The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • National questions are forever

    National questions are forever

    • On the emerging world order

    National Questions just wouldn’t go away. They seem eternal; intrinsically bound to some mysterious uncontrollable forces. Seven months after we thought we got a reprieve in Nigeria, they seem to be back with a vengeance. To flee your fate is to rush to find it, says an Arab proverb. Kidnapping and abduction are back on the national menu. Armed marauders are back on the highways.

       There is a resurgence of political, ethnic and religious mayhem  on the plateau. After the lull, the pincer movement on Abuja by various sociopathic elements and criminals appears to be on underway again. When a nation’s capital is besieged and embattled to a point where citizens cower and tremble in the sanctuary of their living room, the handshake has gone beyond the elbow.

       African colonial nations often remind one of Aboliga, the man-child, Ayi Kwei Armah’s weird and haunting monstrosity, who grew into full manhood the very day it was born only to die later in the day. Of his native Germany just emerging into late nationhood from the Bavarian bog, Karl Marx thundered:” Verily, Germany will one day find itself on the road to ruins like other European nations without having achieved their economic and political consolidation”.

     Germany duly paid its dues and reparations after plunging itself and the rest of the world into two global conflicts which finally saw off its old Junker military caste and its dominant xenophobic political class famously described as Hitler’s willing executioners. Without its elites achieving an organic unity of purpose and national will, many colonial African nations have found themselves on the road to ruin even before consolidating the nation-state paradigm imposed on them by their European masters. It is a cruel and unjust fate, but the world does not wait for any laggard nation or people for that matter.

      In all this, it is the American nightmare that concentrates the mind. The scary possibility of Donald Trump, the archetypal demagogue and supreme anti-humanist, returning to the White House gives one the jitters. Trump is America’s ultimate nemesis, a disturbed and possibly deranged doppelganger programmed to bring out the worst in America and Americans.

      Ugly Americans are on the ascendant in America, particularly its middle belt. With Trump calling the shots in the Republican primaries even while facing criminal charges that would make a normal person go home and hide, only a miracle can save America from itself. If the invasion of the Capitol is a dreadful dress rehearsal of what is to come, then a civil war cannot be off the card.

      America has not always behaved well in the pursuit of its national interests on the global scene. Its hegemonic Brahmins have been responsible either directly or by covert conniving for some of the bloodiest conflicts the world has seen in the modern times. In the name of protecting itself, it has imposed many psychopathic dictators and bloodthirsty tyrants on hapless nations stalling their economic and political developments as they dissolve into chaos and disorder.

      But this is only one side of the coin. No nation is perfect or completely sane for that matter. When America puts its better foot forward, when its finest people who have retained fidelity and faith in the grander and more noble ideals that impelled its founding fathers to surge forward as an organic mass, they have been responsible for some of the greatest leaps forward intellectually, economically and politically by humanity and modern civilization.

    This is when America is a marvel to behold, a biblical city shining on the hills which cannot be hidden. Unfortunately, despite the highfalutin noise about its exceptionalism, America, like every other nation, is prone to fundamental disorder and vulnerable to unresolved aspects of the National Question, particularly what to do with its native Indians, its Black populace and the descendants of barely literate hordes from mainland Europe it has used to populate the American interior as the ungainly behemoth opened up.

       This last lot tend to be intellectually obtuse as they are spiritually tone-deaf. The two aces they hold close to their chest are race and religion. Having been outsmarted by people they consider to be racially inferior and spiritually lower than themself, their resentment and indignation can only find outlet in racial and religious bigotry as well as ethnic block vote. This is where Trump draws his greatest support and sustenance from and they constitute the Praetorian Guard of his electoral insurgency.

      From the look of things, it is becoming clearer by the day that this is no longer a matter for the democratic rabble to resolve. Rabbles do not resolve National Questions. They only tend to exacerbate the tension and national fault lines. This is the time for America’s finest people, the true intellectual heirs of the founding fathers, to rise to the occasion. America needs to return to the Philadelphia of Benjamin Franklin and all the avatars that forged a new type of nation on the ashes of feudal Europe.

      Despite their democratic aspirations and pretensions, the American founding fathers were no starry-eyed idealists. They loathed the rule by rabbles and ragamuffins to death. This was why they hedged their bet and did everything possible for their age to forestall and prevent this. Against the Plebian lower house, they installed a patrician and authoritarian senate. Against the idea that every vote is equal, they ceded the ultimate power to elect to an electoral college. Both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore outstripped their opponents in terms of popular vote but the Electoral College gave the nod to George Bush and Donald Trump. This writer describes it as a kind of democratic eugenics.

        Barbarians are at the barricades. The American founding fathers could not have foreseen the ascendancy of the descendant of an old German drafter dodger from Bavaria.  National Questions are never solved on a once and for all basis. They depend on the stage a nation has reached in the course of a turbulent and tumultuous march through history. It may well be that America needs the Trumpian tornado to reset its democratic momentum.

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       America’s serial setback may be symptomatic of a decline in the nation-state paradigm itself as the premium human mode for organizing and valorizing territorial space. For some time, acute observers have noticed a fraying and frazzling at the edge of the nation-state paradigm, particularly its inability to offer stability, accelerated development and protection for weaker nations against bigger predatory states.

      Just as it happened at the tail end of the Ottoman Empire, there are whispers about a post-American world and the whetting of appetite about the culinary possibilities. Many countries are jostling for contention to replace the greatest power the world has seen since the Roman Empire. But if history is any guide, it will not happen the way they envisage.

      We are already witnessing the advent of some strange hybrids. With the devastation of Gaza and its possible annexation, Israel is transiting to a colonial power in the post-empire age. Iran, the residual relic of the ancient Persian Empire, acting as a countervailing power against American designs in the Middle East, is gradually transforming into a new type of imperial power as it nurtures and empowers a network of clienteles which includes the Houthi insurgents in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and a cluster of rogue militias stretching from Iraq to the Maghreb corridor in North Africa. Having swallowed the Tibetian nation, China waits furtively for American potency to decline further before pouncing on Taiwan.

      It has become a very dangerous world out there as the nation-state paradigm is convulsed by terminal stress. It is perhaps the developments in Russia that are most interesting. An empire before its revolution, Russia became a colonial behemoth once again after the Second World War by adding many satellite states in what became the USSR.

     The empire collapsed in the wake of Gorbachev’s reforms, a development Vladimir Putin has described as the greatest geo-political catastrophe to have befallen his people. But Putin is already making hay. With the looming annexation of Ukraine coupled with the earlier confiscation of huge chunks of Georgia and the Crimean peninsula, Russia is set to reconfigure itself as a modern empire-nation.

      These oddities, hybrids and genetic monstrosities portend a world out of joints, a world structurally misaligned and badly configured in which the nation-state paradigm faces its greatest threat. Nobody knows how the new global order will shape up, but it can be safely conjectured that by the time the cloud clears, a few more weaker states will be gobbled up with impunity by the stronger states and the brave International Court of Justice would have become the splendid court of international criminals.                                                                                              

    Africa nations are most vulnerable. Verily, without having achieved the political stability and accelerated economic development offered by the nation-state state paradigm in its prime, African nations have found themselves being frog-marched to the post-nation frontiers. National Questions may be forever. But the world will not wait for any nation to resolve its national questions.

       In conclusion, what is most tragic about all this is the fact that Nigeria which has the strengths and the spunk to act as a countervailing lodestar for a new vision and vista of human conurbation based on social justice and inclusive governance is so hobbled by internal contradictions that it cannot help itself not to talk of providing leadership in harmonized existence for the Black race. In its state of hapless paralysis, Nigeria, without formal annexation, has become a prey to several predatory groups that have turned its chaotic landscape into a vast extractive emporium.

      Heavens forbid, but if care is not taken, this is where and when the torrential rains that will supplant the heavy clouds gathering will beat the hell out of the Black person. It is a tragic pity that early African heroes and political visionaries of the decolonizing phase such as Kwame Nkrumah, Gamel Abdel Nasser, Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Samora Michel and Augustino Neto saw the critical need for this Pan-African concert. But they could not overcome the internal contradictions of their respective countries. Almost to the single person, they were felled by these contradictions. It is time once again to begin to reimagine the continent.

  • The Army and its Hoi polloi

    The Army and its Hoi polloi

    It is just as well that the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Taofeek Lagbaja has paid a well-publicized visit to the governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwoolu. This is coming against a background of rising insecurity, the growing spate of kidnapping, the return of marauders to our highway and the increasingly unruly behavior of some military personnel particularly of the lower cadre to constituted civil authorities.

     As far as the optic of military-civilian relationship is concerned, it is expected that the visit, a symbolic reaffirmation of the superiority of civil authorities over the military, should go a long way to smoothening ruffled feathers and reassuring the public that all is well. Jide Sanwoolu is not known to be a boorish and uncooperative fellow driven by egomaniac pomposities. He should let the verbal bruising in circulated videos serve as a reminder of the seething furnace of anger and resentment in the land.

     All over the world, a sense of entitlement can be found even in the highest echelons of the military. More often than not, this is always well-managed. But if it is not, it leads to humiliation and self-deflation as General Douglas MacAuthur, arguably America’s most decorated military officer, was to find out to his chagrin when he attempted to tango with the feisty no-nonsense President Harry Truman over the direction of the Korean War.

      He was summarily cashiered. In recent times, it was only when a top serving American general hinted that the sacred tenets of presidential transition would be enforced to the letter, even if it means physically bundling out any intruder that the anarchic presidential rogue slunk out of the White House. He would have been treated as the unruly thug and bounder that he is.

      Ever since human society discovered the deployment of force and violence as the organizing principle of the state, the arms-bearing classes have always been accorded a pride of place at the apex of the society. They are seen as the custodians of societal stability and arch defenders of its corporate and territorial integrity. Often in times of anarchy and turmoil, they usurp the supreme authority of the sovereign to protect the sanctity of the dominion.

      But this is only a temporary measure to stem the tide of anarchy as they must return to their hideout on the margins of the society from whence they came once order is restored. Even in ancient times, the established consensus was that the military hierarchy does not have the governmental nous, the basic competencies and skills to rule over the complex and countermanding perplexities of the human society in its variegated intrigues and treacheries.

        Military training is of a different order: to instill discipline and enforce strict compliance. The difference between military and political leadership can be illuminated by Sir Isaiah Berlin’s famous dichotomy between the fox and the hedgehog: the hedgehog knows one big thing, but the fox knows many small things.

        There are however some exceptional and extraordinary individuals of genius who combine in their unique personality the countervailing prototypes of top warrior and world-historic statesman: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Charles de Gaulle, Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Dwight Eisenhower and arguably the founding troika of the Russian Revolution: Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.

       What is incontrovertible is the fact that Modern societies accord serving and retired military personnel rare honours, respect and privileges in recognition of their patriotic services to the nation and the willingness to lay down their lives at short notice at the behest of the society.

       In the summer of 1999, after lining up for several hours among a teeming crowd queuing for an American visa in Amsterdam, yours sincerely was quietly intrigued when a lady calmly called out American serving soldiers and ex -servicemen to form a much shorter queue. One later discovered that this is quite the norm in America where serving or delisted soldiers of whatever rank are treated with special respect and admiration wherever they go.

     One would have thought that in an arms-suffused society, the normal tendency would be for arms and their bearers to suffer a drastic demystification. But then there is a qualitative difference between professional managers of violence and its mere purveyors. In a nation where the refinement and sophistication of the instruments of incapacitation has reached the zenith of human ingenuity, the fear and awe of the military class is the beginning of wisdom.

       The same intriguing dynamics has been at play in the evolution of the Nigerian military from a colonial army of internal occupation to current efforts to make it regain its reputation. The annulment of the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation, itself an act of physical and psychological intimidation against the civil populace, remains a blight on their record and reputation. But since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the military hierarchy, despite minor hiccups, has put their best foot forward.

      Unfortunately, there is always a weak link in this tough chain of professionalism. And it is the lower-most ranks, the military rabble or what we choose to call the military hoi polloi. They are the ones who come into most contact with the civil populace. Hard and hardy indeed will be the senior officer caught in the market haggling over the price of yam or freeloading on a battle-tested motorcycle.

      As a result of their elementary and rudimentary training, particularly where it comes to psych-ops  and the manipulation of reality to achieve a stated objective, military underlings lack the discipline, the fortitude, the endurance and the capacity for higher deception, dissembling and dissimulation associated with the higher ranks.

      In retrospect, and given their extraordinary civility and gentlemanly conduct, nobody would have thought that the mid-ranking officers’ formation of the Nigerian army was a seething cauldron of anger and discontent in the run up to the mutiny that terminated the First Republic. Or just imagine the calm and placid atmosphere that preceded some of the most momentous military uprisings in Africa.

       We may have to thank the military underclass for their understandably lower threshold of pains and capacity for suffering without flinching. It may be an accurate barometer for gauging the smouldering resentment among the subalterns. In confronting the errant soldier, Governor Jide Sanwoolu was faced with a testy and nerve-tingling conundrum, and he acquitted himself honourably.

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       To have allowed the errant soldier to go scot free would have amounted to opening a floodgate of traffic anarchy and chaos. That particular route was already becoming notorious for the disproportionate number of military personnel and some miscreants driving deliberately against the traffic with impunity and disdain for order clearly written on their visage. It may be due to the presence of a nearby military barracks. Horrendous accidents have occurred as a result of such impunity.

        However justified the case may appear, there can be no two laws in the same society, one for soldiers and another for the civil populace. It is an invitation to chaos and anarchy. Perhaps as a result of his limited education and exposure, the subaltern compounded his initial error of judgment with an appalling sense of entitlement, repeatedly insisting to the governor that he was a serving soldier who must be granted some positive discrimination. As we have demonstrated, this is not how soldiers in civilized polities conduct and comport themselves.

      For his rogue colleague and the other impersonating confederate to have taken to the airwaves to babble insensate nonsense about Sanwoolu and the federal authorities may well be an indication of the massive discontent among the lower ranks of the armed forces which cannot be blithely brushed aside. There is too much anger and resentment in the land.

      Consider for example when Tunde Fashola arrested a redneck for driving on a designated route. The senior officer took it in the chin and was contrite and very remorseful indeed. The lowly soldier does not speak the same language with the governor. There may even be a possibility that he considered his apprehension an act of monumental injustice.

      We must do everything possible to avoid a revolt of the military underclass in this complex and complicated country. In Liberia, it led to unremitting savagery and a fifteen year eclipse from which the country is yet to recover.

      This is an excellent opportunity for the Lagos State government and the military authorities to enter into a partnership to alleviate the horrific living conditions of the subaltern. Better barracks, better transportation dedicated to the lower ranks, a revolving loan scheme and improved welfare are urgent necessities.

      Understandably, the need to insulate the army hierarchy from partisan politics may prevent open flirtation with the political class beyond the call of duty. But these things can be done quietly, without funfair or publicity and with maximum integrity. 

      Unless the army is operating under an old feudal code in which every soldier’s status is already preordained and pre-assigned, it should open the eyes of its lowly cadres to further education and useful training which will prepare them for life beyond the barracks. Every soldier must learn a useful modern trade before being de-commissioned.

    The possibilities for military/civil authority collaboration are immense and should not be thrown away simply because of the misguided angst of some errant service people. In the coming world order, quite a lot will depend on the superior intelligence and the capacity for swift reaction of the average soldier. The illiterate army of the future will be the army that has refused to educate and re-orientate its lower masses. 

  • Apocalypse in Ibadan

    Apocalypse in Ibadan

    Oh dear, oh dear, the metropolis of gold and rust and of pound for pound civil affrays has itself taken a pounding.  Irrepressible Ibadan, the city of no-nonsense warriors, wears a shell-shocked grimace after a freak calamity arising from impunity and official irresponsibility.

      Forty years ago in an essay commissioned by Newswatch magazine to commemorate Nigeria’s independence anniversary, this writer posited that Nigeria is a consuming paradox. Ever since then, paradox, like irony its sister and ambiguity its brother, has defined every facet of our national life. It throbs, weaves itself into the fabric of national existence and bobs up everywhere we turn.

      But it does appear as if the paradox is getting more gruesomely paradoxical. Or how else does one explain the apocalyptic nightmare that almost took down the Bodija suburb, arguably the most civilized and refined enclave of this ancient warrior city with it on Tuesday night? It was a mining mystery laced with the typical Nigerian paradox.

      How does one explain, after crass impunity has been factored into the equation, that dangerous explosives meant to be detonated in some faraway pits have found their way into an upper market residential area without eyebrow being raised until tragedy struck? It reads like fabulous fiction, like King Solomon’s Mine, Sir Rider Haggard’s  phantasmagoria about a mythical mine of incredible riches located somewhere in the heart of darkness.

      But if that was straight from the colonial imaginary which adequately explains the later scramble for Africa, how about this one? A postcolonial mine and its violent accessories this time located in the heart of the most urbanized section of Africa’s most populous nation and superintended by a Malian native. Echoes of the manager of the interior, Joseph Conrad’s uppity supervisor of some misbegotten African jungle in the old Congo?

       It would appear that the more ungovernable spaces Nigeria boasts of the more minable its governable enclaves have become. Let us put this more starkly. The more undermined a country is, the more over-mined its natural resources are. This is the Charles Taylor’s Law of extractive predation.

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     Remember him?  Charles Taylor was the Liberian warlord-ruler who simply carved up some parts of his country and added ungovernable lumps from Sierra Leone and Cote D’Ivoire for the purpose untrammeled plundering until nemesis caught up with the rogue Americo-Liberian.

      Our Malian brother who caused all this with obvious internal connivance has probably bolted with the winds leaving traumatized Nigerians to clean up the horrendous mess. On the board of directors of his so called company, there is only one Nigerian without instant name recognition. He got away with murder without any eyebrow being raised. Wonders and paradoxes will never end in this country.

       This column commiserates with those who lost relations and valuable property in the inferno. We share the grief of Funso and Muyiwa, children of the great and unforgettable Cicero, whose Solemia Residence was severely rocked by the violence and force of the explosion.

      It would have been gentler and easier on the soul if one had not severally visited and had been entertained in some of the affected homesteads. Solemia was the site of epic intellectual duels in the early nineties with the great man sometimes calling for a truce which would end in delectable dinners at the nearby Alma guesthouse.

    We condole with Niyi Akintola, SAN who wrote with trembling hands on the total devastation of his upper market hotel in the area. Our heart also goes out to our great friend and senior politician, Barrister Iyiola Oladokun, whose wife is a great fan of this column. We learnt that their residence was completely obliterated.

      Once again, Nigeria has become the laughing stock of the entire world. How can a gifted and much admired nation allow this kind of seismic damage to be inflicted on its populace? They have been mining in South Africa for eons and we have never heard of this Kafkaesque nightmare. One day the nation would rouse from the horrendous sleepwalking

  • The battle for economic modernity

    The battle for economic modernity

    Superman comes to the Supermall

    In the struggle to reorder its governance architecture and economy in line with the best practices of modernity, Nigeria faces daunting challenges. There is a siege on rationality everywhere. Nobody ever thought that an ethical challenge of such magnitude would have faced a government trying to revive an economy that has been battered to stupor. But here we go once again. The good news is that there is a silver lining in every adversity.

      Just before the Russian Revolution, a European diplomat to the court of the ancient Tsars was asked what he thought the Russians did best. Casting furtive glances across his shoulders, the old spook blurted out in good-natured exasperation: “They steal!” Given the rate at which everything lootable in Nigeria is being looted, and the rate at which the country itself is being canonized as an authentic crime site, we will be lucky if the Russian moniker does not become the enduring epithet of this generation.

      But believe it or not, stealing directly from the federal coffers, as heinous a crime as it is, should not be our greatest headache if every other thing had been in place; if Nigeria had been able to move from being a nation in itself to becoming a nation for itself.

    As the old Russian stealing class, the Chinese economic scoundrels, the Cuban corporatist crooks, the Korean chaebolists and the Singaporean cartelists  would later find out to their utmost peril, stealing can be swiftly eradicated or substantially curtailed once all other things that make a nation are in place.

       No nation can exist in a permanent vacuum. Even nature itself abhors a perennial vacancy. An uncultivated garden soon becomes a weedy nuisance. It is our inability to work out our fundamental and foundational problems and come up with a consensual organogram for the nation that has turned stealing into such a compelling and compulsory national pastime. It has made almost everybody with access to feast on the nation to a state of stupefying self-engorgement.

      Perhaps because of Nigeria’s size and stupendous riches, no one has seen anything like this before. No human magic can procure straight furniture from crooked timber. And no sleight of hand from a tailor can restore sartorial fidelity to a pair of trousers that has come up for short. It is a fundamental design mishap.

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      It is just when we think we are getting on top of a particular problem that other unresolved problems come rearing their head. Just imagine the renewed mayhem on the Jos Plateau, the return of marauders to the Abuja-Kaduna highway and the growing restiveness of military hoi polloi against lawfully constituted civil authority all sucked into an already seething vortex of instability and disquiet.

    The irony of it all is that it is when a government shows unusual courage and initiative in confronting the problem head on that we begin to see the issues in all their enormity. How do you begin to assimilate someone who has been acculturated not to see the distinction between private and public coffers into the norms of modern economic order?

     How do we collectively transit from an outmoded economic model in its various forms, formations and formats that privileges sharing over producing to a modern economy embedded in our own indigenous notions of rationality and thrift without some apocalyptic fatalities?  The kind of figures bandied about as missing or misappropriated from the Nigerian treasury is an affront to common sense and reason.

       But as we have shown, it could not have been otherwise. Nigeria is plagued by institutional debility compounded by deep structural and systemic miscarriages. This is what makes the ongoing saga of the youthful Betta Edu and other instances of larceny a mere symptom, a short hand for something more fundamental. How do we account for the role of the civil service which is supposed to be the Praetorian Guard of fiscal order and bureaucratic rigour in all this?

     The back and forth memos, the spate of lies, evasions and the criminal duplicities show that rather than act as a bulwark against disorder and irregularity, the civil service itself has suffered a bureaucratic meltdown of catastrophic proportions . Let us not deceive ourselves or underestimate the immensity of the rot. Such is the web of complicity, the net of extortion and shameless racketeering that the lone crusader caught up in all this is fated to forlorn martyrdom.

       What then do we do? Do we simply wring our hands in helpless submission to fate? Or do we fold up in hapless fatalism as our country is buried in a cosmic avalanche of sleaze and malfeasance? Not on their life. But as are about to show shortly, this is where structure and national configuration matter, or in the alternative and interim a ruthless law-giver with the courage and balls to put an end to the nonsense no matter whose ox is gored.

       There is no single route to economic and political modernity. Most human societies as a result of their historical trajectory have developed a system of economic check and political balance which would have allowed them to transit to some versions of modernity on their own steam and without any colonial irruption. In oriental societies, there is a culture of shame and proper conduct which forbids sleaze and a run on the exchequer. The culture also demands gentlemanly conduct and good public relations.

      A personal example is illustrative. As a visiting scholar to the University of Leiden’s African Studies Centre about twenty five years ago, yours sincerely shared a flat with a well-heeled Japanese postgraduate student. A few weeks into cohabitation, one was woken up one night by a foul and putrid smell emanating from the washroom. The chap had fouled up the toilet after a night of carousal in the dark alleys of the ancient city.

       The fellow was woken up and given the most severe verbal upbraiding. Before dawn, he had disappeared after making a heroic effort to clean up the place. Thereafter, he only made furtive nocturnal returns like a ghost until he showed up about a week after with a retinue of his Japanese compatriots who came to apologize on his behalf. It is from such minor encounters that you know the character of a people and a nation.

       In South Korea, there is a ritual of shaming and publicly humiliating their leaders who have infracted against public norms. In the not too recent past, one of such leaders jumped off the cliff rather than face the prospects of such public disgrace. In Malaysia its revered leader, the nonagenarian Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, stormed out of retirement to confront a corrupt and amoral leadership caste. He won hands down.

       Before it was forcibly incorporated into the rubric of modern Nigeria by a vengeful Lord Lugard after the Adubi War, the Egba city-state had already solved the problem of corruption and public malfeasance through its own formula of public shaming and exiling of errant public officials. Such officials were hounded out of town never to be seen again. In many Yoruba towns before independence, this unique inquisition was visited on many erring officials with their homesteads incinerated.

      The problem with fractious, heterogeneous and multi-ethnic colonial nations in Africa is that the little gains many of its component societies have made in terms of probity and public order have been wiped out in the postcolonial maelstrom, leaving them morally and ethically hamstrung. The falcon can no longer hearken to the falconer.

      It is exactly forty years ago that General TY Danjuma remarked with wry prescience after the fall of the Second Republic that corruption and sleaze in Nigeria had assumed a “transnational efficiency”. One can only wonder what the old man would be thinking now. 

      The fact is that we have finally arrived at ground zero. This is what eventually happens to nations without core values or a consensual elite agreement about the political architecture or destiny of the nation. In such circumstances, somebody has to be the “carrier”. In Yoruba ritual politics, the “carrier” is the person who by mystical assignation or secular instigation is chosen to carry the sins and infractions of the society to the outer boundary and margins of possible remission and restitution.

      Judging by the spate of retirements, dismissals, dissolution of ossified boards and interdictions of banks this past week, the superman might have finally arrived at the supermall. It may be too late for the owners to close shop or for the shoppers to bolt. There will have to be an audit.

       When this column mooted the idea that given the countervailing perplexities that have brought Nigeria to this sorry pass, the sum total of a Tinubu presidency may be greater than the man himself, many scoffed at the idea. In saying this, one is not unmindful of the possibility of the cooling off of the reforming ardor as sheer survivalist instincts and electoral gaming take over, or as the outfoxed and outgunned forces of reaction and retrogression rally to deliver a crushing veto. But this will be when other countervailing forces triggered by the ethical implosion of the nation kick in. Nigeria is on the cusp of momentous developments.

  • “Frank Kokori is here!!”

    “Frank Kokori is here!!”

    To know where a nation is headed in the comity of great assemblies of humanity, look no further than how such a nation treats it authentic heroes while alive. According to Louis Althusser, only the production of new heroes keeps old heroes alive.

      The problem is that in fractured and fractious colonial nations where even the issue of a federal identity remains prone to fierce intellectual contestations, the notion of who is an authentic federal  hero keeps rearing its head. One can understand such a dispute among the polarized elite formations in the country. Just begin to rhapsodize about the virtues of the late Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu or Eman Ifeajuna in certain circles and you will be told to shove it down wherever it was coming from.

      What is strange and intriguing is the fact that as a result of partisan politics, such shabby treatment could be extended to heroes even within their own catchment area. Politics can be a very brutal war indeed with no hostages taken.

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       Several years back in Benin City at a public lecture to mark the momentous two-term tenure of the feisty, occasionally tempestuous but politically gifted Adams Oshiomhole, yours sincerely as the guest lecturer had noticed two gentlemen lurking faraway in the hall in bemused anonymity. They did not interact with the crowd and the crowd did not interact with them. Nobody acknowledged their presence in the hall and they did not acknowledge anybody either.

      But yours sincerely was having none of that. As the lecture got underway, one had noted the presence of these men in the hall without whose heroic exertions, the current democratic experiment would have been impossible. “Please step forward for recognition, Chief Frank Kokori and Great Ovedje Ogboru!” yours sincerely rallied.

      Muted and grudging applause followed to the consternation of the hard men in the crowd. It was only then that the two gentlemen were chaperoned to the front of the gathering. While Kokori donned a grin of worldly wise sangfroid, Great Ogboru wore a bemused frown as they were led to the front. They probably knew what one did not know at that particular point in time that past distinctions cannot count where current contentions are unfolding.

      A few weeks back, Frank Kokori went to join his ancestors perhaps nursing the quiet regret that his heroic sacrifices at the behest of his society have all been in vain. Such is the whirligig of postcolonial politics. May his great and heroic soul rest in peace.

  • And now the Anthony Aboki Ochefu conundrum

    And now the Anthony Aboki Ochefu conundrum

    Although they may arrive at political modernity via different routes, all good governments are the same everywhere in the world. It is only bad governments that are unique in their specifically evil and whimsical ways. All reforming governments that want to live in the heart of their people are often confronted by the Anthony Ochefu conundrum. Put baldly, it is what do with high-flying and brilliant officials who have committed infractions against the stated wish and philosophy of the government.

      Ochefu? Does anybody remember Colonel Anthony Ochefu? The Idoma-born military red-neck was a high-flying and highly charismatic official in the early days of the Murtala administration. As a result of his derring-do as a garrison commander in the events that led to the ousting of General Yakubu Gowon, he was made the military governor of the entire East Central State as it was then. He proved highly proficient and briskly competent, not to talk of being compassionate and caring.

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      The Igbo race thought that a messiah had come from nowhere to reintegrate them into the Nigerian society. As a serving corper then, one should know. Ochefu paid a scheduled visit to the Youth Corp camp in Awgu and was given a heroic, rapturous welcome. Then everything unraveled one dark night. In a broadcast to the people, Ochefu explained that he was resigning and retiring from the army as a result of the completion of investigation into some infractions committed in his earlier post.

      Please note that Ochefu had to go on the basis past infringements rather than current infraction. The Murtala administration was firm and unwavering in its resolve because it knew how an administration can be damaged by question marks on its credibility and legitimacy. A dark pall of resentment and misgiving descended on the old Eastern region. But his successor, Colonel Atom Kpera, proved equally competent and proficient, thus dispelling the clouds of suspicion.

      If our memory serves us right, Anthony Ochefu would later succumb to a gang of armed robbers in his Otukpo homestead. May his noble soul rest in peace.

  • Power production and elite delinquency

    Power production and elite delinquency

    (A review of Odion-Akhaine’s Political Power in Nigeria –Excerpts)

    By the turn of the sixties, Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and social theorist, had noted that the new African elite were afflicted by terminal weariness and historical disorientation. It is a condition that has taken on perplexing aggravations. By beaming his formidable intellectual lens on the vexed issue of regime-change at a particularly tense and fraught conjuncture in Nigeria’s post-military evolution, the author has opened up the topic for discussion and further scholarly dissection.

    It is in this respect that this book, emanating from a collection of the author’s column written on the topic for The Guardian newspaper, is an important and critical contribution to the emerging literature on the politics of succession in post-independence Africa, particularly its Nigerian dimension

     Sylvester Akhaine-Odion writes with the quiet and understated authority of personal suffering. An intellectually alert professor of Political Science and committed patriot, he was the Secretary General of the defunct Campaign for Democracy in Nigeria during the murkiest and most tragic political transition programme that the country has ever witnessed.

      As General Babangida’s political chicanery gave way to Abacha’s frank and brutal despotism, Akhaine-Odion himself, for his pains, was impounded and kept away in detention in horrid circumstances. But he has kept faith with his beloved country, successfully transiting from the urban political warfare of civil protests to the equally punitive gymnasium of academic exertions.

      The passion for his country, his faith in the immanent destiny of the troubled giant and his sustained intellectual engagement shine forth in this collection of essays, particularly in their tone and tenor. But they are not enough to redeem the collection from a certain structural levity or what can be more forthrightly described as an organic incoherence of organization.

      There was always going to be a problem in trying to graft a unifying theme on what is essentially a loose collection of random reflections. The situation is rendered all the more desperate and precarious when it is obvious that Akhaine-Odion is writing on the hoof in a manner of speaking, that is trying to make sense of events as they unfolded, giving the impression that serious column writing cannot be anything other than scholarship in a hurry.

      In the circumstances, the most charitable and profitable thing to do is to engage this collection of articles on their own terms and terrain, without ignoring the conceptual lapses and theoretical lacunae brought about mainly by trying capture a historical phenomenon still unfolding. According to the author:

    “The first point of analysis is to look at the power perspective to understanding Nigerian politics in the context of the preponderance of pollster projections ahead of the 2023 general elections.”

      As this passage indicates, and rightly so, it is all a question of power. Power is the principal organizing mode of all societies since the dawn of human civilization. Power is the capacity to enforce compliance or ensure submission without necessarily resorting to physical force.

     The production of power is the ability among owners and wielders of power to create conditions for its own reproduction down the line. This is what allows power to be transferred from generation to generation and within dominant groups as it happens in larger entities, societies, guilds, peoples and nations. This continues until there is a signal rupture in the production of power chain and the falcon no longer hearkens to the falconer. The old order crumbles.

      Sometimes, the end comes with a shuddering and apocalyptic halt which takes many by surprise. More often than not, it is a final whimper after a series of disruptions which often appear unconnected and uncoordinated reminiscent of the multiple wounds which finally put paid to the Roman Empire.

     The capacity for brutal exertions often of a violent physical nature over dominated entities is a sine qua non for the perpetuation of hegemony by dominant factions. This is particularly so in multi-ethnic nations in which mutually unintelligible people of diverse and occasionally countervailing cultures are boxed together by exploitative colonial necessity and its cruel political economy.

      Quoting Odia Ofeimun, the notable Nigerian poet and political activist with warm approval, Odion-Akhaine concurs that the Lugardian Architecture of the colonial state foisted on modern Nigeria by the departing  colonial masters is “a sacral writ which requires power to reside only where the colonial mandate wanted it to be or in favour of British exploitation”.

      Despite its fascinating allure for Nigerian intellectuals, activists and political theorists alike as a theory of power domestication, there is nothing strange or unique about the “Lugardian Architecture of the colonial state in Nigeria”. You cannot give what you don’t have.

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      As it has happened almost everywhere else and in consonance with their own history, the British colonial masters sought for a master-nationality around which the new nation could cohere and congeal even as it facilitated the real business of economic exploitation in favour of the metropolitan centre.

     This was what happened in Kenya with its Kikuyu master-nationality and in virtually all of their colonial franchises everywhere else. Where it has failed, it was because the local elite were considerably unified, cohesive and acutely alert to their historical responsibility. This was the case with Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana.

      As long as this fundamental impulse and impetus of the imperialist mission is not disturbed, the natives can get on with the business of sorting themselves out often in bloody confrontations which leave death and utter destruction in their wake. Colonization is not a tea party or a benign adventure on behalf of humanity despite the civilizing razzmatazz.

      In his second and third installment about what he termed as the receptacle of power or the warehouse of power, Akhaine is on surer ground when he brings in the concept of the state-nation as an analytic category for capturing the production and distribution of power in the Nigerian postcolonial dominion.

       He quotes himself and quite rightly too: “State-bearing nation refers to the strategic control of state institutions by a nationality , not necessarily dominant  demographically in a plural society, but capable of dictating the content and direction of state policies.”    

    The difference between the nation-state proper and its state-nation simulations is that whereas in nation-states, national institutions evolve alongside state paraphernalia with forces of civil and political society acting in concert to modulate and moderate the excesses of the state, in state-nations, the nation owes its life and continued existence to the state which often act to impede or stall its democratic aspirations. 

    The colonial conquest of Africa and the subjugation of its people was not an act of friendly persuasion. Force—sheer minatory violence—was the organizing principle. Unlike what obtained in the Westphalia nation-state in which the military acted at the behest of the nation, it was the army that founded and owned the colonial nation. All the subsequent anomalies that have hobbled Nigeria’s march to organic nationhood can be traced to this fundamental aberration.

    The litany of colonially induced woes is quiet extensive and benumbing. Odion-Akhaine dredges them up with painstaking assiduity. They include rigged census, rigged elections, rigged recruitment into the armed forces and political organizations to ensure the northern veto and the manipulation of religious and cultural fault lines.

      Odion-Akhaine writes with persuasive force and unimpeachable logic about the nation-disabling antics of the colonial masters. According to him: “Statecraft trumped nation-building. The former is about central control, while the latter is about bridging, merging, and realigning the identity forces, normalizing them, and ensuring the inclusivity of the component nationalities of the Nigerian state. Instead, the Lugardian Achitecture ensured that policies were mainstreamed to ensure the domination of the northern elite.”

      This was the poisoned chalice the departing colonial masters handed down to the Nigerian elite in the guise of a new nation. Yet it ought to be obvious that without elite reorientation and the re-engineering of political ethos leading to a new national consensus about the immanent destiny of the greatest conglomeration of Black people anybody thinking that peace, stability and genuine liberal democracy would follow must be living in a fool’s paradise.

      As we have said many times, Nigeria is structurally rigged against rationality and peaceful order. The state is at war with the nation, and the nation is at war with itself. The colonial terror machine bequeathed to the nation is an impersonal, equal opportunity terminator which does not recognize anybody except its extant handlers.

    Any wonder, then, that after the series of coups, civil wars, mutinies, social and religious upheavals and the summary annulment of the freest and fairest presidential election in its post-independence history by a military cabal and its oligarchic enablers, Nigeria again almost suffered a fatal implosion in the last presidential election?

     Nigeria is like a serial political gambler whose luck has continued to hold. But it should be obvious to the discerning observer that this legendary reprieve cannot go on forever unless the critical issues are critically addressed.

      Many critics believe that this is a crisis of democratic succession rather than a crisis of fundamental state impairment. They cite mundane ephemerality such as the “Emilokan” Syndrome as famously propounded by the leading candidate who is now the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

      Yet it should be obvious that the “Emilokan” outburst was itself a mere symptom of an underlying serious ailment. Given the legendary capacity of the Nigerian political class for mischief and haymaking, it is a miracle that the political reapproachment and elite consensus which underwrites the post-military dispensation beginning with the Obasanjo civilian regime has lasted for twenty four years before it began to show signs of terminal weariness or the need for repacting.

      Even then, it was not for want of spirited attempts to undermine it. In 1999 despite the prevailing atmosphere of conciliation and compromise after the tragedy of June 12 and Abiola’s demise, there were still some rogue elements of the Nigerian political class who insisted on exercising their fundamental human rights by contesting both the PDP primary and presidential election itself.

       By 2003 when he began contesting for the presidency in a serial losing run which lasted till 2015 when he finally won the laurel, General Mohammadu Buhari exhibited an unwavering disdain for elite consensus.

      Inside the PDP nest of intrigues itself, it is a well-known fact that President Obasanjo barely survived the spirited efforts of  Abubakar Atiku, the Vice President, to unhorse him. Having survived the scare, Obasanjo himself went on to attempt a tinkering with the constitution in a doomed Third Term bid.

      By 2023, the wheels finally began to fall off the clattering locomotive of elite consensus. This was against the backdrop of certain ominous developments in the polity. There was the Sharia gambit of 2001 which suggested that the core north was very uncomfortable with losing power and was bent on doing something about it.

    There was the Boko Haram religious insurrection which began as a local discontent only to snowball into a regional conflagration.  The east became a hotbed of separatist agitation even as flashes of economic sabotage persisted in the Delta.

     As growing insecurity and the menace of Fulani herdsmen began to undermine the peace and security hitherto enjoyed by the region, the old west and its radical intelligentsia began to champion the cause of negotiated separation or some drastic reconfiguration of the extant unitary structure of the country bequeathed by the feudal/military complex.

      It was against this background of the polarization of the nation and the return of the National Question in a sharply accentuated form that the game of thrones of 2023 opened. Under General Mohammadu Buhari’s watch, the old north appeared to be in danger of losing its fabled and much rhapsodized  magical touch and the power of ethnic cum religious veto with which it has railroaded the rest of the country into electoral compliance.

      Two significant developments in the polity showcased the scary possibilities of a looming electoral debacle. First the PDP, panicked by the possibility of becoming a permanent opposition party, opened up its presidential sweepstakes to all comers in flagrant contravention of the founding clause of the party which stipulated that power must be rotated between the north and the south.

       In similar manner, and not wanting to become a sitting electoral duck, the ruling APC opted for a same-faith ticket in open defiance of an unwritten clause that has operated throughout the post-military Fourth Republic, thus igniting a ruckus of discontent in several sectors of the country, particularly among northern minority Christian groups who felt betrayed and even persecuted by the arrangement.

      To complete the millennial meltdown, Peter Obi, sensing an electoral shellacking by Atiku, his former boss and running mate, suddenly decamped from the PDP only to show up in the supposedly leftward leaning Labour Party, a party for which he had never shown any ideological affinity or political consanguinity. The stage was thus set for a political duel unto death without any higher political ideals or ideological and moral probity.

       It is intellectually rich and a grim misapplication of the Biblical code to assign any higher morality to the decision of the group of northern governors to support Bola Ahmed Tinubu in their party presidential primary after General Buhari put his boot in against Tinubu’s aspiration on the floor of the party primary. It was borne out of grim survivalist calculation and a brave attempt to stem the tide of electoral anarchy which would have put paid to the Fourth Republic.

       General Buhari’s aloof contempt for conciliation had become legendary. To the more discerning among his younger gubernatorial colleagues, he had become a political liability to both party and nation at that point in time.

     To do his bidding would have been tantamount to signing a collective death warrant. In a strange drama of political self-abnegation, he himself had acquiesced to being summarily put to the sword even before the ink had dried on his presidential proclamation.

       If it were not for the pained grimace of stupefaction the former infantry officer wore that long night and the hint of surly distaste for what was unfolding, one could have thought that a master political illusionist was putting on a major show.

       In such circumstances, it is the presidential candidate with the least baggage who was bound to prevail. In a stunning dispersal of electoral fortunes and forcible redrawing of map similar only to what can be described as the interpellation of forces in politics, no candidate had been able to impose his might on the populace.

      Such was the cliffhanger that electoral upsets were recorded in strange and unfamiliar places. But by the same token, those who were hoping for a major disruption or an electoral deadlock which would have put paid to the system eventuating in an extra-constitutional interim government could not muster enough votes to achieve their anti-democratic agenda.

      The presidential election of 2023 represents a watershed in Nigeria’s electoral evolution. With the apparent breakdown of the old elite consensus giving way to a new multi-plurality of voices, the hitherto centralized monolithic production of power yielded to a multi-valence and micro-pluralism of power vectors. In the process, an emerging national consciousness , quaint and conservative in nature and orientation, has suffered a drastic pushback.

       This may well be the greatest achievement of the ethnic cum religious cum social combustion known as the “obedient movement”. But in a great irony the greatest beneficiary of the obedient commotion has been the current administration. The post-commotion quietude has allowed the Tinubu regime to strike out in its own peculiar and idiosyncratic manner without the fear of any hegemonic bugbear chafing and snapping at its heel.

       If the administration maintains its calm despite the possibility of a fearsome backlash from the outraged and outfoxed forces of the old order, we may be witnessing the crystallization of a new elite consensus. One thing we can reestablish from the last election is the fact that it is impossible to gain electoral ascendancy in a vast and chaotic ensemble like Nigeria without substantial elite compliance.

       This is the lesson the core Buharists learnt in 2011 after the resort of their rabble to carnage and destruction. It is the lesson other groups aiming to rule Nigeria must now take to heart. Even a revolutionary reconfiguration of the nation under the current template can only come from elite consensus. In attempting an intellectual excavation of his country in a testy moment of electoral disquiet, Sylvester Odion-Akhaine has carried out a yeoman’s assignment. He ought to be commended.  

  • A wayward year on the final approach

    A wayward year on the final approach

    As this year eases itself out of contention in a matter of hours, many Nigerians will breathe a sigh of relief. It was a year that delivered much more than it promised. A year full of awkward surprises and telling political ambushes, it even managed to collect some significant political scalps on the homeward stretch.

     It was the year of magical paradoxes. The person who won the presidential election was not the person who won the most votes. But he was widely seen as the person with the least political baggage, the one with the best capacity transcend the yawning chasm and ever widening geyre thrown up by the unresolved aspects of the National Question. 

    It was the year when the brittle pact among the elite which held the country precariously together for twenty five years since military departure finally collapsed. For the first time since 1966, a significant fraction of the political elite opted for political disruption as a way of resolving the political logjam.

      A former head of state took to the tube urging for an immediate cancellation of the election on the ground of widespread irregularities. But the midnight black market intervention felt more like a signal for the termination of democracy rather than its protection. Political discontent simmers in some quarters.

      In many other African countries where this collapse of elite conciliation has occurred, it has led to civil war or unusually violent political commotion. Sudan has not had a functioning state in the last eighteen months. But Nigeria’s legendary luck has kept it staggering about like a badly wounded elephant and with its capacity to function as a normal state seriously impaired.

      In more than one  respect, this outgoing year will be remembered as the most significant and consequential since the military returned to the barracks. This is the year Nigeria’s traditional power merchants finally lost the plot. Emerging political contradictions surprised them and rendered them combat-ineffective. Political proxies and satraps they have always relied upon to fight their battle for them developed ideas of their own. The power baron is dead, long live the power baron.

     Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, this was also the year the Nigerian economy finally tanked after decades of serial abuse and horrendous mismanagement which qualifies for a new word in the history of state aggression against its own people and corporate larceny: econocide: the deliberate killing of a nation and its people through systematic plunder of its resources by a wayward political elite.

      Forget about Mobutu, Eyadema, Bongo, Mugabe, Mansa Musa, Bokassa and all of them put together. Nigeria is the most openly stolen and looted country in the history of humanity. If the reports of humongous stealing from the federal coffers and outlandish pilfering are anything to go by, it has been a bazaar of barracudas.

      No human society has ever survived this level of stealing without some significant consequences. Even the feudal mode of production in its classical formation was better organized and far more humane. Yet we claim to be a nation-state which is supposed to be a historical advance on the feudal vision of human society. But the fan has now hit the ceiling of putrescence.

       There is an organic connection between the collapse of elite amity and the virtual collapse of the Nigerian economy. Those who are organically incapable of self-development cannot be expected to organize and develop a nation’s economy. They are at the dead end of political economy. Much is consumed as if there is no tomorrow and little is produced.

      A feudal national elite that has developed a sweet tooth and the habit of cosmopolitan consumption without corresponding hard work cannot grow any economy. They are like a pack of gluttonous rodents who happened upon a sugarcane plantation. They will feed themselves into a state of drunken stupor until reprieve comes from the cutlass of the bemused hunter.

     This last Friday, one had wandered into an upmarket Bureau de Change in Canary Wharf in London just to have an inkling of how the transactions in international currencies were proceeding. Of course, Nigeria and its naira had long been expelled from this global currency community because the naira had lost its viability as a convertible currency.

    To our shame, all the African currencies on display, particularly the Uganda shilling and its Kenyan counterpart, were holding out very well with the Kenyan currency trading at 217 to the pound sterling. At that point in time, the black market rate of the naira was 1650 to the pound sterling and still counting.  The question is what is Kenya producing and exporting that we are not? Are we not dealing with the same prototype of fractious political elite?

       The key to unlocking the question lies in firm, committed and disciplined leadership. If the massive anger and discontent were not to tip over, if Nigeria were to avoid the terrible fate of the sugarcane plantation rodents, it will require a stern lawgiver; a brutally self-disciplined leader who will show by example that it is no longer business as usual and that he is not hostage to any corrupt elite formation with a feudal sense of entitlement. This is what has brought Nigeria to the gate of economic and political ruination.

     It has been said that President Tinubu’s civilized approach and his behind the door arm twisting, cajoling and entreaties may be bearing huge fruits beyond the glare of public klieg lights. There are unsubstantiated reports that stolen money and huge repatriations from criminal looting of the exchequer may be finding their way back to the federal coffer.

      This is just as it should be. But it is not nearly enough. Private deal for public looting is a vision of human society which lacks the basic components of social justice and compassion for the economically abused and dehumanized.

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    Even if the lesser crooks are allowed to go with a slap on the wrist, such benign dismissals must never be contemplated for the major scoundrels who have brought this country to the nadir of its fortunes. Examples will have to be made of the major crooks whose thieving shenanigans have contributed greatly to the economic adversity of the nation. 

     At this juncture in our nation’s history, it is important to lay down the cult of integrity and propriety in public office to serve as an example to coming generations. In the whirlpool of irrational stealing, nothing much can be achieved until we lay the foundation of bureaucratic rigour and modern rationality in this country. As the English put it: men are hanged not because horses are stolen but so that horses may not be stolen.

       As a student of the dialectics of history and a believer in the immanent rationality that drives the conduct of human affairs despite the wayward twists and turns of actual events, one cannot but ease off this year on a note of optimism.

      It is time for honourable dreaming. Just as historical developments and the reality of a multi-ethnic nation rumbling with volcanic possibilities made continued military rule an unprofitable venture for its most ardent champions, and just as political contradictions have weakened the vice grip of the old ruling class on the nation, the prevalent political gangsterism will also become a thing of the past as its ethical and political toll becomes very prohibitive. Welcome 2024.

  • Okon flunks his Japa interview

    Okon flunks his Japa interview

    To the fabled Aromisa Police Station around the narrow strip of land abutting the lagoon at the Makoko marsh where the equally fabled warriors from  Benin first disembarked several centuries earlier to try their luck and tempt their fate in a quest for human cargo cleverly disguised as a fishing and hunting expedition.  Okon had been languishing in one of the horrid cells having been arrested for aggravated theft and conduct prejudicial to public peace and order.

       This bleary early December morning, all was eerily quiet on the sandy approach to the lonely police outfit where Okon was spending his sixth night because his bail condition could not be perfected. In addition to the humongous money he was asked to pay, the crazy boy had been ordered to produce a surety who was of high religious standing in the society or a traditional ruler of equal status. Since Okon had been heard several times on television denouncing both institutions even while claiming to be a High Chief in some remote backwater, no one was willing to stand surety for him.

       As the “Japa” phenomenon took deep hold of the society with everybody, including both the very old and the very young, wanting out, a whole range of industry developed around the japa scheme. They include examination boards, interviews, referrals, resits, feeder boards, etc with local scams ensnared by national hoaxes all ending in a gigantic swindle. You can trust Okon to cotton in on one of the pilot schemes scamming everybody who can be scammed until the scam master himself succumbed to a master scammer.

       Pretending that he was not in interested in leaving the country, Okon had been doing lucrative business with a Japa Company by herding prospective applicants in its direction and taking a cut which was known as endorsement fees. Until the superman came to the supermarket. After heavy hints, winks, sighs and whispers, Okon became convinced of a surefire route to the US and promptly applied to another company in heavy secrecy, or so he thought. He was immediately granted an expedited interview, having paid the requisite fees for executive service.

       So convinced was Okon of this sure path to the promised land that he began misbehaving at home, dropping heavy hints of imminent change in status and inviting his usual accomplices from the creeks to teach him Americana manners and gesticulations without any further ado. Yours sincerely was quite convinced that something was not quite right and had decided to follow him to the interview. It was a comprehensive fiasco with the interviewer bent on unsettling Okon with a no-nonsense stare.

      “Country of origin, please?” he demanded.

      “Ha oga, why dat kin question now? Even dem afoju or blind man sabi say na for Abeokuta dem dey make dem orijin drink. But tell dem say he be like if say dem dey reduce dem ogogoro for dat one ooo. He no dey fire people again.”

      The interviewer, a dandified crook with a colonial hairstyle whose landmark parting glistened with local pomade, wore a deep frown of reservation at Okon’s verbal misadventure. But his face suddenly softened as if he was showing deference to some invisible master giving him instruction. He became friendly and conciliatory again.

       “I will help you out”, he began with controlled disgust. “What is the name of your country?”

       “Nigeria now. You know say Nigerians no dey carry last, abi dem never tell una dat? “ Okon responded with triumphal flourish to the utter discomfiture of the interviewer who decided to deflate his upbeat self-importance.

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      “ Mr Okon, you are already in an asylum, so why are you looking for asylum in another country?” the interviewer suddenly shot out with a deadpan expression. Okon was momentarily flustered. But he quickly regained the initiative and his composure.

     “ Ah, my brother, you see asylum pass asylum. He get one asylum where food and bush meat dey plenty and he get another asylum dat even dem devil dey run comot from, no money, no light, no food, no work… Make I dey go on?” Okon retorted with a fiendish grin.

        “It’s all right. So, what is the Fifth Amendment?” the interviewer demanded.

         “I no sabi dat one, but he get dem Mushin tailor who dey tell me say him done do seven amendments for my trouser. I come tell am say as I no be thief, amendment no dey kill trouser. So who come born five amendments?” Okon rallied with an ignorant scowl. Even the interviewer could not resist a quiet smirk.

       “So how many wives have you got?” the interviewer asked as he reached the end of his patience.

       “One full one and one half one, so dat one be one plus one over two”, the mad fellow replied with convoluted mathematics.

        “Meaning what?” the interviewer screamed at the crazy chap.

      “You see I get one but dem never give me cerfiticate of occupancy for no 2. I beg dem Fashola and dem Ambode boys sotey but dem no answer. So, I come tell dem say na poor man’s wife dem fit take no be him pikin”. At this point, the interviewer was getting discomfited and thoroughly uneasy.

      “What special skills are you bringing to America?” demanded the harried interviewer.

       “Ha thank you, my brother. Skill plenty and kill plenty. You never hear the case of dem yeye boy who come give four of dem American policewomen belly for inside cell for one year? Me, I fit do six for one month. He get time like dat for Calabar when dem come put me among dem room to give women obonge yansh. After one month dem come remove me becos all dem women come dey spit for morning”.

      At this point, even the interviewer seemed to have had enough as he quickly packed his papers. “We will get in touch with you”, he announced as he flew through the stairs.

      “Which kind get in touch be dat? No be when person don fail exam dem dey say dat? So wey my change?” Okon stuttered as he pursued the poor fellow in blind rage. He had caught up with him as the poor fellow made a frantic escape bid through the back door. As he pounced on him scattering his papers and files to the wind, policemen emerged from the blues and promptly arrested Okon. 

  • As blindness leads to new visions

    As blindness leads to new visions

    On a scale of comparison for complexity and complication, this outgoing year will go down as one of the most intriguing and perplexing since the dawn of civilization. Despite his reputation for higher intelligence, the human species has not demonstrated much intelligence when and where it comes to organizing and ordering his own affairs.

     Despite specks of brilliant developments which may eliminate famine and hunger in the most developed parts of the world, there is also growing evidence of a universal collapse of charity and the human capacity to understand and tolerate each other as seen in person to person, nation to nation, religion to religion and race to race relationship. It is this fundamental character defect of unemotional intelligence which holds the key to further human capacity building and not startling ll advancement.

     We can understand the plight of Africa and the capacity to shock the rest of the world with pristine savagery. Sudan has not had a functioning state for over a year, but it is in excellent company. All over the continent, statehood is a fluid and volatile business which often exchanges batons with anarchy or organized official banditry.

    But how does the civilized world explain the horrific and apocalyptic carnage of Gaza Strip as Israel pounds the Hamas overlords into submission? How does the slow-motion destruction of Ukraine which has been going on for almost two years now while the civilized world watches in powerless perdition make sense? With the stricken people of Gaza reverting to sign language and primitive modes of transportation, a dawn of de-civilization appears to be underway in the area.

     Some analysts have contended that the appalling human mess such as we are witnessing the world over is nature’s way of asserting its suzerainty over human affairs and of curbing our illusion that we are on our way to becoming undisputed masters of the universe. The human species murdered and pillaged its way into universal dominion over other contending hominids. The logic and manner of ascendancy and domination is unlikely to end with our species.

      What we are witnessing may well be a replay of that struggle for the survival of the fittest at another level. At the end of it all, the human species may become so enervated and exhausted that it may pave the way for the emergence of another master species already lurking in the shadow; or out of sheer apathy and weariness humankind may suddenly be surprised into submission by its own creation on a clear beautiful day.

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       The Middle East gave human civilization its two most powerful and successful religions to date. They do not derive their power and achievement from the beauty of their message or the transcendental scope of their vision of humanity, but from their capacity for organized violence and relentless militarization of conversion.

    When the capacity of one to enforce its universal writ petered out outside the gates of Vienna after slogging it all the way from conquered Constantinople, the other took over. The world would never be the same again.

       From there, it was a straightforward route over the Dark Age to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The interplay of fortuitous forces and geographical placement as well as the fact that historically Western Europe was on the periphery of classical feudalism pushed the continent ahead of other continents in the sweepstakes of modernization and its booty. The discovery of the two continents of America followed and the creeping colonization of Africa commenced.

        Almost two thousand years after being expelled from their ancestral homestead, the Israelites are back in the same place but this time as a conquering colonial power themselves. There is no other way Israel can sustain its brutal writ and iron grip over the Gaza Strip without assuming the formal trappings of a colonizing imperium. The Israelis groaned and wailed under the savage yoke of their Roman conquerors. Now it is the turn of their Arab cousins.

      The same goes for Russia and its cruel exertions in its former colony, Ukraine. For centuries until the Soviet Union imploded, the Ukrainians felt the icy grip of their powerful Slavic cousins. It is an understatement to aver that Russia covets Ukrainian riches and stupendous human resources and is willing to ignore ineffectual international condemnation to achieve its objective.

    It is on record that Vladimir Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Empire as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe to have befallen his country in the modern era. This enthusiasm is not shared by most Ukrainians who regard themselves as more politically advanced and culturally sophisticated than their Russian relations. The average Russian balks at this, claiming that the veneer and gloss of modern civilization paraded by Ukraine is a result of Russian generosity and labour.

      The situation is thus set for a duel onto death and a collision of altars which can only end in conquest and submission rather than negotiation and conciliation. Russia does not seem to mind Ukraine disintegrating after seizing a huge chunk of the nation. But to maintain its vice grip and give its dominion a semblance of statehood, Russia would have to take on the role of a colonizing emporium for the second time.

      The rest of the world is compelled to look askance, given the growing impotence of the UN and its utter powerlessness when it comes to dealing with the superpowers. Hobbled by its manifest frailties, the African Union lacks the voice and the gravitas to intervene in any matter. Haven gone through a disastrous run of incompetent leadership caused by cronyism and chumminism, Great Britain is understandably quiet and supine.

     France is chafing and chomping having been expelled from its overseas holding which it has milked without any milk of human kindness for centuries. Emmanuel Macron appears to have lost a bit of his bounce and swerve after his brinkmanship failed so disastrously in Niger Republic. The French extreme right is not taking all this lying low.

       A leading light has suggested the equivalent of the guillotine treatment for Emmanuel Macron for losing the plot in Africa and for letting the much despised Black people unto the secret of their misery and historic privation. This coming from the country of liberte, egalite, and fraternite is a new low in a history of arrogant duplicity and deviousness.

      It is noteworthy that after the French were ejected, Niger became the fastest growing economy in the world. One can imagine what a vast difference this new found wealth will make to the fortunes of the average Nigeriene if it does not disappear into private pockets. So much for colonial exploitation and brigandage.

       As the memorable year swings to a close, the question on everybody’s lips is who will redeem western inspired civilization as we know it from its self-inflicted wounds? Certainly not America which prides itself on its own Exceptionalism and messianic destiny. America is in danger of imploding from its own contradictions, particularly from the unresolved National Question about whether a nation laying claim to universal freedom of humanity can also play host to such dehumanizing inequities and survive.

      The land of the founding fathers, of Washington, Jefferson, Jay, Hamilton and all those heroic figures who cobbled together a new type of nation is in critical danger of a swift descent into an authoritarian distemper the like of which these sages and avatars could not have contemplated. In Donald Trump, the descendant of an immigrant from Germany who was expelled for draft-dodging, America seems to have found its nemesis.

     If Trump prevails in next year’s poll, the enlightened wager is that America may dissolve into anarchy with the possibility of the entire nation being consumed in a secessionist conflagration. A toxic and polarizing conman, Trump had already caused enough division in the land to last a whole generation, and that is if it survives him.

       America is a victim of its own success. By forcibly homogenizing several disparate entities under the rubric of a new type of human society with democratic ideals and under the capitalist ethos of life more abundant for everybody, Uncle Sam was tempting fate too hard.

    In such circumstances, something must give as harsh realities confront visionary daydreaming, rendering the whole project nugatory. Yet as the American project has taught the world no nation can move forward without some visionary daydreaming and Utopian yearning encapsulated in the thoughts and vision of its founding fathers.

        In local parlance, the masquerade that arrives early to the village dancing square to exhibit his skills will soon join them in the spectators’ stand.  Several novel types of human societies are visible in the horizon threatening to put paid to the dominance of America and other western nation-types. First, is the Israeli-type messianic warrior-nation based on permanent mobilization of the people for war and unending strife and buoyed by the Masada complex of fighting to the last man.

      Second is the Chinese model of mobilizing the entire society for progress and enhanced prosperity which is powered by Confucius-inspired State Capitalism disguised as Communism. Within seventy years of its existence, China has lifted almost ninety percent of its people out of poverty. Politically, the society is more cohesive and economically less polarized.

     The tradeoff is a harshly authoritarian climate which brooks no dissent or political rascality. The bet is that as the society becomes more prosperous and economically independent, questions will be asked. But it should not be forgotten that this is a malleable, docile and acquiescent society which sees the state as a benevolent and caring father-figure. The modern rulers of China seem to have plugged all the loopholes of mainstream dissent. Tiananmen Square is almost thirty five remote years in memory. The youthful veterans of that remarkable uprising have become potbellied elders in exile.  

    Fourth is the Arab miracle of the Emirates where remarkable discipline and focus anchored on a skilled devolution of economic, political and military power among the emirates has managed to clear away within a generation centuries of feudalistic accretions and their cobwebs leading to startling modernization and an investment capitalism which has turned Dubai into a global powerhouse of financial wheeling and dealing.  Six decades ago, the entire country was a fetid feudal back wood bristling with sand and dunes. Today, the glitzy emporium and glittering skyline of the postmodern city of Dubai rival any Western capital.

      Finally, there is the frankly authoritarian but prudent, Spartan and economically disciplined state of Singapore which has managed to transit to the First World from the Third World in a single generation. When it was summarily expelled from Malaysia, Singapore was a festering colonial backwater swarming with slums and shanties. With pride and fierce determination, Lee Kuan Yew seized it by the scruff of the neck dragging it to modernity by  force.

      Today, Singapore feels better than most Western nations and its infrastructure vastly superior. There are also stand-between societies such as the Japanese and South Korean whose elite are culturally driven by a sense of what is right and proper and will do the needful if they are adjudged to have contravened societal norms.  

    Unfortunately, while the world is stirring and creating itself anew amidst many conflagrations, Africa has been missing on this radar, this stellar congregation of transformational leadership. To suggest that Africa has not produced its own fair share of transformational leadership would amount to a genetic scandal. Where will one put the Nkrumahs, the Awolowos, the Cabral, the Nyereres and the Samoras?

       In retrospect, it would appear that the cultural and tribal obstacles that some of these avatars rightly identified as barriers to genuine nationhood returned to haunt their aspirations because the solutions they offered could not withstand the difficulties on ground.  What is playing out in many African nations attests to the fact that in multi-ethnic nations with religious and cultural fissures, it is often very difficult to produce a leader with a transcendental vision of his society who also transformational.

       But to produce a nation or a society worthy of global admiration and emulation, a pacesetter for jaded humanity, postcolonial Africa must come up with this stellar combination: a leadership with a cosmopolitan vision that transcends narrow ethnic and cultural divides and the intellectual strength and energy to transform his nation.