The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • A Happy new year to you, too!

    A Happy new year to you, too!

    Have a Merry year; I intend to

    A Happy New Year to you too, dear reader.

    It is the beginning of another year, and I want to thank you for keeping faith with us all this time. Believe me, I cannot even begin to guess what it must have cost you to buy this paper and then sit down to read through the verbiage in this column. Some of it you said you understood, and some you said you did not. I say well done for the former and to the latter, I say, bless those words for making themselves inaccessible! Anyhow, in our trips down our nation’s history, progress, problems, culture, life … and prospects, I hope you have had as good a time as I did. But we are not done yet I hope, not by a long arm; for, you see, when all is said and done, there is still a lot more to be said and done. You get that I hope, ‘cause I’m still scratching my head on it.

    You know, I have always thought of the relationship between an old year and a new one as one between two boxers. When two boxers get into a ring, they look beautiful and have the air of bounding health as they skip up and down, making boasts and threats like kangaroos about to give birth. In a little time, though, one of them is slumped on the ring floor like a worm that has lost its wriggle power, waiting for the referee’s whistle. That’s the old year.

    The winning boxer is, however, not much better looking for wear. He appears to swagger out of the ring but don’t be fooled; he is leaning ever so slightly on his trainer. And the doctor is waiting for him in the dressing room. Now, that’s the New Year. The doctor is always hovering around it, knowing full well that the things that the old year is blamed for – the many air crashes due to the careless acts of men, the many incredibly heartless actions of men, all kinds of natural and unnatural events caused, you guessed it, by men’s thoughtlessness, and so on – will sooner or later be attributed to the ‘curse’ of the New Year. So, before we go on, let us take a look at what you and I have been through in this nation, and the conclusions we reached about them in this last year, to decide what kind of doctor this new year is going to need:

    ‘The people also want a government that can save the weak from the strong, keep the strong from destroying himself and the state, and stop pushing the people’s button. For, when the people’s button is pushed, they will react again and again and again. Their reaction, however, is not what takes the country to the precipice. No sir; it is when the country is handed over to cronies and friends and party members that the country will be pulled into certain anarchy. It is government liberality to a few that has led to the corruption that has taken us to where we are now; it is this government liberality that the people are fighting. “That government is best which governs the least”, says an adage.’

    ‘To be sure, agricultural development ensures food security which also in turn ensures national security. To ensure that development, some serious thinking that will hopefully lead to some serious action needs to be done. There are too many of us hungry ones, who cannot go beyond potted tomato-farming, who need to be rescued.’

    ‘The problem with this country is that we the citizens have developed the nasty habit of shamelessly bending the law for relatives, friends and escorts, and everyone has an endless list of those. This has led to a standing joke that Nigerians have found a shortcut to getting to heaven: it’s a matter of knowing one or two powerful people. In Nigeria, we have relegated fear to the backburner. Listen, without a healthy fear of the law, people will continue to embezzle, destroy and kill. Until we develop that healthy fear, we shall continue to roll the country involuntarily towards extinction.’

    ‘In normal climes, education is the surest means of reversing a horrendous culture such as we are talking about; in Nigeria however, this factor seems to be failing us. This means we have to look elsewhere. Each one of us has to look inside him/herself to find out what really matters: money, connections or working towards evolving a system of values which will benefit us all, children and all, centuries from now. The change that will revolutionise a state must begin with each person.’

    ‘For the government’s reformation programme to succeed, it must be people-directed. If the last Subsidy Removal protests have taught us anything, it is that the people, literate and illiterate, are ready now to hold their governments to account. Since a literate person can be more easily talked to, it is better to aim at making the entire country literate. Believe me, sir, illiteracy is a time bomb looking for when to happen.’

    ‘Look at the air travel industry. For reasons best known to the federal government, the national air carrier, Nigeria Airways, was allowed to die by a combination of strangulation, lethal injection, outright murder and lack of funds for maintenance. Yet, no one has been bold enough to look the nation in the eye and say this is the cause of its death. In the place of the carrier, with its long culture of standards and practiced legitimacy, a fleet of private carriers with a famed impatience for huge profits and sharp appetites for sharp practices has been substituted. So, here we are, sans carrier, sans standards, and at the mercy of the men in suits or … err … big, flowing agbadas. For that, the nation continues to pay incalculably huge costs.’

    ‘The moral of this story is that men ought always to go more in search of madness than money. Just listen. When you have madness, you will be pushed beyond the point of endurance to go chasing your dream that leaves humanity a little better than before and men will remember you always for your efforts. Today, we credit and remember Priestly and Davy for what they did for mankind, not for how rich they managed to get by having access to government coffers. No one remembers such. Because of inventors like those, you and I can now have our appendix removed while watching our favourite shows on TV.’

    ‘Mystery has even sustained homes. The reason why many wives have not left their husbands is because they do not know exactly how much those husbands earn, so they prefer to stay on and keep guessing. It is right now even sustaining the nation. Now, who on earth can predict the president’s next step, or even his wife’s? I tell you, Nigeria is the home of the mysterious because there is just no making out the people’s mind. Since I can never know what they are going to do next so, I have decided I’d better go find out really why the tortoise wears a hard shell. It may turn out he needs the shell to help protect him against unforeseen injuries. For the same reason, some of us had better borrow a shell or two from him so that something else can shatter other than one’s back.’

    ‘The mental health of this country is in your hands. Stop screaming at others; stop driving recklessly; stop embezzling recklessly; stop killing in the name of lust or God; and begin now to take care of yourself and others in this giant mental institution. Who knows, if we begin to behave ourselves we might be let off, and be allowed to join the comity of sane nations soon, real soon.’ Have a merry year; I intend to.

  • Oga mi no dey run

    As presidential posters swamp strategic corners of Abuja, it is all but certain, despite feeble official denials, that come 2015, Goodluck Jonathan is set to enter the presidential ring once again. The tribe of hidden and not so hidden persuaders is multiplying and mushrooming all over the place. Deploying the awesome logistics of authoritarian but not so authoritative incumbency, the Jonathan juggernaut is set to roll over the Nigerian landscape once again like a road crunching Soviet Saladin and with prohibitive collateral damage. Like the Tupolev aircraft, the Soviet tank is a no-frills, no-nonsense equal opportunity machine.

    Everything is now in place to ensure that Jonathan steamrolls his way through a supine country. The old fixer has been returned to familiar haunts at the Lagos Port, hunting down political contrabands, while facing down all known refuseniks, particularly the Owu-born general. Some known acolytes and favourites of Baba are being processed for the Ribadu Rigor Mortis. If Sule Lamido still believes that a presidential struggle is a Kano inner city Baghdad tea sortie or a Talakawa assembly, let him continue to fool himself. The money laundering dragnet is an equal opportunity manger which has no respect for gubernatorial immunity.

    But in the unfolding scenario of presidential disincentives, the most serious and pathetic case is that of the courtly and affable Rotimi Amaechi who has been shouting from the rooftop that he has no intention whatsoever of contesting the presidential election either as a candidate or a running mate. At the rate things are going, the poor chap may have to take a disclaimer in all the leading dailies with his picture prominently displayed. In the alternative, he may have to hire a chopper to write the disclaimer in the skies. Such are the perils of presidential power-play.

    In confusion and utter disbelief, Okon had walked up to Baba Lekki for clarification.

    “Baba, why dis Amaechi man dey deny sotey say him no wan be president?” Okon demanded.

    “Ah Okon, you are a fool. Se you want the poor boy to enter presidential dekumagolo?” the old man sneered with lunatic relish.

    “Baba you don come with dem Yoruba magomago again? “ Okon scoffed.

    “Ah yeye Calabar boy. Agolo na Yoruba word for tin. Dekumagolo na rat trap made from tin. As the rat come enter dem tin come shut gbam, and dem rat come kaput. Odigbere ni yen” Baba jeered.

    “Kai, kai, na god go punish dem wicked Yoruba people. But baba how about dem fire for Baba dem house?” Okon demanded.

    “Na the same thing, Okon. If you wan catch dem big rodent, you put fire for him hole. Baba himself don say if say na for night, him go kaput. Jonathan no be fisherman. Na rodent catcher. You know say him do him youth Service for dem Yoruba town dem call Iresi? Make una siddon look. Overtake don overtake Overtake be dat”, the crazy old man croaked.

    “Kai dis thing no be joke. Baba wetin dem poor Amaechi boy go do now?” Okon inquired.

    “Ah make him do oga mi no wan run” the old man sniggered.

    “Baba wetin be dat again?” Okon demanded.

    “Ah you see, when dem catch dem soldier who come shoot Ibrahim Taiwo na the cry him dey cry be dat”, the crazy old man whined. It was at this point that snooper drove the lunatics out of his house.

  • For Justus and Justina

    For Justus and Justina

    As this brutish year finally takes its brutal blow before the court of history, most Nigerians would be wondering what had hit them. Like a heavyweight boxer pole-axed with savage precision, Nigerians are distraught and disoriented. Even by the standards of their cruel bondage to an unhappy fate, never in their history has a year been more punitive of the soul and destructive of the body.

    Even at the very tail end, the year has lost neither its poison nor its potency, sending a gubernatorial convoy into a fatal clinch and snatching away our own Chief Wumi Adegbonmire, a master political combatant and journalistic warrior of distinction from the land of tigers. This was shortly after celebrating his beloved wife’s seventieth birthday. A childhood romance cannot terminate in more awry circumstances. Akure, Yorubaland and Nigeria mourn their illustrious son.

    At the very last count, at least three governors are all swapped up in hospital beds. Sullivan Chime has not been seen anywhere in over a hundred days. Suntai Danbaba of Taraba State is reported to be comatose in a German hospital. As this is been written, Idris Wada of Kogi is reported to be battling for his life after sustaining serious injuries in a convoy crash which left his ADC dead. And the First Lady is making expeditious recovery from a strange ailment whose provenance is as mysterious as the arcane rituals of governance in modern Nigeria.

    To God be the glory. But one must be careful about which divine praises to utter. Even the celebrated author of that phrase is said to be in hospital somewhere on the planet. With spiritual, economic and political escape routes seemingly blocked , tragedy cannot be more comprehensive. Yet somehow and somewhat, a way has to be found out of this national logjam or we are all goners in the short run.

    In such circumstances, Nigerians should not wish themselves a happy new year. Even divine graces and favours are earned and merited. God is no longer a Father Christmas. You cannot plant unhappiness and expect to harvest happiness. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Rather than wishing themselves a happy new year, Nigerians should be happy that it is a new year. A new year is a time of renewal and rejuvenation. We must roll up our sleeves. The Chinese are coming, and may be some Africans.

    This outgoing year is remarkable in at least one respect. It is the year Nigerians probably lost the last shred of illusion about the ability of the Nigerian post-colonial state to provide solace and succour to its citizens. It was the year when the falconer finally lost the falcon. If Nigerians were expecting a messiah and a quick fix to their political and economic woes, they finally got the message. It was the year of yearning in hope and expectation and of yawning in impotence and terminal frustration.

    True enough, the year began on a turbulent and tempestuous note with the provocative removal by government of a yet to be established petroleum subsidy. It drew the implacable ire of Nigerians. For a week, it was a tense and fraught affair, with tottering democracy on a lifeline. The great pan-Nigerian political mass which had not been seen in 20 years since the annulment of the June 12 presidential election made a dramatic return. Something was about to give, or so it seemed.

    It turned out to be a damp squib, as they say. It turned out that there was no real synergy between Labour and the mass-movement. It was a revolutionary moment without real revolutionists. There was no real linkage between refulgent radical forces waiting in the wings and the masters of the masses. Given the limits and limitations of their political consciousness, the leaders of the movement were waiting for a Deus ex machina to be thrown up by the commotion and combustion.

    It was a foolish and forlorn hope, but an accurate reflection of the balance of forces at play. A revolution is not a congressional mass of fevered devotees, but a congregation of hard and hardened men and women of intellectual faith. No wonder, Labour slunk away leaving labourers in the lurch and only to reappear in even more perfidious circumstances. A country throws up the Labour Movement it deserves.

    With their reformist, work-a-day consciousness steeped in opaque under the counter negotiation with officialdom, the new Nigerian Labour aristocracy are not Gdansk Port workers. The Poles are a tough race whose history is steeped in heroic martyrdom against local and external oppressors. For centuries, the Russians took them for lunch while the Germans often had them for supper. But they never give up.

    In fairness to Nigerian Labour, they did make a telling point which ought to absolve them of historic responsibility. They were not fighting for regime change but for the reversal of harsh pricing of petroleum products. In that, they achieved a limited and partial success. You cannot ask the children of squirrels why they are not tigers. In the animal kingdom, no genetic miracle can achieve that feat.

    But it will be the height of intellectual folly for anybody to assume that the sacrifices of affronted Nigerians and those who summoned them to the barricades have been in vain. Throughout history, men and women fight for something or some ideal only to discover that what they have fought for is not what they have achieved. It is then left for others to carry on in the perpetual struggle against oppression and injustice.

    Probably unknown to both sides, the January protests achieved a dramatic and telling effect which might have altered the Nigerian political psyche forever. In panic response to the protests, the government began hurriedly probing itself. In the process, it exposed the rotten innards of world-historic corruption and official malfeasance for all to see. It simply means that we cannot continue like this and that something will have to give, sooner than later. We may all have Goodluck Jonathan to thank for this epic feat of elite collective suicide.

    Jonathan has helped to demystify the Nigerian post-colonial state in a way that has never been done before, and in a way that has never been thought possible, to the ire of his sponsors. They have given the shoeless boy from Otueke platform shoes to wear and he had laced them with explosives. It will be Mount Krakatoa later. No onomatopoeia of impending volcanic eruption can be more appropriate. The government has its back to the wall and no one believes it anymore. You cannot transform a stone country. This house has not fallen, but it cannot stand the way it is.

    Let us expect more unintended miracles from the explosive laden shoes. Meanwhile, please step forward as the Person of the Year, the eponymous protester on the streets of Abuja and the Gani Fawehinmi Square in Lagos. After the protest, Snooper stumbled on a pair of abandoned uni-sex shoes at the Ojota end of the park. They must belong to either Justus or Justina. May their tribe multiply.

  • Awotunsin on my mind

    One of the many programmes through which the MTN has shown that it is a socially responsible company is the ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ television show. It is a very educative and good family programme.

    The ‘Who Deserves to be a Millionaire’ segment is particularly thoughtful of the producers, as it affords needy individuals and organisations the opportunity to get some funds. The guests on this segment are people, who by their contributions or that of their relatives to the society, deserve to have enough to take care of themselves but due to some circumstances beyond their control are at the mercy of the economic situation of the country.

    The last guest on this segment was the widow of , a journalist with Champion Newspapers who was killed along with Kris Imodibe of The Guardian while covering the Liberian war in 1992.

    I was very sad to hear of how hard life has been for the widow, Agnes and the children of the distinguished journalist I reverently called Mr Awotunsin when he was Ogun State correspondent for The Guardian Newspapers in Abeokuta, Ogun State and I was then with The Punch in 1987-90.

    The present state of the widow who is battling with stroke on her left side is very pathetic and I really appreciate the producers of the programme giving her the chance to earn a million naira that night through comedian, MC Abbey and actress, Toyin Aimakhu, who answered the questions for her.

    The widow and the children deserve all the support they can get considering that their breadwinner paid the professional sacrifice of being killed on duty while covering the Liberian crisis.

    Like the widow rightly noted, her husband would have taken care of the family if he was alive. I testify that the late Awotunsin was a hard working journalist who was very passionate about his job and his family.

    But for joining the print media industry late, he shouldn’t have been a State Correspondent when we were colleagues in Abeokuta. Some of his colleagues were already then on the Editorial Boards of national newspapers, but the humble Awotunsin went about his job with a high professional sense of duty. I was not surprised that he got the well deserved senior Editorial Board membership job at Champion Newspapers at inception.

    Despite the communication limitation then when unreliable analogue phones and telex machines were the only means of sending stories to the headquarters, Awotunsin did everything possible to get his stories across, including travelling to Lagos to ensure that The Guardian does not miss an important story.

    I remember a female telex machine operator Awotunsin recruited from the Nigerian Telecommunication Limited who could not send a story he gave to her and was very surprised how agitated Awotunsin was about the issue.

    “Sir I will send the story today (day after). Please take it easy; slow and steady wins the race,” the female former civil servant said trying to plead with Awotunsin.

    With his eye glasses hanging on his nose, I could feel the anger boiling in the late journalist.

    “Lekan, can you imagine what this woman is saying,” Awotunsin responded, trying hard to contain his anger.

    “Slow and steady loses the race in journalism,” Awotunsin hollered as he banged the table with the frightened telex operator looking in my direction for rescue.

    That was Awosunsin for you, who though gentle and slow talking, would not hesitate to give you a piece of his mind to anyone who messes up his job.

    That was the consummate journalist  Charles Taylor and his  cohorts wasted in Liberia along with his colleague, Imodibie. Their families deserve all the support they can get.

  • Person of the year The Nigerian “Refugee”

    Person of the year The Nigerian “Refugee”

    IT was a year of trinity, even from the beginning. It began with three evils: a subsidy removal, a fuel hike and, in consequence, a paralysis. As the nation shut down, strikes rumbled in Lagos and some other fragile areas and people stayed at home and President Jonathan swaggered with intransigence, we thought the year would be redefined only by another trinity: a fuel crisis, an angry people and a stubborn president.

    But in-between came another trio: water, wind and fire. But the last became the first. Boko Haram struck not once, not twice but many times even though they fell ominously silent during the strikes in January. It was as though they bowed to the first trinity. In a foul and macabre feast, the strikes swept from Borno to Abuja to Kaduna to Kogi like a display of blood and death. Its register was fire: bombs, guns and knives. Another trinity.

    It happened all year long. Soldiers died, police fled, worshippers fainted, defied and died, a security chief first complained in public and later lost his job, a president retreated inside Aso Rock. But mostly people were displaced. Southern governors sought the return of their “people.” Ethnic rhetoric inflamed more ethnic rhetoric. But mostly people fled. Markets became skeletal, churches wary and pastors invoking deity before a shrinking followership. Those born in the north, and those who had relocated there for business and those who had no other ways of life than the ones they knew either in Kano or Maiduguri or Sokoto, were stunned between stark choices: fight, wait to die or flee. Another awful trinity.

    It was a time that tested the unity of the country. Northern governors sought answers, held meetings, appealed and cajoled, but could not do what was necessary: stop the menace. The silence of southern leaders was as ominous as those who banged the doors for a national conference. It raised questions about state police, integrity of security budget and above all, the competence of a president who reacted to the news of carnage with another trinity: surrender, nonchalance – he left for Brazil after one of them – and bluster.

    In the midst of this was the combination of water and wind. Nigeria, just like the malice of Hurricane Sandy in the United States, saw flood. It came not only in the south, not only in east, not only in the west, not only in the north. It was fury without borders.

    In a bizarre replay of Boko Haram, houses fell, only not by fire. People fled their homes. Villages and homesteads vanished in watery tombs. It had no respect for the high and mighty, for the jalopy or cocky limousines. They were huddled in camps. In the camps, women delivered babies, men and women made love, old and young played and fought, scrambled for food rations, slept in makeshift beds. Fishes swam where families sat for dinner, hippopotamuses became threats before they inspired feasts. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan risked life paddling a canoe in a symbolic gesture to the displaced.

    While water, wind and fire raged, the other trinity inflicted their own damages: jobs were lost, subsidy thieves exposed and companies closed, another shrill trinity.

    At bottom, many Nigerians were out of joint, and had to find refuge in places other than where they had comfort. “Something startles where I thought I was safest,” wrote Caribbean writer George Lamming. They became, in a strange irony, refugees at home. Those who fled the north have never found comfort at home in the south. Home was where trouble was. Flood sacked people who never returned to the home as they knew it. It was a case of alienation in body and in spirit. Subsidy-related jobs became as fragile as the homes swept off by flood.

    The refugee, often a term for those who flee their home countries for another, has come to define our year, except that these persons did not find refuge at home. The technical term is internally displaced persons, a wordy and inelegant term. They suffered all the indignities of the year: hunger, joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, bigotry, elemental fury, disenfranchisement and death. In a year of suffering, they embodied the worst.

    For these reasons, The Nation editors have picked the Nigerian “refugee” is our person of the year.

  • Three long goodbyes

    Three long goodbyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • I insist, Sambo must have his N13bn palace!

    I insist, Sambo must have his N13bn palace!

    Many people were angry with me when, on December 16, I made a passionate appeal in support of the N14billion palace that our vice president is about to be denied (God forbid) and which has been a subject of all kinds of debates by all kinds of people, including the ordinary Nigerian on the street. As at that time, we had not even been told the full details of why the cost of the structure must go up. Today, however, we know better. We have to pray that God should open the understanding of those criticising the idea so that they can give their unconditional blessing to it.

    The story: In 2009, a contract was awarded at a cost of N7billion for the building of a residence for our Number Two Citizen. Suddenly, we were told that we would need an additional N9billion to provide infrastructure at the place. Mercifully, the Bureau for Public Procurement advised that we would not need more than N6billion more. This plus the initial N7billion would have brought the cost to about N13billion. But the Senate committee in charge would not take any of that. Then, the brouhaha started.

    When an important decision is about to be taken on an equally important personality like the country’s Number Two Citizen, one expects those taking the decision to advance impeccable reasons why they want to do something, or why they would not. So, what is the reason advanced by the Senate committee? Hear Senator Smart Adeyemi who led members of the committee to the project site: “The National Assembly is not going to appropriate additional N9bn for the project, especially at a period in this country when people cannot get a square meal. The N9bn is far more than the original cost of the project”.

    Smart is talking as if he does not know that contract variations have become part and parcel of us and we hardly review contract cost down here. Imagine a ‘learned’ legislator like Smart talking about people not able to ‘get a square meal’ and the abject poverty in the land. He should tell us when last a government provided Nigerians that square meal a day. I left the university in the mid-‘80s and I know that people had been going on all kinds of formulae to reduce their food bills, even since then. We had things like ‘0-1-1’ (minus breakfast, plus lunch and dinner) and ‘1-0-1’ (plus breakfast minus lunch plus dinner). This is the way it has been for years such that these days, most parents merely ask whether their children have eaten. They would have taken off before the children start complaining that the food is not enough!

    And what does Smart know about ‘abject poverty’? Is he now pretending not to know that is what governments have been spreading in the country for decades? Pray, how do we deny our respectable vice president a palace simply on account of these flimsy excuses! Is it his fault that things are the way they are? I guess that people like Smart are advancing all these reasons because President Goodluck Jonathan and his team are largely democrats with human kindness flowing in their veins. Imagine if it had been in the Second Republic, Smart and his colleagues would have been put where they belong by some outspoken public officials of the time, who would have asked them whether they have seen any Nigerian eat from the dustbin yet. It was the then President Shehu Shagari who was quiet; but he had ministers and other subordinates that were garrulous. As a matter of fact, one of them was so loathed that they organised for him to be ‘crated’ home from Britain, but for the eagle-eyed British police who aborted the plan.

    What is particularly annoying is the fact that the senators ignored all the explanations of the executive secretary of the FCDA, Adamu Ismail, who tried all he could to make them see sense in the idea. The man said the place needed furniture, fencing, two protocol guest louses, a banquet hall and security gadgets. According to Ismail, these were omitted by those who conceived the project. Now, tell me, which of these is our vice president not entitled to? Is it the furniture that you want to disagree with? Or you want to say the man should not be protected with a fence as thick and strong as the wall of Jericho in these days of high profile kidnappings and bombings? Are two protocol guest houses too many for the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?

    Are the senators also saying the banquet hall is unnecessary? We should realise that those who prepared the initial estimate are human beings likely to forget that these items were not included in the original project. Or, they must be some other Smarts who believe in Spartan lifestyle for our vice president.

    In view of all these points, we should show understanding for why the supplementary budget for the project is higher than the original estimate. All these could not have been provided for in the original estimate of just N7billion! Moreover, what if technology has changed between when the contract was awarded and now; would we want our vice president’s palace to be fitted with yesterday’s technology today?

    What is more? We have been given fresh insight that the project must gulp the billions more because our vice president is a Muslim, a devout one at that; so, the structure should reflect that fact. This is important too because prayers are not likely to ascend to Allah if the vice president is living in a structure that does not reflect his religion. Those who are not close to God may not know what we are talking about here. The same way those who are asking what would happen should a Christian take over the office tomorrow;. Can’t they let that tomorrow come first? Would contract awards have ended by then? We award fresh billion contracts to also reflect the change. I wonder why Nigerians love to worry over little things when there are bigger issues to worry about. We should understand too that all the items to be bought have to be transported to site, so, we should expect the estimate for that and miscellaneous expenses should also be expected. So far, we have not been told these had been taken care of.

    Now, the critics have made our vice president to be unhappy with the issues becoming a beer parlour one. But Vice President Sambo should forgive the senators and others who think he does not deserve such a palace. What they fail to realise is that many of our leaders are not like the president who did not have shoes when he was young. Most of our other leaders had been drinking Irish Cream since the time they were in the womb. So, we are the ones who should be grateful to them for offering to lead the nation. And the way we can do that is to spoil them, not a little, but big time.

    •You asked for it, you got it! You are the reason the piece was updated. And this is the ‘Gospel of Transformation’, according to the Jonathan administration . Happy New Year in advance!

  • What a year it has been!

    What a year it has been!

    I can hear the bells tolling for the old year, as it limps towards its close like an exhausted Olympic athlete, and ringing in the New Year as it jaunts in; I hope the year meets us well

    Edo not consider myself to be very adventurous. No sir/ma; most days, I just love to pack myself in my favourite chair, have some nice pillows to support my poor ol’ back, a footstool to support my tired legs, some fresh air accompanied by chirpings of birds to flutter in through the window, and then proceed to listen to silence. Reader, it is from these deep reveries into silence that some rhapsodies of postscript issue forth. So, most days, I say ‘no, thanks’ to invitations to visit Governor XYZ (yet to get one though); ‘no, thanks’ to invitations to paint the town red (got that one); and definitely ‘no, thanks’ to an invite to visit the moon. Someday, I will be compelled to visit the moon, but not just yet.

    There is a journey we are all compelled to make sometimes. Noooo, you!; I rebuke your morbid mind!; I’m not talking about death. Hopefully, that will still be a long way off for you and me. I am talking about the journey we are all compelled to make each year, and that is to move from one year to another, even if you do not leave your armchair. Now it even has a name – The Crossover, which makes it sound more like ‘The Red Bridge of Courage’! Without that element of compulsion, I’m sure many of us would rather go, ‘Do I have to?’ Of course the Almighty will go, ‘Yes, you have to; otherwise time will stand still, swallowing itself with a yawn’. So, just to save father time from swallowing itself, we are compelled to move from one old year to a new one. Sir Lancelot could not do better.

    I think the truth is that if we don’t move, time will move us. Have you taken a good look at your neck lately? I bet you did not know that the crows there have somewhat increased over the past year. That, sir/ma, is time moving you relentlessly, and who knows where it will end. After the neck goes up in crows, you raise your arms and people cannot tell whether or not you are waving the national flag, and then your legs begin to do the shuffle. So now, I don’t argue about moving from the old year to a new one. The only thing I do is look back a bit to see how the year fared.

    To start with, 2012 was the Year of the Big Bang. Oh no, that has nothing to do with the evolutionary theory; rather, the big bang signifies the year the people of Nigeria gave the government a very big heart attack that actually exploded in a bang. It was when the people reacted violently against the government’s attempt to remove fuel subsidy. Of course, following the bang, the government has since been nursing its wounds and the people have since been contending with dry pumps or alternately giving the pumps some frustrated banging to register their hopelessness.

    For me, my Year of the Big Bang came in the form of a discovery. I finally accepted that just as you cannot separate a tree from its bark, so also you cannot separate a man and the money he does not want to part with. Whenever we women have tried to get an increase in the housekeeping money, there have been unbelievable arguments which go like ‘my salary has not been increased; why should I increase the housekeeping money just because things are more expensive in the market?’ Or ‘You want to buy beans? Go sell one or two of your trinkets’, or ‘You want me to steal?’ Worse, when we remind our husbands that there are women who go to the market in jets, they go bananas. ‘Perhaps, if you sell one of my thighs …’; yea, as if that could fetch anything.

    Yep, 2012 was also the Year of the Jets. No, we are not talking about that football club, for sincerely, I don’t know how they fared this year. But I know how the sellers of private jets fared in Nigeria: extremely proudly. No one quite knew what was going on beneath the surface ripples until a state governor decided to play both governor and pilot and promptly fell from the sky. In quick succession, a church leader was given a jet as a birthday present. (Since then I have been trying to understand what kind of birthday it was). But for now, I understand that the jets within the country are in their hundreds (including those in the presidency) and many more have been ordered by individuals, most of who are living on government money. So yes, it was the year of the jets: hopefully, every Nigerian will soon get to own one and we can all abandon the bad roads to the goats, chickens and birds. Well yes, when we all take to the sky, the birds will now have to walk.

    Sadly, it is also the year of the fear of heights. Those who know me know how much height I can endure: the height of the steps that lead into my house. Anything beyond that incites a great deal of horror, sweats and falls comparable to air crashes. So, when the year began to record all those crashes, I just thought, oh my, what did they go all the way up for? I had come to the truth of the matter earlier, that the fear of height indeed is the beginning of wisdom!

    And the year’s floods have almost been worse than Noah’s day. Even though the floods made their entries very quietly enough, their effects have been so devastating many people have been tempted to purchase canoes alongside their cars. Some did. Naturally, material and human tolls have been beyond the pale but many of us have taken consolation in God and the hope that the government would have learnt a thing or two from the experience. But since you and I know that they never do, our only consolation is God.

    Now let’s see if and what we as a nation have learnt from our various experiences during this year. I think the fuel subsidy experience has taught us that if we are ever going to move forward as a nation, we must put aside petty grievances and petty divisions such as the colour of our skin, turban or hat. The nation spoke successfully with one voice on the issue of fuel subsidy then because of the pain we felt. Other issues require such a unity of purpose: a modern mass transportation system, potable water, reliable energy sources, etc.

    I also don’t think we have learnt much from the lesson nature tried to teach us about private jets. There have been no reports telling us for instance that those who had ordered their private jets have cancelled their orders. We have also not been told that the state governors who own private jets have been asked politely to explain how they came about such possessions considering that they did not go into their respective government houses with one. On the matter, mum has been the word from the various Houses of Assembly, the National Assembly or the national government.

    I can hear the bells tolling for the old year, as it limps towards its close like an exhausted Olympic athlete coming in long after the officials have packed their gears and gone home. I can also hear, albeit faintly, the bells ringing in the New Year, as it jaunts in with a hat balanced on its head in a rakish angle and with high hopes. I hope it meets us well.

  • Refugees, Refugees everywhere

    Refugees, Refugees everywhere

    Refugees, refugees everywhere – that is the story of Nigeria in 2012; and you would be amazed at the ‘democratisation’ of the victims, the spread of the suffering and the multiple direction of their panic fleeing.

    For starters, the commander-in-chief, chief symbol of state security, got banished from show-boating the power and the glory of the Nigerian state, at Abuja’s Eagles Square, at important national occasions.

    Though President Jonathan loves to project power in military ceremonial garbs with the Field Marshal’s epaulette sitting on his big shoulders and a blaze of medals bedecking his broad chest, the wise president, in 2012, was content to limit his heroics to the closet at Aso Villa.

    Besides, as Boko Haram blasted Maiduguri, Nigeria’s terrorism capital, and sent murderous ripples through most of the North East states of Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi and Adamawa, the president stayed away from this vortex of trouble. This self-imposed ban and the dash from Eagle Square into Aso Rock closet on ceremonial days, are the making of His Excellency as a presidential refugee!

    But that was only the high end of the refugee crisis. At the low end, when the masses, sore, confused and angry at the abject failure of the state to protect them, the fleeing has been more abject, more confusing and more desperate – with many even fleeing to neighbouring countries.

    Between November 30 and December 5, according to a report in The Punch, which quoted a NAN report which itself quoted a UN newsletter, the Nigerian Red Cross said some 1, 042 refugees, made up of 520 children and 306 women, had arrived at the Diffa region of Niger Republic, fleeing from Boko Haram violence in Nigeria. The refugees reportedly settled in the villages Guessere and Massa, 25 kilometres away from the Nigerian town of Diffa.

    Year 2012 ended as it started. In January, Boko Haram launched heavy bombs and gun attacks on Kano, with the police headquarters at its target. That attack claimed 150 lives. On Christmas Eve 2012, gunmen suspected to be Islamists attacked two churches during Christmas Eve services: First Baptist Church, Maiduguri, Borno State and another unnamed church in Firi village, near Potiskum, Yobe State, claiming 12 lives, including that of a pastor and a deacon, according to a report in The Nation of December 26.

    This attack echoed the one that presaged the horrible harvesting of death and limbs that 2012 would be; and the humongous refugee crises to result from those attacks: the horrendous Christmas Day 2011 bombings at Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madala, Niger State, which instantly transformed happy celebrants of Christmas mass into horrific body bags, that would make many Christmases to come anniversaries of grief, instead of the universal gaiety that Yuletide symbolises. No less than 29 worshippers perished in that attack.

    Boko Haram attacks on Christian shrines and worshippers came to a mad climax in June. Here is the tragic report, in the words of Human Rights Watch in its 96-page document, Spiralling Violence: Boko Haram Attacks and Security Force Abuses in Nigeria: “On three successive Sundays in June 2012, for example, suicide bombers detonated explosives at church services in Bauchi, Bauchi State; Jos, Plateau State; and Zaira and Kaduna, Kaduna State – all locations of past episodes of inter-communal violence. The June 17 attacks on two churches in Zaria and two churches in Kaduna killed at least 21 people and set off several days of reprisal and counter-reprisal killings between Christians and Muslims, resulting in some 80 more deaths.”

    Aside from churches, university campuses were not left out of the orgy of violence. The Mubi, Adamawa State tragedy, in which gunmen massacred no less than 26 students of The Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, the Adamawa State University and the Adamawa School of Health Technology, all in the Wuro Fatuje off-campus hostels. The massacre reportedly started at around 10 pm on October 3, with Nigeria still celebrating its 52nd independence anniversary. At the end, the casualty figures rose to no less that 40, according to unofficial sources.

    Neither were high-profile military and police targets: the church facility at the Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna State (November 25), and gunmen storming the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) Headquarters in Abuja (November 26); perhaps to underscore the impotence of the Nigerian state in the face of free-wheeling terrorism.

    These church and campus attacks left refugees streaming south-ward, with many of the youth swearing to abandon their studies rather than go back to risk their lives. The Mubi attacks were however not conclusively linked to Boko Haram.

    Indeed, in the first nine months of 2012, no less than 815 people had been killed from 275 attacks, according to the Human Rights Watch document already quoted. This number is more than half of the no less than 1, 500 casualty figure for three years: 2010, 2011 and 2012.

    At a period during this grim year, worst-hit governments in the South East of Nigeria often arranged transport to evacuate their indigenes from the troubled spots and also burials for victims of the attacks.

    The year 2012 has been Boko Haram’s bloodiest year, leading to the worst cases of internally displaced people in the country – a grim irony of Nigerians becoming refugees in their own country, which should be a natural refuge.

    The sad tale is, with the Federal Government’s tepid handling of the problem, the prospect does not appear better for 2013.

  • 2013: Will the slide of the Black race continue?

    2013: Will the slide of the Black race continue?

    •It is an odd man who foregoes supping with his family that he may serve the table of others. It is an even odder thing that his people applaud this insult against them.

     

    Writing this piece means I failed to resist the temptation to engage in the ritualistic, end-of-year soul searching. However, I will not indulge in the usual deceptive practice of redefining defeat or of portraying miniscule achievements as historic breakthroughs. I refuse to see what is not there or to sprinkle glitter on a toad then pretend it to be beauty incarnate.

    2012 was not a fine year for most Africans and the African Diaspora. The year showed what a vexatious people we can be. In cultural arts, entertainment and sports, Blacks excel. Our contributions continue to redefine how music is made and how sports are played. We cart away gold medals and achievement awards by the bushel. Yet, when it comes to politics and economics, we are more prone to run backwards or sideways than to move forward. A mystery remains unsolved.

    Amid the greatness in other fields, how come Black political and economic leadership is middling? From Brazil, to the United States to most of Africa, our leadership does not approximate Black achievement in other fields. This has not always been the case. The fight against colonialism and legal racism produced black leaders more able than today’s vintage. When times were leaner, education rarer and hatred more open, Black leadership was more profound. The more unfairness the system tossed at us, the better was our leadership. In times past, our leaders rose to the occasion. Today, they sink below it.

    Then, our leaders had the vision to fight for something. They struggled for the political and economic equality of their people. Although they failed as much as they succeeded, at least they tried. The stark injustice of the system made them seek an alternate reality. The servitude system demanded of them was too coarse a shackle to pretend it was a bracelet. They spoke of African and Black liberation not only out of love but of necessity. Being Black was more than a casual affiliation. It was a political and social indictment cast against us. Being part of an inescapable caste, past leaders worked for that caste.

    Among the elite of today, discussion of the political economics of Blackness is the stuff of bad manners. Being black is no longer an inescapable caste. Blackness is now an optional socio-economic perspective. In effect, being Black is akin to membership in a lower-class social club. If possessed of enough money, you can buy your way out by buying your way into the elitist club. That one’s new membership in the elite is that of an inferior associate and not that of a full-fledged patron is fine. What counts is entry into the mansion. If one has to enter as a sidekick or kitchen staff, so be it.

    This is the way of Black leadership today. Because leaders are no longer forced to be Black, they are under no compulsion to help the bulk of the people. Today, they can select between the dueling options of being Black visionaries or membership in the country club. Most leaders opt for the country club where the glimmer and gold are. Consequently, figures like Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba, or even Martin Luther King Jr. are impossible today. Not that they would be violently killed. Their present fate would be worse that their former ones. Today, they would be ridiculed to death. They would be called uncompromising radicals ignorant of the value of a dollar, a fine car or choice wine. They would be looked at as impractical fools dreaming on stars that don’t exist. While a modern King would still proclaim he “has a dream,” the rest of today’s leaders would retort “they have large bank accounts and thus have no need to dream.” If they cared to dream, they could hire someone to do it for them.

    We have reached the juncture where Black leaders are no longer Black like their people. They are of a diluted Blackness that would rather align with the global elite than lead the masses to a better place. Instead of being our heroes, they have become pack dogs following the meat wagon to the rich house.

    We have seen this behavior throughout the year. In South Africa, the Zuma government killed over thirty striking miners. To call the miners’ work hazardous is an understatement. To say they are scantily paid for their daily grapple with death is unassailable. Yet, Zuma’s praetorians acted lethally, in a way the fathers of apartheid would have cheered. The predominately white domestic and international business community rushed to pat Zuma on his back for killing his brothers. Without the struggle and efforts of these miners and people like them, Zuma never would know high office. Yet, he killed those who lifted him and accepted the dark accolades of those who worked to keep him lowly. By this single act, Zuma showed that South Africa is too big for him.

    The nation needs fundamental reform. The current economic imbalance cannot endure without a resulting in convulsion. The small group of Black elitists cannot succor the great want of the poor. Sadly, this man can do nothing about it because he hasn’t the proper equipment. Arrogant and ignorant to a fault, he thought all he had to do was keep the folks happy by laughing, singing and dancing like a regular guy. However, when the party ended, the people saw that he left for the big house and the bank, while they trooped back to the dreary township. The people were not to be perpetually fooled by his false populism. They want bread, jobs, and justice not cheap merriment. The latter he was willing to give because it costs nothing and he could deliver for he was good at the fluff of politics. The former trio he was unwilling to give because it would cost him the support of the moneyed elite and because he was terrible at the substance of governance. In the end, Zuma revealed himself to be a bifurcated man. Culturally he is a Zulu of the Zulus. Politically and economically, he is closer in mindset to Pik Botha than to Nelson Mandela.

    Soon, the beloved Mandela will leave the scene as all men, even the great ones, must. When he goes, so will go our race’s last extant political hero. This man who endured over twenty years in prison has been placed in prison once again. The present confinement is not his health. It is something worse. Mandela handed off the baton as well as humanly possible. Sadly, the man who now should carry it had traded in the correct baton for a more mercenary instrument. Zuma carries not the light of a just political economy but of an unequal one where the large swath of the black populace forever occupies the place made for it under the old ways. For Zuma and those like him, the fight against apartheid was simply to produce a small, Black elite to sit beside the established white one. This dismal vision constitutes Mandela’s new prison. Unlike physical trap that was Robben Island, he no longer has the lifespan or energy to escape this entrapment. Unless a miracle falls upon the nation, Mandela will leave us ruing the quality of those who now steer the ship he once captained.

    Another yet dissimilar visionary leader of this era was Gaddafi. The chief Pan Africanist of his time, Gaddafi’s vision was blurred by his megalomania and ruthlessness. His was a distorted vision of a twisted soul and thus could not be taken seriously in its entirety. Notwithstanding his mental turbidity, Gaddafi managed to see the light of an overarching reality. He did not begin his career as a Pan Africanist. He became a Pan Africanist only after he had become a global outcast. As such, he realized Africa had been made an outcast. The only way to buffer the continent from the dismal consequence of this designation was for African nations to work more closely together. One would be foolish to rest his fate on a labyrinthine mind such as Gaddafi’s. He was not fit to lead his nation to its optimal place let alone an entire continent. Yet, we must acknowledge his departure extinguished a leading voice of African unity. Worse, most African leaders cheered the Western powers as they pushed Gaddafi into the tumbrel. For their unsophisticated support of Gaddafi’s demise, African leaders got two national upheavals for the price of one.

    Libya no longer figures in media reports. The place is a tempest. Armed militias rule the streets. Black Libyans suffer danger and indignity unknown under Gaddafi. Yet, Black Africa makes not a peep. The West claimed intervention was needed to protect human life. But when the human lives in danger were Black, the West turned its head. Africa mimicked the travesty. Arguably, the nation is in no better shape now than under Gaddafi. The despotism may be different but hardly is it much better. The social service network is gone and order has not been restored. Yet, the West does not rush to make post-Gaddafi Libya a success; protection and improvement of the people was never the objective. The real objective was to silence an independent, if half-crazed, voice. The West realized that interspersed with the lunacy was a compelling theme that would discomfit its long-term designs on Africa.

    For supporting the West against Gaddafi, conservative African leaders got a crisis in Mali as their immediate dividend. The Malian crisis is “Gaddafi’s Revenge.” Comprised mainly of Tauregs who supported Gaddafi and radical Islamists who fought him, a loose, ever changing constellation of armed groups allied to declare independence for a slice of northern Mali as large as France.

    In response to this, African leaders responded by calling for the deployment of 3200 peacekeepers to secure the territorial integrity of the nation. One would have to be supremely credulous to believe such a small deployment of ill-equipped soldiers can defeat the Tauregs and others on their desolate home turf. The Tauregs can fade into the desert at will. They are like spirits during the day and ghosts at night. They know the ways of the desert, its wind, heat and sands. The conventional equipment of the peacekeepers will be ruined by the desert conditions in short order. In essence, the deployment is an exercise in futility. Yet, when offered a chance to help, all the western powers could do was verbally support the effort with an oleaginous UN resolution. None put forth material support. No material support was forthcoming because the Western powers do not want Mali solved. They would rather see a smoldering crisis.

    The longevity of this and other crises will be exploited to buttress their military budgets for sophisticated surveillance equipment in order to contain terrorism where it is and not let it get to America or Europe. Moreover, such crises turn African nations into beggars. Western governments, especially their militaries, will gain greater leverage in African capitals, thus pressuring African armies to do the dirty work in the dank places western armies refuse to go. Already more than 90 percent of African nations receive American or other Western military support. Yet, this aid has not promoted continental peace and stability. Africa remains the most instable and war-scarred continent. There is an ugly correlation between the presence of foreign military assistance and the presence of strife on the continent.

    Across the ocean in America, the Black president remains obsessed with forging a budget deal that will further impoverish Black people. Such a deal is unnecessary and unwise from the humane standpoint. It is even unwise from the perspective of ensuring an economy that honors the place of the middle class as the fulcrum of durable economic growth. The deal he seeks will honor and enrich the Scrooges and moneybags of our day. President Obama is being treated as a folk hero despite the objective fact that the deal he seeks will undo ordinary folk. Now that the election is over, he has shunned the populist veneer and assumed the position of factotum of great financial power. The people gave him the victory, now he will give them the blues by handing their fate over to those who already have too much. In exchange for selling the common man down the river, he will be hailed in the mainstream press and by the hired chroniclers of the elite. His legacy will be secured in history. But the truth of the matter will be no Black man has committed such a dramatic betrayal of his people since the man who ratted on Nat Turner’s slave rebellion.

    In the end, the progress we have made over the years has ironically resulted in a situation that makes further progress improbable. Because Blackness is no longer a harshly and universally imposed restriction, the Black leadership elite has the option of being Black in their political and economic orientation or flowing into the mainstream. Greater personal reward lies in going along with the rich and powerful. Thus, most leaders have joined the global circus. In Africa, this means our leaders do not spend much time worrying that both the America and China jostle to control Africa, her resources and her future. China attempts this through its financial reserves and America does it with its military might. Sadly, already much of Africa’s resources and fertile lands have been conceded to foreign interests. Major parts of the continent have become arenas of conflict in the hyperventilating war on terrorism or in an American attempt to insert its military boot before China inserts its checkbook. In America, the master practitioner of anti-Black Black leadership actively pursues a budget reduction deal that needlessly will injure Black and poor people for decades to come.

    I wish things were different but they are not. I foresee nothing that will change this forlorn state except if the people become energized and cognizant of the game being played upon them. Yet, how will the people be stirred when those who lead them are content to lead them astray. The New Year shall come. I can only pray that it will be a happier one than the trend lines predict.