The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Jalio remembered

    Jalio remembered

    As the petroleum queues got longer and the currency crisis worsens, yours sincerely, in distress and despair, reported himself to the old guru who had taken up a war camp at Alapere, at the tail end of the Third Mainland bridge, amidst an unruly brigade of criminals, cut-throats and cut-purses. The old man took a despairing look at snooper and then opened with devastating contempt.

    “You are suffering from Jalio’s complex, an advanced form of delusion of grandeur which strangely afflicts Nigeria’s wannabe writers. Do you know Jalio?”

      “ No”, I replied in humiliation.

     “Well, Jalio is the chap in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People who took to wearing locally woven materials, native bangles and cowrie shells simply because he has become a writer thinking that this entitles him to become the saviour of the nation. Writers have written about the nation, the point is to change it. Unfortunately, only revolutionaries like myself can do that.”

    Read Also: ‘Nigerians will vote Tinubu despite naira, fuel scarcity’

         In fairness to the guru, he has been making revolutionary hay of late. Since the currency crisis worsened and petrol became gold, he has been rousing the revolutionary demon for what he called a final confrontation with a terminally diseased Nigerian state. At a point he was caught by eagle-eyed detectives as he carried a jerry can of petrol towards the Central Bank. He was singing an ancient Yoruba folk song.

       Oriyangi ba ma temi je

       Epo nmoru

       Needless to add that he was beaten to a pulp. Thereafter, he relocated to Alapere from where he has been sending sorties of handset snatchers against what he called the degenerate Nigerian middle class who will not fight for their rights. I raised the whole point of carrying petrol to a national monument like the Central Bank.

    “National monu ko, national moinmoin ni. Isn’t that a temple of armed robbers? If the place is taken down there will be less for the thieves to steal. Wo, if I catch that chap called Eemofilele!! (the devil has left home)”, he screamed. I noticed that he was barricaded by full jerry cans, and the smell from one of them was becoming unbearable.

    “Baba, what is this? Are you into petrol black market?” I asked him.

    “No, this is not petrol, it is horse piss. Some of those stupid boys will steal it then the foolish people will buy it and their car will pafuka accordingly”.

    “What is in all this for you?” I asked in alarm.

    “REVOLUTION!” he screamed and brought out a pouch of native charms. Snooper fled.

  • Organic crisis of party formation

    Organic crisis of party formation

    The crisis of party formation in post-military Nigerian politics has reached its apogee.  It assumed nation-wide prominence with the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the death of General Ibrahim Babangida’s Third Republic in vitro. That was when leading party people sold the victory of their party in exchange for filthy lucre and position. But if the truth must be told, the roots go deeper to the Second Republic and the original military intervention.

       As it is to be expected, this crisis is more fundamental than its surface manifestations, an integral part of a wider system failure. Unless the problem is tackled from the roots, no amount of fire brigade approach, ad hoc tinkering at the level of facile and unserious constitutional reforms and the extra-constitutional hallucinations being entertained in some quarters can restore democratic health to the nation.

       In functioning democracies, parties are the vehicles through which members launch their political aspirations or fight to impose a set of governance ideals on the polity. But in circumstances where the party is bedeviled by a crisis of identity, or where individual or group aspirations become solidified to the point of irreconcilable differences, the party may be headed for the scrap yard.

     As the electoral D-Day inches nearer, the leading parties have intensified their vote-garnering drive. This is just as it should be. The inter-party brickbats and personal spats among the leading candidates are reaching a crescendo. There is a reason for this. This is the first election in the post-military epoch in which there is no substantial elite consensus and in which the political class are as bitterly divided as they are badly polarized. The nation itself appears to have reached a political and economic dead end.

    But it is the internal rancour and struggle for control and supremacy within the major parties that should be of interest. At this point, what you see is not what you see. There are fifth columnists everywhere, bent on internal sabotage and implacable in their avowed mission to cause maximum damage to their parties before the real election takes place.

       Politics has become a Travelling Theatre, with improvisations, revues and satirical sketches on a daily basis. The war within the parties is fiercer and more urgent than the war outside. Labour does not appear to be working as widely speculated.

    There is a loss of momentum and grip somewhere and it shows in the forlorn and furtively bemused expression on the face of its helmsmen. While recalcitrant PDP governors, otherwise known as the G-5, continue to pelt and pester Atiku Abubakar, it is from the east that the weapons of mass destruction are talking louder than the weapons of mass persuasion.

        However, it is the ruling party that hosts the biggest contradictions and the most dramatic developments. This past week, the rambunctious but usually perceptive Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, ruffled not a few northern feathers by calling out some of his colleagues in the ruling coalition, particularly the shadowy and influential deep state camarilla that surrounds General Mohammadu Buhari.

      In a widely circulated interview, the Kaduna State Governor accused the ranking echelons of his own party of plotting to torpedo the possible victory of the party’s flag bearer in the forthcoming presidential election.

      Not done, El-Rufai went as far as revealing the basis of their unyielding animosity towards the former Lagos State Governor. According to him, they have refused to come to terms with the resounding walloping they got from Tinubu in the last presidential primary despite all the intrigues and Machiavellian machinations. As proof of the current conspiracies, El-Rufai cited the crippling shortages of petroleum products and the currency redesign debacle.

      The federal government’s response was swift. At a press briefing after the scheduled executive council meeting last Wednesday, Lai Mohammed let it be known that his principal was not interested in supporting a particular candidate but in ensuring free and fair elections which he hopes will be his lasting legacy to the nation. After the Daura-born general’s unconvincing, desultory and lacklustre appearances on the party’s presidential campaign, the cat was finally out of the bag.

       Readers of this column will recall that after Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s dramatic victory at the party’s tension-soaked primary at the Eagle’s Square in Abuja, we had cautioned that it was not a done deal, at least not yet.

      It was not the Moor’s last sigh, as we put it then. This kind of crushing victory was bound to spawn a vicious counter-rally in the long run from the ethnic supremacists lurking around, particularly if the victor succumbs to hubris and premature triumphalism and if the fundamentalist hawks in the party remain unappeased and unappeasable.

    As a public commentator crowed on Thursday morning, the presidential contest is now between the ANC and the CPC, the two major legacy parties that formed the APC. Before our very eyes, the APC is once again in danger of fracturing into its component parts.

     We must give it to Nasir el-Rufai and his gubernatorial colleagues who made Tinubu’s victory possible in the first instance, against the run of play and against the will of the honchos and henchmen of reaction and retrogression in the party. Once again, El-Rufai is playing the role of a lone visionary to a beleaguered and befuddled northern feudal hegemony. Many are accusing him of cynicism, of rank opportunism and of running with the hare while hunting with the hounds.

       Whatever they may call it, the objective reality suggests that the Kaduna State Governor is seeing the danger farther ahead than many of his power-obsessed cohorts. Call it enlightened self-interest at its most rarefied and bedeviling.

     It is clear that in the absence of a reforming messiah thrown up from among its midst, the next best thing for the north is a sympathetic undertaker who will manage its traumatic, willy-nilly transition to modernity with the kind of kindness and courtesy that Bola Tinubu has shown to its leading lights.

       As it is, the current power configurations encrusted in a feudal veto is unsustainable. It will lead to a historic bloodbath and the mutual ruination of all the contending classes. This is the kind of messianic role many expected of General Buhari which has now been sensationally fluffed. Unfortunately, you cannot give what you don’t have.

      But historical failures can still be mitigated, that is if you find yourself in a hole and stop digging. The power cohorts around General Buhari appear to be digging and digging in furiously. By attempting to ditch Tinubu and by consequence the extant power arrangement between the north and the broad south at this perilous point, President Buhari may be committing the greatest strategic blunder of his military and political career.

      There is plenty of room for a walk-back. The press briefing ought to have been more nuanced and the language of disavowal more diplomatically couched. Supporting the candidate of your party is not antipodal or antithetical to conducting a free and fair election. Both positions can be comfortably and honorably held without raising an ethnic or regional ruckus, unless the general knows something that many of us don’t.

       Unfortunately, the rumpus within the ruling party is reigniting the bitter memories of the June 12 debacle and Abiola’s tragic death. Despite Abiola’s outlandish wealth, his vast connections, his religious affiliation, his north-friendly outlook and the fact that he won a free and fair election, the Egba business mogul was still denied the opportunity to claim and enjoy his mandate by a military cabal fronting for a minority caste bent on ruling Nigeria in perpetuity either directly or by proxy.

      The Abiola palaver led to a bloody commotion which questioned the validity of Nigeria’s survival and continued existence as a corporate entity. Here is why. If a man as rich, distinguished and well-connected as the late billionaire business mogul could not aspire to rule Nigeria, what hope is there for millions of less fortunate compatriots from even more seriously disadvantaged background?

       It was an ethical and political conundrum which posed the National Question in a way it has never been posed before. Thirty years later, like the proverbial dunce that is incapable of learning the lessons of history, we are treading on dangerous and slippery grounds once again. But since no two historical conjunctures are completely alike, here are the reasons why this one is particularly fraught.

       Unlike MKO Abiola who was a neophyte and fresh state recruit to politics, Tinubu is a master grass roots political practitioner with a formidable capacity for horizontal and vertical mobilization. If many of his compatriots believe that he has worked very hard to earn the presidency, denying him the much coveted prize at this point by foul means would be a very dangerous game to play indeed.

      Let no one weep for the nation at this point. It is the old fundamentally faulty system that has returned to haunt us in all its gross ineptitude. Our inability since the First Republic to grow genuine, authentic and organic political parties except as special purpose vehicles for state capture or as articulated personnel carriers for political ambush has come back to demand its full wages. We may have Tinubu’s political genius to thank for this.

      Our military overlords bear full responsibility. The only mitigating circumstance for this grave infraction against the greatest conurbation of black souls anywhere in the world may be that they meant well but acted within the limits and limitations of their vision or lack of it.

    In 1979, barely recovered from the trauma of civil war, they cast their net far and wide for a broad based, pan-Nigerian coalition of elites that would insulate the nation against the ruinous fissiparous tendencies that led to the civil war. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN) kept the country together, but looted its resources dry. Anarchy and popular chaos loomed. The military stepped in to head off a bloody revolution.

       Twenty years after in 1999, the surviving military hierarchs were still at their old game of cobbling together a broad based pan-Nigerian coalition of elite with the mandate of holding the nation together without any consideration for accelerated growth and development which is actually what keeps a modern nation together. This was after Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha had both taken the country to the political and economic cleaners for thirteen years.

      In the event, the old formula produced similar results. The Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP) kept the nation together for sixteen years through a vast network of patronage and elite clientele. But the country remained in the political and economic doldrums. Despite widespread clamour, no attempt was made to reform the system except self-serving “constitutional conferences” which came to naught.

     It was obvious that the bubble was about to burst. The criminal pillage of national patrimony and the obscene display of unmerited wealth opened up the government to sundry anti-state and non-state actors who appeared bent on bringing the nation to heel. It exposed the fatal vulnerabilities of an imperious but not so imperial state. After sixteen years of gross misrule and economic brigandage, both the nation and the ruling party had reached the end of the tether.

      This was the situation that threw up the APC, an unstable coalition of disparate and contrary forces. Unfortunately, the APC has not passed muster either. The less said about its own eight year tenure at this point the better.

      Once again, the nation has found itself in an epic quandary. If the extant rump of the selectorate is thinking of another quick fix, they had better perish the thought. The forces in contention have grown beyond them. 2023 may feel like but it is not quite 1993. Peeping at the political horoscope, it is obvious that this time around, not only the living but even the dead will stir in protest. Alertness is the price for emancipation. Those who vote must never again be supplanted by those who veto.  

  • Okon is in a class of his own

    Okon is in a class of his own

    After his last attempt to import Calabar carnival into Lagos ended in a fiasco with Eyo masquerades from Ilubirin chasing the impudent rascal across the Carter Bridge, it became clear to snooper that very soon, Okon would get his master into trouble with the law.

        Each time he was thwarted in a scheme to make some money, Okon comes up with more inventive scams. The last time he ventured near the Marina, he was beaten to an inch of his life for passing off cow dung as the latest aphrodisiac from Bombay. Yet the mad Calabar boy has remained undaunted. Snooper discovered that he has even collected money from some Efik fanatics claiming that he was importing the Donald and Onari road show to Lagos. When we asked him about this, the mad boy retorted, “Oga, if fine boy no find work na fine bara remain”.

        As the end of term approached, snooper mounted a discreet surveillance on Okon’s room to make sure he doesn’t import any contraband. What we saw shook us to the marrow. On the two term papers Okon received, he had crossed out the grades of B and B+ and replaced them with E and F. When confronted, Okon exploded:

       “Oga, the yeye doctor call me and say, I get B, so I come tell am not to joke with Okon, dat I wan E and F. E be excellent and F be say finish, which means say Okon don finish them patapata. Porogodo”

     “And what did the man say?”

     “The man come dey laugh like hyena for Bakassi. Na im I come cross out him yeye grade and I come put better grade”

    “Okon, don’t be a fool”, I shouted laughing uncontrollably.

    “Oga dis one no be matter of fool ooo. The yeye man say  make I give am feedback and I say I no dey give feedback. Even feed upfront I no fit give. Oga, abi feedback no be another name for egunje? I no know why corruption don finish Yoruba people like this.”

    “So what grade did baba make?” I asked.

       “Dat one dem come write im initials for am. Dem give am OO”.

     “But Okon, why, why now?”

     “Oga, I think say old age don dey hammer baba. Dem ask am about the problem of theodicy and him com say he get problem with Theophilus Danjuma and Daisy”.

    On that perilous note, snooper quickly back heeled away from the mad boy’s lunatic enclave.

    • First published in 2007.

  • The crisis of the post-imperial state

    The crisis of the post-imperial state

    New Barbarians at the old barricades

    Everywhere you turn, the post-Imperial state seems to be in acute distress. In other words, most nations the world over are embroiled in one conflict or the other. There is a sense in which one can confidently surmise that this crisis is a reflection of the enormity of the problems confronting human civilization itself as the world finally leaves behind the second phase of globalization and physical colonization.

    It is useful at this point to be reminded that the state in however rudimentary or elementary form has been with us since humanity first ventured out of their dark cave to enjoy communion and fellowship with fellow humans. Were human beings to be born saints without some dark impulses cohabiting in the remote recesses of their souls, there would have been no need to regulate their affairs.

    Alas, it would seem that the more human civilization advances and humanity sheds off the veneer of savagery the more some more terrifying species of savagery appear in even the most advanced human societies. Consequently, as societies evolve and human interaction takes on new complexities, so does the state in urgent response to new developments and emergent contradictions.

    It however remains to be seen whether we are approaching new frontiers of human evolution in which the state as we know it will no longer matter or whether new forms of super-states will emerge which will attempt to rein in atrocious conduct in human affairs and the degeneration of humanity, either at the level of the governing or at the level of the governed.

    The crisis of the modern state is multi-dimensional and it does not matter whether it is the post-Imperial state as seen in the highly developed nations of the world, the post-colonial state as particularly visible in Africa, its hybrid manifestations in continent-nations such as Australia and New Zealand and its oriental detours evident in most Asiatic countries.

    It comes at the level of politics, or the poverty of politics, the level of economy or the poverty of economics and at the level of religion or the poverty of religion. Most of the time, the indices are mutually reinforcing. The result is that very few countries in the world can be said to be free of all manifestations of the crisis or a combination of its dire actualities.

    In the last two years, we have witnessed in the USA and Brazil an invasion of what was hitherto thought to be the citadels of the Post-Imperial state and the sanctuaries of its awesome power. Unable to live with electoral defeats, a rightwing fascist mob in the two countries simply besieged the state sanctuary in a daring but foolhardy attempt to put it to sword.

    The scale of the destruction of government property and the catastrophic implications for countries laying some claims to exceptionalism are better imagined. Even denizens of the Third World cringed in horror as the new barbarians from the west arrived at the barricades.  By the time the smoke cleared, the power-houses had been thoroughly trashed. The physical destruction cannot compare with the psychic wounds.

    In Russia, a new hyper-Slavic imperialism is trying desperately to claw back some of the losses of the Imperial Russian state and its Soviet super-state successor by attempting to recolonize Ukraine. Russia wants Ukraine, or a huge chunk of it back, not as a satellite or a neo-vassal state but as an integral part of a greater pan-Slavic imperium. Vladimir Putin is on record as having rued that the collapse of the soviet empire was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe to have befallen Russia in modern history.

    While Russia is bent on doing something about it as its frantic and desperate invasion of Ukraine has shown, the western powers are having none of that because they believe it is a threat to western post Cold War hegemony and the new World Order built on the ashes of the old socialist empire.

    But dead ashes sometimes come alive once again, or as they say in Yoruba culture pounded yam of a twenty year vintage can sometimes burn with a withering intensity. Whether this will be a brief posthumous glow for Imperial Russia or it will explode into a consuming inferno the like of which the world has not witnessed before will depend on the forces at play and events unfolding in global power dark rooms.

    With the conflict set to escalate as America and Germany send sophisticated tanks to the embattled Ukrainians, the shadow-boxing may soon give way to a full blown confrontation between the western powers and Russia and her allies with grave implications for the extant global pecking order.  China and North Korea are already waiting in the wings. While China is viewing their Taiwanese cousins across the Taiwan Straits with a heavy murmur, the North Koreans are looking Southward in compulsory family reunion.

    Global economies already reeling from the twin impact of Covid-19 and the Ukrainian conflict are likely to experience further contractions. British economy, limping from decades of political incompetence and a typically British version of crony capitalism, may collapse under further stress. France is hobbled by industrial unrest.

    The Kremlin spokesperson puts the development in grim perspectives and to paraphrase his apocalyptic rumination: “The tanks will burn on the field as usual. The burden will be passed to the tax payers and America may even make profit”. The post-Imperial state is facing its most severe crisis in the modern epoch.

  • The Nigerian dimension and the assassination of politics

    The Nigerian dimension and the assassination of politics

    Since all politics is local, as they say, it is only appropriate to study closely the impact of the global crisis of the state we have been tracking on Africa’s most populous state. Like most African nations, Nigeria has been badly hit by the multi-dimensional effects of Covid-19 and the Ukrainian conflict. Economies already rendered parlous by the twin-combination of corruption and inefficiency have been further devastated by rising energy bills and critical shortages of wheat, rice and cooking oils.

    Stagflation—evaporating purchasing capacity and galloping inflation—the like of which has not been seen has become the order of the day. Richly endowed African nations which ought to have stepped forward to reap the bounties and windfalls of the Ukrainian shutdown by filling the gap have become helpless victims of the war.

    Nigeria has seen its capacity to earn substantial revenues from petroleum products dramatically reduced by massive theft of the black gold from source and the multiple siege on the state by local and external insurgency which has made even subsistence farming a brave proposition. But for the legendary luck of the nation, apocalyptic famine would have set in.

    The Nigerian circumstances are however unique and exceptional in the sense that it is holding its most consequential elections since the military went back to the barracks in the most precarious and desperate of circumstances. Four significant drawbacks can be isolated. First is the rising insecurity in parts of the country which has raised the possibility of cancellation or the postponement of elections in those parts of the country.

    Second is the absence of elite consensus on the conduct of the elections or even their desirability. Successful elections are anchored on substantial elite consensus which boosts the legitimacy of the outcome and their general acceptability. The elite consensus on which the Fourth Republic is anchored has been carelessly mismanaged. Never have the Nigerian political elite been more polarized and badly divided.

    The third drawback flows from the second. Not even during the First Republic have elections been marked by this degree of rancor and divisive rhetoric. Fake news which threaten the security of the nation to its foundation, character assassination, the peddling of dangerous rumours that could lead to ethnic and religious conflagration and the deployment of fake statistics to score cheap political points have been the order of the day.

    Finally, there is the ongoing acute scarcity of petroleum products combined with what can now be described as the debacle of currency change. All this has rendered tempers very brittle, leading to the possibility of a social explosion at a very critical conjuncture for the nation. A leading candidate has already shouted foul.

    Consequently and a few weeks to the elections, an eerie chill has descended on the political arena. This is irrespective of the excitability and volatile nature of many of the political combatants. There are many who believe that this time around, we are pushing our luck too far. There is nothing so fundamental and ideologically irreconcilable about the positions of the leading actors which ought to warrant the level and degree of personal hostility and mutual intolerance exhibited so far.

    The assassination of politics and the art of give and take, of compromise, consensus and conciliation portend grave danger to the polity and is the greatest threat to the continued survival of the Fourth Republic and the postcolonial state as we know it in Nigeria.

    The Nigerian political class does not seem to have the capacity to learn from history. After the federally engineered impeachment of Balarabe Musa, the PRP governor of Kaduna State, Abubakar Rimi, the sole surviving PRP governor in Kano State, having ditched Malam Aminu Kano, his benefactor and ideological patron, felt sufficiently embattled to issue a query to the revered Emir of Kano, the late Alhaji Ado Bayero whom Rimi suspected of flirtations with the federal government.

    The query was met with widespread protests in the volatile city which saw Kano descend into a wild orgy of arson and assassination during which Dr Mohammed, Rimi’s ideological master strategist, was burnt to ashes in his bath. The protests signposted the beginning of the end for Abubakar Rimi’s political suzerainty over the Kano metropolis.

    But the real query was coming for the much admired emir and from the emergent military rulers of Nigeria that were waiting in the wings to profit from the political chaos. The emir and his bosom friend, the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade, were later restricted to their respective palaces for six months by the federal authorities for unauthorized communion with the state of Israel.

    This was not the end of the matter. There is a bitterly ironic twist to unfolding history. After Rimi, now humbled and humiliated by political adversity, was sentenced by a military tribunal to a humongous time in jail, he alluded to a superior judgment hovering in the air. Not long afterwards, the military regime of the then Major General Mohammadu Buhari was swept away by a rival power faction.

    Based on a reading of the political barometer of the nation, elections will hold next month however the shambolic arrangement and preparations. Those who are currently huffing and puffing about, threatening that they will prevent elections from holding in their ethnic strongholds ought to know the consequences of such political folly. The Nigerian Leviathan does not care a hoot about self-disenfranchised entities and enclaves. If the balance of power remains as it is, the illusion of order must proceed willy-nilly.

    The real problem will arise if the elections fall short of general acceptability or is adjudged as falling short of substantial compliance with the electoral provisions.  A lot will depend on an electronically sound and technology-savvy INEC. Mahmood Yakubu and his colleagues ought to have invested in the latest spy ware. The possibility of an electronic violation of the fundamental integrity of the elections by rogue elements remains very rife. If that were to happen, politics itself will be added to the casualty list.

  • Errata

    Errata

    Last week’s piece titled “On the Code of Royalty” drew many interesting responses. Unfortunately, two words critical to the elucidation, odu and Olodumare, were miscast by the computer in transmission and then allowed to go through by less than diligent proofreading.  They turned up as edz and olydQmarP respectively. The corrections were immediately effected online, but too late for the hard copy. Once again, we offered our apologies to the elderly citizen, an avid reader of this column and one of Nigeria’s most respected surveyors ever, who wrote back wondering about the mystery code language. Sir, be rest assured that hieroglyphics, the ancient writing art of the early Egyptians, is not making a comeback via Nigeria.

  • On the code of royalty

    On the code of royalty

    To the ornate and magnificently draped banquet hall of the exquisite Marriot Hotel, Ikeja, last Monday for the launch of the book, Code of Kings by the Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi, (Telu 1). It was a beautiful mid-January morning.

     One had never met his royal majesty before, but after a formal letter of invitation, deputations by mutual acquaintances and a personal phone call from the Iwo palace, one knew that one had walked into the equivalent of a royal ambush cryptically coded as a summons.

      The last time one was here a little over a year earlier, it was for an intellectual engagement. Yours sincerely had been invited by the Federal Ministry of Finance to thrash out some pressing national issues on policy, finance and security. It turned out to be quite a robust interactive session; a moveable feast of rare insights and patriotic concern for the fate of the nation.

      This early afternoon as the mammoth hall filled with people from all walks of life, particularly royalties from different sections of the country in their magnificent plumes and contrasting fineries, one knew that one was in for a different kind of engagement. Perhaps this was the last snapshot; a peep into the royal soul of the nation at a particularly turbulent and combustible intersection of our pre-colonial culture with post-military politics.

      The man of the moment, the Oluwo of Iwo, was already well-seated looking regal and resplendent as he soaked in the plaudits and royal homages from his subjects, admirers and well-wishers alike. He was as dignified and dandified as they ever came. Contrary to a reputation for combustible exertions, the youthful monarch wore a calm and demure visage. A royal public relations coup appeared to be underway before all.

    A caveat would be in order at this point. The Oluwo has been embroiled in too many controversies in the past. To many of his harsh and adamant critics, the idea of an Oluwo Book launch is an impossible anomaly, in fact a grand oxymoron. What has he got to say, they would sneer. Or perhaps he was offering a royal manual on the latest technique of boxing. The Oluwo they think they know will be handy in the coliseum of pugilistic contentions rather in the refined realm of intellectual exertion.

      But there was the royal enigma last Monday offering an impressively researched, finely wrought and deeply illuminating history of his Iwo people, a tome that weighs in at three hundred and fifty eight pages. This is a labour of love and affection for his Iwo people. Drawing on the work of the iconic Johnson brothers, notable professors of History and up and coming researchers, the Iwo monarch has offered his people a rich an unique excursion into their origins and modern evolution.

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    Perhaps the key to the enigmatic puzzle of the Oba Akanbi persona can be located in what he himself has called the codes of kings. The code, or odu in Yoruba semiotics, is the special divination by which Yoruba royalty, and its spiritual aristocracy alike, decode and unravel confounding signs, signals and signifiers which may not be apparent to the uninitiated. It enables them to deal with difficult situations and even more with difficult but gifted scions. It is the shortened version for the longer word Olodumare.

      In his epic history of the Yoruba people, Johnson narrated how the later Basorun Ogunmola, as at that point a minor but promising warrior who had relocated to Ibadan from a hamlet near Iwo, was in the habit of cocking a snook at Balogun Ibikunle, his war commander, by asking his solitary drummers to sing his praises to the high heavens and daring Ibikunle to do his worst.

      But the genial and humane Ibikunle, a consummate warrior who was even a more accomplished statesman, rather than ordering the rudimentary homestead of the impish upstart to be fired and leveled would order that rams and yams should be sent to him. (Ebi lonpa). “He is hungry”, the great warrior would chuckle to himself. By so doing, Ibikunle saved the young fellow from court-martial and made it possible for him to fulfill his destiny as arguably the greatest warrior thrown up by the Ibadan army.

     If his rambunctious nature is finally tempered, and that is if it does not get him into terminal trouble, there is every possibility that Oba Abdulrasheed Akanbi may yet serve his people and nation in an even more productive capacity.

      It is useful to remember that as a youthful monarch, the late Alaafin also had the itching fists of a former trained boxer. But by the time he exited the scene to join his illustrious ancestors, his Imperial Highness had transited to a highly revered scholar-monarch and repository of Yoruba history and contemporary politics.

     From what can be gleaned from the book, the scholarly review punctuated by sonorous rendition of the Oluwo’s panegyric by the reviewer, snippets of gossip from the floor and the insightful remarks on behalf of the publishers by Honourable Femi Kehinde, a publisher, writer and founding member of the first house of the Fourth Republic, it became clear that the Iwo monarch has led a charmed and storied life guided by the divine hand of immutable destiny.

       His grandfather had been prevailed upon to reconsider his decision to relocate to Ilorin on the ground that one of his grandchildren was likely to become the sovereign of the place in the not too distant future. Guided by an inner voice, the Oluwo himself had arrived penniless from Canada to vie and fight for the stool of his ancestors. Before then, the future king had been caught up in the Liberian civil war, where he fought on the opposing side with the nom de guerre of Major Wallace.

       It was now time to formally acquaint the old major, now a major traditional ruler of his people, of one’s presence in the hall. As one made to introduce himself, yours sincerely was greeted with rapturous approval by the monarch who insisted that one must be seated not far away from his royal majesty.

       As one made his way back to his seat, one found himself sandwiched between the duo of Femi Kehinde and Dele Momodu, the irrepressible Ovation publisher. They had demanded a group photograph but not before Dele, as cheeky as ever, noted that the professor of Literature and Cultural Theory had made a seamless transition to traditional ennoblement judging by the size of his drooping bead and preternaturally youthful looks which he ascribed to some satanic native concoctions.

    Both men had been snooper’s wards in their early life and Femi Kehinde is a nephew, the son of one’s beloved sister, the late Iyalode.  But both have now carved a niche for themselves in their respective fields of human endeavor. How time flies, yours sincerely rued. It was a little over forty years in 1980 when after teaching Dele’s part three class, the young man had slipped a note in snooper’s pocket to inform his lecturer that he got the spelling of anthropology wrong! Such is the stuff of life.

       It was now time for launching. The representative of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Kassim Imam, led the way in purposeful and value-oriented donation when he ordered copies of the book for Kings College, his alma mater, and all secondary schools in Bornu and Yobe.

      A man of infectious bonhomie and irrepressible zest for life, it was clear that Oba Akanbi has a capacity for friendship and bridge-building judging from the quality of the crowd he was able to attract. The royal ensemble was an arresting show-stopper.

      There were burly and heavily beaded Benin nobility who took up a whole section of the place. There was the Oshile of Oke Ona, Oba Adedapo Tejuosho, and his triumvirate of fetching olori.  As stylish and as fit-looking as ever, the famed monarch sat in a quietly reflective pose even as Ebenezer Obey’s son, Tolu Obey, dished out his father’s classic rendition in honour of the Oshile.

      The traditional rulers from Iwo and environs were not left out. They all came to honour the supreme monarch of the area. There was the Olupo of Oluponna, the Akire of Ikire-Ile and the Olowu of Owu-Ile. Finally there was the big masquerade that must pick the rear in the jungle of masquerades, the Etsu Nupe himself, who had journeyed all the way from Bida to grace the occasion.

      It has been an engrossing afternoon with the colourful and convivial monarch of Iwoland.

  • A brief encounter with Etsu Nupe

    A brief encounter with Etsu Nupe

    And whilst we are still on the subject of the  book presentation by the Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Rasheed Adewale Akanbi at the Marriot Hotel, Ikeja, last Monday, it is meet to report on an intriguing encounter  with the paramount ruler of the Nupe people, the Etsu Nupe, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar Saganuwar Nakordi GCFR, Chairman of the Niger State Council of Traditional Rulers.

     Described as a rare gift to humanity, the Etsu Nupe is a committed bridge-builder, a detribalized cosmopolitan monarch and staunch apostle of pan-Nigerian elite consensus. The last time one spoke to the revered ruler was about two and half years ago. He had jolted one with a transatlantic phone call in the early hours of the morning as one struggled to settle down in New York after a long haul from Lagos.

      “This is the Etsu”, the caller at the other hand announced. Groggy and assailed by sleeplessness, one at first struggled to establish the true identity of the mystery caller. The permutations ranged from the most ridiculous to the most alarming, Esu being the Yoruba cognomen for the devil itself. But as he revealed his full identity, it turned out that this was no hoax. Alertness quickly returned.

    Read Also: Ooni, Etsu Nupe unveil firm’s board

      A sophisticated citizen of the world and a former top military officer, the ring tones must have alerted the highly regarded traditional ruler that his quarry must have absconded from the shores of Nigeria. After copiously apologizing for conflating time zones, he revealed that he wanted to pass on an urgent message to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in connection with an upcoming Nupe festival of recognition and historic commemoration. After a further exchange of pleasantries for about two minutes, he was gone.

      Last Monday as his name was repeatedly announced as one of the royal dignitaries gracing the occasion, one had dismissed it as a publicity stunt or at best a public relation prank. But as the proceeding wore on, one accosted one of the hosts to find out if the northern-looking, quietly self-possessed gentleman seating very close by was the representative of the Nupe monarch.

      To one’s astonishment, the launch official revealed that the monarch was not only in the hall but had insisted on taking yours sincerely to him to pay his compliments. The monarch’s face glowered in immediate recognition as one’s name was mentioned. We exchanged cordialities. Of course, he remembered the transatlantic conversation. Here is wishing the supreme sovereign of the Nupe people many more years of service to the fatherland.

  • And prayers for Aketi

    And prayers for Aketi

    Call no person healthy until the day they have carried their robust health to the grave. The recent pictures of a frail-looking and obviously medically-challenged Rotimi Akeredolu give one concerns and anxiety.

      A normally robust and even bearish physique now appears to be at the mercy of a vicious and truly malignant ailment. Some weeks back, a mutual friend, a medical practitioner who had journeyed all the way from Hull in England to attend Akeredolu’s mother’s funeral in Owo, did not give the impression that the situation was this bad. Perhaps he was keeping to the oath of the profession.

     Oh humanity, frailty is thy name. But there is no medical condition that is insurmountable. Aketi must summon all his inner reserves of resilience and naturally combative disposition to fight this incubus to a standstill. While doing that, Akeredolu must avoid the lure of shadowy, Rasputin-like characters and their quack medication. There is no alternative to a scientifically validated regimen of treatment.

       The last time one had spoken to Aketi was about three years ago. He had called in the early hours of the morning to invite one to deliver a state commemorative lecture. As usual, his voice crackled through the phone with energy and cheerful lustiness. The invitation could not be honoured because it clashed with an urgent family engagement in England.

      Despite one’s policy of giving state houses a wide berth, particularly after the virtual homogenization of party formation in Nigeria and the unfolding contradictions of our post-Military condition, a playful and joyous Aketi would always break protocols whenever we meet in public, screaming the undergraduate nom de guerre of yours sincerely.

       Aketi entered the then University of Ife in 1974 when yours sincerely was in his final session. After one left, he had cut his political teeth in the heady radical ferment of students’ politics of that epoch, emerging as Vice President in the 1975/ 76 Session with John Mabayoje, aka Awe, as president of the union. Those were the days when boys were men indeed.

      Here is wishing Aketi a speedy recovery and many more years of service to the fatherland.

  • Polytechnic Education: A recipe for visionary leadership and governance in Nigeria (II)

    Polytechnic Education: A recipe for visionary leadership and governance in Nigeria (II)

    • Continued from last week

    First, (there) is the false notion that because polytechnic education is mainly vocational, it is merely functional and work-driven. This notion ignores the fact that in certain disciplines, a polytechnic education is more rigorous and quality driven than their university-based counterparts.

    This explains the preference of employers in fields such as banking, Finance, Engineering, Accounting and Technology for polytechnic graduates over their universities counterparts. In these fields of human endeavour, the polytechnic graduates often arrive “perfectly tuned” and programmed for easy and immediate absorption.

        The second is the binary divide traditionally erected between university education and polytechnic education which makes one inaccessible to the other. Although a carryover from our colonial heritage, this divide ignores the reality  of cross-breeding, cross-carpeting, cross-fertilisation and the transfer of talents and human resources between the two types of education that have existed across age and human societies.

      The third factor arises from the fact that entry-level qualifications for polytechnics tend to be lower than those for universities and the staff generally less qualified. While this is true, this stigma ignores the human capacity for self-improvement and continuous exertion. There are sandwich degree programmes and other avenues for self-realisation for those who start the relay race of education at a disadvantage.

     In certain circumstances, teachers with lesser qualifications, because they have more to prove, are generally more focused and more ferociously determined to impart quality education than their better qualified colleagues. Although there is usually no short cut to pedagogic distinction, it is so that under the right atmosphere, these disadvantaged students and teachers often come into their own, and it is where you end up that matters rather than where you begin from.

      The example of Albert Einstein again readily comes to mind. The German-Jewish genius was a famously lazy, sloppy and inattentive student. But this was not because he was mentally challenged but because the precocious boy had greater issues on his mind. Einstein was bored to death by the banality of his teachers and as he himself was later to put it: “Since I hated authority so much, God made me an authority”. How many potential Einstein would have been destroyed in the grinding gridlock of the Nigerian educational system?

      In Nigeria, the stigmatization and discrimination against polytechnic education began right after independence when the first Cookie Commission of Enquiry set up a salary differential between university graduates and their polytechnic counterparts. Even worse is the fact that in universities, you cannot join the council in congregation unless you are a degree holder.

        In 2006, the Nigerian federal authorities took what at first appeared as a bold and courageous step to harmonise  and consolidate tertiary education in the country by virtually abolishing polytechnic education. Inaugurating the technical committee, Ufot Ekaette, the then Secretary to the Federal Government, noted that no country could achieve scientific and technological breakthrough when less than fifteen per cent of the populace have access to university education. According to him, the existing facilities were so oversubscribed that the entire educational system faced an apocalyptic meltdown.

      With less than three per cent of the Nigerian populace having access to university education, the situation was very dire indeed. Consequently, all polytechnics were to be abolished with the minor ones becoming campuses of proximate and contiguous universities while the Yaba College of Technology and the Kaduna Polytechnic were to become City Universities of Lagos and Kaduna respectively.

     Crowing jubilantly about the development, the then Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, noted that the development would lead to the creation of half a million additional university placements and immediately ease the bottlenecks that have come to be associated with JAMB.

       On the face of it, this seems to be a revolutionary and radically innovative development; an admirable example of visionary and proactive governance. But on closer examination, there seemed to be something sinister and radically obtuse going on. There is no evidence that the momentous conclusions were arrived at after a holistic, exhaustive and comprehensive study of the country-specific needs of tertiary education in Nigeria. Had there been a more crucial interrogation of the dynamics of technological and societal under-development in the nation, the conclusions might have been different.

     Far more disturbing however is the suspicion that as usual, Nigeria might have been aping developments and trends elsewhere particularly in the colonial metropole without any conceptual linkage to the country-specific crisis of education. Even the names given to the new polytechnic-turned university come with a colonial imprimatur.

      It will be recalled that when polytechnics were transformed into universities in Britain, many of them were given the prefix of “metropolitan” simply to distinguish them from existing universities based in the same cities. Thus was born Leeds Metropolitan University, Sheffield Metropolitan Universities etc.

        Yet Britain was actually responding to country-specific needs based on the unique trajectory of education in the country.  Polytechnics in England came with a class-slur. As dumb-down vocational centres for middle-level manpower, they were regarded as the natural habitat and havens for the educationally challenged and the socially disadvantaged flotsam and jetsam of the society. Naturally, this binary divide bred a lot of resentment and fuelled social tension.

        Eventually, the contradictions matured into an impossible systemic lock down. As better educational facilities at the secondary level led to greater successes, pressures on scarce university placements naturally led to a millennial bottleneck.  As more people gained higher educational qualifications, surplus quality staff meant for the universities had to be deflected to the polytechnic.

      The lack of vacancy at the professorial level due to strict establishment ratio and the fact that quality staff now marooned at the polytechnic could not be expected to reach the pinnacle of their profession led to widespread intellectual disillusionment with the system and an internal brain drain.

         Every shrewd societal engineer realizes that the presence of a radically disaffected intellectual class is a recipe for anarchy and rebellion.  In 1992, the British authorities finally caved in to the pressures. Under the Further and Higher Education Act, the old polytechnics were abolished and transformed into degree-awarding universities. Britain had attempted to solve its unique educational crisis in its own unique manner.

        If this was the trend and development in other lands that the Nigerian authorities were aping, it is clear that we have missed the boat again. Every country is unique in its educational specificity. You cannot slam on a country developments from elsewhere without first analyzing the country-specific dynamics. In this regard, ASUP’s critique of the committee decision is spot on.  Ruing over why such a momentous decision should be coming at the very tail end of the Obasanjo administration, the union of polytechnic staff dismissed the whole exercise as a superficial and retrogressive charade.

       Had the committee  more than a glancing acquaintance with the phenomenon of genuine branding and not the superficial shibboleths of Nigerian officialdom, it ought to have occurred to them that Yaba College of Technology and Kaduna Polytechnic were already successful brands in their own rights. Turning them into “city universities” actually devalues their brand. It is like asking Massachusset Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech, Imperial College, the London School of Economics etc to drop their gloriously unique brands and become universities.

        In a remarkable stricture, ASUP noted that the committee was filled with establishment bureaucrats, equal opportunity consultants and other racketeers out to preserve and promote vested interests. In any case, we may wonder, what is the point of adding hordes of glorified graduate illiterates to an already saturated labour market?  This can only compound an already dire situation, fuelling social discontent and ultimately inviting anarchy.

       It is noteworthy that while Nigeria was trying to abolish its polytechnics, the Singaporean authorities were strengthening theirs based on a rigorous evaluation of country-specific needs.  In a remarkable speech at the closing ceremony of the annual Polytechnic Forum on 8th October 2009, the Minister of Education and Second Minister of Defence, Dr En eng Hen, outlined with engrossing perspicuity the vision behind the retention of polytechnic education in his country.  Among the reasons proffered, four are particularly compelling.

    1.            The law of supply and demand. With over 40 percent of the primary cohort demanding for quality polytechnic education, the authorities had no choice but to grant the demand of the populace.

    2.            The fact that the polytechnic work-force arrive “industry ready” and is readily available to fill opening vacancies in industries through what is a close symbiotic relationship between the forces of labour and the forces of production.

    3.            The rate and vigour of what he chooses to call “disruptive technology”. In a rapidly modernizing and increasingly globalised world new technologies intrude into our life on a daily basis which demand the constant upgrading of obsolete curricular and the constant introduction of new courses based on emergent technologies. For example, a polytechnic in Singapore has begun to offer Bachelors’ degree course in Computer Games Software. There is also a degree programme in Culinary Arts.

    4.            Finally, there is the need for existing workforce to be retrained, retooled and even re-certificated. Rapidly evolving technology renders a degree obsolete and antiquated during the life time of the degree holder. The cure-all and once-for –all time paper qualification is no longer tenable. A person that holds a 1979 degree in Computer Science would no longer understand what is going on the profession by 2009.

      According to the minister, polytechnics are there for “jobs yet to be invented and challenges not yet foreseen”. Finally, “being autonomous, these universities can chart their own destiny, differentiate themselves and pursue revolutionary innovations”. By creating themselves anew, they re-create and reinvent the society on the basis of ceaseless self-surpassing.

      This is a radically innovative educational policy based on visionary governance and pro-people policy. The dynamic is powered by country specific needs and a close study of the Singaporean society and culture. When there is a perfect congruence between the educational policy of a nation and the societal needs, there is a positive equilibrium between the parts and the whole. Little wonder then that within only one generation, Singapore has moved from the Third World to the First World.

        Without innovative thinking, there can be no innovative and cutting edge industry for that matter. Even transferred technology requires considerable innovative thinking to be “tropicalised” and domesticated. And without revolutionary technological innovations, there can be no expanding economy. Any society caught up in a technological rut will always play host to mass unemployment and a glut of unproductive work force.

        This is the basis of Nigeria’s contemporary plight. Let me now begun to tie up the loose ends as we arrive at the conclusion. As we have seen from the above-going, it should now be clear that the virus of unoriginal thinking is more dangerous and potentially more lethal than the virus of unemployment. This is because unoriginal thinking is the original form of unemployment; a critical disengagement of the thinking faculty.

      Yes, as we have read from above, Nigeria needs polytechnic education as a recipe for visionary leadership and governance. The can do spirit, the rugged determination, the energetic networking, the constant struggle to improve self-capacity, the urge to pull oneself up by the bootstraps such as we find in the polytechnic community are all heroic ingredients of visionary leadership.

      But before these fertile resources can be milked and harnessed for national greatness, Nigeria itself will need a generous dash of visionary leadership to rescue it from the present morass and millennial rut of educational under-development. I thank you all and wish the graduands the very best in the current circumstances.