The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • It is time for a marshall plan for Northern Nigeria

    It is time for a marshall plan for Northern Nigeria

    For those who may not already be conversant with the article in focus today, which appeared on these pages on 15 September, 2024 let me begin by reproducing its introductory portion. It reads as follows:

    “Northern Nigeria situation today – economic, security, climate, name it, is analogous to  the post World War 11 situation in Europe when the U.S, “fearing  that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation occasioned by the war were aggressively reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe”, that something just had to be done. That was what finally eventuated in the much celebrated Marshall Plan. 

    If the security situation in Northern Nigeria fails to point, unambiguously, to the urgent need for something urgent to be done to rectify the situation, the horrendous consequences of the Alua Dam disaster in Borno state, should.

    Enough is now enough. Northern Nigeria urgently needs a Marshall Plan to restore it back to its glorious Sadauna days of no serial bloodletting.

    And for the sake of our country’s long-term survival, and for us to live in peace, and  avoid  attracting the attention of the international community the way countries like

    Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria – the 3 most insecure countries in the world according to the Global Peace Index (GPI 2024) do, then our restive North must be restored back to its pre-Boko-Haram and banditry days.

    This is neither intended to stigmatise the North, nor to suggest that we can easily overlook what horror terrorism and economic deprivation have spurned in the South”.

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    The article has since attracted some attention, if not in government circles or amongst Northern leaders, two groups that should, ordinarily, have been very concerned, then certainly among intellectuals, some of who see the suggestion as something outside the remit of the Federal government which I hard sort of indicated should take the lead in what I  considered an urgent desideratum.

    Before I come to their argument, however, a new, very agonising issue emerged, no thanks to a WhatsApp post which trended during the past week.

    The post, which had a narrator who is of Northern extraction, showed in Kano, a huge collection of very little girls – call them children – clustered together,  begging bowls in hand, some joking and some fighting, with no parents or elderly ones in sight, with the commentator  repeatedly drawing attention to their young ages, their huge numbers and emphasising what a future ticking bomb they represent for a Nigeria already shackled down by insecurity.

    No serious government, qua government, state or local, or leaders with any conscience, at all, should be able to turn a blind eye to this macabre phenomenon.

    The North must now necessarily turn  attention to what is nothing short of a future consuming fire.

    To the main focus of this piece then, that is: reaction to the idea of a Marshall Plan for Northern Nigeria.

    I have for company, a distinguished, highly regarded retired Ambassador, and an equally distinguished University Professor, both of whom will remain nameless, but would be quoted verbatim at some length. Both are gentlemen I routinely, send my weekly articles.

    It was Prof who  reacted first. He commented as follows: “Uncle, good evening. It’s been a while since we chatted. I guess the situation in the country is making it increasingly difficult to keep one’s sanity.

    I just read your very interesting article. Now my questions regarding the situation in the North which  is, of course, creeping down south, are these:

    Who will bell the cat? Who will take the responsibility of turning things around in Northern Nigeria?

    All these pretty talk from Elders’ forums, Governor’s forums and many other fakes, are just mere talk.

    They never seem to care. So, how do we get out of this mess?

    After I waded in with a short reply, he riposted: “We should know that banditry and attendant insecurity has become an industry. Some people benefit from it and those beneficiaries are the ones propping it up.

    Look at the video you sent to me where someone was asking for a right of way for some fulani terrorists.

    The unanswered question is – Who are those Fulani? What is their mission? On whose orders?

    President Tinubu is being frustrated all round, even by his own men. So the problem remains fluid and intractable. The hardship is not letting up and Nigerians blame him”.

    The Ambassador was direct. He wrote: Who will finance such a Marshall Plan for the North? Foreign agencies or local?  Yes, there is a need for a massive investment in human development in the North. But the challenge is not limited to lack of financial resources  but the existing social and economic structure which makes its people so poor. A Marshall Plan will have to be  complemented by a re-engineering of its social structure to make it more conducive to a rapid transition to a liberal and progressive society . But will Northern leaders, with the huge privileges they currently enjoy, support this transformation?

    I doubt it.

    To his comments, I replied.

    Thank you Sir.

    There are ‘zillions’ of billionaires and millionaires in the North, mostly the result of thefts from the poor over many decades, if not a century. If Nigerians have to blackmail them, then they will.

    Indeed, if the President gets seriously involved, as I guess he would, a percentage of Nigeria’s annual revenue, over say a period of 10 years, or thereabout, can be factored into contributing to it, by an act of Parliament. This is because  North’s failure will occasion horrendous consequences for the country, if only because our Northern border is so huge, and porous, that insecurity in Nigeria could become absolutely unimaginable.

    To this the Ambassador replied: “Are you seriously suggesting that the North should be given a special treatment, or privilege, by giving it a financial subsidy from the national revenue?”

    Personally, I saw nothing wrong in that. So I responded: “Sir, this is the way these things work. We started with NDDC, today almost every region has got a development commission. If we have to start from the North because of the insecurity which I already expatiated on, we would only first be priotising the North for such an intervention.

    Varieties of that could then be started later in other parts of the country.

    The Ambassador, a  highly principled diplomat, who served  in many grade A embassies during his checkered service to the country countered:

    “Such a plan should be a national, not a regional intervention. For far too long the North has received all kinds of privileges and preferences without any significant progress due to its rigid social structure and leadership deficit”.

    Short and sharp.

    I then replied: “Very rational argument Sir. But do all parts of Nigeria constitute the same level of risk? With utmost respect, I say not at all. And I can’t see what we would lose. In deed, we will lose much more in these parts, if Nigeria happens to unravel.

    And to this he replied: “If you think this will save Nigeria from unraveling then you support it. But I am not sure it will”.

    And as is the norm in arguments with elders in Yoruba custom, I humbly replied:

    I concur Sir.

    Concluding, in deciding one way or the other on the reasonableness, or otherwise, of a Marshall Plan which will help in enhancing security in that part of Nigeria, I think it is important to factor in the recent confession of the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, at the 2024 Distinguished Personality Lecture, which can safely be interpreted as saying that Nigeria may never have enough resources to adequately protect our extensive Northern border with the highly volatile sahelian countries through only annual budgetary provisions which are, in fact, hardly ever fully released.

    According to the COAS, “in a country with over 200 million people, it is unrealistic for security agencies totalling around two million, including an Army of just over 100,000 active personnel, without a reserve force, to secure the entire population”.

    Expatiating further, he added that “the significant gap in resources is being exploited by criminal elements and to address the issue, it is crucial to invest in expanding and strengthening security forces, ensuring they have adequate personnel and resources”.

    This, in my view, ipso facto, means that a Marshall Plan for the North, to which several entities would generously contribute, cannot be anything else but rational and  reasonable.

  • On the painful construction of hegemony

    On the painful construction of hegemony

    Retrospect and Prospects

    Contrary to speculations that the greatest bane of the current administration is the economy, politics may well be the bigger elephant in the room. Although humankind is principally Homo Economicus, he is  more fundamentally Homo Politicus.  Even in his primitive cave, his choice and mode of economic activities were determined by political calculations. Otherwise, he would have been overwhelmed by other hominids. Hegemony is the structured and ordered domination of society for an appreciable length of time. It is different from coalitions which are often brittle and unstable cohabitation of contrary and occasionally incompatible groups for purposes of political speculations. People often balk and bristle at the prospects of hegemonies but no meaningful economic strides can be taken by any society without a superintending vision of the nation.

      The three regional hegemons thrown up by Nigeria in the run up to independence are classic examples of how carefully constructed and nurtured hegemonies can make radical and revolutionary impact on pre-industrial economies in societies transiting to modernity. In the old Western Region, Awolowo had his political setbacks. He was able to exert full dominion over the turbulent and ever restive region only after his radical reforms kicked in. His party, the Action Group, was engulfed in a multi-sector war of ascendancy with many hostile forces. So also was Nnamdi Azikiwe who had to endure many intra-party insurrections before things calmed down.

      In the north after an initial skirmish with Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa particularly during the Jos Arewa convention in 1949 where the egalitarian forces were rooting for the Bauchi-born, golden-voiced teacher, Ahmadu Bello, the scion of the Fulani dominion with base in Sokoto, became the undisputed master of the entire region, leveraging on the template of regional cohesion established by his remote ancestor. For a man of his feudal background, he developed a gargantuan appetite for modernity and modernization which enabled the region to take giant strides in industrialization and education which took many people by surprise. Despite the historic blight occasioned by subsequent misrule his imprints remain till date in the region.

    Apart from the three titans at the regional levels, no other Nigerian leaders since the advent of military rule has been able to construct a political hegemony capable of fueling the nation’s rapid industrialization and democratic emancipation. Gowon had been pushed down the slope by his junior colleagues. In the Second Republic, a returning Awo was stopped in his tracks by hostile political forces despite famously informing Gbolabo Ogunsanwo that you could only return to a position you have left. This was perhaps due to political inexpediency and the extant structural misconfiguration of the nation by military adventurers and their political subalterns. But it is said that a man can make for himself a throne of bayonets, whether he will be able to sit on it is another matter entirely. All the subsequent military leaders who appeared to be on the cusp of greatness as Nigeria’s modern hegemonic rulers have had their ambition snookered in a tragedy-suffused historical drama:  Shehu Yar’Adua, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha.  Abiola, who could have made the difference, was summarily eliminated after languishing in jail for four years.

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        Obasanjo has come very close in the post-military Fourth Republic. But you cannot procure joy and happiness with the proceeds of other people’s pains and misery. His furtive attempts to elongate his tenure was checkmated by an alert senate under Ken Nnamani while his attempt to bring the south West under his suzerainty after masterminding a historic electoral heist was subsequently steamrolled by Tinubu’s electoral blitzkrieg in a titanic struggle that lasted almost a decade.  Unable to appreciate that they had become yesterday’s men, the attempt of the rump of the old selectorate to congregate recently was met by a gale of furious indignation and derision. They were dismissed as a coven of witches thoroughly drenched after being stranded in a historic downpour.

      If only they read. For a long time we have been warning them that the end of their dominion over Nigeria was at hand. Only two years ago and just before the election, we cautioned them:

    Now the chickens have come home to roost. Perhaps for the first time in the post- Independence history of the nation, we are going into an election without a substantial elite consensus. The old power blocs are in disarray. As the gyre widens, the falcon can no longer hear the ancient falconers.  You cannot keep a people down without staying down with them. For the first time, the Nigerian selectorate have their political wits completely scrambled. Despite the grandstanding, the huffing and puffing by one or two of them, it has been impossible for them to come up with a viable candidate. Their comeuppance seems to be around the corner. Fumbling and Wobbling to Conclusion (September, 2022)

      Having been influential and even instrumental in their demystification and eventual defenestration, it is quite a painful paradox that President Bola Tinubu should be encountering profound difficulties of his own in an arduous quest to emplace a durable and enduring hegemony in Nigeria’s postcolonial politics. What he has now is a dominant electoral coalition capable of winning elections but far from the coagulation of nationalistic forces capable of institutionalizing hegemonic dominion. Hegemonies are made of sterner stuff. And it is not a question of ideologies. In the history of the modern world, we have seen hegemonies put together from both the left and the right and from contrasting and occasionally countervailing forces under the charismatic leadership of a unique and unifying personality. No matter the internal tensions and differentiations the unstable human ensemble is held together by a vision of the transformation and emancipation of their nation. For communist or socialist and even militaristic countries that have constructed an enduring time-tested hegemony, such as China, Cuba, Vietnam, Egypt, Algeria and North Korea, there are also rightwing, conservative and even theocratic countries such as Singapore, South Korea, India, America, Saudi Arabia and Iran that have thrown their hat into the ring of durable hegemonies.

      Hegemonies require stern, disciplined and altruistic leaders capable of mobilizing and galvanizing the entire country or substantial sections of it in the name of a unifying national project with a buy in and elite compliance. In fractious, multi-ethnic and multi-religious colonial nations seething with polarities and mutual distrust, such is a virtual impossibility unless the circumstances throw up a unifying transcendental figure who has led the nation through some momentous events such as wars of liberation, civil wars or seminal coups in materially providential conjunctures.

    Nine years ago, many would have vowed that General Mohammadu Buhari, despite his well-known political ineptitude, sectional biases and primordial proclivities, was on the cusp of galvanizing the entire nation towards a more secure polity and a new corruption-ridden ethos. Many were those who were willing to overlook his mortal frailties in the name of a new beginning for the nation. But blessed are those who do not hope for they will never be disappointed. The old demons soon began to rear their head .Such was the dedicated and deliberate mismanagement of the ethnic and cultural diversities of the nation by the Daura-born general that on the eve of his departure after spending eight years, he was openly rooting for a candidate from his section of the country as if he was bent on bringing the house down.

      As we have noted earlier in this column, the circumstances in which the former Lagos State governor gained political ascendancy in the country could not have been more unpropitious and unpromising. The National Question could not have been more sharply and bitterly accentuated. The whole country was fiscally broke and openly bankrupt. The west was restive and economically discomfited from a prolonged and protracted siege by marauders and kidnappers. The entire north had virtually succumbed to banditry on an industrial scale as well as numerous local insurgencies. Regular bloodletting traceable to contending local factions and seething internal contradictions had turned the east into a war zone. To compound the national misfortune, disaffected nationals bent on bringing the entire country to heel unleashed a campaign of active sabotage of the economy and disinformation so vicious and unabating that one might be forgiven for thinking that the country is under occupation by a foreign power.

     Given the hostile circumstances of his acceding to power with a minority electoral majority and with a country economically on its heels, the president seems to have compounded the National Question and the quest for hegemony with unforced errors of perception and judgment of his own. We can now isolate two of these. First, while no one can fault the patriotic motivation of his herculean efforts to reroute the economy through some draconian reset, such efforts ought to have been preceded by some massive ameliorative measures that would give solace and succor to the injured and serially violated people of the country who have been put through the guillotine of state corruption through no fault of their own.

      Second, in his choice of people to work with, the president ought to have given more thought to the Lincolnian Doctrine of Departure. With malice towards none and charity to all, the noble and altruistic Abraham Lincoln, in his effort to get his compatriots behind him as America faced its most severe test, sought out his most vehement political adversaries including the remarkable William Seward to work with him. Contemporary Nigeria needs this doctrine more than the America of Lincoln’s time. In fractured multi-ethnic nations roiling in mutual hate and distrust, elite amity is compulsory to bridge the yawning chasm created by cultural polarizations. Even if the country opts for a confederal arrangement as a result of unmanageable diversities, this still requires substantial elite compliance, otherwise the country will continue to lurch from one unitary misadventure to another. But it is morning yet on creation day. Happy anniversary to the nation.

  • A Beggars’ Opera for Gani

    A Beggars’ Opera for Gani

    As the royal send off for Nigeria’s fallen legal idol reached its kingly crescendo, reports reaching snooper spoke of a glorious exit spectacle in honour of the great man somewhere on the outskirts of Ikotun Egbe. We were informed that the whole place was crackling with verbal fireworks and anti-establishment wisecracks. This was departure brilliantly enacted as opera by Nigeria’s multi-ethnic underclass. There were reports of an old man singing ancient Suberu Oni tunes in honour of Gani in the deep, guttural Ondo dialect of the great duet. With Ondo royal blood flowing deep in his own veins through his paternal grandmother, snooper could not afford to miss this show-stopper. Of course, snooper immediately fingered the old radical contrarian, Baba Lekki.

    It has been a long time we heard from the scourge of the Nigerian ruling class. Not since he was arrested for going prematurely public with the comprehensive list of notable bank debtors including former heads of state. He subsequently walked out of jail when his jailers fled upon being informed that ferocious kidnappers from old Biafra were on the way to settle accounts. The old crook promptly resumed the distribution of the subversive documents, daring anybody to stop him.

    While the Gani royal departure rites lasted, snooper was worried about official attempts to deny his real constituency a say in the farewell of their noble benefactor. State narrators, with their fulsome praises and pathetic panegyrics, have taken over what is essentially a life lived at the behest of the masses. Snooper has been furious with this risible rodomontade. Once again, the poor subaltern cannot speak; once again, the hegemonic tale has swamped the counter-hegemonic narrative.

    And so to Ikotun Egbe we headed on a drizzly September morning after a rather heavy breakfast of pounded breadfruit and partridge from Ifewara. Due to the digestive emergency, a lot of blood seemed to have been withdrawn from the brains leaving one drowsy and torpid like a sated crocodile. But Ikotun Egbe changed all that.

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     It was a huge carnival and the crazy old man was there pounding away at an ancient manual guitar with lyrics dripping with venomous wit and vitriol. He was surrounded by a posse of ruffians, ragamuffins and the casual riffraff on the margins of society. There were cut-throats and cut-purses on the loose. The whole place was crawling with beggars, cripples, the deaf, the dumb, the destitute and a thousand victims of the epidemics of state dereliction.

    There were several huge pots of aromatic pepper soup and massive primitive grills hissing and dripping with fat and curd. Snooper saw with his own eyes the celebrated beggar, Aminu Petrol, a.k.a Mayor of Carter Bridge, who runs a racket of divine extortion at the Idumota end of the old bridge. With his retinue of mendicant hangers-on and colourful harem, the blind man who was also an employer of blind labour, was as dashing and dazzling as ever.

    The blind master sidled towards Baba Lekki with his walking stick probing the air and an explosive sound of wild desire coming from his flared nostrils.

    “Baba, duallah bani nama gabadaya”, his mendicant majesty bellowed with authority.

    “Aminu, your head don kaput. Am I now your mai-suya?” the old man answered with a crooked smile as he pointed at the roiling grills.

     “Yoruba people good for Suya and kilishi”, the blind wag noted in halting English as one of his aides brought him a huge slab of meat surgically carved and dripping with much fat and oil, His royal blindness gobbled a chunk and spat it out with bitter disgust.

    “Allah, haram nama ne”, he screamed at Baba Lekki.

     “Haramu ko, kalamu ni” Baba Lekki trumpeted with malicious relish as the deflated beggar-king retreated with his retinue but not before a final round of hell raising.

    “This one, this Dan Iska, Babanbarawo ne, no be him come dey thief my money for under bridge?”, he screamed, directing his walking stick at a lame youth who sat by the old man mumbling some fiendish nonsense about authority stealing.

    “Ha Aminu, your Sigidi wan dance for heavy rain. If you are blind how come you can you see thief?”” Baba Lekki crowed.

    “Shut up, blind man dey see when area boys come steal him money. Even dumb man sef if you come step hard on him toe, he go talk”, the blind nobility noted with flourish and began to sing praises of the great Gani.             

    As soon as the old man sighted snooper, he became uncontrollable with wild excitement and started dishing out lyrics in praise of Gani in the inimitable manner of Suberu and Oni, the old Ondo juju maestros.

    A-Guinea Roger sebe o lo, akinkanju omo won L’ondo egin

    K’ato r’erin odigbo, kato r’efon o d’odan, ekun oko  awon Baseje

    Ekimogun omo alagbede, omo Lisa Alujonnu, omo Seriki Tugbogbo

    Anjonu agbejero ti fi adajo nakanakan, Jafojo, ako niwaju soja

    Ogbona bi elegun soponna, soponna o gbona elegun re l’ogbona

    It was at this point that Okon emerged from nowhere leading a crowd of mourners dressed in black suits like Nation of Islam fanatics. Snooper’s heart missed a beat. It was obvious that the mad boy had not come for any civil proceedings. His conduct was rowdy and threatening, and it was obvious that the crazy loony had been drinking local wine. Baba Lekki viewed the impudent rogue with wary bemusement.

    “Baba, abi your head no correct again? Wetin be dis yeye business? And why you dey call Gani Egin? Gani na Ganiyu. No be Egin at all. He be like if say dem police don pull your front teeth for detention”, the boy scowled.

    “Okon, you are a big fool. Egin is Ondo word”, the old man said as he burst into a deranged smile.

    “Hen na dat one you for say. All dis yeye lawyer who come dey cry as if dem like Gani, dem be useless people. If dem support am true true, Gani no fit die like that. I dey go Ondo for dem funeral and if I come see any lawyer dey cry, I go beat am well well. Dem all be yeye people. Dem be Senior Advocate of Nothing sam sam”, the mad boy exploded.

    “Okon na so we see am oo,”  the old man grunted with relish.

    “He get one of dem yeye Yoruba lawyers who dey talk say him dey wear silk since 1970. Wetin be big deal for silk? My grandfather, Okon Ekanem Okon, don dey wear silk robe for Calabar for 1940 and he no even go school,” the mad boy snorted.

    “Ah that one na Senior Advocate of Nabi”, Baba Lekki sniggered.

    “Baba wetin be nabi?” Okon demanded.

    “Nabi na Hausa word for karuwa” the old man replied.

    “Wetin be karuwa?” Okon asked in alarm.

    “ Karuwa na Hausa word for Ashewo or Agammo for ancient Yoruba”, Baba croaked.

    “Kai kai, baba, your head don pafuka patapata”, Okon exclaimed, considerably awed.

    “That is what they call satanic synonyms”, the old man noted as he reverted to perfect Queen’s English. “By the way, you hear that Nuhu Ribadu also came through NADECO Pass via Imeko?”

     “Brave man, dat one na better person”, Okon swooned.

         “Remember I told the yeye boy dat dem go turn am to Fura de Nuhu? Abi I no warn am?” Baba snorted.

         “ Baba, you no say dat dem Anthony General, him head no correct at all?” Okon raved.

    “Ah you mean Malam Ribadun?” Baba noted with a mischievous wink.

    “Baba, he is not Ribadu”, Okon protested.

    “I said Ribadun. Get that into your blockhead”, the old man suddenly snapped.

    “Baba, but him name na Andooaaka, and na Tiv man”.

    “Okon, greet the Tiv for me and greet Nnamani for me too and tell am say na Kukuruku man go finish Wuruwuru man. You have one more question”.

     “Baba, I come notice say all dem lunatic dogs come vamoose when Gani died. Mad dog sabi im owner, abi no be so?” Okon retorted.

    “Mad dog dey soup, dem don become pepper soup”, the old man replied with a sneer.

     “Baba, Make una no tell me I don dey eat 404 meat for here!!!” Okon screamed.

    “Na lokili, dat be wetin dem Ondo people call am. Now dat Gani don quench, you go see dem real mad dogs for this dem Obodo ”, Baba Lekki sneered as he dismissed Okon.

    “Baba, dis one na real parable of dem mad dogs”.

    • First published in 2010

  • SNAPSONG 233

    SNAPSONG 233

    Ode to Friendship

    Good friendship is gooder than gold
    It glows, never glitters,
    In its battle against
    The demons of darkness

    Its givers never Brutus you
    When you turn your back
    Nor crave a cunning Cassius
    To viper your virtue

    They laugh when you laugh
    They mourn when you mourn
    They are happy fellow hues
    In Life’s capacious rainbow

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    Ever so often,
    They are your kindest critics
    Who cut through your vanity
    With the cruel kindness of the surgical knife

    In times of dire need
    You can share one grain of rice
    And leave the dining table
    Contended and gratefully calm

    Good friendship is gooder than gold
    It bends and never breaks
    So malleable and glorious
    In life’s tempestuous fire

  • EFCC, Yahaya Bello and comedy of errors

    EFCC, Yahaya Bello and comedy of errors

    It is cold comfort for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that, centuries ago, Shakespeare penned an evocative farcical drama he titled The Comedy of Errors (first performed in 1594 and first published in 1623) set in what is today the Western Turkish town of Selcuk. It is not certain how the EFCC drama, at the centre of which is the bumbling former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, will end; but for Shakespeare, the drama, the shortest of his plays, ended happily, with all mistaken identities regarding long-lost siblings and their twin slaves resolved. When on Wednesday the news popped out of the blue that the fugitive Mr Bello had turned himself in at the EFCC office in Abuja and had been asked to go, it reeked of choreography and farce. How, some people wondered, could a former governor declared a fugitive from the law by the EFCC visit the anti-graft agency office on a clear day unencumbered by fog or mist and be asked to go?

    Sometime later, the EFCC would be gracious enough to sequence the news for bewildered Nigerians about what really transpired last Wednesday beyond the terse statement by the agency that Mr Bello was still a wanted man over the misappropriation and laundering of over N80bn. The former governor cannot be trusted to give an account of the event because he embellishes stories and possesses fertile imagination. Court cases instituted by both Mr Bello and the EFCC had been decided in favour of the anti-graft agency to the effect that they had the power to investigate anyone, including sitting governors clothed with immunity, and the power to arrest, detain and prosecute anyone shorn of immunity. The former governor, supposedly enforcing his fundamental human rights, had sought to derogate the powers of the EFCC to carry out its constitutional functions, but met with little success beyond delaying the exercise of those powers. Finally, perhaps sensing he had run out of options, and fearing possible embarrassing arrest, he choreographed his now controversial visit that ended in a farce, and hours later, in a security stand-off.

    Mr Bello’s media aides released photographs of their principal’s visit to the EFCC office, but all anybody saw was his walk with Kogi State governor Usman Ododo in what looked like a busy car park, and a photograph on Instagram alluding to his interaction with Michael Nzekwe, chief of staff to the Commission boss, Ola Olukoyede. Regarding whether he was told he was free to go, it is not clear yet. The interactions on the EFCC grounds were too farcical not to be a conspiracy the Commission should clear the air on soon. Shakespeare, even in his earliest years as a playwright, would be incapable of penning such dissonant and vexatious twaddle. Since it was evident Mr Bello was in Abuja on the day in question, the EFCC brushed aside all misgivings and went at him hammer and tongs, laid siege to the Kogi Governor’s Lodge in Abuja, but waited for their quarry in vain.

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    If it was true that Mr Bello was ready to turn himself in, and had indeed, according to his story, turned himself in, why would he resist arrest a few hours later, assuming the EFCC unprofessionally changed its mind? Shakespeare would be flummoxed. The former Kogi governor had spent tons of documents and arguments in self-exculpation. If he was persuaded of his innocence, and there were no grey areas in his stories, surely he would not be opposed to proving it to the EFCC officials, even if they were dimwitted investigators. After all, regardless of how many days they keep him, and notwithstanding how many years he carefully curated his image as a whiz-kid politician, the matter would still end in court, where he would have all the latitude and lawyers to establish his innocence.

    The bigger puzzle in all the EFCC/Bello drama is the involvement of Mr Ododo in the appalling farce. It is true that he is beholden to Mr Bello. It is also true that the governor’s unique personality triggers considerable genuflection before his benefactor, a fact he proved when he prostrated before a beaming Mr Bello at his inauguration as governor last January. He seems perfectly like one who would eternally be grateful for small acts of kindness. And the former governor had shown him great kindness by making him governor which he did little to merit either by dint of intellect or by demonstration of character. The question Mr Ododo has, however, refused to contemplate or answer is why his self-abnegation must involve willfully frustrating the constitution and obstructing justice. He has immunity, but he seems irrationally to be conferring by open provocation a part of his immunity on the former governor who no longer has immunity. By so doing, Mr Ododo appears to be lending the image of the entire State to the service of a poltroon, a man who feigned overweening courage as governor, and even the dashing bravado of youth, but is at bottom no match for his own posturing.

    If Mr Ododo, as a former auditor-general for local governments in Kogi State, was not involved in any financial shenanigans with his predecessor, it is time he dissociated from Mr Bello and struck a new path for himself. His repeated abnegations, not to say his open participation in his predecessor’s farcical dramas, need to come to an end. Had he not been governor, it would have been okay for him to continue groveling before anyone that catches his fancy. There is nothing in the constitution, not to talk of even his private principles and morality, should he have both, that encourages him to obstruct justice. It is tragic that Nigerian security agents are also ridiculing themselves before the world by protecting a fugitive under the guise of protecting the governor, an overlap encouraged by Mr Ododo himself. If the governor chooses not to respect the constitution, the heads of the security agents shielding Mr Bello should be directed forthwith to give him up for the law to take its course. Replicating farces in Kano, Rivers, Edo and Kogi should not become the hallmark of the Fourth Republic.

  • Tragedy unfolding in Sahel States

    Tragedy unfolding in Sahel States

    Last Tuesday’s attack on two targets in Bamako, capital city of Mali, is another reminder of how tenuous the political situation is in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger Republic. Jihadists had in the early hours of that day targeted a gendarmerie school in the Faladie district and a military zone at Bamako-Senou airport which hosts the country’s drone facility. Shooting lasted for hours in attacks claimed by the Katiba Macina of Jnim jihadist group. They claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Mali military.

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    Since September 2023, Mali has been a member of the three Alliance of Sahel States which severed their regional and security relationships with ECOWAS bloc, France and the United States, and entered into a security agreement with Russia. The new deal has not led to a reduction in attacks; instead the three countries have suffered devastating attacks. If security worsens in the Sahel, Nigeria and other West African States, including Cote D’Ivoire, could become vulnerable in the absence of regional security cooperation. Worse, the AES goals enunciated in their confederation article in July 2024, including common market, monetary union, and ultimately federalising into a single sovereign state, would be jeopardised.

    Apart from endangering the entire region, the AES may soon realise that they needed more tact and less propaganda to defy their regional bloc, overcome Islamist insurgency, and stabilise their imperiled frontiers. The easiest part was plotting coups and denigrating former alliances.

  • Nigerians mystified by economic crisis

    Nigerians mystified by economic crisis

    It is a little tiring writing on the same subject week after week. But since the economic hardship buffeting Nigeria has not abated, everyone seems condemned to either discussing it or writing about it, and doing nothing else. It won’t matter how rancorous the debates are, or what dangers lurk in street corners; as long as the pains the economic measures inflict last, the lessons history teach on how not to navigate the rapids will continue to pale into insignificance. Last week, former military head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar warned that the hardship seems to be getting out of control. He is not the only one to warn of looming danger. Since the beginning of the crisis, torrents of warnings have issued from well-meaning leaders and politicians, regardless of their limited grounding in economic analysis. Some advisers indeed proceed almost entirely from emotions, swayed by the sufferings so many people, particularly the vulnerable, are going through. Gani Adams, Odua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) leader, insists hyperbolically, for instance, that everyone will be dead before President Bola Tinubu’s reforms are over. 

    Opinions are not evenly split on the president’s economic measures. Most people think the measures are being implemented without a human face, or in modern parlance, without sufficient palliatives. A significant number of economists, however, think that the administration is too fixated on its macroeconomic measures to substantially mind both the sufferings Nigerians are enduring and the political component of the reforms. A collation of the criticisms against the administration’s economic measures and reforms indicate that reservations have been voiced about the relevance of the policies, their volume, their timing and spacing, and lack of public engagement. The president seems convinced that the fiscal and monetary measures, including the fuel subsidy removal and currency float, not to say rising tariffs at a time of low and stagnating wages, are appropriate but need a little more time to register impact. His critics beg to differ, a difference accentuated by schools resumption and rising school fees without any succour, particularly at the lower levels of the educational system. They scoff at the integrity of the measures and deride the incoherent administration of palliatives, wondering if it would not have been better to target palliatives at school fees and massive availability of cheap basic food items.

     Read Also: Humanitarian Crises: Why Nigeria needs collective response – UN Rep, Fall

    It is left to the president to step a little away from his policies to assess the complaints of the people he governs, to see whether they still have any ingenuity left in them in coping with the crises engendered by the country’s economic crisis and the measures being applied to redress decades of economic damage and stultification. He’ll probably shudder to see how unprepared they are to cope with the hard times, and how ineffective their puny coping mechanisms are. He still has more than two years of grace to positively and heavily affect the lives and welfare of the people. And he has the next few months to reexamine his policies to see whether some tinkering could still not be done to lessen the sufferings of the people without derogating the salience and effectiveness of his macroeconomic measures. What is indisputable is that Nigeria’s economy has been heavily though not irreparably damaged. But what is also unavoidable is that drastic and painful measures need to be administered. Both the damage and the panaceas will, of course, cost the country a lot of pains and sufferings. The president’s task is to find the right balance, not to exult at the courage he has brought to the task before him, nor to go so far ahead of his people that he would lose them in the thicket, but to inspire them to own the policies, brave the punishments and consequences, and together with him arrive somewhat unnerved but fairly unscathed at the right destination.

    It was crucial to explain and convince Nigerians about the hole the previous administrations had dug for the country, the pit into which their fortunes were sunk. Decades of unitary government had wreaked havoc as states and local governments abandoned the responsibility of generating revenues in preference for free money from Abuja. That fiscally irresponsible distortion was bound to unravel sooner than later. That day finally came in the closing years of the last administration. Unpopular administrations since the 1960s also instituted a panoply of placatory economic policies and benefits that created and reinforced a national sense of entitlement evidenced by cheap fuel, cheap tertiary education, and a host of freebies that encouraged huge and unsustainable birth rates. The consequence is that every Nigerian looks up to the federal government for their daily fix in foods, handouts, and remedy for every small thing that goes wrong at the local government and state levels. It is scandalous, for instance, that anyone could still argue, as Mr Adams and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), that fuel subsidy should be restored, or that the federal government should feed everyone. It is urgent that Nigerians be weaned off their dependency status. The only problem is that that objective needs to be calibrated. Weaning a child off her mother’s milk, except for a precocious child, often comes with pains and tears. Nigeria, given the manner of its founding, was not precocious; and it has acted pampered and stunted since independence. Not to lose the child, however, the administration must display a sense of judgement and foresight uncommon to the times and these climes.

    Incontestably, should President Tinubu fail to push through his measures, or the measures prove either incompetent or inadequate to redress the decades of damage done to the economy, whoever succeeds him will not restore fuel subsidy in any form or return the naira to the old exchange regime. It will not happen, not under the chimerical former vice president Atiku Abubakar nor under the utopian Peter Obi, should either of them linger in the fond imaginations of wearied Nigerians. It was thus unhelpful that former head of state Abubakar spoke to the failing resolve of the people in the face of hunger and hardship instead of speaking to their patriotism, strength and resilience. Taking the sufferings of the people as a peg for their interventions, virtually all top Nigerian politicians and leaders think the administration is headed in the wrong direction. Yet, beyond urging a cosmetic change of style, they have not said what they would do substantially differently. They agree broadly with the current administration’s policies but disagree with the manner of implementation.

    Previous interventions by this column exposed what seems to be the Achilles heel of the Tinubu administration. Firstly, it was, for obvious reasons, unwilling to paint a vivid and convincing picture of just how deeply broken the country’s treasury was, and how two or even three years would not be enough to remedy the financial disaster the country had been plunged. Secondly, it did not also get the right rhythm for its palliatives policy. The rhythm was panicky, haphazard, and in many instances even inappropriate and riddled with loopholes. Thirdly, there was no substantial executory coherence, with some ministers and agencies going off on a tangent, brandishing executive approval. Fourthly, debates consultations, and appointments might not have been far-reaching or thorough and representative enough, especially given the politically and culturally variegated nature of Nigeria. And fifthly, the administration has sometimes wilted in the face of daring challenges to the rule of law, thereby sending wrong signals as to the resolve of the government. Imagine, then, if the untested and pliant Godwin Emefiele, former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, had assumed the presidency.

    Notwithstanding these handicaps, the Tinubu administration got it right that reforming and retooling Nigeria could no longer be postponed. It had to be done to stave off total collapse, and drastically enough in order not to prolong the pain and the punishment. No matter how gingerly it acted, given the country’s precarious fiscal health, the administration was bound to be unpopular whatever it did. Every patient, given the choice, would opt for anything but surgery. But herein lies the dilemma for the Tinubu administration: it is conducting a surgery without anaesthesia. Upon recovery, the patient may even hate the surgeon. President Tinubu has dared to be different, striking a bold and new course from the fatigued ordinariness of the past. He should now take inputs from the right quarters in order to help refine and even tone his measures, seeing especially how some of his past acquaintances dismiss him as cocky and impervious to contrary views. Should he fail to turn the country around fairly quickly, virulent critics and violent protesters could create conditions that might expose the country to a referendum or, worse, fragmentation. The pains felt in the streets are real, and the sacrifices by the wearied and vulnerable heavy, but there is no unity and common purpose forged to enable the country easily endure the grueling journey ahead.

    President Tinubu has rightly and sensibly paid considerable attention to tackling the calcified economic mess he met. He now needs to spare some time to shuttle a little around the country to meet key stakeholders and powerful opinion moulders strategic to helping him rally everyone around him. He has received a few of such people at the Villa. That is good. But he should also flatter his friends and critics by visiting them. It is politics. His predecessor nearly became a recluse; he should resist the temptation to become a mystic. The job of a president is admittedly draining; but, as he has said, he asked for it. Now, let him do it with gusto and panache. If his policies are too difficult for the people to comprehend, let alone own, perhaps because they are bitter, he must find ways of coating them with some honey, and tinkering them with novel ideas. For too long, Nigeria had projected weakness and irresoluteness in the face of daunting socio-economic and political challenges, with too many Nigerians feeling entitled, birth rate going out of hand, and religious and ethnic groups sowing hatred and distrust in an increasingly irrational and volatile world. Nigeria’s survival is clearly not guaranteed. The current economic crisis must, therefore, be an opportunity to do a reset. If it is missed, there will be no other easy or controlled way to repair the damage which messianic military rulers and incompetent and visionless elected presidents had caused over the decades. It is time the president came out of his lair to mobilise the people, starting of course with a comprehensive rejig of the people around him. 

  • Edo poll and Obaseki’s hysterical politics

    Edo poll and Obaseki’s hysterical politics

     Governor Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) probably judged that the only way to retain the governorship of Edo State for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was to adopt hysteria as a political tool. The All Progressives Congress (APC) planned to rig the poll, he hollered. The police might rig the election in favour of the opposition, he exclaimed, unfazed his supporters could view every police officer with suspicion. Then he likened the election to a do-or-die affair, completely oblivious he was inciting the electorate to violence. His protégé and PDP candidate in the election, Asue Ighodalo, weighed in by suggesting that he and his party would denounce the poll should he lose, but later modified his threat to say that he would accept the poll result if the election was fair.

    In Edo’s three-horse governorship race, the other two candidates, Monday Okpebholo of the APC, and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP), were less frenzied. They noted the reluctance of Mr Obaseki to campaign against the godfather phenomenon in Edo politics, for he had himself ironically become a godfather. Then they deplored the governor’s resort to general blackmail in which the PDP campaigners hinted that President Bola Tinubu would bear ultimate responsibility should anything go wrong with the poll, with the wrong of course defined as anything that disadvantaged the PDP or caused the state’s ruling party to lose. In his campaign, Senator Okpebholo had been unsurprisingly tame, mostly limiting himself to the issues he would urgently address should he win, and refusing to rebut PDP’s sarcasms on his elocutionary difficulties. Mr Akpata, on the other hand, had generally minded his business and continued to promote his ineffective feel-good brand of politics, complete with ecstatic dancing and joie de vivre.

    Read Also: Idahosa delivers polling unit for APC with landslide

    It is uncertain whether both Sen. Okpebholo and Mr Akpata had convinced the Edo electorate about the dangers inherent in Messrs Obaseki and Ighodalo’s politics and campaign styles. If the voters repudiate the PDP, it would be because they saw through the political smokescreen spread by the PDP to mask the dictatorial tendency of Mr Obaseki and the inflexibility, not to say the messianism, of the 65-year-old Mr Ighodalo. It was not until Mr Obaseki took the reins of office for the first time in 2016 that it became clear to former governor Adams Oshiomhole he had helped install an autocrat. Eight years later, the autocrat has spawned a nest of other autocrats, chief among whom is Candidate Ighodalo. Secondly, should the PDP candidate lose, it would probably be because voters had sensed his authoritarian streak and were tired of being led by the nose by men who could do no wrong. Edo had not always voted right, having developed the tendency to embrace charlatans disguised as liberators as well as host a crossbreed of cultures that diffuse and enervate their worldview.

    But Edo is not alone in this hysteria, despite being the archetype, and regardless of the outcome of yesterday’s governorship election in the South-South state. Last year, Kano State exemplified this new kind of politics, with the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) leaders threatening fire and brimstone upon the state and the country should the courts declare APC candidate Nasiru Gawuna as victor. Between the threats and the integrity of the courts’ jurisprudence, Abba Kabir Yusuf’s election was eventually upheld. It has thus become clever to threaten the Republic in order to secure concessions, deserved or undeserved. Worse, in many states, the APC is increasingly painted as the party holding and monopolising the rigging franchise. In addition, a new kind of excess has also started to take root and even bear fruit. If it is not second-rate leadership, as Osun State dramatically shows through its inattentive governor Ademola Adeleke, it is utter contempt for the rule of law as Governor Siminalayi Fubara showed in less than a year. Former governor Rotimi Amaechi also did it in Rivers with the courts, and for eight years, Mr Obaseki replicated the malaise, starting with some Edo legislators whom he disliked.

    If the federal government does not begin to move firmly to counter the weaponisation of threats and violence as a means of securing political advantage, if the administration does not condemn and explode the threats as tools of blackmail, and if the president does not begin to speak to the disgraceful style of governors maintaining control by desecrating the rule of law, the country will be susceptible to instability, if not anarchy. Nigerian democracy should have grown beyond today’s level; instead governance has declined in many states and sprouted diverse threats to the Republic, as the completely deluded Datti Baba-Ahmed illustrated on the campaign rostrum in Edo last week. This column has maintained that except the Tinubu administration does something major and radical in the next one year or so about streamlining, institutionalising, and codifying Nigeria’s leadership recruitment process, worse leaders could emerge from the local government, state, and federal levels. The administration has a few models in the world to choose from. It should choose well, for the current leadership recruitment process, as most states indicate, is middling.

  • And there shall be music again

    And there shall be music again

    The rise of Nigeria to global cultural stardom

    To the sprawling and visually unprepossessing Tripple C events  centre on Alara Street, Yaba for the funeral reception of Femi Esho, the recently departed showbiz impresario, Highlife musician, cultural entrepreneur and walking museum of art history on a hot and sultry afternoon about a fortnight ago. With a watery apocalypse  threatening to overwhelm the entire national firmament all the way from shell-shocked Maiduguri to the Benue River corridor, and with the toxic politics of NNPC threatening to compromise national security, only a crusty curmudgeon will fail to cut the nation some slack at this perilous moment.

      It is just possible that while national attention is wholly diverted on politics and its toxicities, the nation may be making some impressive strides in other areas of development without the prodding of the state. The implications may eventually lead to a modification of the postcolonial state itself and its invasive and authoritarian proclivities. Political contradictions often resolve themselves in dramatic and unexpected ways. No individual in history has ever been known to exercise full and complete suzerainty over a people and a nation or even an empire for very long. The dispersal of power and the micro-plurality of dominion, particularly in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation ensure that.

        There is only so much a particular leader can do at a particular period.  As De Gaulle famously puts it, the graveyard is filled with the bones of indispensable men.  When Winston Churchill was quizzed as to why he remained glum and unresponsive before an excited and rapturous crowd cheering him on shortly after leading his country to victory after the Second World War, the eccentric aristocrat retorted that if it were to be that he was being led to the execution stakes, the same crowd would be cheering and applauding. Shortly thereafter, the old soldier, statesman, exemplary English patriot and Nobel laureate in literature, was booted out of office by grateful compatriots in appreciation of his pains and effort.

       This afternoon, the crowd that came to bid Femi Esho goodbye was unbelievable in its magnitude and sheer multiplicity.  Although dominated by artistic types and recuperating veterans and virtuosos of Fela’s hand to hand combat and counter-cultural sieges, they came from all walks of life. The triple-decked hall thronged with joyous humanity. These were Esho’s people and his principal constituency. The din and commotion suggested a carnival that would have been a tad threatening and unwieldy but for the fact that like Esho himself, a man of unaffected grace and kindness, the crowd radiated goodwill and positive vibes. As somebody who has been inducted to studying crowds and power for over fifty years, one can always tell which crowd would go rogue at any point.

       It was the type of sending off reserved for princes and nobilities. As a man of the people who know that fine and exalted music is never made by ordinary people but by anjonu and irunmale touched by the irrational dynamics of genius and the unsparing muse of creativity, Esho himself would have appreciated the delicate ironies. It took the guide about ten minutes to negotiate the passage clogged with revelers and well-wishers to get to the table of the chief mourner and brother in law to the late Esho, Tunde Fagbenle ably assisted by his younger brother, Dotun, a high chief of Igbajo, and his friends, Taiwo Adedoyin, the veteran journalist  and scion of Egba nobility and Akin Fatunke, the notable publicist. Gbenga Omotoso, the well-respected  Commissioner of Information and Strategy, Lagos State, later joined.  Although older by about a year, Femi Esho, an infinitely polite and quintessential gentleman, always called his brother in law “uncle” and treated him with utmost respect and deference.

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       It was just as well.  Fagbenle, an inveterate hell-raiser and rebel against social conventions, does not take hostages or prisoners of war. Journalist, irrepressible columnist and ancient publisher of the rested London-based , Nigeria Home News, Fagbenle is a social gadfly and witty conversationalist not to be crossed lightly.  His eyes welled up with mirth and mischief as he sighted his old sparring partner. But while responding adequately to his acerbic jabs, one’s mind had strayed to more important matters. It was almost twenty two years earlier on December 4, 2002 that one had journeyed all the way from his Georgia base for the formal presentation of our last novel, Bulletin from the Land of Living Ghosts. The selfsame Tunde Fagbenle was the organizer and brain behind the launch.

       Ably chaired by Aremo Olusegun Osoba, the then Executive Governor of Ogun State through the instrumentality of a mutual friend , Niyi Omoruyi Alonge, the well-attended event was graced by the old titanic trio of Pa Abraham Adesanya, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Sir Olaniwun Ajayi. So was our old teacher at Ife, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo. Dele Alake stood in for his boss, the then governor of Lagos State, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu. Governor Bisi Akande was represented by Ayo Afolabi. It was so to say the last snapshot of a mighty but gradually disappearing river. Although at that point in time, there were already some rumblings in the House of Oduduwa, they were kept under the lid by the authority and undisputed legitimacy of the heroic triumvirate.

        As tested warriors and bare-knuckle political gladiators, they had emerged from the struggle against military autocracy as authentic heroes and saviours of their people against feudal tyranny. Their mind was concentrated rightly and justly on the struggle of the moment which was the protection of Yoruba collective interest in a unitarist federation rigged against rationality. But even at that point in time, events were conspiring to dispossess them of their Yoruba stronghold. In retaliation for their humiliating him in the previous election, Obasanjo had already detonated a twin-bomb under them and was merely waiting for the rubble to clear. Tinubu at that point in time appeared to have discovered their political naivety and vulnerabilities and was no longer willing to put up with their meddlesome supervisory role. Osoba was quietly cocking a snook at them in a cloak and dagger confrontation reminiscent of ancient palace intrigues. Bisi Akande never forgave them for hounding his beloved patron, mentor and benefactor to death.

      In the event, and with sober retrospection, the book launch turned out to be the high noon of authority and prestige of the great Yoruba leaders. As it so often happens in history, the moment of consecration is also the moment of desecration and desacralization.  Afenifere and its political launch pad, the AD or Alliance for Democracy, became irrevocably and irretrievably fractured. While the AD appears to have expired quietly after several mishaps and misalliances, Afenifere has continued to weather the storm of adversity in a diminished and attenuated form with its identity and ownership bitterly contested and often misappropriated.

       That afternoon and in a development laced with great ironies, one’s attention, despite the political theatre unfolding among the Yoruba grandees and political luminaries, was completely riveted on a lone musician at the corner of the hall dishing out memorable highlife music from a glorious and forgotten era. It was the unforgettable Alaba Pedro who soon thereafter was to join his ancestors without aplomb and fanfare. It was as if one was in eager communion with the inner essence of the Yoruba people: great music, great dancing , high drama and lyrical grandiloquence amidst outstanding culinary feats. The title one had given to a write up to commemorate the book launch was quite revealing: And There Shall be Music Again. In the essay, one had lamented the dearth of music in the country, the disappearance of secondary school musical prodigies and their groups such as Ofege, Sound Incorporation from Government College, Ibadan led by the silken and telegenically appealing Dave Yomi Adeola and the wonderful Loyola College boys with our childhood friend, Israel Babayomi Taiwo, now a medical doctor, strumming away on the lead guitar like an enraptured votary. Every secondary school student could boast of a note book filled with songs and their enchanting lyrics with the pictures of the various artistes pasted in the top corner. We had concluded the essay with the rousing prediction that at some point in the future, music would be back in the country.

        There is a difference between callow predictions about the future and the real thing. Twenty two years after, music is back in the country and in a more exponential manner. While politics continues to disgrace the nation, music continues to grace it. A new generation of Nigerian musicians has exploded on the global scene. Everywhere in the metropolitan capitals of the world, Nigerian music and cuisine are on the menu, so are Nigerian actors, dramatists, sartorial stylists and other cultural entrepreneurs. In every part of the modern world, there is a small corner which is forever Nigeria.

      The earnings and revenues accruing from these lofty ventures are humongous and incredible to say the least, given the virtual evisceration of the naira and they can be directly impactful and consequential for the nation. The state has no influence in these matters and they can actually be directed against it with baleful consequences as David Adeleke, aka Davido, has proved in his native Osun State and may yet prove in his mother state of Edo.

      Just as one was about to depart the scene after the memorable farewell to Esho, a young man who had been sitting quietly and soberly a few seats away was thrust upon one for recognition. He was the son of Tunde Thomas, aka, Tunde Nightingale, the late urbane crooner and gentleman of owanbe juju music. He was also a budding musician. Before him, Bayode, the son of Victor Olaiya, had also stormed the stage in a memorable rendition of one of his father’s old classics. The late Esho has also contributed a footballer and a musician to the global scene. Nigeria’s musical sun has risen and the sons and daughters also rise. Let us give honour and praise when it is due.

  • Tales from the land of the returnable

    Tales from the land of the returnable

    Walter Benjamin surely got this one right. According to the famous Jewish-German philosopher who chose to commit suicide at the French-Spanish border rather than being returned to Germany under Hitler, there is no record of civilization which is not at the same time a record of barbarity.  Benjamin was referring to the horrors western societies unleash on weaker people and weaker nations in the name of civilization.  But the imagery can be extended to what other people also do to themselves in the name of afflicted leadership. One can only conclude that while civilization proceeds by awkward leaps in a particular society, it is also met by stark retrogression in the same society.

    The horror stories from the catastrophe in Maiduguri are truly gut-wrenching. No one born of humans would fail to be moved to tears by the images of humanity returning to primeval existence. Just as it happened with the high-tech evisceration by mining explosives of a highbrow section of Ibadan a little while ago, our metropolitan tormentors would be laughing at us. See the people who said they can rule themselves. Let us watch and see how well they do it.

      As a watery apocalypse threatens the very foundation of the greatest conglomeration of Black souls that the world has seen so far, there have been all kinds of strange occurrences reminiscent of the Biblical end of times.  Apart from the sinisterly familiar washed-up characters on the political front, some of them parading horribly distended stomachs arising from historic overindulgence, the depths of the ocean have washed up many strange and outlandish creatures never seen before in these climes.  One of these prehistoric monsters, a genetic mishap for sure, is a hydra-headed and hydra-handed monstrosity eating from all corners of the multiple mouths all at once and letting off a fearsome yell out of incontinence and fear at the same time. Sighted once at Amugangan Bay, it is known to have demanded the heads of all former Humanitarian ministers for snack.

       But of all these oceanic pabambari, the greatest threat came from the king or queen of them all, Iyenibu, the goddess of the deep seas. Encamped near the Ejinrin deep sea harbour, it has threatened to crash or roll over the city if it was not immediately palliated or placated with two hundred and twenty million bags of palliative rice stolen from the people by callous government officials together with allied relief materials donated by international organizations filched from known and unknown warehouses. They were to be deposited like sandbags along the waterways leading to the former capital.

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      In fairness to them, government has responded heroically, declaring an eleven state flood alert. That is almost a third of the thirty six states in this messed up Mecca of the Black person. Inter-faith services are being held all over the beleaguered nation.  Ancient rituals of salvation from the dawn of civilization are being resuscitated. The scent from aromatic herbs and perfumed essences from the time of yore and yonder permeated the ozone layer.  A controversial pastor, very well celebrated for his apocalyptic grandstanding, has returned to the secular rostrum, waving a talismanic wand which he claimed was the answer to the nation’s predicament which was sent to him by his misbegotten father. Cottoning on the misery of the nation as usual, some human rights concerns notorious for their outlandish scams have sent a joint memo to the government on how to avert an impending meltdown affixed with a tidy bill of ten billions. It doesn’t get more concerning.

        Wearing a scholarly frown and asking Okon to serve as his bodyguard, Baba Lekki, the no-nonsense contrarian, confronted a crowd of distraught humanity near the Makoko beach with the sea rumbling with intent in the background.

      “Yeye people, I think you talk say water no get enemy. How come you dey fear water like this?” the old crook jeered at the crowd.

       “Alagba, is this time to be saying all this?” one irate man screamed at him.

        “Ha, no vex. Some countries don begin to make rain at will, but here rain come dey unmake us at will”, the crazy old man continued his baiting.

       “ Baba, na because rainmaker don kaput and dem gobment no sabi nothing”, one man rued.

        “You see, is that not what I been dey say? I don spend ninety years among wonranwonran people. Make dem no return me here oo, I warn”, the old man sneered and vanished.

     But one thing is certain in this wonderful clime. Obeying only their own time and schedule, the storms and floods will recede in no time, leaving the dying to bury the dead and this horrific ritual of cataclysmic destruction will be repeated over and over again until the battle between modernity and primitive existence is won in all their economic, political and spiritual ramifications. Those who have perished in the traumatic transition might have won their own battle.