The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Satanic vibes

    Satanic vibes

    Nothing can be more intellectually daunting and emotionally distressing than column-writing in a deeply polarized polity. With the creative Muse and organizing Maiden of the society themselves deeply violated, nothing, absolutely nothing, can insulate or isolate one from the depth of mutual hostility and the rapidly expanding canvas of hate and vicious recriminations. The columnist finds himself at the mercy of the greater column: the column of angry communes: bitter, dispirited, disillusioned and disoriented citoyen advancing on all fronts and venting their spleen at everything and everybody.

    Their job, if not their cause, has been made easier by the advent of the social media. There has been an exponential rise and expansion in the army of private critics. The democratization of the means and ownership of opinion-production has led to a new age of information-production and information dissemination. Nowadays, anybody with a laptop, a fairly sophisticated phone and an access to the internet is a manufacturer of opinions and a factory of “facts” or factoids as the case may be. In the process, the old authoritarian master-discourse has been dethroned and supplanted. In its place, a new hierarchy of eerie reality in which it is increasingly difficult to separate factuality from fiction and fantasy. AI-generated pictures and scenes often appear superior to the real thing. The post-public is here with us and may the good Lord help even the law courts.

    Our twin-tribute to General Yakubu Gowon last week has provoked a gale of reaction which is as furious as it is overwhelming in its scope and scale of indignation and emotional turbulence. It came in a fast and sweeping torrent. It is hard to understand how a man of the old general’s tame and temperate outlook, a man who was swept from the pinnacle of power almost fifty years ago, could still provoke such a rash of raw emotions in many of our compatriots. Even more astonishing and fear-inducing is the fact that the events leading to the civil war and the aftermath could still induce such a tempest of fiery recriminations and shrill denunciations across the land as if they happened only yesterday. The Nigerian elephant has a long memory indeed. And it is an elephant shambling and lumbering about the trembling plains with gaping wounds. Unless we find a way to restrain this wounded mammoth and dress its open gashes, we will be far from closure in this troubled land.

    First past the post of fierce contention as Sunday morning filtered in are two of my former students of Igbo extraction who are now full professors in their own right plying their trade in South West universities. They sometimes abuse yours sincerely and they are occasionally rebuked for their audacious contumely. Sometimes, we agree to disagree and some other time, we disagree to agree. But yours sincerely consider their critiques and occasionally nettling censures as invaluable feedback mechanisms. When they cross a particular line, they get mercilessly ticked off and they retreat to their scholarly dens. The other one was in no mood to take hostages last Sunday. He writes:

    Happy Sunday with love!  The hidden truth in spite of the ninety bouquets {for General Gowon} came with the postscript which in equal measure dismisses the value of the otherwise praise! Gowon is guilty as charged!!

      When yours sincerely responded with a tone of quizzical exasperation, our man came charging like a bull:

      I spent my Christmas in the forest in 1969 after we had been forced to run from Lagos to the East. We were trained on how to dodge aerial raids and even at that some unfortunate people couldn’t escape from the bombs and other strafings.

     His professorial colleague was more measured and nuanced. We quote:

    In this coruscating historical piece, the historian and the philosopher….meet in the poet, and in this instance, the linguistically self-conscious columnist.  I have read Chuks’ venomous riposte to the Gowon interview and how immensely apposite you have served us this torrid and sweltering Sunday a meta-analysis in response, thereby vouchsafing a more nuanced and holistic contemplation of the regnant saga. Closure! Closure? Who has the Balm of Gilead to salve and bind our open sore? I guess the present managers of the estate have bigger fish to fry. Thank you for another intellectual labour of patriotic love.

    As the columnist was ruminating on these interventions, an old friend from London, a youthful Advert Manager of the Daily times Group in his late twenties in the mid-seventies, a former Nigerian nationalist but now a militant apostle of restructuring Nigeria or dissolving it as the case may be, put the heavy boot in with icy resolve:

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    The greatest public political ageless truth in Nigeria was uttered by Jack in his maiden broadcast post successfully eliminating Ironsi/Fajuyi when he said: The basis for one Nigeria no longer exists…It was true then and still true now. It was North first then and still north first today. The thoughtless arguments on VAT by Northern governors is so contradictory…..My practical thinking is: the day Yoruba and Igbo agree on the political direction of the country, Nigeria will be truly liberated. Good day…. Never mind my old man struggling semi-educated write up to a sound across the board professor like you. Please tolerate this.

    For a man approaching his eighth decade on earth, it doesn’t get more vitriolic and combustible. While still trying to digest this, another distinguished Nigerian well past the octogenarian benchmark, scion of an illustrious Lagos family and notable author in his own right waded in with a flying tackle. In an early morning chat, the aging literary duelist famous for delectable turns of phrase noted with wry acerbic flourish: “If you say Gowon is not the ripper, he is definitely the REAPER.”

    We can now see why elite consensus continues to elude Nigeria. In response to the irate professor who turned the whole thing into a Donnybrook Festival by going after Gowon’s personal integrity in a rumoured amatorial and romantic cop-out, yours sincerely promised to avail him of our imaginative intervention in the matter. This country can do with more love and affection. Without arriving at the realm of love, we can never arrive at the love of the realm. The original title of the piece you are about to read has been adjusted to suit the moment. Happy reading to our readers.

  • Love at the dawn of Kudita

    Love at the dawn of Kudita

    Moments after General Jackson Biwok left the precincts of the cancer ward at the old capital’s premier hospital, he was assaulted by a terrible and nasty smell. It was the odour of death and human disintegration, reminiscent of a savage battle field. The mortuary had broken down again. Giant maggots crawled out from a sewer adjacent to the mortuary, heading for the casualty ward. Overhead, several vultures had taken up pole position. Perched on the huge baobab trees from which the hospital had taken its name, it was as if the rotund overfed scavengers were daring the mortuary to spill its contents.

    The general struggled to fish out one of his trademark immaculate white handkerchiefs from his resplendent Agbada robe.  As the terrible smell filled his nostrils, shame and misery overwhelmed him. The whole country had broken down, he thought to himself. The nation had become one vast, stinking mortuary. 

       Commuters screwed their nose at the stench , and as the mood turned bitter and foul, they rained unprintable curses at the rulers of the nation. The general wondered whether some of them had recognized him as a man dressed in cassocks took a swipe at the nation’s former military kingpins and eyed him with bitter malice. “Dem go smell dem mama’s yansh, one day, one day”, a woman cursed in pidgin English at the general’s heels.

     Jack Biwok, accompanied by his beloved wife, Elizabeth, the iconic former first lady, and some trusted aides, had gone to the hospital to pray for the speedy recovery from cancer of Princess Edna Iwu-Abangwu, his former beau, much adored sweetheart and confidante. He knew in his heart of heart that it was a farewell visit, a closure-effecting pilgrimage. As a tested officer and a man who has seen his fair share of tragic exits, he knew death when he was in its omnipotent presence. Despite his good breeding and legendary stiff upper lip, he was a man of tremendous, overpowering emotions.

    He had almost recoiled in terror and horror as he beheld the former beauty now ravaged and wasted by the most deadly of human afflictions. Here was the fairy princess who had taught him many pleasures, whose cutting tongue often cut too sharply, but whose wit , vivacity and charisma had brought him moments of  divine joy.  He had begun to weep inwardly, but he had to pull himself together.

       He must not betray his emotions, he warned himself, or he must be prepared for a subsequent ferocious tongue-lashing from the other woman who had begun to eye him on the sly with manhandling intent. As a young man, he often wondered why it was his lot to be sandwiched among powerful women. But this was not the time and place for soapy and silly sentiments.

    Despite the overarching atmosphere of tragedy and imminent death, the visit had gone quite well. The former lovers had connected brilliantly. Hatchets had been buried. He could see the glimmer of old love and affection in the hollowed, sunken eyes. Oh those beautiful expressive eyes! Let some outstanding issues remain outstanding. Time would heal those. What was important were the shared moments and the honor of having loved such an extraordinary woman, a heroine of love and devotion.

    Only God could decree the future, and it was he who knew those who were meant for each other and those who were not. Let fools indulge in idle speculations. He knew in his heart that he was not a cruel, faithless brute. But he felt then– as he felt at that moment– that duty to one’s nation was superior to love. He could live with the hint of personal dishonor.

    Buoyed by such sentiments, the old soldier was his preppy and energetic self as they left the ward. He had done his duty to man and God. Let his servant now depart in peace. He was a man of simple, almost childlike instincts which often made him very vulnerable to the hardened amoral sharks in the national pool of piranhas. He would continue to pray for the nation and the bad boys who had shamed his adored military profession. But this broken down mortuary business is a bad omen, he thought as ugly reality intercepted his saccharine benevolence and he began fumbling for his handkerchief. He was not a normally superstitious person, but he felt that the collapsed mortuary was a sign of approaching catastrophe. “God knows I tried my best, but the boys messed up”, he muttered as he covered his face from the stench and shame.

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     Jackson Musa Nimyel Biwok had every reason to be grateful to God. He had been very kind to him. Very close to three scores and ten years, he retained the fabled good looks of his youth and a sprightly handsome frame. He had never been the best or the brightest, but at every turn in his eventful military career, good fortunes had always smiled on him.

    It was this providential preferment, combined with tact and modesty , that carried him on the cusp of turbulence to the leadership of his nation at a very tender age. It also made him the nation’s preeminent soldier. Out of office, his restraint, equanimity and rectitude had also gradually turned him into the nation’s foremost statesman. For a man of his humble background and lowly origins, it had been a dizzying and spectacular climb to the top of the mountain.

    A chilly current froze his heart as his mind drifted back to the terrible events that first brought him to national attention several decades earlier. It was the nation’s first military coup. Led by some dissident majors and spearheaded by an exceptional officer he would later describe as a misguided idealist, it was a momentous bloodbath which cost the nation its innocence and political virginity. A whole generation of senior officers from a section of the country had been wiped out. Despite the ensuing revenge coup, the civil war, the carnage and terrible casualties on all sides, the nation had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

    He himself had been targeted by the plotters, and had barely escaped, thanks to providence and quick thinking.  He had returned to the country after a course abroad on the eve of the coup.  He had disembarked from the M.S Orion, only to be confronted by Edna who had whisked him away in a breach of military protocol. He could not hide his irritation. Love could always wait for duty, but the fairy and fiery princess was having none of that. After a party attended by military echelons at which the army commander was at his hilarious best, Edna had lured him away from his assigned quarters and from certain death. What had she known?  Powerful feelings for the dying beauty returned.

     “Take me back to that ward, and to the only woman I ever loved!” the general shouted as he broke away from his wife’s tight hold.

    “Don’t be such a fool!!” Elizabeth screamed. A proud, powerfully built stallion, she was not a woman to be toyed with. She had always carried herself with steeliness and stateliness. With her regal poise, statuesque and stately bearing, she had brought much honor and dignity to the office of the first lady, unlike the three a kobo successors who had disgraced and desecrated the office. Behind the throne, she was a fortress of strength to her husband and countless were the battles she was known to have fought with  aging military playboys who had tried to teach her husband a few lessons in matrimonial hanky-panky.

    As the entourage crossed an open sewer, the general struck a huge crater in the middle of the road with his left foot and was finally roused out of his daylight reverie. A searing pain coursed through his body and he let out a weak yell. His wife steadied him, assisted by Israel Ihube, his long-time associate and faithful aide. But he was sure he could hear a small crowd behind him crowing with delight at his discomfiture. The mood of the nation was foul and nasty, not even four-star generals could walk freely about any more, he thought as his mind went back to the dying Edna.

    It was precisely at this point, as if on cue, that Princess Edna Iwu-Abangwu slipped into a terminal coma, her brave, heroic soul finally succumbing to the mortal ailment that had reduced life to an existential burden. The pain was horrendous. It was as if a million savage ants were crawling all over and making a huge meal of what remained of her once magnificent body. With characteristic nobility and generosity of spirit, she had already shared out her remaining pain-killers among the tribe of afflicted. It was doubtful whether they could have helped at this point.

    In this state of delirium, she saw herself as a bride in a classy, shimmering wedding gown being taken to the altar by her beloved Jack. In his ceremonial uniform, the handsome colonel was quite a sight to behold; so was the best man, the boyishly good-looking Major Joe Akahan. She had curtsied with customary élan in the direction of her parents who were a picture of urbane graciousness and cultivated restraint.

    Thank you sir, she seemed to say as she blew a kiss in the direction of the Governor General, the great Zik of Africa. It was a gathering of who was who among the emergent power-brokers. There were so many officers that she lost count, nearly all of them athletic and dashing. Those were the days when men were men and officers were officers. 

    As she sank deeper into unconsciousness, her mind went to the memorable night of mayhem when she had saved her beloved lover from certain liquidation.  In a sense, she could claim that she had given Jack to the nation and the world over and above the competing claims of ethnic solidarity. She could live with the consequences because love was superior to everything. Love was the greatest gift of God to humanity. To hell with revolutions and revolutionaries.

    Two nights earlier in the turbulent capital of the nation’s most politically explosive region, she had overheard the final briefing of the inner caucus of the impending revolution. In terse militarese which they thought no one could decipher, they had shared out the principal objectives. Jack had been penciled for elimination because he was to take over the command of a critical battalion. The other reason was that he had been a major beneficiary of the feudal and colonial pestilence that had laid the country low, having been promoted over the head of his peers and seniors alike.

    The great Amazon had affected stony ignorance, but immediately came up with a daring rescue plan for her beloved. To have betrayed any knowledge would have meant instant death. The revolutionaries were in a mean mood. One of them was later to boast that they could afford to waste a million people from the surplus population. Later that night as the couple went to bid goodbye to the army commander after a party for a visiting dignitary, Edna was happy that the stiff, strait-laced colonel had not disobeyed her.

    A bluff, genial and immensely likeable man, General Agolo-Urensi was in his usual good mood, cracking heavy jokes as he scooped chunks of stock fish and downed it with enormous swigs of Scotch whisky. When Jack asked for permission to fall out, the general winked and furrowed his eyes at the couple.

    “What you need is permission to fall in”, the general crooned.

     “Thank you sir”, the colonel replied with coy chastity. Then the general grabbed the colonel by the arm in an avuncular but soldierly manner.

    “Colonel Jack, make una jerk your woman very well ooo,” the general croaked.

    “Thank you sir”, the colonel replied, giggling like a girl.

    Because as my people say when two dogs make love standing the product is not very palatable”, the general whispered and kicked the air, laughing with wild relish.

    By now Edna Iwu-Abangwu had reached the final gate of transition. She remembered complaining to Jack about the general’s bawdy jokes and arrant vulgarity. With great prescience, Jack had replied that the old soldier might actually be collecting intelligence while pretending to be tipsy. Many of his drinking buddies were to perish later that night.

    And then Edna noticed the hospital attendants stuffing her nose, closing her wide luscious eyes and covering her with a white spreadsheet. Why were they doing that to her? She was not dead. So, this was how they buried people alive in the country? What a country!!! But by then the fairy princess was beyond anger, only a celestial bliss and everlasting peace.

    •  First published fifteen years ago.
  • Ninety bouquets for Jack Gowon

    Ninety bouquets for Jack Gowon

    A few weeks past, General Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s most respected and arguably most admired former military ruler, turned ninety. The entire nation rose as one to pay homage to one of its most illustrious sons ever. The cascades of tributes and encomiums were truly overwhelming. In a nation in which the political elite rarely agree on anything and in which elite consensus on most things remains a mirage, Gowon has emerged over the years and more so after he was eased out of office by junior colleagues as an exemplary Nigerian patriot, a soldier-statesman and shinning moral exemplar for many of his compatriots.

      For a man who has risen from humble and lowly origins to the acme of fame and professional fortune, this is as giddy as it can get. It is a fairy tale of outlandish accomplishment. But it is also an allegorical fable of how far faith, determination and unassuming humility combined with good luck and providential fortune could carry a person of unfabled and unfancied origins even in the postcolonial quicksand. It is a tribute to Gowon’s humble nature and decency that he has remained unspoilt and unsullied by success unlike others whose palm kernels have been equally cracked for them by benevolent gods but who have become a national byword for abominable conduct and aggravating impertinence. The late Brigadier General Benjamin Maja Adekunle, gifted war commander and combustible military gadfly, noted that General Gowon, his former supreme commander, ought to have been a pastor rather than an officer.

       Yet despite all the accolades and unstinting acclamations, the clapping and ululations for General Gowon have not been universal. There have been some faint murmurs of disapproval and even the odd tremor of disapprobation.  In explosive putdown, Chuks Iloegbunam, author and notable journalist, tore into General Gowon accusing him of exaggerating his role in the suppression of the majors’ mutiny that led to the termination of the First Republic and of perfidy and complicity in the opaque intrigues surrounding the revenge coup of July, 1966 and the pogrom that was to follow. As a young boy, yours sincerely actually listened to the maiden broadcast of the then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon in which he asserted that the basis for Nigeria’s unity was no longer there.

     That was two full days after the nation was without a valid national government. This was because the initial push of the victorious coupists was the breakup of the country until they were cautioned by western concerns. Perusing the literature of the murky and murderous interlude, one cannot but come to the same conclusion with Brigadier Hilary Njoku that it was a tragedy without heroes. The revelations of double-dealing and ambush within ambuscade contained in Chief Theophilus Akindele’s memoirs which chronicled the events of that terrible eclipse are even more explosive and bone-chilling. It was from his house that the embattled Brigadier Olufemi Ogundipe left in tracksuits to board a British frigate mysteriously moored off the Marina.

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       It will, however, be stretching it too far to insinuate that Gowon did not contribute anything significant to quelling the majors’ uprising on that night of murder and mayhem. Although he had no troops under his direct command having only arrived in the country the night before, he was a figure of calm authority behind the scene as he rallied the troops and made sure that the idea of military disruption of the political process was a professional abomination. It is obvious that the youthful and untested colonel was caught in a double bind or more appropriately a double jeopardy. He had been appointed to the position of Chief of Army Staff by Ironsi over the head of a few of his seniors. It was the right thing to do based on the exigencies of the moment. The northern military aristocracy had been liquidated by the mutinous majors. But there was no political rapport or professional synergy between the two men. Gowon was not and could not have been part of the ethnic cabal Ironsi surrounded himself with and who led him into a tragic misapprehension of the true state of the nation, particularly a northern region convulsing and seething with rage over the decapitation of its political and military leaders.

       But on the other side of the divide, the northern coupists did not trust Gowon and they viewed him with sullen suspicion based on the fact that he was a Christian and a member of a minority ethnic group. The putative leader of the military uprising, the tempestuous and irascible Major Mohammed, treated Gowon with such open rudeness and shrill discourtesy that it took Gowon’s calm and stoic forbearance to save the day. Even then, according to documented sources, it took a parade ground show of strength in Ikeja to convince the Kano-born Fulani aristocrat that Gowon was far more acceptable to the military rank and file. Thereafter, Mohammed embarked on a campaign of serial insubordination and disregard of stated military instructions which culminated in the Asaba pogrom and the military disasters of Onitsha and Abagana.

      It can be seen from the foregoing that although far from being a saint, Jack Gowon is also far from the satanic, bloodthirsty Dracula that secessionist propaganda has made him out to be till this day. What all this means is that almost fifty five years after the official termination of the civil war, Nigeria is yet to achieve a proper closure. As it is, and if he puts his mind to it, President Tinubu is properly and providentially emplaced to effect this closure. This morning, we republish a tribute to General Gowon first published on this same page exactly seventeen years ago in 2007. Nothing has been removed or added.

    By way of a postscript, a fortnight earlier yours sincerely settled down to dinner with two ancient friends, a lady who was a top official of the defunct Nigerian Airways and her brother in law visiting from Long Island, New York. Both are indigenes of Asaba town and had witnessed the horrors of the civil war “live” as they say. The lady whose mother was the immediate past Omu of Asaba was a fellow youth corper in the defunct East Central State in 1975. Yours sincerely had witnessed the funeral of the late Omu about a decade earlier and it was a grand carnival which shut down the storied city for three days.

      Inevitably, the conversation drifted to the pogrom. While the lady regaled us with eerie graphicness about the indignities visited on young women, the man’s attention was focused on the actual pogrom which he survived as a boy by lying still amidst the huge pile of the dead and dying. Later, he had helped sympathizers carry the body of Chief Okongwu to his adjoining homestead for proper dressing before interment. That incidentally was the father of a former First Lady of Nigeria.

    The rotund vultures are still hovering in the air. When are we going to get proper closure in this land?

  • Jack is not The Ripper…..

    Jack is not The Ripper…..

    General Yakubu Gowon, a.k.a Jack Gowon, is an immensely likeable fellow, an officer in the finest tradition of the old colonial army when martial nobility carried its sacred obligation.

        Although neither the best nor the brightest in his generation, neither imbued with the radical pan Arabic nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser, nor the Ottoman revolutionary zeal of a Kemal Mustapha, fate, and perhaps his own utter decorum and modesty, have always conspired to thrust him into the highest echelon of power and responsibility.

          Gowon remains the classic example of the old principle of feudal preferment: those who actively seek the throne will never get it, except by murder and perfidy. So it is then that an interview with the old soldier should come at a period of subdued militarism, of a tense and fraught succession, and of intense and acute interrogation of the fate of the territorial space known as Nigeria.

          The interview itself is vintage Jack Gowon: honest, guileless and utterly bewitching in its political virginity. Gowon seems to be crying out to his traumatised compatriots that in the political and economic disembowelling of modern Nigeria that we have witnessed, he is not the famed ripper.

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        Yet in many ways unknown to him, Gowon touches on the problems that have made Nigeria’s history such a consuming nightmare. It is a mad and maddening history in which heroes quickly become villains but only to have their honour and respectability redeemed in the long historical run, and in which villains become heroes only for their villainy to catch up with them at the final post.

         Thirty one years after he was declared a wanted criminal for the murder of a turbulent subordinate he had treated with levity and guarded affection, three decades after he was stripped of his exalted rank by the government of General Obasanjo, Gowon has not only had his rank and privileges restored, he has also regained respect and respectability as a revered avatar in the gallery of pan-Nigerian heroes.

        In the event, it was Obasanjo himself that did time in prison, in addition to his rank being briefly withdrawn after having been found guilty of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government of a subordinate he once rescued from General Danjuma’s keen professional clipper. More interestingly, a controversial return to power appears to have ended in severe self-demystification with the Owu-born general much reviled and despised as a corrupt and cruel despot who botched the genuine democratic transformation of the country. It is a steep descent for the war hero and political liberator.

         Thus the whirligig of time has brought its sweet revenge, as Shakespeare once famously asserted. There is no question of who the villain is at the moment between Gowon and Obasanjo. Longevity and staying power have their historical advantages. All Gowon had to do was to simply refuse to die. Long after those who dismissed him as a national nuisance anti-democratic potentate have descended into infamy, Yakubu Gowon is still there, smiling his sweet cherubic smile. According to a Chinese proverb, if you stay long enough by the riverbed, the bodies of your enemies will wash by.

           But history is still an open script, and anybody who believes that this is the end of the story is a historical neophyte. It was famously said of Stalin that he drove barbarism out of Russia by sheer barbarity. If by some strange luck the current democratic blunderbuss prevails, if by some quirk of history Umar Yar’Adua turns out moderately well despite the appalling and unpropitious circumstances of his ascendance, if official corruption henceforth is reduced in Nigeria, Obasanjo, despite his glaring personal failings, may yet be seen as the man who drove out corruption from Nigeria by corrupt means and who established some semblance of democracy by despotic fiat.

           It is perhaps with an unconscious eye to such history in all its grand whims and caprices that Gowon has opened his heart to his compatriots once again. For the umpteenth time, Gowon reminds us that he did not join the army as a short cut to fabulous wealth. Neither did he join to become Head of State. Even if he does not explicitly inform us, this was the twin-malaise that eventually undid the Nigerian military as a potent force for national restitution and redemption.

        But this is not the same as the biblical tale of their fathers having eaten sour grape. The Nigerian military old-guard were an apolitical, frugal and ascetic lot, until oil flowed and blood followed, that is. The bald and bland facts tend to support Gowon’s earnest asseverations. The story is touchingly told by those who know of how Gowon, after ruling Nigeria for nine years, was about to become a homeless pauper in London until help and rescue came his way. It is a redemptive tale of self-abnegating heroism and immaculate patriotism.

          The raw facts also attest to Gowon’s utter lack of political appetite. When the then Colonel Yakubu Gowon returned to Nigeria on the eve of the first coup, his burning ambition was to transform his battalion into a showcase of discipline and professionalism. Within the next seventy-two hours, he himself had been transformed into the army chief of staff, the ultimate military posting. In another eight months, he was to become the youthful leader of his country. From putative battalion commander to de facto Head of state all in eight months: no ascension could have been more dizzying.

        Yet if this space shuttle transformation is symbolic of the confusion and uncertainties of the post-colonial state, it also speaks to the fundamental paradox of the Nigeria nation: the utter and frightful lack of preparation for office of virtually its entire post-independence leaders. It is the problem that currently bedevils the Yar’Adua administration. No Nigerian leader has been deliberately groomed for office. They all seem to stumble into preferment with the self-assurance of a sleepwalker.

      Obasanjo himself is the classic example. If the old General Obasanjo was carried into office screaming and kicking in protest with the ferocious Danjuma directing, the later President Obasanjo wandered into office like a traumatised amnesiac fresh from solitary confinement. For a complex and complicated country aspiring to rapid modernity, this haphazard and feudal lottery mode of succession may well be the unkindest cut.

       In retrospect, anybody thinking that General Obasanjo was historically positioned to buck this trend does not appreciate the fact that the deep psychological wounds inflicted on him notwithstanding; Obasanjo has always been in paradoxical collusion and complicity with his tormentors.

        With this, we now come to the grandest paradox of the Nigerian postcolonial state. Despite their inability to further the lot of the nation, despite their inability to project the interest of their class formation in and as the national interest Nigeria has been ruled by the same set of people, the occasional violent internal collisions notwithstanding. The result has been a pool of leadership hobbled by incest and a vastly diminished possibility of genetic replenishment.

         It is the same set of officers who put Gowon there that eventually removed him in a patriotic vote for the subordination of the military to the democratic ethos. Despite the fact that they were historically constrained from casting their net wide, nobody can deny the patriotic and nationalist motivation behind the act. Yet it is the same group of people that would terminate civilian rule and inaugurate a new round of military tyranny. More intriguingly, three of them went ahead to commit the same crime they have accused Gowon of: Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo.

        Perhaps there is more to this feat of self-perjury that we know little about. Or may be we should have stuck with good old Jack. May be what a fledgling country wracked by internal contradictions needs is a temperate and even-handed leader who will stay long enough to oversee genuine national transformation. The jury is still out, and Jack is still smiling and smelling of rose.

                                  First published in May, 2007

  • Capitalism and modern slavery

    Capitalism and modern slavery

    • On the enslavement of nations

    Historical projects, more often than not projects of conquest and domination, are often forced to assume new forms to protect their hegemony. No new historical development ever jumps on the world stage fully dressed, well-rehearsed and ready for action. They would have been incubating somewhere else in rudimentary or elementary forms, awaiting the cue or signal that their appointed hour with destiny is at hand. With the arrival of AI and other precursors of a new age of technology that are unlike anything the world has seen before, some early barons of ancient factories and hand-wrought artifices would be wondering whether there is any correlation between what they handed down to us and what we have made of it. If Charles Dickens with his plethora of bleak novels about the social disequilibrium and the horrors of human degradations of his time were to be shown a glimpse of the modern factory, he would have thought that we had truly reached the end of history and the advent of a new type of humankind.    

    By the same token, historical developments do not terminate abruptly or cease suddenly with a resounding thud. Sometimes under the pressure of other developments, they undergo a slow transformation of their inner essence. At other times, their outward form and formula begin to wear off revealing new possibilities. It is like the dialect of a particular language which after a prolonged estrangement by distance from the mother tongue or protracted isolation due to circumstances of geography and evolution becomes a new language in its own rights and takes off in a novel trajectory of its own.

      Some developments in the past fortnight lend credence to the claim that the phenomenon of slavery has not completely ceased but has merely assumed new forms in order to deal with historical emergencies. While the restructuring of the fundamental categories of capitalism proceeds apace, the whole notion of forcible labour, enforced migration, the substitution of persons for ownable property and the selling and transfer of such property in the new international slave markets also indicate an ongoing radical reset of the operative parameters of human toil. How else does one explain the sheer audacity of the World Bank Chieftain, a man of Indian extraction himself, who came here to tell us that there would be at least fifteen more lean years before things normalized in the country? Is this how they do it in his home country?

    But there are other developments across the globe that indicate how the international showdown between hegemonic capitalism and the nascent and contradictory forces arraigned against it is shaping up. First, the new Labour government in Britain spurned once again the idea of reparations for what has been adjudged as the complicity of the British Empire in the international slave trade which led to catastrophic displacements of populations, unimaginable suffering and irreversible demographic distortions. The British argument is that it is better to work for a new dawn of progress for humanity rather than to dwell on the errors and mistakes of the past. But the past does not cease to haunt us just because we have decreed its banishment from the imagination. Shortly after the British dismissal of reparation, King Charles on a state visit to the former colony of Australia was pounced upon by a Native female senator who heckled and pilloried him to distraction. She told him to his face that she did not recognize his sovereignty over her either now or in the past. A few days after this at a gathering of Commonwealth dignitaries of the Caribbean section of the association in Samoa, the selfsame King Charles was politely informed despite the highly convivial and literarily intoxicating atmosphere that massive reparations for the injuries of the past could not be off the cards.

      What are the main drivers of this new surge of resentment against the well-heeled nations and affluent societies of the western world emanating from the peripheries and hell-holes of humanity? In the first three decades of the twenty first century and despite hiccups here and there, the relative prosperity of core western nations appears undisturbed while other societies in Africa, Asia and Latin America have plunged deeper in the catacombs of catastrophes and human degradation. In countries such as Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and most recently in the Middle East, war has torn off the veneer and comforting veil of modern civilization revealing the horrors of human regression into a savage state of nature and a post-apocalyptic world of horrific suffering.

    The last frontiers of civilization are besieged on all sides and the gates are heaving and tilting as a human tornado threatens to overwhelm them. In Central America, hordes of refugees and would-be immigrants trudge thousands of miles through the inhospitable jungles in order to reach the American border. Many never made it as their remains are eaten by wild animals. In Africa, millions of young hopefuls and other wannabes trek through the hot and scalding sands of the Sahara Desert. Those who survive are then packed in rickety canoes and sagging dug-outs  to take their chance against the intemperate seas as they clutch at anything in desperation and utter disorientation. Those who have read Simon Schama’s gripping and unforgettable account of ancient African slaves traversing the middle passage would appreciate what it means to be trapped in the belly of a ship in the middle of nowhere.

       Now, the middle passage to nowhere is everywhere. It is a site of biblical suffering and aggravated anguish. It is in Sudan where state and central authority have collapsed. It is in Myanmar where the deranged military cartel feed on native Burmese as well as the Rohingya nationals who are subject to periodic pogroms accompanied by violent expulsion. It is in the jungles of Latin America where people reenact the Chinese long trek through hostile and snake-infested territory to reach freedom. Finally, the middle passage is in the gutted, shell-shocked and drone-dismembered apocalyptic hell of Gaza, Beirut and central Lebanon where human civilization has disappeared and children eke out a feral existence amidst rubble and rubbish. Now the question must be broached. Is this what vast wealth and increased prosperity has brought the human race? Is there a nexus between modern capitalism and a new form of human enslavement which is as sophisticated as it is insidious?  Finally, does the growing disparity between some core western countries and a few outliers from the periphery and the rest of the world point at a new type of inequality that borders on modern slavery?

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      To answer the question we need to broaden our historical perspective. In 1944, Eric Eustace Williams, a Trinidadian of French Creole extraction, published his Oxford University Ph.D thesis with the title, Capitalism and Slavery. The original title of the thesis was far more intriguing and directly polemical: The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade and West Indian Slavery. Williams’ argument was succinct enough. The abolition of slavery by western countries was not dictated by the noble and humanitarian altruism it purported to be but a function of economic pragmatism due to declining profitability. But some critics believe that this argument can actually be turned on its head in the sense that the relative prosperity might have forced Britain to take a visionary look away from indentured labour and its economic and political discontent.

      The irony of both countervailing arguments is that they demonstrate the fluency, fluidity and the extraordinary capacity of capitalism to change direction and to restructure its fundamental categories for greater efficiency. So while capitalism divested itself of its vast holdings in human toil and labour, it went ahead to acquire even more humungous holdings in national resources. In the past while it was humans who were abducted and forced into slavery, now it is nations who are dragooned into the slavery of permanent peonage and everlasting indebtedness. In the past, natives had to be hunted down and captured before being transported overseas as slaves, whereas in the current epoch it is individuals who willingly deliver themselves into modern slavery as indentured workers in modern factories. Either way, it helps the west to absolve itself and to salve its conscience. At the highest level of human endeavors, such individuals are subsequently absorbed into the social matrix of the west and are forever lost to their originating societies. Like the original slaves, it is a journey of no return but at least transplantation is to be preferred to the old plantation. Either way, capitalism is absolved of ingrained and inherent racism.

    Some elementary or rudimentary form of capital-holding and capital-dispensing has been present in all human societies since the dawn of human civilization. What has happened in the last six hundred years is that some nations, people and societies have proved more adept at valorizing and capitalizing on capital far more than others. Not only that, they have also through wise investment of resources from wars and other predatory ventures been able to build institutions capable of justifying, explaining away, predicting and rationalizing the course and trajectory of the dominant economic system they have put together for and on behalf of humanity. Framing the current economic conflict and global inequities as a war among nations rather than a war of deprived people against political, economic and religious slavery is a strategy of containment which helps to mute and modulate the prospects of global conflagration. That way, things get far less rowdy and confrontational.

       In the final analysis, only nations that cock a snook at the west either militarily or economically have managed to spring the trap of economic slavery or what has been aptly described as “the development of underdevelopment”. Numerous examples spring to mind: Russia, China, North Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Korea and Indonesia. These nations, either through military hell-raising or through an adaptation of what they consider to be benign and beneficial about western capitalism to aspects of their own indigenous cultures, have managed to reprieve their people and their countries from the clutches of poverty and millennial misery. On his way to becoming the founding prime minister of his country, Eric Eustace Williams suffered many tribulations. He was denied prestigious teaching positions on account of what was considered his earlier intellectual contumely. As prime minister, he successfully fought off an Anglo-American conspiracy to seize a chain of islands belonging to Trinidad and Tobago. After a haughty face-off, even the Russians told him to stick to what his country was best known for which is Calypso and Steel Band. But he remained proud and defiant till the end.

    Given the tradition of some form of communitarianism in virtually all African indigenous cultures, African economists should come together to fashion out an authentic economic system for the continent which is distinguished by inclusive growth and a concern for the plight of the poor and the most vulnerable in the society. Without this, it is as sure as daylight that postcolonial Africa is willingly knocking at the gates of economic slavery all over again.

  • No-Fly Zone lands Okon in police soup

    No-Fly Zone lands Okon in police soup

    As earthly political dueling takes an aerial hue with reports of strange mishaps in the skies , Okon, the once and future presidential candidate, has taken urgent steps to insulate himself from the murderous antics of desperate politicians. One morning, snooper woke up only to find a huge “no-fly zone” banner erected in front of the house. When the crazy boy was questioned as to the reason behind his antics, he retorted with a scornful glare.

    “Oga, even dem Asari Tokunbo dey dare dem military helicopter with him wotowoto. Him say him go bring dem down with him nakannakan and gbamugbamu. You wan make dem mad politician come finis me, like dem Israel come finis dem Hamas?”

     “But you can’t do this. This is a violation of federal space”, snooper pleaded.

    “Oga, I no know book, but I sabi bomb, and I sabi dem Ogbunike. Na dem mad Biafra boys wan finis obodo again. He get one man for Biafra dem dey call Air Raid. Na him be Bomb Scare”, Okon screamed.

       One morning, the police came for the rogue and promptly charged him with disrupting the smooth flow of air-traffic. Snooper followed at a safe distance.

       “Why I am here?” Okon suddenly thundered.

       “You wan drop president plane with dem local catapump. Dat one na treason”, the desk sergeant hollered with a sinister frown. Okon was momentarily flustered but he quickly regained the initiative.

    “Hmmmm. Sebi you no say I be cook?”, he demanded.

    “Hen he, hen he so what?”, the irate corporal roared.

    “And dem cook office be dem kitchen?” Okon pursued.

    “And so?” the corporal  thundered.

    “So, if dem cook come put notice say make fly and dem insect no come kitchen, dat na treason?” Okon demanded with his nostrils flaring contemptuously.

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    “Kai, kai, wonna na real kata and katakata boy. Just release dem crazy crook”, the sergeant ordered, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

    “No, no, no, you must to pay me compensation”, Okon raved.

     “Compen wetin? Okay put am back for cell and let dem mad man from Mushin shit for him stupid mouth. Dat na compensation”, the sergeant who looked like a deranged hippopotamus ordered.

    “Na shit go be your pension”, Okon cursed as he stormed out of the station.

  • The imperative of greater equality

    The imperative of greater equality

    It is just as well that the acute disparities in wealth and wellbeing between the rich and advanced nations in the world and the hellholes that litter the rest of human civilization are back on the global agenda. An intellectual generation earlier, Samir Amin, the notable economist of Egyptian and French extraction, had devoted considerable attention to this phenomenon which he proposed as the reality of unequal exchange between the western nations and the rest of the world, particularly the late colonies on the African continent. At the moment, the world is on the cusp of great and dramatic changes. What with the prospects of a settler-colony on the verge of transforming into a new-type of colonial imperium as it brings areas and entities outside its jurisdiction under its dominion by force and by fire.

      How Israel will harmonize and reconcile the vast cultural, ideological and religious differences that exist between it and the people of Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon without resorting to brutal violence and the mindless terror of colonial occupation remains to be seen. To put things simply but starkly, the growth of inequality is principally due to inequality of growth. This can also be extended to new vistas of war and weaponry. In the history of war and human evolution, the lead societies always play the leading violin. When certain parts of the world are left behind in terms of their capacity for productive development and progressive self-enhancement, they also fall behind in the indices of civilization. But this is not usually the end of the story. Gangrene has a way of fatally spreading and to other parts of the body if not promptly treated. In the end, it is human civilization that is threatened.

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    Hunger and famine kill faster than Alfred Nobel’s dynamite. They are a sad testimony to human capacity for regression, a tragic reminder that the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence is never far away for a significant number of the human community. Once again, the Nobel Committee in Sweden has performed a yeoman’s task for humanity. Like all human gatherings, it is not a perfect commune. Some of its past prejudices and current predilections are as lamentable as they are regrettable. But it gets by from time to time, showing nobility of judgment and a passion for political equity which are rare and uncommon in the contemporary world. By awarding the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science to three outstanding economic theorists who have devoted time and quality thought to the issues of how wealth is created and why some human communities seem to perpetually lag behind in economic self-actualization, they have directed our attention to the institutional, historical and political enablers of fast and vast growth as well as the multi-segmented impedimenta that blocks off developmental capacities.

     Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economics Sciences, is on song: “Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this”. This is a pitch for democracy and understandably so in a world in which democracy is losing steam and in which the passion and infectious optimism for government of the people by the people and for the people that the world witnessed with the ascendancy of democratic rule after the struggle against Communism and Fascism might have waned considerably. But more importantly, it is also a cogent plea for the liberalization of opportunities between the rich and endowed global North and the impoverished South; between the First World and its fairly well-heeled proletariat and the Third World and its beleaguered working forces and within nations where elites plunder and pillage national resources at the expense of the generality of the people.

    Depending on their conception and articulation, all human strivings and struggles for a better world have their timeline and historic clock-out. Sometimes, old struggles are reimagined and cloaked in new garbs which give them fresh impetus. At some other times, it is entirely unanticipated new developments that outflank old struggles and retire them without pension. For example, it no longer feels like the Second International of Karl Marx and Georg Plekhanov where workers of the world were expected to come together across national divides and societal gulf to fight their common oppressors but a new commonwealth based on mutual understanding and humane compassion for the plight of others. Even the old warriors of socialism in one country have all repaired to their ancient balconies and postcolonial balustrades.

    According to the Nobel trio, where revolutions helped and still help is that the mere threat of them often forces recalcitrant and obdurate elites of poor countries to embrace the democratization process rather than lose everything in a showdown with the irate masses. The tragic irony however is that in the absence of ideal and enabling conditions for revolutions, some predatory elite groups in certain nations have become so obdurate and irredeemable that not even the thought of looming revolutions could move or sway them to the path of rectitude and fiscal sanity. They are debauched and dehumanized beyond redemption.

      Consequently, they push their countries towards anarchy and the total breakdown of the semblances of state institutions that survive. Haiti, the first Black country, has been at it for quite some time and has become a horrendous wasteland of human existence. A few African countries are hard on Haiti’s heels. According to the new Nobel laureates settler-colonies tend to do better than colonial dominions because the settlers are more inclined to build better and more inclusive institutions since they have to live with the consequences of their own creation. To corroborate this insight, we focus on the startling contrasts between Haiti and its next door neighbors, the Dominican Republic.

       In the case of Haiti, the colonialists departed in a huff having suffered a humiliating defeat in the hands of a ragtag military force led by the descendants of Black slaves captured from Africa. Famously dubbed the Black Jacobins after the original French revolutionists by CLR James, the great Trinidadian journalist, intellectual and cricket enthusiast, they overturned the conventional expectations of war by trouncing the better equipped and better trained imperial army of France. They were the precursors of later-day struggles for emancipation and national self-determination by nationalists in Indonesia, Indo-Asia, Algeria, Vietnam and South Africa where native people often fought off their colonial tormentors with bare hands.

      But the imperialists made sure Haiti paid heavily for this contumely. Not only did they subject Haiti to a crippling naval blockade, they imposed impossible war reparations on the new country. Far more damaging is the fact that they made sure they denied the new country the institutional nourishments and state nutrients capable of transforming the stricken enclave into a truly modern nation, knowing fully well that there was no tradition of nation-building and statecraft to full back upon. The new nation of America, despite its revolutionary proclamations about the unalienable rights of humanity, could not be of any help for fear of providing its restive Black populace with a revolutionary leitmotif. Consequently, while the Dominican Republic has managed to transform into a modern nation with relative stability, passable institutions and a functioning democratic arrangement, Haiti is a veritable black hole driven into existential perdition with its harried and harassed denizens fleeing to the Dominican Republic in droves.

       We must thank the 2024 Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences for raising these important issues in an impassioned but uncontroversial manner and for reinserting the subject of global inequities into the hegemonic discourse of Western discursive formation. What they have to say is far more important than how they have to say it. As Fredric Jameson famously avers, “ history will not ignore us however much we choose to ignore it”. By adopting the language of professional academics, the Nobel triad has contextualized for us some of the important dynamics that power the imbalance of economic opportunities and the historical reason behind the continuing hegemonic domination of western societies in our epoch in a way and manner that shun needless controversies and unwarranted opprobrium.

    Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson owe a debt of obligation to scholar titans and writers who have trodden the same path much earlier. For example in a landmark PhD thesis for Oxford University, Eric Williams, the former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, argued convincingly and with a surfeit of data that the abolition of slavery by Britain was not the act of altruistic nobility and exemplary humanism it purports to be but an act of economic pragmatism dictated by the changing dynamics of slave acquisition in an increasingly competitive international market. Earlier in his memoir, Olaudah Equiano, an eighteenth century liberated slave, was so filled with anger and contempt for the civilization and religion of his abductors that he described himself as “a nominal Christian”. Not only that, he made sure that he invested himself with such cosmic and supernatural powers that made it possible for him to rescue and prevent floundering white sailors from perishing at sea.

       As modern day readers, the hugely allegorical nature of Equiano’s outlandish literary conceit should not be lost on us. If western civilization and its purveyors as the acknowledged saviours of humanity are themselves in need of rescue at sea, what is the fate of their transplanted political institutions and colonial nations strewn everywhere across the modern world?  Just because something happened in the past does not mean the same pattern will be repeated in future. Unlike the earlier epoch of human civilization, emerging global trends suggest that there is no super-hegemon nation or society in the horizon capable of re-imposing order on a fractured and fissured world. America is limping, badly hobbled by internal contradictions. In an attempt to restore its geopolitical supremacy, Russia is reduced to fighting a local war which it has not been able to win after two years. Compare this with the great Soviet Union. China is cautiously peeping out, occasionally sabre-rattling but acutely aware that its mighty army remains largely untested. Meanwhile, Israel is busy supervising the Last Supper against a background of huge fireballs of savage destruction in the entire region.

       In the circumstance, viable nations and forward-looking societies are drawing on their inner reserves of strength and visionary energy to plot their way out of the cosmic void. This is why there is so much commotion abroad as each society or group of homogeneous nations try to fashion out what is best for their people. While rooted in current global economic inequality, the contribution of our Nobel laureates is also an unintended nostalgic evocation of a past dominated by the Western consensus. Despite the massive hiccups, western hegemony was good for the modern world. It gave us a new type of nation-state. It also strengthened liberal democracy and its institutions on amenable soils. Unfortunately, despite its posse of creative minds and surfeit of outstanding academics, postcolonial Africa has not been able to throw up its own organic intellectuals. This is the real challenge of the Sweden investiture.

  • Mama Igosun returns to familiar haunts

    Mama Igosun returns to familiar haunts

    You remember her, the old amazon and dreaded warrior from the rural precincts of the sprawling and ungainly municipality of Ibadan? If anybody is thinking that the old girl had been long dead and buried or had succumbed to some fatal frailties or comorbidities of the Covid-19 scourge, such a person had better have a quick rethink. The old lady, fierce and implacable descendant of highly valued and much lionized pre-colonial warriors, was not for turning. The transition from octogenarian to nonagenarian status had been quite traumatic for her.

      Nobody has made that epic landmark in the recent history of the family. Complicating the trauma for her was the loss of her surviving daughter, Mama Kinkinyiun, a scintillating local beauty in her youth who had been forcibly married off to a famous elephant hunter and crack herbalist whose gentle visage and dovish mien belied a capacity for spectacular malignancy. He lived in the bucolic and idyllic village on the bank of the Ishasha River where fish and venison were aplenty in the good old days.

      For days after the death of her daughter, Mama Igosun would lay still in bed, frighteningly still, as if she was about to join her ancestors. Strange women in snow-white apparel would appear by her bedside ministering unto her in her last moments and wishing her sweet and speedy transfer to the arrival hall of transition. Yours sincerely received more than ten urgent messages alerting him of the imminent departure of the last of the remarkable Osungbemileke sisters. And then the old lady would pull back dramatically, moaning for food, softly at first and later with increasing belligerence. More remarkable was the fact that the amazon suddenly regained her Girls Guide gait and bounce as well as the lustrous glow of her timeless skin which further accentuated her deep set Abaja tribal marks. At over a hundred, Mama Igosun looked like a forty year old beauty queen and young women gave her wide berth over rumours that she was indulging in a prehistoric ritual of non-invasive stem engineering where all she had to do was to direct an icy stare at luckless daughters of Eve.

      Last Friday, the matriarch struck just before dawn banging the gates ceaselessly and claiming that she got a ride from a military convoy at Omin-Adio. She had heard the rumour that after the historic deluge, the ocean and lagoon had expelled their best kept secrets from their murky depths and the markets were flooded with all manner of strange creatures and culinary pabambari and other ecological exotica. One woman was selling hippo meat all the way from Jigawa and another was advertising the choicest parts of a so called mammy water hooked by an intrepid fisherman off the Ejinrin deep sea. There was also the reported sighting of the hump of a butchered Supo, a prehistoric monster bird thought to have been hunted into extinction in the seventeenth century. Why all these strange creatures were assembling as if preparing for a historic commune remains a poser to be answered.

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       Mama Igosun immediately headed for the kitchen to raise a local palaver with Okon.

      “ Hunger dey wire me like dis and dis yeye Kukuruku boy still dey sleep. Him dey snore like dem Egbeda thieves”, the old woman screamed at nobody in particular.  Okon, wide-eyed and wide awake but distraught at the prospects, wound up further in bed like a disturbed millipede. Very soon the smell of aromatic herbs and other medieval condiments invaded the place. The old woman was preparing Sukuniyan and Kokoruwa, an ancient delicacy favoured by the people of the interior. Then she exploded.

    “Oponu, abi wetin be dat your funny name again? I give you five minutes to dress up and go market at Majidun for me. Buy crocodile meat, buy Eja abami and hippo for me, and, and..” Okon decided to cut her short.

    “Ha mama, oga no leave money for dat kind thin”, the crazy boy retorted.

    “Meaning what? And wey dem foolish oga?” the old woman raved.

    “And oga don go work.”

     “Which kind yeye work be dat?” the old woman demanded in swooning rage.

     “Ha, oga don become part-time barber for Toyin Street”, Okon sneered.

     “Oosa Anlugba!!! I told dis boy to return to the village!” the old woman wailed and collapsed in a rumpled heap on a nearby sofa. She didn’t wake up until the following morning.     

  • Many Rivers to cross

    Many Rivers to cross

    Once again, Rivers State has erupted in huge fireballs as anarchy and mayhem swept across many of its councils. Bodies littered the corridors and pavements as if hostile troops had just swept through. Elected council chairmen have elected to stay away from their offices creating an impasse of governance. As ungovernability and a breakdown of law and order loom, the dreaded phrase, “state of emergence” has crept into the lexicon of dominant discourse all over again. The fear of the main gladiators is not about the fate of democracy in the greatest conglomeration of black people but a change in the sitting arrangement at dinner and the positioning of apex predators at the buffet queue.

     Unfortunately, the wager is that this will not be the last eruption in Rivers State. There are many rivers to cross in Rivers and for a “more perfect” democratic process in Nigeria, potentially and arguably the greatest Black nation on earth, a tribute to the subversive imaginary of the colonialists and capacity for inventive self-undermining. It has been said that if Nigeria does not exist, a commodious and expansive nation like this will have to be willed into existence by visionary African emancipators to represent the Black person and his interest in the final working out of the occidental dominance of the universe.

      Readers should note that this column has not mentioned democracy but “the democratic process”. Given the recrudescence of military coups in many African countries, the authoritarian populist backlash against democracy in many European, Asian and Latin American countries and the threat of Donald Trump to turn America into an anti-democratic, authoritarian conglomeration of ethnic deadwood and underachieving racist bigots, the plight of democracy these days remind one of a quote often misattributed to Herman Goering, the late NAZI chieftain who transformed from an aviator hero of the German people during the First World War to a dope-crazed sybaritic punk as Hitler’s deputy. Goering was said to have famously exploded that whenever he heard the word culture, he always reached for his gun. It is to be hoped that the same fate does not overtake democracy.

      There is as yet no ideal democratic society anywhere in the world. At best, democracy remains a permanent work in progress. Dating back to the time of the Greek utopianists, the idea of people’s power(Demos and cratos) is an appealing and winning combination indeed, targeting the subliminal yearnings of all humanity for freedom. No human system has been put together, not even the Chinese authoritarian populism, that is superior to democracy in terms of its capacity for the egalitarian redistribution of societal privileges. It is left for each society to fashion out which mode of democracy is best suited to the pressing and urgent needs of their people based on the correct political architecture of the nation. A society engaged in a quest for democracy in the face of dire structural misconfiguration of the nation is engaged in a forlorn Sisyphean quest. Rapid economic transformation may blunt the rough edges for some time and lure the people into the quietude of self-sufficiency but they will rear their head again once acute scarcity due to political de-formation reappears.

       Why is it that Rivers State, the colonial jewel in Nigeria’s crown with its storied Garden City and glittering pearl of its postcolonial petrodollar possibilities, ever a recurring decimal of political violence and destabilization in Nigeria’s post-military Fourth Republic? Is there something about this unflattering development that is symptomatic of the democratic hiatus in Nigeria’s post-military dispensation? To be sure, gladiators on both sides of the political divide in Rivers State have cast themselves in heroic and iconic garbs. On the one side are those who believe they are acting as liberators of their people from the clutches of ethnic domination and tyranny. On the other side are those who purport to defend the rule of law and democratic order. Both are false garbs and nothing can be further from the truth. Political battles are often fought under certain occlusions which preclude actors from seeing themselves the way they truly are. The hard truth is that what is going on in the Rivers state is the struggle for the allocation of resources and who gets what and at what time. As it often occurs in politics, the end-result may manifest some of the stated ideals but only as by-products of the real contestation.

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       As our readers will attest, this column does not dwell on individuals or personalities. Individuals are important only to the extent that they illuminate the political and historical process. The classic summation of the materialist reading of historical developments is that people make history but not under the circumstances of their choice. In our commentary so far about the crisis in the Rivers State as it unfolded, we had cautioned the minister of the Federal Capital Territory to exercise some restraint and rectitude over his occasionally intemperate outbursts and barely disguised attempt to exercise political overlordship in a state whose reins of power he had willingly ceded to his political godson and self-designated successor, Siminilayi Fubara. If the optics of Wike’s political one-upmanship didn’t look too good then, the auguries have gone dire with the latest development. Please permit us to quote this column at some length.

    “It is not known whether Nyesom Wike, the current minister of the Federal Capital Authority, immediate past governor of Rivers State and –as some would insist—the de facto third term governor of the state, is trained to read political signboards or savvy enough to decode horoscopes of impending disaster. One thing is clear. The fascination of a moth with fireballs always leads to self-immolation” 9/4/2023. One line from that piece that continues to haunt even the writer in its prescience and premonition is this: “Despite his official protestations of peace and harmony, it is only a question of time before Fubara pulls the trigger”.

       Fubara duly pulled the trigger last week in what appeared to be a seamlessly choreographed political demolition of his former master and presumptive patron. He had managed to organize local government elections while his old boss was waiting for the law and the rule of law to come to his aid.  In the light of the overwhelming popular acceptance which seems to confer a solid legitimacy on the polls, the recourse to legalistic obscurantism may well be akin to pursuing historical chimeras. In the strange feudalization of politics in the post-military dominion, it is becoming an established tradition that the king must die for his successor to thrive, whereas in more traditional societies, a possible successor must be out of the sights of the reigning king or he will come to grievous harm. As Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the founding father of Ivory Coast, famously retorted: A Baole Chief does not know his successor. And he never did until he breathed his last, plunging his nation into a monumental crisis of succession which eventually led to civil war and a brief partitioning of the country.

      In Rivers State since the advent of civil rule and increasingly in the rest of the country, the successor must not know the former king. He must be killed off politically or perish in less amenable circumstances. Thus in the beginning, Peter Odili begat Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi his former PA and office boy who threw him off the cliff.  Rotimi Amaechi begat Nyesom Wike who tomahawked him in the manner of Red Indian head-hunters.  And now Wike begat Sim Fubara who ran him out of town wailing and gnashing his teeth with a carving knife sticking out. Having been demystified in his home base, no matter the outcome of the court case, Wike for now should avoid lending a helping hand to his numerous political adversaries.

      It will be extremely politically naïve and utterly presumptuous of the former governor of Rivers State to imagine that he can second-guess his current patron or corral him into underwriting his political misadventure. The former governor of Lagos State is an extremely dexterous and multi-dimensional political poker player who can deal several apparently countervailing cards at the same time. As the male servant in The Labyrinth of the General will put it: “ Only my master knows what my master is thinking about”. It is possible, just possible, that while Wike is completely obsessed and consumed by his political offensive against Fubara and his core supporters, his boss may be looking ahead to reaching political accommodation with the fourth largest ethnic nationality in the nation. The Ijaw people did not obstruct his path to the presidency. They looked the other way while controversial presidential election took place in the state.  With the South East already on a virtual war footing, alienating such an important ethnic bloc with its volatile and combustible personalities will amount to a costly strategic error in the rocky days ahead.

    We can now end by speculating on just what type of national legacy brings about the type of politics on display in Rivers State which is as mean-spirited just as it is murky and murderous. Needless to add that it is also generally symptomatic of political developments in post-military Nigeria. Like a virus that has infected the entire society, the type of guardroom and garrison politics bequeathed to the nation by the protracted stretch of military rule takes time to work out of the body politic. One of the outstanding deficiencies is the decline and death of ideology.  Ideology, or fanatical attachment and devotion to a set of ideas, is the glue that binds politicians of different and contrasting personality-types together in the name of an ideal that transcends individual peculiarities.

       Ideology is the secret weapon of the modern party. A rational human being just must believe in something and have a vision of the society they want. Parties without ideologies are nothing but elite conspiracies to appropriate power for the purpose of unfettered access to state resources. Up to a point, ideologies worked in the First and Second Republics in ensuring party cohesion and internal order. This was particularly true of the Action Group and the Unity Party of Nigeria. Until it was sundered by external pressures and the resurgence of personality differences, the Action Group was a modern wonder of cohesion, internal discipline and organizational acumen.

      Unfortunately, the inauspicious corollary of the collapse of ideology in Nigeria’s post-military polity is the sheer indifference and lethargic apathy to party cadre recruitment and rigorous leadership selection. Since nature abhors a vacuum, the yawning gap is filled by an ethnic revanchism of the most violent and virulent type and a growing cult of personality at all levels which conduce to a further problematization of the intractable National Question. In such circumstances, it is almost impossible to produce a transcendental leadership except by miraculous default which cannot be discounted given Nigeria’s legendary capacity to soar above the flames of its own self-immolation. Taken together, it can now be seen why there are still many perilous rivers to cross both in Rivers State and the rest of the nation.

  • Okon is floored by Saro woman

    Okon is floored by Saro woman

    Dawn brings several premonitions and its own apparitions. Nothing stalks an impoverished citizenry more than the fear of a new day. The dawn of misery or the misery of dawn strikes terror in the heart of those newly promoted to the brackets of the broke and broken. The fear is real and palpable. Nothing is more daunting than returning to the same urban déclassé you thought you had left behind, ages ago, or the prospects of being welcomed back to the garrets by the multi-ethnic underclass. There are people you have not seen in ages who welcome you back with genuine conviviality and much warmth. Unlike you they have never bothered with the rat race and are very happy with their unhappy lot, knowing fully well that the sewage rat never races far ahead of the slum cat. It is a question of time and timing.

       This Thursday morning, although dawn had broken, you were still curled up in bed with no incentive to get up, apprehensive that the people playing with petrol had come up with another punitive increase, the last one coming only the previous day. It was getting to crunch time and the least of your worries was your once leafy and gentrified suburb which had suffered a historic loss of status, category and classification due to a mammoth influx of hoodlums, vagrants, yobos, hobos, yokels and ethnic savages from the outer margins of hell. They loiter about and march up and down the streets in a threatening manner with daggers dangling out of their dishevelled pockets. They had materialized out of nowhere as if by some mysterious call up. The more purposeful had set up shop on all available spots, offering services ranging from ritual barbing, shoe-shining, car-washing, house-cleaning and the odd horticulture.

       All of a sudden, the early morning bliss was shattered by the noise of rowdy commotion just beyond the gate. At first you thought it was the usual antics of the crazy dustbin woman who usually wakes you up with a lisping torrent of subversive commentaries on the state of the nation. But upon drawing the shutter, it was the sight of Okon crumpled on the asphalt with the Saro woman pummeling him and screaming hysterically.

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       “Oga, come carry your boy before Saro woman kill am oo. Calabar boy don go carry firewood with dem mad red ants oo. I never see something like dis one. Man dey bottom and woman dey for top. He get as he come be oo”, the half-crazed dustbin woman screamed with satanic relish.

         “Stupid man. I don tell you say I don dey soak your garri, abi no be so?” the hefty woman from Freetown yelled in Creole lingo as she rained more heavy-duty blows on Okon, “if na your mama you fit hit am with useless Yoruba juju, abi?” the Saro woman insisted as she was pulled up by good Samaritans. Okon fled inside the house nursing a black eye and swollen lips. Snooper gave him the tongue-lashing of his life.

       “So Okon what happened? I thought you said you were a champion wrestler?” yours sincerely sneered.

        “Oga na Lamidi give man dem Yoruba juju dem dey call gbadigbadi. Him say anybody I whacked for him bottom him go follow me quick quick”. Lamidi Alekuso, the old NNDP thug who doubled as driver, quickly sprang to his feet.

         “Akanbi, no be so. I tell the nyaminrin man say ingredient never complete. With dem climate change and so so rain everyday leaves don they sleep for forest. Ewe sunko ni”, the old partisan of the wetie conflagration drawled in senile mischief.

         “Did you take his money?” yours sincerely demanded.

         “Ha, baba, if passenger no enter vehicle wetin concern Olomolanke?” ( truck pusher) the old crook from Akanran whined with a devilish grin and slipped away.