor Jega up to at INEC?

    President Jonathan has to step into the ups-manship in INEC

    With the fresh petition delivered to the Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, by employees of INEC on January 7, 2013, it would appear that matters are far worse today than they were when the article below, mildly edited, was published on 12 September, 2012. Like it or not, President Jonathan would now have to find a way of stepping into the ups-man-ship going in that agency because of its possible negative consequences on the 2015 general elections.It is now in the open why Jega wanted to be all-in-all as he recently requested of the government. Happy reading.

    What game is the North up to at INEC?

    Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot? Is the famous Professor Oba, former Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in the former’s usual role of a Northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage? These and more questions agitate the mind on reading the advert: THE TAKE OVER OF INEC published in the Monday, 20 August, 2012, edition of this newspaper by the ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK but which in itself emanated from an earlier story by TheNews Magazine. It will be a little disingenuous, even unfair, to claim or even pretend that

    INEC has just so suddenly become a Northern enclave. The story has always been the same since there is literally a Northern Executive Secretary, permanently in place, but with the addition of Jega as Chairman, cronyism and outright nepotism have assumed an industrial scale with Oba’s FCC’s ludicrous connivance.

    For ease of reference, let us quote directly from the advert under reference. According to the publication, INEC’s top management is made up as follows:

    1. Prof Jega (Chairman)- Kebbi 2. U.F Usman (Director of Logistics) -Kebbi

    3. A. Muktar (Director of Human Resources) -Sokoto

    4. A.A Uregi (Director of Finance) – Niger

    5. M. Kuta (Internal Auditor) -Niger 6. E.T Akem (Director ICT) -Benue

    7. I. Biu (Director of Voter Education) – North East

    8. I.K Bawa (Dep. Director, Legal) – Plateau

    9. Okey Ndeche (Director,

    Operations) -Anambra

    10. Nyise Torgba (Director M& E/ Performance) -Benue

    11. A.A Adamu Head, Commission, Secretariat) -Kogi

    12. M.Ekwunja (Director,

    Civil Societies)

    13. E. Umenger (Director, Public

    Affairs) -Benue

    14. Regina Omo-Agege (Director, Political Monitoring) -Delta.

    15. B.E Edoghotu (Estate & Works).

    Those heading its key committees are also quite revealing. They are:

    1. Col. Hamanga ( Chairperson, Logistics Committee) -Adamawa

    2. Dr Nuru Yakubu ( Chairperson, Operations Committee) -Yobe

    3. Ambassador Wali (Chair person, Procurement Committee) -Sokoto

    4. Prof Jega (Chairperson, F&GP) -Kebbi

    5. Prof Jega ( Chairperson, ICT) -Kebbi

    6. Hajia Amina Zakari (Chairperson, Political Monitoring) -Jigawa

    7. Membership of its 9-Man Strategic Planning Committee reads as follows: Nuru A. Yakubu, Istianus Dalwang, Mustafa Kuta, M.S Mohammed. Torgba Nyitse, Emanuel Akeem all from the North with the exception of the duo of Mike Igini and Okechukwu Ndeche from the South. Add to this, the Executive Secretary who is from the same geo-political zone with Jega and, who, by the way has long passed the official retiring age. How blatant can some supposedly educated people get?

    It’s impossible not to wonder how an otherwise accomplished academic conveniently overlook the fact that Nigeria has a a Federal Character prescription in its constitution. What will Jega claim as alibi for this totally unacceptable lop-lopsidedness in an agency that is so critical?

    I found the following comments by Ifeanyi Izeze very useful in taking a look at the Federal Character Commission. Wrote Izeze in 2011 : ” When Nigeria’s Federal Character Commission (FCC) was established in 1996, it was supposed to enforce the federal character principles which aimed at ensuring fair and equitable distribution of posts; social-economic amenities; and infrastruc-tural facilities among the federating units of the nation. The intention was for it to be the watchdog of government ministries, departments and agencies to ensure an evenly distributed workforce that reflects ethnic diversity and the geopolitical divides of the country’.

    In recognition of its failings, wrote Izeze, the Commission after a Port Harcourt stakeholders retreat recounted as follows: ‘The FCC has delineated the country into national, state and local government levels as channels of distribution among the federating units for ease of implementation. Allocations at the national level, it said, will now be based on the 36 states and Abuja or the six geo-political zones or north and south …’ Apparently under Professor Oba, all these have been thrown into the trash can such that today, the North can completely dominate INEC with literally all its consultants coming from the North with nary a voice of warning from the Federal Character Commission.

    Given Professor Oba’s history as Vice-Chancellor, University of Ilorin, I am not in the least surprised that under his leadership, the Federal Character Commission has decided not know that INEC exists within the country’s laws.

    It is here that one begins to suspect a collusion with the PDP Federal government, given the ringing silence from the office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation. Not even a single warning to that office for its total ineffectiveness nor to Jega for the nauseating ethnic domination in INEC. Add to this, Jega’s clandestine decision to now use permanent voter’s cards for the next election, which cards will be obtained in the most dubious of ways as it will permit the registration of, not only minors, but totally non-existent persons, just so INEC can unilaterally swell registration figures in some given areas.

    I doubt if Jega’s defenders know what incalculable damage they do to his reputation when, in mitigation, they claim that he met everything in place. If in all these years he cannot right the obvious wrongs then he certainly does not deserve all the adulation he got at his appointment by a man who, we now know, truly did not know him at all.

    What then are the probable calculations? The Election Integrity Network is of the view that the structural iniquity in INEC epitomises nothing but a skewed regional interest especially at a time when geo-political struggle for power has assumed a violent dimension. The body believes that this is a carefully planned restructuring in which the most important organs responsible for future elections are placed smack in the hands of the North.

    The only time in recent memory that I can recall a similar scenario was during the Abacha era when you could hardly find four Southerners on the list of the topmost twenty security officials and a security council meeting could hold with no southerner, whatever, in attendance, if you go strictly by rank.

    Without a doubt, this arrangement at INEC cannot be a happenstance; rather it is the result of cold calculations aimed at the next elections. Nothing, for instance, stops some of Jega’s Northern top men in INEC from being transferred to other sections of the service as long as they do not lose their seniority. But nobody will dare.

    The sponsors of the advert in question bemoaned the fate of the Southwest in the agency.

    For me personally, this is a non-issue since it is a failure of the Yorubas in the PDP who are obviously not treated as equals as was recently eloquently demonstrated by Chairman Tukur who unilaterally sent its Yoruba Secretary packing. If these people now traversing the South-West ahead of the next elections were treated as co-equals, having lost the Speaker-ship of the House, they should have since ensured that they are adequately represented in agencies like INEC. This, however, will never happen since they are keener at feathering their individual nests as opposed to corporate South-West interests.

    As things stand in INEC today, Mr President owes it a duty to Nigeria to clear up, the Augean stable as a stitch in time could more than save nine.

  • Retrogression and paralysis in Africa and Nigeria

    Retrogression and paralysis in Africa and Nigeria

    Less than a decade after most African countries got their flag independence, some of their leaders became acutely aware of the corrosive effects of neocolonialism. To counter this problem, they attempted a cocktail of cultural, economic and political policies to neutralise the negative effects of colonialism up to as far back as the curse of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. Leaders of Africa’s independence movements knew, and to some extent accepted, their limitations in trying to redraw the debilitating maps drawn arbitrarily by the Berlin conferees, but they didn’t entirely give up. They were not only passionate about their countries; they were also largely well-educated, cerebral and innovative. To supplant the destructive impact of colonialism on the African mind, these leaders promoted the ideals of pan-Africanism in order to give the continent an identity, instil confidence in young Africans, and give them a reason to look forward to a greater tomorrow where they could stand tall and equal with the young of any other continent, especially Europe and America.

    Barely half a century after independence, however, all hope of a greater tomorrow has virtually evaporated. Not only are the continent’s current leaders half-educated daydreamers and cannot, therefore, tell the difference between colonialism on one hand and neocolonialism on the other hand, they are simply too desensitised to the dangers of harmful external influences to care what happens to the continent or how its peoples are regarded by the rest of the world. It wasn’t too long ago that great minds walked on the continent, minds like Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Tom Mboya, Amilcar Cabral, Kenneth Kaunda et al, but their walk was both too brief and sometimes inexpert to help create enduring ideological and institutional legacies for Africa’s freedom and economic independence. Yet, for all their faults, it was never said of them that they were too stupid not to comprehend the denigrating impact of foreign influences.

    In contrast today, there is hardly any African leader with the depth of understanding, political ingenuity and moral fortitude needed to galvanise the continent away from the looming apocalyptic path of recolonisation. West Africa has become a barren landscape of short-sighted leaders who can’t tell the difference between leadership and feudalism. Even when a few honest leaders come along, they lack the rigour to reclaim and promote the visions of past continental leaders. Ghana’s present leaders, for instance, are the beacon for the sub-region, but beyond offering their country technocratic competence, there is precious little else. Whatever they call vision today can’t hold the candle to Nkrumah’s vision. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia fought senseless civil wars, in spite of their poverty, and Cote d’Ivoire and Mali needed their former colonial master, France, to restore stability and order. And self-destructive Nigeria is, of course, boiling with largely self-inflicted and man-made sectarian cum socioeconomic revolt.

    Southern Africa was a hotbed of apartheid, but when they finally emerged from servitude one after another, only Nelson Mandela exhibited the character of a leader. Sam Nujoma had to be pressured not to amend Namibia’s constitution to serve tenure extension, and geriatric Robert Mugabe has become a burden greater than apartheid upon his people. Successive leaders of Angola and Mozambique have also not been too inspiring, while Central Africa is probably the worst served by incompetent leaders. Since Britain’s MI6 plotted the death of Patrice Lumumba using the façade of Belgian, French and local forces, the hapless country has grappled with a succession of inept rulers, including the two Kabilas, Laurent and Joseph. Central African Republic (CAR), which is embroiled in non-ideological, distasteful and interminable rebellions, has not fared better.

    While ethnic groups in Rwanda nearly exterminated one another, and Uganda reels under rebel attacks, and Burundi stagnates, it took spectacular incompetence, as Mo Ibrahim observed, for Sudanese leaders to infuse religious dogmas into their country’s body politic thereby destabilising and fragmenting it. East Africa is also entrapped in rebellions and poverty. Ethnically and religiously homogenous Somalia is just emerging from state failure begun in 1991 and orchestrated by local rebels, Ethiopia and Libya working in concert. And Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti at the horn of Africa oscillate between pointless wars and horrifying famine.

    The retrogression in Africa is so numbing and so nearly complete that whispers are beginning to be heard in many European capitals that what is needed is a complete takeover, a recolonisation. (See Box, and note the factual inaccuracies). The consequence of the massive retrogression is that future generations of Africans will become humiliatingly less globally competitive than their European, American and Asian counterparts. The gap is widening into a chasm, and it is only a question of time, if things are left unchecked, before active calls for recolonisation receive favourable attention in many key world capitals. Except the continent puts behind it the effects of the trans-Saharan slave trade (which are factors in the Mali turmoil), the even greater evil of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the most crippling effects of colonialism that virtually distorted the economy, culture and thinking of the colonies, the continent’s problems will worsen and predispose it to recolonisation.

    Indirect rule made it difficult for Britain to retain a strangulating hold on its former colonies. It consequently could not actively pursue the establishment of military bases in Africa as successfully as France has done in more than half a dozen of its former colonies. But it nevertheless has advisory presence in Kenya and Sierra Leone. France’s colonial policy of assimilation facilitated the insidious subjection of its former colonies. From Central Africa to West Africa and even to the Horn of Africa and the Maghreb, France has sustained its military presence and bases, and intervenes when the need arises. The relationship between France and its former colonies goes beyond military, however. In foreign policy and the economy, the former colonies still look up to France. China is doubtless elbowing its way in. But many analysts suggest that the disturbances in Mali, CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and especially the promptness and assertiveness of France in those trouble spots, could not be detached from the rising economic profile of China in many African countries.

    During the Cold War era, many African countries were cajoled into taking sides with the Eastern or Western bloc. In the Berlin Conference, which was chiefly triggered by the quest for raw materials to feed European industries, Africa had no say on how its internal borders were drawn. The fresh campaigns for the recolonisation of Africa can also not be detached from economic reasons. For instance, all seven French West African countries are connected to the French Central Bank. The fall of former Ivorian leader, Laurent Gbagbo, was partly a consequence of his dispute with France over Cote d’Ivoire’s external reserve. Niger is as important to France economically (supply of uranium) as Nigeria is important (oil) to the United States. France, Britain and the US are now engaged in strategic military cooperation involving deployment of drones. On another side, China is also steadily and aggressively pushing in into Africa for raw materials to feed its massive industrial complexes and huge population. To facilitate this push, China deploys financial and other kinds of assistance to needy African countries. It may not be too far-fetched to say that China and the West have begun a new scramble for Africa, as the September 2011 election in Zambia proved, and as the creation of the US African Command (AFRICOM) is also indicating.

    If the creeping recolonisation of Africa is not to become a fait accompli, Nigeria must experience revolutionary changes in order to offer the leadership necessary to reclaim Africa from its local and foreign oppressors and reposition its peoples for greater competitiveness in the coming decades. If things remain as they are for much longer, the image of the continent will be battered and its chances of securing a glorious future compromised. Fundamental changes must come to Nigeria, for it is the only country with the potential to offer that leadership, not South Africa, not Ghana, and not Egypt. Sadly, in spite of the momentous events happening around it, Nigeria has remained silent, phlegmatic, inept and docile. It lost confidence in handling the Mali conundrum, ignored the CAR troubles, and has said little on DRC. It is high time visionary and ideological African leaders emerged, leaders who have the depth, intellect and passion to create and drive technological advancement, cultural renaissance and new and sustainable democratic paradigms.

    The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cannot midwife the necessary fundamental changes Nigeria and Africa need. On its part, it is anticipated the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) will whittle down its ideological purity and political idealism to stand a chance of birthing a new party (say, the All Progressives Congress) capable of beating the PDP. I am, however, not too optimistic that within the existing Nigerian political structure and given the nature of party politics, the changes the continent desires and deserves can be achieved.

     

  • The Faleye metaphor

    The Faleye metaphor

    A young Nigerian’s educational dream is about being aborted due to lack of funds

    When Oluseun Samuel Faleye received his letter of admission into Shenyang Aerospace University (SAU) in China in September, 2011, to study electronics and telecommunications engineering, in furtherance of his course at the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, his joy and that of his parents knew no bounds. Faleye had in 2011 concluded his diploma programme at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, Zaria, which on March 30 of the same year signed a memorandum of understanding with SAU for the purpose of admitting the college’s products for a two-year degree programme.

    His father, Chief S.A. Faleye, had in a letter of consent to the consular-general in the Chinese Embassy in Lagos, undertaken to take full responsibility for the payment of his school fees and any other financial involvement, before things started going awry. Any parent would not have thought twice before consenting to such a project. Prior to the signing of the MOU with the Chinese university, products of the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology used to secure employment with the airlines or other aviation agencies with their diploma certificates. Faleye had hoped to get a job after the Zaria training.

    However, a new policy which made it mandatory for those of them from the Zaria college seeking employment in the aviation agencies to have first degree came into being at about the time Faleye was leaving the college. This apparently informed the college’s decision to sign the MOU with the Chinese university so that the diploma holders would be able to go there for their first degree programme.

    Faleye and his colleagues were thus in a quagmire, as none of those agencies employed the Zaria college’s diploma holder after that policy too k off; at least initially. It was after he had stayed at home for about a year doing nothing that his parents decided to fulfill all righteousness: if what would get him employment was obtaining the first degree in the Chinese university with which the college had signed an MOU, so be it. So, they pulled resources together to ensure that their investment on their son in the aviation college would not be in vain.

    Unfortunately for him, it was after he had left for China that some of the aviation agencies changed their mind and recruited some of his colleagues. Unfortunately too, for him, things did not go as planned as they sometimes don’t. The projection of raising the about N4million needed for the school fees soon got derailed. And that is the challenge that Faleye is facing right now in China. As a matter of fact, his father, in his 70s, had to sell a few properties to ensure he completes his studies.

    His programme which commenced in 2011 is supposed to end in July, just three months away. But Faleye, the last child of his parents, is in a quagmire: he is not sure of concluding the programme due to the financial challenges he is currently facing. About N1million is standing between him and the conclusion of his programme. If help does not come, all the investments in China since 2011 when he secured admission into the college would go down the drain.

    When he realised the precarious situation in which he is, he managed to secure a teaching job in China. But that country is a no-nonsense country, they quickly stopped him because, as they said, the job is for their citizens. As things stand, Faleye is willing and ready to enter into agreement with any individual, corporate organisation or institution that is ready to offer assistance, on how the money would be repaid.

    As a matter of fact, he is even contemplating deferring his course and returning home if it gets to that, at least pending when things improve, but he does not even have the means to transport himself back. That shows how tight things are. The story is too long to be captured here; but, this, essentially is the message.

    Sadly, Faleye is probably not alone in this kind of an avoidable mess. One shudders at the number of our youths who are in dire straits and could have their fortune reversed simply because no one cares for them. The point is that Nigeria cares about no one in particular. It cannot pay pension to old people. It cannot ensure that its youths get access to good and qualitative education, and even when the youths manage to find their way, they are left hard and dry in the middle of nowhere if they suddenly run out of funds.

    The sadder aspect is that most of those who’ climbed the ladder before removing it’ as it were (those who are now making things difficult for others today) benefited from one scholarship or government sponsorship or the other in their school days. They had the best of life in and out of school; many of their children enjoyed the same opportunities too. One would think the government should have some ‘crutches’ for people in Faleye’s shoes, some shoulder to lean on; unfortunately, the government thinks otherwise. Rather than put money where it has meaning, the government is pumping money into private businesses which the owners ran aground, in the name of bailouts. We have had these in the agricultural sector; we have had it in the textiles sector; we have even had it in the aviation sector which the government is threatening once again to give another round, in spite of the failure and ridiculous allegations that trailed the last bailout in that sector. It is not that bailouts are inherently bad; the problem in our circumstance is that, like most things Nigerian, they are abused and no one is punished for such abuses. As a matter of fact, bailout in Nigeria has become euphemism for doling out government money even to those who already have, to do as they please, when there are people out there genuinely in need of money but cannot have it.

    The course that Faleye is studying that is about to be truncated at the ninety-ninth hour due to lack of funds, electronics and telecommunications engineering, is one that should be hot cake in the country. It is a course that any country with vision should be interested in.

    Although Faleye is the reason for this piece, the point should not be lost on us, and particularly the governments at all levels, to begin to address in concrete terms the challenges that leave our serious-minded youths stranded, whether at home, or, worse still, in foreign lands, in pursuit of the proverbial golden fleece. This is the only thing that can check the inequity and iniquities in the system and also ensure that we all are able to sleep with our two eyes closed when tomorrow comes.

    But, if you are touched and feel like helping, please contact Samuel Oluseun Faleye on phone number +8615040317741. Better still, you may wish to contact Richard Chen, the Dean of International Education College, Shenyang Aerospace University, 37, Daoyi South Avenue, Daoyi Development District, Shenyang, China, 110136 or phone 8624 89724578.

  • Now, Okon propounds a culinary theory of national chaos

    After an Easter celebration filled with bombs and bombasts, snooper had settled into a post-Easter rumination about the fate of the country. One is now slowly coming to the conclusion that things will not get better in this country in one’s lifetime. It is a psychological therapy called reconciliation under duress. No matter how you look at it, it is not a bad development.

    It consoles and soothes and helps you put a glossy sheen on things no matter how depraved and degenerate they may be. It allows snooper to reach back for historical comparison. Almost every Yoruba child born between 1823 and 1875 was born into a situation of great strife and turmoil. This was the period of the Yoruba Mfekane, or dispersal of the tribe.

    But Okon was having none of that. There is something to be said for the vitality and energy of youth. As snooper slipped deeper into this anti-revolutionary mush, Okon was all boundless energy and initiative. One morning, the bounder showed up in the sitting room dressed like a respectable Niger Delta chieftain.

    “And where is Asari Dokunmu heading for this morning?” snooper asked with a sarcastic leer.

    “Oga, I wan reach Abuja make man attend dem Congress of oil-producing Nationalities (CON) Dem say we dey meet for dem Hall 419 for dem Sheraton. We wan talk before oil scatter obodo as dem mala wan drive Jonothan comot with dem tira and dem wahala”, Okon replied with a frown.

    “ So what are you going to tell them at the conference?”

    “Ha oga dat one dey easy. I go tell dem say obodo problem be like dem problem of dem yeye Yoruba soup. As dem Yoruba soup get too much oil, obodo Nigeria too get too much oil. Make we remove dem oil and everybody go scram and we go get peace for obodo, When dem oil no dey again, you go dey hear dem mala scream, tefi mana, tefi mana”, Okon chortled with devilish relish.

    “Quite some culinary theory of national chaos”. Snooper mumbled to himself.

    “Oga dis no be time for grammar, na dem Yoruba grammar finis us before before, all dem Lagos lawyers and dem Shakabula journalists who dey answer Oyinbo name, yeye people”, Okon sneered. Snooper suppressed his mirth at the boy’s militant malice compounded by sheer ignorance.

    “So Okon, what else are you doing in Abuja?” snooper cautiously demanded.

    “I wan reach Aso Rock make I grab dem amnesty from dem Jonathan. He be like if dat one just dey distribute amnesty like dem Red Cross rice. Dem amnesty na for my brother sub-lieutenant William Oyazimo. Na dem Yoruba people finis dat one for Bar Beach becos dem think say na Ibo” Okon submitted.

    “Is that not the WAHUM armed robber of the early seventies?” snooper asked in alarm.

    “Him no be armed robber. Na dem Yoruba finis am becos him go knack dem Yoruba wife for dem barracks. You no say for dat time dem wuruwuru man for Dahomey come kill him number two dem Captain Aikpeh becos him say dat one dey knack him wife. Oga rubbing no be robbery” Okon flatly propounded. It was on that note that snooper wished the loony boy God’s speed.

  • Mali needs a takeover, not an exit strategy

    Mali needs a takeover, not an exit strategy

    No sooner had the French cleared Mali of Islamist terrorists than talk turned to exit strategy. Although no one thinks the threat over, the thought is of training the Malian army to take responsibility for securing the country’s long and porous frontiers when the French leave.

    This is sheer delusion. Even before the Islamists hit town Mali was a barely functioning state. A military coup last year, led by a 39-year-old army captain who, one year on, is still pulling the strings, put paid to any notion that Mali was a democracy. Long before the coup, corruption had eroded the rule of law to the point where many of Mali’s institutions had ceased to function effectively.

    Despite training by US Special forces, the Malian army is ill-equipped, ill-disciplined and underpaid. When the Islamists arrived, it disintegrated at the first whiff of grapeshot. Already, even before the French have turned their backs, the army has resumed harassment of civilians. What is needed is not an exit strategy, but a strategy for the long term. Without one, there is a danger that the country will disintegrate as soon as the foreigners go home.

    Mali is only the latest example of that growing phenomenon: the failed state. Somalia is the supreme example, but we can all think of others. Liberia (currently under its formidable president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, enjoying a respite from decades of turmoil) has been the subject of three UN interventions. Sierra Leone, rescued from implosion by British military intervention, remains fragile; likewise Ivory Coast, recently the subject of another French intervention and presently hosting an 11,000-strong UN military mission. In Sudan, no less than three separate UN military missions are doing their best to maintain stability.

    Then there is the misnamed Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast, chaotic, dysfunctional kleptocracy. The armed forces are bloated, parasitic, disloyal, and generally useless except in so far as they threaten the civilian population. No one knows how many have died in the years of mayhem in eastern Congo. The figure is in the millions.

    What is to be done? There is no simple solution but I wonder if the time has come to experiment with a new, more robust form of intervention, one that recognises that some states have failed so completely that any short term fix is doomed; that we need to start from the scratch and, subject to the consent of the people, stay for the long term. And I mean for a generation.

    Some years ago, when a Foreign Office Minister, I stayed with John Blaney, the US ambassador to Liberia from 2002 to 2005, in his fortified mansion in Monrovia, overlooking the Atlantic. It was he who saved Liberia last time round. While the last bout of violence raged, desperate Liberians were literally pulling their dead outside the gate, begging for US intervention.

    Unfortunately Liberia scarcely featured on the radar of the neocons then in charge in Washington. Eventually, they were persuaded to dispatch a naval task force, which, to everyone’s dismay anchored out of sight over the horizon. Mr Blaney received a message from the admiral saying that they were sending a helicopter and that he should fly away leaving the Liberians to their fate. He refused saying: “I take my orders from the state department, not the Pentagon.” The marines had to land, and barely had their boots touched the ground than the chaos subsided.

    Mr Blaney had clear views on what needed to be done. It wasn’t enough to send troops. A stronger UN mandate was needed, which gave it the power to run the country in the medium to long term. “Everyone is afraid of upsetting the African Union, being accused of neo-colonialism or racism. The fact is this is a failed state. There aren’t any functioning institutions to plug into. We’ve got to do what helps people. What works. So why don’t we sit down and talk about it?”

    Our man in Congo, the late Jim Atkinson, said much the same. “There are no altruistic Congolese. You have only to look at what the rulers have done to their people in the last 40 years. A mandate is the only way. The international community is wasting its time on half-hearted measures. They should either takeover and do it properly, or get out.”

    Instead of scuttling at the earliest opportunity, a UN Special Representative should run Mali for as long as it takes to build stable institutions. Not just an effective military, but a fully functioning administration so far as possible funded out of local taxation, supported by the rule of law, and subject to the approval of the people by way of referendums every four years. This would be a better way to deal with failed states than anything we have so far tried.

     

    Culled from The Times (London)

    February 8, 2013

     

  • Will nations align anew?

    Will nations align anew?

    •History tends to vindicate those who keep their eyes on it

    For all the righteous melodies coming out of Western capitals exalting the rule of law, openness and democracy, when their money is jeopardized, these governments reach for a different fiddle to play a discordant, crasser tune. The rule of law retreats in the face of the imperatives of power. These nations berate African states for inconstancy in economic and financial policy and practice. When it comes to the crunch, we now know these countries commit similar misconduct. In fact, they may have authored it.

    Decades ago, a courageous intellectual, Walter Rodney, wrote the seminal work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Sadly, Rodney left us prematurely without finishing the contributions he could have rendered to mankind. If alive today, the West Indian would likely feel a sense of vindication, even schadenfreude, at the economic woes Europe currently experiences. The book he would write today would bear a startling title: How Europe Underdeveloped Itself.

    A few weeks ago, a courageous Cypriot government tried to buck the heavy financial pressure levied against by a venal trinity: the German government, the EU and the IMF. The rebellion offered by the tiny island was as futile as it was brave. Given the size of the island’s economy compared to three behemoths against it, the Cypriots’ stood not a chance. We predicted they would be forced to do what they loathed. The choice before the beleaguered people was one no sovereign nation or innocent person should face. By sticking to principle, they would face sudden and certain financial death. Through surrender to greater power, they would consign themselves to protracted economic recession tantamount to death through slow but gradually compounding torture. Since the latter delayed the execution, thus providing a sliver of a chance for reprieve, the proud Cypriots bowed their heads, tendering to Berlin and its cohorts their dignity in exchange for the less dramatic but equally moribund fate. With heads lowered, they were forced to drink of a bitter cup, the taste of which shall sting well into the next decade.

    The price they paid was a steep one. The Cypriots relinquished to the Venal Triumvirate the scant chards of economic sovereignty the island still possessed. The harsh trio showed little mercy in putting the island to the lash. With the strength of an absolute monarch’s medieval edict, the Venal Trio turned the rule of law into the rule of might with one tragic blow. Heretofore, bank deposits were sacrosanct, insured so savers felt secure in parking their earnings in banks. This no longer applies to Cyprus. The largest depositors lost most of their funds through no fault of their own save bringing their money to Cyprus in the first instance. This effectively destroys the nation’s commercial banking sector. Now only the maddest of mad man would lodge his money in Cyprus. The only men known to be that insane are the North Korean and Syrian leaders both of whom are currently too preoccupied with other matters to bestow such largesse at the moment. For a nation where banking stands as one of two major industries, this is not a mere knell. It is the presence of Death itself.

    Moving from the terrible to the sublimely catastrophic, the Trio of Doom imposed currency controls on Cyprus. Basically, any euro already there must remain on the island. Any that enters must stay save a minimal amount per individual exiting the isle. Also, most business transactions on the island have been reduced to cash. However, there is daily maximum limit on bank cash withdrawals. With these restrictions, the only tourists with the desire to visit Cyprus will be ascetics who neither like money nor enjoy the normal comforts upon which money is spent or those who have so little money that the restrictions are inapplicable and who most likely cannot afford to come to the island in any event. Upon neither class of people can tourism be revived. For a nation with tourism as its other large industry, this is akin to deboning a turkey while the fowl is yet alive.

    Add to these debilitating measures, the biting fiscal austerity placed on government expenditures, Cyprus has descended into the deepest gaol of depression. The island state shall not see the light of prosperity until after it has forgotten such a light exists.

    These controls blatantly contravene the EU treaty’s (Articles 26 and 63) provisions guaranteeing the free movement of money, people and goods. When it comes to extracting demands from weaker nations, the Unholy Three have the same lack of qualms as a hardened racketeer. They gutted core EU principles in order to extract a pound of Cypriot flesh. For them, the rule of law comes distant second to the rule of money. To legitimize their mischief, they passed measures and regulations giving the appearance of propriety. No matter the ribbons and bows place on it, what they did remains a strong-arm confiscation as if done at gunpoint. Pasting butterfly wings on an elephant doesn’t convert it to a jumbo jet. Drafting these onerous measures on EU parchment neither eases the misery caused thereby nor makes the overbearing intimidation any more ethical. There lies a broken body in the street, the casualty of a financial mugging of the worst order.

    In superficially attempting to save the Euro, this martinet plan makes the first structural crack in the euro zone’s architecture. The essential principle of a monetary union is that of a uniform currency. This is no longer the case. The dire restrictions placed on money in Cyprus means the “Cyprus euro” is less useable, thus valuable, than the regular euro. Two currencies effectively are in use. Cyprus now exists in a netherworld. It is of the euro zone but not completely in it. Only the future can tell if it returns to full membership or goes in the opposite direction. Exiting the zone’s strictures would better serve the nation’s interests but it would take politicians of the rarest courage to hew that path. Thus, the nation’s future is to be written by the pen of sorrow. Meanwhile, predator nations will swoop on the supine island and purchase its ample gas reserves on the cheap. Have you ever seen an island sink? It is a rare thing but you shall witness it if you keep your eye trained on Cyprus.

    Since Cyprus is such a small economy, all this might seem like a tempest in a teapot. More accurately, it is a teapot tossed in a tempest. A majority of banks in the EU are illiquid; many of these are insolvent. This means the EU financial crisis is buried but not dead. Like most living things, it detests life underground. It wants to surface. More banks will crash. EU officials now contemplate applying the Cyprus medicine to banks in other nations. Even the American Federal Reserve is considering measures that will lessen the government’s heretofore ironclad guarantee of bank deposits.

    Before our very eyes, a financialism counterrevolution is underway even before the progressive revolt was had. If this method of writing off bank losses becomes practice, depositing savings in a bank will soon assume the same risk as investing in the stock market. The very nature of savings and commercial banking will alter. People will feel compelled to ply their savings into more speculative forms of investments. Non-bank investment houses, known as the shadow banking sector, will enjoy a field day.

    If this becomes fashion in the developed economies, it may quickly infect African economies given our penchant for mimicking what comes out of the West without fully understanding the consequences.

    However, what recently took place in South Africa offers a thin hope that the days of mimicry may be ending. On March 26-27, BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) held a summit in Durban whereby they attempted to turn their grouping into something more material than just a notion. They tried to bring some organizational structure and purpose to the unit. They succeeded in part and failed in part.

    At its most ambitious stance, BRICS represents the non-Western world’s latest attempt to restructure the global economic order. BRICS nations are not paradise and their leaders are not always sufficiently versed or statesmen enough to overcome the peculiar national tasks they each face. Thus, creating a supra-national entity transcending geographical bounds and somehow harmonizing these disparate economies is a herculean endeavor. But, some of these leaders tend to run when it comes to most forms of heavy lifting.

    Heretofore, the unity of BRICS has been a negative one. BRICS joined hands not because of what they were; they did so because of what they were not: they were not the West. However, this anti-identity does not do much except if all that is wanted is a new global platform to publicize Western failings. Those failings are so self-evident that limiting BRICS to such a role would quickly render the grouping an intricate but wet fuse.

    BRICS needs to be something more than a club of large economies not situated in the North Atlantic. In Durban, the process of lending the group a positive identity took a few steps. The most noteworthy is the agreement in principle to establish a development bank. Funded in the amount of 100 billion dollars, the bank is envisioned as an alternative to the rabidly financialist IMF and, to a lesser extent, the World Bank. Such a bank will be condign but all will be opposed by established powers. They will see it as directly threatening their ability to impose conservative economic strictures on struggling, beggar nations that now must visit the IMF because there is no other place to go. But IMF remedies are like those of the mad physician who relieves a patient’s pain in the neck by poking a sharp dagger in his back.

    Unfortunately, the agreement regarding the bank was only in principle. The summit could move no further on this issue because BRICS members disagreed over structural and operational details for the bank. Also, it is one thing to stand before the klieg lights and pledge 100 billion dollars before a supportive audience. It is quite another thing to return home to write the checks. Allocating funds to the bank entails cutting funding for extant priorities. Influential elements in each government will be unhappy, seeing the bank as a foreign policy romp prematurely, thus quixotically, made. BRICS also stepped toward strengthening their Business Council. Also, China promised African nations 20 billion dollars in concessionary loans.

    In all of these, China is the biggest winner. Under cover of BRICS, China will pursue its agenda to influence numerous African nations, thus securing supplies of raw materials. However, instead of chasing the hare as a unilateral action, China will do more of this as a member of the BRICS collective. This may help Beijing blunt criticism that it pursues an agenda as equally hegemonic as those of developed nations. However, such criticism is proper and justified given Chinese recent antecedents in Africa. Its policies have revealed a China disinterested in Africa’s independent development. China’s driving mission is to position itself to control African raw materials and strategic industries at their source. The neo-imperialism of the West focuses on gobbling African raw materials then exporting finished manufactured goods and specialized business services to Africa.

    Departing from this model, China reverts to old fashion colonialism. They want to snatch raw materials but are all too willing to export millions of Chinese citizens to run factories and open businesses in Africa. The face of 21st century resident colonialism in Africa is not the face of the Occident. It is the face of China. The “chinafication” of African economies is noticeable in several countries. It may initially bolster local production and GDP. The uptick comes at the longer-term price of mortgaging the nation’s economic sovereignty. As Cyprus and the other nations of the southern tier of the euro zone have shown, sacrificing long-term independence for short-term profit is a wretched bargain.

    Consequently, Africa should applaud the ongoing institutionalization of BRICS. At this point, a group offering a perspective of the world economy different than Western financialism is a positive counterpoise. Western financialism is a corrosive way to model any economy. It is especially disastrous for Africa. We need something else. BRICS may not be the final remedy but perhaps it may be a transition providing some breathing room. For BRICS to be more than a stopgap, it must expand its membership and advocate a more reformist agenda than the one now implied. In some ways, BRICS nations don’t want to amend the current system. They just want to negotiate more room for themselves at the top of the appalling heap.

    With this in mind, Africa must keep an eye on the West and one on China. Both want to keep Africa in subordinate so as to exploit her resources. Africa must be wise by leverage each against the other. If not, this century will not be the advent of Africa’s climb out of poverty. It will be the century of Africa’s compound abuse because this time it will not be just the West larruping us the East too will pounce and extract its portion.

    In the end, talk about economics as an exact science and about the objective rules of finance is the stuff of fables. This is an elaborate nursery tale told to those who the architects of the current global economy would rather have believe in make believe. Too many of Africa’s people are too poor to afford the luxury of believing in things that do not exist and in ideas that do not work except against those who obey them. Africa needs to come to the place where it understands the rules of the current game offer it no respite. The economic and financial regimes set by organs such as the IMF and World Trade Organization are so stacked against the evolution of African economies that should one of them a grow into a developed economy, it will be by accident. Africa needs to confront these regimes to which it has sheepishly agreed. The continent needs to formulate ideas, ways and means that promote its own interests. Then it must use these things to build its own positive economic life and structure, brick by painstaking brick.

     

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  • Generation of change: Young and old people in culture 2

    Generation of change: Young and old people in culture 2

    Serious-minded and well-planned trans-generational collaboration is needed now more than ever

    In these and other writings of Achebe, the country’s new ancestor made it clear to his readers that the responsibility or duty to create a good life for people in pre-colonial and post-colonial Nigeria rests on the shoulders of old and young alike, particularly on the shoulders of all human beings who are emotionally intelligent enough to know that good values lead to good change in the hands of old and young people alike. In other words, Achebe did not see a world divided along binary lines. He saw a world that is driven by ever-present possibility of ‘unitiveness’ or ceaseless negotiation between elements on what appears to be a divide on the surface.

    While Chinua Achebe deserves to rest in perfect peace for the many good ideas he had bequeathed to Nigeria, the call for dialogue on Thursday at Bola Tinubu’s birthday colloquium is timely, coming at a time that our nation needs to change its ways, if it is not to go the way of dinosaur, perishing by avoiding to change.

    We concluded this column last week by saying that the call for inter-generational dialogue at Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s 2013 birthday anniversary colloquium: “Beyond Mergers: A National Movement for Change – A New Generation Speaks” is most timely, coming at a time that our country needs to change its ways, if it is not go the way of dinosaur, perishing by avoiding to change.

    Exactly a week after the colloquium, the British Council released a report that contains more dismal statistics or scary statistical interpretation about the country. Titled ‘British Council Raises Alarm,’ the report says in summary that Nigeria’s population is heading in the direction of swelling by 63 million people by 2050, with the likelihood of becoming the 5th most populous country in the world, and with the likelihood of teetering on the edge of ‘demographic disaster,’ unless the country’s stagnant economy improves rapidly enough to support its teeming population of young people.

    The British Council’s report further observes that large cohorts of unemployed and underemployed young people have the propensity to destabilize society, boost crime and foment conditions where civil conflict becomes more common. The report pontificates that any country that is not well prepared to make the best of its Baby Boom generation can find itself in the midst of ‘a demographic disaster.’ It concludes that if Nigeria fails to respond positively to employment needs of its rising population of young people, it stands the risk of getting its youth radicalized, particularly in the direction of Boko Haram and its Al Qaeda mentor.

    As is expected, Nigerians with fathomless and infectious enthusiasm have not failed to addtheir comments at the end of the British Council’s report online. Some of such comments go thus: “Our stagnant economy of 6.1 growth rate will soon be supporting UK’s stagnant economy of negative -4.6% growth rate,’ and ‘This seems devastating, but before then d youth of Naija will put things in order. Lets (sic) empower one another cos its (sic) one of the way (sic) out.’

    The call for the empowerment of the country’s youths to avoid a demographic disaster is evident in thinking of the organisers of this year’s colloquium in honour of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and in the presentations of the speakers at the colloquium. Certainly, the young Nigerians that spoke to their elders at the colloquium fully understood the problem facing the country when they insisted that senior citizens in party politics must engage them optimally if they are to drive the country from its current position of inertia and ritual celebration of percentage of growth in the last few years to an ethos of action and development that provides employment for the nation’s youth and thus predispose them to self-actualisation.

    One theme that was announced at the colloquium is that Nigeria’s young men and women less than 40 years of age are technology lovers, and like youths across the globe, more computer savvy than their parents who are currently directing the country’s politics in all the political parties. Without doubt, young Nigerians are capable of using Twitter and Facebook and other devices to mobilise citizens to participate in demands for equity and social justice, just as their counterparts in the Arab world were able to do before and during the Arab Spring. Young people thus need to be attracted to joint meetings on the way forward for Nigeria from its decades of self-paralysis.

    The responses of most of the elders at the colloquium suggest that the celebrator’s party is not just interested in creating a large party to take over power from the ruling party of today or to stiffen competition for power between APC and PDP. Elders driving the merger appear interested in more than allowing the younger generation to speak. They want the country’s youth to join them on the train of change. The elders do not seem to be interested just in the technological advantage or superiority of the youth; they are desirous of drawing young people into the new political configuration that is expected to bring new ideas and positive change to the people of the country.

    While the elders have no reason not to acknowledge the technological advantage of Nigerians under 40 years, they also must know that technology is not an end and that the technological wonders of our century is a product of ideology and culture in other parts of the world.Useful as it is, the technological skills of young Nigerians should not be the focus of trans-generational rubbing of minds. What is needed is intellectual and emotional honesty of young and old in efforts by concerned Nigerians in progressive political parties to construct a worldview that can galvanize Nigerians to acknowledge the imperative of change.

    What is most needed is the continuation of the dialogue started at the colloquium beyond the walls of the venue of this year’s festival of ideas. Young people are not to wait to be invited to join a party that is being projected as the party of change. They are expected to insist and act as co-founders of the Merger for change. Young men and women are thus not to wait until the party’s ideology is cast in stone before they engage party leaders on the way forward for the country.

    This is the time for focused trans-generational meetings on the ideology that is capable of keeping the country united and at the same time poised for the kind of economic development that can ensure equity and justice for all. Young people need to be in the boardroom of ideas that create the ideology to change Nigeria from its present paralysis to actualization of the potential of young and old as well as boys and girls. Veteran politicians and aspiring ones need to realize that political culture determines economic development or lack of it. There is no better illustration of this than today’s Nigeria. Both groups ought to create a conducive environment for collaboration on how the new party plans to move millions of the country’s youths out of unemployment or underemployment.

    Similar efforts had been made before. Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his forties joined hands with the likes of Chief Anthony Enahoro then in their twenties to prepare an ideology of Freedom for All, Life more Abundant. This ideology popularized among young and old the duty that political power puts on those in charge of governance, particularly the principle that people voted into power are duty-bound to create and implement policies that assist citizens to have a sense of fulfillment in life and not fight alienation through life as most citizens do in our own country today. Alhaji Aminu Kano also popularised similar ideology of equity and justice in his time in NEPU. The principle that government is created to serve the interest of the people it governs went from Action Group to Unity Party of Nigeria and, to a large extent, to M. K. O Abiola’s Social Democratic Party. It surfaced again in AD and later ACN and in other parties now in the process of merging.

    Serious-minded and well-planned trans-generational collaboration is needed now more than ever, more so at the instance of a new party that sets out to be a national movement for change.

  • America: Where did your dream go!

    America: Where did your dream go!

    •The people must protect democracy for democracy to protect the people.

    This piece returns to the American scene because it is important for Africa to understand the dynamics of America’s political economy. It is insufficient to imbibe the myths hoisted on you. If you accept them, you would believe America invented the words “democracy, justice and right.” Further, you would believe America’s actions are always and everywhere defined by these notions. To accept this perspective is to align on the wrong side of a grave deception. America occupies the pinnacle of military and economic power; possession of such might gives the nation an ability to broadcast its favored version of history and events with a force none can match. This dominance of the portals of information reshapes the minds of others. The frequency with which the fables are told becomes seen by the innocent and unaware as indicative of the accuracy of the message. That you regularly publish something does not make it true. It just makes the average nation and person think it’s true.

    America has always been an imperfect nation that engaged in many ignoble things along the road of national evolution. Slavery, the nearly total eclipse of Native American populations, and the strong-armed theft of the southwestern United States from an unfairly beaten and supine Mexican nation scar the nation’s path to greatness. American would rather you discount these things as mistakes from a dead past. But the past never fully dies; it exists in the present it helped create. These benighted events are as integral to American history as the march toward democracy, economic development and human rights. One set is the full counterpoise of the other. Those who say America is God’s country belittle God, reducing Him to a mortal who respects might and money more than compassion and goodness. America is not God’s nation; it is a man’s nation, save that man is stronger than any other at the moment. Like other nations, America is a mixture of good and bad, of noble and base, and of those who love democracy and those who so despise it that they would turn it into something different if given a chance at a chance. American democracy is not a monolith nor is it an altar at which all Americans worship. It is a composite human organism suffering a terrible affliction within. Some of its parts want no part of it. Ironically, the relatively smooth yet elitist operation of the system has provided those who would undermine democracy the money and power to do so.

    As such, America is a great republic turning small. Today’s America represents a textbook on how to lose democracy not strengthen it. For African nations like Nigeria, there is no lesson more poignant. You will learn much about how to grow your democracy by understanding how America is forfeiting hers. By learning how America bankrupts its democracy, you just might discover how to keep your own.

    Thus, this column frequently returns to the American scene not because America is a positive lesson. We examine America because too many of you perceive it as the pinnacle, when it is not. Once it was; now it is not. However, perception commonly trails reality. This err can be fatal to Africa. Thus we must cure it before it leads Africa backwards.

    Last week, the American government criticized the pardon granted former Bayelsa Governor DSP Alamieyeseigha. Local media was alive with this story. However, something was missing in much of the analysis of this bilateral spat. Reasonable people may differ about the merits of the action so there is little profit in trampling this worn ground. Suffice it to say the act was legal. There also is little utility in arguing that America’s statement represented an unwarranted interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs as America is the supreme global interloper. The American government sees it as its divine right to tell others what to do. This is what America does. What most of the media commentary failed to address was the American government’s obvious hypocrisy in criticizing another nation of corruption when America could not handle what it had in hand.

    While fustigating the pardon came, this same Administration recently found one, possibly two, banks willfully guilty of laundering drug money, with each institution washing nearly one billion dollars in dirty money. This was criminal action performed by senior bank officials. Yet, no criminal charges were had. The excuse was that invoking criminal sanctions would harm the banks. Because the banks were so large and important, such action would damage the economy. Put another way, the law cannot touch them because the officials hold important positions handling other people’s money. This begs a question: What do you call a banker who will not be charged for misappropriating other people’s funds? He is no longer a fiduciary custodian of the funds: he has become a thief in the making.

    Rarely has such a feckless excuse been given by law enforcement officials unwilling to enforce the law. In effect, the Justice Department lent its good offices to injustice. Eschewing the constitution and the laws they swore to uphold, administration officials revealed that Money Power trumped justice in their universe.

    No one was asking the government to set torch to the banks. Certain bank employees were guilty. Punishing them would not crash the banks or ruin the economy. We would have survived just as we make do when a bank official expires or falls ill. These people should have been sanctioned as severely as any drug pusher. Without willing bankers, the drug industry would not be as big, violent and lucrative as it is. It would not menace society as it does. Yet, the bankers were given a free pass. All the banks did was to pay a civil fine. The fine represents noting more than a “tax” on criminal behavior. Justice may be blind but she evidently has acquired a great deference to money.

    Worse, the same Justice Department declared it will not investigate, let alone, prosecute any of the misconduct that precipitated the 2008 global financial meltdown and concomitant recession. This mocks justice. Again the excuse was a spineless wonder. Officials rationalized the financial wrongdoing was too complicated and too massive to prosecute. What! Every major financial crisis is built on a mountain of crimes. The 2008 decline was no exception. Systematic accounting fraud by senior officials in the largest financial institutions reduced the world economy to its knees. Over 20 trillion dollars in nominal wealth was destroyed. Millions lost jobs they shall never regain. Lives becoming synonymous with poverty and unable to bear the weight of their decline, hundreds took their own lives. Meanwhile, the incomes of bank officials responsible for the morass grew, as if they fed off the misery of the economy.

    Authorities pursued wildcat criminals like Bernie Madoff whose one-man pyramid scheme inevitably collapsed. However, Madoff and those like him were fringe players in a larger drama. By foregoing any attempt to prosecute the wrongdoings leading to the financial crisis, the American justice system gave blanket pardon to the perpetrators of a trillion dollar criminal undertaking. In one swoop, the justice system immunized an entire class of professional wrongdoers. It was as if the Administration said, “You stole so much in such an arcane way, we’d rather you keep the loot!” Senior officials in the large financial houses are now above the law. As long as theft is not blatant and is aptly buried in the balance sheet, banker criminals will not be sanctioned and can remain among the most powerful and respected members of society.

    Not only does this pardon shield past wrongs it gives a green light to future sinister conduct. By its permissiveness toward financial wrong, government has approbated the resumption of the hircine behavior that produced the 2008 crisis. This means another financial crisis is inevitable. Shorn of its nigh unintelligible legal jargon, the government’s position is that sophisticated financial crimes which profit large banks are no longer illegal. A nation has reached the height of financialism when criminal justice officials, in contravention of Congress’s legislative prerogative to define crime, unilaterally deem legal financial conduct every sentient person knows is illegal. Sadly, the height point of financialism is a low form of corruption, as barren as the public office corruption bedeviling Africa. However, because people have been indoctrinated to see America as the exemplar of good governance, we don’t see its corruption for what it is.

    America’s big financial institutions are rife with crime but rifer with money able to fuel political campaigns. Consequently, financial firms have disproportionate sway over politicians, including the occupant of the White House. Yet, many firms are populated with senior officials who should be indicted. Instead, they deploy profits improperly acquired to buy undue influence in government. Because of this undue weight, government looks at the financial sector as sacrosanct to the extent that government has decreed that no serious crime can be committed therein. Wall Street is now America’s Vatican and Washington is but government for hire. In comparison, Nigeria’s prosecution of a handful of banking officials, while far from exemplary, still exceeds the American government’s performance in similar circumstance.

    In all, the reasons given by the American government for effectively pardoning the entire class of people who crashed the global economy are not as colorable as the reasons given for the Alamieyeseigha pardon. There may be people with cause to question that pardon. The American government is not one of them. Washington should first remove the forest from its eye before shouting to everyone to come view the speck in Abuja’s. At bottom, America’s grouse is not against corruption. In its hubris, America believes it should define those forms of corruption other nations should commit and those they should not.

    Meanwhile, people who celebrated Obama’s reelection, believing it would free him to become his truer self have gotten their wish. They now wish they hadn’t. The first months of Obama’s second term have been as pleasant as a rotting fish in one’s bed. This column has repeatedly declared Obama a consummate manipulator prone to do the opposite of what he says. For years, I have labeled him a Rockefeller Republican. That description has proven too ebullient. Although he continues to deceive people with his winsome personality, the man has become Nixonian in action.

    During the campaign, he pledged allegiance to the middle class, vowing not to balance the budget on their backs. Yet, outside the glare of the media, his Administration recently sent tens of thousands of government workers on unpaid furlough. Many will be permanently dismissed, never again to find work. By and large, these workers voted for him, hoping against hope that he would bring the change he promised. What they got in return for their trust in this man is change that will impoverish them. They have learned the bitter lesson too late. To lean on Obama is to lean on a mirage. You will fall.

    Obama also claimed he would not undermine Social Security and public health care benefits. However, he joined the Republican congressional leadership in temporizing as the deadline for comprehensive government budget cuts expired. Unable to hide delight as his boss’s political legerdemain, Obama’s chief economic advisor let the rat out of the trap. The advisor revealed the president’s public opposition to the cuts was political theatre. Obama actually wanted the reductions. The cuts would allow Obama to achieve the social service reductions he wanted yet allow him to escape blame for the austere measures. Obama could claim the Republicans forced him into cuts that, in reality, he wanted all along. In other words, He conspired with his Republican interlocutors to confound the electorate and as well as members of his own party who did not expect this level of fiscal austerity from him. That they did not know better was because they did not want to know their president. They would rather believe him than to know him. This may prove a costly preference.

    From the onset of his presidency, Obama set his heart on dismantling the social safety architecture constructed by Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party’s greatest president. Though waving a liberal banner, Obama seeks the conservative Holy Grail: to shrink and privatize social security and public health.

    That Obama does these things although contrary to the interests of the people who voted for him does not make him evil. Like most American politicians, he is more hired hand than elected official. In America, elections mean less than the money that funds them. Without funds, there is no campaign, thus no victory. It is a myth that Obama’s campaign was dependent on no one because it was fueled by millions of small donors. Without the vast sums given him by Wall Street interests, Obama would not have made it. His election was purchased by the few. To the few, he owes his loyalty. This is the way of modern American governance. Elections keep it democratic in form. However, the system has been distorted to where all major candidates are simply indebted to different members of the same class of deep-pocketed donors. Thus, Republicans are now extreme conservatives and the Democratic Party has become moderately conservative on economic matters. In substance, American government is no longer democratic in terms of abiding the will of the electorate. It is democratic only in the venal sense that it is now open for purchase to the highest bidder.

    In the end, democracy is a rather odd species of governance. While other forms of governance leap at self-perpetuation, democracy recoils from longevity. Its core theme is the fundamental equality of man. Yet, not all people believe it. However, democracy does not penalize those who despise it. It allows them the freedom to amass the economic and political power to deracinate the very mode of government that provided them the space and freedom to prosper. A sad trait of human nature is the nearly universal and uncanny ability of elites to come to the wrong conclusion regarding the relationship between their personal attainment and the governing system in which they operate. The wealthier people become, the more they believe their fortune is unilaterally derived. They believe they achieved it despite the system. As such, the system becomes the enemy to their continued advance and fulfillment. They buy and bend the system to fit their purpose. The more it fits them, the less it accords with the majority of society. This is how democracy is placed on the auction block. This is the current state of American governance. It is nothing to celebrate. Emulate it at your peril for you will progress no further than you already have.

     

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