The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Aids deaths and the pharmaceutical industry

    Aids deaths and the pharmaceutical industry

    Several years ago, I began to learn about what I would come to regard as one of the great crimes in human history, whereby millions of people in Africa and elsewhere were cynically allowed to die of AIDS, while western governments and pharmaceutical companies blocked access to available low-cost medication. The outrage I felt as I discovered the details of this story was exceeded only by a deep sense of betrayal mixed with shame for not having known more about it in the first place.

    Today, I find those feelings mirrored in audiences who see my film, Fire in the Blood, which, incredibly, is the first comprehensive account of this horrendous atrocity and how it was eventually halted. As anyone who knows anything about pharmaceuticals will tell you, the name of the game is monopoly. In the case of medicine, monopolies emanate from patents. Typically a patent lasts for 20 years, but drug companies are expert at getting them extended. As long as the monopoly is in place, the company selling the drug can essentially charge whatever they want for it. Pricing is unrelated either to the cost of production (normally a few pennies per pill) or how much was spent in development, but a simple calculation of how to maximise revenue. Though most western countries do have price controls, these typically only keep price levels consistent with other comparable countries, so restraints are minimal.

    Why does society accept this? The narrative the industry has been immensely successful in selling is that it spends vast sums of money on research and development, that this R&D is very high risk, and that monopolies and high prices are a “necessary evil” needed to finance innovation of new medicines. These arguments do not hold up under scrutiny. 84% of worldwide funding for drug discovery research comes from government and public sources, against just 12% from pharma companies, which on average spend 19 times more on marketing than they do on basic research (paywalled link). When we screened our film at the Sundance festival last month, audiences were dismayed to learn how much of their tax money goes to discover medicines which are then sold back to them at monopoly prices nearly half of all Americans surveyed say they have trouble affording.

    In developing countries, where people typically pay for medicines out of pocket, the situation is far worse. Pharmaceutical company representatives have told me that in (relatively prosperous) South Africa, they price their products for the top 5% of the market, while in India their customer base might be just the top 1.5%. The rest of the population is of no interest. At the same time, drug companies are working tooth-and-nail to cut off supplies of lower-cost generic drugs originating in countries such as India, Brazil and Thailand, to make sure that they don’t miss out on a single customer who could possibly pay their sky-high prices.

    At the industry’s behest, governments in the US and Europe use a dizzying variety of trade mechanisms, threats of sanctions and so on to curtail supplies of affordable medicine in the global south. The potential impact of these measures in human terms is nothing less than cataclysmic. As Peter Mugyenyi, director of Africa’s largest AIDS treatment centre, says: “We are on standby awaiting another bloodbath.”

    To any suggestion that the prevailing system of monopolies on medicine is hugely inefficient, immoral and unsustainable, industry apologists contend that “it’s tried and tested”, whereas any proposed alternative would represent a massive gamble. This, again, is totally disingenuous. A vital first step is to raise the bar for granting patents: 90% of drug patents have no meaningful clinical advantages for patients, but nonetheless impede access.

    More significantly, for 70 years Canada had a system prohibiting monopolies on medicine, where patent holders received a statutory royalty on sales of generic equivalents. This maintained profit incentives for innovation, while ensuring the public was not held to ransom by monopoly pricing (it did not, however, produce the windfall profits to which the industry is addicted – so US trade negotiators had it killed under Nafta).

    As unthinkable as it may seem, the horror that saw millions of people die unnecessarily of HIV and AIDS while being denied safe and effective generic medicines produced at a fraction of the prices brand-name companies were charging, could be a mere taste of things to come.

     

  • Soccer as political allegory

    Once again, Nigeria’s legendary luck and mysterious provenance have been on grand display in the recently concluded soccer fiesta in South Africa. Against better fancied and indeed better prepared teams, the eagles have prevailed. It is a tad short of the miraculous. The eagles’ victory came against the run of play both outside and inside the field.

    Yet as this column never tires of asserting, Nigeria is a profound tribute to the subversive genius of the colonial imaginary; a prospective candidate for greatness and the salutary ironies of adversity. When it gets its act together, Nigeria is like its own football team at the summit of its genius. It is pure poetry in motion.

    But no nation has ever lived on football. Otherwise, Brazil would be the greatest nation on earth. If soccer is the new opium of the people, it is a poor tranquiliser indeed. The pains and the torments often return to the afflicted in greater measure. The crises and contradictions resume with greater intensity. The morphine of soccer glories is not always available even under the counter. To forget his woes, an alcoholic has to be permanently drunk, which is impossible. A person who dreams of great riches without hard work has a pact with punitive poverty.

    Now that that the euphoria has died down and the protocol of pundits has vanished, it is time to face once again the ugly realities of our existence. Now that the denizens of public parks and their celebratory fireworks have retreated to their dens, it is time to put the eagles’ victory in proper perspective and within an analytic framework. There are surely lessons to be learnt and it is important to get to the root of the matter before the wrong conclusions are drawn.

    This is not to take anything away from Dr Goodluck Jonathan. An unlucky president also deserves his lucky break. We must be generous even to our political adversaries. Jonathan has every right to milk the eagles’ triumph to its maximum possibility. Napoleon rated good luck above sheer proficiency when it came to assessing his generals. A man may have uncommon abilities, but the gods may conspire against his being catapulted to human greatness.

    If Jonathan’s minders had the presence of mind and are not too consumed by fatuous carping and bitching, they ought to have persuaded their principal to take a picture with the victorious eagles wearing their jerseys. That is what those who have an eye to history and posterity do. There is an iconic picture of General Yakubu Gowon in Eagles’ jerseys as he welcomed the victorious Eagles team of 1973. Shortly after that, the eagles were handed a 5-1 shellacking by the no-nonsense Zambians.

    Still, this last one was sweet and sublime victory. Snooper shared in all the hoopla and euphoria. It was great and good to be a Nigerian once again. In the global circuits, only those who travel frequently can describe how national misfortune can determine the fortune of the national. At Boston Airport last Monday, an American Custom official cheerily and heartily waved snooper on, congratulating him on the victory of the eagles. Have a good country and you will travel. It is a profound irony that Nigeria’s greatest soccer moments in the last 30 years have come either in time of unwholesome military dictatorships or under-performing civilian governments.

    In the end, nothing must take away the sterling performance of the eagles’ boys and the sublime coaching skills of Stephen Okechukwu Keshi. Nobody gave the boys a chance. Official support was niggardly. There were dark and ominous hints that Keshi himself has been penciled for dismissal after the game. The seamy racket involving the recruitment of foreign coaches was about to unfurl again.

    But Keshi triumphed against all odds and adversities. Having conjured something out of nothing, his achievement is nothing short of the miraculous. It is an interesting irony that having travelled around a bit, it is at home that Keshi would finally find his moments and materials. There is often an ineluctable logic to human destiny.

    Stephen Keshi has shown us what is possible when grit, persistence and determination combine with natural talents and home-made resources. In a sense, this ought to be the story of Nigeria itself, but why it is not so is a question the Nigerian people and their political elite would have to answer before the court of history. Keshi has shown the character and aplomb, the cheeky brilliance and the ability to cock a snook at adversity which have made Nigerians to be unique specimens around the globe.

    In other words, what we are saying is that the eagles’ soccer triumph is a political allegory for Nigeria. It points at , and at the same time, points away from the political quagmire of the present and what can be achieved once the correct lesson has been drawn. It shows what can happen to a nation once ethnicity, quota system and federal character are shunned in the recruitment of national leadership. Keshi has proved to us that once these viruses are taken on headlong, the nation can come up with its true First Eleven on the field of soccer.

    But soccer has never rescued a nation or its political class from internal contradictions or a crisis of development and eventual damnation. Snooper once asked a famous American professor friend why he thinks that the US lags behind Brazil in soccer, despite its immense riches and resources. My friend looked sternly at me as if snooper had lost his mind.

    “Well, we can’t allow our boys roaming the beaches in the morning and practicing soccer when they should be in school. In America, any youth who plays soccer in the morning will end up with the police in the afternoon.” Then he added the devastating clincher. “For every Pele and Maradona so produced, there are at least a hundred miscreants. These are social pellets and time-bombs.”

    When a soccer-besotted snooper thus lamented the fact that in the event, America would never be a great footballing nation, the professor snapped. “Well better a great country than a great footballing nation. In any case, all your great and exceptional footballers will end up in the west to entertain us. Many of them will never go back and you will never hear of their children as footballers, but as successful professionals in other fields.”

    Still, it will be a poorer world without great soccer stars and great footballing nations. The tantalising and intriguing question must now be posed. Will Brazil trade off something through the great and sterling efforts of its recent leaders in lifting more and more people out of the poverty loop and in clearing the slums and the beaches of their gifted urchins?

    All pointers are in that direction. In recent years and as Brazil gained greater economic prosperity, political justice and racial equality, its soccer fortunes also appear to have dipped. The endless production of soccer prodigies has not quite halted but the factory line appears to be stalling and spluttering. In recent years, Brazil appears to be no longer at the cutting edge of soccer artistry.

    Its last truly great team were the 1982 World cup soccer wizards including the recently departed Socrates, Falcao, Junior and Eder, he of the dipping outrageously long shots. It managed to win the World Cup in 1994 after a tedious and uninspired performance. The bulk of that team would later succumb to an inspired Nigerian team which came from behind to beat them at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

    We have now come up with a troubling social and historical conundrum. Brazil and Nigeria present us with allegorical parables. Could it be that the more underdeveloped a nation is, the more overdeveloped its football is? Germany and to a lesser extent, Holland, Italy, Spain, France and Britain are obvious exceptions. But it could also be that the great irrational alchemy which produces the truly outstanding soccer maestros such as Pele, Tastao, Garincha, Revelino, Eusebio, Puskacs and Maradona could only thrive on poverty, biblical misery and great social inequity.

    No son of a truly rich person has ever become a great footballer, or legendary boxer for that matter. A madman is a grand spectacle as long as he is not your sibling. For many Africans and Latinos, soccer is the surest escape route from the poverty loop. But in this case individual salvation does not lead to collective salvation.

    The choice is stark for developing countries like Nigeria. They may have to choose between soccer glory and accelerated development. Without economic development, the powerhouse of soccer is nothing but the football of the real powerhouses of the world. They will almost be kicked to death until they escape the prison house of soccer glory. It is a tragic paradox but such is the stuff of human history.

  • A rendezvous with Rauf

    A rendezvous with Rauf

    In the end, all politics is local. While we are still talking about accelerated economic development for the greatest benefit of the greatest number, it is meet to report on the latest efforts in the regional integration department. For the past one week, snooper has been trampling and traversing some major intellectual and economic powerhouses of American global supremacy with Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the energetic and indefatigable governor of Osun State, Nigeria.

    Snooper often relishes the role of intellectual mugger and bouncer all rolled into one, and it has been a memorable cultural and cerebral feast. From Harvard in Cambridge, Boston, through the Carnegie Mellon empire in Pittsburgh to Howard University in Washington, snooper was there, sparring and not sparing and with the fury of an ageing boxer threatened by terminal retirement.

    The aim of the visit is two-fold. First, to avail potential investors, particularly well-heeled Nigerians in the Diaspora, of the bold and visionary developmental strides undertaken by the Osun state government. Secondly, to test the main intellectual planks of the regional developmental paradigm against the critical interrogation of an academic audience that does not take kindly to flabby-minded drooling and empty posturing.

    It was going to be very hard to convince an audience steeped in western hegemony that there is no single monolithic route to modernisation and economic development. Western modernity is just one version of the multiple narratives through which human development can be framed. There was nothing preordained or inevitable about it. The advanced society does not wear a single coluration or complexion. Aregbesola spoke convincingly to these issues without being fazed or overwhelmed by the distinguished audience. Only the massively self-assured could go to a Harvard teeming with monetary school cold warriors to defend the importance of Keynesian economics and massive state intervention

    Perhaps snooper should drop an ironic mea culpa for all those who equate regional integration with a secessionist ploy. Aregbesola was once accused of being the political arrowhead of this separatist agenda with snooper duly fingered as its intellectual godfather by the same columnist. This usually perceptive chap ought to know much better, but that is a matter for another day. If one is going to be intimidated by an animal with horns, it is not going to be a snail.

    Next week, snooper would bring the full report of the trip. It was not just an intellectual tour de force, it was also socially engaging. Among many others including the Walter Carrington couple, snooper was treated to a rousing meal of pounded yam in the home of his childhood friend, Jacob Kehinde Olupona, Professor of African Traditional Religion at the Harvard School of Divinity only to be ambushed the very next day by Tayo Akinwande, a.k.a Tata, a software prodigy and Professor of Electrical Engineering at M.I.T, who could barely contain his excitement on hooking up with snooper after so many decades.

    There he was, now impressively beefed up and exuding the aura of absent-minded brilliance, hollering snooper’s undergraduate nom de guerre with great relish. Snooper had been their adored leader and campus generalissimo in the department of sophomoric delinquency. Forty years later, the table turned as the leader became the led and yours sincerely barely managed to survive Tata’s onslaught at a downtown Boston bar. Sweet revenge came when our man spent about 20 minutes frantically searching for his phone. It was in his pocket all along. Oh la la, as they say.

  • Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)

    Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)

    Dr Doyin Okupe, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, lit a fire under the buttocks of squirming Yoruba leaders about 10 days ago when he blamed them for engendering the marginalisation of their region. It was a beguiling view that upset this column last week. On the surface, he was right to blame the Yoruba for authoring their own woes, but a thorough examination would show the foundation of his argument to be absolutely weak. Let me quote him again: “The issue of marginalisation of the Southwest was a political misadventure and political accident brought about by the Yoruba themselves. If you would recollect, the Yoruba were supposed to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the number four position in Nigeria. Due to political mishandling of the leadership of the Yoruba and also the sabotage of the Yoruba people by Yoruba leadership elsewhere, I am talking of the ACN now, the Yoruba leadership in the ACN conspired against the Yoruba people and allowed that position to be taken away. That was the beginning of the marginalisation. You see, when people sit down to share what is not enough and you don’t have anybody to speak for you, there is a problem.”

    Of course, every political observer is sensible enough to know that Okupe was wrong to have located the genesis of Yoruba marginalisation in the controversial election of Hon Aminu Tambuwal as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Marginalisation of the Southwest, which appears orchestrated under President Goodluck Jonathan, quite clearly predated the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) support for Tambuwal or the repudiation of Hon Mulikat Akande-Adeola. Okupe’s conclusion also glossed over the political complexities that convulsed the House of Representatives’ leadership election in 2011, and unthinkingly simplified the intrigues and motivations integral to the appointment and placement of public and security officials in Nigeria. Even if Hon Mulikat had been elected Speaker, and assuming that by some deft machinations she held on to that post for as long as Tambuwal has, few would be convinced she could blunt the factors that have led to the marginalisation of the Yoruba, which factors the Yoruba themselves apparently misunderstand and mishandle.

    Okupe is not the first to polemicise the Yoruba marginalisation claim, even though his observation, on the surface, appears irreproachable. The YUF and the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), both of which broadly speaking represent two contradistinctively ideological pressure groups in the Southwest, have also made similar observations. That the Southwest is deeply marginalised is, therefore, not in doubt. What is in dispute is the cause of the problem. Okupe’s arguments foundered badly when he placed the blame on the ACN’s repudiation of Hon Mulikat. The YUF took a different point of departure in identifying the factors responsible for the problem. Both by the speeches of some their leaders and the communique issued at the end of their Thursday meeting, YUF suggested that lack of unity was responsible for the region’s marginalisation. Perhaps this partly accounts for why the group has Unity embedded in its name.

    But YUF also insinuated that in view of the political realignments going on in the country, Southwest politicians needed to avoid deceit in acquiescing to mergers. We can only guess what YUF meant when it talked of unity. For reasons quite unrelated to the objectives of cooperation, the Forum is generally unenthusiastic about Southwest regional integration, which would have been a solid basis for the kind of unity they envision, assuming they truly think unity is a driving force in checkmating marginalisation. And since it is only the ACN from the Southwest that is in the process of merging with other parties, the warning issued by YUF could only have been meant for that party. However, both by its warning against merger and its lack of enthusiasm for integration, the YUF unwittingly lends credence to the existence of political and, maybe, too, ideological divisions in the region, which divisions it perhaps unknowingly exacerbates, if not endorses. YUF may in fact see Yoruba unity as one in which leading Yoruba political and business elites queue behind the Forum or at least pay allegiance to Ikenne, the home of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    But as I have argued in this place many times, that kind of unity is nothing but a chimera. It was never existent even in Awolowo’s time, and it may never happen. Moreover, it is doubtful whether it is desirable. Stripped to the bones, it is hard to see how lack of unity could have fostered marginalisation if other factors were not at play, or if the national political leadership had not been deliberately manipulative, mischievous, insensitive and even incompetent. If the presidency knew its onions, and had taken to heart lessons about how conflicts predispose countries to disintegration, it would have been proactive in promoting power balance, fair play and justice among ethnic and regional groupings in the country. Must Abuja be told what grave consequences often follow deliberately orchestrated power asymmetry, especially when power is skewed for purely parochial reasons or as a punitive exercise to undermine troublesome and exuberant opposition?

    Let me state it once again that there will never be unity in the Southwest whether demographically, ideologically, religiously or politically in the sense being advanced by YUF. It is enough that the Yoruba are culturally united, and as a result, and to a large extent, are generally progressive. But their progressivism does not even rise to the level of ideology, and need not, for they are a people at bottom fractious, disputatious, and made up in many disturbing parts of pockets of unprincipled and subversive individuals and entities. They are the only people capable of producing a winner in Chief MKO Abiola, and creating the counteracting forces of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s enviousness and Chief Ernest Shonekan’s betrayal. They are the only people capable of producing the insightful and gifted Awolowo, and nurturing the equally gifted but contumacious Chief Ladoke Akintola. Indeed, as the living Awolowos will recall, the opposition to their patriarch was so insidious at a point that it seemed the whole Yoruba political and judicial elite united against him. I fear that YUF is tilting at windmills. They speak of unity and warn of treacherous mergers; but they had attempted to prop up Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State as the counterforce to the prevailing political leadership in the Southwest, in spite of his formless political and developmental visions, general lack of fidelity to noble ideas and principles, and lack of foresight.

    If the marginalisation of the Yoruba is to be understood, it is certainly not in terms of unity or the lack of it of the people, and not in terms of their ideologies and political affiliations. There is no part of the country that is united, whether Southeast, South-South, or even the seemingly monolithic North. Yes, the Yoruba are to a large extent responsible for the marginalisation of their region, but it is not in the sense Okupe argued, nor in the sense proposed by YUF, nor yet in the sense analysed by most commentators. After all, if we must talk of political unity, it is only Ondo State that is out of the ACN column in the Southwest. Surely no one expects that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) must merge with the ACN in the region for unity to exist or for the region to escape marginalisation.

    The single most important factor in the marginalisation of the Southwest is probably the image of itself projected by the region. That image, though a little complex, is actually unflattering. Many observers have suggested, with good reason, that if Abiola had hailed from the North, and the head of state at the time of the 1993 elections had been an army general from the Southwest instead of Gen Ibrahim Babangida, not only would it have been difficult to annul the presidential election of that year, it would have been even more difficult to appoint an interim replacement. This logic may be simplistic and far-fetched, but it was easy to undermine Awolowo in 1963, easy to replace Abiola in 1993, and even easier to recruit those who connived at their replacements and colluded with the national leadership of the day to thwart their political victories.

    Pursuant to this observation, I think the Southwest projects the image of an irresolute and long-suffering people in the face of external oppression and machinations. Just as they produce brilliant non-conformists and political juggernauts, they also produce enterprising reactionaries and subversive heavyweights. Babangida had on many occasions insinuated that the annulment of the 1993 presidential election was at the instance of highly placed personalities, some of them from the Southwest. He also added that we would be shocked if we knew the identities of the conspirators. Before then, as if troubled by his conscience, Obasanjo had said the heavens would not fall as a result of the 1993 poll cancellation. And for effect, he added that Abiola was not the messiah we longed for. Conspiracy and treachery are not the exclusive preserve of the Yoruba. But they have managed to turn both into an art. This was why it was not difficult to find Southwest judges to put Awolowo away and stymie his political ambitions. This was also why Obasanjo actively endorsed the infamy of 1993. And this is why Nigerian leaders always find ready accomplices among the Yoruba to subvert the aspirations and principles that have ennobled the Southwest for many generations.

    But the image of group envy, group subversion and fractiousness projected by the Yoruba to the outside world is not a recent phenomenon. It predates colonialism. It manifested in Afonja’s rebellion when he took Ilorin out of the orbit and protection of the Oyo Empire in 1817; and when Ibadan for economic and political reasons attempted to address that historical anomaly, it took fellow Yoruba states working in concert to undermine that effort in the late 19th century. The talent to undermine one another is evergreen in the region. YUF, I think, sees unity in terms of its own goals and ambitions. If Mimiko resists friendship with ACN, it is not because he really fears that the progressive party’s hegemony would be destructive, but because his horizon is limited and is therefore unable to key in to wider regional economic and political aspirations. It should not surprise anyone that the much-ballyhooed Southwest regional integration effort is stalling. The region’s governors are not operating on the same wavelength, do not share the lofty vision of integration equally, do not have the capacity to clearly see the shape of the future, and cast wary glances at one another, fearing to be outdone or to be outshone.

    In all this, the Yoruba, in spite of their principles, progressivism and civilisation unfortunately give the impression of a weak and exploitable people who crave for unity on the surface but are at bottom committed to undermining their own leaders, regional goals and survival. President Goodluck Jonathan simply does not feel threatened by them as he feels threatened by, say, the North. If he attempts to appoint a few more Yoruba into key offices, it will be nothing more than sheer tokenism designed for electoral gains, or a belated attempt to correct his own leadership shortcomings for having presided over such indefensible lopsidedness.

    There are some countries you will think twice before attacking; and there are ethnic groups a leader will think twice before marginalising. The Yoruba do not project that deterrence, that implacable force and power that would make it unattractive for anyone to marginalise them. They are marginalised because their enemies sense their weaknesses, their isolation, their instinctive ethnocide. In their plaintive cry of marginalisation, they cut a pitiable figure of a people burdened by centuries of character flaw, of a people unable to subordinate their individual ambitions beneath their transcendental group objectives, and of a people so terribly buffeted by enemies that in the past few decades they have begun to doubt their own strengths, compromise their own foresightedness, and for the first time actually face a dilemma so cruel that their leaders have to seem to disavow their ‘Yorubanness,’ like Abiola and Obasanjo did, to win a major election.

    Concluded

  • Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    ‘Those who aspire to political leadership must on no account be sheltered from the hard knocks which a political career in a democracy inevitably entails’ –AWO. 

     

    While linguists are thematic in explaining phenomena and the scientist advances knowledge by formulating a question, collecting data and then testing a hypothesis, a historian, like me, prefers the use of epochs in analysing historical events.
    We therefore proceed to address today’s topic from epoch to epoch in the hope that it will serve as a guide in making our choices in the series of elections that will commence in the region, come 2014, long before the general elections of 2015, God keeping Nigeria intact. I begin then with what I call:
    AWO’s GOLDEN ERA
    Awo’s golden era in Yoruba land did not come on a platter. And to prove this, we need not re-invent the wheel. Rather, we take sanctuary in AWO -THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO, from which we shall quote at some length. He wrote: ‘I fully recognise that the healthy growth of a democratic way of life requires the existence of an enlightened community led by a group of people who are imbued with the all-consuming urge to defend, uphold and protect the human dignity. At the very beginning, wrote the Avatar, ‘ in the region, outside Lagos, democratic practices were unknown. At the local government level, many Obas and Chiefs were autocrats with legislative backing. Native courts, where justice were expected to be administered, were dens of corruption and instruments of tyranny and oppression. ‘As things stood, we knew on which side we should be: the poplar side, the peoples’ side’. But we wanted to try to carry the Obas and Chiefs with us though, for them, it was going to be a sudden transformation from the ancient to the modern. Awo, through tact and great seriousness of purpose, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in doing precisely that.
    ‘But,’ he continues: ‘there were the other freedoms –freedom from ignorance, freedom from disease and freedom from want which would, doubtless, encounter towering problems of an intractable character’. But he did not flinch. The government promised to introduce the following people-friendly policies before the end of its five-year term. 1. Free, universal primary education for all children of school age; 2. Free medical treatment for all children up to the age of 18; 3. One hospital each for each of the 24 administrative Divisions in the Region which did not yet possess one; 4. Improvements in agricultural technique and higher returns for farmers; 5. Better wages for the working class; 6. Improvement of existing roads and bridges and the construction of new ones; 7. Water supply to urban and rural areas.’
    To accomplish these, Awo and his colleagues were determined to blast their way through whatever problems, and compel the force of any adverse circumstance to serve their will’. This was because, in his words, they ‘had put in long and hard preparations to meet the challenges and they had evolved elaborate plans which they were ready to launch at a moment’s notice. What is more –I quote Awo again –‘we had an abiding, flaming faith in the soundness and practicable-ness of our plans. We regarded ourselves as crusaders in a new cause, and as eminently qualified for the pioneering role which we had imposed on ourselves’. All these, if nothing else, demonstrate that Awo saw governance as serious business; not the same way some gold-chain adorning, skin bleaching governors did in their time.
    With such preparations, many times going far into the nights when some of his political opponents were busy carousing with women of easy virtue, his millennial achievements which have continued to make the SouthWest a primus inter pares, should not be a surprise. The fact that, in addition to free and universal primary education, the region had colour television long before some European countries, that the Liberty Stadium was built or that Cocoa House, then arguably Nigeria’s tallest building, erupted, not out of oil, but cocoa money, could only have been expected from such single-mindedness.
    THE MILITARY YEARS
    The least said of those years of the locust the better. It was a long period during which soldiers, total strangers who had probably never heard of an Awo and what economic miracles he wrought in the region , were foisted on us and did with us as they deemed. As for the few of them, Yoruba, today’s parlous state of Cocoa Industries, Ikeja, remains an unforgettable testimony to their stewardship.
    PDP’s STERILE 8 YEARS
    One of Obasanjo’s main reasons for railroading the Southwest into the PDP was to compete with, or probably, overshadow Awo, the man he had earlier derided as never achieving the Nigerian presidency which he, in turn, got on a platter of gold. But that chimera fizzled out only after eight years as the people soon banished the pretenders to political Siberia. It was even short-circuited in Ekiti via an inchoate impeachment and declaration of a pre-meditated emergency rule. When I write about the PDP the way I do, it is not out of disrespect. Rather it is because of the laisser-faire, and thoroughly unserious manner in which they take governance. They want power solely for its perquisites but never for its huge responsibilities. While I know, for instance, that both Rauf Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi are students of Awo and I am aware, on good authority, that Fashola carries Awo’s books he is reading even into his rest room, barring perhaps Gbenga Daniel, which of the then Southwest PDP governors ever opened a rigorous book by Awo? How then could they have been motivated by the man they all love to claim as their own too? How could they have learnt from the many problems which confronted him both from within and without? How could they have realised, like Awo knew then, that the people must be the focus of government policies, indeed, its raison d’être, such that they would not indulge in those things in government which they could not afford through their own personal means? Obviously without reading Awo’s thoughts and getting to know the philosophical underpinning of his socio-economic policies, Regional Integration would never have meant a thing to those gentlemen even if they served as governors for their entire lifetime. I have conscientiously sought, but in vain, for one single mention of Regional Economic Integration during those 8 years.
    It never surprises me that all we remember of PDP years in control of the Southwest are decayed infrastructure, run-down education, mayhem, total neglect of the elderly among us and a complete absence of pan-Yoruba peace which the present regime of peace daily brings into bold relief.
    THE A C N YEARS OF HEALTHY COMPETITION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
    At first glance the above looks like a contradiction in terms. But it is not. While the I’s of Regional Integration are being dotted and the serious work required for its proper formulation are being undertaken by the DAWN Commission under the absolutely patriotic and determined leadership of its chairperson, Hon Wale Oshun, the governors, in turn, are learning from one another and assiduously replicating the good plans they have for the people.
    In Education, the governors are equipping pupils and teachers with computer hardware and paraphernalia; schools are being rehabilitated as Ekiti has done for all its 183 schools; Osun is more than doubling up on agriculture, urban renewal and roads are progressing admirably in Oyo and Ogun states respectively while Lagos remains simply unbeatable. I recently listened to Dr Femi Hamzat, Lagos state commissioner for Works, on the Opeyemi Agbaje T.V Programme, and I was completely stupefied at what the Fashola government has done in the area of transportation infrastructure in the state and its plans even for the next 25 years. Such brain work you never found in the PDP which is really what pains any serious observer of our polity and the very reason I always argue that our politicians are not all the same. There is, indeed, a world of difference because, after all, the governor currently making waves in Akwa Ibom is of the PDP. But in the Southest, we never one day saw them rule for the well being of our people. It was all about self. Granted that the tenure of A C N governors is still largely a work in progress, I haven’t a scintilla of doubt that they will all leave their names in gold, since morning, as they say, shows the day.

  • Murder, most foul and vicious

    Murder, most foul and vicious

    Believing that what personally touches one must come last, this column does not always encourage any emotional incontinence from even its creator. It was a great author who admonished that we must always separate the man who suffers from the artist that creates. But there are moments when the profoundly private cannot be separated from the powerfully public, when what we have all made of Nigeria returns like a monster to stare us in the face, and when an injured man must return to the community for solace and succour.

    This morning, snooper evacuates the cerebral fireworks and the din of agonistic contention from this column to mourn our late and beloved aburo who perished in the hands of hideous hoodlums on the notorious Ife-Ibadan road in the early evening of January 26th. He was returning to Ibadan after a funeral reception in the ancestral town of Gbongan. But he never made it back to the warm embrace of his beloved wife at their Iyaganku GRA residence.

    A chartered auditor, Godwin Kolawole Adedeji was a scion of the notable Adedeji family of Gbongan and the famed Ojo family of Ibadan. He was a director in the Federal Ministry of Mines and Power. Before then, he had served his country meritoriously in NAPEP and the Petroleum Trust Fund. He had also worked at the UAC as an auditor before transferring his services to the public sector.

    All those who met and interacted with him in the places he had worked spoke of a quiet and reticent fellow, devoted to duty and hard work and given to stoic fortitude and Christianly forbearance. He was also a man of immense personal generosity, lavishing kindness and affection on all who came his way without any ethnic or religious bias. He was a model Nigerian. Had he been allowed to live, Kola would have turned fifty eight in March.

    By all accounts, it was a life of humility, piety and studied self-effacement. He did not push himself or push anybody around. He was courteous and polite in the extreme. Even in our old age, Kola still greeted snooper with the Yoruba deferential gesture of half-prostration, despite the fact that he was already a grandfather several times over.

    But he was not a softie by any stretch of the imagination. On both sides of the family, he was descended of illustrious warriors, and he could tackle like a compact tank. As a youth, he was known as the “admiral” and till the end there was still something of a martial gait to his quiet bearing.

    His loss is Nigeria’s loss because it was said by those who know of these things that he was in close contention for the post of Auditor General of Nigeria. Now the audit is on the grim statistics of elite haemorrhage in Nigeria. Once again, we mourn for a country which like a deranged old hen must suck life out of its most precious eggs in order to prolong its miserable existence.

    How does it feel writing the obituary of your own younger sibling? It is a stark reversal of the evolutionary process. This is too close to call even when one is a compulsive glutton for punishment. How does a traumatised wife explain to the children who have all partaken of a mire humane and civilised existence in Canada that she found their father’s lifeless body with the skull openly split by a crude axe right there on the Ife-Ibadan road near the quarry at Wasinmi? What a savagely ironic mockery of that village’s name!

    The grim reaper has been at work, scything down anything and anybody at sight like one of those dreaded and iconic Egunguns of Yoruba folklore. Once, we were many youths roaming the wild, enjoying the bounteous fruits of nature and eating from the communal pot of their father, S.A, the notable teacher and community leader.

    Now like a Homeric battlefield, men and women are falling on all sides in a crushing pile. The great future that we dreamt about is almost behind. It was a life of schooling, but may be we missed something about the school of life. We went to school as we were told only to succumb to those who didn’t.

    We have been taught a hard lesson by them. You cannot create a personal paradise in an environment of consuming hell. They will come for you, and as they say in America, just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not going to get you. Once your number comes up in the irrational lottery of a dysfunctional society, there is nothing anybody can do about that.

    In a traumatised society, metaphysical self belief is often a talisman for physical self disbelief. Last Thursday evening, snooper departed Kola’s residence in Ibadan after a service of songs in company of a childhood friend who had recently retired as a Permanent Secretary in Lagos state. We were heading for Gbongan to be with the family in preparation for the burial the following day.

    It was getting late and a hideous and fearful pall of darkness suddenly descended on the notorious Ife-Ibadan road. Having cautioned his friend about the dangerous folly of travelling on that road at night, yours sincerely was full of premonition and dark foreboding. But like all people who believe they are metaphysically fortified, our friend would have none of snooper’s words of cautionary wisdom.

    As darkness enveloped everywhere and driving becomes a function of autopilot, our friend growled at snooper. “ I never knew you are this security conscious. Listen, you are travelling with the anointed”. Snooper took a look at him and quipped. “When the armed robber chaps get hold of your bulky frame, you tell them you are anointed. They will ask you, oga wetin you say before ramming your skull.” By that time, the anointed will need ointment if not some immediate life-saving surgery.

    Unknown to our friend, snooper was actually thinking that his (our friend’s) older brother, Segun, had perished in a terrible early evening accident on the same road a decade and a half earlier. Decades before this, their father had also succumbed in a different theatre of road carnage. But even then it is getting impossible to even leave your room these days without being reinforced by some mystical faith in your destiny if not destination.

    As if to confirm snooper’s premonitory hunch, and by an almost preternatural development, there on the road and at a very sharp bend after Ikire very close to where Kola was murdered was an articulated lorry lying completely athwart the road. But for the prompt and timely intervention of the police who opened a bypass for motorists, the carnage would have been unimaginable. Snooper at this point could hear some fearful rumbling from the anointed. But it was a mere vigorous shaking of the lottery can. Our numbers were not up, not yet. At 8.23 am the following morning, the vehicle was still lying across the road.

    How did we get to this point in this country where you leave your loved ones in the morning and you are not sure whether you will be returned to them in a body bag? Or whether it is your spouse that will happen upon your corpse in the middle of the road? Kola’s murder has all the dark hints of a modern whodunit and the satanic ingenuity of a professional execution.

    At first, it was given out that he had jumped from a moving car and smashed his head against the road. But the autopsy has revealed something darker and more sinister. His head injuries were from an axe which suddenly struck. Frozen for posterity were the looks of quizzical horror and tormented bewilderment. What have I done to deserve this, he seems to be asking his sadistic executors.

    That question must now be answered by the men of Osun State police command. This is one vicious murder that must not be swept under the carpet under the guise of permanent investigation. The bald and bare facts are there. Kola did not kill himself. Somebody somewhere must be responsible for this heinous crime against humanity.

    By all corroborated accounts, Kola left the funeral reception around six in the early evening to get to Ibadan. He never did. At the bumps just outside Wasinmi and before Ikire, some armed hoodlums intercepted the car and abducted him. He was taken to a nearby bush where it is believed a stormy confrontation took place.

    Thereafter, he was struck twice at the back of the head with a crude instrument. His body was taken back to the point where he was abducted and deposited near the road. To remove all evidence, the abductors burnt the car they operated with. They were also hoping that by the following morning the body would have been smashed up by traffic with vultures completing the rest. But this was not to be. The body was discovered in the early hours of the morning by his wife who had set out from Ibadan to find out what was going on.

    This is obviously not the work of some amateur killers. This is professional elimination by hard and hardened criminals. The police must find out what is behind this callous execution. All leads must be followed to their logical conclusion, and the criminals brought to justice. There are indications that the highest echelons of government apparatus in Osun State have already swung into action. This is as it should be. This will not bring Kola back to his family but it will effect a much needed closure. May his gentle and noble soul find perfect repose.

  • Some political insults for the road

    One thing that is missing in the contemporary political atmosphere of Nigeria is the great art of political insult such as was evident particularly in the First Republic and classically in the Anglo-American political theatre. It is an index of the lack of education and preparation of our current political class that they cannot come up with the wit and brio to match the forensic exertions of their illustrious forebears. They are nothing but dismal caricatures and epigones of this distinguished tradition. Since snooper is in a foul and uncharitable mood, we will supply three political and literary insults for the road.

    1

    Benjamin Disraeli, the great author and remarkable politician, was once accosted by a furious younger opposition parliamentarian. “Sir, it seems to me that you will either die on the gallows or of some horrible venereal disease”, the younger man bellowed.

    “ Youngman, that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress”, the great man shot back.

    11

    And when the selfsame Disraeli was asked to explain the difference between a calamity and a catastrophe, his eye twinkled with epic mischief..

    “You know William Gladstone?” Disraeli began in reference to his greatest political foe. “Well if Gladstone were to fall into a river, that would be a calamity”, Then he quickly added the mortal clincher. “But if anybody were to pull him out, that would be a catastrophe.”.

    111

    George Bernard Shaw, the great Anglo-Irish dramatist was a notorious hell-raiser and incorrigible social gadfly. He was once the object of lavish attention from a leading lady of the London literary saloon and a rich heiress to boot. Thinking that Bernard Shaw would be flattered to be the object of her adulation and public affection, she sent him a telegram of invitation.

    “Lady B…will be home tomorrow at 7pm”, the telegram read.

    “So will Bernard Shaw”, came the prompt reply by return telegram.

  • After Ratzinger, enough with the old European Popes!

    He was supposed to be ‘God’s Rottweiler.’ In Newsweek, A.N. Wilson looks at the paradox of Benedict XVI. 

    My wife exclaimed, when she heard of the pope’s surprise announcement to retire: “It’s bad enough having one old man thinking he’s infallible—now there’ll be two of them!” Our conversation went on to imagine the election of yet another octogenarian, who might well in turn resign before the demise of Benedict. Pretty soon, the Vatican could fill up with retired infallible old men, most of them Italian, all nodding in front of the daytime television in the geriatric wing, and all—all—infallible.

    My guess is that this time, they won’t go for yet another ancient European, and they will plump for a cardinal either from Africa or South America. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana would be good. Another possibility is Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria—an arch-conservative who makes Ratzinger seem like a wishy-washy Anglican. (Which in many ways he is!)

    But my money is on Cardinal Leonardo Sandri of Argentina. At 70, he is the ideal age—with 10 years, at least, before he joins the other infallibles in the dayroom. Additionally, he has the great advantage of being, at present, in charge of the Vatican’s relationship with the Eastern churches—and it is surely the moment in history to reunite Rome with the Orthodox. And he is also a voice of South America—and that must be heard. Europe and North America have grown deaf to the faith, and the church needs someone from elsewhere to nourish the flame once more.

    Whatever happens, for a pope who was elected on the traditionalist ticket, it was a curious thing to retire. Popes just don’t retire. And then he did. Ever since his moment of truth in 1968, when the rioting students of Tübingen converted the liberal-minded Joseph Ratzinger into the Enemy of the Enlightenment and Defender of Catholic Reaction, this has been a man—surely—who wanted to revert to the way things were in the good old days, back in … er … when exactly?

    That has always been the problem for “traditionalists” or “conservatives” in any sphere of life—church, politics, family life. How far do you want to go back? At what point, exactly, did things begin to go wrong?

    Appointed as John Paul II’s righthand man, Ratzinger was the Nasty Cop, engaged to wage war on the liberals. But in point of fact, he was always a much subtler figure than his enemies—or, more dangerously—his fans believed. Almost the first thing he said to the English Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was: “When are we going to make Newman a saint?”

    John Henry Newman, the 19th-century convert from Anglicanism, in 1845 wrote a world-changing book—literally—called The Development of Christian Doctrine. In it, he posited that nothing stays the same; everything is in a state of flux and development. He popularized the Hegelian view of the world for English speakers, and thereby prepared the world for Darwin and modern political democracy. But it took a while for the church—in the Second Vatican Council—to catch up. Ratzinger, behind the old-fashioned vestments, and the occasional sharp message to American or German liberal theologians, has always in fact been a Newman Catholic, aware that the church, for all its historic roots in the world of late classical antiquity, is ever changing, ever new.

    Dante Alighieri, not a poet who minced his words about popes, had no hesitation in sending to hell the only pope who had resigned in his lifetime. True, he did not put the resigning pope in the very pits of hell with those who sell political office, or who betray their country or their friends. But there he is, cowering on the borders of hell at the very beginning of the Inferno. “And then I saw—and knew beyond all doubt—the shadow of the one who made, from cowardice, the great refusal”—che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto.

    They are tough words, especially if we take them to refer to a man whom the Catholic Church venerates not merely as a holy pope but as a saint: Saint Celestine V.

    No one would compare Benedict XVI, a highly intelligent and articulate man, with the poor hermit peasant-friar who was chosen as a compromise candidate for the papacy in 1293. Unable to make up their minds between rival French and Italian rascals, the College of Cardinals—only 12 men in those days, dithered for 27 months! Eventually, someone had the idea of appointing a saint to the Holy See. Poor, illiterate Padre Pietro was an 85-year-old hermit living in a little grotto on a mountainside in the region of Naples. He accepted the papal office, but was terrified by it, and after only a few months begged to be allowed back to his cell. The cardinals accepted his choice. He was canonized relatively quickly, in 1313, less than 20 years after his death. Modern scientists examining his skull found the unmistakable traces of a nail having been driven into the poor old man’s head, so he was evidently murdered, and in all likelihood, it was his suave lawyer-successor, Boniface VIII—Dante’s bête noire—who arranged the murder.

    It was an unedifying episode in medieval history, and we would probably not know much about it if Boniface VIII had not, in addition to murdering his predecessor, sent Dante into exile from his native Florence. Boniface thereby made himself into one of the villains of world literature, and all of Dante’s hatred was poured out on the pope’s head.

    There is matter for meditation here. Celestine V was a holy and good man, but a very bad pope. Boniface, if only half the things his enemies said about him were true, was far from a good man. But he was a brilliant pope who rescued the Western church (for a time) from some of the worst crises in its history: the breakup of Christendom itself being the worst, with the Eastern Orthodox churches going it alone, while the Western church was riven with schism. Add to that the European wars and the ever-present threat of Islam in Spain and in Eastern Europe.

    Benedict XVI is neither a holy hermit nor a criminal. But he is a paradox. Before he became pope, he was the white hope of the arch-conservatives in the church—”God’s Rottweiler”—the man who was going to send the liberals howling to their lairs while the universal church once again reasserted the old ways.

    And in some ways, it looked very much as if this was what Benedict set out to do when he was first elected. He wore a variety of extremely old-fashioned vestments—the little red cap trimmed with white fur bearing more than a passing resemblance to that of Father Christmas—and those scarlet loafers made by Prada. He brought in from the cold the ultraright conservatives who followed Archbishop Lefebvre. (But he failed to do a name check with all of them, and found himself acknowledging as a bishop an English oddball called Richard Williamson, who was a Holocaust denier.) He restored the old Tridentine Mass, for those who wished to use it—a semi-cynical move, since how many priests are left who know how to perform the old rite?

    But also, from the very first, he revealed a surprising intellectual flexibility. The very first address he made to the cardinals, just after his election, was a remarkable piece of prose for anyone to have written—but even more for a German Catholic. For a German pope, it was actually astounding, for he acknowledged that Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, had in effect been right, and that Christians are saved not by the mere performance of religious observances but by faith in Christ. His first encyclical, “God Is Love” (“Deus Caritas Est”), followed up the theme with an exaltation of love in all its human forms. It contained none of the usual carping papal denunciations of gays or divorced people. It was a simple celebration of love—as simple as Dumbledore’s when he tells Harry Potter that he had been saved by “love, Harry, love.”

    Oh, yes. Harry Potter. That too. When a sour-faced old Austrian Catholic schoolmarm went to the boring trouble to write a book denouncing Harry Potter as encouraging magic and the black arts, Benedict carelessly endorsed her thesis. But when it was pointed out to him that, as a matter of fact, J.K. Rowling was on the side of the angels, he was gracious enough to withdraw his denunciation.

    In other words, Joseph the Unbudgeable, Ratzinger the Ironclad Bismarck of Church Politics, transmogrified into a gentle, unpredictable, accident-prone old pope, more absent-minded professor than Grand Inquisitor.

    Continued on Page 68

     

     

  • Yoruba marginalisation: to what effect? 1

    Yoruba marginalisation: to what effect? 1

    Yoruba marginalisation as a theme of public debate is gaining more attention by the day. Afenifere Renewal Group first raised the issue formally a few months back. Just a few days ago, a group of older Yoruba professionals and politicians (than those in Afenifere Renewal) held a press conference on the topic, at which the group’s spokesmen reeled out details of efforts by the Jonathan regime to neglect and relegate Yoruba interests to the back burner of Nigeria’s socio-economic process. Members of the Ikenne front for Yoruba unity had also visited President Jonathan to complain about non-inclusion of Yoruba politicians in top-notch positions in his government. Media pundits have also come on board to analyse and find reasons for this condition of the Yoruba under Jonathan’s presidency.

    It is hard to identify why any president would choose to diminish the significance of the Yoruba in a federation in which they form close to 22% of the population. But if there is no surprise in third-world politics, then where should anyone expect to be startled and confused? But this phenomenon, as volatile and dangerous for the country’s unity as it might be, needs to be understood in all its ramifications, to prevent the Yoruba from being associated with cry-baby syndrome by other regions.

    What has been observed as marginalisation can be broken into two types: apparent and real neglect. Apparent marginalisation is evident in absence of Yoruba in the political pantheon that directs the life of the country. All appointive positions are essentially political. In a winner-takes-all ethos, political appointments are restricted to trusted members of the ruling party. It is true that there are many Yoruba in the PDP that controls all political appointments, but it is also clear that those in the power house in Abuja know that such Yoruba represent mostly themselves. If they represent anybody else, it must be a tiny minority of the Yoruba nation. And this feeling is despite the fact that Jonathan won more votes than Buhari in most Yoruba states in 2011 presidential election. It is, therefore, easy for those holding the lever of power in Abuja to ignore Yoruba individuals in the PDP, just as it was when Obasanjo had more Yoruba votes than Buhari in 2003 presidential election.

    Jonathan’s men and women must know that the heart of the average Yoruba is not in the ideology that subtends policies and actions of the PDP, even though their votes came into his ballot boxes in 2011. They know that Jonathan’s party is not ready to give to the Yoruba region what it needs. They probably know that the value of the Yoruba had disappeared after the election, more so that they are sure that Transformation, which the Yoruba must have voted for had also lost its edge after the election. The current travails of Olagunsoye Oyinlola is a graphic illustration that leading Yoruba in President Jonathan’s party have more nominal than substantive value, because they are deemed to have only a handful of Yoruba voters behind them. Should it have been so? Not necessarily. But anyone that can be ignored in politics without any threat to the party’s consolidation of power is generally the first to be neglected in the competition for appointive posts. If there is any group that should complain about marginalisation of Yoruba by Jonthan, it should be Yoruba men and women in his ruling party. Is anyone surprised that Yoruba members of the PDP are not complaining about neglect?

    Therefore, marginalisation of Yoruba in political appointment cannot be held against Jonathan, more so that his party members from the Southwest are not complaining. Jonathan is only upholding the values of winner-takes-all political culture. Even if Yoruba PDP members have been appointed as some of those that actually rule the country, this may not filter down to Yoruba people. A few Yoruba were so appointed during the administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo without any noticeable impact on Yoruba life. Organisations that are sending delegations to Jonathan for redress should not worry about appointive positions. The Yoruba have gone that route before. Yoruba thrived in the days of NPC and NPN, when those that held most political appointments were largely Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and representatives of the so-called minority groups across the country, just the way it is today. It must be added though that in the days of NPC and NPN, the leaders of the two parties did not ever think that they could take the Yoruba for granted, as it appears to be the case today.

    Actual marginalisation concerns unfair hiring or firing policy. If Yoruba people are retired unduly from the public service or are jumped over in hiring to the public service for career and professional positions in a federation to which they belong and pay taxes, there are other ways to address this issue, in addition to sending delegations to President Jonathan or creating media events about it. There is a need for individual Yoruba individuals, retired without just cause or disregarded in the hiring process, to engage the Federal Character Commission by going to court to challenge any manner of injustice against the Yoruba.

    To be continued

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (1)

    Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (1)

    The elders of the Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF), and before them the Young Turks of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), have stridently complained about the indefensible marginalisation of the Southwest. The YUF has even gone ahead to publish a two-page advertorial in the newspapers spelling out precisely some of the areas in which the Yoruba in the Southwest are marginalised. The details are very disturbing. The advertorial indicates that no Yoruba is represented in the first 12 top positions that constitute the country’s power hierarchy, yet other powers in the country flow from these 12 positions. It also says that the Yoruba head only three of the 36 MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies), yet these MDAs constitute the principal economic and financial agencies in the country. In addition, says the publication, no Yoruba is represented in the controlling echelons of the judiciary and anti-corruption agencies, and many more, including alarmingly the security agencies. On top of these, says YUF, some ministers, such as that of Aviation, have specialised in sacking the Yoruba from agencies under their control and replacing them with favourites from their preferred ethnic groups.

    The question of Southwest marginalisation became a debatable issue last year, and the presidency cannot claim to be ignorant. When eventually the President Goodluck Jonathan government deigned to respond, it chose the unlikely agency of the melodramatic Dr Doyin Okupe to speak on the issue. But in the context of allegations of unhealthy deployment and recruitment in the Army and Immigration, it was expected that when these complaints began to come to light, the presidency would take urgent steps to study and, if required, remedy the problems. Instead, the problems and the controversies have been left to fester, and the government now unfortunately comes across as parochial, insensitive and divisive.

    And so, instead of indicating that the Jonathan government is determined to take targeted and responsive steps to tackle the alleged marginalisation of the Yoruba, Okupe prefers to lay the blame on the Yoruba themselves. Hear Okupe’s warped logic: “The issue of marginalisation of the South-West was a political misadventure and political accident, brought about by the Yoruba themselves. If you would recollect, the Yoruba were supposed to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the number four position in Nigeria. Due to political mishandling of the leadership of the Yoruba and also the sabotage of the Yoruba people by Yoruba leadership elsewhere, I am talking of the ACN now, the Yoruba leadership in the ACN conspired against the Yoruba people and allowed that position to be taken away. That was the beginning of the marginalisation. You see, when people sit down to share what is not enough and you don’t have anybody to speak for you, there is a problem.”

    Okupe also suggested that the marginalisation of the Yoruba could not be blamed on Jonathan. As he put it: “It is not President Goodluck Jonathan’s problem. I am not saying it is not his problem; the President is sympathetic towards the Yoruba people. It is not true that the president hates the Yoruba people; that is not correct. It is our (Yoruba) own making that the election of the House of Representatives was badly handled by the leadership of the Yoruba in the PDP. And also the conspiracy of the Yoruba in the ACN for personal interest and wickedness and evil plotted against their own men. This was the beginning of our problem.” Not being a judicious man, Okupe is of course never given to moderation in speech or thought. As I have noted in this place more than once, the eminent medical practitioner and politician can defend the two sides of the same coin with perfect equanimity, conviction and subversive joy. His conclusion that the Yoruba brought this misfortune on themselves is both crassly political and an indication of deeper underlying malaise in the Southwest. Indeed, because there are many like him running riot with that heresy, Okupe’s statements deserve closer examination.

    In presenting their petitions before the president and the public, neither the ARG nor the YUF argued that the Yoruba were responsible for the orchestrated discrimination against the Southwest. In this first part, this column will limit itself to Okupe’s injudicious conclusion. The statistical proof presented by the two Yoruba organisations is of course unimpeachable. If it had been riddled with errors or demagoguery, the Jonathan presidency does not lack attack dogs to punch holes in them and to present a suitable counterpoise. It says a lot about the temper and disposition of the president himself that such shocking discriminatory practices go on unchallenged under him. Even if he didn’t know that the Southwest was so discriminated against in his government, it calls to question his own competence, the diligence of his aides who should keep a tab on things, and the bureaucratic perverseness of many of his appointees who have become indifferent to the factors that predispose the country to crisis and disunity.

    Dr Okupe says Jonathan does not hate the Yoruba, in spite of the glaring evidence to the contrary. Well, there is no evidence that he loves them either, or that he harbours no malice against them. During the 2011 governorship campaign, the president was in Lagos to bolster the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chances of winning the state. On the soapbox, he said a few things that should have cost him even the presidency itself. He told the crowd of supporters that if the other ethnic groups (that is, the non-Yoruba) came together, their electoral weight would be of such significance that they could unhorse the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) candidate. That was not just a puerile play of the ethnic card; it opened a window into the ethnically-prejudiced mind of the president. In addition, during the fuel subsidy protests of January 2012, the president was unsparing in condemning those he described as the arrogant elite of Lagos who owned three or more cars and whose pampered underage children cruised around in luxury cars. Again, this was not just a harmless opposition to Lagos’ protest culture; it was an exhibition of unadulterated bitterness against a people.

    In spite of Jonathan affording us a peep into his closed mind, many people still thought his statements had no disturbing implications, or perhaps they put them down to both his desperation to help PDP take Lagos State and his discomfort with the unrest that threatened his shaky government. I saw more than that, however. His statements were obviously a Freudian slip that helped us measure the level of his statesmanship and competence. When he made those insensitive statements, I immediately concluded that the country was unlikely to prosper or unite under him. I have been proved right. The country is in turmoil today.

    More, there is no element of veracity in Okupe’s opinion that Jonathan does not have a grudge against the Southwest. Not only does the president nurse a grudge, he has pretended not to notice the discrimination his government is promoting against the Yoruba. Moreover, he seems embittered by the criticalness of the zone, its holier-than-thou attitude, and the insufferableness of its business and political elites, including the region’s untameable and effervescent press. I go as far as saying that the president’s main headache is not even the ongoing insurrection in the North, but the censoriousness of the Southwest.

    If the president is afflicted by lack of insight into how a modern and complex society should be governed, and also lacks the temperament to bring groups together and forge a harmonious whole out of them, Okupe is even much worse and infinitely more mischievous. He argues that the Yoruba are responsible for their own marginalisation. The only proof he tenders is that a faction of the PDP in the Southwest and the entirety of the ACN voted for Hon. Aminu Tambuwal for the position of Speaker House of Representatives, when in fact the position had been zoned to the Southwest, and one Hon Mulikat Akande-Adeola had offered herself for the position. Okupe argued that this amounted to betrayal and wickedness. He glossed over the fact that the Reps were in a fever to checkmate the influence of the executive and its undisguised attempt to impose a candidate on the lower chamber. Jonathan’s candidate, as well as Obasanjo’s, was Hon Mulikat. Not only did the lower chamber feel insulted that the executive wanted to manipulate and control the legislature, many of them also felt Obasanjo was too narrow-minded and unpopular to impose anyone on the Reps. To vote Hon Mulikat was to give in to the malfeasances of the executive and Obasanjo.

    But it is even needless defending the Reps’ choice of Tambuwal, notwithstanding Okupe’s obfuscatory arguments. As far as the marginalisation of the Southwest goes, and as far as the observable bias against the zone is concerned, the position of Speaker is just one tiny block in the Jonathan government’s architecture of discrimination. If Okupe is promising presidential action to redress this major wrong, he is only trying to help the president against what is certain to be electoral debacle in 2015. But no matter what the president does between now and the next election, it will be too little too late. The zone is competent to tell the difference between righting a wrong for electoral reasons and knowing Jonathan for who he really is. I do not think the zone can be fooled. From start to finish, they know Jonathan has not done any major work in the zone. Instead, he has caused more division, displayed unmanageable temper and made incendiary statements when the subject is the Southwest, insulted the zone’s elites, and on top of these, refused to appoint anyone from the zone into notable or sensitive office.

    Yet, Okupe gives the impression the president may be unaware of the marginalisation of the Southwest. Does Jonathan not meet with his men? What faces does he see? Who are the people in his inner caucus, and what amperage of insularity do they display? Is he apprised of the country’s history, and does he have a comprehensive and holistic grasp of the issues troubling the people he pretends to govern? I suspect the president is mixed up with the wrong aides who can’t offer him qualitative or educated advice. Yet he needs a qualitative crowd around him to mitigate the damaging effects of his obvious shortcomings, nay, his provincialism.

    But why is it always easy to discriminate against the Southwest, marginalise it, or as the YUF sentimentally alleged, purge the Yoruba from key positions in government without fear of repercussions? I will attempt some explanations next week, for these explanations are even more relevant to understanding the current pressures the Yoruba face than the seemingly nugatory exercise of merely drawing attention to any perceived discrimination against them or debating who is or who is not responsible for the marginalisation.

    To be concluded next week