The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Who’s driving?

When a man seizes the right of way from another man, it becomes an unprovoked invitation to the third world war. Then, the epithets begin to flow

One of my few fond memories of my national youth service corps days (don’t ask me where) was climbing a mountain, and I have never attempted it since over three decades ago. And no thanks; I do not look forward to a repeat of the performance, mountain climbing that is, not youth service; not that I look forward to another of that either. When we were given the schedule of activities for the programme, we found to the dismay of us girls that mountain climbing was conspicuously placed somewhere in a proud corner of the second week or so of camp life. The dreaded day soon came for our platoon and we set off. First, we had to walk for some meters, a distance that seemed endless to my lazy feet but which the same now stronger feet would regard as chicken length. At the end of our trail, we saw the mountain loom large before us, in all of its glorious ten feet or so. We shrieked but the mountain refused to bend lower for us so we had to literally go to the mountain.

Ten steps up, most of us females were panting and at the end of our lungs’ supply of air. Not so the sergeants in charge of us. Their own lungs appeared to be perpetually full of air for they never ceased to bellow commands at us at the top of their voices, making us girls not only not even remotely think of giving up but to even become fearful. I think their horror was the thought that should any girl fail to make it up the top of the mountain they would be obliged to carry the lump of flesh down back to the camp. Not that they would not relish such a prospect at saner times, but certainly not while going up a mountain. So, they alternately badgered, begged, bellowed, cajoled, hollered, threatened and physically supported us either by giving us a hand from above to pull us up a landing or by pushing us up from below to take us to the next landing. What a sight we made that day, weak female civilians and ever-patient soldiers who made the females feel that by conquering a ten-foot mountain, they could conquer the world. I have never forgotten those soldiers nor their hand prints on my uniform.

That experience came in handy when I needed to learn to drive a car. That car looked no less like a mountain that I needed to conquer, and the traffic was even worse. And both had to be overcome, but without the kind soldiers. There was only my teacher, a very impatient and impersonal fellow (who sometimes went by the name of husband) who did not understand why on earth everyone did not come into the world with the knowledge of how to drive a car. So, out in the traffic, any reluctance to absorb a lesson was greeted with a bellow of anger. ‘How can you drive backwards with your eyes closed just because you are afraid of heights?’ ‘Please don’t shout. The soldiers did not shout at us like this in the camp.’ ‘That’s because in the camp you were government property.’

Now, everyone knows that when a learner is unhappy, he/she cannot be psychologically well-tuned to exploit the learning experience to the maximum level. I believe most women have had to learn to drive under the tutelage of trying and discouraging husbands; so they have not been sufficiently primed to learn well. Why, most of the time, you would think that the war of the sexes was coming to its apogee at the learning wheels. And now, reports are claiming that women do not know how to drive. How can, when their teachers have been these most unsympathetic teachers who are secretly scheming that they would not allow their learners to know everything about driving so that they can retain male mastery somewhere: if not at home, at least on the road. So, yes, women have been badly taught; and yes, the reports have been prejudiced.

I was lucky though. My first driving lessons came at the hands of a woman who drove like a pro, so I had learned most of what needed to be known about driving before my teacher changed. Yep, I had learned to drive straight, hold the car steady, not back up into other people, cut people off the road, weave in front of other cars and generally handle my car like a pro cowboy would handle his horse: expertly. Now, when I drive on the road, I am your regular Schumacher without the sports car or the pay.

More, I find that I am able to guess the gender of the driver in front of me by how erratically he or she is driving. Have you ever seen a woman drive? Phew! It just makes me want to whistle through my teeth. Whenever you see the car in front of you weaving around a bit, then take cover; the driver is most certainly likely to be a woman and she could be doing any number of things. She could be telling her husband off on the phone for cutting the housekeeping money yet again. She could be changing her child’s nappy in between the lights, and yes, yes, she could also really be tired of keeping house, children, husband and work in different compartments of her brain. Occasionally, they all just merge together into one indistinct mass, drive her insane and it could happen while she’s out in traffic. This is why men do not like to be driven around by women. They have no idea of when the zero hour can come.

I have also seen men drive. Indeed, the state of the world is messy right now because men are driving. When men drive, driving tests go on all the time. They want to test whether the car can go as fast as the end of the speedometer, and what better place to do that than the highways. This is why all the highways in the country are no longer safe for women to drive on: too many men are out testing the limits of their speedometers.

Then, have you ever seen men pitch their nerves against other men’s? To determine who owns the road, two grown up men would let their cars drive some meters fender-to-fender close until one caves in and allows the other to go, ‘for now’. Men hate giving way to each other; they’d sooner be caught giving way to a woman. Worse, when a man seizes the right of way from another, it becomes an unprovoked invitation to the third world war. That’s when the epithets begin to flow: ‘why don’t you fold up the road and take it home with you, you this … this … this …!’; ‘Why don’t you drive over me, you …?!’ and many other unprintable things until your poor passenger ears are quite full. It’s got to the point now that when couples go out, the big question is ‘Who’s driving?’ Neither trusts the other.

This is why, when I drive and appear to be a little distracted, shouts of ‘Go get a driver!’ are flung at me from several quarters. But you see, they come from men who are themselves racing inexorably to occupy the bed reserved for them in the hospital; so who are they to tell me I don’t know how to drive. Yes indeed, o, that report about women not knowing how to drive is lying out of its teeth. The sanity of the road right now depends on women drivers. They force the men to slow down.

December 16, 2012
Wahala dey

Without doubt and more than ever before, our nation is facing threats to national security and we urgently need solutions before we slip into chaos and anarchy.

From what can be described as a relatively peaceful country, we have assumed a frightening status of one of the most dangerous countries to live in. Bombing, kidnapping, terrorists’ attacks have become so frequent in Nigeria that it is no longer a major news item.

T he popular P- Square duo sang, Wahala dey. (There is trouble).

We have lost count of people who had been killed in various attacks especially in northern parts of the country and many have been forced to relocate to safer parts that are also prone to danger. Kidnapping has also become an almost daily occurrence that no one is sure who is going to be the next victim.

Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala was recently kidnapped and it took the deployment of soldiers along with other security agencies for her to be released. Others who had been kidnapped before her and after are not as lucky as she is. Families of some kidnapped persons have had to pay ransom, while others have been killed.

In my travels out of the country, I get asked how we are coping with the Boko Haram attacks and other violent incidents that make major headlines in the foreign media. The International community is worried about the implication of major crisis in Nigeria and we have no choice but to stem the very dangerous degenerating security situation.

The threats are social, political and religious in nature. They are very intricate and require a lot of wisdom to resolve.

My hope is that we would be able to come up with some solutions which hopefully those in government and various leadership levels can consider as we struggle to save our country from disintegration.

Let no one be deceived, crisis, no matter how aggrieved some of us may feel, is an ill-wind that blows no one any good. Those who experienced the civil war and other instances of crisis have frightening stories to tell.

The experiences of some African countries are heart-rendering and personally my prayer is that sooner than later when it could be too late, we would get our acts right and learn to live together as one. It’s hard to forget two films on the Rwandan genocide I watched, Sometimes in April and Hotel Rwanda. Hopefully we would not get to that stage of man’s inhumanity to man.

What is the way out of our present predicament?

Our government has to really be on top of the situation as they always claimed.

The government, through the various security agencies, has to ensure the safety of the citizens in whatever parts of the country they live.

We need good governance, lack of which is the root cause of some threats we are experiencing. The ordinary Nigerian needs to feel the impact of the government through well thought-out policies that will guarantee better standard of living.

Where dialogue is needed, it should be considered to address whatever grievance any good any group may have. Community and religious leaders have to keep campaigning for peace since the perpetrators of the criminal acts belong to one community or religious group.

To keep Nigeria peaceful is a task that has to be done. We all have a role to play even if it is talking about it and proffering solutions like we have been doing.

Excerpt from a speech at the launch of Cry for Change by Biodun-Thomas Davids in Lagos on Friday, December 14, 2012

December 16, 2012
A police officer’s indescribable anguish

The police often cut a pitiable sight whenever they are spectacularly wrong-footed by criminal gangs. The kidnap last Sunday of Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was not the first time the police would have egg on their faces. It will certainly not be the last. Their public image, they know too well, is sullied, and the competence of their men, not to talk of their public relations, leaves a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, everyone, including policemen themselves, knows the problems the Force is battling with; and to some extent, everyone has a fair idea of what the solutions are. The problem with the police is that there is simply no president willing to tackle their problems. With every test the police fail, its personnel, serving and retired, get increasingly disenchanted and demotivated. Sometimes they take out their frustrations on the public, and at other times they simply turn their backs on the job. This mounting frustration perhaps explains why the just retired Plateau State Commissioner of Police, CP Emmanuel Oladipo Ayeni, on his last day in office, publicly vented his spleen on the system that continues to ridicule the Force and render it ineffective.

His views on what has gone wrong with the police were uncharacteristically candid and trenchant. Hear him: “The state of the Nigeria Police Force is worrisome. The personnel of the police do not have necessary logistics to work with in all the states of the country. There are no sufficient vehicles to perform our statutory duties of protection of life and property, maintenance of law and order, apprehension of offenders and enforcement of all laws with which the force is directly charged.

“Virtually all the state police commands rely on the assistance of state governments for the provision of vehicles, communications and necessary logistics. I came to Plateau State on July 11, 2011; a state that is facing serious security challenges. No single vehicle has been given to the command by the Federal Government. Apart from that, a single litre of fuel has not been given to the command as well. How does the Federal Government want the police to function and perform its statutory duties under this type of climate? If not for the assistance from the state government, everything would have collapsed.

“Therefore, if we want the problem of security to become something of the past in Nigeria, the Federal Government must take the issue of internal security serious by giving the Nigeria Police the attention it deserves. If this is not done, there will be increased criminal activities in the country. Police cannot perform magic because you cannot build something on nothing. The Federal Government must wake up and play its constitutional role of providing security for the people living in the country.”

I have never been a fan of the police. But I am sensible enough to appreciate that that security organisation has been neglected for far too long. The federal government retains control of the police and pays their meagre salary, but it is the states, which exercise very minimal control over the agency, that sustains it operationally. I have said it here before that notwithstanding the suavity and determination of the Inspector-General of Police, MD Abubakar, he is fighting odds so daunting it is hard to see him making the kind of progress he envisions. If there is to be a change in the fortunes of the Force, it will have to come primarily from the presidency.

That change, sadly, eluded both the excitable Olusegun Obasanjo presidency and the lethargic presidency of the late Umaru Yar’Adua. Yet, either man was a fairly gentler conservative than President Jonathan, a conservative dyed-in-the-wool. It will take a tectonic shift in Jonathan’s worldview for him to author the radical change that would be the saving of the Nigeria Police. His presidential credo is to pass on the country as it is, a lousy and unworkable nuisance, to his successor. The Force had better wait for that successor and hope he would be a progressive and a patriot par excellence.

December 16, 2012
Obasanjo in Ghana

Nigeria’s Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is a fairly well-known African leader, having presided over the affairs of his country twice. His reputation as a leader, whether democratic or authoritarian, has however not quite matched his fame as a long-standing ruler. Even then such fame as he continues to enjoy has made him a prime candidate for African Union (AU) or Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) missions. If he cannot be trusted to carry out those missions with the perspicacity of a true statesman, so the feeling goes on the continent, he can at least be relied on to handle them with the weight of his presence and renown. This probably explained why the AU/ECOWAS appointed him to head their observer mission to the February/March presidential/run-off elections in Senegal. It is a tribute to his disputatiousness and ineffectiveness that he made the assignment a controversial one. Now, again, ECOWAS has made him the head of its observer mission to monitor the presidential election in Ghana. This time, he is not expected to undermine the little fame he has left, notwithstanding his propensity for the controversial.

If the two continental and regional bodies are serious about advancing the cause of democracy in Africa, it is time they began to search for the right candidates to head their observer missions. It should gladden the heart of Nigerians that their former president is entrusted with continental and regional responsibilities; but they are keenly aware that he is the wrongest candidate for the job on account of his anti-democratic credentials. Nigerians are not so parochial as not to appreciate when the wrong honour is being done them. Nor are they so mystified as not to know that Obasanjo’s repeated and continuous appointment for such delicate missions is a reflection of both regional and continental unease with the principles and values of democracy. Africa may be more democratic than it was some 20 years ago, but such democracy as they now practice falls short of universal standards.

I acknowledge that none of the observer missions Obasanjo led in the past few years has miscarried. His modest successes are, however, less a function of his wise counsel and assiduousness than they signpost the iron determination of the host countries to get their democracy right. In the February/March presidential elections in Senegal, Obasanjo had blunderingly suggested to the angry and restless Senegalese electorate to offer a two-year tenure extension to ex-President Abdoulaye Wade who was hotly disputing with the opposition the correct interpretation of the country’s presidential tenure. Obasanjo had in that instance tried to act as a political scientist or statistician, having observed that Wade wanted three more years while some stakeholders were willing to concede only one year. The main opposition led by Mr Macky Sall had offered none; and Obasanjo struck for the mean by offering two years. For someone sent to Senegal by AU and ECOWAS to mediate a disputatious pre-election period and ensure sound adherence to democratic principles, it was distressing to hear the former Nigerian president talk and seem arrantly self-important. In the end, during the run-off election on March 25, wise counsel prevailed, and the Senegalese electorate booted out Wade, voted in Sall, and disgraced Obasanjo who had prided himself on some unfounded originality and tactical ingenuity.

To prove his diplomatic and political malfeasances were not an aberration, Obasanjo had earlier displayed a stark lack of judgement in Sierra Leone when in 2007 he backed the then vice president and presidential candidate of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), Solomon Ekuma Berewa, for the presidency in that year’s election. He didn’t need to, though he had travelled to that country to dedicate a youth centre named after him. The All Peoples Congress (APC) candidate, the more polished Ernest Bai Koroma, won the election of that year to assume the presidency of Sierra Leone. But after leading a business delegation to the country of six million people last month, Obasanjo simply took sides and declared Mr Koroma as favourite to win the November 17 election. Many commentators in Sierra Leone concluded that Obasanjo was unprincipled and motivated by wrong and base motives. Some even said that his endorsements should be watched with care because the former Nigerian leader did not have the reputation of a statesman and democrat, and that electoral malpractices followed him everywhere, including those he engineered himself.

But by far the most important fact that should disqualify Obasanjo from heading any election monitoring group is his own record as an elected president. None of the two elections he conducted while in office was adjudged free and fair. In fact that of 2007 was by universal acclaim dismissed as the worst election anywhere in the world. Observer missions sent by many countries, including the European Union, described the poll as fraudulent and did not reflect the true wishes of the people of Nigeria. Even the main beneficiary of that election, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, declared the election to be flawed. To further demean himself, apart from conducting a fraudulent election, Obasanjo also strove desperately to secure tenure extension for himself, climbing down from asking for three years, to plaintively asking for two years or even one. Nigeria has still not been able to live down the appalling choices he foisted on the country in 2007 and 2011.

Neither the AU nor ECOWAS will take the wise counsel of always appointing someone really qualified intellectually and temperamentally to monitor elections on the continent, mediate electoral or governmental disputes, and generally serve as facilitator for anything that would advance the cause of democracy. The reason, as the Mo Ibrahim Foundation has found out in its frustrating effort to award leadership prizes over the years, is because the continent is replete with uninspired leaders, of which, sadly, Obsanjo is the archetype. Until the quality of leadership increases in Africa, the continent’s leaders will continue to be inured to the weaknesses exhibited by their colleagues. And since Obasanjo fancies himself a statesman and has an exaggerated opinion of his capacity and accomplishments, he will continue to angle for diplomatic jobs and offer himself as a champion of causes far beyond his ken.

Monitored or not, and by Obasanjo or any other, Ghana will get its electoral dynamics right. It has a prouder democratic history than Nigeria, and has managed, in spite of its hunger for modernisation, to establish and run a humanistic government, one that is at once as unprepossessing as it is somewhat ruthlessly efficient. Ghana may not be as copiously intellectual as Nigeria, or as boisterously exciting and culturally variegated, but in its seeming staleness and staidness, it has proven to be a better avatar of governance, moderation, innovation and surprisingly piquant traditionalism. People like Obasanjo should go to Ghana to learn a thing or two about the eternal verities of life, not to monitor elections for which they are least qualified. Perhaps a course on Nkrumahism would do them some good and positively redirect and refine the amorphous Pan-Africanism they struggled to acquire in their youth, and which pristine version they grew up yearning to embrace, to identify with, and to market.

December 9, 2012
The dangers this time

As the Nigerian ship of state enters turbulent and uncharted waters, we must be careful in which direction we push the troubled hulk. The troubled early years after independence appear to be back with us, but with heightened and more critical contradictions. This time around, almost everything that can go wrong in a fragile nation and a more fragile democracy has gone wrong and without powerful countervailing institutions.

As it was the case in the First Republic, we have a military stretched to the limits of its fabric and professional tether by internal security operations. We have a bitterly divided political elite. We have a situation in which a section of the country has been rendered virtually ungovernable by armed insurrection, with the other sections besieged by social, economic, political and religious vampires and vultures.

But now in addition to these ancient woes, we have the alarming situation in which ordinary and normal military postings are judged and condemned through the prism of religious and ethnic coloration. We have warlords and powerlords jostling for contention. We have a ruling class that has become a byword for a bizarre and berserk variant of kleptocracy. Never in the history of this country has the run on the Exchequer been more openly defiant and in your face. Presiding over all this is a president who reminds one of a boy-emperor handed an empire as a toy rigged with explosives.

In politically divided and ethnically fractured nations where zero sum politics is the name of the game, the struggle for power is often seen as a struggle for the soul of contending nationalities. No wonder then that democratic contests are framed as a battle for the survival of the ethnic group in a hostile environment rather than a struggle for office. In such circumstances, elections are nothing but an ethnic census or a tribal referendum. They solve and resolve nothing. In fact as we have argued on this page and it is now apparent in the plight of the nation, elections tend to worsen the contradictions.

If it is of any help and comfort to us, primordial scare mongering is not restricted to developing nations alone, but with an important proviso. As we can see in the tragedy of the Republic of Congo, the other African giant with which the chaotic mess of Nigeria is often compared, developed nations are not colonial amalgamations or overseas plantations and mega-mine crematorium put together for the sole purpose of extractive predation. In about sixty years, Congo has had only four rulers: Patrice Lumumba, its murdered and iconic founding president, Joseph Mobutu and the two Kabilas. The first three were either violently overthrown or murdered. Every election has been followed by a civil war.

Now if gold can rust, what is dross expected to do? During the run up to the ill-fated Treaty of Versailles and the knotty issue of German reparation, an American negotiator was so affronted by the unrelenting hostility to the Germans of Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, that he was forced to ask him.”Pray sir, have you ever been to Germany?”

“No sir!” Clemenceau, a.k.a The Tiger, shot back. “But twice in my lifetime Germans have been to Paris!”. He was of course referring to 1870 and 1914. Had The Tiger tarried a bit longer, he would have lived to witness a more comprehensive German “visit” during the Second World War when Hitler’s Panzer Divisions overran France in a question of days. One can then imagine what would have happened had the French and the Germans been boxed together in a nation-space by colonial fiat, and without a road map.

But it can be worse. And some nations have paid terrible prices as a result. If the rhetoric of injustice and marginalisation succumbs to dark, paranoid fantasies; if passions are inflamed to a point where they lead to a bitter scape-goating or stigmatisation of other ethnic groups, civil wars or genocide often result. Nigeria, Rwanda and Kenya come to mind. In Kenya in 2007, the entire country dissolved in ethnic mayhem after disputed presidential elections. But as soon as an internationally driven acceptable formula for post and power-sharing was found, all became quiet on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Although often mainly executed by ordinary people, all the genocide in post-colonial Africa are driven by elite hate propaganda and are often the nuclear fallout of bitter contention for state largesse. Genocides do not descend suddenly from heaven. The principal role of intellectuals in fanning the embers of hatred and inflaming genocidal passions is often ignored by intellectuals who write on genocide.

Once again, Nigeria appears to have arrived at a critical juncture. Political battles are almost always preceded by intellectual contestations. You can almost tell when a nation is headed for a major showdown whenever certain key cultural and political codes, eg, genocide, demonology, terrorism, federalism, devolution of power, sovereignty etc become sites of fierce intellectual combat.

In the old West, even when the battle field wears a new garb and fresh mutants of the old tendencies emerge, the contest is still structured around the ancient ideological divide which showed up fifty years ago when the Action Group fractured irretrievably. Whether as seen in the struggle between federalists and anti-federalists, between the demos and their demonologists , between Afenifere patriots and Abacha collaborationists and now between the so called mainstreamers and the champions of regionalism, the ghosts of Awo and SLA have always stalked the battle field.

Unflinching loyalty to a cause, a group or the communal ideal is a timeless phenomenon since humanity first socialised and civilised. So is political treachery which is arrant disloyalty to the communal ideal. Just as no alchemy can transmute base metal into gold, no verbal alchemy can transform treachery to loyalty. From the Jews to the Japanese, it has been shown how loyalty to the group and established communal ideals promotes good virtues, particularly resilience, industry, generosity of spirit and the cult of heroic self-denial in the service of the society.

Every human society has a way of dealing with dishonourable dissent and outright disloyalty and political treachery. The disincentives range from stigmatisation, demonisation and when all else fails the employment of Political Terror. Terror ranges from physical coercion to other more subtle forms of economic, spiritual, metaphysical, artistic and intellectual intimidation.

In the old Yoruba society, there were certain institutions which acted in concert to protect the integrity of the communal ethos and ideals. These ideological apparatuses of the old Yoruba state include the Ogboni Confraternity, the oro and Osugbo cults which employed the efficacy of physical, intellectual and spiritual terror to ensure strict compliance with societal norms. It was not for nothing that a baffled and bewildered Peter Morton-Williams described the Ogboni as “mystery-mongering greybeards”

The problem with Nigeria, and with all colonial creations, is the clash of competing loyalties, that is loyalty to the old organic community and loyalty to a new nation that is yet to be properly founded, one that remains an artificial contraption and a mere geographical expression as Awolowo famously noted. Although loyalty to the new modern nation ought to supersede loyalty to the primordial community, that is only where and when the state acts out its true historical role as an arbiter, arbitrator and mediator of the competing and countervailing demands of the different factions of the ruling elite.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian post-colonial state has proved itself to be incapable of arbitrating or mediating anything, except when it comes to the deployment of gratuitous and autistic violence against different constituting units and nationalities. Like a childlike monstrosity, the Nigerian bandit state is frozen in conception as an instrument of Colonial Terror against captive nationals, utterly incapable of coming up with an organic organogram that will satisfy the yearnings and aspirations of its captured natives.

In such circumstances, rather than being an ameliorative clinic of national clarity and charity, the state becomes a theatre of chaos and confusion in an absurdist drama of national entropy; a Bazaar of buccaneers where every ascendant group barricades the door as the feeding frenzy of political hyenas commences. To the faithful, come and chop is the war-cry and there is no difference between the colour of blood and the colour of red wine. Each must flow abundantly.

As every outbid or smashed nationality retreats to lick its wounds, the ethnic igloo welcomes back its own at great costs to national consciousness and cohesion. In the event, the embattled nationality, particularly if it retains some residual cohesion from its pre-colonial political formation, begins a process of internal purgation. Conscientious objectors and opportunistic “one-Nigeria” dissidents alike are branded as traitors and harsh sanctions often follow.

December 9, 2012
Four Yoruba and Nigerian Avatars

More than any other Nigerian nationality, the Yoruba nation often suffers this periodic backlash arising from traumatic stress and disorder. On at least three occasions, it has led to low intensity civil wars resulting in the liquidation of many of its illustrious children, particularly during the “Wetie” civil insurgency, the revolt against massive rigging that sank the Second Republic and the uprising that marked the annulment of the June 12 presidential election.

Yet despite all this , and all things considered, there are those who argue that Akintola was a better focused and more realistic politician than Awolowo. In their estimation, SLA probably discovered very early enough the gigantic fraud that the post-colonial nation was and how every heroic effort to reform it is doomed to tragic failure. Since politics is ultimately about who gets what and at what time, it is better to let the status quo be as long as the Yoruba elite were allotted their fair share, after all what the bird eats is what it flies with no matter the complexion of the skies.

This was the early prototype of the later mainstream argument. Akintola acquiesced in the feudal supremacy of the old North. It should be recalled that his battle cry of “Ekiniani” and Ekejiani was directed against the dominant Igbo elite whom he felt were greedily gulping up what should belong to the Yoruba elite but which was denied them as a result of Awolowo’s political intransigence. In fairness to them, Akintola and his colleagues did manage to claw back some concessions.

But there were also many who saw through all this as sheer political chicanery, an attempt to appease the greedy palate of a few Yoruba right wingers even as the entire Yoruba society lay under the hammer of the feudal oligarchy and with its authentic leadership in jail. In sharp ideological contrast to Akintola, Awolowo heroically believed that Nigeria was redeemable but that it would know neither peace nor development until feudalism was smashed in the north.

Prolonged and protracted military rule stalemated the argument, with the Yoruba society oscillating between confrontation and guarded collaboration with the military-feudal complex. After Chief Awolowo’s departure, and in a significant play of signifiers across rigid ideological divides, it took a habitual right winger who had transited to the left to break the deadlock.

Before his Pauline conversion, M.K.O Abiola’s apostasy knew no bounds or limits. But he brought immense rightwing resources to bear on a leftwing cause. These are the resources of immense wealth, wide contacts across the political spectrum and a liberal attitude to political impurities. Abiola triumphed but panicked an outfoxed military high command into annulling the freest and fairest presidential election in the history of the country.

In retrospect, it can be seen that it was Awolowo’s tradition of heroic defiance which facilitated Abiola’s dramatic victory. Awolowo’s courageous opposition made it possible for the Yoruba nation to maintain its position as a hegemonic power bloc even while being out of power and contention. The northern power masters knew where the real threat to their hegemonic stronghold on the nation lies. In turn, it was Abiola’s heroic defiance and self-martyrdom coupled with the NADECO insurrection which made an Obasanjo presidency possible.

Of the four Yoruba titans, Obasanjo, the lone soldier, is arguably the outstanding political games-master. It will be recalled that Akintola’s supine deference led to a stiffening of feudal arrogance which in turn invited a violent military reprisal. Awolowo’s disdain and defiance led to a cycling of the wagon by his adversaries which prepared the Yoruba for a long siege. Abiola’s in your face conversion panicked the military feudal complex into a nation-destroying annulment. But Obasanjo stooped to conquer, feigning bucolic ignorance and enduring humiliation and indignities along the way until he acquired enough leverage of power to wreak untold havoc on his feudal tormentors.

It will be left to future historians and psychoanalysts to ponder whether Obasanjo was in the best psychological state to lead a nation shortly after he was sprung from jail by his wily benefactors who had looked the other way as Abacha summarily impounded him. A man with the legendary memory of an affronted elephant, Obasanjo simply returned the toxic compliment in full measure. By the time he had finished with them, the hallowed aura had vanished and the feudal power mongers were looking very ordinary and most politically vulnerable. For the first time in the history of the country, we have what looks like an open playing ground among the ruling class.

But it is also obvious that Obasanjo lacks the temperament, the political skills, the psychological disposition and the intellectual wherewithal to build and sustain a mass political movement or even a regular political party. More shattering is the fact that having ruled the nation for the longest period as a civilian and having been able to impose the last two presidents on the nation, the current chaotic mess is a damning testimonial against the substitution of benign, visionary and transformative statecraft for petty and vindictive score settling. Rather than being the solution, the general is part of the problem.

With the old pacted consensus gone, with no overriding pan-Nigerian statesman in sight and with no dominant power broker in the horizon, it is clear that once again Nigeria has entered uncharted waters. Yet our story of avatars shows the immanent rationality of history, how unjust visions of human development will ultimately succumb to bitter reality, no matter how long and what it costs, and how different people with different goals, in a different, contradictory and even adversarial manner, can end up contributing to the same historical cause without their ever being aware of the end result.

December 9, 2012
‘Unity symbols’ and shadow chasing

No federal legislature has a right to outlaw symbols and emblems of cultural nations within Nigeria

It appears that our National Assembly is indefatigable when it comes to cultivating self-distracting issues. If it is not contesting the site of sovereignty with citizens, it is embroiled in disagreement with the executive over which branch of government should supervise development projects in senatorial constituencies or trying to silence the CBN governor when he finds pleasure in criticizing federal legislators’ exorbitant salaries. When the assembly is not acting as a body, some of its members are quick to engage in, to use popular parlance, heating the polity unnecessarily.

For example, when the legislature finally chooses to countenance citizens’ call for constitutional reforms, the assembly brings to the fore creation of states. Some of their leaders even travel to different parts of the country to promise new states to traditional rulers. When citizens argue that it is not the responsibility of lawmakers to create a people’s constitution, lawmakers claim that as the only site of sovereignty in the country at present, they can manufacture a people’s constitution through tinkering with the 1999 Constitution that has no input from citizens.

The new game in town by federal legislators is to deny citizens their right to information. A few days ago when the Aviation Minister asked the assembly to send out journalists from the hallowed chambers during presentation of her ministry’s budget for next year, legislators quickly accepted to do. Similarly in the same week, members of the legislature refused to listen to presentation of the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The argument is that the persons representing SEC were acting on behalf of SEC’s director-general who is not considered to be on friendly terms with many members of the legislature in Abuja. Is it proper for legislators to stop the work of government because of a disagreement with the head of an agency? Should lawmakers personalize in a puerile manner whatever conflict they have with a public officer? With this decision, the lawmakers are not only creating distractions, they are also trivializing the role of government, particularly that of the executive and the legislature.

As if all these were not enough, honourable lawmakers are now in the process of spending sessions on the right of states to have flags and coats of arms in a federation. The latest game in the national assembly is the threat to outlaw flags, coats of arms, and anthems of states. The thinking of lawmakers is that state emblems can detract from national unity, an argument that clearly confuses the concept of territorial integrity (national unity) with cultural integrity of individual states.

It is hard to know how many of the lawmakers in Abuja or anywhere else in Nigeria are aware that Nigeria before the coming of military dictators used to have national and regional flags flying side by side. Each of the three regions used to have its own coat of arms, in addition to the federal one. There was no threat to the country’s unity because of simultaneous existence of federal and regional flags and anthems. When Eastern Nigeria decided to secede, it was because Igbo leaders believed that people of Eastern Nigeria origin were not safe in northern Nigeria and that the federal government, then controlled by military leaders from the north, were not to be trusted with securing the life and property of citizens from Eastern Nigeria.

Lawmakers have no good reason to feel skittish about the country’s unity simply because states choose to express the cultural diversity of the country. Lawmakers’ attempt to suppress expression of the country’s cultural diversity undermines the country’s motto of unity in diversity. Furthermore, serious lawmakers should have the humility to seek information about other federations in the world before inducing tension between federal and state governments. Our federal legislators need to know that they are operating in a post-military era and that not all the policies and practices bequeathed by military governments can be sustained in a democratic system.

Legislative aides (if any) need to tell lawmakers that most of the countries that operate federalism do have a tradition of at least two levels of symbols of allegiance: federal and state. For example, each of the 50 states in the United States flies two flags daily; the American flag and the flag of each state. Even cities and companies fly their flags daily along with federal and state flags. The same applies to Canada. In South Africa each of the nine provinces has its own flag and coat of arms.

Furthermore, Brazil has 27 state flags in addition to the national flag. Switzerland allows its 26 cantons to have flags and coats of arms. Each canton has a constitution that complements the federal constitution. So does Belgium host 18 flags: one for the country, three for the regions and the rest for the country’s 14 provinces. There are also coats of arms for each level of government. Argentina has one national flag, 23 provincial flags, and a flag for the city of Buenos Aires while Germany has 16 state flags while Austria has nine state flags and coats of arms. India, a co-member of the Commonwealth, has 28 state flags and coats of arms, in addition to the national flag and coat of arms. There are 14 state flags in Malaysia, etc. Nearer home, Ethiopia, a federation, does not have state flags but has provision for secession in its national constitution.

Similarly, there are multiple flags and coats of arms in the country that created Nigeria, the United Kingdom. Apart from flags in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to complement the Union Jack, many cities in England, Scotland, and Wales have flags to accentuate their identities. Yet Britain has not broken into pieces because of symbols and emblems to express Britain’s cultural identity.

Nigeria cannot afford the myopia or intolerance that is illustrated by the call of lawmakers for abrogation of state flags, coats of arms, and pledges. The world has been (and still is) changing faster than the military dictators that reconstructed Nigeria into a unitary system were (and still are) capable of imagining. Despite frantic efforts by leaders of sections of the country to dampen the spirit of cultural identity in a federation, Nigeria must prepare itself for change from the blanket of uniformity draped around it by military dictators through the 1999 Constitution. Lawmakers and cultural leaders who refuse to acknowledge the inevitability of change take the risk of going the way of the dinosaur. No federal legislature has a right to outlaw symbols and emblems of cultural nations within the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

December 9, 2012
Federal government so detached from reality

As an indication of just how far down on the realty scale the government has descended, huge contracts have just either been approved or budgeted for in the 2013 budget. Among these are N2 billion additional fund for the construction of the vice president’s residence in Abuja, N2.2bn for the construction of a ‘befitting’ banquet hall in the presidential villa, billions more for the maintenance of the about 10 aircraft in the presidential fleet, and stupendous amounts for the official accommodation of the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives. There are other hefty allocations for all sorts of sundry matters including meals, cutleries, entertainment, etc.

Asked why the VP’s residence was a priority, the Federal Capital City (FCT) minister made this remarkably indifferent explanation: “The Vice-President is staying in a guest house meant for visiting heads of state. It is not right, it is not befitting for the Vice-President…The Vice-President has no accommodation; certainly you will agree with me that it is unbecoming for any government not to provide accommodation for its Vice-President. We will now embark on the construction of a befitting residence for the vice-president.” The minister, you will notice, wasn’t talking of necessity in these dire economic times; he was talking of what is befitting and what is not befitting. It’s the same rationalisation everywhere in government. The Aviation minister, for instance, is also preoccupied with building airports that can compete with the best in the world. Have they been able to run and maintain the ones they inherited as best as they should?

The Goodluck Jonathan government is not just spending billions without rhyme or reason; I am beginning to suspect that the government has run berserk. Only last week, the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, disclosed that some 50 oil firms fraudulently collected N232bn from the government. Only N29bn has been recovered so far through debt swap. Were the gatekeepers sleeping when the crime was being committed; or was it sheer criminal collusion by government officials? In the midst of this horrendous mismanagement and wasteful spending, the president has not spoken with the gravitas the situation calls for. Instead, he has announced that eventually fuel subsidy would have to be removed completely. Neither he nor his ministers could tell us accurately the volume of fuel we consume, how they computed the subsidy, and why they think the economy can survive the social and economic dislocations the subsidy removal would precipitate.

The Jonathan government has not provided fresh ideas on how the country can best manage its resources, develop the economic and political paradigms that are efficient and best suited to our needs, and energise the system to succor the rising number of poor people who cannot afford to pay for shelter and healthcare, educate their children, and enjoy a decent standard of living. More people are unemployed today than at any time in our history, are cripplingly less skilled, more criminally minded, and die much younger than their counterparts in most other African countries. In brief, Nigeria fares very badly in every social or economic indicator. What plans does the government have to remake the country and its people? Practically none. Instead, the government continues to embark on a spending spree so violently opposed to the reality of the moment, and almost without a care for the future, that it is a miracle order has not completely broken down.

Sadly, as democrats, we will have to cope with this sorry situation for the next two years and more. There is little anyone can do to redirect the government. It believes it has the brightest ideas and the best men and women to run the affairs of the country. Whatever we say will simply bounce off their thick skins. The best we can hope for is to wait for the next polls and vote in rational and realistic leaders who have workable ideas for re-engineering the country. Meanwhile, we must also hope that the damage this band of indifferent and financially reckless politicians will do to the system will not be irredeemable. Indeed, I am not sure we can survive a wrong choice after 2015.

December 9, 2012
Before Nigeria is gifted another Obasanjo

We must tell OBJ: Not again

General Olusegun Obasanjo, the two-time Nigerian President, is a patriot; a queer one I must say, who remains so only if Nigeria is ruled in his image. In order to ensure he dominates the Nigerian environment, therefore, he first gave us Yar Adua as Obasanjo 11 and not even that gentleman’s cluelessness would deter him from subsequently inflicting reigning Goodluck Jonathan, as Obasanjo 111, having himself held us spellbound the previous eight years, rampaging. Rampaging, yes, that was it. No thanks to the EFCC, which he created and had under his jackboots, state governors like Alamiasiegha of Bayelsa, Dariye of Plateau, Ladoja of Oyo were sent packing via impeachment spuriously using , by far fewer legislators than were constitutionally prescribed. It mattered nothing to him that the courts subsequently reversed some of these constitutional aberrations. But those were the lucky ones as in Ekiti , he not only rambunctiously sent packing, his own adopted son, Ayo Fayose, who was governor, but flagrantly and needlessly imposed his kinsman, General Olurin, on the hapless state as Military Administrator, even as there was a sitting Deputy Governor.

Nor was that the limit of his impunity in a curious regime of ‘Le ‘tat, cest moi’ – I am the state. Today, Nigerians talk to no end about the monstrous oil subsidy scam easily forgetting that the impunity in that industry started way back when Obasanjo personally took charge of the Ministry of Petroleum and ensured that not even the National Assembly could conduct oversight functions there to guarantee accountability.

At least we have the words of Speaker Ghali Na’aba to that effect.

General Obasanjo was not done. He is, after all, a soldier. Therefore, for him, the appropriation laws were nothing but mere intentions of the National Assembly. For him, no institution should effect changes in his draft budgets whatever the constitution says and when it appeared to him that was not going to happen, he personally went on national television to allege that key officials of the Assembly had padded the budget.

The above is the essential Obasanjo.

But neither those nor the signal failure of Yar Adua and Jonathan as leaders, not even the fact that these two soon became their own men would dissuade him from again wanting to be thrice lucky, inflicting totally unprepared persons on Nigerians as president.

If news currently going the rounds are to be believed, his latest scheme is to divine on Nigeria, the pair of the Jigawa State governor, the dour Sule Lamido who ran, unarguably, the worst phase of Nigeria’s foreign policy in history as Foreign Affairs Minister, and his River’s State counterpart, Rotimi Amaechi, the same man Obasanjo said his gubernatorial ticket had what he called ‘K’ leg and who had to be rescued, to OBJ’s chagrin, by the Supreme Court. To make a success of this new scheme, and in his usual serpentine manner, Obasanjo is known to have stopped at nothing to so damage Jonathan he won’t even be able to count on a wholesome support of his South-South constituency in his comeback bid. It is for that sole reason Obasanjo did not cast a mere glance at the South-East but went to the heart of the South -South –Rivers State –to zero in on Amaechi.

It should, however, not be our problem if the duo of Obasanjo and Jonathan should fight to the death, politically speaking. Indeed, Nigeria has a lot to gain from that eventuality as it has the distinct possibility of sparing us all the electoral malfeasance for which Nigeria has become world famous these past many years since the PDP has held the country captive with nothing tangible to show for it. What we have had, instead, to quote Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Ekiti State governor, mutatis mutandis, is ‘a paucity of leadership and apposite planning; deficits of vision, holistic strategy and service delivery accentuated by poor infrastructure stock and a level of corruption which today places Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt country in the world.’

It would have been tolerable if that were all the negativities.

Rather, PDP’s last two years in government has witnessed the theft, still to be officially denied, of a humongous N5 trillion, just as its other crowning glory is a rampaging Boko Haram that not only attacks at will, but chooses its mode of inflicting maximum damage, whether by suicide bombing, by outgunning security personnel or simply slaughtering, ram-like, poor villagers, as happened this past week in Borno state.

Long suffering Nigerians must wake up to the reality of what it means for an individual, however seemingly powerful, to continually, single-highhandedly, inflict leaders on the country.

Opposition politicians must lead the way by subsuming their individual political ambitions to the greater good of the country. They must realise they cannot all be President. PDP has done enough damage that its defeat should ordinarily be a foregone conclusion. But here, things are different, and we are talking here about past masters in election rigging.

Under the PDP, Nigeria has been taken to the very nadir not even the National Assembly can be trusted to deal honestly on behalf of the people they claim elected them. Its investigating committees are now routinely being caught in corrupt practices. Committees that are conducting otherwise solemn duties on behalf of the people have turned such opportunities to avenues for amassing filthy lucre simply because of our ineffective leadership at the centre. Yet Nigerians are pining for things other countries now take for granted: electricity, water, good roads, security, reasonable health services, but get, instead, misplaced priorities and stolen billions in oil subsidy.

Opposition parties already have their jobs cut out just as Civil Society must not be tired rallying the masses of this otherwise great country to ensure that we achieve our own ‘Rose Revolution’, the type that produced Georgia’s Saakashvili who completely changed the direction and history of that country by turning it to a respectable nation in which corruption is reduced to the barest minimum

It can be done. All we need is to be angry enough as a people to vote out those rampaging over us. We must tell OBJ: not again. From now on, Nigerians must hold his feet to the fire and tell him enough of this monkey business. We must let him know he is only one man, not three. We have had enough of this jolly ride over a country he could have taken to the ‘stratosphere’ in his eight years and which, today, should rank among the leading countries of the world given its God-given endowments, but is simply nowhere.

December 9, 2012
For once, let us change the colour of our problems

I have heard villagers plead passionately that just one school in their village will go a long way in ensuring the continuity of their lives where food cannot do it

No, people, the line is not original to me, I borrowed it from somewhere; and oh yes, problems can have colours. For instance, when the pocket is empty and the bank account is reading zero, don’t panic, it is only colour blue. That is when the radiogram will croon to you, ‘I’ve got the blues baby, I’ve got the bluuuues’. When there is no food in the house, though, then you are in colour grey. That is when all the edges of life are fuzzy and you find yourself shrugging and waxing philosophical and finding that it is true what they say, life is not all black or white. In between, there are various shades of grey, and there ain’t a single thing you do about the grey areas. However, should Junior make the mistake of taking the car out illegally in his youthful exuberance, then the family is catapulted into the red zone because Daddy can see only red. Everyone had just better scatter; things will get very rough indeed.

So, yes, problems have colours and the colour of Nigeria’s problems since I have been privileged to know her has been perpetually false. True, her flag may be green and white but believe me there’s nothing green about the way her leaders are bleeding her dry. They are right knowing ‘uns. Why, for instance, should it take an entire country so many decades to realise that it is not good for the presidency to hoard TEN (10) aircraft in its fleet all to itself. What kind of country is this? Tell me, IS THIS FAIR?! No, and again, I say, no when little ol‘ me has NONE!

From the time I heard the piece of news that Nigeria has about ten aircraft in the president’s fleet, I just thought, no, it is not the president who needs them. My suspicions are turned entirely elsewhere. I have been sneakily wondering though just what has been going on in the mind of all our presidents’ men from the time of Christopher Columbus down to the present. Normally, the president’s men are carefully chosen to reflect the cream of the cream (never mind that sometimes the cream is quite sour) who would work assiduously to make sure the president did not get into trouble, and also that the country did not get into trouble as a result of the president not getting into trouble. You get that, don’t you, because I don’t? So, they would make their efforts as concerted as possible to be frugal in their praise of the president (so he does not get so swollen-headed that he gets out of their control) and be equally as frugal in their methods of extracting him from any hot soup he finds himself in. From our records of the Nigerian scene, it appears that all our past presidents’ men who have not been frugal at all. They have insisted on lapping up all the praise themselves. Lucky devils, they have been riding around in presidential jets!

Ordinarily, and I think this is what happens in saner climes, the saying is if it’s broke, fix it; around here though, the saying is, if it’s broke, get a new one. And this is how Nigeria came to own 1, 2, 3, 4, … 10 planes in the presidential fleet when countries such as rich, rich Britain has none. No, it was not that they could not afford one, it was that they found that the wiser thing to do was to hire because it is so expensive to actually keep one.

Seriously, our humour is too black in this country; and some would go so far as to say we have none, and that is even blacker. The typical Nigerian attitude to public utilities does not do credit to our intelligence. Again, some would even say we have none of that either. Well, I say we have a sense of humour. Just look at our leaders at every level from the local government councillors to the legislative and executive. That should send you into rapturous laughter. Hem, hem. This is no time to laugh though.

And yes, we do have some intelligence. Just look at newspapers when our leaders are having their annual spats and spits. Delightful, isn’t it, to hear the fire crackling and the fireworks just going in every direction? So yes, I’m not sure but I think we have some intelligence. The problem though is that this nation prefers to keep what little intelligence it has under wraps. So, all our public stadia go to waste without any input of intelligence to keep them in good shape; all our national fleet of ships, planes and vehicles get to sit out their days under the stars, sun and moon just because we have too little intelligence to spare. Oh yes, and all the presidents’ planes get their early retirements just because we cannot beget the intelligence to get the mechanic take a look at them. After all, there is always a ready answer: yes, you got it, get a new one.

The most painful part of all this is that there are other Nigerians who desperately need the money used to buy these things to sustain their lives. Thirty minutes’ drive from where I live, there are people who have no electricity. There, we are not much different. Half the night and all day through, I hardly have any electricity myself. They also do not have water. Again, we are not much different. I also do not have water from the public utilities in my house. They do not have schools though. Now, the similarities begin to end. Anyone can do without water or electricity or food but not schools.

This is why I think the money spent on accumulating airplanes is being wasted. Please Mr. President; these monies are needed to sustain schools in these villages so that people who do not have a present can at least have a future for their children. It does not much matter that they do not have much food to eat; they really do not mind at all. But I have heard them plead passionately that just one school in their village will go a long way in ensuring the continuity of their lives where food cannot do it.

This is why I think we should begin to change the colour of our problems. The colours we have been used to have been colours of joy where all we appear to have been doing as a nation so far has been to go to the big markets of the world and throw up fistfuls of foreign currencies to the delight of those nationals who have looked at us, smiled, shaken their heads from left to right and walked away. And we thought they were enjoying the show. How were we to know they were shaking their heads in pity?! So, I think we should change that colour to black: it is the universal sign of mourning: we need to mourn the loss of intelligence in the land.

December 9, 2012