The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Okon upstages Seriake in Communication Theory

    Something new always comes out of Nigeria. With its endless assortment of political oddities and oddballs, Pliny the Second would have had a lot to say about contemporary Nigeria. Ever since Paul Dickson Seriake’s famous theory of “Dem say, dem say” journalism, snooper has been inundated by complaints from some South-south internet insurgents who accuse him of being slow to congratulate the Bayelsa governor for his landmark insights.

    With his formidable embonpoint, his burly and beefy frame and the bulging biceps, snooper fancies Seriake as a ferocious seriatim enforcer in the Praetorian Guard of some modern Ijaw emperor rather than as a Communication scholar, But we live in a world of scholarly surprises and it appears that the Yenagoa strongman has other fancies, Even Marshall Mcluhan, the famed Canadian Communication guru, would have applauded the insight and folksy wisdom of “Dem say dem say” journalism.

    But not so fast. In April 1989 at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, snooper partnered his friend, Stephen Ellis, formerly editor of the influential Africa Confidential and now professor African History at Leiden, Holland, to mount a seminar on Radio Trottoir or the use of pavement radio as a vehicle for rumour-mongering in Francophone Africa. It is not for nothing that the Yoruba call their old Rediffusion box, asoromagbesi, or he that talks without waiting for a reply.

    It was discovered that when people are denied access into the opaque treacheries of governance in Africa, they resort to rumour mongering. It is the invention of politics. Rumour is the integral lubricant of political abracadabra in Africa. In an interesting preface to a famous interview with General Ibrahim Babangida, the old Newswatch editors noted that apart from the coup attempts to oust him, the Minna born soldier had also survived “damaging rumours”

    But trust Okon who has no time for all this fancy stuff. According to the crazy boy, “Dem say dem say” journalism is an integral aspect of “Ngbati journalism” pioneered by the Yoruba people. When pressed further, it turned out that Okon had beaten up a Yoruba butcher at Agege market. When asked to narrate his ordeal, the man continued to sob “Ngbati, ngbati”. Okon then turned to the crowd. “You see, no be him say make I slap am well well, abi wetin be ngbati, ngbati?”.

    At the police station, the Ibo desk sergeant, after listening patiently to the “ngbati, ngbati” sobs of the butcher, promptly recorded it as a case of “when dem when dem assault.” Over to you, Dickson Seriake.

  • On post-military party disorder

    On post-military party disorder

    Is the party over? It is necessary and even mandatory in the light of the current ruptures and eruptions in the dominant party structure in post-military Nigeria to take a closer look at the military origins of party formation in the post-military Fourth Republic. This is with a view to determining the origins of the current crisis of party formation in contemporary Nigerian politics and the possible ways out of the historic gridlock.

    To be sure, this exercise has little or nothing to do with whether Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the embattled chairman of the PDP, survives the throne of bayonets. Whatever his tragic illusions of grandeur, Tukur is a mere epiphenomenon in a consuming and engrossing dance of the political forest. If he is able to see himself as he truly is, or the situation as it really is, then there would be no need for what is known as dramatic irony.

    Like President Jonathan, Tukur himself is a a product of a determinate historical process which must eventually unravel before our very eyes. The fate of the nation is far more important than the fate of two individuals however important or self-important. It is this process and the political occlusions as they violently unfurl that must be of concern to patriotic Nigerians.

    Just as individuals suffer from what is known as post traumatic stress disorder, so do societies. Nigeria suffers and has continued to suffer from the stress and traumatic disorder of post-military rule. If the worst afflicted is the ruling party, the other party formations also suffer from the stress and roiling contradictions to a lesser degree.

    A dispassionate analysis of the crisis must also take on board the current efforts of opposition parties, spearheaded by the ACN and the CPC, to form a broad-based alliance against the ruling party. The opposition must take more than a passing interest in developments in other African countries and the mixed results so far.

    Whereas in Guinea, Senegal and the Benin Republic, the stitching together of various and seemingly incompatible political tendencies succeeded in upending the status quo and inaugurating a new social order, in Zimbabwe it led to an abominable compromise and tense power-sharing while in Kenya it eventuated in civil war and near genocide. The last presidential election in Kenya merely showcased the bitter ethnic divisions in the nation.

    In Zimbabwe, the old wizard of Harare still continues to rule the roost even as the opposition has become a butt of joke and bitter derision. By the time the wily and obdurate Robert Mugabe was done with it, the opposition had lost so much ground and prestige that at the moment it is no longer in a position to mount a challenge in the name of freedom and democracy.. With the scion of Karamoja Odinga Oginga still sulking and with the son of Jomo Kenyatta a presidential fugitive from international justice, Kenya remains a seething volcano.

    There are many who believe in retrospect that Nigeria would have been spared its current post-military trauma had the old opposition coalition that fought the military junta to a standstill remained steadfast in its insistence that nothing good could come out of a post-military Nigeria without a major restructuring and reconfiguration of its top-heavy and lopsided political structure.

    By jettisoning its original demand for a national conference before meaningful elections could be held, the opposition fell for a military sucker punch which made it a willing tool and accomplice in a power game for which it was particularly ill-suited and ill-equipped. The old masters simply overran and overpowered it. The result is a military ordained party in perpetual power with all its democracy threatening toxic side effects.

    The hardnosed and hard-headed pragmatists dismiss this rosy view as touching in its idyllic naivete. One, it ignores the realities on ground. Second, it overlooks the balance of power even as the military shambled away in disorderly and disorganised retreat having exhausted its political and historic possibilities. It was not the civilian agitators that got rid of General Sani Abacha. It was the military themselves. It was not the NADECO insurgents that summarily eliminated Abiola. It was the culmination of the original move to clear the political deck of its human cobwebs.

    NADECO and its allies merely panicked and pressurised the military establishment to come up with a fresh initiative. In other words, the departing military still retained the initiative. Hobbled by struggle-fatigue, riven by internal divisions and dissensions and with its international source of funding about to dramatically evaporate since the global donor community were aware of its limits and limitations, the opposition could only meekly comply.

    It was not cut in the mould of an ANC which had the cohesion, the capacity and the superior organisational ability to wage a long-distance struggle. In any case, the strength and disposition of the enemy often crystallises the strength and disposition of the adversary. Unlike the apartheid monstrosity which had the ideological solidity, the political clarity and institutionalised memory about the kind of society it was creating, the Nigerian military never came up with a set of coherent ideas about a new type of society with the military as its arrowhead beyond its reliance on sheer brute force.

    Both the Babangida and the Abacha Transition Programmes were exercises in sustained brutal duplicity unleavened by neither redeeming vision nor intellectual sagacity. Once the vice grip of each on the levers of power and brute force was prised apart, it was easy for either to briskly unravel.

    But what the military echelons lacked in intellectual sophistication and ideological subtlety, they made up for in raw political cunning. Despite its loss of prestige and authority and the sudden death of its leader, the military after Abacha remained the dominant political party in the nation. Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar to a lesser extent knew the Nigerian political class and had them solidly within their rifle sight, so to say.

    It is useful to recall that in his maiden broadcast to the nation, General Abubakar had pledged to continue with the Abacha Transition Programme. It was a remarkable howler. But the Minna-born soldier quickly changed his mind once the master puppeteer behind the veil ticked him off. Without Abacha’s savage repression, his transition programme was dead on arrival. So were the league of elected charlatans.

    But you cannot bequeath what you don’t have. What the military was looking for were not visionary idealists or transformative leaders who could take Nigeria to the next level but politically correct journeymen sworn to protect the status quo. People who could be relied upon to indemnify the retreating army against loss and loss of face. It is to be noted that it was not NADECO leaders who began immediately crisscrossing the country to identify and plot with the pair of safe hands but members of the old military aristocracy.

    Thus was born the PDP and by extension the Obasanjo presidency as a protective shield for the retreating military and as a grand cartel for the protection and furtherance of the interests of the monied plutocracy thrown up by military rule as well as the old oligarchy. It is to be noted that 20 years earlier, the NPN was born in chillingly similar circumstances and very much for the same purpose.

    It is to be noted that in the run up to the presidential election of 1999, General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma famously noted that that although the Yoruba people had been asked to produce the next king, they could not be kingmakers in their own cause, Thus a strange king was procured for the Yoruba people even as the king lost in his own ward. Twenty years earlier, Obasanjo himself as military head of state had even more famously observed that the best person would not always win a contest.

    In contrast, when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was told about the ambition of a former military ruler of the old west to join the partisan political fray, the old man had tersely responded that while he was not interested in probing the military as an institution, individual members who chose to join partisan politics would have their background subjected to searching scrutiny. Obasanjo would have chuckled to himself. The old man still didn’t get it. It was the shortest and sharpest political suicide note in Nigerian history.

    So it is then that we are faced with the conundrum of a party which was not founded on the premises of national development or rapid transformation but on the platform of sheer racketeering and privilege pimping. Can the PDP give what it doesn’t have? Can it take Nigeria to the next level? While the PDP must be commended for its policy of demilitarisation through cooptation, it has also re-militarised the polity through its politics of harsh regimentation and its garrison mentality.

    This is what is currently playing out with seismic reverberations across the length and breadth of the country. It is not a revolutionary upheaval but the volcanic implosion of a party that has come face to face with the fatal contradictions of its origins, roots and foundation in military autocracy and the transformative, politically redemptive yearnings of most Nigerians.

    The nation-threatening explosions will go on for quite some time until the PDP is put out of its misery by a pan-Nigerian ensemble. Obasanjo who drove away the original founders has himself been driven to the outer margins of the party. This last week, in a futile show of sterile impotence, the party’s South West caucus endorsed Jonathan’s re-election bid without the former president’s input. It doesn’t get more bitterly ironic. And it is morning yet on the day of traumatic transition from military despotism to true democracy. It didn’t start raining yesterday.

  • Humour out of uniform

    Oh boy. Oh boy, while we are still talking about militarised politics and a politicised military, has anybody stumbled on snippets from the forthcoming memoirs of retired Brigadier-General Godwin Alabi-Isama? If his current interview and snippets collected by snooper from the underground press are anything to go by, the book promises to be as explosive as it is riveting. It is rollicking humour out of uniform. Aficionados of wit and verbal polish must recall the ancient column from good old Readers’ Digest.

    Walahi, these old military chaps are a cheeky and daredevil lot. Alabi-Isama does not take hostages, and neither is he interested in the Geneva Convention for literary warfare and all that effete rubbish, He shoots straight and then calmly tallies the casualties of his verbal howitzers, This is the devil of Agbanikaka himself. Like the master marksman that he is, Alabi-Isama deflates inflated reputation with the pin of a grenade before tossing the explosive at the mortally wounded human pile. It is not a pretty sight at all

    Perhaps the most riveting and hilarious was the revelation that one of Nigeria’s most decorated war heroes actually took a bullet in the buttocks while fleeing from Biafran insurgents. An internet sadist has added the savage addendum that the bullet journeyed through the spine and finally lodged itself in the brains, thus explaining the penchant for irrational and wild outbursts. A pellet in the pia mater is not a funny thing. Come on, Godwin, be nice, please be nice now.

    No one could have suspected that the urbane and ever polite retired Brigadier carried such explosives in his head. The man they call chairman is often the soul and life wire of a social gathering, bubbling with boyish enthusiasm and good-natured bonhomie. As a reserve general in the intellectual militia and the army of Nigerians as opposed to the Nigerian Army, Snooper often attends some of these parties incognito, dressed like a plumber.

    The controversy between Alabi-Isama and his former commander over proper war credits is bound to echo the classic military duel between Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, the two best known German warlords of the pre-Hitler era. When his former boss persisted in claiming credits for certain German victories, Ludendorff, a no-nonsense Aryan fanatic, famously issued a writ for retraction. His boss quietly complied.

    Years later when Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the German Republic visited the implacable Ludendorff at home and offered to make him Field Marshal, the gruff and implacable soldier growled: “ Field Marshals are born not made!” With those famous words, the great soldier ordered the former Austrian corporal out of his presence.

    It will be recalled that Ludendorff had earlier collaborated with Adolf Hitler in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch. When the whole thing ended in a nasty fiasco, it was said that Ludendorff calmly walked through the hail of bullets as if he was taking an early morning stroll. Great soldiers are born indeed. Over to you, General Alabi-Isama.

  • Why June 12 still matters

    Why June 12 still matters

    (An almanac of national folly)

    June 12!!!! Spring is in full spring. But it is not yet summer, at least not officially. There is something profoundly mystical about this date. There is something grandly metaphysical about its provenance. It feels very good around this time. But it also feels eerily daunting and tasking. The human fear of the after effects of climatic good fortunes has kicked in. Had General Babangida and his cohorts consulted astrologers, they would have been told to beware of the Ides of June.

    Let us play some zodiac games. In the Gregorian calendar we have 12 months that make up a year. June is in the middle, and the middle of nowhere.  The twelfth day of June is in the middle of June, but not quite in the full middle. In other words, June 12 is in the near middle of the middle of nowhere. The in-between nature generates its own astral tensions. The twelfth night after Christmas is when merriment officially ends and serious business begins. Twelve is double six, and yet they say there is no difference between six and half a dozen.

    The number 12 has played a significant role in the political evolution of modern Nigeria. Just before June in 1967 and on the eve of the civil war, the then Major General Yakubu Gowon restructured the nation into a twelve-state federation. Twelve years later, it was the magical legal formula known as 12 2/3 which prevented the Murtala-Obasanjo Transition from achieving full integrity and fidelity to democratic norms. The military and their civilian accomplices had insinuated the virus that will destroy their own baby.

    General Babangida probably  never gave any thought to the zodiac import of the date when he lighted upon it. It was going to be another day for the permanent shuffling and reshuffling of the cards of transition which this author described then as “transfiction”. But there were enough astral signals to warn even political novices about the danger of toying with the destiny of the greatest conglomeration of Black souls in the world.

      As usual, it was the Americans that first picked the scent of political perfidy. Acutely aware of the political shenanigans going on in Abuja and the reality that IBB was about to abort the election , the Washington authorities caused a certain Mr O’Brien, their USIS chief of Bureau, to issue a stern warning that America would view such a move with great displeasure. For his pains, the USIS Bureau Chief was summarily expelled from Nigeria. The transition had arrived at terminus.

    The actual date itself was full of portents. The elements and the god of nations were warning those who had held Nigerians in military thralldom to let go. For a normally watery eyed month of June, not a single incident of significant rainfall was recorded anywhere in the nation on that day. And for a country with a global reputation for electoral mayhem, there was no record of any significant political disturbance throughout the length and breadth of the nation. Nigerians put up their best behavior to see off their military overlords. Everywhere was eerily calm.

    It is useful to situate this strange calmness on June 12, 1993 within the explosive and combustible background of the country’s political evolution. Twenty three years earlier in January, 1970, the country a three year civil war which was as bitter as it was savage came to a sudden end. The casualties figures were high and alarming . Thereafter, the country lapsed into hard-fisted military rule which many believed was necessary to lay the foundation of a strong, virile and united nation after the ravages and ruination of the Civil War.  Between January 1970 and June 1993, the military had ruled Nigeria continuously with the exception of a brief civilian interlude of four years between 1979 and 1983. Between December 1983 and June 1993, military officers from a particular region ruled the nation continuously as a result of the overwhelming domination of the officer corps by that region.

    But there is time for everything. By 1993, a significant section of Nigerians, particularly the educated elites, were saying no to military rule in any guise or hue. But in spite of all the warnings and ominous portents, history teaches that those who play the game of domination and hegemony never know when and where to stop. In the first instance, if they are weak-willed, they would never have been able to retain their hegemony. But as compulsive political gamblers, they never know when enough is enough. In the process, they tend to lose everything.

    Are there lessons to be learnt from the June 12 fiasco?  Of course there are signal lessons to learn and the tribal henchmen  of the current hegemony must read the following carefully.  Twenty years after June 12, 1993 and 43 years after the end of the civil war, an Ijaw president rules over Nigeria, taking his turn after presidents of Yoruba and Fulani extraction. Pontificating over the length of tenure of each is a foolish political exercise. What is significant is that 20 years ago when a structurally lopsided military was at the zenith of its power, such a development appeared impossible and in fact unthinkable.

    This significant political development would have been impossible without the struggle for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The symbol of that struggle, M.K.O Abiola, was a most unlikely hero. The late business mogul was not everybody’s cup of tea, even among his fellow Yoruba political elite. There were many  who hold the view that the tragedy of Abiola was the tragedy of a man who forgot his origins. He was a creation of the military that eventually destroyed him.

    Yet in a significant respect, Abiola typifies the saying that it is not how you begin that matters but how you end up. Abiola has ended on the right side of history. Erupting from the ranks of villains, Abiola ended on the side of saints. Martyrdom, especially with the eyes wide-open, is not an easy proposition for people of money and means. Abiola took his own on the chin.  As he gradually passes into legend and folklore, he will be better remembered and much better regarded than most of those who have actually ruled Nigeria.

    It is important to restate this fact particularly in the light of those who will reduce the June 12 struggle to an ethnic affair, or are wont to see the continuing celebration of its memory as the annual ritual of Yoruba political disturbance of the nation.  June 12 is about firm and founding principles without which a nation may never know peace, order and prosperity.  The presidency of a country is not the birthright of an ethnic group. Neither is it the permanent possession of an ethnically derived political and military caste.

    It would have been easier for everybody and the nation if this lesson had not been learnt the hard way. But just as there are obstinate people, there also obtusely obstinate nations that can only learn the hard way. The struggle to establish foundational principles can be very ruinous for a stubborn nation. The casualties are often horrendous. The June 12 struggle cost Abiola his life.

    On June 8, 1998, it also led to the dramatic termination of General Abacha’s life in famously sordid and sorry circumstances. It led to the ruination of the old military establishment and its professional demystification. It led to the humiliation of the Sokoto caliphate and the decimation of its political authority.  It has consigned many formerly powerful people to political irrelevance and a few self-important actors to figures of national scorn and derision.

    But as an avenging talisman for foundational principles, June 12 is not finished with the nation.  As a direct and indirect consequence, 20 years after June 12, 1993, 43 years after the end of the civil war and 47 years after Isaac Adaka Boro’s rebellion was swiftly put down, a president of Ijaw extraction is presiding over the military and political pacification of the old north.  Its hegemony having been exposed as a pious fraud by a radical internal rebellion, the old northern establishment is in a shambles.

    To anybody who had lived in this country prior to June 12 1993, particularly before and after the annulment of the presidential election, the current development would appear strange and inexplicable, the stuff of the fictional subgenre known as magical realism. To a political Rip Van Winkle who has slept for the past 20 years waking up to the vastly altered political landscape of Nigeria, the situation would have been as bewildering as it is disorienting.  In ordinary political perception, it would have taken a major political earthquake to bring the mighty north so to heel.

    The irony is that the real earthquake occurred on June 23, 1993 when the military summarily annulled the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation thus setting the stage for prolonged and protracted national instability. The arbitrary decimation of the sovereign will of the fourteen million Nigerian electorate that performed their civic obligation 11 days earlier set the stage and opened the gate for radical and armed interrogation of the state which has proved very costly to the country’s dominant political structure.

    In retrospect then, perhaps the most significant lesson of June 12 is that those who cling to power in the name of privilege are destined to lose both power and privilege. If the establishment and enshrinement of the first principle of a level playing ground for all ethnic groups proved so costly to the nation, the second, which is the establishment of a level playing ground for all Nigerians irrespective of religion, creed or class, is about to prove even more costly.

    This is the second foundational principle that now has to be established, that all Nigerians irrespective of race, region or religion have a right to aspire to rule and preside over the affairs of Nigeria provided the electorate relinquish their sovereign authority by endorsing the aspiration. It is to be noted that while the first principle involves an inter-elite but intra-class struggle and contestation for power, the second involves an anti-elitist and inter-class struggle for power and hegemony. Nigeria cannot be said to be truly and fully democratic until the second principle has been established and the transition/transfer of power to the citizens has taken place.

    To our ultra-radical compatriots who pooh-poohed  the June 12 struggle as an elite affair, we say that it amounts to infantile radicalism to believe that in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural nation with multifarious modes of political and economic production concurrently playing out, it is possible to crash the historic gear to the second stage without going through the first. If the dominant political elite of a nation can deny other members access to power based on narrow ethnic affiliations, one must shudder at the fate of the ordinary people. Struggle must flow from concrete and material reality and not from idealist constructs in the head.

    It is this second transition that must now take place under Jonathan’s watch. We can no longer rail about a feudal oligarchy. But the atmosphere is so fouled up that even normally liberal-minded Yoruba elite view the seeming chummy relationship between the dominant political tendency in their region and the old north with wary unease, wondering whether they are about to be sold to the “aulde enemy” all over again by a bewitched political leadership .

     If gold can thus rust, one can imagine the fate of iron.  The ironic reality of the nation today is that the ethnic injury and abiding trauma of the transition from military despotism to civil rule has made the next potentially more costly and ruinous. But this transition must now take place. Fortunately for Goodluck Jonathan, he has two more years to convince Nigerians that true democracy has finally berthed on their shores. Unfortunately for him, the ethnic sabre rattlers surrounding him are urging him to resort to anti-democratic self-help on the grounds that having suffered the yoke of oppression for so long, the Ijaws must also hold on to power for as long as possible.

    Evil is permanent but truth is also constant. There are some prominent Nigerians who have become permanent fixtures of evil, having fought against the restoration of Abiola’s mandate, even as they are currently urging  Jonathan on.  But there are also many patriots who fought against the annulment of Abiola’s mandate who are also involved in the current struggle to deepen democracy in Nigeria.  If Jonathan succumbs to the first mindset, he will most likely leave Aso Rock as a tragic failure, a principal beneficiary of a process who also became one of its principal casualties.

    We can now see why June 12 mattered and still matters. Perhaps the most significant lesson is that like human beings, nations also make history and progress but not under the circumstances of their choice. Societal evolution progresses by detours, diversions and digressions. It is often circuitous and mind-bending, but most of the time it is not without its own peculiar logic. May the noble soul of Moshood Abiola rest in peace.

  • The functions of state dysfunction

    The functions of state dysfunction

    (A call for a sovereign summit)

    Recent events, particularly the bizarre developments of the past fortnight and the unfolding fratricidal bloodletting within the ruling party, the PDP, make it mandatory to focus once again on the state of the Nigerian post-colonial state. The danger is not that the PDP might implode but that it might take nascent democracy and the nation itself along with its misbegotten debris.

    As it is today, the PDP is in total shambles, a power consortium bristling with buccaneers, political cannibals and other consorts of patronage and unearned privilege. It has never pretended to any higher ideal or superior nationalist agenda. It was born in perfidy and is dying in felony. Even by the miserable standards of party formation in post-independence Nigeria, this is quite a new low.

    At least its forebears withstood the ravages of their internal contradictions and remained essentially as parties until the military summarily disbanded them. But this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a party is openly disembowelling itself for all to see. It is quite a gory sight, a gruesome enactment of political seppuku on a national scale. But as a people and a nation, we owe it a duty to posterity to prevent ourselves from being consumed in the inferno of its infamy.

    In its classical ideal, the state embodies and encodes the society along certain stern and immutable principles which guarantee the stability and survival of its territorial reach.. This means that the state orders and organises society for optimal self-actualisation. The more impersonal and transcendental the ideal, the more the state is able to function with impersonal rigour and transcendental efficiency.

    In some extremely well-organised and disciplined nations, the state radiates and emanates such rigour, ruthless efficiency and quiet terror that it often comes close to an Absolute Spirit or deity. In such societies, state worship becomes a national religion. The state is the Father and Law-giver. For the citizens, the fear of the state is the beginning of wisdom.

    The entire society is suffused with its ideological apparatuses. It is the ultimate Kabiyesi, firm but just and fair. In the old Kongo before the Belgian king arrived to do his genocidal bit, it was not for nothing that the state was known as Bula Matari or crusher of rocks. Anybody that stood in its way risked being crushed. But it also acted as a benevolent and indulgent father. .

    The perversities of the Nigerian state in its current incarnation make it imperative to raise a few posers if only for the mental health of those trapped in its territorial hellhole. Is state disarray a cover for something far more sinister going on? In other words, can a modern state benefit and in fact profit from its own disorganisation and disorientation?

    In a cheeky and perverse manner, this seems to be the case with the contemporary Nigerian state. The more disorganised and dissolute the state appears to be, the better organised and resolute it is in discharging its primary obligation and fundamental raison d’etre of plundering and evacuating the resources of the nation. Those who designed the colonial state as a vehicle of metropolitan predation must be chuckling in their graves. The Africans have managed to stay one step ahead.

    We have now come to the juncture in political theory where a functional value must be allocated to dysfunctionality whereby state dysfunction obeys only the logic of its own inner function as a scientific machine for primitive extraction and expropriation of national resources. A nation under such historic affliction acquires the veneer of modernity and civilisation whereas social cannibalism and Stone Age political savagery are the order of the day.

    Archaeologists of the future, while excavating the ruins of a gifted but doomed Black society, will be amused to no end at the remains of primitives clutching modern GSM phones or of some later day Rasputin still clasping at indices of phenomenal economic growth even as supervised carnage and spiritual barbarity were the norm.

    Contemporary Nigeria is a classic illustration of state dysfunction as the organising principle and primary function of the state. We have left behind the concept of the order in disorder so beloved of some prominent African political scientists. In that scheme of things, the disorder is often accidental, purely without design and the culmination of a march of folly of intellectually challenged rulers.

    In any serious and properly functioning democracy, a state of emergency is an emergency for the state. It means that the nation has entered uncharted waters, requiring extraordinary and out of the normal routine and measures. The entire political class and not just the ruling party must coalesce in a bipartisan front to confront the threat to the nation. But to treat a national emergency with the kind of grandiose buffoonery we have witnessed in the last fortnight points at some sinister war-gaming.

    At the last count, three northern states have become a theatre of war and emergency. This is in addition to several economic, political and religious flashpoints across the entire country. With this dire exigency, you would have expected those in power to stop digging. But they have been digging furiously.

    Last week, they added the scalp of the Sokoto state governor, Magatarkada Wamakko to the hunter’s bag. What this means is that the entire northern fringe of the nation is a roiling cauldron of insurrection and insubordination. The Sokoto state chapter of the PDP is in open revolt.

    The PDP northern senate caucus is up in arms. Governor Aliyu Babangida is rampart against federal authorities and rearing to go, even as Isa Yuguda of Bauchi makes discordant noise. As the entire north dissolves in political combustion, total emergency and possible civil war loom in the region. And this is going to be supervised by a Southern Commander in Chief and a Southern military commander.

    The ethnic sabre-rattlers and assorted power mongers who seem to have captured Goodluck Jonathan are egging him on. Their claim is that what is happening in the north is good and desirable for the nation, since the north has supervised the mismanagement of the country for so long. In the process, they have turned what is supposed to be a pan-Nigerian mandate into a narrow ethnic platform for the domination of Nigeria in perpetuity.

    Even if it were to be so that some northern leaders mismanaged Nigeria, the purveyors of this abject and objectionable canard have forgotten that their own forebears were permanently in bed with the oppressors while the particular ethnic nationality they now openly revile and traduce were in open and permanent revolt against injustice for as long as it lasted.

    In any case and unless their closet agenda is the balkanisation of Nigeria, they should realise that the current closure of the Nigerian state under the guise of equalisation of oppression can only lead to permanent warfare and instability. It will open the door to a new Robin round of terror whenever Jonathan leaves or is forced to leave power.

    The question that should now concern all patriotic Nigerians is why the nation is prone and vulnerable to periodic closures .under each ascendant group, particularly in post-military Nigeria. We saw this with Obasanjo and the pan-Nigerian cult of personality that finally unravelled his administration. We saw this with Yar’Adua and the provincial and backward looking feudal clique that attempted to seize power in the name of a mortally afflicted man. Now we are seeing its ultimate manifestation in the somnambulist farce of the Jonathan administration. History repeats itself indeed.

    We cannot blame a state for becoming a burden on a nation when this is what it was designed for in the first instance. This is the historic conundrum before Nigerians. The state is an alien contraption forcibly grafted on diverse and mutually incompatible nationalities and has continued to be so in all its post-colonial transformations and mutations.

    We must warn once again that elections alone cannot resolve the conundrum except as a tentative and token holding device to ward off the inevitable. In such circumstances, no genuine transformation can also take place without a fundamental reconfiguration of the state and a redesign of the nation. A sovereign gathering of nationals is inevitable for Nigeria. Whether we must continue to postpone it and prolong the misery and the biblical suffering of our people is an entirely different matter.

  • Okon romances Bigfoot at Ife

    To the lush, alluring and eternally enchanting OAU campus at Ife and its celebrated Staff Club with Okon in tow. Nestling among giant trees and overlooking a magical mountain range straight out of the fabled Igbo Irunmole, the OAU Staff Club remains a tribute to Hezekiah Oluwasanmi’s visionary genius.

    It was here in the seventies and eighties that some of the most brilliant debates about military rule and the fate of the nation took place under an iconic almond tree. The almond tree was still there this Friday afternoon—or was this an optical illusion? But the presiding deity was nowhere to be found. The deity in question, Professor Akintola Aboderin, a.k.a Akin Abod, supervised the debates under the tree while beer and much bile flowed. Aboderin was a Yale prodigy who was already turning in research papers as an undergraduate. But all that now belongs to institutional memory and aborted hopes.

    Okon had been dazzled and dazed by the architectural beauty of the landscape, But not to be fazed, the rummy lad immediately began running errant commentary.

    “Chei, Oga na god go punish dis wicked Yoruba people. So na here dem come sink all dem Oyel money?” the mad boy crowed.

    “Okon, watch your tongue. This is an important place.” Snooper admonished the mad boy.

    “So na important place go mean make man see dem truth make man no talk?” the rogue charged back.

    “Okay then” snooper said ominously. This seems to have quietened the boy a bit. But all hell was let loose as soon as we entered the club\s premises.

    “Wey all dem yeye professors, abi werepe don finish dem for dem farm?” the mad boy charged. An embarrassed snooper tried to hush the boy up.

    “You lunatic, I have told you these people are eggheads,” snooper cautioned.

    “Ah oga,” “na true, he get one of dem I dey see and him head come be like dem tolotolo egg.” The mad boy jeered. It was at this point that Luke, a veteran staffer of the club, hailed snooper.

    “Ha Mr president.” Luke saluted. But the satanic boy quickly picked the scent of blood.

    “Chei, we dey pray make god give us better pikin. Oga, so na for here you come be president?” Okon chortled to snooper’s seething rage. It was at this point that Charles Ukeje, an Associate Professor, reverentially guided snooper towards a row of immaculate whitewashed chairs. Charles’ father, the late and much beloved Animalu Ukeje, a,k.a Comrade Animal, was Vice President to snooper.

    “This is the elders, corner,” Charles intoned.

    “No wonder, but why dem chair no get wheel?” Okon grunted sarcastically. It was at this point, and as if on cue, that the elders started trooping in. Welcome, Mr Sagay a.k.a S.O.G, welcome Professors Adewumi and Monone Omosule, welcome the ever urbane and courteous gentleman, Professor Aduayi, welcome snooper’s buddy, Professor Owolabi Ajayi of Cobra fame and ,of course, welcome Dr Bunyamin Kukoyi, a.k.a Bigfoot, prizefighter and inimitable master of urban affray. It was Bigfoot that immediately caught Okon’s fancy.

    “Do you remember the day I wanted to beat you up at Ifewara for rowdy conduct?” Bigfoot asked a bemused snooper without any sense of irony. The old pugilist immediately began regaling us with his duelling exploits, particularly his encounters with local thugs who always ended in hospital. One of these, a local toughie called Agbo, fouled his trousers after Bigfoot administered physical therapy.

    The most hilarious was the occasion in secondary school when he was sent home to bring his father after a nasty fracas. In place of his real father, Bigfoot rented a local Ijebu man who wasted no time in slapping him several times as the principal reeled out his offences. Okon was immensely impressed. He never uttered another word that afternoon. The fear of Bigfoot is the beginning of wisdom. It has been a wonderful afternoon, folks.

  • Democracy as travelling theatre:

    Democracy as travelling theatre:

    The vastly urbanised and cosmopolitan Yoruba people of Nigeria have a sub-genre embedded in their prodigious dramatic repertoire. It is known as Alarinjo or Travelling Theatre. It is mobile and instant theatre enacted to a background of music and dancing. It is an amusing and riveting spectacle, but it can also become a vehicle of savage social and political satire’

    This is the Seventh Stage of politics as drama in Nigeria. The six other stages are exclusively devoted to Farce, Burlesque, Melodrama, Pantomime, Tragicomedy and of course Ritual. Given the pantomime buffoonery of the past fortnight, it does seem as if Nigerian democracy has learnt something from Yoruba dramaturgy.

    Last Wednesday, it was time once again for the annual national pilgrimage to the ritual shrine of democracy in Nigeria. Whenever democracy becomes this routinised and ritualised, you can be sure that it has been emptied of all its formal content. For in the final analysis, it is not what you say about democracy that matters but what you do about it. Democracy is a habit and not an antic. The anti-democratic panjandrums who rule Nigeria must be chuckling to themselves at this huge national swindle.

    Nevertheless on May 29, Nigerians from all walks of life and across the political divides, celebrated the fourteenth anniversary of civil rule and nascent democracy. So far, it has been the longest uninterrupted stretch of civilian administration in the history of the country. It was by all accounts a mixed celebration, reflecting the dominant mood of a nation that has entered uncharted waters in a perpetual quest for democratic self-actualisation.

    For many, it was a time for sober introspection and reflection about the fate of the country. For others, it was a time to roll out the drums of modest celebrations. To those who wore mournful looks of apprehension and unease, the tally of democratic dividends is in gross deficit. To this band of conscientious objectors, the stark realities on the ground, and the anti-democratic posturing of the upper echelons of the ruling party, is a cause for national anxiety. Darkness may be visible indeed.

    Yet for many others who trade in optimism like political stockbrokers, we have not done too badly given the circumstances. There is no ideal democratic society anywhere in the world. There has never been. Every human society must negotiate with its own dark demons on the perilous road to democratic emancipation. But where and when the demons win, not even the dead or the martyrs of democratic struggle will be safe.

    Democracy has its dark drama, its dismal dissimulation and dire dissembling. Sometimes it creeps in most often after momentous exertions by the populace. At other times, it steals out like an unwanted guest often after serious dereliction by the political elite. In a society fraught with explosive contradictions, nobody is sure of just when enough will be enough.

    But above the din of contention, a most sober assessment holds that what we should be celebrating is not the consecration and consolidation of democratic tenets and habits but the absence of formal military rule. If the soldiers remain in the barracks despite sore temptations, we may yet fumble and wobble our way out of the woods.

    It is perhaps in keeping with the aggregate mood of the country that the celebrations in Abuja have been modest and muted. A state of emergency in a democratic set up is an emergency for the state itself. In a low-keyed ceremony, the government of Goodluck Jonathan reeled out its achievements in the face of widespread question marks over its competence and capability.

    But in a development suffused with dramatic irony, while Jonathan was defending his competence and lashing out at his implacable detractors, his benefactor and political patron, the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was in nearby Jigawa state issuing an oblique but well judged fatwah against his former protégé. With Socratic acerbity, the former president noted that you could help a person get a job but you cannot help them do the job.

    It was a sensational vote of no confidence and a damning report card from the man who had set the exams and formulated its grading rubrics. Obasanjo had single-handedly propelled Goodluck Jonathan from the joyous obscurity of his tidal backwater state to the dizzying heights of the Nigerian presidency. If he is now publicly flinging the confidential evaluation of his own student and political apprentice at the Nigerian populace and putative electorate, it amounts to a public declaration of hostilities and an indication that 2015 will be one hell of rowdy and riotous endgame.

    But Obasanjo should be the least of Jonathan’s worries and woes. The country is unlikely to trust the judgement of the retired general again. He has been tested severally and found wanting in this department of leadership selection. When without any touch of irony, he was magisterially pronouncing on Jonathan, he was also at the same time publicly pronouncing on the soundness of his own judgement and his capacity for rational and patriotic evaluation of the nation’s leadership needs. The system of preferment he has put in place is as ruinous of true merit as it is redolent of malice and mendacity.

    The wily military strategist may be stalking some bigger game in the jungle. It may well be that General Obasanjo does not really care a hoot about who succeeds Jonathan as long as he has damaged him beyond re-election and as long as he succeeds in stripping the government he has installed of its last shred of credibility and legitimacy. This is the typical endgame and grudge match in which the general seems to excel. In that case, Sule Lamido himself must beware of a Greek gift.

    For the good people of Nigeria who have been sidelined as usual and forced to become idle spectators at this unfolding play of giants, the good news is that there is time for everything. Given the current power configuration in the nation and the dispersal of political authority within the dominant, residual and emergent hegemonic blocs, one individual, however powerful and pre-eminent, can no longer single-handedly determine who will rule Nigeria.

    Long out of power, with his political stock vastly diminished, without a political base and with virtually all the IOUs called in, the general reminds one of a political dinosaur stranded by choice. The omens are dire and he should read the handwriting on the wall. Unlike the northern power masters who often treat him with grace and civility in recognition of past services, the emergent hegemonic bloc does not seem to have the cultural grace for such niceties.

    They are prone to a feckless impudence which does not recognise past achievements or current distinctions. They are already sending ominous warning signals of impending demystification in his direction. If he does not take the cue and if the ascendant power bloc comes under intense political pressures, as it is bound to be in the coming months, it might set the House of Lugard ablaze. Long accustomed to hunting with the hounds while running with the hares, Jonathan may yet prove Obasanjo’s ultimate political nemesis just as Abacha almost turned out to be his military nemesis.

    There is a feeling of Déjà vu in the air. Something tells Snooper that we have passed this terrain before but in a military guise. The current conjuncture hauntingly reminds one of the early days of General Abacha’s reign of terror. After the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation was annulled, the opportunist miscalculations of the Nigerian dominant power bloc paved the way for a general who had no time for their posturing and pretences. The military, the caliphate and their southern power coolies paid very dearly for this.

    The goggled one strolled where angels feared to thread. He was ferociously feckless. At that point in time, two generals, Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, bestrode the political stage, huffing and puffing with hubristic self-importance. Yours sincerely in an article titled “Martyrs Arising” admonished the two military colossi, warning that in some paradoxical and inexplicable manner they may yet become martyrs of the unfolding democratic drama.

    Early in Abacha’s tenure, this writer asked the perceptive and brilliant Patrick Wilmot what he thought was the critical difference between General Babangida and General Abacha, Wilmot shot back that the difference was that Abacha was not intelligent enough to know fear. A few months later, Abacha summarily impounded both generals. Yar’Adua did not live to tell the story and Obasanjo escaped by some miraculous provenance.

    Once again, the Nigerian Theatre is travelling and the political road show is on. Like the Alarinjo, no one is sure when the joke and the fun will turn serious and morbid, or when the irreverent satire will metastasise into a vehicle for huge social commotion. Given the ongoing desecration of all known democratic norms and tenets, one can only conjecture that it will not be long. Like all dramas of human existence, it is impossible to distinguish between playing actors and acting players. Only time can tell.

  • Awada Kerikeri in Abuja

    Oh boy, oh boy, whilst we are still on the subject of political drama, has anybody watched the travelling video of the elections conducted by the Nigerian Governors Forum to elect its own leadership? This is what happens when the people infiltrate one of their own authentic leaders, Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, into a forum of feral carpetbaggers who do not care a hoot about democratic decorum.

    Snooper has watched the video several times and feels very sorry for Nigeria. It is an unworthy political melodrama. Their Excellencies behaved like cads and political bounders. They should not be proud of themselves. People should keep that video for posterity in case democracy unravels once again. The shame of it all has led Tunde Fashola, the cultured and civilised governor of Lagos State, to tender an apology on behalf of his errant colleagues. This will not prevent Snooper from wielding the heavy lash

    It was Raymond Williams, the famous British literary critic of proud Welsh extraction, who noted that one should not bother about what goes on in a church if you are not a member. Snooper has never hidden his distaste and contempt for the Governors’ Forum. It is an anti-democratic cartel of strange bedfellows. It has offered a platform for some of its past leaders to talk down on Nigerians with fatuous pomposity. It has supported many anti-people measures such as the removal of the phantom fuel subsidy. It parades and has paraded many undesirable elements that should be in jail rather then preening and strutting about the gubernatorial mansions.

    But fair is fair. When such an ethically challenged forum cannot obey its own rules or the basic tenets of democratic conduct all for reasons of political expediency, then democracy is on a life support. These monkey marionettes and their master puppeteer in the background will be held responsible if anything untoward happens to democracy in Nigeria.

    There can be no doubt that Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi won the election fair and square. The whole process was clean and transparent. The federal authorities should be embarrassed that the video recording has gone viral and they ought to have done something to halt the post-election charade, if they are not behind it in the first instance.

    The resort to a larcenous fabrication of a phantom majority after an election has been won and lost must rank as a new low even by the infamous standards of electoral banditry in Nigeria. No matter what happens next, it is a win win situation for Rotimi Amaechi. He has shown true grit and courage in the face of state persecution. Nigerians will surely hear from the fellow again long after his assailants have returned to penal obscurity.

    If there is a clear winner in this matter, there are also clear losers. It was sad to watch the elderly Governor Jonah Jang defending the indefensible even as his strange and convoluted logic descended into arrant blasphemy. Jang, a former Commodore of the Air Force, a presumed gentleman and a man with the mien of a pious priest suffering from ethnic persecution complex, has obviously struck a deal with the devil.

    But for this column, the greatest loser is Governor Olusegun Rahman Mimiko of Ondo State. Is Iroko beginning to politically unravel? He appeared nervous, fidgety, uncomfortable and ill at ease among the hard people of the PDP. Snooper’s good friend and former comrade in arms in the students’ struggle against early military despotism in Nigeria should know that his people, the Yoruba, detest injustice in any form and manner. They are watching and taking note.

    For some time now, Snooper has been observing Mimiko flip and flap about like a huge fish that has thrown itself out of water. In the run up to the Ondo gubernatorial election, this column had argued that even if Mimiko won, he would have exhausted his historical and political possibilities by not aligning himself with the current mood and dominant political tendency of his people. Every passing day confirms the potency of that political prophecy, and every critical misstep of Mimiko points at a political tragedy in the making.

  • 1914 amalgamation not as bad as often projected (1)

    1914 amalgamation not as bad as often projected (1)

    On 1st January, 1914, a giant country was born by the British and was named Nigeria. In geographical size and population it was bigger than its creator –Great Britain-a 356669 square miles land mass which is said to be the ‘size of United Kingdom, France and Belgium combined’. She had a problem almost from the beginning – the lack of family love: she suffers from what can be called hate-syndrome. Generally seen as a child of circumstance she has often been treated with scorn by her parents like an unwanted baby. However, in spite of such ill-treatment and other problems, the baby grew steadily, surviving all odds and hardship. Very soon- precisely on 1st January 2014 she would be 100 years old. In its wisdom, the Federal Government announced plans to celebrate the centennial existence of the country –an obviously remarkable feat. Unfortunately, that decision to celebrate such epochal stage of our history has generated much furor. The purpose of this essay is to show why it is good to celebrate one hundred years of the country’s existence. The 1914 amalgamation is not the evil it has often been painted by critics. It is the cradle of our nationhood.

    The criticisms have been based largely on two grounds, namely, the circumstance of birth and the poor performance and achievement of the country since birth. However, it is the circumstance of birth that seems to be more vociferous. Our position is that while there is nothing much to worry about the circumstances of our birth which is beyond us, there is much to worry about a life badly led after birth especially since independence. The latter was within our control to make or mar.

    This distinction is important for as AWO the sage popularized many years ago, it is not life that matters but the courage brought into it. The question most of critics have ignored is: what amount of courage and developmental imagination did the Nigerian Ruling Elites bring to bear on the fortunes of country since her independence in 1960? The obvious answer is not much and the obstacle is not with the circumstances of birth per se but poor upbringing due largely to the gross incompetence or inability of the ruling elites after birth. Blaming 1914 for our problem is thus wrong: it reflects lazy thinking and amounts to giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. It is unfair.

    Hatred and prejudice-review of criticism of 1914

    The criticism of 1914 dates back to history of colonialism in the country and it is largely one of hatred and prejudice. The problem though is that the criticisms have never satisfied curiosity. They may explain partially how Nigeria came into being, and poor, but they don’t explain why the country has remained ever so poor, underdeveloped and persistently corrupt long after the attainment of political Independence. For instance a persistence criticism is that the 1914 amalgamation has been responsible for the disunity, under-development and poverty of the country. But instead of working hard to overcome such age-long identified problems and making the best out of our common inheritance, the elites have been busy blaming the circumstances of our birth, amassing personal filthy wealth and living in obscene opulence and continuing to mourn the death or eclipse of once upon a golden time of our forefathers. They romanticized the pre-colonial past as though all was golden and so provide excuses for passing the bulk and unconvincing reasons for the present day failures. In the process the real problems are left unsolved and the culprits are allowed to run away with their crimes unpunished and unchecked. Recent comments on 1914 reflect the old mark of prejudice which blames our problems on colonial factor but tends to ignore the present danger next door. This has not been helpful.

    To some of the critics, 1914 is evil – the source of all the country’s problems today including insecurity. As it were, there were no problems in pre-colonial Africa and each empire lived in peace, love and harmony till the arrival of the white man. But we know that this is not true. There were wars and insecurity even among people with common language as we can glean from the history of the slave trade or the Yoruba wars in the 18/19th century. To others, 1914 represents an act of subjugation by a foreign power and thus unworthy of celebration because according to them, it is not wise to celebrate one’s period of slavery or conquest. History is full of accounts of the rise and fall of empires from Roman Empire to Songhai, Benin, Oyo etc. The African experience is therefore not strange. The odd thing really has been the inability many of African countries including Nigeria to make the desired progress after freedom.

    Yet others have disdainfully referred to Nigeria as mere geographical expression, the ‘mistake of 1914’, colony of ‘strange bed fellows’, a colonial measure meant only to reduce colonial administrative cost and enhance British economic fortunes overseas, the cause and source of her continued under-development etc. These are some of the wrong ideas fed to citizens over time from colonial era to post Independence period by the elites which had made citizens resentful of their country thereby making the task of Nation-building extremely difficult- if not nearly impossible to prosecute. A major problem with dependency theory is the tendency to pass the bulk, blame others for their misfortunes and find excuses for present failures. In Nigeria it has made the cultivation of unity of purpose, patriotism, mutual coexistence, cultural and religious tolerance, morality in public life and other related values necessary for national unity and development very hard. Wrong and hateful ideas can be hurtful to any cause including Nation-building.

    According to Dozie Ikedife, who wonders whether the country was about celebrating failure or success, Nigeria is yet to attain economic independence, national unity and therefore improper to celebrate a ‘mere existence of a country’. However such observation ignores the longevity factor as well as the fact that nations do not build themselves. They are built and developed by people especially the ruling elites and being able to live together for 100years is no mean feat. The purpose of milk in mothers is to enable them to feed and nurture their babies healthily. The baby whose mother fails in her primary duty of feeding could have stunted growth, but should be grateful all the same for survival and long life. Nigeria is a like a baby that has not been nurtured well since birth and yet survived to be 100 years old in spite of all odds. Her problems are largely post-natal-the negligence and ineptitude of the ruling elites. So blame the elites for our poverty and economic backwardness and not 1914.

    In similar vein other writers such as Okoko have argued that the 1914 amalgamation is the bedrock of Nigeria’s problems, including ethnic antagonism, insecurity, infrastructural decay and lopsided federalism. How? To Okoko the antagonism that we frequently experience among the various ethnic nationalities is as a result of forced amalgamation. Thus we should ‘rather concentrate our efforts in forging a united country’ (The Nation centenary celebration 30/1/2013, p. 43). Again this is a human failure wrongly ascribed. The arguments are illogical and the anger misplaced. How can one lonely event of a hundred years old be held responsible for today’s problems such as insecurity, corruption, infrastructural decay, intolerance? Shameful: Nations are what men make them and antagonism is an attribute of man and not of geographical space.

    To Idowu Akinlotan, the centenary celebration is a warped project as amalgamation is a’ humiliating part of our history which irreparably damaged our self esteem’ (The Nation, January 7, back page). To Ropo Sekoni, it is a ‘bold attempt to commemorate the nation’s colonization’ (The Nation, 10/2/2013:16). To Segun Ayabolu, who sees the whole thing as a “centennial delusion”, the amalgamation was ‘the commemoration of military subjugation, cultural alienation, psychological disorientation and humiliation as well as economic emasculation of the well structured and organized communities that preceded the colonial conquest’. He, however, recognized that the amalgamation is an ‘undeniable important historical event’ (The Nation, 23/2/2013: back page). To Tunji Adegboyega, who believes that Nigeria once worked within the framework of amalgamation, he was not too sure whether to support or not the idea of celebration. All he knows is that the country once worked but not working fine again and were the idea to be subjected to a referendum, most Nigerian would have rejected the celebration of 1914(The Nation, 10/2/2013:17).

    The position of these authors can hardly be faulted except to note that what we are actually celebrating is not 1914 per se but the gift of life- 100years of togetherness as a ‘people’ the jerky or ugly circumstances of birth notwithstanding. Besides what makes it impossible to rebuild and firm up our self-esteem, build better institutions since Independence and why has prevented the country from working fine today? Let’s call a spade a spade. The problem here has largely been with the Managers of the country especially since 1960. They reversed the progressive gear and dampened the nationalistic and patriotic spirits for which citizen were better known before the attainment of Independence. The 1914 event is not as evil as often painted. While it has its many blessings, it serves no useful purpose to wish to white-wash our history or ignore its ugly aspect. The importance of history is its objective account and sound knowledge of the past and attendant lessons for the present. History teaches that one can be born low and poor and yet grow to be great and to enjoy long life and celebrate birthdays if one likes celebration.

    In a three- part article, published in The Nation that ended in its edition of March 14, 2013, Dapo Fafowora gave a historical account of the ABC of what one probably needs to know about the amalgamation, detailing its origin, thrust, problems etc. He left no one in doubt that though the amalgamation was not deliberately done to advance the interest of the Natives, it non-the-less remains an important milestone in the history of the nation. However I did not see how Amalgamation per se destroyed indigenous political and administrative system that was alleged to be ‘far more democratic and accountable’ than the colonial. This is because the African system and its leading operators had been put aside by the colonial conquerors long before the amalgamation of 1914. At least the partition of Africa of 1884/5 came before the amalgamation of 1914 which created Nigeria as we know it today. Still I agree with his view that the 100th birthday of Nigeria should be celebrated but not for a whole year. The government can review the program to make it smarter in order to avoid a boring, snoring party.

    According to Tatalo Alamu, there is a tinge of intellectual slavery in the whole event (The Nation..10/2/2013:3). To him, the 1914 amalgamation is not a ‘Nigerian event because the Natives did not give Lugard their mandate’. It is therefore not worth celebrating ‘by the descendants of those who were herded in like human cattle’. The ‘celebration and commemoration of one’s own enslavement is a classic instance of mental colonization and the most depressive example of Afro-Saxony in recent political history. By the same token, the Japanese ought to commemorate the arrival of Commodore Perry on their shores and the Chinese the seizure of Hong Kong’ In a subsequent edition of The Nation, Sunday, 21/4/2013:3) he shows the debilitating impact of mental/ intellectual slavery on society in form of ‘inferiority complex’. According to him ‘intellectual subjugation is the worst and most deadly form of conquest because it leads directly to spiritual, economic, cultural and political enslavement. With his old religion gone, his culture subverted, his traditional institutions decimated, his mode of knowledge production devastated, the African, unlike the Chinese, the japans and Indians requires a complete make -over to even minimally function’.

    The logic of the argument here is sound. However while I find the intellectual-slavery thesis useful to understanding what went wrong since creation day, it does not remove the fact that Nigeria somehow has lived a long life of 100years and that such longevity is a thing of joy. Would it be proper to ask a man say of 80years not to celebrate his birthday just because his mother was wicked or suffered much pains to deliver him in controversial circumstances? Suffice to add that we live in a competitive world where one man’s meat is another person’s poison. Japan may not like to celebrate some aspects of their history but Nigerian has chosen. It is a matter of choice and perception. Given our peculiar circumstance of many tongues where not many gave the country a chance of survival, one hundred years of living together in a tough, slippery, political terrain such as Nigeria is worth the drums of celebration. It is a remarkable feat where others such as India and Sudan which equally experienced colonial amalgamation failed.

    •Abhuere writes from Uromi, Edo State

  • An Ambassador’s Odyssey: How internal affairs determine external affairs

    An Ambassador’s Odyssey: How internal affairs determine external affairs

    A Review of Lest We Forget: The Memoirs of Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora

     

    It is a great honour and privilege to review the memoirs of one of the most stellar diplomatic products of Nigeria’s post-Independence history.

    The ambassador is a walking encyclopaedia of that tortured history and perhaps one of its most memorable victims. But despite the occasional bumps and bureaucratic hiccups, it was good and glorious while it lasted. To have become the ambassadorial representative of one’s country at the United Nations barely at the age of 40 is a rare feat even among diplomatic high-fliers. But to be peremptorily retired and recalled three years after and 17 years to full retirement age must be considered a diplomatic tragedy.

    The ambassador’s career illustrates a classic Nigerian paradox which has continued to haunt the nation till date. The very system that recognises and rewards talent and excellence is also the same system that recognises and punishes talent and excellence. It is a Janus-faced system that is capable of good and evil in equal measure.

    All human societies are prone to errors of judgement and procedural mishaps in their preferment systems .But civilised societies build and develop institutional frameworks and safety nets to protect their public service against the frailty of human nature and its tendency to arbitrary tyranny. Almost 30 years after the ambassador’s arbitrary retirement, the Nigerian public service remains a Homeric killing field in which the best and the brightest are routinely sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity and mendacity.

    One can then understand the occasional bitterness and bewilderment and the abiding trauma that lace the ambassador’s photographic recall of events. But it is not all a tale of woes. There are happy moments and joyous events recollected with perfect tranquillity. The ambassador is an illustrious scion of an illustrious lineage.

    Once he is able to put behind him the trauma of a truncated career, Fafowora takes a hardnosed and insightful view of our failings as a nation and the concomitant foreign policy fiasco. The thesis is simple. In the long and short run, a nation’s foreign politics is conditioned and determined by its internal politics. Chaotic internal politics always lead to chaotic foreign policies. The colour and complexion of external affairs are a reflection of the colour and complexion of internal affairs.

    With its rich anecdotes, its hilarious encounters with saints and sadists of power, its unforgettable and finely crafted cameos of living and dead personages, this memoirs is a tour de force of institutional memory. Only a glutton for punishment would wish to become a victim of the ambassador’s perfectly weighed putdown or his pithy and pitiless summations. A few old heroes are disrobed. Emperors walk naked. Unfortunately, some of them are no longer around to answer to the ambassador’s scathing denunciations. All in all, this memoirs will come in handy for our foreign policy planners plotting a way out of our foreign policy conundrum.

    Let me say right away then that this memoirs is destined to become a classic of its genre, a towering contribution to diplomatic literature and a rich mine for students of cultural history, particularly of the westernised Yoruba elite thrown up by colonisation and christianisation. The old Lagos colony comes alive in this memoirs and through its prism we are able to catch a historic glimpse of its Victorian, Georgian and Elizabethan phases.

    My favourite is the unforgettable cameo of the old fabled Lagos millionaire, Pa Da Rocha, promptly appearing on his balcony at 1pm everyday to throw two shilling coins at passers-by. According to the ambassador, there were rumours that Da Rocha was actually long dead and that it was his ghost dispensing the munificence. But this did not prevent Fafowora and his fellow pupils of CMS Grammar School from partaking in the free for all scramble for the old Brazilian benediction.

    It is stuff from magical realism. It appears that we have had ghosts for a long time in this country, but this one was a good and generous ghost. There was also the story of the late venerable musical impresario, Art Alade, arriving in school in a gleaming and glistening Jaguar car while his principal made do with an old banger. But the iron-willed disciplinarian would not be fazed by such display of opulence.

    Fafowora writes the English language with felicity and facility. There is a fluency and fluidity about his prose which hint at a natural flair for writing. When this is added to a racy and riveting narrative style, it is moveable feast indeed. There is a master story teller, a raconteur of exceptional ability, at work in this memoirs.

    If the ambassador’s grasp of historical details is astonishing, his power of recall is a tad short of extraordinary. Fafowora vividly recalls events from childhood, and not even memorable pounded yam meals at the feet of his adoring and doting grandfather in Ilesha escape his attention. What a great professor of History lost to the Nigeria academy! The utter clarity, the limpid simplicity and uncluttered writing remind one of Norman Stone, the former Cambridge professor of Modern History and the celebrated AJP Taylor, the great historian.

    In the event, the loss of the Nigerian academy was the gain of the Nigerian nascent post-Independence diplomatic community. It was a career that blazed forth like a comet resulting in two glorious ambassadorial rescue postings to Idi Amin’s Uganda and later Turkey. It culminated at the UN as ambassador and Deputy Representative of Nigeria’s mission before it was plucked down in orbit by malignant forces.

    Fafowora does not mince word about those he felt were responsible for his plight, which saw him suddenly thrown out of the Nigerian Mission at the UN and to the abyss of joblessness in a foreign land. According to him, the main culprit was the late Ambassador Lawal Rafindadi who was a mere cipher clerk when Fafowora was already a top official of the Nigerian embassy in London.

    Rafindadi was ably assisted by the late General Joseph Garba who appeared to have coveted Fafowora’s job beyond the bounds of decency and decorum. Mention must also be made of the top Nigerian diplomat and former academic who wrote Fafowora a profuse letter of appreciation and thanks after enjoying the ambassador’s warmth and hospitality in New York. But almost in the same breath, the fellow also wrote a damning letter about the ambassador to the federal authorities.

    Although the new military authorities admitted that a mistake had been made, its ranking echelon was said to have claimed that the government had put the matter behind it. The moral and mortal error of military arrogance is that injustice can never be put behind. It will always surface on the front burner, an open sore of the nation.

    It has been said that an ambassador is a person paid to lie for his country abroad. Also, in a famous diplomatic dogfight, General Alexander Haig, the late American Secretary of State, was said to have dismissed Lord Carrington, his British counterpart, as a duplicitous bastard. To which the British earl snootily replied that there was always going to be a problem when you put boy scouts in charge of diplomacy.

    This ambassador is neither duplicitous, nor is he a boy scout in diplomacy. Fafowora has refused to lie about the ugly realities of his country. There is a refreshing candour about this memoirs which occasionally does not sit very well with the classical canons of diplomatic reticence. Anybody on the wrong side of the famous Ijesha tongue would know that it is not an ordinary bruising affair. Future generations of Nigerians will remain grateful to the ambassador for exposing with merciless frankness, the hollow ritual of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

    Had the ambassador been a better politician and a more accomplished insider operative, perhaps his fate would have been different. But throughout his career, Dr Fafowora insisted on doing what was right and proper even if heavens should fall. In following the laid down procedures and regulations, he was as militant as he was uncompromising often courting the ire of his affronted superiors and influential subordinates alike. The chancery is not a place for hostage taking, or for taking chances for that matter.

    There is an almost obsessive insistence on honour and propriety which often make Fafowora to sound like a moral crusader rather than a wily diplomat. In fairness to the author, he had the likes of Simeon Adebo to look up to as iconic avatars of the tradition. An excellent technocrat of immaculate integrity and unimpeachable character, Adebo was often spotted by eagle-eyed superiors who rewarded him with higher portfolios .and each time, the great man turned in an even more superlative performance. But it is unlikely that our ambassador has not heard that the distinguished public servant died a broken and disappointed man.

    It is time to examine the cultural and historical milieu that threw up this remarkable diplomat. The family took its name from the ambassador’s great grandfather who is rightly regarded as the modern primogenitor of the Fafowora clan, even though the original lineage could be traced back as far as the 15th century. Like many contemporary Ijesha family names, Fafowora is a nom de guerre adapted by the modern founding father.

    Fafowora distinguished himself as a warrior in the protracted Ibadan-Ekitiparapo war which had drawn in all of Yoruba land. He was known to have been fierce and uncompromising in war. Such was his total commitment to warfare that his own son and the future ambassador’s grandfather was already a twelve year old boy when he was taken to meet his father for the first time at the Ikirun front. The boy chose to remain with his father at the war front where he tended to his horses.

    With the end of war and demobilisation, the great warrior took to farming and business and became an instant success. The son took after the father, even surpassing him in superlative wealth. His entrepreneurial daring and love of adventure took him as far as the Badagry coast and in particular Oke-Odan where he promptly eloped with his sweetheart, a local princess and the ambassador’s paternal grandmother.

    Here we see new class formations in process and the modern Yoruba hinterland elite in progress. The old warrior class had transformed itself into the nucleus of the new merchant class. Further travel and exposure brought cultural refinement and civilisation which was almost synonymous with westernisation and the adoption of the Christian religion.

    As a son of a wealthy and influential father, the ambassador’s father in 1934 became the first student of Ilesha Grammar School with the magical number 001. He eventually finished at CMS Grammar School in 1938 in the same class as the famous Williams brothers. His son, the future ambassador, followed his father’s footsteps and became a pupil in the same school in January 1954 at the age of 13 and graduated with solid results in 1958.

    The inevitable contacts and collisions between the new Yoruba hinterland elite and the old coastal elite of Brazilian émigrés, returnees and recaptives produced its own great social ironies and explosive contradictions which should be of interest to our sociologists and cultural historians. Gentrification, with its hints of snobbery and exclusion and the attendant stratification of society were also underway.

    The ambassador’s maternal great grandfather was a Famuyiwa, a hardy Ijesha man who had been stranded on the Ileke coastline as a result of the protracted Yoruba civil war of the late 19th century. His son who trained as a clergyman promptly adopted the name Williams. But when the ambassador’s father, who had by then made his way to Lagos as a promising civil servant, asked for the hand of the beautiful Williams daughter in marriage, it was initially frowned upon by the Williams’ clan as an act of great social temerity by an upcountry bumpkin.

    It was the resulting union that was to produce the future ambassador. A blissful and idyllic childhood was brutally punctuated by the death of the mother who succumbed to cancer at the age of 38 in December 1954. The young Dapo, who was barely 13 at the time, was left to provide an emotional shield for his younger sister and infant brother. Far into his manhood, particularly in dire straits, the ambassador recalls the tragedy with pain and an acute sense of loss.

    Yet it is also likely that it was this defining event that steeled his character and forced early maturity on him. It probably also fuelled his determination to succeed in the face of all odds. This was to stand him in good stead as he scraped through secondary school without a permanent address. It also saw him through the Nigerian College of Arts and Science and the University of Ibadan where he emerged with top honours in 1964.

    It was however as a budding diplomat that the future ambassador faced his stiffest test of character. The sparks started flying almost immediately after he joined the Foreign Service. The training officer in the ministry, in what the ambassador described as an act of “deliberate negligence”, locked up all the correspondence pertaining to an earlier admission he had secured to Oxford University and went on leave. The offer lapsed, but when the Civil War broke out some months later, the same officer was among the first to defect.

    Secondly, Fafowora discovered early enough to his chagrin that official quarters in the Foreign Service were not allocated on the basis of seniority and rank but on the basis of region and creed. The ostensible reason for this flagrant favouritism and discrimination was that officers of northern origins, being in unfamiliar territory, would find it more difficult to secure accommodation than their southern colleagues. But as the ambassador would later rue, there is no evidence that this policy was reversed in favour of southern officers when the nation’s capital shifted to the north.

    It would appear that all the internal cleavages that have hobbled Nigeria’s march to authentic nationhood are reproduced at the level of External Affairs. These are the cleavages of ethnicity, religion, regionalism, gender and class. Those who find themselves outside the magical circle often learnt of their posting or promotion from far junior officers who belong. It was in the same manner that Fafowora learnt of his first ambassadorial posting to Uganda.

    During his mission to Turkey, the ambassador was directed by the home office to comment on the desirability or otherwise of Nigeria joining the OIC. Based on his awareness that Nigeria is a secular state, Fafowora urged caution, advising that our observer status be maintained. But an ambassadorial colleague serving somewhere else was unimpressed, insisting that Nigeria was an Islamic state and that the process for full OIC membership should be expedited.

    If Fafowora thought that this was a mere difference of opinion, he was profoundly mistaken. Years later, his ambassadorial colleague could barely conceal his hostility, pointedly referring Fafowora to the original affront as the basis of his intense irritation. To slight his colleague even further, the ambassador not only refused to vacate the quarters he no longer needed, he handed it over instead to a far junior officer. Such was the nature of political and religious animosity..

    Added to all this is perhaps the more fundamental problem of the mode of decolonization. The mode of decolonization also affects the mood and tone of Foreign Policy. Nigeria’s independence was gained on a platter of gold rather than at the altar of heroic sacrifices But Ghana which had a more turbulent trajectory in which Nkrumah moved from prison to presidential palace always had a more robust and vigorous foreign policy than Nigeria. Indeed in the early days Nkrumah viewed Nigeria as an imperialist poodle and there was no love lost between him Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa who was a staunch conservative at home and an imperialist ally abroad.

    Almost thirty years after and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Ambassador Fafowora’s premature exit from service has a ring of inevitability to it. A Foreign Service already devastated by ethnicity, religious bigotry, gender discrimination, post- civil war stress, regional polarization and the bitter division between career diplomats and political placemen now added the virus of Intelligence officers planted to write damaging reports about their colleagues and superiors rather than mounting external surveillance. An implosion was bound to follow.

    It was the last-mentioned virus that proved fatal to the ambassador’s career. He was summarily retired along with many other illustrious and distinguished colleagues in what he describes as a night of long knives. The climate of national hysteria and confusion that followed the termination of civil rule provided the perfect cover for what is nothing but ethnic and religious score-settling. Almost thirty years after, the mind still boggles at the scale of mischief and malice. Yet the nation has failed to draw the appropriate lessons.

    The ambassador’s subsequent incarnation as the director General of MAN, his foray into Yoruba cultural politics and his political appointment as a Special Adviser to the government of his native state of Osun are beyond the immediate purview of this review. His account of this phase of his life is as illuminating as it is filled with insights. But after his stellar Foreign Service career, it is an anticlimax of sorts. It merely shows that for a man of exceptional talents, there is life after diplomatic death.

    This is a powerful book whose pulsating echoes will reverberate in the sanctuary of power for a long time to come. It is a bold and courageous intervention brimming with daring and sheer audacity. Like his Ijesha warrior forbears, Fafowora has thrown his hat in the ring.

    But behind every exceptional man there is probably a more exceptional woman. In ending, I must not fail to single out for particular praise the ambassador’s wife. She has stood like a Rock of Gibraltar behind her husband as an exemplar of self-sacrifice, duty and devotion. The couple was taken to the airport in an ambulance on the day of their wedding which also coincided with the first coup. This is not just an ambassador’s memoirs. It is also a love story at its most sublime, and at a time of political and diplomatic cholera. Let us now rise in honour of this exemplary Nigerian nationalist and Yoruba patriot.

    I thank you all.