The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Happy Birthday, dear ol’ girl!

On this your birthday, dear girl, here’s my glass raised in a toast to you: may your story be long, your tail be short and your ending wear a hat

Happy birthday, Nigeria.

I am sending this birthday card to you a little late, but you know what they say, better late than never. Besides, I say that the best ones come last, e.g. wine at a party. I would have sent it earlier anyways, but I have been a little stumped on what exactly to write to cheer you up. What with all your dismal and chequered stories of wasted opportunities, generations and even until recently, lives, it’s all we can do to hang on to our seats in this cinema of horror passing horror! The years do add up, though don’t they, ol’ girl? Just look at you, all grown up at fifty-two! What, still growing? Well, it is a matter of perspective, isn’t it, to determine who is grown and who is growing. But, if you say you are still growing, then so be it. I mean, when a dog barks, who is to argue with him on what he means by it exactly?

Look at me now, at your age, I considered myself all grown. How I knew? Well, by the time you begin to notice that when you look in the mirror, you see some smooth areas of your skin surrounded by many variegated lines of wrinkles; or when you walk with your eyes on the ground so that you don’t fall cause if you do, they are going to need a crane to pick you up; or when you bend down, you have to hold your waist as you rise cause it’s all gone, baby gone; or when you keep telling people not to block your view by standing in front of the TV until someone tells you that there’s no one there, it’s your eyes that have gone rheumy; I say when these things begin to happen, you know you are going somewhere. Trust me, I know; at that age, there is no more ‘up’ to grow to, it’s only ‘down’ baby, down.

You see, girl, fifty-two is the age when people tell you a lot of lies, and because you are so vulnerable, you believe them. People actually tell you that you are still looking good. Don’t be fooled, looks don’t mean a thing. Ask Marilyn Monroe, ask Jackie Kennedy, as me. Did you say I don’t belong in that group? Come now, is this the time to split fine hairs?

Anyway, people will also tell you, how strong you are! Again, don’t be fooled; you know what support cast you have to walk with. It is just you and your doctor who both know how many pills you have to pop in a day: a blue one for your rheumatic joints, a white one for diabetes, a red one for hypertension and a green one to help you remember your spouse’s name each morning.

Fifty-two is clearly also the age when you need a little help from your first child to assist you to remember the names of his/her siblings. Those ones don’t usually want anything to do with your fossilised self anyway. It is also the age when your friends have to gather and eat your cake for you not because you like to see them around you (truth is you would rather not) but because you cannot eat any of that cake yourself if your doctor has his way. Girl, at fifty-two, you have a lot to be thankful for; you get by with the help of your friends.

Oh dear, you say you have not been very lucky with your own set of friends, associates, citizens, or well wishers, and there doesn’t appear to be much you can do about them? Yeah, I know, your friends appear to be killing you right now. I forget now which nineteenth century writer said he’d rather be killed by his friends (they love him) than his enemies (that would be adding insult to injury). So, consider yourself lucky. In all fairness, some of us have wept for you; some have cried out in your defence; some have even shed their blood on your behalf. But it just appears that those who have given up next to nothing for you are the ones bent on taking everything you have to give, not caring whether they destroy you in the process. They just don’t seem to like you.

I know, I know, you have been given so much in trust for us. Look at the extremely vast areas of very, very arable land you have in your keeping; look at the very vast amounts of solid and liquid minerals you are holding for our collective benefits; look at the vast amounts of human resources you have placed at our disposal. Yet, we have all but ruined you for our selfish and parochial interests.

You have certainly seen it all, haven’t you? You have been ruled by vagabonds and killers; you have accommodated innocent mass assisted suicide hysterics cum citizens who have turned killers; you have also tolerated the inactive ones who are neither killers in government nor are in citizens’ bombing squads but have done nothing to help you. You have regarded everything and everyone with your bemused, sad and lonely gaze with admirable equanimity. Yet, I know you’re bleeding for yourself and for us even if we cannot see your bleeding heart. Because we are so blind and blinkered, no one has lifted a hand in your favour. So now, you have no one to call your own. There are people in Nigeria, but no Nigerians!

Many of the things we do appear to pitch us on your side. See how much religiosity there is in the land. The churches are all but filled with converts gyrating endlessly in ecstasy while the mosques are pelting out calls for prayers at all hours, both waking day and sleeping night. Yet, not one of us shows that we even know the Almighty in any remote sense. Our psyches have been collectively and unidirectionally tuned towards taking, taking, taking out of the national cake, even killing for it while giving nothing to you in return. We are all, to a man, on no one’s side but our own; and you are all alone.

Actually, you are to blame, partially. You have given us this much really, without adding the necessary and commensurate intelligence that would enable us use all these effectively for the greater good. Look at so many other lands with no resources whatsoever, whether liquid or solid; just see how they are able to manage the only resource nature has given them, their brains. Why did you not cut us a large size of the stuff too, brains I mean? I am seeing that in the Nigerian, it would appear that the black man is really short on the stuff. This is why avowed killers are in government and people help themselves to government funds in amounts that rival the national budgets of some countries. Still wonder that a people can be so blessed and still be so stupid?! It is all your fault.

In spite of all these though, ol’ girl, I don’t despair; you still have a fan club rooting for you. I believe your bones will still rise from the ashes to gloriousness. The path might be long, rough and stony but the light at the tunnel will continue to be a strong pull for you. On this your birthday, dear girl, here’s my glass raised in a toast to you: may your story be long, your tail be short and your ending wear a hat. Happy birthday ol’ girl!

October 7, 2012
Achebe: Some things are better left unsaid

Professor Chinua Achebe’s latest book, There Was A Country, A Personal History of Biafra, is bound to engender stormy controversies all over the country and perhaps beyond, for its candour, its controversial allotment of motives to the principal actors of the Nigerian civil war, and the author’s unrepentant and undisguised partisanship. The book is yet to be released to the Nigerian market, but the Guardian of London last week excerpted a short but very poignant part of the book to whet readers’ appetite and for analysts to have an idea of the book’s potency. This piece will look at that excerpt and attempt a brief foray into the eminent writer’s mind. No review of the book will be attempted until it is available.

First, here is what the publishers have to say of the book: “The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.

“Achebe masterfully relates his experience, both as he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeria’s birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the country’s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people.

Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebe’s place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.”

It is unlikely anyone will question Achebe’s literary astuteness, especially knowing that he is a towering literary personality of the 20th Century. No one will also question his freedom to say the things he has just said in the book, for he felt the torment of the civil war as keenly as the worst victim, just as the publishers indicated. What with his young family that needed his protection during the war, and his involvement as a roving cultural ambassador of the short-lived Biafra Republic. In general too, Achebe was impeccable in counselling writers to take a stand on the great moral issues of the day, as he apparently did during the war, and has now done again more than four decades after. What remains to be seen, however, is to what extent he could take liberty with his understanding of the issues surrounding the war, his interpretations, his conclusions, and the underlying emotions that obviously coloured both his own worldview and his paranoid perception of the country vis-à-vis the Igbo people.

After reading the Guardian (London) excerpt of the book, I concluded this was a book he should not have written, for sometimes, the merit of a book is compromised by just one page, one paragraph, even one sentence. Because of the sentiments contained in the excerpt, which sentiments I think vitiate the force of his lofty intellect, Achebe should have left unsaid many of the things he wrote in the book. His reputation as a world-renowned writer was already secure, having written one of the 50 most influential books of all time. Why did he feel impelled to write this fateful book, one which doubtless reinforces the suspicion many hold about his private and public animosities? Achebe is a courageous writer and a principled Nigerian who felt no qualms twice spurning the honours bestowed on him by the Nigerian government. A disreputable government could not give honour to one so morally superior, he snorted. Yet, the book contains sentiments that appear unworthy of both the fame he has acquired by dint of his unequalled genius and the high pedestal upon which Nigeria, nay, the world has thrust him.

Most of the criticisms levelled against Achebe come from the Southwest. The critics seek to defend Chief Obafemi Awolowo against the motives ascribed to him by the author. I do not intend to join forces with those critics. It is enough to say that writing interpretative historical works and psychoanalysing historical personalities are not Achebe’s forte. Perhaps if he were detached from the Biafran debacle he would have been able to do a greater work. For now I am uncomfortable with a few issues raised in the excerpt. First is the fact that the eminent author showed a disturbing streak of extreme traumatisation. Forty-two years after the civil war, the bitterness Achebe nursed against both the federal side and a few of the dramatis personae in the war are still very fresh and potent. He has allowed that bitterness to endure, to retain its potency, and to colour his perception of Nigerian (ethnic) politics. I doubt whether the great Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, who was ambivalent towards Biafra, nor the man who led Biafra itself, Dim Emeka Ojukwu, retained such vitriol against the rest of Nigeria as Achebe.

Second, it is hard to know where Achebe got the statistics upon which he built his insupportable conclusions. He claims the principal targets of the war, a war he insinuates was genocidal, were two million mothers, children, babies – all civilians, apparently in contradistinction to military casualties. He inexplicably ignores the losses suffered by World War II combatants. The former Soviet Union alone lost over 16 million civilians and about eight million troops. China lost more than 10 million civilians and just over one million armed men. Poland lost about six million civilians and over 800,000 armed men. Germany, where the final battles of the war were fought, lost seven million people, about half of whom were civilians. In all, WWII cost between 60 to 70 million lives of which some 40 to 50 million were civilians. Civilians often bear the brunt of wars.

The Nigerian civil war was fought mostly in the Southeast, yet the author queries the preponderance of war dead on the Biafran side. Where does Achebe expect most of the casualties to come from? He also said the small arms deployed in the constricted Southeast region during the less than three years the civil war lasted were more than the quantity deployed in the entire WWII, which lasted over six years and was fought across vast territories. Even without counting, and looking at the scale and scope of WWII losses, it would be far-fetched to come to Achebe’s conclusions. Except the author could convince us that the more than 40 million soldiers who fought in WWII shared weapons or fought barehanded, and the soldiers who fought in the Nigerian civil war used more than 40 guns each, he could never persuade anyone that more small arms were used in the Southeast during the war. After all, Nigerian Army strength rose to only 120,000 by the end of that war. It is doubtful that Biafran troops exceeded federal troops in number.

Achebe’s latest book is unlikely to be of much value. It will be regarded as a bitter account by a traumatised man who has found it difficult to overcome the effects of the civil war. He considers as diabolical the use of starvation as a weapon of war, as if he never read any history of warfare, where sieges were designed to starve the enemy into submission. He glosses over the fact that Igbo people lived in the Southwest during the war; yet he yielded to paranoia by concluding that the purpose and methods of the war were designed to exterminate the Igbo. He connects those execrable methods, such as starvation, to Awolowo’s ambitious design for power and northern jihadist inclinations. This is guesswork.

The Guardian (London) newspaper excerpt illustrates how difficult it is for many Nigerian intellectuals to overcome the stereotypes that hamstring objective discussions of national affairs. So, who will write the history of that period, let alone teach it, when even Achebe could not overcome stereotypes nor bury the bitterness of four decades past? The great roles played by many Igbo personalities during the war are being highlighted, and many of them, including the great Zik and the charismatic Ojukwu, are being canonised. We must hope that Achebe does not take us back to our ignoble past where heroic deeds are acknowledged through ethnic prism.

October 7, 2012
Autumn in New York with Ahmadinejad

The gathering of world leaders at the United Nations every September turns the city into the landscape of a cheap thriller. The streets are lousy with ministers, tyrants, and potentates and you can’t cross Third Avenue without fear of death by motorcade.

On Monday morning, as in recent years, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited a few dozen journalists to the Warwick Hotel, on Fifty-fourth Street, for what his representatives bill as “an exchange of ideas” but what turns out to be a group interview. With the carriage, dress, and manner of a cocksure regional politician, Ahmadinejad strolled into the conference room just after 8am and got down to business. He does not much conceal his pleasure in provoking his earnest questioners.

When asked about the Israeli leadership’s threats to carry out an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Ahmadinejad said that he viewed them as a kind of desperate diversion. “Fundamentally, we do not take seriously the threats of the Zionists,” he said. “We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end.… I don’t think it is anything of utmost importance. But if such an event were to happen, all equations in the region would see a deep change.”

Ahmadinejad will address the General Assembly on Wednesday, which is Yom Kippur, and no Israeli delegation will be present. (Today, when Ahmadinejad arrived at a U.N. discussion on law, the Israeli envoy Ron Prosor walked out of the hall.)

At the Warwick, the Iranian President said that he found the whole nuclear issue “a very tiresome subject.”

“At the end of the day, everyone knows that Iran is not seeking a nuclear bomb. The scene resembles one of a comedy show. Those who accuse us are those whose warehouses have nuclear stockpiles. They talk of security. If you are so preoccupied with this, why not do away with your own nuclear stockpiles?”

When he was asked about his hostility toward, and threats directed at, Israel, he said, “We say occupation must be done away with. We say war-seeking and war-mongering must be eliminated…. Has the Zionist regime conducted itself in any other way in the last sixty years? If they don’t change, what will become of them? Assume that one day the rights of the Palestinians will be legitimated… Will anything known as Zionism remain?”

The Israeli state, he said, was a rootless “fabrication” and not “born out of historical events or hopes,” while the Israelis “believe they find themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end.” He made it clear that he sees Israel as a kind of temporary phenomenon, a historical aberration not long for the world. The Israelis “do not even enter the equation,” he said. “During a historical phase, they present minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated.”

Ahmadinejad was also intent on doing what he could to further aggravate the troubled relations between President Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been demanding that the U.S. declare its “red lines” on the Iranian nuclear issue. “At the end of the day, who determines what the U.S. government should do?” he said. “Is it the Zionists who tell the U.S. what to do and about red lines?… Who are these Zionists to dictate and tell the United States what to do?”

After Ahmadinejad assured everyone that, despite economic sanctions, Iran was in better economic shape than the European Union and that it was not defending the Assad regime in Syria but, rather, doing its solemn best to help find a peace settlement, I asked him a question about blasphemy and free speech. What did he have to say about both Salman Rushdie (who, despite the lifting of the 1989 fatwa, has been threatened yet again by an Iranian cultural foundation, which raised its bounty on his head last week) and the violence surrounding an anti-Islam video on the Internet?

“If someone insults you when you are walking down the street, would you not react or file grievances?” he said. “Is insult not a form of crime? It certainly would be. Insulting divine figures is not a crime? Of course it is.” The video, in his eyes, was also the doing of Zionists. “If you are talking about the most recent events,” he said, “some of these Zionists are seeking adventurous games as a way to find a salvation for their dead end. In a place where under the guise of freedom sanctities can be insulted.”

And what of Rushdie?

Ahmadinejad smiled, ominously. “Salman Rushdie, where is he now?” he said. “There is no news of him. Is he in the United States? If he is in the U.S., you shouldn’t broadcast that, for his own safety.”

Culled from The New Yorker

September 30, 2012
These days, it pays to own a canoe too!

Whoever knew that come one day, canoes would rush around on Nigerian roads where big trailers would fear to tread?

During the week, I listened in on a radio programme on the ‘curse of the ember months’. I was prepared to learn how I could meet those guys and give them a piece of my mind, thinning out the population the way they do around Christmas, the ember months that is, not the radio people. No, I do not necessarily have anything against them radio guys; it’s just that my diary is full. Anyway, I was very relieved to learn that there is no such thing as an ‘ember month’s’ curse. Instead, there are careless and desperate drivers who want to make extra money for the Christmas period, period. In the process, they make mistakes and kill people.

I also learnt, on that radio show, that the Christmas period usually witnesses, how do you say it, a little bit of madness, no? People use the period to show off what they have achieved during the year, such as how many cars they have bought. This is why a single family that used to go home for Christmas in public transport finds that it needs to take seven cars to ferry everyone in the house home: one each for the father, mother, children, servants, luggage, food, family dogs … That’s right; the dogs must go for Christmas too. Who else is going to sing, ‘It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas’ for the family? The children? Are you serious? In a family that takes seven cars home for Christmas, the children do not need to know anything. I would not.

Seven cars! Imagine that, and in a land where three quarters of the populace cannot even ferry themselves to work with a bicycle. Sometimes I wonder, should those ones commit suicide? What is just wrong with us that we lose all reason and dignity as we drool and grovel in abject ecstasy at the feet of these material things? Obviously, such families need some talking to.

The unfortunate thing is that none of us can actually raise the first stone to condemn the family mentioned above because I think that is the secret dream of everyone of us: to show the world up in our little ways! How else will the world know we have ten cars if we don’t take seven of them home for Christmas? That is what makes life a little fair, at least. So, I guess our mindless worship of these mindless material things will continue unabated until something shows up to let us know how really flimsy we are, such as floods.

Oh, the floods, the floods! Have you seen pictures of the Kogi floods? I mean, here is Kogi State, in gentle somnambulism all the year, undulating along the pathway of life minding no one’s business, not even its own, and it is suddenly and furiously thrust into national limelight, not by some great achievement but by the floods! It is a rather sad event, isn’t it, particularly for those killed, displaced or discomfited. When I saw the pictures, I just went, wow! There’s just water, water, everywhere in Lokoja! And Noah was nowhere in sight, only Mother Nature! Incredible!

I mean, here we are, dying or killing each other over land, money, power, positions, just name it, and all the while not one of us realises that nature is in masterful control. How come none of us realised this? We really need to go back to our books. Seriously, don’t we ever learn? Has no one told us the story of the man who was so desperate to purchase an airline ticket he went and colluded with the tickets clerk to withdraw one that had earlier been sold to someone else and the plane now crashed and killed the desperado? Have we never heard that story? Or of the man who insisted on taking a particular seat in a bus on a long distance journey, only to be the only one to die in a crash the bus was involved in? You have not heard? Silly me, I thought these things were common knowledge.

Look now, one of the Lokoja pictures was of a house with a car parked in front of it, both neck-deep in water of course, and as I looked at it, I thought, this car ain’t going nowhere any time soon, not to the market, the office, the shops, nowhere. But then, right beside it was a canoe and its paddle and I thought, what ingenuity! This man had prepared for a rainy day, literally! What message did this modern day Noah receive that the rest of us didn’t: when you buy your car, make sure you purchase a canoe to go with it? Who would have thought that one would need a canoe, no matter how little, after one had bought a car?!

More pictures showed how houses had been completely submerged in water; and how big lorries, trucks, trailers were attempting to wade through the waters. I saw however that canoes, tiny little canoes, were able to move and were being used to ferry people and things over the waters. And I thought I spied a little canoe stretching out a helping hand to a big lorry across the water. Perhaps not, it might have been just my eyes playing tricks as usual. When I looked at that picture again, I thought how indeed are the little risen and the mighty fallen! Whoever knew that come one day, canoes would rush around on Nigerian roads where big trailers would fear to tread? Who knew indeed, that some day, some rainy day, some little canoes would be the heroes of their owners’ lives? As they say, life is full of strange turns and twists.

Let’s look to now; there are some lessons to be learnt from these strange turns and twists. To begin with, I think we should all accept the fact that life is indeed full of strange turns and twists and it never pays to disdain the little guy. What do you mean you already knew that? What about your neighbour? If Nigerians as a people were to accept that they knew that, then we would all cling less to these material things, accumulate stolen funds less, stow away public funds less and generally not carry on as if we were in control. I think the only thing we are in control of is the food in our stomachs, not even the one on our plates. A fly may come suddenly and perch comfortably on it.

Now, don’t go getting me wrong again. What I mean is that the larger order of things (such as floods, lightning strikes, earthquakes, etc.) is not in our hands. However, we can help the little things such as preparing for the larger order of things: getting a canoe, preparing systems for the delivery of relief materials, equipping hospitals well enough to take care of the injured, etc. We may not be in control of things in general, but we can at least focus on the things that truly matter such as making this world a better place by serving others, not just ourselves. Now, I’m sure not everyone can afford a canoe (imagine, Noah spent years building his own!), but we can at least bear in mind that nature rules, ok, cause we don’t, ok.

September 30, 2012
Forging a national identity

Tomorrow, Nigeria will be 52. It will be time to ask who she is and what she stands for. Except those who rule the country, who think that by simply declaring that she has an identity and cannot therefore fragment, most of us know she is afflicted by midlife crisis. British colonialists superintended the marriage between Northern and Southern Nigeria. But they were unable to give her an identity before she became independent in 1960. For reasons we will not go into here today, it is not surprising that France was more successful than Britain in imbuing her former colonies with a more tangible sense of national identity. If Nigeria appears to be undone today, wracked by religious, ethnic and social conflicts, the problem is more likely located in the absence of an identity than simply because it experiences economic difficulties, hypocritical attachment to religion, selfish and unintelligent leadership, and uninspiring and short-sighted constitution.

I was fortunate to grow up under a father whose mind was often made up, and made up in the right direction. He never really sat me down to teach me in the fashion Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle, but both through his writings – he was an editor and columnist – and his progressive worldview, I learnt the virtues of altruism, patriotism and strength of character. He had a strong moral sense that was not attenuated by worldly pleasures. He was not averse to philandering, and had even tried more than once to inculcate in me a healthy suspicion of the opposite sex bordering on the misogynistic, which pearl he said he polished in his years of turbulent relationship with women. He also drank, perhaps a little more than could be described as the social drinker, but he was seldom so far gone as not to recall what he did or said. He ruefully did away with the bottle only when his creaking pancreas, which never stopped working, protested vigorously.

But this piece today is neither about my dad nor about me. I only offer myself as a practical example to illustrate how and why it is crucial for a nation to acquire an identity necessary to abjure the hedonism that weakens national resolve. I distilled my worldview eclectically from my dad’s lifestyle and unsystematic philosophy, and honed this worldview after introducing myself to the lives of great statesmen. It enabled me to discover myself when I was barely out of my teens. That self-discovery has not only helped me to keep my head in the Kiplingian sense, it also helped me to endure life’s vicissitudes, shape my reluctance to be beholden to unprincipled interests while sometimes being a supporter of enlightened absolutism, and give me a strength of character that makes me ready to sacrifice anything, anybody, including my life, for the principles and values that I have dedicated my life to.

A few weeks ago, I tried to communicate to my readers the herculean task I took upon myself to inculcate in my children the noble principles I thought anyone able to call his soul his own should embrace. I could not initiate that effort if I did not believe in something or if my principles were so fluid they could be bought or influenced by degrading considerations. I think the same thing goes for a nation. Nigeria could never hope to make something of its children if it does not believe in or stand for anything. Nigeria is passing through middle age and transiting to old age without the redeeming benefit of standing up for anything truly noble. Worse, it is making that transition without having had a leader who could personify that noble longing for greatness.

Forgive my pessimism, but I often look at Nigeria and wonder whether it will ever amount to anything. What does it stand for? What great thing does it hope to bequeath the world? Without a national ambition which comes out of knowing who we are, what great things could we hope to accomplish? It took approximately 10 years for Alexander the Great to forge a great name for Greece and for himself, names that have endured and still stupefy the world both for the accomplishment of the young Alexander himself and the inability of the rump empire to live up to the glories of its incandescent past. We are familiar with the popular British patriotic song “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves,” and its stirring refrain “Britons never shall be slaves.” No historian would underestimate the inspiration and fillip which this patriotic song gave to Britain’s naval strength, its colonial adventures, and its prosecution of World War I and II. Who could also belittle the nationalistic passion Frederick the Great and Otto von Bismarck imbued Germany (Prussia) in the 18th and 19th centuries? Who could ignore the sense of national pride brought to France by both St Joan of Arc, through her independence wars, and Napoleon Bonaparte, through his ground-breaking war tactics and the Napoleonic Code? And who could imagine the Roman Empire, its character, justice system and administrative legacy, without the two Caesars, Julius and Augustus?

Nigerian rulers may denounce the pessimism of their countrymen and even live in denial of the looming apocalypse. They may continue to affirm the indissolubility of the country and whoop that the country’s unity is non-negotiable. They may even hold out plenty of hope in institutions as ramparts upon which to build a “strong and virile” nation, whatever that means. And they may believe that by and by, the constitution, if tinkered with, may deliver the utopia we crave, in spite of the indiscipline we are noted for. The fact, however, is that the fabric that holds the country together is straining badly, and will sooner or later give way, for it cannot be held together by words but by action, action which we have refused to summon.

What actions are required to weld the country together and make it flourish? Two options present themselves: either the people join hands together to lift the country; or a leader emerges to lead the charge. Most people have given up on the possibility of a visionary leader emerging, and have therefore reposed faith in the ability of followers to do the job. I entertain no such nonsense. Followers are never capable of creating and sustaining a vision for national identity and greatness. They could never summon the consensus that would bring it about. In the late 1930s, for instance, Britain was amenable to appeasing Hitler’s irredentism. It took Winston Churchill’s bitter challenge to galvanise his country in the opposite direction. France was, after defeat in that same war, resigned to fate; it took the single-mindedness of Charles de Gaulle to convince them otherwise.

Anywhere, anytime, change is delivered only by the few for the many. Most analysts and south-westerners, for instance, cannot see why it is necessary to fight and defeat Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State in the October governorship polls. They cannot understand why the region must place premium on leadership character and principles; they cannot understand the urgency of forging a regional identity as a tool for social, political and economic mobilisation in a country lacking a sense of purpose; and they cannot understand the highly intricate and elevated visioning necessary to engender a mini utopia in a national sea of mediocrity. It is given to only a few to understand these issues; they must not fail to try fight the electoral battle because they fear to fail.

I do not know a great nation with a discernible national identity which did not have visionary leaders at one point or the other in its history. Imagine if the United States had had Chief Olusegun Obasanjo or Robert Mugabe instead of George Washington to lead the war of independence. Could it sustain the tradition of two terms? Would the two African leaders not act as if the country owed them its very life? Imagine also Turkey without Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the end of World War I. Could the secularism that has underpinned its stability and projected its influence in world and Eurasian/Southeastern European politics have been devised, let alone nurtured for so long? How could the Soviet Union and China have played significantly in the 20th century without Lenin/Stalin and Mao Zedong respectively? What would 20th Century Egypt be without Gamal Abdel Nasser, Israel without David, son of Jesse, and Ghana without Kwame Nkrumah?

For 52 years, and after about 12 heads of state/presidents, we still don’t know who we are, what we want, and where we should be. The leaders themselves never had a sense of mission or a sense of history. But we won’t know who we are, no matter the hundreds of brilliant individuals we produce annually, until a leader comes along, a deus ex machina to help us forge a common identity either by force of his character, force of arms, or force of ideas. Western Nigeria continues to embrace the progressivism fostered by Chief Obafemi Awolowo; Northern Nigeria still makes the conservatism moulded by Sir Ahmadu Bello its reference point; and Eastern Nigeria oscillates between the liberalism of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and the radicalism of Dim Emeka Ojukwu. If no one builds a foundation for Nigeria, the country will not have an identity because it cannot stand on nothing.

September 30, 2012
Calling NYSC

Last Wednesday, Served, a book on the compulsory one-year national youth service experience of Joe Agbro Jnr, a staff of The Nation, was presented in Lagos.

At a time when many are questioning the relevance of the scheme and calling for its discontinuation, Agbro Jnr deserves commendation for publishing a book which makes a good case for the retention of the service.

The interesting experiences he shared in the book confirm how the service has truly been an opportunity for young Nigerians to know more about the people and places of the country. That Agbo Jnr from Delta State who grew up in Lagos still cherishes the year he spent in Ebonyi, which he says is like his second home, confirms that the scheme has indeed been accomplishing the objective of enhancing the unity of the country.

By the time I went for my national youth service in the old Sokoto State in 1985, I had never gone beyond Lagos, Ogun and Oyo States. Serving in Sokoto gave me a better understanding and appreciation of the northern parts of the country.

Each time I hear of Sokoto, I remember the Bodinga camp, Sokoto township, Illela border town, Kaura Namoda, now in Zamfara State and many other places I visited during the service. Years after the service, I keep running into the people we served together in Sokoto, some of whom we have remained friends.

While some of us like Joe Agbro Jnr would want the scheme retained, there is need for an overhaul of the service.

Recent cases of killings of corps members in the north have made it imperative for the issue of security of the young graduates to be taken more seriously.

In deploying corps members, priority should be given to places where their security can be guaranteed. State governments and communities that cannot protect corps members don’t deserve to have them posted to their states.

The welfare of the corps members who have accepted to serve their country should be given better attention. Much as we want to expose them to the reality of the situation in the country, the orientation camps should have basic amenities.

The situation where camps don’t have water, toilets and other basic facilities despite the yearly allocations for Orientation Camps is not good enough. Their allowances have to be paid promptly instead of subjecting them to hardship occasioned by delays like the recent case when they waited for another month before they were paid.

Unfortunately, when some corps members after waiting endlessly for an official explanation wrote about their plight, the NYSC in Ebonyi State for example invoked the provision of a bye law to extend the service of Samson Folarin, a graduate of University of Lagos, for a month without pay.

The punishment for Folarin and some corps members over the years like that of another ex-corps member in Sokoto who also wrote about the extension of his service for a similar reason is unjust.

If the NYSC fails to discharge its responsibilities to the corps members who are far away from where they can get money to take care of themselves, it is not right to penalise them for speaking out. If the corps members can write about the positive sides of their service years and not get punished, it is wrong for them to be punished when they draw attention to lapses.

The bye law being invoked by the NYSC which says corps members should not grant press interviews on the policies of the organisation needs to be reviewed. Despite all efforts made by Joe Agbo Jnr, the national, state and local government levels of the NYSC were not represented at the launch of his book. The lack of interest of the NYSC in a book that will prepare future corps members for the year ahead of them and those who are about to begin their service is not the way to reward young people like Agbo, who have opted to remain patriotic to their fatherland despite the challenges they have faced.

Served or any other that has been written about the one-year service year is a book every intending and serving corps member should read if the NYSC gets it acts right.

September 30, 2012
Major Triumphant

(“I am not dead yet”)— Colonel Victor Anuoluwapo Banjo

The above were the defiant last words of Colonel Victor Banjo after each round of furious bullets failed to silence him. It was an unequal struggle between man and man-made metal. The great colonel eventually succumbed to the fierce velocity, thus ending the life of one of the most brilliant and mysterious officers thrown up by the Nigerian military during the years of the locusts, 1966 to 1999.

The neat and cruel symmetry of dates only reinforces the metaphysical mysteries that often accompany the birth of national tragedies. For Columbia and Latin America in general—according to the incomparable Gabriel Garcia Marquez—it was one hundred years of solitude. For Nigeria, it has been ninety eight years of the syndrome we now name as elite solipsism and still counting.

There is an exacting and intriguing connection between war and literature. Some of the greatest writers the world has produced have been arms bearers in their prime. Count Leo Tolstoy, arguably the greatest novelist of all time, Leon Trotsky, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Andre Malraux, a.k.a Colonel Berger, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Eric Blair, a.k.a George Orwell, Wilfred Owen and the great war poets of England and a host of others. These were writers of the greatest pedigree. Two of them were Nobel laureates in literature. Perhaps an immediate but superficial explanation is that apart from love, it is war and literature that evoke the deepest passion in humanity.

Readers of Victor Banjo’s memorable memoirs, particularly his hugely touching and affecting letters to his beloved wife from prison, must wonder what a great writer lost to Nigerian literature. This is the stuff of the greatest penmanship anywhere in the world. Banjo writes with passion and poetic brilliance; his observations are laced with penetrating acuity. The letters are wrought from the furnaces of epic sonnet at its summit.

Like all supremely gifted people who are conscious of their god-given endowments and the possibility of deploying these for restorative and redemptive actions, Banjo could be difficult, impossible to fathom and perpetually obsessed by a single solution. Yet there can be no denying that he was a great Nigerian patriot and nationalist. Even his obsession with a single solution which could be a vice only led to the virtue of granite clarity and phenomenal will. Eventually, there is probably only a thin line between genius and monomania.

It will be recalled that Colonel Victor Banjo was arrested shortly after the major’s mutiny of 1966 for physically threatening the new Head of state, General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi. It was rumoured that he was close to the radical majors and was tacitly in support of their action although he was not a direct participant. A less brave and self-assured man would have lain low, but not the testy Colonel who probably viewed Ironsi with barely concealed contempt and condescension.

It was in prison, or what may be termed in retrospect as true preventive custody, that the greater events of 1966 and the killings of Nigerians of Igbo origins found Banjo. Incarceration in the east probably saved his life. Imprisonment saw Banjo resuming his friendship with his old buddy, the then Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Although very sympathetic to the gory plight of the Igbo, he was not persuaded that this should lead to the break-up of Nigeria.

In prison, Banjo had renewed contacts with other committed Nigerian patriots and nationalists who were not sold on secession but who also felt that General Yakubu Gowon was an interloper who had no business presiding over the affairs of the nation. Thus crystallised the idea of a Third Force which was to rid the nation of the ethnic revanchists who had installed Gowon and the secessionist bugaboo in the east.

It turned out to be a bridge too far for the great colonel, or perhaps it was the old Majidun bridge that was too far. Given command of a Biafran army that was to rid the mid-West of Nigerian forces and then head for Lagos to topple the Gowon administration, the colonel began to nurse other ideas.

It was reported that an advance unit of Banjo forces actually got as far as Ikorodu. It was a fraught and dire moment for the federal government and there were rumours of hurried evacuation plans to spring the beleaguered Gowon from Dodan Barracks. But back in Benin, the colonel appeared to stall and stonewall probably due to immense logistic difficulties. There was even a farcical short-lived Republic headed by a military doctor. It would seem that after Banjo serially disobeyed his orders, Ojukwu tricked him back to Biafra where he was executed after a celebrated trial of saboteurs.

For a nation already serially traumatised, the best way to avoid further ethnic kerfuffles is to place the Banjo tragedy in a severely dispassionate sociological perspective. War is hell. Secondly, once an army loses its way in the political jungle, it will eventually turn on itself in an orgy of fratricidal bloodletting. This is the lesson the Nigerian military ought to have learnt from its years of misadventure. Apart from the nation, the greatest casualty of military rule is the military itself.

The logic of a strife-torn army unravelling at its ethnic and regional seams is strange and compelling. There is no paddy for jungle. Once Colonel Banjo accepted a military rank and the command of an army from the Biafran army, he had accepted Ojukwu as his commander-in-chief. He was bound by military ethos to accept and obey his orders to the letter.

Treason cannot cancel out treason except by superior force. Within the context of the mass hysteria of a faltering and tottering Biafra and the enduring trauma of the Igbo people at that point, it would have been impossible for Ojukwu to save his old friend from certain death. Not even friendships forged in radical comradeship often survive a poisoned polity. When Majors Adewale Ademoyega and Emmanuel Ifeajuna caught up with each other in prison, the argument about who was remiss in his role during the uprising led to memorable fisticuff which shook the entire prison.

Perhaps in an unviable federal prison, there is always a stiff price for an ethnic nationality to pay for political sophistication and a cultural incapacity to stomach tyranny and misrule. But by his radical daring, his contempt for personal suffering and his noble self-sacrifice, Colonel Victor Banjo has joined the pantheon of Yoruba avatars who have sacrificed themselves in the pursuit of a greater and better Nigeria. If political martyrdom were to be added to this list, then it becomes an endless cortege indeed.

Last Friday, the Yoruba race in Nigeria added another illustrious son to the pantheon of its military sons who have chosen self-sacrifice as a noble profession. There have been weeping and wailing ever since. But one thing should be clear. Major Akinloye Akinyemi, a.k.a Sergeant Carter, might have died physically, but his cult of heroic example will survive for many generations to come. It was the mortal remains of the late major that were interred last Friday, leaving him with the robe of immortality.

In the end, nothing could be better and more uplifting than the moving tribute and homage paid to him by three of his classmates at Government College, Ibadan, and the lengthy obituary by his military colleague and former comrade in arms, Colonel Tony Nyiam. First published in an abridged form in a national newspaper, the full devastating disclosures came later in the online Sahara Reporters.

Scion of the notable Akinyemi family, the late major was a model officer in every material particular. He was in a class and league of his own always finishing far ahead of others in terms and times of physical and mental exertion. Top honours and rave commendations at the elite Sandhurst Military Academy were followed by a First Class degree in Electrical Engineering from a prestigious British university.

There is a lot about Akinyemi that recalled the martyred Colonel Banjo. Both were extremely brilliant officers, mercurial in disposition and also first class military engineers. Even as he was pushing his lithe body to the limits of physical endurance, he was also pushing his mind to the zenith of pneumonic capacity. This mental agility and the conquest of physical pains would serve him well during subsequent ordeals.

It was not surprising that this gifted officer chose the elite paratrooper unit as his natural turf. Given his antecedents and glittering records, Akinyemi ought to have finished at least as a four-star general who could hold his own in the rarefied echelons of global military titans. But in an army imploding from its internal contradictions, the unhappy consciousness is a sure recipe for tragedy.

The unhappy and troubled major began asking unhappy and troubling questions about an army courting disaster and death by misadventure. Instead of heading for the stars, he was directed to the military dungeon where his tragic predecessors had ended up. He only escaped the firing squad by whiskers. Twice the major was arrested and detained and twice was he arraigned before military investigating boards, first during General Babangida’s tenure and later during General Abacha’s reign of terror. He lost his commission in the process.

It was perhaps Major Akinyemi’s encounter with Abacha’s murderous goons that left their indelible scars. Mentally abused and grotesquely tortured, he was also rumoured to have been injected with a poisonous substance which eventuates in fatality by slowly targeting the vital organs. If this were to be so, the major must have been an extremely tough cookie indeed.

It is just as well that “Sergeant Carter” finally found peace and solace in god as a Christian soldier and officiating pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God. The major is at ease, but the nation is still ill at ease. Perhaps it is only the dead who are probably lucky. We say this because there are several walking dead and living casualties out there crying for mercy.

As we bid a final goodbye to this illustrious son of an illustrious father, it is useful to remind ourselves of the heroic sacrifices of those who made the current dispensation possible. As the nation celebrates its fifty second anniversary, many of the demons of yore are still very much with us. Only full disclosure will lead to full closure for an unhappy nation. May the fallen major rest in perfect bliss.

September 30, 2012
Is Nigeria a toilet of a country?

Lord Apsley and I were colleagues at Harrow School in England approximately 36 years ago. I have never forgotten his uncharitable remarks about Nigeria which led to a heated arguement between us. At that time I found it ironic, and I still do, that this quintessential member of the English upper class not only had the nerve to say such things to me about my country but that he could say it with such confidence. My response to him was that if Nigeria was indeed a ‘’toilet where evil reigns’’ then it was a toilet that was created by his British forefathers who not only dumped the evil there by defecating in it but who also refused to wash their hands, to flush and to leave the toilet after they had finished. My point was simple and it was that Nigeria was as much their mess as it was ours. For a young man who had been born into wealth and power and who had been brought up to believe that ‘’Brittania’’ had civilised the world and had brought nothing but immense benefits to the natives of her colonies, he found my response most disconcerting. I have never forgotten what he said about my beloved country on that occassion. It was painful and regrettable.

Yet I look at what has happened to us in the last 52 years of our existence as an independent nation and what we have suffered in the last 98 years since the 1914 amalglamation of the northern and southern protectorates and I really do wonder. If the truth must be told, things have not gone too well for us. I was born in the same year as we gained our independence and as I ponder and reflect on the last 52 years all I see is violence, bloodshed, dashed hopes, lost opportunities and shattered dreams. I see a brutal civil war in which two million people died. I see a string of violent military coups and repressive military dictatorships and I see suspicion and division between the peoples of the north and the south. I see dangerous tensions between the numerous ethnic nationalities, continous strife and sectarian violence. I see church bombings, the slaughter of the innocents, islamic fundamentalist rebellions, battle-ready ethnic militias and bloodthirsty local war lords. I see economic degradation, decaying infrastructures, environmental disasters and untold suffering and hardship. And finally I see poverty and unemployment, poor quality leadership and a dysfunctional semi-failed state which is still struggling to find it’s true identity. If this sounds like a scene from Dante’s hell please forgive me but this is what I see.

On October 1st every year we make nostalgic and inspirational speeches about the ‘’labours of our heroes past’’, pop the champagne, pat each other on the back, go to churches and mosques to give thanks to God, dance at owambe parties and congratulate one another on our independence. Yet we refuse to sit back in deep reflection, take stock of what has really been going on in our country and carry out an honest and candid appraisal of our situation. We are not ‘’a toilet of a country where evil reigns’’ but we must admit that we are in a mess. A really terrible mess. And the question is why are we in such a mess, how did we get there, why have we not been able to get out of it in 52 years and what role did our former colonial masters play, and are still playing, in creating and sustaining that mess.That is the subject of this essay.

If we want to answer these questions we must go back to the beginning. The problem is that the British established a faulty foundation for Nigeria right from the start which they knew could not produce anything wholesome. The Nigeria that they handed over to us in 1960 was nothing but an unworkable artificial state and a “poisoned chalice”. It was destined to fail right from the outset. Worse still they handed us that poisoned chalice with a malicious and mischevous intent and without any recourse to our people in terms of any form of a national referendum. The British did the same thing in varying degrees when they left virtually each and every one of their other ‘’third world’’ colonies. The most obvious cases however were Nigeria, the Sudan, India and the nation that was formerly known as Malaya. Every single one of these four countries had monuemental problems with sustaining their unity after independence and all of them, with the exception of Nigeria, were compelled to break up into smaller entities before they could bring out the best in themselves as a people and fully exercise their human potentials. Consequently India broke up into three and became India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Sudan broke into two and became Southern Sudan and the Sudan and Malaya broke into two and became Malaysia and Singapore. Nigeria is yet to find the courage and fortitude to go that far and whether we will eventually break up or not remains to be seen.

Yet the truth is that when you force two incompatibles with completely different world views together into an unhappy marriage, lock the gates of the house, throw away the keys and bestow leadership upon a “poor husband” to rule over a ‘’rich wife’’ in perpetuity, you are looking for trouble. The bible says “if the foundation be faulty what can the righteous do?” Our foundation as a nation is faulty and the consequence of that is that everything that is built on that faulty foundation is unproductive, unsustainable and unpleasant. And until that foundation is fixed the biblical ‘’righteous’’, no matter how well intentioned, can do nothing about it. It will always be a case of one step forward and ten steps back. Some have made the point that what exists in the Nigerian space today was once a collection of confederations and that our level of integration centuries before the British came to our shores was far greater than many care to admit. This may be true but upon their arrival the British, rather than build on that and allow us to forge a united nation ourselves based on dialogue, trust and consensus, instead played up our differences, drove us further apart, set us against each other all the more and compelled us to remain in the same cage hoping that we would eventually kill each other in the process.

The result of the amalgamation was therefore predictable. It was either that the “poor husband” (the north) would fully subjugate and eventually kill the “rich wife”(the south) or the “rich wife” would fully subjugate and eventually kill the “poor husband”. And we are right in the middle of that struggle for mutual subjugation till today. In 1960 the British ensured that power was handed over to the most pliable region at the Federal level by establishing an alliance with the northern traditional institutions and political ruling elite and fixing the census figures in their favour. Consequently by 1960 we had a situation where the well-educated, enlightened, progressive and predominantly christian south was played out through intrigue, deceit and fixed census figures and instead power was given to a fatalistic and ultra-conservative muslim north who were prepared to do anything the British wanted them to do, who had already overwhelmed and supressed their own ethnic and christian minority groups and whose major preoccupation was to dominate and control the entire federation, to keep the south out of power at the centre and to “dip the koran in the Atlantic ocean”. It did not stop there.

Even after the British left in 1960 they continued to meddle in our affairs and they encouraged, sponsored and supported a string of repressive military regimes, all of which derived their power from a northern-controlled army officers corps whose retired generals, up until today, are the ones that determine who will be what in our country. That is our story. Some have argued that despite the ignoble intentions of the British we ought to have been able to sort out our own problems 52 years after they left us. This is a good point. It does however betray a tinge of naivety and a lack of appreciation of just how chronic those problems were right from the start and just how malevolent a hand the British dealt us. I say this because the bitter truth is that the system in Nigeria cannot be changed simply because the forces that have controlled our country since 1960 are deeply conservative and the foundation and the structure upon which she has been established has been designed in such a way that makes radical and fundamental change impossible. Some have compared Nigeria to a badly wounded, gangerous and dieased leg which can only be cured through restructuring or which needs to be cut off in order to save the rest of the body. The consequence of doing neither is death for the whole body. It follows that the only way real change can come is if the country is broken up into two or more independent nations or, if we insist on remaining as one, through the auspices of a peoples revolution (our very own ‘’Nigerian Spring’’,

similar to the ‘’Arab spring’’ that we witnessed in Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt last year and that we are witnessing in Syria today) which will sweep away the old order, convene a Sovereign National Conference, restructure the country drastically and devolve power from the centre. If you are looking for fundamental change in Nigeria these are the only two courses of action that can produce it.

The line up in our country is therefore clear-on the one hand you have the ordinary people, who have nothing and little hope for a brighter future, and on the other you have the ruling elite, who have everything. Those that are waiting for such a change to evolve under the present system and structure will wait forever. This is because under the present system there is no hope for a peaceful, purposeful and meaningful change because justice, equity and fairness has no place. Worse still the most courageous people with the best minds, that are prepared to speak the truth no matter how bitter that truth is and that have an element of vision are always destroyed, discredited or set aside. If anyone doubts this they should consider the fate of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Moshood Abiola. Those that have a clear vision about the way that Nigeria needs to go have no say and those that have a say have no vision. Our country is in the hands and grip of mediocres that just don’t care.

Unfortunately the Nigerian people do not seem to have the resilience or strength to effect either of the two options for true change anytime soon. They seem to have been so traumatised, demoralised and subjugated in the last 50 years that they have lost their will to resist inequity, tyranny and injustice, to insist on determining their own fate and to fight for their own future. And who can blame them because the state itself is extreemly violent and ruthless in the way and manner in which it fights and resists change and those that advocate it. Very few good leaders can emerge at the federal level in such a system because it was not designed to produce truly progressive leaders. There are a few exceptions to the rule but generally speaking the type of leaders that the Nigerian system is designed to throw up are leaders that are not minded to bring any benefit or hope to the ordinary people but rather that are there to protect the archaic system and to maintain the nebulous and dysfunctional status quo. The relevance of the British today is that they are not only the architects of this monuemental monstrosity but they are also the ones that have continued to encourage and support the ruling elite that runs and sustains it.

If they were being fair to us they would have been amongst those that have been encouraging the idea of restructuring our country, devolving power from the centre and effecting a fundamental and radical change in our attitudes and affairs. That is precisely what they are doing in the United Kingdom itself today where power is being systematically and gradually devolved from the centre at Westminster in England to the hitherto supressed and occupied regions of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This is good enough for them yet our erstwhile colonial masters have never supported a similar course of action for us. Instead they have done all they can to support those that believe that power should continue to be centralised and concentrated in Abuja, to maintain the “ancien regime” and to preserve the chronically conservative system and the status quo. The idea of a properly-led, prosperous, peaceful and truly united Nigeria has never been something that the British ever sought to establish. It is for this reason that we can blame Lord Apsley’s forefathers almost as much as we can blame ourselves for the mess that our country is in up until today. May God deliver Nigeria.

•Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Aviation.

September 30, 2012
Robbers and the tragedy of modernity

Policemen should be steps ahead of criminals, not the other way round

For their era, the Babatunde Folorunshos, the Ishola Oyenusis and the other armed robbers who made the headlines in Nigeria in the 1970s were indeed armed robbers to reckon with. But if they were to be operating today, they would not have qualified for the kind of attention that they got then, given the ‘professionalism’, expertise, precision and sophistication that today’s armed robbers bring to bear on their illegal trade, unless they retrain and retool. Today’s armed robbers have taken full advantage of modern gadgets and arms and ammunition in a way that would make those who are shaping our present world regret that their inventions are now being turned into the tragedy of modernity.

When the news of the armed robbery that shook Lagos on September 9 hit the town, many people knew from the way the robbers operated that a lot of logistics went into their operations; we also knew that it was not the kind of robbery that was hastily executed; it must have been well planned and perhaps rehearsed before the day of attack; we had every cause to suspect too that sophisticated weapons were deployed by the bandits. Indeed, this is the area that interests me most.

Confessions following the arrest of three of the suspected robbers in the Ajangbadi area of Lagos, following a tip-off, exactly two weeks after their operation confirmed that much. Indeed, the songs that they sang at the Lagos State Police Command in Ikeja after their arrest are enough to instill the fear of God in many of the people who saw what they referred to as their armoury last Monday, when they were paraded by the police. Not a few persons too would have wondered how the 23 year-olds – Uche Okeagbu, Emmanuel Ezeani and Chinonso Nwuangwu- could have been so sucked into armed robbery. Obviously, going by their confessions, ‘bad society’, as the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti called it, had a great influence on them.

It was Okeagbu’s confession that led to the recovery of a large cache of ammunition: one rocket propel grenade launcher, 225 AK 47 magazines fully-loaded, over 10,000 rounds of AK 47 live ammunition, two general purpose machine guns, 260 rounds of GPMG live ammunition, five dynamite with detonator and nine AK 47 rifles. A Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) team led by Mr. Abba Kyari, found the gang’s armoury in two Volkswagen buses parked at Okeagbu’s residence at Ajangbadi. The police also seized a Toyota Camry belonging to the gang. The car was fitted with sensors and camera. That way, the robbers could monitor whatever was going on behind them. If we recollect the kinds of arms and ammunition that the police seized in Oraifite, Anambra State recently, in the course of arresting a suspected kidnap kingpin as well as many others, we should worry about the source/s of these weapons.

Indeed, all these and more should be enough to make one wonder why, in spite of all these unsavoury developments, the government cannot see the larger picture of what should constitute national priorities. A nation besieged by these kinds of security challenges ought to be able to put its acts together to deal frontally with them. Just last week, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said some 800 companies have closed down in the country in the last three years alone. LCCI has not said anything new, though; the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and other bodies that should know had raised similar alarm in the past. The implication of this is the erasure of millions of direct jobs and many more of ancillary others. This point has come for mention in view of the fact that many of the people involved in violent crimes in recent years are youths, most of them with tertiary education but with nothing meaningful to do. And, since the state cannot provide them with something worthwhile, the devil is delighted to keep them busy. But that is at the peril of the larger society.

The Lagos State Police Command has every cause to be angry and to put in their all to fish out those who troubled the peace of Lagos ansd almost rubbished their efforts at crime prevention, because, when on September 9, the gang struck, the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, said the robbers succeeded largely because his men were sleeping. The command swiftly denied this but that would not have impressed anyone. However, with the arrest of three of the suspects, the command is probably trying to prove to the IG that it is not sleeping. And, that, really, is the next logical thing to do; it is not that there is yet any fool-proof system to stop people from armed robbery, but those going into it would think twice if they know that the chances of being caught are high.

We saw the typical robbers’ greed in this Lagos gang. Like most other robbers, this gang too comprises Oliver Twists. Even as the dust was yet to settle on the Lagos robberies, the gang went to Ilorin in Kwara State, where it allegedly robbed a bank and attacked a police station. If their confessions are anything to go by, the suspects had carried out at least four major robberies this year alone in places like Ibadan where they had four operations; Uyo; and Share, Kwara State. It is not clear when the other robberies in Akure, Ondo State, Osogbo, Osun State, Okene, Kogi State and, Auchi, Edo State, as allegedly confessed by one of them, took place. Now, if these people stole as much as N50 million as was reported in Lagos alone, how did they share the proceeds and what did they do with it that they could not resist the urge to go for another operation so soon?

No doubt if it were possible to ride a horse in the stomach of the state commissioner of police, Mr. Umar Manko, there won’t be any obstructions. This is some progress made in the battle to demystify the gang that shook the state after a long break from such incidents, but it is not yet uhuru. Neither the state, nor any other part of the country is safe until the real kingpins of the gang are held because, as we have seen, they have robbed in many parts of the country. Again, if we go by the confessions of one of the arrested suspects who said he got N500,000, N800,000 and another N800,000 and N100,000 (for the Lagos robbery where at least N50million was said to have been stolen), then who are those who got the lion’s share of the loots? We have to keep such people out of circulation if Lagosians and Nigerians as a whole are to have a truly merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Above all however, the Federal Government has to rethink its attitude towards the police. It is criminals who should be following the law enforcement agents and not the other way round. Policemen cannot be carrying glorified Dane guns and be expected to confront criminals with the most sophisticated weapons. That is akin to a man jumping in front of a moving train.

On this note, I say happy 52nd Independence anniversary in advance. If you have cause to thank the government; please do; but for me, I give glory to God Almighty. May next year’s anniversary be more rewarding (Amen).

September 30, 2012
Between the right of readers and the freedom of writers

As far as rejoinders go, yesterday’s right of reply (This Day back page) to Dele Momodu’s piece of September 22 on the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, was as unsparing as any I have read in a long time. Momodu’s original piece was equally vigorous. I enjoyed both gentlemen, even if I disagree with some of their conclusions. I have myself been at the receiving end of merciless lampoon from angry readers – from extremists masquerading as academicians and administrators at the University of Ilorin, to pro-Jonathan analysts, lobbyists and theorists, and from freelance critics in search of a cause celebre, to critics who simply love to excoriate pontificators, whatever the issue and not minding the logic.

If I know columnists well, especially considering their outsized egos, they usually don’t appreciate readers having the last word. Momodu may take the opportunity of his column to give his traducer a parting shot, and then brusquely close the debate. If he does, he will be exercising his freedom as gutsily as his critic had exercised his right. Columnists, like authors, are not unaffected by the trenchancy of their critics. It therefore takes an indomitable spirit to keep writing from day to day, and from year to year. There are critics who look out for spelling errors, grammatical blunders, and factual inaccuracies. When they hit upon one, they drive the knife in so deeply into the back of the writer he would need special remedies to recover. And there are critics who, with measured grace and logic, tear the writer’s assumptions to pieces, and delight in doing so. To them it is a blood sport.

For as long as a writer exercises his freedom to tyrannise his readers with weekly pontificates, he should expect his critics to also skewer him in venomous language. It goes with the territory. I illustrate with the case of John Keats, the 18th/19th century Romantic poet whose poem Endymion was severely criticised by a certain Mr Wilson Croker of the Quarterly Review in 1818. Here is an example from Croker: “It is not that Mr Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his sense would put his real name to such a rhapsody,) it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius – he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language….

[Mr Keats] is a copyist of Mr Hunt; but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples: his nonsense therefore is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by Mr Leigh Hunt’s insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his poetry….”

Keats died at 25, and his friends attributed his passing to the unpleasant reviews he received when Endymion was published in 1818, a line of thought also canvassed by Lord Byron. Keats of course died of tuberculosis, and not of adverse criticisms. Contemporary writers may not be as endowed as those of the classical era, but either because they are not as gifted in appreciating lampoon or because they are made of sturdier stuff, they tend to shrug off all criticisms. But why is Palladium not scalded by vitriolic reviews? Why, ask his editor who has refused to publish the rejoinders. Surely, this columnist couldn’t be expected to brood over what he does not know.

September 30, 2012