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Category: Sunday

Better still leave many things unsaid

I do not agree with most of the things Mr Arthur Anyaduba said or implied in his rejoinder to last week’s Palladium, and particularly the ferocity and emotionality of his arguments; but he couched his unpersuasive intervention in brilliant prose deserving publication. I also recognise that the Achebe book has evoked critical and even bitter reviews, excerpt of which book I took up here last week. It would, therefore, be unfair if I debarred others from having their say. I think it is proper to discharge my obligation to my readers by publishing the rejoinder above.

Anyaduba is free to interpret my “pre-review” as he deems sensible, but he exaggeratedly rebutted positions I did not take and inferences I did not make. He thought me a reader of motives, and he used that as licence to ascribe motives to things I did not, and probably will never, say. Mind reading, I am sure he knows, is a perilous exercise the best of us sometimes miscarry very badly. I am not sure by describing Achebe as traumatised by the war I said anything extraordinarily unobvious. Importantly, Anyaduba felt I was also an ethnic jingoist by appearing to defend Awolowo, a problem he thought afflicted many in the Southwest, but which the nation must honestly grapple with for progress and reconciliation to occur. He said so many other things that were clearly either wrongly inferred from my essay or wrongly attributed. I regret I do not have the space to go into all these.

Perhaps we should first review the book before consenting to a meaningful exchange on what Achebe said, thought or implied. But I thought I made it clear Achebe could not mean the book to be taken as a historical work in the sense of historiography. When the book is finally reviewed, that unsettling objective should come out in bold relief, just as it should also be indisputable that it is unlikely to fall below the literary standards we are used to. If at all I betrayed ethnic jingoism, as Anyaduba claimed, I think he did much worse. But I believe it is always helpful to first focus on the integrity, or lack of it, of a writer’s logic than to fish for his backgrounds, be it religious, cultural or ideological. The danger in not drawing the line in the right place is to fall into the error of controversially charging a critic with influences that are inapplicable to his work.

Let me restate once again the two reasons that informed my contribution to the Achebe excerpt. After observing the Rwandan genocide, I appreciated better the fearsome capacity writers, musicians, media professionals and other sundry artists have to instigate either genuine change or genocide. I do not think that even in the name of candour or of coming to terms with our infamous past we should fail to summon the circumspection required for peaceful co-existence. History by all means; literature by all means; but peace without doubt. Otherwise, we would, after the damage is done and depending on whether we are on the winning or losing side, begin to nonsensically romanticise war and suggest that one form of killing – by sword or by hunger, or whether the dead are soldiers or children – is preferable.

The second reason I commented on the excerpt is valid for all ages – the virtue of sometimes maintaining dignified taciturnity, not silence, as Anyaduba wrongly interpreted, especially decades after an event. I do not know whether Anyaduba is married. If he is, does he tell his wife everything about herself – maybe her plain looks, her awkward gait, her repulsively broad smile, etc. – especially when there is disagreement between the two of them? Yes, I love candour with all my heart, but if I want peace, I had better leave some things, indeed nearly all things, unsaid. If Anyaduba has not learnt this lesson, it is probably because he is not yet married.

• Palladium

October 14, 2012
Why we seek total integration (II)

As the din of political battle reaches its crescendo in the rump of the old Ondo province, there is a creeping feeling of Déjà vu. Already, political violence, threats of assassination, accusations of prefabricated rigging have engulfed the state. This high-voltage political atmosphere may be a reflection of the stakes. But it may also presage something darker and far more sinister. Will the west unravel from Ondo this time around? Can an Iroko take the entire Yoruba forest with it?

As we have said in the first instalment, the main purpose of this two-part series is to identify with the currents of regional integration such as they are sweeping the old western region .There can be no equivocation about this. A man is entitled to his partiality and political preferences.

But once again, we have found it necessary to caution some of our numerous readers that the kind of engagement with a traumatised post-colonial society that we mainly undertake in this column is often very difficult to press into immediate political service, and deliberately so.

There is a distinction between the political writer and the writing politician. Snooper is too much aware of the complexities and complications of contemporary politics to be swayed into easy agitprop. In the heat of political battle, the unhurried reflection, the stout and stoic refusal to be panicked into sheer name-calling may often appear like an abdication of responsibility; a pact with the devil himself. In such agonistic contentions where body bags cannot be confused with lap top cases, it is felt that writing must not just be a passion of the mind but the mind of passion itself, with due apologies to Karl Marx.

But it was the same great philosopher who also advises that history must be read with its grand nuances, its delicate ironies, its perplexing paradox and great ambiguities. It is not the columnist that created what is known as the cunning of history. Yes the cunning of history must never prevent us from making a clear choice when the chips are down. Neither must it prevent us from being clamorously partisan when we have to be.

For many of our readers, a continuing problem with this column is the very structure of dialectical writing and the writer’s insistence on applying its cardinal principles to journalism. It is a stylistic battle that predates this column and one that has been going on for almost 30 years. We cannot afford to inherit the intellectual shortcomings of our colonial masters.

Unlike the canons of easy clarity and lucidity emanating from the Anglo-American schools of journalism, dialectical writing often subverts or contradicts its own initial premises in order to gain superior insight. Those who hold on to the initial argument find themselves devastatingly wrong-footed and dramatically upended.

This is not just mere writing about political drama, but the drama of political writing as a private theatre enacted wholly within itself. The writer listens in to his own argument and the murmurs of internal dissension, disagreement and outright disputation. The writing involves a constant shifting and shuffling of the dialectical gears with the writer himself as embattled protagonist.

Let us then begin our concluding remarks about the Ondo imbroglio with a dialectical conceit. Powerful political figures often stamp the badge of their personality on the outcome of a political struggle. But a political struggle cannot and must not be reduced to personalities. As Karl Marx famously noted, men make history, but not under the circumstances of their choice.

In other words, no matter how powerful a personality may be the outcome of a political conflict may be determined by material, intellectual and historical circumstances beyond his control. In the Battle of Waterloo, it was the lesser genius that triumphed. But it was Napoleon’s more egalitarian vision that eventually carried the day, and in spite of himself too..

In our concluding paragraph last week, we cautioned against framing the unfolding political drama in Ondo state as a personal duel unto death, but as a battle of ideas about the future of the Yoruba race and the destiny of Nigeria. It is important to deepen this perspective in order to understand just what is going on and how we got to where we are.

Contrary to blackmail and propaganda, regional integration is not a neo-colonial or imperialising venture. It is not about an emperor and his viceroys sent to predate on hapless captive communities. In a god-forsaken federation it is about maximising opportunities for maximal development in an ethnically unified region and its culturally compatible adjoining communities.

Neither is the inevitable political centralisation that goes with this an attempt to ride roughshod over sub-ethnic sensitivities as they may exist in the larger Yoruba society. It is not an attempt to instutionalise or consecrate a political overlordship in Yoruba land. Neither is it a ploy to grind the subtle cultural differentiations in Yoruba land into a conforming homogeneity. As their history has consistently demonstrated, the Yoruba do not transit from one empire to another empire.

Centralisation often comes with mass mobilisation and a unified and disciplined society. Of course, like many old concepts imposed on new realities, regional integration and centralisation are bound to come with a lot of local impurities and vexatious crudities but these imperfections can only be defined and refined in dynamic collision with reality and other visions and ideas of societies.

It is not enough to pooh-pooh the idea of integration without coming up with other alternative visions of the society. It is intellectually lazy and mischievous to dismiss regionalism as a new form of :”Lagos imperialism”. That this pernicious propaganda is coming from what we thought were progressive quarters shows that something indeed is going on.

But it should be noted that even the old progressive tendency did not gain complete ascendancy over the entire Yoruba geo-political space in one fell swoop. It was an epic slog. The astute and discerning Yoruba electorate have often proved to be veritable masters of their electoral destiny. In 1954, the Action Group lost a general election to the NCNC as a result of venal propaganda.

The Yoruba urban dwellers and city denizens were beginning to feel the pinch of what they thought was punitive and unjust taxation in the name of free primary education and other ameliorative schemes. Overwhelmed and demoralised by the visionary thrust of Awolowo’s policies, the Action Group competitors could only carp and sniff. It worked, but only briefly.

The Action Group and its storied strategists rolled up their sleeves and went back to the people, painstakingly explaining to the populace why tribal marks even though accompanied by great pains and distress often result in greater beauty. By then the gains of the visionary programme were beginning to trickle in. The Yoruba society was rapidly modernising, transiting from farm to the factory and superlative modernity in a Great Leap Forward unknown to tropical Africa.

Ascendancy was restored to the Action Group. But there were still pockets of resistance, particularly in the royalist cities and some other sub-ethnic enclaves suffering from post-empire hang-over. Paradoxically, it was in 1959 at the height of its glory and grandeur that the Action Group began to unravel.

In a bid to capture power at the centre, Awolowo took a sharp ideological lurch to the left, embracing the full socialism which had always been implicit in his grand envisioning of human society. At its best, the Action Group was an unstable ensemble of royalists, monarchists, conservatives and progressives. It proved a Potemkin bridge too far. All that was solid began to melt into thin air.

By 1962, as a result of internal disaffection and external infiltration, the Action Group had fractured irreversibly. The split degenerated into a low-intensity Yoruba civil war which only ended with a military take over in 1966. It was the dawn of darkness as Awolowo himself almost put it. The late sage spent four years in jail.

1979 and the advent of civilian rule restored the total dominance of Awolowo and his party over the Yoruba race. Combining the authority of personal suffering and his by then larger than life status as the undeniable champion and standard bearer of the race, the late sage and his party romped home in the entire Yoruba landscape. By then it was AWO or AWOL.

But by 1982, the wheels had begun to come off the train once again. Chief Bola Ige, then Governor of old Oyo state and one of Awolowo’s most gifted lieutenants, survived a motion to expel him from the party for fraternising with General Obasanjo by the whiskers in what was dubbed the Yola night of long knives. But by then the demon of self-destruction had berthed once again. By 1983, it was being rumoured that one or two of Awolowo’s most trusted loyalists were beginning to hint that the unyielding old man had become a veritable albatross on the Yoruba race.

After he was so egregiously rigged out of contention in the 1983 presidential election, a humiliated and deeply affronted Awo took a final bow from Nigerian politics. In a vote of no confidence in democracy, Awolowo vowed never to seek electoral office again and darkly added that if Nigerians needed his services, they knew where to find him. Awolowo also famously predicted that generations of Nigerians to come may never know real democracy.

Yet the old man was not done. In a famous parting shot at his shell-shocked party faithful at the UPN Congress later that year and as a befitting riposte to the obtuse gloating of the likes of Umaru Dikko about a Third Reich, Awolowo espoused the famous Hegelian dialectic of a coming reconfiguration which would combine the best parts of thesis and antithesis in a new synthesis. This was dialectical thinking at its most sublime and majestic.

Ten years later in 1993, Awo was already six years in his final resting place, but his prophecy came to fruition. It was M.K.O Abiola, a former unreconstructed apostate, who became the standard bearer of the progressives. Those of Awo’s surviving lieutenants who could not read the historical signals correctly and who could not abide the new developments found themselves politically excommunicated forever.

In 1999 at the new dawn of civilian rule, it was the NADECO chieftains who had fought heroically to redeem Abiola’s mandate and who had borne the brunt of Abacha’s tyranny that were handsomely rewarded by the Yoruba electorate. Their suzerainty extended over the entire Yoruba landscape. But trouble began almost immediately as a result of external destabilisation by the PDP and the nuclear fallout of the AD’s presidential primaries. Somebody was misreading the historical signals once again.

After the 2003 elections, the AD fragmented irretrievably. Although the Yoruba electorate did not mind Obasanjo returning to the misbegotten centre, they frowned at the nicking what did not belong to his party under the even more misbegotten slogan of mainstreaming. After the electoral debacle of their favourite sons, the Yoruba seem to abhor being corralled into the so called unitarist mainstream of stifling suffocation.

It was then left to the lone survivor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to begin the process of heroic retrieval of the electoral patrimony of a race. The recovery and recuperation of stolen electoral goods is a hard slog indeed. Bola Tinubu’s titanic exertions in this regard have already passed into Yoruba and Nigeria political folklore.

It is said by Unamuno that under tyranny men seek liberty but under liberty they also seek tyranny. The entire Yoruba political elite ought to be grateful to this man and his associates for rescuing them from the jaws of internal slavery. From the beach head of Lagos, the ACN began to claw and muscle its way into the Yoruba interior. In 2007, the PDP compounded the original electoral larceny with a more blatant perfidy.

But the ACN rollercoaster was unstoppable. It had locked into the dominant mood and aspirations of the Yoruba people. In 2011 and in a telling historic rebuff, the Yoruba electorate gave General Obasanjo a sensational shellacking in his own local polling booth. As it was in the beginning in 1979, so it has been at the end.

This, ironically, was the momentum and goodwill Rahman Olusegun Mimiko tapped into when his own mandate was ostentatiously pilfered. Snooper was physically present at the Marina when his defence team was being constituted even before the beleaguered politico had physically shown up.

As a party, the ACN is not perfect. There have been loud and legitimate complaints. But we cannot throw away the baby with the bathwater. The hideous scars of the lineage of the Fourth Republic in military autocracy are here for all to see. This translates into the militarisation of the polity, the monetisation of politics and the regimentation of parties as if they are fighting formations. Politics is the continuation of war by other means. It is better to fight for the deepening of democracy in a party with possibilities than to indulge in the proliferation of political platform for the sake of ego and ambition.

Snooper has not been able to sit down with the Ondo state governor since his memorable reinstatement. Given their noble antecedents and reputation for radical integrity, there is nothing on ground to suggest that the good people of Ondo state are not in tune with the dominant aspirations of the Yoruba race.

Unfortunately, this is where Mimiko’s gravitational odyssey through all the parties irrespective of ideology constitutes a setback for progressive consciousness. It is a measure of Yoruba tolerance and liberality that these gyrations in the shuttle spacecraft of ambition have not earned him a severe censure. Other people have not been so lucky. But the question must now be asked in the larger interest of the race and the nation. What does Mimiko really want, and is he in tune with the larger Yoruba aspiration?

It is not enough to slam ad hoc and haphazard developmental projects on a state without articulating these to a grander vision of regionalism or a deep integrative base which reflects the dominant mood of the people. These are just token tidal twitches in a mighty ocean. The Lagos state miracle is not a happenstance but the result of deep strategic thinking in which the megalopolis is envisioned as a developmental hub in the manner of Hong Kong, California, Taipei, Singapore and other emerging state-cities and city-states.

As it is, Mimiko is propelled along by a folksy populism without any deep intellectual content or serious integrative and theoretical base. His party, the so called Labour Party, is a vexatious and pernicious nuisance emptied of all radical contents and without any links to real labour; a mere opportunistic decoy and doppelganger of the ruling party. It will not take Mimiko beyond Ode Ondo. Even the fabled timber merchants of that district will tell you that an iroko does not make a forest. Is Mimiko content to remain a local champion and a political warlord in a provincial laager?

That question will be answered on Saturday. Win or lose, Mimiko would have exhausted the political and historic possibilities of his gambit. By trapping himself in a sub-ethnic cocoon, he has foreclosed further development either horizontal or vertical. It doesn’t get more politically suicidal than that. The Yoruba tend to reward patience, honesty, integrity and perseverance in aspiring leaders. Pa Ajasin who never aspired to be Yoruba leader but who became one in spite of himself would be smiling in his grave.

October 14, 2012
Jonathan can do it alone, so to speak

In less than a week, President Goodluck Jonathan managed both by his blandness and by his irrepressible extemporaneousness to stoke three fierce storms. On Thursday, he announced the appointment of new service chiefs, and as if justifying the suspicion in the Southwest that he was indifferent to the sensibilities of the zone, no one from the zone was appointed to that exalted hierarchy. The implication, say analysts from that zone, is that when the president takes top level security decisions, he will have to assume he knows what the zone thinks. The second storm was the declaration in his Independence Day speech that Nigeria’s rating in the anti-graft war had improved to number three in terms of real efforts to combat corruption. He ascribed the improvement to a study said to have been carried out by Transparency International (TI). But the global corruption watchdog said it carried out no such study, while presidential aides glumly explained they took the information from a newspaper.

Before Independence Day celebration, the president, at a church service, argued that no one person could save a nation. Comparing himself to the biblical Nehemiah, the president suggested that only the cooperation of the people could make a leader achieve feats. Not so, said analysts. The president must first show the way, offer brilliant and principled leadership, and then persuade the people and mobilise them to achieve the impossible. The president is unlikely to be persuaded by such analysis, for he summarily jettisons anything that does not fit into his worldview. He wants cooperation first; he wants critics, whom he sighed always abused him, to sheathe their swords first; and he wants the snobbish Southwest to drop its political and media opposition to his government first. That, to him, is the only way the virtues of Nehemiah can be brought out.

It is certainly not the fault of Jonathan that the quality of leadership in Nigeria has fallen. It has been falling since independence, not only in Nigeria but elsewhere in Africa, and indeed all over the world. In the turbulent decades of the mid-20th Century, it was rare to hear the president of a great nation plaintively declare he could not do great things alone. Great leaders have the capacity to walk alone, look only to their inside even if they take advice on the outside, judge right, take bold decisions, and swaddle their policies, which are often prescient, with messianic conviction. Somebody must persuade the Nigerian president to talk right, speak more persuasively and inspiringly about his visions, and believe implacably in himself. Somebody must tell him that by his endless waffle he communicates his hesitations to the whole country.

Last Sunday, the president told the church congregation in Abuja he alone could not do the job of taking Nigeria to great heights. He is absolutely wrong. He alone can do it if he puts his mind to it. The rest of us are available to be mobilised and led, since we must, for the sake of democracy, endure the remaining years of his first term as best as we can.

October 7, 2012
Mubi massacre and the limits of outrage

Nigeria’s descent into depravity is a challenge that is now beyond President Goodluck Jonathan and the security agencies

The cowards who slaughtered forty-something unarmed students of the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi on Independence Day are yet to openly own up to their devilish act. So we may never get a full understanding of their motivations and agenda.
Still, there are all kinds of pointers that put the usual suspects in the frame. All the circumstantial evidence suggests that this was something sectarian and political; it was not just the arbitrary act of rival school gangs fighting over turf or girls.
This was cold, calculated and pre-meditated. The guns started blazing at 10.30pm the previous night and did not stop booming until 3.00am the next morning. For over four and a half hours more than 40 young Nigerians were methodically executed in their hostel for reasons they will never know.
The act was also deeply symbolic. The killers could have carried out their deadly spree on any other day, but they chose to do so on the day Nigeria celebrates her independence as a nation. If you think that is coincidental, then think again.
The timing is important because beyond damaging national cohesion, it presents a public relations conundrum for a beleaguered government which rose out of the ashes of one of the bitterest political contests in Nigeria’s history.
The attackers asked for the identity of their victims before dispatching them to untimely death. Other eyewitnesses said they called the victims by name and then killed them. Clairvoyance is not required to conclude that the identification parade would have been to sort out Christian from Muslim, Northerner from Southerner.
Several months ago in the same Adamawa State, gunmen burst into some churches and slaughtered over 20 worshippers. Other innocents would be killed where they gathered to grieve their loss. A couple of weeks ago in Bauchi, it was another tale of unprovoked deadly assault against a hapless community.
What should be evident by now – going back to similar attacks in places like Bayero University, Kano – is that certain people and forces are hell-bent on pushing our buttons until we slide into an undeclared sectarian and ethnic war.
Their strategy is clear. If past outrages have not done the trick, then up the scale by killing more people in the kind of numbers that will generate global headlines, and stir even the most stable and sober to reach for their sword.
What is especially depressing about the Mubi massacre is not just the sheer scale of its savagery, but its exposure of the helplessness of the authorities to guarantee the security of citizens. Senate President, David Mark, captured this reality vividly in his reaction to the killings.
He said: “Today it is Mubi, who knows where and when it will happen in the next town. How many policemen can you put in various universities and polytechnic in this country? It is absolutely impossible. There is no way; it does not matter how well you fund the security agencies.”
One of the reasons the execution-style killings have riveted attention is because the victims are students. But the reality of present day Nigeria is that in the North-East and other parts of the north, the mindless slaughter of scores of people has been a weekly occurrence. We are only shocked when the body count is especially high.
Let’s forget the hollow posturing: what is happening is a national crisis that is far beyond the capacity of President Goodluck Jonathan and the security agencies to manage. The almost daily killings give the lie to claims by the president and other officials at different international fora that government is containing the Boko Haram insurgency and the freelance killings.
Mubi is evidence that this crisis will not be addressed by merely reshuffling the leadership of the national security apparatus. General Andrew Azazi was fired as National Security Adviser (NSA) and Colonel Sambo Dasuki hired in his stead, but the switch has not made one jot of a difference. Dasuki has shown that he’s no magician.
It’s not as if the agencies have not had their moments. But where they make some progress like in the slaying of the Boko Haram spokesman, Abu Qaqa, that gain is immediately cancelled out by a statement-making type of Mubi massacre.
After each of these bestial outings, Jonathan and the National Assembly leadership serve up the usual chorus of outrage. This time, for added effect, Mark has called for the death penalty for perpetrators of such heinous crimes.
Unfortunately, knee-jerk reactions based on the emotions of the moment will not solve anything. The death penalty is a dubious solution that has not stopped serial killers in America, or mass murderers whether in Rwanda or the Balkans.
Nigeria needs help and Jonathan even more so. He needs to call an urgent national gathering, or family meeting, that transcends political affiliations and ethnic origins.
Such a gathering is imperative to hammer out a national consensus that certain things like the mass murder of innocents are unacceptable. We need to agree that our differences can be resolved without recourse to senseless slaughter.
We need to agree that we can pursue our political aspirations within the ambit of law, without recourse to the bloodshed blackmail.
We have to agree that that all who will not subscribe to this national compact become our common enemy who should be fought and defeated by all means necessary.
Without such a consensus, no president – whether of minority or majority ethnic group origin – will be able to deal with what is happening right now. Without such a deal, we will never have enough men under arms or in our security agencies, to thwart evil men when they decide to embark on killing sprees in deserted outposts of our vast land.

October 7, 2012
Revisiting our unification policies (3)

It is illogical for an Igbo man or Fulani woman that does not speak Ijaw to lay claim to indigeneship of Ijawland

Last Sunday’s column concluded that our post-military governments have failed to revisit policies crafted by military dictators in their search for unity at all cost and without consideration for citizens’ rights and security. In addition, trustees of power since the transition to civil rule tend to be imitating military rulers in crafting low-wattage and high-verbiage policies that are likely, if not quickly nipped in the bud, to further endanger insecurity, increase inter-ethnic tension, and shrink citizens’ freedom.

Some of such policies under consideration pertain to provisions in the constitution on when and how citizens can become indigenes (not residents) of communities other than those into which they and their parents are born. Another policy issue worth worrying about is creation of grazing corridors across the country for nomadic cattle breeders. Today’s piece will address principally these two issues.

One thing that makes these two issues troubling is that the current civilian government is not genuinely interested in involving citizens directly in the making of the constitution that is to define and circumscribe their political and social life. Just like the military before it, the administration of President Jonathan is talking from both sides of its mouth regarding the place of citizens in the construction of the constitution of their country. On one hand, the President said that he wants the process of constitution making to involve citizens. On the other, he affirms that it is the recommendations of a committee constituted by him that will produce a people’s constitution for the country. In other words, the president talks right on sovereignty of citizens but acts to avoid call for a national conference to create a democratic constitution.

Our country may be taking a major but avoidable political risk if it chooses to legislate on the process of indigeneship in a multiethnic federation without involving citizens and ethnic nationalities in the process of making such determination. Similarly, any legislation regarding creating zones for cattle, goat, and pig farmers in different parts of the country is likely to lead to political disadvantage that may outweigh its economic advantage for any group. But let us, for the sake of argument, agree that the present National Assembly can legally perform the function of a constitutional conference and create whatever constitutional provisions it wishes, the dangers inherent in creating policies or constitutional provisions that legislate on indigeneship and trans-state grazing grounds for private farmers must not be discountenanced.

It is important for policy makers not to confuse indigeneship with residency. The former is culturally endowed while the latter is politically endowed. It is safer for policy makers to focus on requirements for residency than to attempt to legislate on the process of acquiring the status of indigene of ethnic communities. Our constitution needs to guarantee citizens’ freedom of movement. Regardless of where they live, citizens must enjoy at all times and in all places the right to vote and be voted for. In addition, Nigerian citizens that choose to live in communities or states other than the one into which they were born should have the right to do so guaranteed by our constitution. Such citizens must be protected against discrimination when they seek employment, rent or buy a house, enroll their dependents in schools. They must have the right to enjoy all social amenities provided in their community or state of residence.

It must be added that such citizens are also obligated to pay taxes levied in their adopted communities and obey the laws created by such communities. The right of the community to determine how long a citizen must live before he or she can enjoy the privileges of residents should be respected by the constitution, but the federal government can recommend an upper ceiling to the number of years a citizen must live in another community before he or she becomes a full-fledged resident. This is how far a federal constitution can go on guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of movement within the federation.

Any attempt to legislate on the process of indigenization is a wild goose chase. Indigeneship is generally the end point of assimilation into another culture. While a citizen in a federation does not have to necessarily blend into the culture of any community he or she migrates to in order to enjoy the privileges of residency, he or she needs to be culturally assimilated before he or she can claim the status of an indigene. For example, the language that binds the various ethnic groups together in our country is English or a smattering or bastardization of it. On the other hand, individual ethnic communities exist and thrive on languages other than English.

It is, therefore, illogical for an Igbo man or Fulani woman that does not speak Ijaw to lay claim to indigeneship of Ijawland, simply because he or she has chosen to migrate to an Ijaw community. It is also irrational for citizens who live in cultural enclaves such as Sabo in northern and southern Nigerian towns and villages to aspire to be recognized as indigenes of such towns and villages. Nigeria has enough problems with Bauchi and Plateau states regarding tension between those who claim to be indigenes and those in the process of transition to indigeneship. We need not multiply such tension by nudging the country’s constitution in the direction of confusing the requirements for indigeneship with those for residency.

Similarly, the call for creation of Grazing Zones across the federation for nomadic cattle farmers is fraught with more danger than can be readily observed. It is true that the country is already experiencing serious tension because of conflict between nomadic cattle farmers and plant growers in various parts of the country. But the solution to this problem is not to appropriate land from communities for the use of nomadic cattle farmers across the states. What is needed is for the government at all levels to provide facilities for transforming nomadic cattle farmers to sedentary farmers. Most of the countries that produce enough cattle for both domestic consumption and export do not rely on nomads. They adopt new scientific techniques in animal husbandry that make it possible for cattle and goat farmers to have a normal life that does not include following cattle or goats from one community to another.

Just like nomadic education of the military era, creating grazing corridors for nomadic cattle farmers across the country is likely to fail to achieve the higher goal that should inform policy formulation: improvement of the quality of life of the citizen. What is needed is a policy that will modernize all forms of farming in the country and thus make the country competitive in all forms of agriculture. The United States, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, and many other countries are exporters of beef today, without having to rely on nomadic cattle farmers. Nigeria can also move to this level.

To be continued

October 7, 2012
The increasing call for true federalism

We have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement

I have had this running dialogue with my very good friend, Antony A. Sani, Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (A C F) who sees any talk of regional economic integration or any effort at canvassing true federalism as nothing but a façade for ethnic nationalism that I could not but shout hurray when in recent times equally significant voices from the North have come out loudly in support of both. In an article: The State Of The Nigerian Nation, by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, and, also, by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as recently as at the ceremony of the award of the Leadership Governor of the Year by the LEADERSHIP newspapers at Abuja this past week, a ringing support was lent the drive towards true federalism which remains about the only panacea to our lingering problems as a country.

Wrote Ahmed Joda: ‘Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must not mistake the fact of our survival to anything such as military might. The truth is that we have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement. It is quite clear from all we are passing through and from all the political debates in which we have been engaged, that there is a sufficient body of opinion around the country that the present arrangements are not adequate and need to be discussed further.’ And in his opening remarks as Chairman of the 2012 Leadership Conference and Awards Ceremony at Abuja on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, not only called for the overhauling of Nigeria’s political structure in order to pave way for true federalism, he publicly regretted not supporting former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme’s call for the creation of six semi-autonomous regions. Said he: “Now, I realize that I should have supported him because our current federal structure is clearly not working. Dr Ekwueme obviously saw what some of us, with our civil war mindset, could not see at the time. There is indeed too much concentration of power and resources at the centre. And it is stifling our march to true greatness as a nation and threatening our unity because of all the abuses, inefficiencies, corruption and reactive tensions that it has been generating.”

Without a doubt, the modus operandi towards achieving the desired goal has been as varied as there are calls for true federalism. While many have called for a Sovereign National Conference Alhaji Ahmed Joda apparently fears this model, believing it could be a recipe for disintegration. He was winsome enough, however, to concede that though such an outcome cannot be ruled out, the problems we face will not permit us to ignore the fact that we need to, and must, address these problems in order to safeguard our future either as one unit or under some other form of arrangement; concluding that it is much better to face the issues frontally, and to discuss them frankly in an open forum to come up with solutions that can ensure a peaceful existence for Nigeria. His preferred route is via a Constituent Assembly which he presents as follows:’ It appears that a likely more acceptable arrangement will be the establishment of a Constituent Assembly, with a full mandate to comprehensively review the Constitution. The Constituent Assembly should be composed of an entirely elected membership. No representation should be permitted for special interests. The election should be on zero political party bases. Serving Members of any legislative body should not be eligible. Public Servants, who wish to serve, must resign from their offices. And it should be brought into being by an Act of the National Assembly.’

With this well reasoned position, and more, in support of true federalism, it will be apposite for opponents of true federalism to go back and re-learn their history of Nigeria in order to understand how in the First Republic of 3 regions, regional autonomy galvanized overall national development through positive inter-regional competition.

This, incidentally, was a theme that featured prominently in the Keynote Address by the Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, at the recent National Convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba (National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America, held in Baltimore, Maryland.

Happily, many of the things he recalled for the Western region, if not most, are replicated in the other regions of North and East. During that period, he said, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as Premier, established the first TV and Radio Station in Sub-Saharan Africa, Cocoa House, Ibadan, he said, was built from revenues generated from cocoa and coffee just as the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, was established from same sources. Under the auspices of one of the best organized political parties in Africa, the Action Group, he continued, the government inaugurated the free primary education programme which, till today, has put the South-West in good stead politically, educationally and economically. It was in that era too, he reminisced, that such great institutions as the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, were established in the North and the East, respectively.

However, on the contrary, the military with its command structure mindset came in 1966 and imposed a suffocating unitary system that had remained the bane of the country even where sustained struggle had rid Nigeria of military autocracy.

His address then continued: ‘At independence in 1960, there was regional autonomy and each region had its own constitution. There were only about 26 items on the exclusive list of the Federal Government but today, there are 66 thereby nearly completely suffocating the states. Suddenly our unity in diversity was trampled upon by the military with far reaching consequences. For instance, he said, the totalitarian imposition and horrendous decimation of the Yoruba educational system, its economy and commerce let to many of the Yoruba intelligentsia leaving in doves to Europe and America; people who, today, cannot guarantee that their own children will ever return to Motherland, thus culturally, and otherwise, depleting the Yoruba’. If the above is true of the Yoruba, so also is it true of the 250 other ethnic groups in Nigeria.

But there remains a window of opportunity which is restructuring towards true federalism which will, once again, engender positive inter-regional competition and co-operation instead of our unedifying atavistic politics of who controls the unitarist federal government which, as Vice-President Atiku says, has proved thoroughly inefficient.

Not surprising though, the opposition is totally unrelenting. Indeed, so enervating has opposition to regional integration and true federalism got that I once responded to Tony Sani as follows: ‘These things, Tony, are about perspectives, and a pointer o each group’s preferred developmental paradigm for the nation. For the status quoists, what is on ground is simply the best. But for majority Yoruba, stronger regional groupings will make for a much stronger, more peaceful and equitable country. I then said: ‘consider, for instance, that both the North-East and the North-West had each synergized earlier via integration and economic cooperation, both would probably have chalked up developments that would have made Boko Haram a most unlikely phenomenon. I intend, one day soon, to consider doing an article on your strongly held opposition to regional integration which I see as a fall out of the North’s fear of the unknown. Whilst not only Europe or the Americas are synergizing, I am perpetually astonished at your angst against mere regional economic cooperation as a way of maximizing development and catalyzing national development and cohesion’.

Today, I feel certain that my friend will sooner than later bow to a development whose time has come and for which leading lights in the North are beginning to lend their support.

October 7, 2012
Why we seek total integration (1)

In the end, and as it has been famously proclaimed by a political wit, all politics is local. This column craves the indulgence of the numerous fans and readers of its Sunday musings, particularly the Nigerian multitude, to do some ethnic arithmetic this morning and in subsequent issues. In many ways, when we beam a searchlight on the Yoruba Question, we are also beaming a powerful x-ray on the National Question and the problematic arrested nationhood in Nigeria.

Let us therefore begin with the kernel and motto of this intervention. For integration to be meaningful, it cannot afford to be piecemeal and offhand, lacking in ideological coherence and integrity. But in certain political circumstances, integration can be incremental as long as the part does not threaten the organic whole. Partial integration is a product of partial vision. Economic integration cannot take place in the absence of political integration.

A great political drama is unfolding in the oil and bitumen-rich and humanly endowed state of Ondo as presided over by the politically adroit Rahman Olusegun Mimiko. It is a drama that has pitted some of its outstanding intellectual products against the rest of their intellectual peers and comrades in arms in the old west.

It is so profoundly ironic that it is in the rump of the old Ondo province that this great battle is being fought. History often indulges in a cruel mockery of humanity. This was where it all started, when the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, journeyed to the ancient town of Owo to team up with the equally revered late statesman and patriot, Michael Adekunle Ajasin.

Thus was born the Egbe omo Oduduwa, an organisation which sought to impose a cultural uniformity on a hitherto fractious and divided Yoruba nation which for fifty years after the collapse of the old Oyo Empire had fought itself to a political and military standstill in a series of civil wars which culminated in the Kiriji Armistice supervised by the colonial overlords. By then, even the fighters had forgotten the original causus belli.

The cultural ascendancy of the Egbe omo Oduduwa which invoked as a stirring and rallying trope the illustrious name of Oduduwa, the fabled primogenitor of the Yoruba race, led to the political hegemony of the Action Group, a party anchored on rousing rhetoric and mass mobilisation. It was arguably the best organised political machine in tropical Africa.

It is to be noted that despite being the older man, and despite being equally accomplished, Ajasin did not feel any qualms whatsoever about accepting Awolowo’s leadership. It was based on an acceptance and acknowledgement of Awo’s sterling credentials as a formidable and visionary political thinker and outstanding organiser. It was also based on the principle of noble self-abnegation in the larger interest of political group and nation.

Basorun J.K Randle once told snooper of how miffed and mystified he was as a young boy when a man with a dignified aura walked in only for his great father and all the Lagos political grandees and fabled aristocrats to quietly stand up in deference. When he later asked his illustrious father what on earth was going on, J’K Randle told his boy that that was Obafemi Awolowo, the new leader whom they had all decided to follow. This was another example of noble and collective self-erasure in the greater interest of group and nation at classic play.

Yet the fundamental paradox remains that every time a dominant faction of the Yoruba political elite achieves something close to a complete mobilisation of the Yoruba race for a political cause, the wheels immediately begin to come off the mobilising train leading to a clattering and shuddering halt in the middle of nowhere leaving both the mobilised and their mobilisers in acute distress and dismay. Then the heroic exertions start all over again like some Sisyphean venture.

This was precisely what happened in 1959, 1979 and in 1999. Now in 2012, we are beginning to see telltale signs of elite betrayal of a popular cause once again. Those who are metaphysically minded often point at the celebrated curse of Alaafin Aole when as a result of what he considered to be elite perfidy among the Oyo nobility, the distressed and embattled king was known to have shot his arrow in several directions, indicating insurmountable divisions and irreversible fracturing of inspiration and aspirations among the Yoruba elite until the end of time.

But the sociological explanation is more banal and less awe-inspiring. The wheels often come off the Yoruba train due to a combination of internal sabotage and external assault often presaged by momentous infiltration. The external factors can be briskly disposed of but with careful objectivity. Nigeria is greatly traumatised at the moment and this is not the time for ethnic vainglory and sabre-rattling.

As arguably the most politically advanced and sophisticated ethnic group in Nigeria, it has been noted that, in and out of power, when the Yoruba nation sneezes, the rest of the country catches cold. The fear of the Yoruba is the beginning of wisdom. This is often due to a combination of irrational envy and unenlightened self-interest. Many of the other elite groups simply feel that as the most culturally coherent, economically viable and politically savvy segment of the nation, the modernising Yoruba elite cannot simply walk away from Nigeria just like that leaving others to roast in the post-colonial hell.

Despite our shouting from the rooftop that total political and economic integration is not about the disintegration and covert dismemberment of the nation, many have refused to be persuaded. Despite our well-wrought and splendidly argued contention that Yoruba regional integration is meant to serve as a fast-tracked developmental hub for the rest of the nation and as a heroic nudge for the other regions such as was the case in the First Republic, other elite groups are not persuaded that this is not a sophisticated secessionist gambit.

The most benign view from these hostile quarters is that if the Yoruba cannot use their economic vibrancy, their political sophistication, their cultural subtlety and their prodigious intellectual endowments for Nigeria as a whole, then they aren’t going nowhere. Everybody will roast here together, may be until the western interlopers come with a coffin or a historic curfew.

At its most extreme and malignant, this argument holds that since the Yoruba region was developed with Nigerian resources, then it must serve out its peonage first before even contemplating freedom. This is not about developmental ideas but about serving feudal penance. It is a case of heads you lose and tails you lose. Recently, a rabid ethnic hegemonist even went as far as noting that if the Yoruba insist on leaving, all it will take is a bomb well-aimed at the Third Mainland Bridge to bring the empire crashing.

But anytime the Yoruba modernising elite offer one of their own authentic members to carry the torch for Nigeria, it has always ended in tears and tragedy. The argument is that the Yoruba cannot add political power to cultural and economic empowerment. If it must be a Yoruba person at all, it must be one that cannot pass muster and only one that is critically misendowed enough to continue the project of perpetual and permanent underdevelopment of the nation.

Yet this potentially great country continues to lurch from one crisis to another, stalled in historic stasis and mired in the muck of developmental degradation. It is clear that something will have to give eventually. Like animals boxed into a colonial cage, we continue to scratch and tear at each other.

We cannot just continue like this. If forcefulness of rival developmental paradigms and the clarity of alternative political visions cannot persuade those who hold Nigeria to ransom and their various collaborators, then an unspeakable and very eloquent tragedy will, and very soon too..

But hatred and irrational envy of the other is not the exclusive preserve of other Nigerian nationalities. Many fractions of the Yoruba political elite also exhibit fear, loathing, hatred and irrational envy towards each other. The modern Yoruba political culture is anchored on these pathological traits and with them infiltration is easy and external onslaught easier.

This is why it would amount to a grave error of judgement and lack of political subtlety if the unfolding political drama in Ondo state were to be framed as a clash of will and wits between two titanic personalities or a duel unto death between a rampaging lion and a rampart Iroko. Yes, there is surely a bitter personality tussle somewhere. Yes, this is a power struggle between two of the most successful masters of political mobilisation thrown up by the post-military Yoruba nation. As a ringside observer and thwarted arbitrator, this writer can write a tome on a political romance gone very sour.

But there are underlying social and historical currents to this tussle which make the personalities involved, however forceful and powerful and however attractive or repulsive to the vociferous partisans, to be mere impersonal manifestations of some greater political forces at play. This is ultimately a titanic battle of ideas about the destiny of the Yoruba ethnic group within the larger totality of the Nigerian nation.

To be sure, the struggle for total integration of the Yoruba region does not preclude and cannot exclude the struggle for power at the Nigerian centre. Each is in fact a logical correlate and corollary of the other. But in order to better understand the current forces at play and to deepen our knowledge of the order of battle, it is important to go back to 1959, 1979, 1999 and to Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s parting shot to his shell-shocked party faithful at the tail end of 1983.

(To be continued)

October 7, 2012
Jonathan counts his blessings

FG suffering from ‘celebrating too soon syndrome’

President Goodluck Jonathan must have been a generous lecturer in his years at the Rivers State College of Education. In spite of the abysmal performance of his government on many fronts, the President still gave himself a pass mark in what was supposed to be his speech on the occasion of the country’s 52nd Independence anniversary, last Monday. Indeed, his self-assessment reminds one of the lizard which falls from a wall and nods in self-appreciation of the ‘feat’ it has performed since the people around were not willing to acknowledge same.

Let’s start with President Jonathan’s claim on security. Is it not surprising that the President who always tells Nigerians that his government is ‘on top of the security situation’ has not celebrated the last two Independence anniversaries at the usual Eagle Square in Abuja? His aides are never short of excuses; no matter how illogical. I am sure if you ask them why this is so, they would readily tell you that it is because the celebrations have to be low-key; or that the President could mark the anniversary anywhere in the country; he could even choose to do it in his native Otuoke in Bayelsa State. But low-key or high-key, Nigerians want to see their President in a place they can connect with, like the Eagle Square, and not Aso Rock where only the privileged people attend cocktail circuits on behalf of themselves.

This year, the President still could not come out of the ‘rock’ to felicitate with his ‘fellow Nigerians’ on Independence Day; yet he was decked in full military ceremonial uniform. If someone promises to borrow one a dress, we have to assess what he is wearing before knowing whether to take him seriously or not. How does the President expect us to believe that his government is ‘on top of the security situation’ when he keeps waving to us from the safe confines of Aso Rock on Independence Day? Or, does he not give a damn about that, too?

If he has security reports that ‘danger looms’ if he goes to Eagle Square for the event, what of the rest of us that are not privileged to have such reports? The best people to score the President on security are the relatives of the many victims of the Boko Haram crisis, as well as the over 40 students massacred in Mubi, Adamawa State, hours after the President had beaten his chest that the security situation was improving.

Perhaps the most astonishing claim in the President’s October 1 speech was that alleging that Transparency International (TI) rated Nigeria second after the United States, in anti-corruption efforts. This claim has been denied by TI and it has remained a source of embarrassment to the country. What the TI alleged claim has shown, further still, is the penchant of our government officials to do selective exposure, selective perception and selective retention. What do I mean? These people see only what they want to see. Take the case of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) that recently alleged that some 800 companies closed down in the country between 2009 and 2011. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (apparently in cahoots with the Federal Government, countered this and said, rather, that some 249 more companies had registered to operate in the country. They did not specify any time frame. Interestingly, it was the MAN statistics that the President referred to in his speech. In other words, that is what constitutes sweet music to the government’s ears. But the government would be making a big mistake if it thinks that Nigerians believe such manipulations. Again, they are the ones whose children left schools years back and are still roaming the streets in spite of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) 13-year rule in the country. So, they are in a better position to know whose statistics to believe, NACCIMA’s or MAN’s.

The truth of the matter is that the kind of indefensible claim that the government made about its anti-corruption efforts is the way Nigerian officials bandy figures and claims; they had been doing it within for long, it is only that the attempt to begin‘charity’ abroad this time has backfired. They said they found the claim in Business Day newspaper. Would they have seen the report (even if published in the New York Times or Times of London) if it had been negative? Even if his aides had included such a claim in his speech, the President ought to have been truthful to himself to know that it is a bogus claim. Whatever his government is doing to fight corruption is based on pressure from Nigerians; it is not a thing the government initiated of its own volition. Perhaps the fuel subsidy scam is about the most important anti-corruption war the government is fighting, and we know what it took Nigerians to make the government rise to the occasion.

Even then, we are not sure if there would be any gain from the efforts if the matter is left completely in the hands of the present government. TI is not a frivolous body, neither are its scores as cheap as the President’s when it comes to assessing countries’ corruption profiles. Rather than apologise for misleading the President, one of his aides who should know said we need not lose sleep over the claim and that “People should focus on the message, namely that a lot of progress has been made and is still being made to tackle corruption in the system”.

In the first place, this is in itself debatable; to now claim that Nigeria is the second country after the United States, in anti-corruption efforts, is taking a silly joke too far. Isn’t there a gulf between sleep and death? Let no one make any mistake about it, the so-called ‘notorious facts’ that the President relied on in his anti-corruption claim was just a reflection of the shoddy manner the country is being governed. When government is honouring people, the medals would not go round; the next year when the medals go round, other arrangements would be mismanaged and recipients would be stranded on arrival in Abuja for the ceremony.

Another example is the Gross Domestic Product that the President claimed to be growing at 7.1 percent annually in spite of the global economic crisis. The question to ask is how does this translate to better life for Nigerians? Nigerians reject to live by figures alone; even though they know that that is what they are as far as their government is concerned – mere statistics!

Also, President Jonathan’s claim on free and fair elections suffered from the same ‘celebrating too soon syndrome’. The President had a free election last year because Nigerians overwhelmingly voted for him. If there is another poll today, the story would be different because the result would be significantly different from last year’s.

Perhaps the only area that the President could claim to be making some progress is power supply. In spite of the phenomenal increase in the amount of megawatts available in the country, it is yet too early to lay claim to any credit in this regard. Let’s see how far this can be sustained so that we don’t dance ourselves lame even though we may never have an opportunity of having the real dance later.

All said, President Jonathan is not competent to count his blessings yet. He is too generous with marks in his self-assessment. What we need is an impartial external examiner in Nigerians to rate him appropriately. They are the beasts of burden carrying the brunt of the country’s many challenges.

October 7, 2012
Life after the floods

Today’s remedial action determines tomorrow’s well-being

As Nigerians, we sure have our worries, but don’t we, on occasion, wonder why we are so blessed? Everywhere else, the earth quakes, sinking homes, burying and mangling private and public facilities, to say nothing of the precious lives lost. Asians, Europeans, South and Central Americans count their costs now and again whenever the earth moves. Our continent and country are largely spared. Hurricanes ravage the United States so often that the Americans have since learned to differentiate one from another simply by giving them human names. That was why we heard of Hurricane Katrina. We are spared of such Katrinas. Volcanoes are rare in Africa, unheard of in Nigeria, but erupt in Europe, spewing hot ash and rocks, and causing not a little palaver. We are also blessed in that area, aren’t we? There are other natural disasters from which the good Lord has insulated us.

But since last month, Nigerians have felt the power of water, life’s otherwise precious liquid. No one is comfortable with that encounter. A persistent downpour swelled the Niger River and other rivers and tributaries, causing them to overflow their banks. The result has been utter devastation. Over two million people were reported to be displaced in Kogi and Edo states. Hundreds of houses collapsed under the impact of water. Displaced residents found temporary perching spots on the rooftops of surviving houses, waiting to be evacuated. Women clutched their babies, hoping something would happen to put them out of their nightmare. In Delta and Anambra, misery was widespread, as homes and farmlands were washed away.

In Ndokwa-East, a council in Delta, reports suggest no flood ever wreaked so much havoc in its history. It left about 22 clans under water, their people in sheer torment, displaced and with little to eat and little to wear, in makeshift shelters, and unsure of what tomorrow would bring. In Onuaboh, for instance, a clan of three communities, namely, Umugwor, Umuoche and Umuazu, this year’s flooding will be a watershed. No dry grounds at all. Inyi, where I spent two formative years, is a vast body of water. 2012 will be the year of the Great Floods. Discounting the services of wall calendars, the year will help to set off one event from another. It is an unsavoury encounter with one of man’s most cherished resources.

There has been some response from government. The Emmanuel Uduaghan administration in Delta State has sent relief to the displaced residents, as have individuals and organisations.

But there is need for more work. There is need for the authorities, including the federal government, to assess the situation and ascertain the magnitude of damage. Next, it will help to determine what assistance is required. Plus, no one should forget that whatever relief is sent should be appropriate, targeted and monitored.

There are reasons for these suggestions. Disaster management can easily be bungled if not properly thought-out, just as relief efforts can be misapplied and wasted if not clearly conceived and monitored. If the right things are not done at the right time, people needing help become hopeless. And that deepens the initial crisis.

For some of the flood victims, their plight has a traumatising impact. Their farmlands may have been flooded in the past, but not their houses or entire communities, as is the case in Ndokwa-East and parts of Isoko in Delta State. These people are struggling with not just economic loss; they are also grappling with psychological shock and need help in that area as well. They need encouragement now, some sort of psychological therapy.

They need comprehensive relief consisting of, but not limited to, food, medicine, water, clothing, and, of course, sleeping places, till the water recedes. They will also be happy to see that assistance meant for them actually gets to them, and not to some opportunistic dealers or people far removed from the floods. But beyond all that, they need something permanent, something to start and sustain them after the great waters. They need cash to buy new seedlings and begin all over again.

It is in the interest of everyone if this crisis is well managed. For one, it will show that we can learn from past blunders in disaster management, and that our governments really care for the people they govern.

No one should lose sight of the imperatives of mitigating the unpleasantness of life in a relief camp. Still, it must not be forgotten that tiding victims over the flood season is only one step, requiring another. That second step is even more fundamental. It should resolve the issues of life after the floods. What will the farmer-victims eat when the waters recede? And since these farmers also feed the society, what will we all eat when dry grounds appear?

How these issues are resolved now will determine the quality of life after the floods.

October 7, 2012
Okon is Commander in Chef

As tragedy blends fluidly and fluently with comedy in our daily existence, it is becoming impossible to separate the comic from the tragic. The old sub-genre of tragi-comedy does not quite capture the stirring monstrosity of our reality in contemporary Nigeria in all its brilliant chiaroscuro. Darkness is clearly visible. Welcome to Kafka’s Penal Colony. Welcome to sub-Saharan cinematography and the cabinet of Dr Caligari. Welcome to comi-tragedy.

Imagine that the casualties from Monday’s Mubi massacre probably surpass the figures from one month of mayhem in Mogadishu even at the height of war and lunacy in that strife-torn country. Yet it is Somalia that we blithely refer to as a failed state. When shall we learn to call a spade a spade? Or the opium is just a flower?

Snooper was deep in rumination about these tragic fatalities and the infelicitous gaffes and goofs they elicit from officialdom when he almost collided with a truly outlandish figure in the kitchen. It was the impossible Okon dressed in a crude travesty of the full ceremonial uniform of a Commander in Chief complete with silky gloves and bristling epaulettes. Before yours sincerely could finish marvelling at the kitchen Napoleon, the crazy boy exploded..

“Oga, Okon now be commander in chief, no be like dem yeye Yoruba musician ooo. He get time like dat when I dey see dem fine and dandy young Yoruba Oba for Lagos. I come ask wetin be im name and dem say na Elegusi, so I come think say dem better Yoruba people dey give dem cook Oba title. I come say I be Elewedu and dem area boys come beat me sotey. Naim I come tell dem I be Emir for Tuwo Shinkafa. But dis one like dem Jonathan be commander in chief for inside dem Aso Rock, Okon be commander in chief for kitchen sef. Make dem area boys come try dem nonsense make I put better pepper for dem konta konta eye.”

“But Jonathan is a real Field Marshal.” Snooper offered.

“Oga, no be wetin we dey talk? Na for inside dem field for Aso Rock him dey do him road Marshal for independence ceremony. Even dem Ekwueme and dem old soldier Gowon dey hide under dem Aso canopy. I see dem with my korokoro eye. Dem mountain Anyim dey cry for Ibo, biko, biko, biri kem biri. Dem Boko be dem mama him husband. I don tell dem Jonathan make dem cancel dem independence day, abi na by force?”

“Okon, have you been hit by shell before,” snooper demanded.

“Plenty time. Shell no dey kill Efik man. Dem stupid Yoruba barber come throw dem cowrie shell at Okon for Bar Beach,” the crazy boy sneered.

“Okon, you are a big fool, big time,”snooper noted with a comic frown.

“Ha oga no be only dat. He get time like that for dis dem Oduduwa kitchen. As Okon come break egg from dem Ogbologbo Yoruba witch for Oyingbo market dem egg come do Gbuaam and dem shell come hit Okon and dem bird come comot and him dey cry tin o tin oo for kitchen. Naim I come pick race. Calabar juju come finis Yoruba witch. Who born Gbetugbetu for Creek Town?”

It was on that note that snooper quickly shut the kitchen door at the Chef Commander.

October 7, 2012