The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • The enduring allure of aurochs

    The enduring allure of aurochs

    In search of our great ancestors

    As Nigeria celebrated its sixty fourth independence anniversary this past Tuesday, the usual grumblings, rumblings and dark mutterings about the less than enviable circumstances of the nation reached a crescendo. This is not just a matter of elite self-flagellation.  The lower masses, battered by political, social, economic adversities and spiritual disorientation, also indulge in self-pity and mournful excoriations of their tormentors. In a weird scenario of self-exculpation, elite fulmination about the state of the country develop a sonorous din terminating in rancorous debates distinguished by their partisan furies.

      And that is without any sense of irony. The people of the South West have a way of describing the farcical pathos. “Ajala, who is it that has beaten you this black and blue?” they asked the poor battered fellow obviously thinking he would be fazed and browbeaten into submission. “Isn’t it you?”(Eyin naa nuu) the young man retorted damning the consequences. Nigeria’s post-independence political elite bear the responsibility for taking the nation to the cleaners. You cannot beat a child and expect it not to cry. Yet they feign ignorance and even innocence of their monumental heists.

      As a guru of ill-tempered grouching and foul recriminations, yours sincerely can attest to the fact that the last anniversary Nigerians spent relatively free of rancour and sulphurous ventilations was in October 1974 exactly fifty years ago. That was in the last phase of Gowon’s administration. Even then, there were already dark clouds in the horizon as Gowon’s political judgment and weak-willed inability to rein in his key lieutenants came under increasingly strident criticism from the press and the public. But the national fiscal binge and the feel-good factor occasioned by multiple digit growth obscured the rumbling.

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      However, by October the following year, Gowon had been swept away from power by a coterie of junior colleagues. There was a brief and momentary respite in October, 1985 when the image of a newly emplaced Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida thoroughly drenched in drizzling rain and refusing all entreaties to leave became a fetching symbol of renewed hope and national rejuvenation. But it all proved a tragic chimera as the SAP regimen took hold and the national mood soured and sullied all over again. What eventually did it for Babangida was his phantom transition programme which was designed and executed as a terrifying cul de sac, beginning from nowhere and leading to nowhere.  A people can endure economic brutalization for some time, but not when it is combined with political brutalization.

    As a ringside observer of the Nigerian predicament in the past fifty years beginning from undergraduate insurgency to full blown political dissidence, one has been busy inveigling and denouncing the dire fate that has overtaken the nation through regular critiques at strategic independence anniversary.

      In 1984, in a special edition commissioned by the Newswatch quartet of Dele Giwa, Dan Agbese, Ray Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed to commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of the nation coming up the following year, the columnist described the nation as a confounding and compelling paradox. After publication, Dele Giwa, in a thank you letter, described the piece as by far the best and most memorable in the entire collection. Ten years after in another specially commissioned piece for Africa Today, the London-based magazine, to mark the thirty fifth anniversary of the nation, yours sincerely dismissed the country as a giant toddler trundling about unable to get up and go. By then, the national mood had darkened considerably. Dele Giwa had long been violently dispatched to join his ancestors. In a matter of weeks, Ken Saro-Wiwa would follow.

    The entire nation cowered under the despotic and brutal sledgehammer of General Sani Abacha. Yet in a cruel irony, there is an emerging consensus that the Kano-born goggled one ran the best economy of the whole lot of them with the exchange rate stable throughout his tenure and inflation kept at bay despite his periodic sieges on the Exchequer. Notoriously tightfisted at the personal level, Abacha forbade anyone born of a mortal to join him in his raids on the treasury. Only those who militarily and professionally threatened his suzerainty, or those who cunningly attempted to ambush him in his barely disguised quest to rule the nation in perpetuity were made to pay a prohibitive price. But once again and Nigerians being a politically-minded people, it was this attempt to abolish them politically that cast a dark pall on his tenure and not how he ran the economy.

       Having thrown everything one can imagine at the nation at independence over the decades with risible and negligible results, one has come to the damning conclusion that the obdurate has finally met the obstinate. As they say in this part of the nation, it is the person scooping away water from the ocean that will be exhausted and not the inexhaustible stuff. Why not try something else this time around, an inner voice admonished. Upon further troubled ruminations on this historic quandary, one was struck by a flash of illumination. It was at this point that the gargantuan image of aurochs came looming in the horizon.

       The fate of historically distressed and acutely discomfited nations reminds one of the plight of aurochs just before they were hunted into extinction in Central Europe. The last one was killed in what is now Poland in a forest in 1627. But what are aurochs?  Aurochs, or erus as they were known to the early Germans, were the savage and primitive progenitors of the modern-day cattle or cow. It must be observed that some researchers have objected to this classification, insisting that the utterly pliable domesticated modern cow is too docile and amenable to have descended from the fierce and fearsome aurochs. They must have come from a dwarf sub-species bred and domesticated for the purpose of human use and consumption in Europe before being infiltrated into other parts of the globe.

    Ruggedly inured to pains, solidly standing and just below the average elephant in height, built like an ancient Soviet tank and primed for murderous exertions like a heavyweight boxer on steroids, the aurochs was not a sight to contemplate in philosophical equanimity or beheld in wondrous awe. It was the acknowledged master of the ancient jungle far more punitively proactive than the elephant which is normally a very intelligent and peaceful animal until it is rubbed the wrong way. Described by Julius Caesar as fearing neither man nor beast, this impressive beast roamed far and wide in the jungle spreading panic and havoc until it became a threat to humans and the eco system.’

      Yet in a curious development, some scientists are attempting to summon aurochs back to life through genetic cross-pairing with its old DNA in an effort to “rewild” European forests. This may well be a Freudian yearning. There may well be a deeply spiritual dimension to the crisis of modern civilization which cannot be explained away by recourse to regular religion. In many spiritual circles, aurochs are revered symbols of potency, virility and power. Given dire developments in contemporary European and American politics, particularly the attenuation and miniaturization of their leading political figures, it is obvious that the entire European and American political eco system and their hysterical eco-chambers need a genetic rewiring—-or “rewilding” as the case may be— to make a dent on their monumental social, economic and political predicaments. Europe and America need a return of their human aurochs, those world-historic personages who dictated the pace of human development in earlier epochs.

     Given the circumstances and the totality of western dominance in human affairs in the last six hundred years, the fate of the African continent particularly its seething summit of human conglomeration like Nigeria cannot be more concerning. The disarticulation of Africa’s recent history from its remote antiquity as a result of colonial incursion has left a wide gulf that has made it impossible to plot the linkage between even its ecological past and the present. But there is still a lot of architecture in the historic ruins and catacombs of calamity. In all likelihood, Aurochs, or certain genetic cousins, must have roamed the wilderness of the continent in an earlier age before inhospitable conditions made it impossible for them to survive.

        Whatever their excesses and foibles all societies need their larger than life, extra-dimensional figures to set agenda. When they go beyond their remit or exhaust their political and historical possibilities, countervailing forces set in to put them in their place. But they act to push history along towards new vistas and society towards fresh horizons. Africa has produced its own surfeit of human aurochs even if many of them are shrouded in myth and mystery. Their heroic and Herculean exertions at the behest of their societies continue to reverberate across time and zone. The urgent task at hand is for African nationalists to commit to an intellectual excavation of the heroics and derring-do of these great sons and daughters of Africa as tropes of redemption and restoration in a world in which the Black person has become an endangered species.

      These remote and ancient avatars are spread across the length and breadth of what has come to be known as Nigeria and it suggests that no pre-colonial Nigerian society had a monopoly of heroism. Among these mighty aurochs are: Oduduwa, Moremi, Oranmiyan, Shango, Oba Ovonramwen, Nana Olomu, Queen Amina, Nana Asmau, King Jaja, Reverend Ransome-Kuti, Lisabi Agbongbon, Sodeke, the remarkable Egba leader and the literary trio of Equiano, Cuguano and Sancho, former slaves and early superpowers of the pen who seized London saloons by the scruff of the neck with their bewitching exotica in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century .

    A river which refuses to acknowledge its source and tributaries is most likely going to disappear. If they are minded to protect and project the heroic heritage of the nation and inaugurate a new national narrative, the federal authorities should commission some of the nation’s seasoned historians to write annotated biographies of these great men and women as a way of acknowledging the labours of our heroes past. With the entire world in the grip of a new emergency that bespeaks a momentous paradigm shift, it is morning yet on creation day for the continent of Africa.

  • Beyond World War 111

    Beyond World War 111

    The prospects for peace in our time, either with honour or without honour dim. The hopes of global statesmen and international diplomats for a rational resolution of the Middle East meltdown pall rather frighteningly. As Iranian ballistic missiles rain over Israel for the first time since the Islamic Revolution in response to Israel’s high-tech blitz of the entire region, it is obvious that human history is entering into a new type of violent contention the likes of which has never been seen before. Men, munitions and materials will be surplus to requirement as the latest war technology battle antediluvian methodology of warfare.  Districts, suburbs, city centres and even whole nations will exist today only to become huge hollow craters the following morning with youths and toddlers eking out a truly feral existence on the margins of the apocalypse. In its horrific butchery, it is going to be the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again, except that this time around there will be no designed battle zone and civilian casualties will outnumber dead soldiers. Welcome to the Third World War and the global Fourth World.

      In such circumstances when global conflagration appears inevitable, seasoned diplomats have a field day trying to spin their way through the murderous mess. Enter Thomas R. Pickering. Pickering is a well-respected impressively credentialed senior American diplomat and international conciliator with considerable intellectual acumen. The burly envoy is also a past master of the classic diplomat gobbledygook. When he was asked by Aljazeera on Thursday evening whether he didn’t think Benjamin Netanyahu’s documented evasions of President Joe Biden and refusal to pick the American president’s calls constitute a calculated snub, Pickering’s poker-faced response was that “the evidence of action is not the action of evidence.”  Can some of our esteemed readers help in decoding, deciphering or declassifying this diplomatic cable?

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      In our previous commentaries on the worsening political situation in the Middle East, we came to the following conclusions and while we give a rehash of the main points, the various principalities in the conflict will do well to note. In seven decades of turbulent and traumatic existence, Israel has transformed into a new type of warrior-state never seen before in modern history. As a nation, it is imbued with a new strain of the mesada complex and will fight until the last man falls off the cliff rather than surrender or moderate its point of view. This poses a grave threat and danger to global peace and the post World War 11 consensus.

      As we have said here before, the civilized world will give a wide berth to and grant free passage to a disturbed person armed with nukes rather than risk going down with him in a nuclear confrontation in which no one would be standing. The emergence of another disturbed person with nukes will not deter Israel. In its psychosis of belligerence, it will just mean the more the merrier. There is a lot to be admired about the nation of Israel. The spectacular strides it has taken, both militarily and economically, within such a relatively short spell, remains unequalled and unrivalled in the annals of modern civilization. But in creating this extraordinary and exceptional nation, the hegemonic western powers, always too clever by half, might have created the condition for their own superannuation. Hegemony is not always a question of raw power. Israel is the nemesis of western civilization.

      As for the Arab and the ancient Persian communities, it is time to cut their losses and seek a peaceful resolution of the murderous conundrum in order to live to fight another day. Israel does not take hostages and will not bat an eyelid about obliterating the entire enemy territory. There can be no doubt that Israel has won this round of the war among genetic siblings. As long as America supports Israel, it is going to be an unequal struggle until America is probably taken down by its own internal contradictions. It is time for the emergence of a new generation of pragmatic Arab and Iranian leaders who will see beyond the current piteous humiliation of their people the possibility of a new beginning with modernity in all its ramifications.                                                                                                               

  • On the painful construction of hegemony

    On the painful construction of hegemony

    Retrospect and Prospects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • A Beggars’ Opera for Gani

    A Beggars’ Opera for Gani

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Ekimogun omo alagbede, omo Lisa Alujonnu, omo Seriki Tugbogbo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Baba wetin be nabi?” Okon demanded.

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

    “Wetin be karuwa?” Okon asked in alarm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • First published in 2010

  • And there shall be music again

    And there shall be music again

    The rise of Nigeria to global cultural stardom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Tales from the land of the returnable

    Tales from the land of the returnable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Re: Global Disorder and its Localities

    Re: Global Disorder and its Localities

    I  was filled  with  joy on one hand and sadness on the other  hand during  and  after reading  your articles: Global Disorder and its Localities of 4th August 2024, & Symptoms of National  Distress- On the Need  for a More Equal Society August 11, 2024 in The Nation newspaper.

    I was happy  because the articles  discussed  international and domestic issues that  are of  great  interest  to me, but became sad and worried  because  of the highly perilous state of affairs both at home and abroad. Both articles were intellectually stimulating.

    One points to the interrelationship between international developments and domestic affairs, and why one cannot afford to ignore the other. We must all be on guard. For instance, while Kenya was boiling in far away East Africa, Israel was pounding Gaza mercilessly and Ukraine had been bleeding from Russian drawn daggers, there was nationwide strike in Nigeria, organised by some groups under the aegis of youth.

    The implication even extends further: Nigeria is a large country of many ethnic groups, but it would be fool-hardy for one section to ignore the event, especially the riots happening in other parts. This calls for unity of purpose and action at home.

    The other article identified  many  problems  in the country which it sees as SYMPTOMS OF NATIONAL DISTRESS which should  awaken us to positive actions for a better country  or “a more equal society”.

    Your observation that the “world is a very dangerous place” today and stress on the need for “Nigeria to get its act together as the greatest conglomeration of black souls anywhere in the world and the Mecca of the black person and magnetic hub for the injured  and dispossessed  in the race” was very apt and resonated with me.

    I agree with your point in the “Symptoms of National Distress… The Nation 11.8.24 that “the upshot of all this is that Nigeria needs and deserves a new economic deal.  Fortunately, there is opportunity in every crisis – after all “a week is long in politics”. President Tinubu should make use of the respite to go back to the drawing board in order to come up with a more socially responsive economic programme”.

    Here I shall call for ideological shift from the present neo-liberal market ideology to Mixed Economy ideology of the old time before the 1980s, with emphasis on apt leadership, effective management of resources, good governance, equitable justice, respect for the rule of law and compliance with the provisions of the constitution of Nigeria.

    On the whole, I find the two articles  to be patriotic offerings worthy  of commendation  to all Nigerians, especially to the political leaders at this time when the nation appears to be gasping for oxygen for life from the rough and painful grip of what  I see as “wrong ideas and inappropriate ideology of development” (Abhuere 2023).

    Just about the time you published your articles, other things of historical interest happened to expand the scope of these notes. Israel remained unrelenting in its genocidal expeditions to the Gaza home land. At home, a group of respectable citizens under the name of Patriots  led by the highly  respected Chief Emeka  Anyaoku a former  Secretary  General  of the Common Wealth paid a visit  to Aso Rock  Villa to press for  the writing  of a new  constitution.

    That was at a time when some citizens were staging a nationwide protest against what they call “bad governance and hardship” in the country.  And the public was expressing much concern, anger and disappointment with  the fat salaries or emoluments of lawmakers in Nigeria, which do not gel with the idea of a “more equal society” canvassed by you in one of the articles under reference.

    I have evaluated the position of the patriots but unable to see how their proposal would assist the national cause and the charge of bad governance and hardship against the government or reduce the lawmakers’ huge pay. I have my reservation and shall discuss it in the course of writing these notes.

    For me, something  much deeper  and more fundamental was needed, such as Tatalo’s idea of Nigeria “getting  its act together”  say by doing  good governance, able leadership, effective management of resources, equitable justice, etc.

    Perhaps even more urgent is the need for the government to come up with what the author called “socially responsive economic programme”

    As hinted earlier, there would have to be ideological shift from what it is now – a harsh, soulless form, to something much more humane, accommodating and rewarding. In short, we need a shift from ideology of neo-liberalism to mixed economy in order to enable policies to wear human face.

    To accommodate these diverse interests, these notes are divided into two parts.  Part 1 concentrates on the issues raised by Tatalo Alamu, while  part 2 is devoted  to other  sundry  issues  that  are equally germane to the survival  and progress of Nigeria and global peace.

    The call by the author for “Nigeria to get its act together” with “socially responsive economic programme” should be taken seriously. It deserves urgent attention. The issues of his concern carry a sense of urgency. For this reason, I will start off with a consideration of this proposal and end it with a call for ideological shift from what it is now-Neo-Liberalism to what it should be: mixed-economy ideological approach to national development.

    A call for Nigeria to ‘get its act together’: The need for better ideology of development

    Nigeria is faced with many problems today. Perhaps the most acute of them is ideological problem. The country is faced with serious ideological crisis that has resulted in embarrassing shortage of supply of essential goods and services in the country. This has resulted in hunger, higher prices of available goods and services, higher cost of living, inflation, currency devaluation, high rate of unemployment, collective hardship, social unrest, and protest.

    The starting point in dealing with the country’s numerous problems, especially underdevelopment problems of Nigeria, notably poverty, unemployment, insecurity, corruption, disunity is with the proper organisation of the country and its resources by the political elite.  But we lack the organizational skills and ability as well as the ideological  tool to  deal with identified problems. This requires scaling up both the ideological and organizational skills and abilities in the country for optimal performance.

    Lack of organizational ability

    Nigeria lacks the organizational ability to mobilise available resources for growth and development. Her major problem is with the poor nature of organization on ground. It is about how available resources in the country have been used over time. The prevalent ideology of the country – neo-liberalism – excludes the state from economically productive activities thereby contributing to the problem of acute shortage of supplies  in the country.

    Organization can simply be understood as an “organised group of people with resources to achieve a common goal” or objective. This can be a business outfit, a church or a country. In management, organization is “the process of structuring, planning, and directing the resources and members of the organization to achieve its goal.

    It is said to be an important function of management that “involves developing  an organizational structure and allocating  human resources and other resources of work to ensure the accomplishment of objectives” or collectively set vision. It is a tool to minimise waste of time, optimise “use of resources through meticulous planning.”

    As experts have observed, good organization allows for “effective flow of communication amongst departments and control of activities at the workplace”. It “reduces confusion, conflict, duplication” and gives a clear description of what is to be done and how it should be done. In short it is important for “oganizing resources, jobs, staff,  work_ and it is  generally  seen as the most  important  function  of management  after  planning (study.com>learn>organizational, www.investopedia.com > terms >o…www.quora.com>what-is- the imp…)

    Basically  the problem of Nigeria  has been the lack of ability to organize its resources. This includes ideas of development, ideological path or approach to economic management and production of goods and services, etc. For instance for over 40 years, we have failed to use the tools of the state to maximum advantage in the name of neo liberal market ideology.

    For instance, looking back at the last Olympics in Paris, France, it is easy to see organizational shoddiness or lapses at work. Superior organizational  ability explains  why  the US  and China – two very populous  countries dominated the medal  table in the last  Olympics  held in Paris,  France while  Nigeria  with its huge  population  and vast land  could not win  a medal- not even  a bronze. There was no ideological bond and discipline to win.

    Against the background of acute deficiency of organizational ability and disfunctionality of institutions of state, I agree with Tatalo Alamu’s call on Nigeria to ge t”its act together” and come up with “socially responsive economic programme”.

    Towards this end, Nigeria needs a better ideology of development or some ideological shift from  what  it is now to something much  better  and more rewarding  to our society. Precisely, Nigeria needs to adopt a mixed economy ideological approach to her nation building efforts. More on this later.

    Ideological crisis

    Perhaps the best starting point is to recognize that the country has been faced with acute ideological crisis over time, especially since the 1980s. And there can be no much progress without the correct or proper resolution of the crisis. A major problem of Nigeria has been wrong or inappropriate ideology of development.

    The present purely market-driven approach to the management of the economy which was imposed on the country by the military government in the mid-1980s on the pressure of some Western institutions and leaders had disappointed the collective expectations of citizens beyond reason. It must be replaced with a better one.

    The importance of appropriate ideology in nation building cannot be over-stressed. In a word, a good ideology is important in defining the pathway for a group of people, aids discipline, greater commitment to set goals and better organization of resources. That is why we are concerned with the kind of ideology in place in Nigeria today.

    A wrong ideology can lead a group to disastrous consequences. From all indications, the present neo-liberal market ideology in Nigeria has been harsh, stifling and demotivating. It is a wrong one for the country.

    Disadvantages of neo-liberal market ideology in Nigeria

    The neo-liberal market ideology has many disadvantages in Nigeria. For instance, it excludes the state from business and weakens it from playing its leadership role in the development process of the country .Yet the state has more clout  and easier access to obtain international grants for investible funds, credit facilities, more educated hands than most private investors. Yet the state was created to provide security of life and property and to develop society. The current neo-liberal ideology is not in tune with our communal way of living in Nigeria but onlly an advance of western core value of individualism.

    Also it has been heavily associated with exploitation, corruption, an uncaring attitude to the poor and weak, and exhibit injustice in the distribution of resources. It is largely about the survival of the fittest with little or no regard for the low and unfit. It promotes greed and had indeed disappointed the country badly leading to protests, strikes, hardship and shortage of supplies.

    Lest we are misunderstood, we are not saying that the Neo-Liberal ideology has not worked for some people or countries. What we are saying is that it has not lived up to our collective expectation in Nigeria. In other words, it is not that the Neo-Liberal carpitalist market model has been bad everywhere or not produced success elsewhere. The fact is that it has not served Nigeria’s cause or purpose well. This has been  the major  problem  with   neo liberalism  in Nigeria. It breeds anti-people development policies that lead to hardship and protest.

    It will be recalled that when the neo liberal market ideology was imposed on Nigeria through the Structural Adjustment  Programme (SAP) in the mid1980s, its proponents who rejected the recommendation of the Political Bureau for the nation to toe the socialist path promised  El-Dorado  for the country. But so far -after about forty years of its steady application, the capitalist market model has only landed us in Golgotha-the land of skulls perhaps for crucifixion and fed us with gull instead of honey.

    Its shock therapies had shocked many to death and caused much dislocation, instability, misery and agony in the country. Its awful effects led to the last nationwide protest in Nigeria. That is why it should be changed or improved with some populist policies or what Tatalo Alamu refers to as “socially responsive economic programme”.

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    Importance  of ideology in nation  building

    As observed  earlier, the importance  of appropriate  ideology  in  nation  building  cannot  over- stressed.As  I have explained  elsewhere, the nature of the prevalent ideology  is important  because  of “its power of collective action and discipline” and its influence  on policy making  and direction.

    As a “set of political beliefs or ideas that characterize  a particular culture”, ideology informs  the basis of policy making and actions of society. It can  can also be understood as  a  “collection  of shared ideas, values and beliefs which  inform the way  some people  live and the  decisions  they make and their actions”.

    To this  extent, ideology  is important in defining  the pathway for  a group of people. And that  is why  we must  be careful in choosing  or toeing any ideological  path because of its critical role in society. The goal is to adopt a correct  or an  appropriate ideological approach to national unity, development and survival.

    There  are reasons  to argue  that  not much  care  was taken  in the national  interest  in mid 1980s  to  adopt the present neo-liberal  capitalist  ideology  by the Military  government with its very  hurtful Structural  Adjustment Program. It was a military  imposition  reflecting  the pet values  of  some few top military  officers under  the influence of some external  forces and western propaganda.

    Among others  it led to the devaluation of the Naira, privatization  of  many  public  enterprises, commercialization of of services,  many jobs  losses, general hardship as a result  of high cost of living.The path way to hardships  and instability  has been laid.

    Before  that time, Nigeria  practiced an ideology  of mixed  economy- a hybrid  of socialism  and capitalism. It was suitable  and convenient  as we operated under  the  Non- aligned  movement by countries  which wanted  to avoid a severe  knock by either  the USA  or USSR(now dissolved) -two hostile  fierce fighters  of the cold War  at the time. It was also  suitable  to our ordinary  communal way  of living  that  enables individuals  to do business  as well as being their  brothers’ keepers.

    Monopoly  of trade is bad  for  society.

    In a way, the neo-liberal ideology  had held  a monopoly  position  in Nigeria  since  the mid  1980s. Monopoly of trade is bad. Ideological monopoly  of people  mind and way of life is even worse especially  it produces  hurtful  consequences for society  always. That is why  I do not  like either the monopoly of the market(capitalism) or the monopoly  of the  state (socialism) in business.

    It is not that  either  of them had  failed  in producing  the desired results everywhere.   No  each  had its  own  peculiar blessing. For instance both  the USA a largely   market driven  economy, and China a state driven economy did very  well in the last  Olympics in France. It would appear  from history  that  the success  or failure of any ideological  approach  depends largely  on the quality  of leadership, management, governance  and organizational skills and ability available.

    However  some of them are better  or more  specific  and suitable  to some areas than others. Apart  from the fact  that  Nigeria  has been  highly  deficient in   leadership, management  and governance, justice skills  and abilities, the truth  is  that unless  combined, either  capitalism  or socialism  is  unfit and unsuitable  for Nigeria.

    Ordinarily, I do not mind  any   ideological orientation in place as long as it is not against national interest, the health  and happiness of citizens and  their active  participation in the development process  of society. This has been  the  problem  of the country : its  current  ideology  of development  has been largely injurious to the  nation’s interest.

    The neo-liberal  capitalist  ideology  has been  deeply   hurtful  to the interest  of the country  and  injurious  to the happiness  and welfare  of  citizens. History  shows  the weakness of socialism if not tamed. It easily assumes  totalitarian garb and curtailment of human rights.

    Adoption of mixed economy ideological  approach

    The lessons  of history  and experience suggest that  we adopt  a mixed  economy  ideology  today.The country  has been  faced  with  acute  ideological  crisis  over time especially  since  the 1980s. Based on  the  dismal  failure  of neo-liberal ideological  approach  to lead or guide the country to the achievement  of  set  goal in general  and its proneness  to crisis  and instability, Nigerian leaders should  change  their ideology of development  to mixed Economy  ideology and ideological approach  to the management  of the country.

    This has many  advantages. For instance, it will allow  for the better  mobilization and utilization of resources for nation building including the instrument of the state which had be in slumbering limbo for the past  four decades.

    The idea to relegate  the state  to the background  of nation building  remains a serious ideological  mistake till date. It was  made by our leaders  largely  because  of the undue pressures  from western  leaders,  financial institutions and their relentless  Press propaganda.

    There was the repeated  falsehood preached  and popularised by British and American leaders  such as Mrs Margaret  Thatcher-a former Prime  Minister of Britain and Mr Ronald Reagan – a former  President  of USA to the effect that the “state  has no business  with  doing  business”. It became  the sing song of many  countries including  Nigeria,  But the leaders  were only  just  being  ideological as  ideologues  of capitalism.

    Properly understood the state  was  created  to lead the development  of society. This includes  doing  business if deemed  necessary.

    As studies  have  shown the state  “played leading role  in laying the economic  foundation  of the United  States of America” after Independence.

    In  Europe  the state  as represented  by Monarchy sponsored  most  of the exploration  expeditions abroad  in the earlier centuries that boosted trade at home. . And today  the state  is still  active  by filling  up the gaps  the private  investors  are unable  or unwilling  to close. Society  is large  or big  enough  to accommodate all comers-state and private  investors.

    The role  of the state  ought  to be more  self-evident  in the  former colonial  countries  that are  today  independent  for a number  of reasons including (a) weak capitalist  structure  and financial institutions in these countries, (b)scanty  population  of entrepreneurs/ investors, (c) difficult  access  to credit  facilities (d)  mountains  of under development  problems,  large  scale  poverty,  high level  of unemployment, insecurity,  huge  infrastructural  deficiency  etc.

    Without  the leadership  of the state  how would  the difficult  tasks of nation building and development be accomplished? Common  sense  should  show  us the way  to go and not   the unholy advice from abroad.

    Development  was  at the  roots  of  the decisions  to form a state and create a government  to carry  out its decisions. The social  contract  theory  of the state  in which  individuals reportedly decided to give up some of  their  power to the state for the collective  good  of  all in society  approximates this idea most here.

    The role  of the state  cannot  be same for all countries.  The needs  of each  country  should  define  the role  which the state  should  play in it . However in  a poor, non- industrialized  countries such as Nigeria  the  state  should  lead in the  development  efforts  aimed  at creating  wealth  and other opportunities  for the common  good  of society,  well being  and happiness  of the  citizens.

    In particular  the state  should  ensure the security of life and property, law and order  and welfare  of the citizens. It is the most  effective  tool  for nation  building,  unity  and development  of  such developing  societies. It is expected  to ensure  opportunities  for the employment  of citizens,  fight poverty,  under development, and do things that the private investors  are unwilling  to do,  lacks the resources or not  attractive  to invest  in.

    The Nigerian  state  needs  to play  a more  active  role in the development  of the country than presently  obtains. More specifically, the state :should  be boldly involved  in business activities. It should invest in high risk  businesses and in the more difficult  areas  of the country . It should invest  heavily  in Agriculture, infrastructure and  maintain  existing amenities.

    Today  Nigeria  should  discourage any form of monopoly  either of  the  state or market/private  sector. Unlike in  the past when it used political  and nepotistic considerations  in appointing managers  to run public  enterprises,  knowledge,  skills, competence,  experience  and track record  of individuals should inform  decisions  about  such appointments.

    The economy  should  be free  and open to all comers. President  Tinubu should  learn  to spice up his development  policy  with  rconsizable doses  of populism . He should  in the name  of the state invest in profitable  ventures  to be manned by  the best hands and brains in the  field.

    As suggested  earlier, rather  than Thatcher  and Reagan,

    Tony  Blair  of Britain  and  Bill Clinton of the US   should  be his model  here. He should learn  from  the approach  of both remarkable leaders how to do both  socialism  and capitalism  at the same  time  seamlessly.

    To avoid  harsh  knocks from  ideologues in Europe  and America, he should  emphasize  that Nigeria  is  a  member  of Non aligned  nations . This is necessary for him to do because of the return  of the ” cold war” with  the advent of President  Putin of Russia  in the international  scene.  The world  has become  more ideologically  conflictive and dangerous.

    There should  be  no barriers  to participation. Anyone  who is fit  and willing  including  the state should  be free to invest  in all  the sectors  of the economy  without  bureaucratic barriers  or bottle-necks. The economy  should  be open  to all on equal  basis. It is large  enough  to accommodate  all comers .

    Do  things that make nations great

    Above all, Nigeria  must  learn  to do those things  that  make  nations  great.These include  good  government,  good  governance, nourishing ideology of development, public  accountability,  zero  tolerance  for  corruption, high  moral and  ethical  standards,  patriotism,  inclusiveness  of communities, maximum  citizenry  participation,  respect  for the  rule  of law, able  leadership,  effective  management, equitable  justice, organizational ability etc.

  • Averting the Spanish Paradox in Nigeria

    Averting the Spanish Paradox in Nigeria

    The Baleful Stench of Crude Oil

    After some bizarre back and forth, and some tedious toing and froing , what many people feared most has finally become  reality. The pump price of premium motor spirit, otherwise known as petrol, has been officially jerked up very close to the a thousand naira per litre benchmark. With NNPC already dropping some ominous hints, most people believe that crossing the one thousand naira per litre benchmark is a question of time. From all available indices and statistics, this latest increase will add considerably to the misery and burden of the average Nigerian. But for the demonstrated capacity of Nigerian people for heroic endurance, one would have said that the latest increase may well be the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back.

     Hope springs eternally from the Nigerian heart. But with the naira floating helplessly and heedlessly in a vortex of global instability and with no commensurate local production to back it up, it is obvious that the situation is even more precarious than had been hitherto been imagined. The auguries are dire. And the authorities are understandably quiet and reticent about the latest development. With the substantial and substantive issues surrounding the last nation-wide upheaval not quite resolved, with workers in most states still being paid the old wages, government credibility has suffered a crushing blow. In the coming weeks, it will have to fight hard to avoid its legitimacy from being added to the casualty list.

      We urge caution on all sides. This is a very dicey moment for the nation. Nigerians are experiencing a unique type of humiliation which makes people susceptible to sullen dark furies. With the civil populace battered by unrelenting social adversity into a state of helpless perplexity, this is not the time to goad or bait them into confrontation as this might open the door to anarchy and chaos. What is needed now are cogent, well-reasoned and clearly explicated reasons as to why the country’s current economic flight path can only come up against terminal turbulence.

       Nigeria seems to have run into a perfect economic storm: overreliance on oil and a mono-cultural  economy which kills off initiatives in other sectors, exponential population growth without commensurate economic development, a restive youth population unemployable in the main, enemy nationals with ancestral grouses bent on bringing the country to heel through unrelenting economic sabotage, a multi-ethnic populace with contradictory and countervailing modes of production, religious charlatans who discourage honest work and active toil in the name of some misbegotten paradise either here or somewhere else, and an irresponsible political elite that feed fat on the toil and misery of the people.

      No amount of economic acrobatics can make a dent on the problems or prise Nigeria away from the chokehold of their strangulating malignancy as long as the foundational contradictions persist. In the light of the ethnic cross wiring no national mobilization for a worthy cause such as available to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the Russians and the Singaporeans in their moment of existential impasse is possible. Not only this, at every turn, we find the political membrane shielding the  unborn so unusually tough and unyielding  making delivery without significant rupturing impossible. Nigeria’s political elite have so postponed or shied away from this rupturing out of fear or concern for their own suzerainty that it is now almost impossible to give birth to a new nation without tear and tears.

    We can now begin to disaggregate some of the problems loosely and randomly. When a Minister of Education tries to impose the avoidable dictates of his own cultural habitat as a national policy on minimum age requirement for university entry, it is obvious that he is viewing national manpower development from the narrow prism of his sociocultural habitus. When the selfsame person floods what is supposed to be a national list with nominees from his catchment area, it is obvious that he is laboring under the feudal logic of patronage and preferment.

      Second, had both the pastoralists and the farmers been of one ethnic bloc rather than mutually antagonistic ethnicities with countervailing worldviews on agriculture and husbandry, they would have been persuaded of the complementary and mutually beneficial nature of their calling. Had there been an infringement, the authorities would have adjudicated promptly.  More than a decade after the problem reared its head the authorities have been unable to come up with an acceptable solution out of the fear of being adjudged partisan. In the process valuable life, farm produce and diary have been lost, impacting considerably on the capacity of the nation to feed itself.

      Third, a predominantly illiterate population spawned by religious and social contradictions in a politically dominant section of the country, socially maladjusted youth that are ready recruits for political conflagration, disaffected nationals pursuing a single minded project of economic destabilization of the nation and a parasitic caste that feeds off the national grid without contributing anything have all combined to hoist the nation with its own economic petard. Short of splintering the country into several nations, which is an impossibility for now, the problem requires extreme political will and extraordinary wisdom if we are not to end up like Yugoslavia or Somalia. Elections without elite consensus or general goodwill produce winners without overwhelming acceptance who do not feel they owe the old hegemonic coteries or the general populace anything.

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        This is where we are at the moment and how we got there. Covering everything in its slick malevolence is an oil sleaze of historic and monumental proportions which stinks to the high heavens and makes it impossible for the average individual to breath normally. The reliance on crude oil and the mono-cultural economy it breeds has led Nigeria to virtual economic ruination, unable to balance its book and unable to pay its workforce. Pilfering on an outlandish scale abounds with both the government and the populace too weak to do anything about it. All the attempts to diversify the economy have collapsed at the altar of profligacy and mismanagement. Nigeria is a classic study in how not to manage humongous resources and leave something for prosperity. The phenomenon is worthy of being studied in advanced classes of economics.

       From all indications, Nigeria is trapped by a modern equivalent of the Spanish Curse, a situation of sudden outlandish wealth followed by ruinous inflation, stunted institutions, declining productivity particularly in the manufacturing industry, loss of elite vigour and vision and the rise of a parasitic elite class feeding fat on the proceeds of misery and international banditry. This was how it happened. The Spanish conquest of the ancient civilizations of Latin America brought gold and associated resources to metropolitan Spain on a scale which had not been seen anywhere in the world since the advent of Mansa Musa, the footloose and profligate Mali emperor who took off with the entire gold in his empire on pilgrimage to Mecca. Neither him nor his gold returned.

      Of particular relevance to this tale of untrammelled greed was the infamous Potosi mines which was a site of unspeakable human horror and degradation on a scale that was never seen since humans emerged from their primitive caves. The Spanish Conquistadors literally worked the native Indian populace to death and then disposed of them in shallow graves. Virtually the entire populace was wiped out by this callous treatment and associated diseases brought from Europe. When they proved not equal to the task, the natives were replaced by Africans brought from the old continent as slaves who were given the same treatment.

      The native Dominican missionary, Bartolome de Las Casas, although an initial beneficiary of the heist, became so appalled and taken aback by the dehumanization that he took to endless railing and inveigling against what he considered to be a monumental crime against humanity. So trenchant and eloquent was the Spanish friar in his critique of colonialism and slavery that his life was constantly in danger.

      But Spain did not have the last laugh. Inflation arising from the sudden influx of gold brought economic ruination. Its path to political and economic modernity was stalled and its road to colonial superstardom was blocked by loss of initiative to more competitive and enterprising northern European rivals. Its political institutions became atrophied. Its burdensome prosperity which was not due to any real productivity declined rapidly. A protracted period of national stasis and institutional disorientation followed. America, the new power, goaded it mercilessly and baited it relentlessly until it drove it out of Cuba and the Philippines after pitched confrontations. It is instructive to note that forty years after declaring its independence from Spain, Holland was already sending its merchant ships all over the world. With its political institutions stymied, Spain succumbed to a civil war almost four decades into the twentieth century and had to endure almost half a century of military dictatorship by General Frank Franco thereafter.

      This is not some metaphysical retribution at play but the logic of history and the choices people and nations make. History does not forget. Future generations will continue to be haunted by the choices we make. This is why it is not a wise thing to gamble or play games with the destiny of an important conglomeration of Black people like Nigeria. The government must rise above its historic handicaps, handicaps arising mainly from the structural and electoral configuration of the nation. After that we need some interactive consultations on the way forward.

  • In the lion’s den

    In the lion’s den

    To Isapatoromoyan, the ancient Yoruba town, through the ancestral homesteads of Eko-Einde, Eekosin and Iwere-Ile for the annual pounded yam festival with the rogue Okon in tow. This annual festival is a Yoruba rite of passage and the equivalent of the American Thanksgiving which began centuries earlier when some intrepid descendants of Oduduwa settled in the northernmost fringes of the new empire among hostile tribes who viewed them with dread and trepidation as bearers of a new type of civilization.

      In gratitude to their mighty deity who had helped them to survive another season among implacable warlike marauders who were bent on exterminating them to the single person, they often gathered at this historic site among huge rocks and Olympian crevices with their best yams and the plentiful venison abounding in the sprawling plains to jollify and to make merry as well as to give vent to the more playful and gregarious side of their nature. Very soon, it became routinized and regularized as an annual festival of hope and renewal.

        It was an epic feast of a feeding frenzy beginning at sunrise and ending when even the cooperative moon began to complain of tiredness and exhaustion. It is all too reminiscent of the magnificent pounded yam festival in Things Fall Apart where it took three days for feeders on all sides to behold each other.  Replete with rare venison of extinct herbivores, wild mushrooms which tasted like upmarket sand grouse and some aromatic vegetables now out of historic circulation, it was a moveable feast indeed.

      But it was also a celebration of spectacular heroism, incredible self-sacrifice and the ancestral spirit of all those who gave up their life so that others can survive. It was the hazy beginning of armed empire and fiery battlements. Yet it resolves the post-Oduduwa paradox and the Oranmiyan Question: How a people who had conquered and grown their old empire through the force of persuasion and superior civilization could now resort to fierce conquest and slaying on an industrial scale.

       The empire rose like a comet, subduing and subjugating far and wide beyond the realm of possibility and human endurance, incorporating in its mighty and minatory embrace strange territories and even stranger people leading to an incredible miscegenation of tribes and human tributaries. Yet like all empires, it also eventually fell like an expired meteor as the auld enemies joined forces with superior cavalry and the bearers of a new civilization who felt that the old one was a threat and nuisance to its own version of history.

      Empires rise and fall. And the rest is history. History was the farthest thing on the mind this morning as a historic fog laid its icy fangs on the entire country. The motoring condition had become simply atrocious. You could hardly see beyond your nose. Even some international flights had to be diverted to neighboring and more inclement climes. With Okon in tow, history and harmattan were the least of the problems, human nuisance was.

      Before snooper lay an ancient map of the magic route. You journey from Lagos to Ibadan and then to Moniya, Iseyin, Okaka, Otu and then veer off through an old mystery route known only to old empire hands and noblemen which eventually led them back to the ancestral shrine at Ile-Ife. You then come back through Iseyin, the scenic and spectacularly picturesque Ado Awaye, Eruwa, Igbo Ora, the “Randa” intersection near Abeokuta and then back to Lagos through Ewekoro, Orile Wasinmi—Segun Odegbami’s ancestral hideout—- and Sango Otta.

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       The journey had hardly started when Okon began making subversive commentaries in his rasping breathless monotone. Irreverent and caustic, Okon does not take hostages.

       “Oga, I just say make I tell you say dem  dey sell diesel for 245 naira for today. Petrol revenue dey rise and naira still dey fall. Na dis year we go know who get dis yeye kontri. If dem like make dem send dem soldier everywhere. When soldier don finis for barak, he mean say katakata don come be dat.” The mad boy yelled.

     “Okon leave me alone and leave the government alone.  At least they have started paying the very poor and aged people the money they promised”, yours sincerely snapped.

     “ Oga, no be yeye nonsense be dat one? Dem for build food shelter, employ Okon as Chairman for Belly Infrastructure make I dey feed dem old people. Na food dem people need. Na dis dem one –chance boys dem find  food for”, the crazy boy sniggered.

      “ By the way, Okon what do you think about the prophecies this year from the men of God?” snooper asked trying to steer the mad boy away from the path of subversion and sedition.

     “ Ha oga  dat one he be like say oversee come oversee overseer”, the mad boy crowed and burst into deranged hiccups.    

      By now we were approaching the bridge after the Shagamu intersection. All hell suddenly let loose as some hoodlums  jumped out on the road from nowhere, forcing the car to a screeching a halt just before a crater.

       “ Come out!! We are kidnappers!” one of the thugs screamed.

        “ We no be kid, so make you just go nap dem kids”, Okon bravely shouted at them.

        “ Shut up, you fool!” one of them screeched and hit Okon with the barrel of his gun. Snooper jumped up and hit the edge of the bed. Snooper has been dreaming. Yours sincerely has been hallucinating.

    First published in January, 2017.

  • Headwinds against democracy

    Headwinds against democracy

    The Wages of Elite Dysfunction

    If it were to be a Nigerian, democracy will also play victimhood. Despite persistent efforts to undermine and even destroy it from within by rival gangs of the political elite, democracy hardly complains. When countervailing actions are taken against them to maintain a balance of terror in the consuming game of chess that politics is, it is democracy that gets the blame. They do grumble and whine a lot, this lot. It is as if that alone will alter the balance of forces.

    To the naïve and unsuspecting observer, democracy has brought no joy to the nation; neither has it enhanced its economic growth or political development. Nothing has changed in the template of governance or in the conduct of political office holders since independence. If anything, the auguries are more troubling. The same draconian malice, mutual intolerance and ethnic baiting that characterized the First Republic have continued till date at an even more alarming rate. It is as if the civil war and millions of life wasted, mutinies, civil uprisings and ongoing religious insurrections never took place. Yet the truth is that without the promise of democracy or the phony equivalent we often resort to, the nation would have disappeared a long time ago. 

    In the First Republic, the Balewa administration, despite its veneer of respectability and restraint, unleashed a reign of terror on the opposition which stretched the fragile fabric of democratic rule until it snapped. Beginning with the engineered fracturing of the Action Group, the decimation of its leadership, the controversial restructuring of the country, the political subjugation of a vital federating unit, it ended in conflagration  and the destruction of civil rule. It is instructive that one of the reasons advanced by the military mutineers of January 1966 was the deployment of military personnel to quell civil uprising.  

    In the Second Republic as if operating the ancient manual of the First Republic and despite projecting the image of  dovish amiability and  reticence, the NPN and its allies struck at opposition stronghold and held the nation to electoral ransom until the military struck again at the tail end of 1983. General Babangida’s controversial and insalubrious Third Republic ended in vitrio as a result of the authoritarian intemperance and ethnic baiting of its promulgators. In the post-military Fourth Republic, General Olusegun Obasanjo, (1999-2007) had tried to revive the famous feudal template of smashing party formations and abrogating the electorate. 

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    After decimating the opposition parties, he abolished the electorate in the infamous 2003 federal elections. He was within an inch of smelling victory in an attempt to elongate his tenure when he was steamrolled by an alert and purposeful senate lead by Ken Nnamani. Nevertheless, he succeeded in imposing the next two leaders on a hapless and prostrate country completely demoralized and disoriented by its leadership crisis.  

    In the case of the general from Daura, after ruling Nigeria for eight tumultuous years, he attempted to revive the old feudal template of hegemonic domination on the floor of his party’s convention in a rather inept and maladroit manner but was immediately beaten back by more pragmatic forces mainly from his faction of the turbulent coalition. Judging from the meek and mild manner with which he accepted reality, it could have been a moment of tragic self-delusion brought on by fatigue and sheer disorientation. But had he succeeded, it would have brought the nation to certain disintegration. It was as if some Nigerian leaders are working for the American prediction of terminal dissolution with the deadline merely extended.

    In the light of all this and judging from the precarious background elaborated above, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the very structure, conglomeration and mode of leadership contention in Nigeria both pre-military and post-military dispensation insinuate a tendency to authoritarian despotism which is hard to get rid of and which has made it virtually impossible to domesticate and naturalize the western ideal of liberal democracy in Nigeria and possibly sub-Saharan Africa. This is why Nigeria is often at the gate of peril and perdition before more pragmatic forces step forward to redeem the nation.

    It is a curious irony that General Obasanjo who is unarguably the greatest exemplar of this Equatorial despotism in postcolonial Nigeria is also currently at the rooftop among those shouting about the unsuitability of the western model of liberal democracy for Nigeria and the Black race. The owl of Owu truly begins its flight at dusk and after the event indeed. If Obasanjo had been that visionary, he ought to have initiated a truly ground-ripping reform of the system when he had all the power, the authority of personal suffering and the prestige at the beginning of his tenure.  But he confused regime-protection in the guise of de-militarization which insulated him against resurgent military distemper with a project of de-feudalization of the whole country. It is instructive that once the clause recommending tenure elongation was expunged, the old man lost appetite in the remaining over two hundred recommendations of his own initiated conference .A particular structure is made up of certain variables which change over time even where the core structure remains unchanging and superficially unchangeable. This means that the more things do not appear to change, the more some aspects do not remain the same.

    While the inner structure of authoritarian despotism in Nigeria has largely remained the same either during military rule or beyond it, some of the features associated with the phenomenon appear to have mutated in response to historical stimuli. For example, having misconceived its role as the driving agent of accelerated development, the Nigerian military has recuperated and regained its sense of perspective as a loyal servant of the state baring any catastrophic meltdown. 

    Unlike in the past when the armed forces were eager to seize power at the slightest pretext, nowadays it is the military themselves who call out those baiting them and asking them to seize power as disloyal citizens and treasonous elements. In November 1993 after warning the political authorities to put their house in order, General Sani Abacha did not waste any further time before kicking them out. Given this background, it is a most sobering irony of Nigeria’s postcolonial history that the military has emerged as the most fanatical agent of democracy in the post-military Fourth Republic.  Something new always happens in Nigeria, and the most potent agent of destabilization of democracy has transformed into its most powerful pillar of stabilization.

    The reality of having the military leadership on its side redounds greatly to the advantage of the Tinubu administration. This is perhaps the greatest dividend of the prodemocracy struggle of which the current Nigerian president is a stirring exemplar. The leader of the greatest conglomeration  of Black people anywhere in the world  must however jealously guard against the lure of authoritarian despotism which we have shown to be the proverbial nemesis of Nigeria’s—and tropical Africa’s– post-independence leadership however personally benign and charitable a particular leader may appear. 

    It may well be the unwieldy and chaotic nature of these artificial countries, their fractious, divisive and polarizing elite groups and their mutually unintelligible nationalities at various, dissimilar and countervailing stages of economic, political and spiritual development that make this option of wielding the big stick sorely tempting indeed. It may also be that an instinctual autocracy is already wired into the DNA of a traditional African big chief trying to become modern leader. 

    Whatever it is, there is something quite distressing about the possibility of a prodemocracy avatar transforming into an antidemocratic leviathan. Having been in the political trenches with him in a period of grave personal peril, this columnist can attest to the fact that the Nigerian leader is a person of unusual courage and indomitable will. God help the country if these qualities, out of frustration and exasperation, are to be leashed to an autocratic charter.

    The auguries are very dire indeed.  Within a spate of fifteen months, the administration has been rocked by two major national upheavals engineered by restive youths and their shadowy national and international sponsors. A third is cooking up. The east has become a virtual war zone. The north is imploding on several fronts as a result of various insurgencies and industrial banditry. Labour has been on strike on several occasions and is threatening another should its leader be impounded by police after casual interrogation.   Last Thursday, the labour strike force actually made it to the police station where it encamped chanting war songs as Ajaero was being grilled for possible infractions against the state. It doesn’t get more bizarre.

    It is obvious that the Tinubu administration is reaping the whirlwind of the mismanagement of the ethnic, religious and cultural diversities of the nation as well as the economic incontinence of the Buhari administration. Never in the history of a modern country has state larceny occurred with such impunity and impudence. Never has there been a more determined attempt to take down a nation by such brazen and barefaced theft of the national patrimony.

    It must be noted for the sake of fairness and objectivity that the government has added its own incendiary mix to the already socially inflammable and politically inhospitable situation by its economic policies. If Mr President was banking on the traditional meekness of the average Nigerian and his fatalistic acceptance of harsh government measures, the swiftness and scale of the reaction ought to have been worrisome to him. It did not take long for normally praise-singing crowd to welcome him to his own Lagos with rude and disrespectful cries of hunger.  

    Being a minority government in a country seething with ethnic rivalry and unceasing mutual hostility, one had always expected a level of political discontent at the outcome of federal elections conducted without substantial elite compliance and pacting. But this time around, the scope, intensity and duration of post-election rancour suggest a worsening of certain aspects of the National Question which can only be exacerbated by electoral competition. The insistence in certain quarters that no matter how the dice is thrown it is not the turn of Tinubu’s ethnic group to rule the nation has merely intensified the smouldering resentment. That insistence is itself a reflection of the collapse of elite consensus. As a government elected without overwhelming popular support, it is not the wisest and smartest thing to adapt the mode and mood of an imperial presidency.

    The upsurge in well-reasoned and well-articulated demands for a repeal of the 1999 Constitution, the demands for a total restructuring or reconfiguration of the country emanating from traditional quarters including Tinubu’s own restive and voluble Yoruba nation and the demand for a wholesale renegotiation of the terms of the incorporation of the country suggests a stirring of the old sullen bear of centrifugal forces from its slumber.  

    As a platform position for darkroom elite renegotiation in the perpetual struggle for the allocation of resources, they normally surface at the tail end of an administration when it is tired, perplexed and consumed by its own contradictions. But coming so early in the life of the current administration suggests that the old wizards of regime incapacitation have sniffed blood or are ready to draw a pint of the stuff. 

    With the military and security forces solidly behind him, the president’s gamble can be gleamed from his response to The Patriots’ group. It is to hope that the benefits of his economic regimen would have manifested in a way that unites the entire country behind him thus putting his political adversaries to shame. This cannot be an overnight miracle. And it cannot extirpate the political tempest. As a well-tested political operative and a master of the manual of political gaming himself, Tinubu is not likely to give in to political blackmail and what he may consider as mere scaremongering by defeated and demoralized hegemons. His instinct will be to fight rather than flee. If this stiffens into a resolve to wield the authoritarian stick, the stage is set for an explosive confrontation which may end in the mutual ruination of all the contending classes and a tipping into chaos and anarchy. This is likely to put paid to liberal democracy. We surely live in interesting times.