The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • The Hajj experience

    The Hajj experience

    Today is Eid-el-Kabir day. So, let me start by wishing all Muslims Eid Mubarak! Eid-el-Kabir is a key aspect of Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, which is the fifth pillar of Islam. Eid-el-Kabir is also called Eid-al-Adha and Greater Bairam, but the name that I find most graphic is the Yoruba one, “Iléyá” (‘Let’s go back home.’). It captures Prophet Ibrahim’s directive to his son Ismail to stand up for the merciful journey back home, after the divine reward for their faithfulness. The Islamic account is that Prophet Ibrahim prayed fervently to Allah to bless him with a child, and Allah answered his prayers by giving him Ismail. Years later, he had a dream in which he was commanded to sacrifice the child to Allah. He told his son about this grim test of faith. According to Chapter 37, Verse 102 of the Qur’an, Ismail responded: “O, my dear father! Do as you are commanded by God. You shall find me, if God so wills, one of the patient.”

    Ibrahim then took Ismail to the place at which the command was to be obeyed, and Ismail lay down submissively, awaiting his end. Seeing their unshaking faith, just before Ibrahim could slaughter Ismail, Allah replaced the son with a ram. The concept of Iléyá therefore encompasses the instruction to Ismail to stand up for the journey back home due to the happy turn of events, and the feasting which follows is in appreciation of the mercy of Allah. The slaughtering of rams during the festival is also in remembrance and appreciation of the fact that, but for the divine favour, Muslims would have been slaughtering their firstborns in worship of Allah.

    Eid-el-Kabir starts from the 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah, the 12th and last month of the Islamic calendar, which corresponds to today, 16th June, 2024. The festival comes up on the day after the congregation of pilgrims on the plains of Arafah, re-enacting, in a sense, the day of judgement, especially with all pilgrims on Hajj in white, supplicating fervently for Allah’s mercy in all aspects of their life. As a scholar on TikTok @tawbahreminders puts it, “On the day of Arafah. Are you looking for a job? That is the day. Are you having health issues? That is the day. Are you having problems at home? That is the day to beg Allah. Are you looking to have a child …? That is the day. You’re having in-laws issues? That is the day. You’re having a lot of debt? That is the day. … The Prophet of Allah [Peace be upon him] said: ‘The best of dua is the dua done on the day of Arafah.”   

    At late afternoon on this day, pilgrims begin to move towards Musdalifah where they sleep for the night, before heading back to Mina and Kaaba to perform the remaining rites of the pilgrimage. And it was here at Musdalifah that I had my first major culture shock, when I performed Hajj in 2009. I did not know that we would have to sleep in the open and on rough ground; and it was not even as if the sleeping space was ample. I had to squeeze myself between those who were already sleeping and didn’t have enough room to fully stretch my legs. Amazingly, I slept soundly.

    The performance of Hajj is multiply significant. First, it constitutes responding to Allah’s call as found in Chapter 22, Verse 27 of the Qur’an which says: “And proclaim to the people the Hajj [pilgrimage]; they will come to you on foot and on every lean camel; they will come from every distant pass.” Second, wearing only two pieces of simple, seamless white clothes, known as ihram, by male pilgrims, symbolises humility, divestment from vanity, and equality before Allah. Third, tawaf – circling the Kaaba, the black cube-shaped structure in the middle of the Grand Mosque in Mecca seven times – appreciates the building of that structure for the worship of Allah by Ibrahim and his son Ismail. The circumambulation is an exercise requiring physical strength and mental acuity.

    Fourth, walking and briefly running between the hills of Safa and Marwa commemorate the inimitable motherly care by Hajar, the mother of Ismail, and her unflinching hope in the mercy of Allah by going through immense pain in search of water, back and forth, for her thirsty child, in a terrain in which ordinarily the hope of finding it was slim. As her reward, the well of zamzam was revealed to her. The message here is that even when you seem to be overwhelmed by problems, don’t give up, keep trudging, and believe that Allah’s grace will come.  Fifth, staying in tents in Mina symbolises humility, and the ritual throwing of small stones at a concrete wall signifies the conscious desire to distance oneself from evil. Sixth, converging on the plains of Arafah symbolises the consciousness of death and faith in the mercy and benevolence of Allah. Seventh, sleeping without accustomed comfort in Musdalifah represents humility, shedding vanity and sacrificing physically for the sake of Allah.

    In addition to being a religious, spiritual, and social event where you strengthen old relationships and establish new ones, Hajj has a tourist dimension. We visited the site of the Battle of Uhud, at which the enemies of Islam fought to annihilate the young religion and at which the Prophet and his companions suffered significant casualties, but prevented the fall of Medina or the capture of the Prophet. We also visited the graves of Prophet Muhammad and his companions in acknowledgement of their efforts in the preservation of the faith at great cost.

    Hajj also shows the example of leadership that is forward-looking and constantly thinking of infrastructural and logistical renewal. In 2010, modern train services were introduced to ferry pilgrims from the Kaaba to Arafah and back. This year, the construction of high-rise buildings has commenced to replace the tents in which pilgrims stay in Mina with comfortable modern accommodation. Moreover, an 11 June, 2024 report by GulfNews.com states: “Some 251 large electric vehicles are set for operation during the current Islamic Hajj pilgrimage season in Saudi Arabia to help the elderly and physically challenged worshippers perform the ritual circumambulation of the Holy Kaaba … [T]he round-the-clock service will also assist the pilgrims in easily performing the ritual S’ai between the hills of Safa and Marwa.” 

    In those days, some pilgrims used to walk to and back from Hajj and it could take very many months. It is believed that a significant part of the blacks in Sudan were those sub-Saharan Africans who made the journey on foot, but could not return home or were attracted enough by Sudan to stay back in the country. As children, oblivious of all the physical strains, stress and rigour involved in performing Hajj, we used to look forward to gifts of dried or fried Mecca meat (ram or camel), Mecca fruit (dabinu or dates), Mecca (i.e., zamzam) water and small camera-like toys from which pictures of different aspects of Hajj could be seen.

    Many popular Yoruba musicians have documented their pilgrimage to Mecca in their music in remarkable detail. Examples are Haruna Isola, Ayinla Omowura and Sikiru Ayinde Barrister. The sacredness with which Hajj was held in those days was shown in Sikiru Ayinde Barrister’s narration of his unpalatable experience when it was rumoured that, after having performed Hajj and returned home, he was seen following a masquerade. In the passionate account in his 1975 music album Volume 6, titled “Ori mi ewo ni n se”, the police arrested him on account of the rumour, and he was released only after police investigations revealed that the allegation was false.

    The essence of this story is that, in those days, confusionist conduct was not tolerated. You were to choose either to be an Egungun worshipper or a Muslim. Once you had freely made your choice, you were to stick with it, and avoid any ambivalence that could engender mischief.  This principle is represented in the Yoruba proverb, “Tí o bá maa jé òsákálá, kí o jé òsákálá; tí o bá maa jé òsokolo kí o jé òsokolo; òsàkàlànsokolo ni ò ye omo ènìyàn.” (‘If you want to be òsákálá, clearly be òsákálá; if you want to be òsokolo, clearly be òsokolo; it’s being òsákálá and òsokolo at the same time that’s unbefitting of an honest person.’) That is, if you want to be known for one thing, keep to that rather than mischievously swapping or mixing identities.

    Read Also: Hajj 2024: 2,958 FCT pilgrims proceeds to Mina

    The very high level of social control which made Ayinde Barrister’s arrest possible is reminiscent of legendary Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew’s 1986 account of how Singapore became a prosperous country through stern discipline. In the speech placed on YouTube on 15 September, 2023, he said: “I am accused often of interfering in the private lives of citizens. … I believe as Singaporeans become more Westernised in their values and attitudes, they believe they got to have all the rights and privileges. I said, right. This is a new phase: give them the option; you decide; you make up your mind. You exercise the choice, you pay the price. And I say without the slightest remorse that … we would not have made the economic progress if we had not intervened on very personal matters: who your neighbour is; how you live; the noise you make; how you spit or where you spit; or what language you use. Had we not done that and done it effectively, we would not be here today.”      

    Interestingly, Hajj rites manifest significant gender-equity. The Kaaba was built by Ibrahim and his son for the worship of Allah, and pilgrims circumambulate it as part of Hajj rites. Ibrahim and Ismail also demonstrated unparalleled faithfulness to Allah, and this is celebrated in Eid-el- Kabir. Correspondingly, Hajar’s compassionate physical exertion for the sake of her child and her uncommon hope in the benevolence of Allah is celebrated in the movement between Safa and Marwa. 

    It is believed that when a person performs the pilgrimage properly, they would be as sinless and pure as when they were born. It is accordingly believed that within forty days of a pilgrim’s return home, the prayers they say for others would be especially efficacious.

    As Nigerians celebrate Eid-el-Kabir today, our leaders should, like Ibrahim, obey the dictates of good governance; and the followers should, like Ismail, repose confidence in and collaborate with the leadership in their efforts to create a more livable society. And even as the nation’s problems appear to be intractable, we all should, like Hajar, keep hope alive and take to heart the injunction of Chapter 39, Verse 53 of the Qur’an: “Despair not of the mercy of Allah.”

  • It is good that states have countersued on local government autonomy

    It is good that states have countersued on local government autonomy

    Funny enough,  some people, including some APC members, are clamouring for local government autonomy which will take Nigeria back many decades from what a true federation is. There is no federal system in the world where you have three federal units. In the U.S where we copied democracy from, their counties don’t go to  Washington  to collect money directly.

    Each state must have the power to design the kind of local government system it wants. That is what is called true federalism”. –Governor Charles Soludo at Platform Nigeria 24, a programme by a Lagos-based church, Covenant Nation,to mark the 2024 Democracy Day.

    I haven’t the slightest shame confessing that Democracy Day 24 was the first time I completely sat through any of Platform Nigeria’s events.

    And was it worth it?

    Absolutely.

    Of the many weighty issues discussed at the event, this article  will touch only on  Local Government Autonomy over which a fresh debate recently ensued when very surprisingly, the Federal Government   headed to the Supreme Court, asking that the apex court give the totally anti – federalist conjecture its legal backing.

    Uncle Bola Ige, of blessed memory, would, as a lawyer and politician,  be most distraught, and disappointed, by the action of the otherwise cerebral Attorney – General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, on account of this professional misstep. 

    This is not a guess because I  know that I am standing on solid ground when I make that claim. In confirmation, please permit me to press the inimitable  Cicero into service, albeit posthumously.

    Welcome then to my article of  28 July, 2017 titled:

    Constitutional Amendment:An Absolutely Self-Serving National Assembly.

    It reads as follows:

    “Any action, whether legislative or executive in this country today that is not programmed to respond to the yearnings of the populace will amount to an excise in futility”. – Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo

    Should the National Assembly ever have its way with these convoluted constitutional amendments, Nigeria will be guaranteed to make no headway, whatever, this entire century.  Nor would the members be bothered whatever happens to the country. They showed this total disdain for the country’s well-being when they shut out devolution of powers to states which a rational National Assembly should have realised is the most assured way to stem the fissiparous tendencies mushrooming all over the country, and tearing at the very heart of the nation.  Equally, were they perspicacious enough, they should have known that it was disingenuous of them to situate  their approval of Local Government autonomy on the laughable excuse of fighting  state executive- induced corruption  because, were that to be true, then there would have been  no justification for having a national assembly which has turned oversight functions to an avenue for corruption, harassing and intimidating heads of federal agencies in order to have their way.

    Rather than appreciate that only a truly Peoples’ constitution can turn Nigeria back from its present perilous road to Golgotha, they are more interested in having immunity, becoming members of the Council of State and subordinating even the  president to themselves in constitutional matters. Are they so remiss they don’t know that federating units are only limited  to federal and state?  From where, therefore, did they manufacture autonomy for local governments? If INEC continually bungles     national elections, how reasonable is it to now have inflicted on it the additional burden of conducting Local Government elections? Or in which part of the civilised  world is this the norm?

    If the intention is to stop state governors from tampering with local government funds, who will, in turn,  protect Nigerians from these  legislators whose humongous allowances owe nothing to the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission? Nigerians have not forgotten how Speaker Dimeji Bankole and the House leadership, rather than the RMAFC,   self- awarded to themselves the outrageous allowances to which their senate counterparts not only acquiesced, but went on to borrow to pay even when it was not appropriated in that year’s  budget.

    It is apposite here to invite Uncle Bola Ige, unarguably one of Nigeria’s most knowledgeable politicians of any era,  to put these legislators through a learning curve.

    Writing in his column in the Tribune of 27 April, 1996 he asserted as follows, just as Charles Soludo would incisively postulate at Platform Nigeria 24 on Wednesday, 12 June, 2024 that:”In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local government. Nigeria is the only federation in the entire world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilized countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government”.

    He wrote further: “Unfortunately, the Murtala-Obasanjo federal military government began the nonsense that has remained with us ever since when it set  up the  Ibrahim Dasuki  commission whose recommendation is the worst disaster to happen to local government system in Nigeria because it was there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced”.

    Of course, the ever perspicacious legal guru naturally suspected a hidden agenda, which he said, was to “strengthen the administrative stranglehold of the North over  the whole of Nigeria”.

    Without a doubt, that same Northern agenda is in play in this Local Government autonomy affair. It is, in fact, as I will show below, now more urgent than ever  before, in this era of  grazing land seeking, murderous Fulani herdsmen.

    I shall now proceed to a write up, which I did not author, but shared on my Face book wall during the past week.

    Titled: Local Government Autonomy, Abrogation of  State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) and Why the  Federal Government Must Reliquish Responsibility for Creation of Local Government Councils, the author wrote:

    “We are all aware of the efforts to make Local Governments autonomous. We are told it is to curb ‘corruption and ensure development at the grassroots” because state governors do not allow their funds to reach them thereby stagnating growth at that level. There is equally a strong move to abrogate State Independent Electoral Commissions [SIEC].

    Let us now analyse the hidden objectives of this sweet smelling idea, to see if  it is the way to go in a federation.

    Firstly the Federal Government creates Local Governments a preponderance of which has gone to the North. Secondly to be deemed an indigene of a state, one’s Local Government must formally confirm your status.  Thirdly the State Independent Electoral Commission is responsible for Local Government elections. To contest an election, your status as an indigene must be confirmed by your Local Government.

    Impact of  Local Government Autonomy:

    Immediately it becomes law, Federalism, as we know it, ceases to exist and Nigeria, in effect,  becomes a unitary state with 774 Local Governments and 36 State Governments. We will  then have 36

    governors and 774 Local Government Chairmen, all running to Abuja to collect  money, thus rendering state governors irrelevant in  states which they were elected to govern.

    Since the Federal Government   creates  Local Governments, let us assume it decides to create Local Governments in Lagos state.

    If Hausas in Obalende or Agege are inspired, by federal forces, to begin an agitation for whatever reason, or Agege is broken into two Local Governments, and the Federal INEC now conducts LG elections, Hausas  are guaranteed to get a distinct local government in Agege where they are an obvious minority.

    1.That will be a first step for Hausas in Agege, or Igbos in Festac, to become ‘Indigenes’ of Lagos state, and so can, effortlessly,  contest the state’s governorship election.

    Meanwhile, that will never happen in Kano or Enugu.

    2. Before we know it, a bye-law can be passed whereby the new Local Government becomes sharia compliant in an LG area where Muslims are in the minority.

    3. They can then legislate to have an Emir or Eze as the LG’s number one traditional authority; all in another man’s land.

    4. They will now be able to receive funds directly to fund their activities, qua activities, in other peoples’ states.

    5. The Local Governments could then become Abuja’s staging post for their next moves, whatever these are, in states belonging to other people.

    6. This cannot  happen in the north where they will be chased away, at best, or in the East where, as a stranger, you cannot now buy a plot of land. Some Igbos are even refusing a Pope – appointed Igbo bishop, for not coming from their own state.

    The most dangerous scenario, however, will be where the Federal Government desires to pursue an objective which the State government objects to, either for religious or cultural reasons, or on  principles of federalism, but which the Federal Government, relying on such Local Government chairmen in the state will get done, regardless, since he who pays the piper dictates the tune.

    Read Also: Attorney general and local government autonomy

    Some citizens would thus have lost the ability to protect their traditional institutions,  especially land, even religious affinity in their own state.

    The consequences are better imagined, especially in Southern Nigeria, as dipping the Koran in the Atlantic ocean, as long prophesied by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto, may no longer be a mirage, only delayed.

    Concluding, if the urge for autonomy for Local Governments  was the mindset of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, I cannot, in my wildest imagination, fathom its attraction for the Tinubu government unless we are being told that they know, in advance, the mindset of all future Nigerian presidents.

  • Land (IV)

    Land (IV)

    The first, but by no means the most egregious crime against humanity committed in the Mississippi delta in the name of cotton was the callous displacement of hundred of thousands of indigenous people from their homelands. This was done by Europeans who believed in what they regarded as their manifest destiny. This is wrapped up in their warped belief that they had a right to all the natural resources on earth, to exploit or develop them in any way they saw fit even if it was at the expense of other non-white human beings who could expect no more than grudging tolerance from their self-appointed masters. As far as they were concerned, it was part of the execution of their manifest destiny to uproot the indigenous people domiciled within the swathe of pristine land which they had allocated to cotton and replace them with hapless black men, women and children who had nothing but a lifetime of brutal labour to contribute to the creation of wealth and creature comfort for their white overlords.

    Cotton or King Cotton as it came to be known in the antebellum states of Southern USA created a hell on earth for the slaves who were brought in to plant, hoe, harvest and bale the raw cotton they had coaxed out of the rich soil of land dedicated to cotton for export. It was brutal, back breaking work from which only death provided a release, mercifully within only a few years and for many of those slaves, not more than two or three. To be ‘sold down the river’ as the saying was in those days was to be condemned to death; death by a thousand indignities perpetrated on millions of absolutely hopeless human beings. Those of them who against all the odds ranged against the enterprise, attempted to flee from their wretched environment were mercilessly hunted down and when apprehended were subjected to extremely savage punishment, to discourage them from any future temptation to steal away and as a deterrent to others who may be harbouring similar temptation in their tortured breast. There was absolutely no consideration for their humanity as they were only rated as being marginally humanly better endowed than the mules with which they worked side by side on the cotton fields. As a compromise, slaves were actually described being only three fifths of a man and recognised as such in the American independence Constitution.

    At first, all the labour associated with cotton production was manual. At the turn of the nineteenth century however, a machine,  the cotton gin was invented and this was the event that took experience on the cotton fields beyond the pits of hell as it multiplied both the discomfiture of the slaves as well as the wealth which accrued to their masters. If cotton was king before, it was now God. When those masters looked at their slaves, they saw nothing but gold coins and worked them even harder. And it was cheaper to go out to replace an overworked and underfed slave who has died in harness than to treat them humanely to prolong their miserable lives. Before the gin was invented, the seeds which were embedded in the cotton bolls had to be manually removed one by one, a maddeningly slow and laborious process which reduced the amount of cotton that could be produced within a given time. With the arrival of the gin, all impediments to cotton production were off and slave owners were transported to a financial heaven. But, there are no roses without thorns and a storm with enough power to blow the ship of cotton right out of the water was, unknown to the slave owners, already brewing. It took a couple of decades to gather strength but when it became fully loaded wreaked a great deal of havoc to a system which many were willing to defend with their lives.

    Read Also: Owners of licenced units of land mined by illegal miners ‘ll lose titles – Alake

    Another crop worthy of mention with regard to slavery was an Old World crop which crossed the Atlantic directly from Africa. A close look at the map of the world will show that a very long time ago Africa was joined to America and there was a continuity between the Sene-gambian region in West Africa and parts of South East United States. The geography of those regions continued on as if there was never a break between them, so conditions on both sides of the ocean were identical to all intents and purposes. On the African side, rice is grown and has been grown over centuries and so, the slaves brought over from the rice growing region simply continued with what they and their ancestors were used to and introduced rice growing practices to America. The transfer was so successful that rice was adopted as a commercial crop and slave plantations devoted to growing rice were soon set up and running. Many parts of the land were however so unhealthy because of their swampy nature that most of the slave owners were absentee landlords who nevertheless, had devised ways and means of supervising their unpaid labourers remotely. This situation led to two consequences. The heavy workload coupled with the unhealthy conditions of the environment led to even greater casualties among the slaves than was usual in other places. And their isolation also meant that many of the social characteristics they brought with them to America were retained. When Joseph Momoh the then president of Sierra Leone visited the USA some thirty years ago, he was welcomed to parts of the American South where Geeche culture which Momoh recognised as being identical with his own Gullah culture back home in Sierra Leone had been kept alive by the descendants of those slaves that had been purposely imported to sustain the rice growing economy of parts of Southern United States.

    Up above the Mason – Dixon line to the north, the Industrial Revolution had arrived and as was the case with sugar, it was soon apparent that industrial capitalist production was the antithesis of slavery and there was no way that the two systems could coexist. In the North, the agrarian culture which had sustained the region for more than two centuries was being replaced by an industrial culture and was attracting immigrants from all over Europe. These immigrants were replacing the slaves who had toiled without any reward on farms belonging to everyone including grandees like George Washington, the acclaimed father of the country as well as Thomas Jefferson, the man responsible for drafting the Construction of the United States. He not only owned slaves but fathered some, those children that he had with Sally Hemming, cousin and slave to his wife. Those children were both his children and his slaves who were only liberated as a result of an agreement between him and Sally before she consented to sharing his bed at the age of only fourteen years. Apart from other considerations, the man was also a paedophile. The stories of Washington  and Jefferson shows how utterly pervasive slavery was in the English colonies of North America since slaves were first landed on American shores in 1619. Any sizeable wealth created in North America over nearly three hundred years owed its origins to the unpaid labour of Africans for whom every inch of land in America was a bitter curse and that famous injunction to buy land even today hardly includes the descendants of those millions of captive Africans for whom that country, so called the land of the brave remains a hill of trials and tribulations.

    Machines came along to free the slaves in the tyranny of the land but down south, King Cotton continued to chain Africans to the soil which they could not lay the claim of ownership to. For them the more the land available, the greater the misery they had to live with and the people in the northern states whose prosperity was threatened by the continuation of slavery became increasingly determined to rid their country of this multiply evil system, not because it was evil but because it limited their economic growth. All the same, it must be said that there were some white people who immersed themselves in the abolitionist cause in an attempt to free the slaves who they recognised as being human beings such as they were themselves. For example, the Quakers, as a group stood against slavery but on second thoughts this may be because they were also great capitalists and it was in their interest to oppose slavery. There also were other whites who stood up against slavery, none more than John Brown who held out against slavery so fiercely that he was hanged after he led nineteen other men to attack and seize weapons from an army post. His intention was for slaves to whom the weapons were to be given were expected to use them in a revolt, the slave owners’ worst  nightmare. I remember singing the ditty

    John Brown’ s body lies a-mouldering in the grave  x3   

    But his soul goes marching on etc in primary school. His was a whole hearted commitment to a cause from which he could never derive any benefit.

    • To be continued
  • Omo Oodua, oko ya!

    Omo Oodua, oko ya!

    • It is good that southwest governors have now realised that they can only continue to neglect agric to our collective peril

    Some years back, I wrote on this page of the urgent imperative for governors in the southwest region of the country to return the region to its former place of pride in agriculture. Some of them were angry because I said they needed to be creative. They detested being told to stop calling their states civil servants states, because it has not always been so.

    Apparently the southwest governors who perpetually wring their hands in frustration and continued attributing the lack of money to do worthwhile projects in their states to being “civil servants’ states” have forgotten the region’s glorious past. That was the same space that the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo did wonders with agriculture and we never had any complaint about lack of money.

    Then, civil servants were doing their own and agriculture was also thriving. How come that same region is now complaining of lack of money? Something must be wrong somewhere.

    The problem with many of our political leaders, particularly governors nationwide is that they simply cannot live with the bitter truth, including of course, criticism, no matter how constructive. They always assume they are right and that they have the right after being elected or rigged into power to run or ruin the lives of the rest of us. They want us to be following and agreeing with them like a sheep that is being taken to the slaughter slab, deaf and speechless, even when it is clear they are leading us to nowhere in particular.

    I am a happy and proud Yoruba man today that the current governors in the region have at last vindicated my position and the position of people like me who know that if we must continue to be relevant in Nigeria, then, we must be able to feed ourselves. They have realised the need to return the region to the farm. Not only that, they realised that for optimal effect, this has to be collectively done, with every state focusing on areas where it has comparative advantage. This is one of the best decisions the Southwest Governors Forum has taken in recent times. Although the governors deliberated on a lot of other issues, the one that was most fascinating to me is the collective resolve to return to the farm.

    I am here talking of the governors’ meeting hosted by Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday, last week. It is heartwarming that all the six governors in the region –Sanwo-Olu (Lagos, APC), Seyi Makinde (Oyo, PDP), Dapo Abiodun (Ogun, APC), Lucky Aiyedatiwa (Ondo, APC), Ademola Adeleke (Osun, PDP) and Biodun Oyebanji (Ekiti, APC) – attended the meeting. Equally soul-lifting was the fact that the attendees cut across political party lines.

    At that meeting they gave what looked like a marching order to their commissioners for agriculture to begin the process that will lead to food security in the geo-political zone. “On food security, the forum acknowledges the efforts of the Federal Government and decides that the honourable Commissioners for Agriculture of all the states should begin to meet and set up a working template, which will ensure collaboration based on each state’s comparative advantage”, the governors said.

    One of the things that have been lacking in the Federal Government’s efforts to cushion the effects of the harsh economic situation in the country is the contribution on the part of some state governments. The increase in their monthly allocations is not reflecting on the well-being of their citizens. This kind of collective resolve on the part of the southwest governors is therefore akin to killing two birds with one stone. One, their efforts would complement the efforts of the Federal Government in the crucial area of food security. Second, it would also lead to agricultural revival in the region with the attendant multiplier effects.

    But to revive agriculture is not a thing that can be done by political rhetoric. It demands practical, determined and sustained efforts to see it through.

    This is where the new chair of the forum comes in.

    I congratulate Sanwo-Olu on his being picked as chairman of the forum to replace the late former Ondo State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, who passed on in December, last year. But Sanwo-Olu’s selection is a call to service. It is the reward for what he is doing in Lagos; and, as they say, the reward for hard work is more work.

    Akeredolu is dead now, but not so his contributions, particularly in the establishment of the region’s security outfit, Amotekun. Anybody may have certain reservations about the former governor but nothing should becloud the sense of judgement that Akeredolu gave his all to see that Amotekun saw the light of day. Today, in spite of its imperfections, the security outfit is contributing to the relative peace in the region.

    Akeredolu’s main challenge at his time was insecurity and he confronted it headlong. The result is still speaking in the region even now that he is gone. Governor Sanwo-Olu has to understand that his chairmanship of the forum is coming at a time of acute food challenge or, if you like, food security problems. The Yoruba people want to see a marked difference between what obtains with regard to food production now and in a few months’ time.

    The truth of the matter is that many things can wait. Not food. There is no sermon that you can preach to a man who is hungry that he can understand unless his hunger is assuaged.

    Meaning he remains an angry man until he has eaten. And I don’t know of any leader who can successfully lead a hungry people.

    Now that the Yoruba governors have seen our food situation as the emergency that it is, what is left is for them to come up with practical solutions to the challenge.

    As I said earlier, many Yoruba people feel like ‘ what’s happening’ when some of our governors say their states are civil servants’ states. It is unimaginable that political leaders in a place like the southwest would give such an excuse in a region where Chief Awolowo transformed agriculturally and built several monuments through farm

    produce, including the first skyscraper in West Africa, Cocoa House, in Ibadan. Haba! What’s ‘gwan’! Why do we have to forget this glorious past just because everybody now has access to free funds from the Niger Delta? Sometimes, some of us would wish that this crude oil that has made political leaders forget there is something called thinking caps should just dry up. I am sure with it would mop up the incessant demands for more states. Only people who are ready to think creatively would be coming out for elections when that happens. Not people who want to depend perpetually on resources from other places to sustain their life of comfort.

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    Be that as it may, the southwest governors have to swing into action on this agricultural revolution immediately because this was a thing we should have done as early as yesterday. It is sad that things have to degenerate to this extent before we are jolted to action, but it would be sadder still if all we do afterward is to return to business as usual.

    It is shameful that the Yoruba race would have to catch cold if farmers from other parts of the country sneeze. We saw that happen sometime ago when food sellers from a certain part of the country threatened not to bring food down south over some issues. It should never happen again.

    When I was discussing this issue with the editor of our daily paper on Tuesday, he reminded me of the tomatoes that were produced in the southwest that we used to know as kids. They have given way to ‘imported’ ones from the north. The same apply to pepper like ‘ata rodo’ and so on. They have all been overtaken by the northern variants. Something must be wrong with us. Please don’t get me wrong; I am not saying it is bad to buy farm produce from the north. What I am saying is that nothing stops the southwest political leaders from doing their own bit with regard to agriculture. We can never have more than enough food and even if we do, that is a good problem. We can learn to package well for export. Some other West African countries are doing well in this regard.

    It is true that a state like Lagos had gone into partnership with some other states like Kebbi to produce Lake Rice, etc. Lagos even has a rice mill at Imota

    and so on. But Lagos has problem of land; it can therefore only continue to collaborate more with states that have the land to do some other things. We can imagine how much less the country would have been affected if states in the southwest had been seriously engaged in agriculture, especially when insecurity drove farmers away from their farms in the north. The southwest farmers would have filled at least a part of the vacuum. What we have done is akin to putting all our eggs in one basket. It is bad.

    And let me also say this, even if by way of advice; no governor should entertain any demand for money for seminar or workshop to revive agriculture in the southwest or even Nigeria. We have had more than enough of those. Let the commissioners go and dust up the reports of previous talk shops on the issue.

    Our country must be one of the rare places where people who studied Agriculture are roaming the streets, yet, we are hungry. These people as well as others interested in farming should be encouraged through agricultural extension and other programmes to return to the farm. If the package is right and people working in our farms can also wear shoes that would sound smart like their colleagues in other endeavours, we won’t have problems getting dedicated people to work in the farms. Even the farmers’ children that have all left for the cities would come back home.

    As children, there was this song that we used to sing:

    “Ise agbe, nise ile wa,

    Eni ko sise, a ma jale,

    Iwe kiko, laisi oko, ati ada,

    Ko ipe o, ko ipe o.” (Farming is our work, whoever does not work will steal, education without agriculture is incomplete).

    So, where did we miss it in the southwest? We must search for it and take it back. Even if it means bringing back songs and poems of old that gave us character in the region; let us include them in our educational curricular. Enough of westernisation that has made us abandon our cherished heritage, to our collective peril.

    Forward march to the past!

  • Agenda for Tinubu’s second year

    Agenda for Tinubu’s second year

    As his reforms take longer than expected in yielding fruit, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must by now be accustomed to being abused by his opponents, or constantly hectored if that opponent is the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). He could, like his predecessor, choose to be indifferent to the campaigns against his administration and person, or he could choose to be impatient and intolerant. Fortunately for him, despite the trenchancy of the opposition, he has chosen to respond to the attacks with the equanimity of a true democrat. At every turn, such as at last week’s Democracy Day celebrations, he boasts of his democratic credentials, and he is justified to exult; but he is from now on fated to thrive or perish on that scaffold. He spent his first year in office laying a great foundation for the future, resetting the economy, paying off critical debts, retuning the country’s finances, and turning his gaze on some legacy infrastructural projects. Despite the relevance of these policies and programmes, none of them has definitively yielded direct or immediate benefits to an increasingly famished population.

    Unfortunately for the administration, only the president’s die-hard supporters and knowledgeable economists think he has done the right thing or is headed in the right direction. Of course, he and his team believe that without the resetting of foundations which he has embarked on, the future would be fraught with extreme danger. They are all probably right, but his critics and abusers, particularly the hungry and the dispossessed battling with life-and-death situations will remain unimpressed, if not disgusted. They will get testier as hunger deepens and as the months pile on without a significant amelioration of their conditions. The president’s salesmen may not have sold his reforms and efforts with panache, but their nervousness does not diminish what he has accomplished in one dizzying year. His confidence in his plans and policies is infectious, though minified by incomprehensible reversals; but until his plans and policies begin to translate into a substantial softening of the hardship many are experiencing, his attitude would be viewed as intransigent, World Bank/IMF-inspired, or even altogether incompetent.

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    In his second year, he will gradually discover, as many great leaders have experienced, that he will need forces higher than he is to make the economic weather inclement. He has planned and promoted policies, but like wartime leaders, he must hope that the elements will flow in his favour. He probably already knows that, especially what it means for unseen forces to coalesce to someone’s advantage, as his election itself demonstrated last year to the consternation of his opponents. And as president who must take responsibility for virtually everything wrong or well with Nigeria, seeing that the buck stops at his desk, he must be wary of espousing celestial interventions or giving such interventions precedence over his efforts. Overall, in the second year, he must instill bigger confidence in his measures, work doubly harder than he has promoted, and make far fewer mistakes and reversals than he has done so far. The work clearly strains him, as some of his infrequent and unexplained trips overseas suggest, but fortunately for him, the strain is countervailed by the pure, almost unearthly sense of joy and accomplishment he feels being in Aso Villa where instead of continuing to postulate from the sidelines and be rebuffed or even rebuked, he now makes things happen.

    He has a listening ear, and will in his second year continue to read all sorts of analyses, both foreign and local, about his social, economic and political programmes, with many of those essays ignorant, some of them unsparing, and others encouraging. Rather than take umbrage, the analyses must serve as an opportunity for him to receive a fresh perspective from outside experts not beholden to him or his government. One year is more than enough to steady his policy and administrative gait. He should now proceed more deliberately and surefootedly, be less given to impulsiveness, and be cleverer at consulting widely and building consensuses. It probably took a few months to convince himself he had won the presidency he once dreamt of. Now he has the diadem, and he must now walk it, talk it, and more loftily cast visionary glances at the future of his presidency. He has gloated about his democratic convictions, but it must never be at the expense of letting his opponents or even organised labour trample the rule of law underfoot. During last week’s Democracy Day dinner, Senator Shehu Sani lauded him as the father and funder of Nigeria’s recent protest movements. The senator is partly right, but the president has the constitution, not sentiments, to guide him. Besides, the shoe is on the other foot now, and he has more than 200 million people to lead. He must find the wisdom and resolve to balance patience with firmness in dealing with those who allow themselves considerable latitude with the law.

    More importantly, sensing that the people he leads have become increasingly impatient, especially as their misery appears to be compounded by the administration’s policies and programmes, it is time the president adopted a more radical approach both in his public engagements with the people, despite the occasional sneers, and in his measures. He needs to orchestrate a massive and overwhelming nationwide return to the farms in his second year, including deploying prisoners to designated farm settlements, and he should find the sword to slay the insecurity ogre hindering that return. The war against insecurity, as it is currently waged, will take far too long. Other than his kerfuffle with the states over the status of local governments, the president has seemed to cede, at least publicly, to national lawmakers the responsibility of championing political reforms. Yes, plausible deniability comes to the fore here, but whether this ‘indirect’ approach is also the wise thing to do in a polity operating an unsuitable and seemingly calcified constitution remains to be seen.

    It is doubtful whether President Tinubu can postpone doing something about the justice system. It is overdue for reform, both in the appointment of judicial officers and the administration of criminal justice system itself. He has started by dramatically augmenting the wages of judicial officers; he now needs to do more by retuning the practice of law in Nigeria and dealing effectively with the politicisation of the courts in the states and, in some instances, their wilful and humiliating subordination to governors. Simultaneously, the president must find ways of cajoling the national legislature, despite the independence of the three arms of government, into being less flagrant and provocative in their expenditures and lifestyles. It won’t be easy, given the near unanimity of the lawmakers in inspiring and defending their luxurious lifestyle. President Tinubu needs to reconnect them with the reality of living in Nigeria. Asking him to prune the legislature into a unicameral assembly may be farfetched, for it would amount to asking the lawmakers to fall on their swords, but getting them to be more prudent in their spending might be a conceivable request to make.

    President Tinubu’s predecessors did little to entrench democracy in Nigeria, starting from the hyperbolic Olusegun Obasanjo era, through the sedate Goodluck Jonathan period, and, worse, through the hybrid and detached Muhammadu Buhari presidency. During the June 12 Democracy Day dinner, speaker after speaker lionised the president’s contribution to the revival of democracy in Nigeria. He deserves the praise; in fact, it is believed that his contributions have been understated. He may in this wise be anxious to live up to the expectation of being the first real progressive and democrat to occupy Aso Villa. However, his presidency will be challenged by the country’s religious and ethnic ossifications as well as by the nuanced fact that democracy or elections alone are not sufficient in putting the best man in office. It is, therefore, not too early in his second year to begin rethinking the subject of leadership recruitment. The inattention paid to this issue nearly undid the country in the First Republic. It can undo the Fourth Republic if it continues to be treated cavalierly.

  • National Assembly barking up the wrong tree

    National Assembly barking up the wrong tree

    Fresh from their feeding frenzy on the new national anthem, which they passed with dizzying speed on May 23, exultant national assembly members have now trained their guns on a new target. Starting with the House of Representatives, the lawmakers appear determined to make hay while the sun shines. They seem convinced that there are many sharpshooters among them, some of them connoisseurs of lawmaking of the uncanny kind. But they don’t seem aware that their national anthem bill left many Nigerians reeling from the pace of the process as well as the shock of seeing it passed and assented in quick order by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29, just days after. But regardless of any reservations, particularly by a skeptical public wary about the vaunted motives and altruism of the legislators, the lawmakers have already gone ahead to gleefully embrace a new tenure campaign.

    Their new crusade is an old gelding, a dead horse called six-year single term. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan promoted the idea barely three months after winning the 2011 presidential election. He did not specify at the time how long that single term should be, but it was widely believed he had six years in mind. And despite promising not to take advantage of that amendment should it be passed by the legislature, he was roundly condemned for disingenuously campaigning for tenure elongation. The six-year single term proposal had repeatedly attracted newspaper headlines, but without any matching attempt to railroad it through like the new national anthem which became law late last month. Unlike the national anthem, term lengths and limits are very impactful and problematic, not to say deeply political. It is at the root of Nigeria’s democratic unease since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, and indeed since independence. Amending it will require far more efforts and negotiations than the wordings and inspiration of an anthem.

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    How far can the House of Representatives go, assuming they get the buy-in of the senate? Not very far, it seems, especially because they have included in their crusade a welter of difficult and controversial amendments. Some 35 Reps members led by Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere (Ideato North/South – Imo State) have lent their weight to the proposal, perhaps believing like Dr Jonathan that a single term would obviate the bloodletting, waste and acrimony that accompany every election cycle. In their words, “We are a group of over 30 reform-minded lawmakers from different political parties that have come together and are committed to ensuring a working Nigeria using legislative instruments within our power to ensure the reduction of cost of governance and campaigns, unite our country, ensure a seamless transition, continuity, uninterrupted development, justice, equity, independence of INEC, efficient use of state resources, tackle nepotism, state capture, and corruption in electoral processes, etc.”

    Hon. Ugochinyere adds, “There is no doubt that our country is in desperate need of a long-lasting solution to our poor economic situation, insecurity, disunity, weak institutions, weak health and education sector, corruption in public sectors, and waste of state resources. We have now a critical phase where what is at stake is the very survival of Nigeria as one political and economic unit. We must rise to the challenge, and what we do with this opportunity given to us by our people matters a lot. We, the reformers, elected representatives of the people of Nigeria, are concentrated on proving that we are fully capable of managing our affairs together as a nation.”

    Some of the changes the Group of 35 seeks are rotational presidency among the country’s six informal geopolitical zones, constitutional formalisation of the zones, provision for two vice presidents, and a host of other amendments. The lawmakers acknowledged that the amendments were not original to them. They traced the amendments’ historical course and deplored the abandonment of the efforts to birth constitutional reforms despite spending so much money promoting change. Soon, however, they will discover why their predecessors abandoned their efforts and wilted before the challenges posed by the proposed reforms. Not only must reformers get the amendments passed through the two legislative chambers without significant dilution, they must also get them passed by at least 24 state assemblies. Getting the amendments through the national assembly will be truly herculean; passing them through the states will be like forcing a camel through the eye of a needle. The lawmakers can surely not have forgotten that last February, some 60 members of the House began advocating a return to the parliamentary system, forgetting, interestingly, that in December 2018, more than 70 national lawmakers also campaigned for the same system to replace the presidential system. Legislators seem to love flogging dead horses.

    So far, the reformation many national assembly members romanticise has not really taken off. Presuming the new national anthem, not to say the brevity of the efforts that heralded its passage, to be the new leitmotif of constitutional amendment, they have displayed undue optimism and greedily expanded their shopping list. However, amending any constitution is exhausting drudgery, probably the worst kind in these parts due to ethnic and religious suspicion. Amending a constitution is also riddled with many unassailable procedural pitfalls. Nevertheless, the lawmakers can try where their predecessors had dared and failed, and hope against hope that they are not barking up the wrong tree. But they must finally try to answer the global conundrum surrounding term limits wherein many countries attempt to counterbalance the drawbacks of extended one term for incompetent leaders against the costliness and sometimes disruptiveness of competent leaders campaigning for a second term. After all, one term helps a country cuts its losses when grappling with an inept ruler.

  • Datti Baba-Ahmed, Aisha Yusuf hone extremism

    Datti Baba-Ahmed, Aisha Yusuf hone extremism

    Apart from being remorselessly extreme in supporting the candidacy of Peter Obi in the last presidential election, not to talk of still irrationally propagating his phantom victory, both Datti Baba-Ahmed, Mr Obi’s running mate, and Aisha Yesufu, activist and politician, have continued to strain credulity to its elastic limit. Until last year, Mrs Yesufu had foresworn politicking; now she is an ardent fan of the former LP presidential candidate, and his foot soldier to boot. Mr Datti on the hand cuts a very urbane figure as an educationist dedicated to research and finding the truth. His virtues, it is clear, are exaggerated.

    What indeed binds the two together is not just their fanatical loyalty to Mr Obi, which is bad and embarrassing enough, nor even their depressing inability to separate truth from falsehood, but their flippant talk and silly caress of chaos and revolution. Until the 2023 elections and their aftermaths, no one could guess the depth of extremism Mr Datti was ready to plumb. He tells himself infernal lies, and stupendously believes them. Activism, particularly the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, had masked the chaos and wishful thinking wreaking havoc on the mind of Mrs Yesufu. Sadly, just like Mr Datti, she still seems blissfully unaware of how odiously she drains the dregs of infamy with election denial and fact warping. It is shocking.

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    Both Labour Party (LP) politicians do not have to like President Bola Ahmed Tinubu; they may even loathe him. They are entitled to their views. But surely they can’t be saying that had their favourite man won, the vituperations of Obi haters would be justifiable and excusable on the grounds of free speech and democracy; yes, the same democracy the lady and gentleman have done their utmost to undermine and ridicule with lies and perverse logic.

  • Democratic concussions in Nigeria’s post-military polity

    Democratic concussions in Nigeria’s post-military polity

    On June 12, 1993, the entire Nigerian populace rose as one to vote out their military tormentors through the instrumentality of an unlikely hero of democracy, a bosom crony of the military oligarchy and one of its most favoured contractors and plutocratic wheeler-dealers, MKO Abiola. At first glance, the whole thing didn’t make much sense.

       It looked like one of those grand spectacles of deception and camouflage long favoured by the military authorities in their protracted battle of will and wits with the Nigerian political society. It was a battle that had assumed an urgent and frantic tone in the previous five years as General Ibrahim Babangida, the most gifted strategist and political playmaker thrown up by the military inquisition in Nigeria, set about banning, unbanning and banning all over again the most endowed members of the political class in a war of attrition which shook the entire nation to its very foundation and left the politicians gasping for breath.

    And then when there appeared to be some dull rays of light at the end of the long tunnel, one of the military’s own, a man who owed his vast riches and octopus-like political influence to the military institution dramatically stepped forward and began cocking a snook at the same military institution insisting vehemently and vociferously that they must depart at once and without much ado, too. It just didn’t add up. There must be a monstrous sting at the end of the tail.

      Such was the metaphysical import of the day, June 12, 1993 for Nigeria and the entire Black race in general that not a single drop of rainfall was recorded anywhere in the country on the day. Lawrence O’Brien, the American Charge d’affaires in Abuja who was monitoring the intriguing power play and ominous development for his bosses back home, issued a terse diplomatic cable that noted that America would frown at any attempt by the military junta to postpone or abort the election under whatever guise. This was after the government through its numerous agents obtained a midnight injunction from an Abuja court under Justice Bassey Ikpeme which outlawed the holding of the election.

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       For his pains and for daring to interfere with what was regarded as Nigeria’s internal affairs, O’Brien was summarily expelled from the country. In the event, the election held without any major incident throughout the country and was adjudged by local and international observers to have been decisively won by Abiola . A tense face-off ensued between the military and the Nigerian electorate eagerly awaiting the endorsement and ratification of Abiola’s election.

       But this was not to be. After about a week and a half of testing the resolve of the people of Nigeria and the balance of forces, the military annulled the election. It was the greatest electoral catastrophe to have befallen Nigeria both in its colonial and postcolonial history. The ensuing crisis snowballed into a low-intensity warfare which subsisted for another five years until the military withdrew to their barracks.

     Nigeria will never be the same again. Last Wednesday as the presidential state dinner for democracy heroes got underway in Abuja, argumentative rumblings and polite recriminations about who did what and who betrayed who during the struggle to rid Nigeria of military autocracy coursed through the genteel and sedate ambience of the Banquet Hall.

       Looking back in a final gaze across the chasm of the quick and the dead, one can only surmise at the difference an Abiola presidency would have made to Nigeria. Such was the enthusiasm generated by Abiola’s electoral triumph and the man’s reputation for bucolic and unaffected empathy for the poor as well as his compassionate nous that the price of rice fell throughout the country within twenty four hours of his “unofficial” election. Nigeria was stirring in a ritual of hope, renewal and regeneration. It was not to be.

       Last year exactly thirty years after the June 12 debacle and as if to complete the aborted cycle of hope, an Abiola acolyte and disciple and an unwavering hero of the unstinting struggle of progressive elements for the democratic redemption of the nation came to power after a bitterly contested election marked by inflammatory rhetoric, divisive campaigns and ethnic grandstanding of the most deplorable hue. Bola Ahmed Tinubu romped home against all odds and puerile projections.

       It is a momentous irony that fate and fortunes have not cut Tinubu the same slack as an Abiola’s putative presidency. But only those who have not studied history well enough to appreciate its twists and turns will be baffled by this development. To start with history does not follow a straight, geometric path.

     Second and more importantly as this column constantly avers following the Heraclitean dictum, you cannot step into the same river twice. Thirty years are more than enough time for incalculable damage to be done to the fabric of a nation however strong and durable by political termites and other historic grave diggers. President Tinubu will do well to hold this incontrovertible fact to heart as he sets about consolidating his presidency and laying the foundation for a more perfect multi-ethnic union.

      Nigeria has never in its history been this bitterly divided and badly polarized. Ethnic revanchists, religious chauvinists, regional hegemonists and freewheeling economic terrorists are up in arms and on rampage. The disparities between the haves and the have-nots have assumed a staggering and disproportionate proportion. 

     The disposable income available to the filthy poor and the obscenely rich with access to state loot is so callous and cruel that it has become a national and international scandal which has turned the nation into an object of scorn and ridicule in global circuits. These economic inequities have in turn spawned industrial unrest on an industrial scale. Never in the colonial and postcolonial history of the nation has the state been more vulnerable to non-state actors.

       It is a known fact that President Tinubu inherited a parlous economy and if the outlandish facts emerging from the rubble of General Buhari’s reputational edifice are anything to be believed, it simply means the general from Daura and his cronies took the nation to the cleaners before repairing. It is also a known fact that that the languid and lackadaisical former infantry officer and his ethnic cohorts did enough damage to the management of ethnic and cultural diversities of a fragile nation to last a generation.

      As a consequence of this, the polity is roiling in bitterness and acrimony and the Tinubu administration is jolted by continuous concussions ever since its advent. Last Wednesday, the convulsive upheavals seemed to have peaked as Tinubu took a stumble and fell on the podium of democracy like a martyr. His detractors and die-hard adversaries pounced on this with relish. Within minutes, the social media was awash with images of the now famous tumble with many hinting at a more sinister denouement.

       Although he got up, quickly recovered his poise and was able to take the parade including the drive around the entire stadium without being aided or assisted in whatever form, this did not deter his political assailants. A baleful fellow called the columnist hours later to ask whether the president had “stabilized” and he got such a severe tongue-lashing that he vowed never to get in touch again. Even while the parade was going on, there were clusters of protests by people either bemoaning the pervasive hunger in the land or demanding for minimum wage.

      Nigeria has never felt more fractious and combustible than this moment. It is a totally different conjuncture from 1993 which in retrospect looks like the Age of Innocence despite the subsisting horrors of the civil war and the vicissitudes of military autocracy. The mood of the nation is foul and there is a roiling distemper everywhere. Enemy nationals abounds.  The National Question has returned to the front burner. Only sound and durable economic policies can supplant it from its pole position.

      As he sets about consolidating his economic, political and cultural legacies, President Tinubu should avoid a tendency to impetuous and off-hand pronouncements which could lead to dire consequences for the economy and the polity as a whole. These are not the most auspicious of times to test the will of a fractious and combustible populace already tottering at the edge of despair and despondency.

     It cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the president is a left-leaning economic radical. But he should avoid a sharp lurch to rightwing social engineering which can bring him into conflict and direct collision course with his naturally progressive political constituency. It is a fallacy of economic thinking to conclude that compassionate redistribution of wealth and privileges is in fundamental contradiction with capital accumulation. In most forward-looking nations run by a visionary elite both run hand in hand in the interest of social harmony and national cohesion.

      President Tinubu has demonstrated courage and calm fortitude in his refusal to be fazed by Nigeria’s gargantuan economic mess. But this must not be allowed to conjoin with a growing perception that the government treats economic miscreants with a kid’s gloves. This is bound to backfire at some point with the possibility of snowballing into active disquiet and massive unrest.

      Economics of social disruption must not be added to the crushing burden of fractious and inflammable multi-ethnic nations seething with tension and mutual distrust. When he was asked why he always chose poor countries with weak social fabric to impose the harsh regimen of structural adjustment, Milton Friedman, the archpriest of market fundamentalism, retorted that it was because no economic breakthrough can be achieved without some chaos and momentous social dislocation. This is the rupture that accompanies new births and historical transition with its pangs and traumatic pains.

       Although no historic progress is completely painless, developing African nations must seek a more humane transition as an alternative path to fast-tracked development in contradistinction to the ruthless acquisition and bloody-mindedness which characterized Europe and North America in an earlier phase of their civilization. Organic nations which have taken centuries to build up can withstand the stress and strain of creative destruction better than plastic, multi-ethnic colonial nations still striving to achieve authenticity and cohesive identity.

      With its prodigious human and natural endowments, Nigeria can take the lead in this new vision of a more compassionate and humane society. If it does not, this column dares to wager that it will become very vulnerable to centrifugal forces in the coming epoch. This is the symbolic import of the famous stumble at the Eagles Square in Abuja last Wednesday. It is a mystical sign to get up and go. Falling and rising is an integral part of the equation of growth and development.

  • The strange ways of democracy

    The strange ways of democracy

    The ways of democracy are truly strange. Without democracy, a nation is a disaster waiting to happen. With democracy creaking at the joints, even the most advanced nation is a debacle anxious to unfold.  With the apparent failure of the regular democratic process in America to rein in a convicted felon and prevent him from upending the system, with the ethical collapse of the political class in Britain and the rise of far right xenophobic movements all over Europe, it is clear that the world is witnessing an antidemocratic whiplash.

    Predicated on and sustained by the ancient Athenian myth that it is people’s power (Demos plus cratos), the people often find that their power ends when the quest for liberty is consummated. More often than not the people have to be protected from their own worst impulses by wiser counsel which cannot come from the rabble. Yet the fact also remains that the human spirit cannot thrive under authoritarian shackles for long without something giving.

       After wresting power from tyrants, people often cede power to tyrants. This is because people’s power cannot sustain itself or enrich the society for long. After ridding themselves of their Bourbon tormentors, the heroic French people could only watch as Napoleon Bonaparte, a harsh, no-nonsense authoritarian law-giver, collected power to save them from themselves and from anarchy and chaos. In England, the same thing had happened much earlier with Oliver Cromwell just as it would happen later in Russia as Tsarist monstrosity was exchanged for Stalinist catastrophe.

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      And then the struggle for human liberation and emancipation is joined anew, possibly under a new set of actors and on a different political and historical canvas. Perhaps no one has explained this paradox of people’s power better than Unamuno, the great Spanish poet and philosopher, who noted that under tyranny people seek liberty but under liberty they also seek tyranny. If democracy were to be an old woman, it would be a whimsical and self-indulgent grand matron indeed full of great wiles and an unrivalled capacity for self-delusion.

      This is what has led many sober analysts to conclude that rather than being a destination, democracy is indeed a process, a tortuous and tormenting open-ended process at that, full of daring advances and stunning reversals; full of open stumbling and faltering, riddled with landmines and volcanic craters; bristling with detours, diversions and digressions.

      It is in this respect that President Tinubu’s historical stumble at the podium of democracy last Wednesday in Abuja should be seen for what it truly is: a symbolic capture for posterity of a people’s subliminal anxieties about the prospects of democracy in a deeply polarized and alienated nation. Yours sincerely watched it live and from a ringside perspective too.

       Always historicize!  Thus admonishes Fredric Jameson, the great American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist theoretician. “History is what hurts”, we are told, and “however much we choose to ignore history, history in all its alienating necessities will not ignore us”. Dear readers, please follow us as we take a grand historical excursion into Nigeria’s perplexing and intriguing journey towards full democracy and organic nationhood in the past thirty one years of struggle and in the last one year of the Tinubu dispensation.

  • Dangote’s revelation

    Dangote’s revelation

    • It is sad that Africans would continue to encourage importation of things that can be produced in their countries, to the detriment of their economies.

    But for the fact that the story captioned:  ‘Those benefitting from massive fuel imports discouraging construction of refineries, says Dangote‘ was attributed to Africa’s richest person and Chairman of the 650,000 bpd Dangote Refinery, in the Lekki area of Lagos, I would not have regarded it as worthwhile to comment on. This is because, in Nigeria, all manner of people see themselves as specialists that are knowledgeable in anything under the sun and speak as such.

    Even Dangote’s name alone too would not have swayed me to write on the matter if he had been all about his sugar, salt and other items of value that he produces.

    But today, Dangote qualifies to talk authoritatively on all of these and more, and, as chairman of Dangote Refinery, he is eminently qualified to talk about refineries as well.

    As a matter of fact, I have a feeling a time is coming when the man would no longer be identified with the other things that he produces except petroleum products. Indeed, I already have the feeling he must be seeing the difference between crude-related business and his other businesses by now. I remember the experience of the Late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola who said after his foray into the oil sector that “publishing is sweet but oil is sweeter’! Until Abiola got a piece of the oil action, he had thought his publishing business was it, but his story and song changed when he had access to Nigeria’s oil sector. Soon, very, very soon, verily, verily I say unto you, Aliko Dangote too would be singing the same song: Dangote Salt, Dangote Sugar, Dangote Flour, etc. are all sweet, but Dangote Refinery is sweeter! There is a difference between apple and oranges. Just the same way one cannot compare sleep with death. Truth be told, oil and those other things are not the same. Your life can never be the same again once you are admitted into the exclusive crude league.

    If a man of Dangote’s stature is talking about refinery, we had better listen to him. He has come a long way. Even before his entry into the oil business, he had carved a name for himself worldwide as a successful entrepreneur. I guess this would be my third or fourth piece on him in my decades of journalism practice. As far as I am concerned, he has seized opportunities provided by certain missing links in the country and I don’t know how that is a crime. Even if it is, show me a Nigerian, including our politicians who have access to cheap public funds, who has established industries that are feeding the number of mouths that Dangote is feeding. I remember Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey who once sang in praise of the Late Chief Henry Oloyede Fajemirokun, another  industrialist of note, with specific reference to the number of people he employed (Ile ise e, aimoye eniyan ni won nje, ni won nmu). The same is true of Dangote today.

    Whether we like it or not, he has become an authority of sort in the oil business and anyone who wants to remain relevant in the oil sector must have one or two things to learn from Dangote.

    What the man said was only partially novel, though. He told us what we largely knew, at least about our own country. But sometimes what we already know gets some fillip when an authority talks about it. Dangote extended the narration beyond our borders. I had all the while thought it was only in Nigeria that we have people who are feeding fat from importation of fuel. Now I know better; that they are all over the African continent. Dangote added that they are the same reason no refinery has been built on the continent in the last 35 years. Hear him: “I’ve learned that there are other countries in Africa, all the African countries that have been trying to build refineries, they have not been able to. There has not been a refinery in the last 35 years.

    “There are so many issues. I can’t count them, but there are so many. It’s not only money, political will, and also people who are benefitting from this whole stuff of importing petroleum products into Africa are actually discouraging those governments from building a refinery.”

    Dangote said he would not have gone into the refinery business if he knew it was as problematic as it turned out to be. Not only that, he said some people tried to discourage him because they thought it would be still-born. “Actually, yes. If I’m going to do it now, I will do it better. Because I’ve learned from experience. But if I knew what I was going to go through, I wouldn’t have tried.”

    That is Dangote talking. Nigeria should be thankful to God that the man did not allow the counsel of those who tried to discourage him to prevail. Otherwise, it is the country as a whole that would suffer. Today, many Nigerians are looking up to Dangote Refinery to bail the country out of its dependency on imported fuel. We are now reaping the fruits of the refinery with regard to diesel; the pump price has dropped significantly since Dangote Refinery began to produce it. Hopefully within the next month or so, the refinery would start producing the much-awaited petrol. When that happens, the pump price of petrol too is expected to be significantly impacted for good.

    Dangote’s statement clearly returns to the front burner of national discourse why refineries in Nigeria have failed to function for several years despite the huge investments in their so-called Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM). Nigeria has four refineries yet, none of them has produced fuel in years, at least not to any significant volume. If our government officials knew the refineries were not programmed to work, why did they keep wasting the tax-payers’ money on their TAM which neither turns around nor maintain them. Corruption, pure and simple!

    Even though Dangote Refinery is a personal enterprise, still, the man sure deserves commendation for his doggedness and tenacity of purpose. As had been pointed out severally, Nigeria stands to benefit a lot from the refinery. And, if again Nigeria does not know how to maximise the benefit of such a refinery in the country, let no one blame Dangote. It is left for the Nigerian government to know how to tap into the project, not in a way as to stifle private enterprise but in a way it would be a win-win situation for both Dangote and Nigeria. After all, he is also a Nigerian.

    Furthermore, we must commend Dangote because we cannot tell the number of people who would have had such projects in mind but easily got discouraged and died with their dreams. We must salute his audacity, authority and his ‘influency’ (to paraphrase one of my seniors in the secondary school. Any time he said those words that had his patent alone in the assembly hall, we, the junior ones would hum after he had pronounced each of the words and shout ‘hey ey ey’ when he crowned it all with ‘influency’. It took my leaving the secondary school to know that the White man has not yet invented any such word as ‘influency’. But, as they say, ‘ki lomode mo’ (what do kids know)? 

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    Anyway, it is for the same reason of audacity (please spare me the remaining two – authority and ‘influency’) that we must praise President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for treading where others feared to tread. The man appeared determined to make our hitherto moribund refineries work. Barely two months after his government came on board on May 29, last year, the government told the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress  and Trade Union Congress that met with the president at the State House after a general strike called by Labour to protest subsidy withdrawal, that at least the Port Harcourt Refinery would start working by December of last year. The ones in Warri and Kaduna, according to him, would follow suit.

    Although there had been about three shifts in the date of commencement of operations of the Port Harcourt Refinery, the expectation is that it would go into operation soon. The government must work relentlessly on this because a promise is a debt that must be paid. More than that, it is in the government’s interest too that the refineries work.

    Be that as it may, Dangote’s revelation is instructive because it is not only in the oil sector that we have saboteurs in the country, nay the continent. We have also heard time and again that the country has not been able to crack its power crisis because of unscrupulous Nigerians who are into importation of generators. Dangote’s revelation has lent another perspective to the perpetual underdevelopment of the African continent. It is sad that some unscrupulous Africans would collude with foreigners to sabotage essential services like power, oil, etc. so their countries would continue to import those products over which they have comparative advantage in some cases, thereby helping to grow other economies to the detriment of their own.

    The sad thing is that we only hear of these allegations, the people are never unmasked not to talk of being arrested or prosecuted. They are like the fabled ‘they’ that children mention when they steal or spoil their property. ”They have stolen my biro”.” They have stolen my book”. So, as one of our tutors asked in those days: ”who are these ‘they’? I want to similarly ask the same question: who are these ‘they’ that have been sabotaging local production of petroleum products, electricity, etc. in the country? President Tinubu should be able to name and shame them in order to break the jinx of moribund refineries in the country. That would go a long way in boosting the value of our currency because it would complement Dangote and other refineries that are springing up all over the country. We can never have too many refineries, to ensure fair competition and get value for Nigerians who would be buying the products.