By Tatalo Alamu

It is good to celebrate some of our remaining academic heroes while they are still alive so that their labour will not be in vain. The Nigerian society is so harsh and hostile to our ancient dons that many of them go into swift and steep social and psychological decline once they retire from the system. It is like throwing a fish out of water.

In the late sixties, the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Lagos boasted of a world class staff list that was at the global summit of the discipline. A faculty that hosted Ayodele Awojobi, the late Mechanical Engineering avatar, among other luminaries of the profession could not be shunted aside in any gathering of engineering professors anywhere in the world at that point in time. Many of the returning PhDs had already made their mark as outstanding graduate students in the best regarded sanctuaries of the profession.

A very good friend of snooper who was later to migrate back and distinguish himself as a globally respected expert in Automotive Engineering at the University of Birmingham described a typical seminar at the faculty as resembling a collision of altars with cutting edge concepts from MIT, Moscow, Waterloo, Sorbonne, Harvard, Cambridge, Imperial College and DEFLT in Holland among others clashing in frenetic ferment.  It was a great time to study engineering in Nigeria.

Alas, nothing lasts for long in the hot and sultry tropics. By the end of the eighties, many of these extraordinary brains, tired and disillusioned, were beginning to wing their way back to the west with their tail between their legs. Some quietly switched to the private sector and prosperous consultancies in order to beat the offside trap of poverty and social disregard.

But among stars, there are superstars. Ephraim Okon, who plied his trade mainly in the Civil Engineering Department, was one of the greatest professors to have graced the Unilag Faculty of Engineering. By the time he left, he was already a legend. Professor Okon dazzled his students with his brilliance, his wit, his originality and his versatility. A gifted conversationalist, his students adored, worshipped and feared him in equal measure.

Any student of Engineering at the University of Lagos in the golden seventies and eighties must remember a particular academic affliction known as Okon rigour. Despite his amiable and clubbable personality, Okon punished wishy-washy thinking and jejune logic with maximum penalty and he not only demanded solutions to intractable engineering problems, he demanded the most elegant solution. This was to become the war cry of many of his students after graduation.

A sizeable number of his former students have gone on to distinguish themselves in academics and other sectors of the economy. It was one of these, a bosom friend of snooper who later became the Managing Director of one of Nigeria’s telecommunication subsidiaries, who drew our attention to the fact that the great man turned eighty yesterday. Here is wishing Professor Ephraim Okon many happy returns.

By Tatalo Alamu

Modern Western civilization as we know it began in the rich alluvial valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  If care is not taken, it may yet unravel there. Civilizations go and civilizations come, but humanity remains. That is if someone is not sorely tempted to pull the ultimate nuclear trigger.

There are enough itchy, psychopathic fingers lurking in many imperial palaces all over the place. But for now, we must thank God and the intrepid foot works of Swedish and European diplomats for small mercies. A nuclear Armageddon seems to have been averted for now. To soothe its injured pride and ego, Iran has been allowed to unleash its furious missiles on a safe designated area. America has been able to get away with assassination, leaving the rest to proxy warriors.

Since the truce is holding, we can assume that no one is willing to perish in a nuclear inferno, at least for now. The civilized world has been granted a major reprieve.  President Donald Trump will have to look for another opportunity to test what he described with chilling and cheerless nonchalance as those beautiful equipment(s) that America has spent three trillion dollars to procure.

After all this, a word has gained in prestige and global diplomatic currency. It is known as de-escalation. But de-escalation, which means to put a lid on escalation, or to stop aggravating an already aggravated situation, is not a fresh initiative. It is merely the management of mismanagement.

We have said it several times in this column that America is the greatest imperial power the world has seen since the Roman Empire. Anybody who has watched on video the dramatic elimination of Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, or the high-tech execution of Quassem Soleimani, the Iranian general, by a remote-controlled drone must think twice about daring the military might of America.

Military experts have let it be known that after America, the next twenty five countries combined do not have the military strength of the world’s preeminent superpower. The world has never seen anything like this and it can be used for good or bad depending on the mood of America and the mind-set of the subsisting occupier of the White House.

There is a Nigerian saying that a strong and powerful person who does not know the virtues of caution and discretion is the king among loafers and weaklings. Whatever its current might and inclination, America was not founded as a warrior-nation. It was founded by a group of religious and intellectual visionaries who sought to create the world anew away from the ashes of feudal Europe.

It was a radical version of the new nation-state paradigm. While the rest of the world suffered from feudal accretions and the waste products of empire hang-over which hobbled the new nations, America strode boldly ahead recording spectacular successes in technology, wealth creation, modern transportation and urban development while shining forth like a little city nestling on a hill.

For those not blinded by racial, religious and ideological prejudices, these are remarkable achievements on behalf of humanity and the human quest for emancipation from the realm of brutal necessities to the realm of freedom. They must be applauded. This is a drive for a higher telos which has led humanity to evolve away from their animal origins.

It might of course be objected that America’s successes and achievements are based on slave labour and the genocide of native Amerindians. But as Walter Benjamin famously observed, there is no record of civilization which is not at the same time a record of barbarity. Humankind is not a fallen angel but a rising ape.

But as it happened in ancient Rome, the American obsession with strength and power; its worship and glorification of the cult of the superman; its unrelenting machismo, is likely to culminate in hubris and imperial overstretch. Almost twenty years after invading Iraq, they are still bringing home American soldiers in body bags. Iraq itself has become a joke of a country, hostage to many occupying forces with its restive populace chafing under the combined weight of corruption and incompetence.

We can step back a bit to view this historic carnage. When America invaded Iraq over what it considered its threat to world peace and multiple infractions, everybody predicted it was going to be a cake walk, and it was. Iraq was briskly overwhelmed. Saddam Hussein was captured and eventually executed. But as they say once again in Nigeria, what is beyond the figure of six is far greater than the figure of seven.

The Iraq that America invaded and conquered, although ruled by a psychopathic bandit, was a relatively stable and moderately prosperous country. In a seven year war with Iran in which it acted as an American proxy against the emergent radical Islamic theocracy, the Iraqi army held its own. Although he murdered his own people at will, the former chicken rustler from al-Tikriti held the nation together thus maintaining the geopolitical balance in the Middle East.

Almost twenty years after, Iraq is a permanent theatre of war, without an army that can pass muster and the nation at the mercy of hostile occupying forces and centrifugal religious militias. The once proud ancient Iraqi upper society, heirs to the iconic Babylonian heritage, has virtually evacuated the nation leaving it at the mercy of warlords and thuggish clerics.

The entire Middle East itself has dissolved in a cauldron of carnage and bloodletting. There is something worse than despotic rule. It is anarchic mayhem. In a development that was unthinkable even under the reign of the eccentric and grandstanding Hussein, the American Embassy in Baghdad came under sustained assaults of grenades, firebombs and gunshots from demonstrators who are in reality mercenaries sponsored by the Iran Revolutionary Guards just to highlight the unpopularity of the Americans.

This was the last straw for the Americans and the immediate cause of what nearly brought the world to the brink of World War 111 this past week. The Americans fingered Quassem Soleimani, the ubiquitous commander of the Special Forces responsible for the maintenance and expansion of Iranian sphere of influence abroad, as the sole culprit and financier of the covert operation which almost led to another traumatic occupation or evacuation of an American fortress abroad.

Exactly forty years after the humiliating occupation of their embassy in Teheran, national memory stirred uneasily in America. Whatever anybody may say or think about Donald Trump, he remains an Alpha male and shrewd political calculator with an eye for the main chance. Trump knows that it is election year and with the fate of Jimmy Carter in mind, Trump knows that America will not put up with any handwringing, namby-pamby sissy of a president when slapped abroad.

This was why General Soleimani had to go. But Qassem Soleimani was no ordinary Iranian general. He was a hero of mythical proportions among his people. He is widely credited with expanding Iran’s sphere of influence and authority abroad, turning his country into the undisputed regional power in the process.

Soleimani was regarded as one of the two or three most important figures in Iran and was known to have worsted the Americans in several proxy confrontations. The general thirsted for martyrdom and had the reputation of leading his men from the front. And what a paroxysm of universal rage and grieving the death of the general has elicited from his people.

The crowd of mourners was unprecedented in the history of Iran at least not since the death of the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini.  More than sixty people died in the stampede in a ritual re-enactment of the ancient tradition of feeding live people to the mausoleum of departing nobility.

The beloved general has now had his martyrdom and near-deification by his people. It must be said that several American presidents passed up the opportunity to take out the general probably because of a rational calculation of the repercussions. But not so Donald Trump who had no such qualms. It is known in international intelligence circuits that once Israel passed up Soleimani’s coordinates to their American allies, they wasted no time in blitzing him and his entire entourage.

Yet it is not as if the late Iranian general never cooperated or collaborated with American officialdom. Although going occasionally rogue to pursue the obsession with Iranian geopolitical greatness, Soleimani was known to have collaborated with American authorities in the campaign against al-Queda and ISIS. They met and exchanged intelligence several times.

This led to a thawing of the relationship with Iran reaping the economic bounty as the unlocking of assets frozen by the Americans led the Iranian economy to grow by twelve percent. Why would the Iranians prefer this peace and growing prosperity with confrontation and hostility with America abroad? This is what has led some distinguished American commentators to naively dismiss Soleimani as an overrated military and political strategist.

This is a dialogue of the deaf reflecting widely incompatible and mutually unintelligible political habitus and fundamentally divergent worldviews. Whoever told the Americans that the Iranians would like to exchange domestic prosperity for international quietude and loss of prestige?

So that after being well-fed and well-housed their people can start demanding for equal rights and western-style democracy? It is all a question of contending hubris. As heirs to an ancient civilization, the Iranian leadership long for a world in which the ancient supremacy of Persia would be restored irrespective of the plight of the people at home.

The irony of Soleimani’s assassination is that it has for now put a lid on a growing campaign for more openness and inclusive democracy in Iranian society. No one in his right mind will call for freedom of expression and female rights in the current conjuncture. That would mean a short suicide notice.

The internal upheaval caused by the death of the general has led the entire Iranian population to solidify behind what is essentially a fascist Islamic clerisy. Hurt and humiliated, the Iranian leadership will most likely resume their nuclear programme which they will now believe is what makes the difference between their nation and a North Korea or Russia which America dare not humIt is an impossible global conundrum whose violent ripples are likely to be with us for some time. This is not just a clash of civilization, a tussle between an ancient Empire and a new one but a collision of different trajectories to modernity and modernization. One people’s poison is another people’s venison. The more tolerant and liberal nations of Europe must get America and Iran talking once again.

By Tatalo Alamu

AS snooper prowled his way to pole position at last Thursday’s book launch of Babatunde Jose, son of the great doyen of Nigerian journalism, a scene worthy of Elizabethan drama in all its Shakespearean perplexities began unfolding. An old decrepit-looking man dressed in the outlandish costume of a dreaded Ibadan masquerade shambled in and swiftly accosted one of the Jose children.

“Bia, ooo are you not Tunde Jose’s son?” the old man rumbled with intent.

“Yes”, the young fellow responded in a very sceptical voice.

“Look, young man, you cannot be saying yes to your father’s friend just like that. You will now go outside the premises and buy me two packets of cigarettes either Pirates or Craven A or Raleigh if those yeye Oyinbo people don pack up”, the old man thundered.

With a hint of pleasant humour, the young man took a long despairing look at the human fiasco.

“Kai, kai, dis baba na real irunmole and ogbologbo combined”, the young man noted and quickly disappeared. Before the old man could respond, Okon surfaced from nowhere looking thoroughly unkempt and dishevelled. The old man appeared immensely relieved to see a kindred spirit.

“Okon, where have you been, abi dem LASTMA don wire you again?” the old man demanded.

“Baba, dis na serious business. I go join dem people beat up dem old senator for my place, “ the mad boy enthused even as he shadow wrestled.

“Haba wetin he do you?”

“The yeye man come turn my sister to Constituency Project. We ask make him look for work for her and he come dey wire am.” Okon lamented.

“Haba Okon, with or without her consent?” Baba Lekki insisted.

“Wo baba leave me alone o jare. I say dem wire woman and you dey ask for corset, no be corset go disappear first?  Abi which kind yeye question be dat?” It was at this point that the place suddenly erupted with a siren-blasting convoy and Okon promptly took to his heels.

To Mafoluku in the hinterland of Oshodi where the indefatigable Baba Lekki, with Okon ably assisting, is fielding questions on the state of the nation from journalists in a ramshackle and abandoned plaza belonging to an old politician. This is one area of contention where the crazy boy will never be able to match Baba Lekki’s fiery anti-establishment intellect and cerebral wit. In Shakespearean drama, an assistant clown is known as a fool’s zany and Okon was on his zaniest form this gloomy and mournful afternoon.

Nigerians are a hard dying lot. Nothing, and absolutely nothing, can get them down for long. Despite the underlying currents of hardship and acute discontent in the land, the Christmas season this year got underway much earlier than usual. There has been much rollicking and frolicking in the air. Nigerians do not let go of fun and its fares very easily. On this Christmas Eve, they flocked to the scene of amusement and enjoyment in droves.

Despite its rather shabby and unkempt premises, its faded coatings, its dirty curtains, derelict furniture and faded glory, the Pingolo Plaza wore a look of undying relevance and infectious optimism. There was great expectation of a better tomorrow for the nation and its people. Nothing was going to stop Nigeria from fulfilling its manifest destiny. This was God’s own sacred covenant with the Black Race after centuries of suffering and humiliation.

One man who did not buy this saccharine and anodyne nonsense was Baba Lekki. “The Black person is a historic fiasco. Nothing can redeem it, and nothing can improve its stock or fortune, not even a genetic reconfiguration of the human species,” the old sadist and certified kill-joy concluded in what he called his last testament to his late wife hinting at his own imminent translation.

He had arrived at the Plaza that afternoon wearing a mournful and haggard look while eyeing everybody with superior scorn. He beamed a hateful stare at the joyous and happy-go-lucky crowd and then exploded. “Look, I hate people being happy when they should be unhappy.”

“Baba, to appear happy when you are deeply hurt is the best revenge against bad leadership”, one man in the crowd noted with a scholarly grimace.

“Very well said. Ori yen so”, an upbeat Lagosian dandy noted as the crowd roared in rowdy approval. Nothing, it appeared at that moment, was going to deflate the upbeat mood or overturn the sunny optimism of the people this dreary afternoon. The only jarring note of discord emanated from a hefty oak of a man with flared nostrils and the visage of autochthonous dwellers of remote mountains who sat in a corner mumbling intermittently. “Rice o, compatriots!”.

When this did not seem to be gaining much traction with the crowd, he switched tactics and began chanting, “arise o compatriots, rise up, up rise.” This linguistic mischief seemed to have caught the attention of the dandy Lagosian.

“Are you asking for rice or uprise? “ the Lagos dandy demanded.

“Yoruba man, mind una business, whether na rice dem bring or na uprise we bring no dey matter. He no matter which name you call an ogbanje pikin, as ogbanje pikin must quench”, the man shot back. At this point, and in order to bring the interactive session alive, one of the journalists present, a pompous little fellow with the airs of a fatuous attention seeker virtually collared Baba Lekki.

“Ngbo Baba, is it true that you don’t suffer fools gladly?”, he demanded. The old man eyed the journalist with icy disdain before putting him on the canvas.

“So, how come I am suffering you very gladly right now?” Baba Lekki shot back.

“Kai, kai, baba don suffer dis one well, well. See how him mouth dey dance?” Okon crowed.

“Wo Okon, I don tell you say dis matter no be for pepper soup boys or periwinkle people”, Baba Lekki gently chided Okon and turning on the crestfallen journalist, he ordered. “Now, you, ask me another question”, an invitation declined with the poor fellow vigorously shaking his head in disavowal. This gave a more thoughtful looking journalist an opportunity to step forward.

“Sir, what do you think about this local border closure accompanied by international border opening? Is there a contradiction somewhere?” he opened cautiously.

“Ah good question. To tell you the truth I no longer understand the man. You cannot regulate at home while you are deregulating abroad.  How can you close local borders when you are throwing open your international borders for all comers? The law says you cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time. So, this is what Fela calls Ojuelegba”, Baba Lekki crowed with wicked humour.

There was pin drop silence followed by a loud rumble of approaching commotion. The man who had been crying for rice had decided to up the ante.

“You dis yeye Yoruba people, na too know go kill you. I say rice no dey and you come dey blow grammar. Wetin concern common man with dem border?  Dem close border for Seme and come go open all dem border for Egypt. No be say dem one bring dem Araba be dat? Which kind open and close nonsense be dat?” the man screamed and began attacking everybody in sight.

*Pabambari prophecies

By Tatalo Alamu

 

It is a new year and with it a fresh wave of optimism. Nigerians must thank their stars for surviving the year 2019. So many of our beloved compatriots didn’t, and due to no fault of theirs. Many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many who placed premium trust on the bond of friendship, of eternal family values and spiritual association, did not live to regret it. 2019 was a horrible year, full of astral malevolence. The nation was engulfed in crisis on every imaginable front.

Our people seem to have lost hope in government and the possibility of governance ameliorating their historic distress. When any society suffers this signal erosion of hope and faith in the capacity and capability of government safeguarding them against adversity, anomie beckons. For this writer, the most unsettling metaphor of our moral, spiritual and ethical degeneration is the confession of the chap who claimed that he ate the heart of his lover with his mother at the behest of his pastor. What an unholy trinity!!!

This is why President Buhari’s New Year political homily is a fresh breath of air, a welcome departure from his normally stiff and stilted offerings. It was impassioned, compassionate, conciliatory and statesmanlike, offering solace and succour to a serially violated people. But in the same breath, and in a feat of self-subverting irony, the old virus of animated spite and narrow-minded disdain for opposing views resurfaces.

Wouldn’t it have been more statesmanlike and large-hearted if the federal authorities had extended the generosity of their advertising largesse to the Punch newspaper? That singular act of higher statesmanship would have put the Punch on the spot and in the dock of popular opinion.

Future historians of the Nigerian conundrum and General Buhari’s  double rule will wonder why and how in the same person notions of patriotism cohabit with a certain primordiality  that constantly undermines the national fabric and how an unyielding provincialism subverts his stature as a truly national leader. It is the Nigerian paradox at play.

Given the growing resolve in many parts of the country to opt out of what has become an unworkable colonial torture wrack and the determination of some groups to seek a United Nations referendum on the future of Nigeria, this may be a case of trying to lock the stable door after the horse might have bolted.

We have said it many times in this column that you cannot rule a post-colonial multi-ethnic nation still struggling for an organic identity like a feudal enclave without something eventually giving. It would have warmed the hearts of Nigerians if the government had yielded to internal pressure to do the right thing rather than external prodding and prompting. It has taken international notoriety and humiliation abroad to achieve what the collective will of Nigerians could not.

This is a classic case of what we propose as decentred sovereignty. What it shows is that the real masters of Nigeria reside outside the shores of the nation. The sham statehood is another manifestation of the organic crisis confronting Nigeria which can only be resolved either by a reorganization of the state or a redefinition of the nation itself.

The situation is bleak and dire in the long run. Judging by his antecedents, when General Buhari feels overwhelmed by the crisis, he is likely to revert to his default military instincts. But this is likely to provoke more volatile centrifugal forces which will put the continued survival of the nation in acute jeopardy.

In the event, the rise of counterhegemonic knowledge and forces associated with this are likely to play a vital role in the resolution of the Nigerian conundrum. They are Lord Lugard’s bits of wood. Now that the Nigerian authorities have managed through sheer ineptitude to turn Omoyele Sowore into a national and global hero of sorts, we republish this morning, the columnist’s observations at the launch of Sahara Reporters which took place at the Empire State Building in New York in 2006.

 

The Blogger As Nemesis

As the world goes through rapid transformations, so do the professions and the old divisions of labour. There are interesting developments that make nonsense of specialization and even the old notion of the nation-state. Yet it is too early to conclude that globalization will provide the coup de grace for the post-colonial state in Africa or precipitate what will put the superannuated colonial contraption out of its terminal misery.

The omens are not very reassuring. Already gravely imperilled by its juvenile delinquency, its serial breach of the Lockean contract, its aggravating insolence, its multiple infidelities, the post-colonial state in Africa lurches from crisis to crisis, conflict to conflict and confrontation to confrontation.

Such are the internal contradictions, the antinomies between state and nation that the moment it weathers a crisis, a more terrifying disaster looms in the horizon. Disorder is the organizing order, the dysfunctional fulcrum on which national dysfunction revolves.

Yet despite its debilitating impairment, its historic infirmities, the post-colonial state, particularly its Nigerian incarnation, has shown a surprising resilience, a capacity for self-reproduction, an elegant ability to mutate at short notice that has defied all historical odds and doomsday predictions.

The obituaries have been premature. The reports of its death are grossly exaggerated. Drawing incredible resources from its very contradictions, its increasing criminalization and sheer perversities, the Nigerian state fumbles and wobbles on. As the Nigerian state mutates, wearing several masks of tyranny while its fundamental nature remains the same, adversarial journalism, its dialectical mirror image, is also constantly transformed as a response to its own internal contradictions as well as historical developments.

In the First and Second Republics, oppositional journalists were content with writing their stuff and waiting for the government to come for them. Many ended in jail. Ironically enough, because the effects of colonial rule were yet to wear out, there were still some rules to the game. The government was trusted to obey its own laws.

As the Nigerian military state naturalized and sheer lawlessness became the norm, military tactics also infiltrated the press. Obeying the dictates of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature, journalists were no longer willing to trust their fate to a state, which murders its own citizens. Hence the rise of the  “guerrilla journalist’, an insurgent with mobile typewriter who operated outside the laws as an intellectual sniper.

Now, the journalist as journalissimo has arrived: an insurrectionist with a laptop who has carried the battle to the state from global space. It is the age of the new kids on the blog. Just as it is said that war is too serious a business to be left to soldiers and politics is too sacred a profession to be left to politicians, journalism is too serious a business to be left to professional journalists.

Nature abhors a vacuum and as history has demonstrated, every profession which devalues itself, which desecrates its sacred obligations, invites external interventions. The generalissimo defied and demystified the general; the political practitioner disrobed the politician; the “journalissimo” has demystified journalism turning citizens’ arrest into the pre-eminent form of order-enforcement.

The age of the Internet is proving as revolutionary as the discovery of the printing press. Of all the dangers threatening the post-colonial state in Nigeria, none is more debilitating and potentially more devastating than the rise of the Nigerian blogger. Using tactics and electronics normally associated with advanced espionage, taking advantage of globalization and the sheer borderlessness of the new world, the blogger threatens the very foundation of the post-colonial state in its totality and territoriality.

As explosive exposure follows explosive exposure, as revelations of spellbinding corruption and official chicanery cascade, the legitimacy and authority of the state suffer signal erosion. Thus an interview began in Benin Republic under the watchful eyes of rent-seeking immigration officials might be concluded in Lagos, Nigeria only to be edited and put on the World Wide Web in New York.

Totally paralyzed and rendered inept by the ceaseless global flow of information, the state becomes a minor, inconsequential actor within a micro-pluralism of power. Unable to police either its borders or its so-called citizens, the state forfeits its power of surveillance. In this brave new world of Internet hostilities, the surveiller becomes the surveilled.

As disaffected nationals in the Diaspora position themselves on the Internet lobbing artillery shells of disgust and disdain on the home country, the situation becomes very dire indeed. Such are the resources available; such is the intellectual firepower that village despots tremble in their liars under the sustained bombardment. The hunter has become the hunted.

What then has brought the post-colonial state in Africa to this critical impasse?  And what is the implication for the colonial contraptions that go by the name of nation-states on the continent? In all the major indices of governance, the state is unable to justify its fundamental raison d’ềtre. The serial defaulting on the Lockean contract between the ruled and rulers, the peevish and pathological re-offending, have led to massive alienation and one-way exits from the benighted continent.

The result has been a steady regression into the Hobbesian state of nature where everything is short, nasty and brutish. With the breakdown of law and order, with the collapse of legitimacy and authority, anarchy reigns supreme and hostage taking both at the official and unofficial level becomes the norm. In frustration and impotence, and unable to obey its own laws, the state resorts to hostage-taking while the armed insurrection replies in kind. The result is new kind of anomie unique to civilian governance in post-colonial Africa.

Yet dire as the situation is, it can get much worse. In Nigeria, for example, the crisis of governance is at the level of state and civil society. With poverty stalking the land, with the massive co-optation of many oppositionists into government, and with the exit of the best and brightest, there is struggle-fatigue. Nigeria lacks a tradition of long-distance resistance. We are all short-distance runners.

Many contemporary leading lights in civil society anchor their reputation on one-off acts of defiance against a particular tyrant which they then inflate into cosmic self-importance, or which they use as bargaining chips for entrance into the ruling caste. Any wonder then that every phase of resistance usually leaves the opposition gasping for breath and ready to accommodate any political settlement imposed by the ruling class?

Unlike the ANC which was founded in 1912 and which did not come to power until the mid-nineties, there is no such tradition of sustained and organic resistance. Every contention with the latest tyrant has to begin anew, and with fresh political formations. The result is an elite and elitist power play completely dislocated and disconnected from the real people. Realising that neither their vote nor even presence count, the people take refuge in cynical apathy as factions of the elite duel themselves unto death.

This is the political disequilibrium under which our new kids on the blog will operate. There is a clear and present danger to this. Rather than leading to a revolution or even the reformation of an ailing state, the revelations of official shenanigans in the absence of a critical mass may provoke an extreme, right-wing fundamentalist cleansing of the state which may push the nation in the direction of civil war and dismemberment or lead to the consolidation of revolutionary anarchy.

On the other hand, the abstract idealism which often underpins these interventions, the attempts by nationals in the Diaspora to view developments at home with the critical lens of developments in the west may lead to further alienation of the state without creating an enabling or conducive environment for genuine change at home. Either way, it is a play of giants with the blogger granted his fifteen minutes of fame, but marooned on the internet or stranded at the Empire State Building.

In the past twenty years, the Nigerian military state has demonstrated a surprising capacity to deal with emergencies and an impressive ability to assume different masks to deal with political exigencies. It has also shown a ruthless will to power. It found a frowning general to handle the emergency created by the profligacy and irresponsibility of civilian governance in the Second Republic.

When the political class began to chafe under the draconian inquisition, it came up with a smiling general. But when the smiling one lost command and the ruling caucus became gravely imperilled as a result of radical pressures from below, it came up with a begoggled frowning tyrant. After five years of low intensity warfare, the taciturn merchant of mayhem in turn expired in fabled circumstances just as he was about to push the nation over the precipice, thus giving way to another benign charmer who was to prepare the ground for the civilianized general who could frown by the day and smile at night.

It is not the blogger who will put an end to this elaborate charade, this sustained chicanery and macabre musical chairs. But blogging will help. The defenestration of some important sectors of the Nigerian press as a result of corporate corruption and individual greed has assured the blogger of a great historical platform. Yet if he is to fulfill this historic mission, the blogger must conduct a constant reality check and come up with a profound intellectual interrogation of his own vulnerability in a web of elite deceit and mischief. It is only after this that the blogger can reconnect with the endangered forces of genuine change in the home country.

(This text was given as opening speech at the launch of the website Saharareporters.com at the Empire State Building, New York, Saturday, February 18th, 2006.)

 

Pabambari prophecies

In Yoruba local parlance, pabambari is something that is so outlandish that it strains credulity and common sense all at once. As the New Year gets underway, Nigeria’s ever growing tribe of pabambari prophets have been busy at their game. One of them quite oblivious of the fact that a former top politician quietly expired at the last polls has predicted his imminent return to power. Not to be left out of the engaging nonsense, Baba Lekki had approached Okon for his New Year prophecy about the fortunes of the nation.

“Ah baba, I been dey see dem cashless society and dem cowless kontri”, the crazy boy drawled.

“Okon, what does that nonsense mean?” the old man snarled.

“Baba, dat means cash go vamoose and as dem Yoruba juju people dey kaput dem mala cow with dem thunder, dem mala no go bring cow again and suffer go whack dem foolish Yoruba people”, the mad boy snorted.

“I see”, Baba Lekki grunted.

“Baba wetin you see for your own holy camera? “ Okon demanded.

“Okon hmmmm. I see a vacuum at the end of which I see a void”, the old man mused miserably.

“Ha baba dat means say make we all go get dem vacuum cleaner?” the crazy boy inquired.

“Get lost!” the old crank snapped as he walked away.

 

By Tatalo Alamu

To the plush and magnificent pile of reclusive billionaire, Mike Adenuga, somewhere in the exclusive parts of magically opulent Lagos (address deliberately withheld) for an eightieth post-birthday luncheon in honour of General Alani Ipoola Akinrinade, Civil War titan and former Chief of Defence Staff last Saturday.

Exquisitely compered by the ever pleasant and ever delectable Bimbo Oloyede, it was a night of great music, great singing, memorable tributes and remarkable reminiscences showcasing everything that is good and admirable about this country. And it comes with a hint of Nigerian exceptionalism. How can a country that has thrown up this remarkable array of talents, this dazzling collection of gifted people, go under just like this?

This being a season of charity and good will, it is perhaps appropriate to end this rather turbulent and untoward year on a note of optimism about the Nigerian project. It is not looking good. A sizeable proportion of our ruling elite still do not have a concept of the nation-state and what it means to nurture, to build and to grow a nation from birth to full maturity.

They are stuck in a pre-modern time-warp which has scant regard for individual liberty or the right of the citizenry to freedom of association and independence of aspiration as long as such do not threaten the integrity of the state. This is why Nigeria has become a permanent toddler; stranded in the limbo of perpetual infancy.

But however deplorable and despondent a situation is, there is no substitute for hope and cautious optimism even if your mind tells you that based on compelling evidence on ground, it will all end in naught. As events of that evening unfolded, you get a sense that for so many people who have invested considerable emotional, psychic, social, political and financial capital in the country, failure cannot be contemplated.

The man of the evening is one of these. Being of a more combustible and impatient temperament, one may often disagree with his political diffidence and reluctance to cause offence until he is driven to the wall. But after many hours of pounding the table and pondering over the Nigerian project, after many risky trips with him, you cannot but come to the conclusion that General Alani Akinrinade is an exemplary Nigerian nationalist and a sterling Yoruba patriot.

On a trip to Bayelsa State, a sober and introspective Akinrinade told me that having trekked most of the way from a particular spot to Port Harcourt as federal troops began their final assault on the city, he could still smell the flora and fauna of the place fifty one years after. Several decades after, the mangrove forest still appeared sullen and forbidding.

You can then imagine the deep hurt in Akinrinade’s eyes when some misguided scoundrels among his own ethnic nationality and other wild men of the cyber-jungle accuse him of compromise with the current status quo and complicity with evil. Having fought with troops as a military commander and without troops as a freedom fighter, Akinrinade knows the difference and will not be goaded or stampeded into rash action by those who will flee at the mere sight of a catapult.

Akinrinade’s personal history and his story contain more than enough redemptive tropes for an authentic and genuinely liberating pan-Nigerian project. A humane, humble and self-effacing career soldier by all accounts and testimonies, he will never be caught glorifying war or romanticising martial derring-do. In his houses both in Lagos and his Yakoyo village, you can hardly find any war memorabilia or mementoes of military mayhem.

His humility and self-erasure astound. Yet Akinrinade is regarded with awe in military circles and treated with near-mythical reverence by those who adjudge him as arguably the most cerebral and strategically-gifted senior officer thrown up by the civil war. The Biafran High Command, having watched videos of his calm and daring during operations, concluded that he was a Chinese mercenary recruited to give sinews and synergy to Nigerian military operations.

In temperament and professional disposition, Akinrinade often recalls Omar Bradley, the great American Five-star general and quiet hero of the Second World War, who is regarded in many quarters as the best American general of the Second World War. Diffident and unprepossessing, Bradley’s aversion for bloodshed and gore is legendary.

Like Omar Bradley, Akinrinade believes that if ever there should be war, one should get it over and done with without fancy and fanfare and with clinical precision, too. Omar Bradley famously told George Patton, his former sectorial commander who he was to supersede to become overall sector supremo, that while he did not particularly like war but had to wage it as a professional duty, Patton on the other hand glorified war and romanticised the cult of death and dying.

In post-colonial military politics, undue ambition often kills and expeditiously, too. In a profound ironic twist, the key to the success of Akinrinade in reaching the very top of his profession can be found in his modesty and lack of gargantuan appetite for personal glory.

Upon joining the army, Akinrinade’s only ambition was to make the rank of major and then retire to his ancestral homestead to make his mark as a farmer. In an army that had only one division and a few brigades, only the deluded and foolishly misguided would have thought otherwise.

But as fate and luck would have it, the civil war opened up dramatic possibilities with a vast expanding military which ballooned overnight from one division and a few thousand men to almost three hundred thousand soldiers and three divisions at the end of the war. As a brilliant and well-regarded officer, Akinrinade rode on the cusp of this expansion and rose beyond his wildest dreams.

It must also be stressed that as an apolitical officer, the Yakoyo-born general never participated in any of the coups and military uprisings that have shaped the destiny of the modern Nigerian Army. But being well regarded and highly valued, Akinrinade not only survived the frequent purges but was always well sought after when it came to the reconstruction of the disrupted military order.

After the coup that brought General Murtala Mohammed to power in August 1975, Akinrinade found himself as the GOC of the Army First Division with headquarters in Kaduna. The assassination of Mohammed six months later and the sterling role played by the First Division in quelling the uprising confirmed Akinrinade’s status as a gallant officer and one of the most influential in the ruling military council.

In October, 1979 with the advent of civil rule, Akinrinade had put in his retirement papers and had headed for Kenya on holiday with a group of close friends. It was from there that he was recalled and told he was the new Chief of Army Staff. The rumour in town then was that the strategically astute Theophilus Danjuma had prevailed upon Obasanjo that it would be unwise for all of them to leave at once with the army without an influential and respected leader.

In 1981, after some typical military intrigues, he was kicked upstairs to the largely sinecure office of Chief of Defence Staff. Barely a year after in 1982, Akinrinade voluntarily stepped down and retired from the Armed Forces. He was forty two going forty three.

This was the man Mike Adenuga was honouring thirty eight years after on the occasion of his eightieth birthday which came early last October. Looking at a king’s mouth, no one would ever believe that he sucked at his mother’s breast, as they say. At eighty, the general is wonderfully preserved, retaining his sprightly steps and youthful good looks.

Thanks to Mike Adenuga, everything great and promising about Nigeria seemed to have come together that memorable and unforgettable evening. As glorious tributes followed each other and as great testimonies cascaded upon great testimonies, from Senator Olabiyi Durojaiye who opened the floodgate with his guttural wit to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who admonished the general not to call on him when next trouble came calling,  you get the sense that the man being eulogised has already passed into legend as a generals’ general and an iconic defender of democracy.

Two of these tributes stand out, particularly in the light of the glorious echoes of the nobility and high-mindedness inherent in Nigerians irrespective of tribe, religion or creed. While General Ike Nwachukwu’s tribute stood out for its power of elocution, its magnificent oratory, its moving affection and devotion to a very supportive civil war commander, General Godwin Alabi-Isama’s testimony to a dear friend and course mate shone with nobility, charity and incandescent honesty. It is to be noted that Alabi-Isama’s mother was an Ilorin princess while his father was Ikwuani/Ibo. Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu is the son of a Fulani princess from Katsina and an Ibo father.

As the general’s brother Chief Femi Akinrinade concluded with a highly perceptive phrase, the general is indeed an aditu—a riddle bound inside a mystery. For a man who saw the middling rank of major as his highest possibility in the army to become a national institution in his own life time and without ever seeking leadership roles or courting political relevance is indeed a glorious tribute to life’s ineluctable mysteries and possibilities.  Here is wishing a good man and a great general many happy returns.

The Chairman, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, veteran nationalist Alhaji Femi Okunnu SAN, Mama Azizat Jose, matriarch of the Jose family and relic of the late Alhaji Jose, revered Islamic scholars present and distinguished Nigerians in audience, it gives me great joy and pleasure to review this book which is a compendium of some of the author’s weekly sermons spanning the last five years.

Let me from the word go draw the audience attention to the intellectual conceit behind the title of this review. Many who are familiar with the writings of Karl Marx will immediately connect to his famous essay, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luis Napoleon.

What many people take away from this essay is the seminal observation that history repeats itself, the first as a tragedy and the second as a farce. Marx was comparing the political career of Luis Napoleon, a grotesque political mediocrity if ever there was one, to the illustrious career of his uncle, a great soldier and statesman, Bonaparte Napoleon.

Not many people remember that Marx himself was building on insights originally advanced by the great German philosopher, Friedrich Hegel. Hegel had noted that history tended to repeat itself, with occurrences and personalities following a curious and intriguing pattern. What Marx did was to add a tragic and pessimistic gloss on Hegel’s original insight.

We will return to this point later in the concluding section of the review. Suffice it to say that Ibrahim Babatunde Jose deserves to be celebrated as an illustrious son of an illustrious father. Like his father, he is a man of profound Islamic piety and of uncommon humanity and humility. Let me confess that for many of us, he has been a source of admiration and respect.

Over the years, I have watched him refuse to leverage his bankable and illustrious antecedents for filthy lucre or for mere position, post or preferment. A self-effacing, intensely private recluse, the author had to confess in the preface that some people had to put a gun to his head to get this collection published.

It is a classic case of internal self-deportation from a sinful society as it was prevalent in Tsarist Russia before the revolution.  For Babatunde Jose and like most people steeped in spiritual self-denial, poverty of soul is not alleviated by prosperity of means.

The author is a man of strong and unusual convictions which he stubbornly holds on to aided by his impressive intellectual ability. Being neither an Islamic scholar nor a fanatical Muslim cleric or even a particular aficionado of the religion, it is hard to figure out what made the author to decide to inflict my humble self on this august gathering as a reviewer of a book I never heard of or saw until a few nights ago.  When he first mentioned the possibility in a casual conversation, the idea was so outlandish that yours sincerely thought it was a joke from the author’s rich repertoire of humour.

But it turned out that the author actually meant business. On a casual visit to his house this last Saturday, our man brought out a copy of the book and deliberately let slip from the voluminous bulk some invitation cards for today’s event. There in bold print was one’s name as the reviewer of the book set for presentation in a few day’s time.

This reviewer has been confronted with an impossible fait accompli. Trust Alhaji Babatunde Jose, he was beaming a cherubic smile of mischievous satisfaction. Like his father, the old doyen of Nigerian journalism and Kaiser of Kakawa, Tunde Jose can also be an impossible slave driver. It must however be said in his favour that as a sweetener he ordered a steaming dish of amala from a local eatery to ease the misery of the putative reviewer.

On further reflection, it may well be the uncanny habits of intuitive genius that brought the author to the choice of reviewer. Although not being strictly a Muslim, the reviewer has Islamic blood running through his veins courtesy of his paternal grandmother who promptly named him Mukaila, just as she did for all her son’s children. Thus at a point one was saddled with the unwieldy triple-barrel patronymic prefixes of Lawrence Mukaila Ayanbisi, the last a sop to the branch of the family that worshipped the god of music.

Many traducers of the Yoruba people and their religious tradition often dismiss this creative and highly syncretic culture as a sign of cultural miscegenation and evidence of moral impurities which must be rooted out if the Yoruba were to make any progress in the brave new world. It cost them their old empire and an epic political meltdown.

But the fact remains that if a dialogue among the world’s leading religions is imperative and in an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas, this encounter can only be deepened and enriched by insights supplied from a multi-religious perspective.

The Khutbah, or Friday preaching as we know it, is a very important component in the propagation of Islam. Its hoary and feisty exhortations, its fiery denunciations, its sadness at the plight of humanity sometimes buoyed by rousing optimism in the ability of humankind to transcend transient travails and overcome temporary difficulties, are a source of delight and heart -warming hopes. This is the tradition that Ibrahim Tunde Jose has turned into higher intellectual art. With Jose, the Khutbah is turned into a bully pulpit for confronting and pursuing all the miscreants of human society.

Jose does not easily let go. In sermon after sermon, he pursues his quarry with remorseless and relentless vigour. No fine detail escapes his keen attention as he lays a perpetual siege on the citadel of sins rifling through the cobwebs of moral decay and licentiousness with a fiery passion that belie his calm demure exterior. You can actually imagine him coming to blows with the perpetrators of evil and those enemy insiders who have given Islam a bad name and reputation.

Yet as we have noted, Jose is not your typical itinerant Muslim vagrant preacher, or what is known in Yoruba local parlance as an ajegbemokeferi or he who shouts down unbelievers and infidels. Being a trained political scientist, the author is deeply embedded in western intellectual tradition and its arcane metaphysics.

When this is combined with an impressive and formidable knowledge of Islamic theology, it makes for a truly moveable feast of Islamic sermonising. It is like suddenly happening upon a master of Socratic dialogue extending and expanding the logic of an Islamic mullah. It is this duality that gives this book its intimidating range and reach as well as its entrancing flavour and peculiar stamp of originality.

But it is not all fire and brimstone.  In a moving sermon to his son, titled,” Letter to my Son: Tie your Camel”, Jose reveals the soft and humane side of a loving and doting father. The author admonishes his son never to give up no matter the spiritual and physical adversities.  “The temptation to give up is a common one, and nobody is exempt. Failure isn’t something many of us can handle gracefully. And even though we know it’s a common human condition, we’re somehow always surprised when it happens to us.” (p187).

Echoing a Hadith in which the Holy Prophet admonishes a Bedouin tribesman who had left his camel unsecured to tie it first before placing his trust in Allah, this moving sermon emphasizes the need to do all that is humanly possible to guard against failure and then leave the rest to the almighty.

In another titled, TABARAK, the author emphasizes the glorious, overwhelming and overawing perfection of Allah in the face of humanity’s chronic and startling imperfections. This is the equivalent of a spiritual reality check.

No matter how hard puny humanity strives towards perfection, it will never be able to come close to the almighty in his purity and immaculate perfection. Yet in another titled, Breast Cancer: A Painful End to A Promising Life, the author pays a moving tribute to his beloved wife and soul partner who departed in traumatic circumstances.

This compendium is a prodigious labour of love and devotion of a man to his professed faith and religion. In pursuing numerous strands of thought, the book demonstrates how nothing can be more illuminating and enlightening than inter-faith dialogue. A deep knowledge of inter-religious tensions and dynamism as they shape world history can be very liberating for denizens of multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies indeed.

In a touching and brilliantly argued piece titled, Crusade, Islam and Compassion, the author marshals facts to show how Yusuf Ibn Ayyub aka Saluh-ad-Dun, the Islamic conqueror of Jerusalem, demonstrated much compassion and humanity by refusing to retaliate for the historic carnage the Christian crusaders visited on its Muslim populace a century earlier.

Intellectually self-assured and spiritually elevated, Jose’s questioning and immensely resourceful mind frames and interrogates virtually all the great issues in contemporary Islam. He does not shy away from controversies. Neither does he pull his punches when it comes to the origins of certain unhealthy attributes which have given rise to the spread of Islamaphobia , the particular mind-set that views everything Islam with suspicion and misgiving.

In a landmark Khutbah titled Jihad, Terrorism and Islam in Contemporary World which corroborates the reviewer’s own research, Jose traces the etymological evolution of the word, Jihad and how what began in Islam as a doctrine of self-striving and the struggle for personal perfection became weaponized and militarized as a result of perceived threats to Islam posed by the crusades and emergent sects within Islam itself.

Like the later notion of concentration camps which evokes horror and revulsion, the original concept of jihad itself has become a prime casualty of protracted religious wars and prolonged hostility between the world’s two principal religions. This is how words themselves become victims of wars. According to the author,” the concept, holy war, is a wholly western creation, coined by western historians”.

In many respects, this collection of Jumat reflections evokes the revered memory of Ibn Khaldun, the great fifteenth century Egyptian historian, Islamic philosopher and sociologist, who anticipated both Spengler and Karl Marx in his cyclical view of world history as well as his doctrine of Asabiya, the ascetic self-denial, group discipline and cohesion which allows desert tribes to gain ascendancy over the towns folks before they themselves collapse in the same orgy of hedonism and spellbinding corruption.

Having said all this, there are gaps, absences and signal silences in this collection which hint at the author’s own contradictions. For example, one would have expected him to dwell more on the ascendancy of the Sunni sect in Nigeria and how this plays out on the global scene in the light of the permanent confrontation between the two major sects of Islam and how certain West African countries, Nigeria included, are beginning to reap the whirlwind as a result of the collapse of the Maghreb corridor.

But even a collection of Khutbah must willy-nilly reflect the gaps and contradictions of the author. Having said that, this is a work of prodigious intellectualism and deep piety. What a great professor lost to the Nigerian university system, one is bound to conclude after reading this output. And with that I now come to the concluding reflection of this piece, and to do that I must return to the opening intellectual conceit.

In his famous comparison of the two Napoleons, Marx had hinted that compared to his illustrious uncle, Luis Napoleon was a glorified buffoon. But without expressly saying so, Marx was also hinting at the fact that this was how the great Napoleon himself would have appeared had he chosen to come at that material point in time, a glorious caricature of his former self. There is time for everything.

By the time he was fifty, the author’s father, the illustrious Ishmael Babatunde Jose, had already concluded his essential earthly labour having voluntarily retired as the chairman of the Times Group. Given the sharp deterioration of life in contemporary Nigeria and the collapse of hope and expectation, the older Jose, who rose through the ranks from a lowly proof reader, would have found it very difficult to carve a niche for himself in contemporary Nigeria.

But it is in the nature of human history that when one door closes, it opens the route to another door. Much better educated and exposed than his father, the younger Jose has deepened the family reputation in another direction with this engrossing contribution to Islamic literature. Alhaji Jose will be smiling in his grave. We can then safely and joyfully conclude that in different generations, exceptional individuals can rise from the same family to enhance the family heirloom in different directions. Ibrahim Babatunde Jose who turns seventy in a week’s time deserves all the accolades.

• Injury Time

• Okon survives an assassination attempt

By Tatalo Alamu

Once again an organic crisis of the state grips Nigeria. The post-military democratic order is in grave danger. The atmosphere is thick with foreboding. There is so much anger and ill-temper in the land. Insults are let loose like verbal missiles. While poverty of vision and loss of initiative permeate the entire political class, the president is behaving like an all-conquering emperor with impressive anti-democratic credentials.

This is not the way to go if we want to preserve and entrench democratic rule in this unhappy clime. After General Abacha’s despotic blitz which followed the annulment of the democratic wishes of Nigerians, the 1999 Settlement and the return to civil rule was the only thing that saved Nigeria from looming disintegration.  Nigeria cannot return to iron-fisted rule without the fragile elite consensus which underwrites the Fourth Republic collapsing.

His messianic zeal buoyed by adulation in certain quarters,  General Buhari treats civil and civic obligations with the kind of contempt and disdain he did not and could not contemplate even as the head of a military junta given the reality of countervailing power and possibilities of that era. The paradox is that despite its essentially despotic and anti-democratic nature, military rule among peers in multi-ethnic and multi-religious nations had its own inbuilt anti-dictator dynamism.

It was this constellation of contrary forces that eventually brought the general from Daura to grieve. In any badly polarized and bitterly divided nation, any sanitizing mission which is not underwritten by substantial elite buy in and endorsement is bound to falter at some point. This is at the heart of the contradiction that has hobbled Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade.

Unfortunately in the current conjuncture, General Buhari is not helped by evidence of organic dysfunction in the first family. The open bickering and nasty infighting emanating from the precincts of power in Aso Rock are a costly distraction and do not portray the president as sovereign over his own private affairs.

There is something to be said for the stoic discipline and forbearance which do not allow the murky effluents of domestic dissonance and marital meltdown to seep through the portals of public matters. But rather than indulge in insult and recriminations, we must put on our thinking caps once again to plot how the current crisis can be resolved in favour of the continuation of the democratic project rather than its swift termination in chaos and anarchy.

To do this is to face certain awkward and uncomfortable facts and home truths. General Buhari is not the first elected ruler in the Fourth Republic to exhibit despotic tendencies. But he is the one determined to drive this contradiction to its logical conclusion thereby exposing the fragile and ethically-challenged template of a military ordained democracy. It is in the nature of unnegotiated diarchies that they will be vulnerable to anti-democratic strongmen particularly of military provenance.

Yet whatever the current level of anger and disappointment with him, it would have been impossible for the president to gain his initial political ascendancy without the support of the majority of his compatriots and other critical sectors. That widespread support, except in the most classic instance of delusional daydreaming or wishful thinking, could not have been predicated on Buhari’s democratic credentials or capacity to deepen the democratic process.

Buhari’s critical supporters, among which were many famed patriots, held the fervent belief that by ending terrorism and insurgency and by battling corruption to a standstill, he could free much needed national resources in order to address the fundamental problem of poverty in such a way that this can be leveraged towards the democratic emancipation of average Nigerians.

But as hopes of a fundamental economic re-engineering of the nation recedes in the face of accelerating poverty and immiseration of the people, and as evidence of a reflexive intolerance of democratic institutions mounts with an increasing resort to self-help and serial constitutional infractions, a mood of despair and despondency has overtaken the nation. The pessimism is such that in some quarters, it has been concluded that neither democracy nor development is possible under the current structural configuration of the nation.

In such dire circumstances, rather than looking forward, this column this morning has decided to cast a retrospective look backward to the last major manifestation of an organic crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state and how it was impossible to resolve until there was a major reconstitution and reconfiguration of the Nigerian ruling class.

Written for The News magazine which remained proscribed at that point in time, it was an inquiry into the nature of organic crises and an appraisal of the chances of General Sani Abacha just as the dark-goggled one unleashed a campaign of terror on the nation the like of which had never been seen before then. Needless to add that what the article predicted was what eventually took place exactly four years after much bloodshed and national trauma.

Injury Time

The game so beloved by Nigeria’s ruling oligarchy has reached what is known in footballing parlance as injury time. As all soccer fanatics know, it is indeed a most critical moment, distinguished by anxiety and acute uncertainty.

Within the twinkling of an eye, anything can go wrong and , invariably, things do go wrong. Carefully laid plans go up in smoke. The players themselves, with tired limbs, declining vision and deteriorating coordination, look towards the referee for early deliverance.

Since events have conspired to make it impossible to settle for a draw, since a clear winner must emerge, it is this fleeting moment that determines whether the match will end in a penalty shoot-out or the phenomenon known as sudden death.

This is the moment that has stolen upon us. As the nation lurches and staggers from one crisis to another, as one incompetent measure is hurried abandoned for even more inept “solutions”, as the state loses its authority and becomes more authoritarian, it is clear that we are faced with what is known as an organic crisis.

An organic crisis, because it affects the organism, is a profound crisis usually requiring major surgery or mercy killing as the case may be. Nations are also like human beings, and when  an affliction becomes terminal, when suffering is unbearably acute, when human misery is so stark and remorseless, it is time to consider the virtues of euthanasia.

Let us enlist the authority of Professor T.R Bates to describe an organic crisis. According to him: “an organic crisis involves the totality of society as well as its superstructure. An organic crisis is manifested as a crisis of hegemony, in which the people cease to believe the words of the nation’s leaders, and begin to abandon the traditional parties. The precipitating factor in such a crisis is frequently the failure of the ruling class in some large undertaking such as war, for which it demanded the consent and sacrifice of the people”

The current crisis has shown just how unviable a state that undermines the possibility of the nation-state has become. To move forward, Nigeria as a nation requires a new state. Failing this, the Nigeria state in its current military-feudal incarnation will need a new nation, a nation constituted along its medieval and feudalistic ethos. Either way, it is clear that something will have to give: the nation or the state.

No one can be sure about the possibilities of the current crisis, for as Gramsci has noted, “no social class is ever willing to confess that it had been superseded”. Let us recall Bates again. “This is a very dangerous moment in civic life, for if the efforts of the mandarins fail, and if the progressives forces still fail to impose their own solution, the old ruling class may seek salvation in a divine leader. This “Caesar” may give the old order a “Breathing spell” by exterminating the opposing elite and terrorising its mass support”.

The writer might well have had Nigeria in mind. Yet as history continues to show, no matter how long, the forces of rationality always triumph over irrational forces. What can be more rational in late twentieth century than a government based on accountability and democratic principles? This is what the people of Nigeria demand from their feudal and military tormentors, and they cannot lose. The international climate is in their favour. The civilized world bade goodbye to absolutist tyrants a very long time ago.

It is a tragic irony, then, that at the precise moment that Nigeria requires a leadership that can perform prodigious feats of political imagination, it has been saddled with a leadership that has shown little or no imagination at all. With tact and great astuteness the Nigerian military and political oligarchy might still be able to salvage a little portion of its honour and a substantial part of its loot.

But as its enemies close in on all fronts, as an invincible array of aggrieved forces coalesce against the moribund oligarchy, the prospects of a safe passage diminish. The past six months are a compelling testimony to the spectacular moral and political ruination of Nigeria’s dominant ruling class. The government of General Sani Abacha is an absolute disaster. In retrospect, the general has done himself and his nation a disservice by taking over the reins of power.

His mode of governance is a classic study in political plagiarism: the same tired tricks, the same dubious talks, the same devious antics of his disgraced predecessor. A nation with a battered psyche, a battered polity and a battered economy surely deserves better. The government’s prospects have not been helped by most of the politicians co-opted to serve.

These overly ambitious enemies of civil society, confusing their own rank opportunism with realpolitik are carrying on as if a Political Transition Programme which is utterly devoid of democratic content is all that matters. As with the Babangida Transition  Programme, they will discover that there is nothing to hand over.

At the end of the day, they will discover that they have merely been conscripted into The Military Party of Nigeria and as such cannot expect their masters to hand over to junior partners. Those of them with undemocratic antecedents will not find it hard to rationalise, since they never believe in genuine democracy in the first instance. It is those with democratic pretensions who will find it impossible to return to base.

• Excerpts from Injury Time published in The News, 30 May, 1994.

Okon survives an assassination attempt

As Okon’s antics became more outlandish with each passing day, snooper devised a scheme for tempering the juvenile Calabar rogue’s waywardness. The mad boy has even added Governor General of Efik nation to his numerous titles. We decided to ask him to accompany snooper to the barber’s shop where we normally relax and enjoy a game of draughts with our childhood crony, Buhari a.k.a  Buhari Jogbojogbo. May be Okon can learn something from the ancient wit and wisdom of the Yoruba, and the humility with which they display their wisdom.

The day began with snooper trying to sharpen Okon’s rusty mind for the task ahead. He was also cautioned that Jogbojogbo was a dreaded chieftain of an outlawed confraternity and a Yoruba supremacist who believes that his people are the greatest thing that has happened to the world.

“Okon, what’s your take on this Kong-fu fight between Ribadu and Aondoakaa?”

“Oga, I like Ribadu well, well. Na me supply the carbide dem use come scatter dem Globacom man’s gate. I write dat one say make he give me dem journalist handset, dem come tell me say dem no sabi any journalist wey dey bear Okon.  Na im  I say if dem no sabi my pen dem go sabi my carbide”.

“Okon !!” I screamed in disbelief.

“Oga, leave me o jare. Wetin you say be the name of the man who dey fight Nuhu?”, Okon asked with a devilish smile.

“Aondoakaa”, I replied.

“God punish am. No be dem people wan kill me for Bauchi?” Okon growled.

“No, no Okon. He is not a Dandoka. He is a Tiv.” I corrected.

“Oga, if he be thief, why Nuhu no go fight am finis?”

“No, no no, he is Tivi, Tivi, wereeeee!” I screamed at the mad boy.

“Chei oga na wa for dis kontri. I no no say some people dem dey answer Television” Okon said and burst into a ringing laugh.

The fireworks started immediately as soon as we got to the barber’s shop with Jogbojogbo eyeing Okon with suppressed mirth as if he was a specimen from the zoo.

“Alamu, do you need this one to dress like Mungo Park to cook  egusi soup for you?” Jogbojogbo asked with wry bemusement.

“Buhari, leave the poor boy alone”. I said with a smile. Okon was not amused at all. After trouncing snooper in straight sets, Buhari became expansive and started taunting Okon again.

“Come oo, Ete, what’s that your funny name again?”, he asked Okon.

“Oga, I no be Etteh, I be Okon Anthony Okon”, Okon snapped.

“Hen, hen, so when did your people start bearing name?” Buhari crooned.

“Oga, when my people dey go school for Hope Waddell your people dey fight for Kiriji”, Okon submitted with a straight face.

“Ha, Eko yi ti baje. Iyen lenu ee, even Calabar cook dey talk back”, Buhari stammered in wounded self-regard. Sensing tragedy, I quickly rose to go, but Okon was not done.

“And make I tell you, na Calabar dem white people wan make capital, but dem come find say your people make better slaves”, Okon blasted.    On hearing this, Jogbojogbo flung out a huge amulet from his pocket. Okon scrambled away, screaming, “Yoruba people wan kill me again ooo”.

• First published in 2007.

 

 

 

IN native Yoruba parlance, the term kokobiowu refers to something as hard and strong as a mass or clump of pure steel. This is where the name Kobiowu derives from. As the gubernatorial victory romp in Kogi reverberates with the imitative echoes of staccato firing, snooper remembers much happier times in the confluence state when the electoral duel was resolved by mere scissors and nails.

Now, in a video that went viral about a fortnight ago, fetching damsels of Kogi State celebrate the Yahaya Bello victory by openly hinting at the fate that might have overtaken those who opposed the governor at the polls. Tatatatatata, dem go hear am, they chanted. Kokobiowu, the ultimate hard man and hit man, has finally arrived in Kogi state.

When he eventually dislodged Governor Abubakar Audu from the Lokoja gubernatorial mansion, it was given out that Idris enjoyed prosperity in another profession, which is carpentry. Snooper can reveal that all the Iroko trees around the mansion fled at the approach of the master-sawyer. The spirits inhabiting them claimed they could not bear ending up as part of a piece of furniture.

The much beloved and sadly departed Onukaba once wrote a piece titled, How the carpenter nailed the tailor. It was then revealed that the ousted Igala prince was a busy tailor in an earlier professional incarnation. Not since Godwin Daboh revealed that Wada Nas was a tailor has snooper been more amused. We had often wondered at the source of Audu’s majestic Agbada and grand embroideries. But before long, the late prince scissored his way back into contention.

Apart from the oldest profession in the world to which they all mandatorily belong, snooper can reveal the weird profession of some our lawmakers. We hear that a serving senator was a mai-suya in Kano, another was a shoe maker in Aba and yet a third one was a bricklayer in Agbadagbudu.

Snooper is proud of his own lawmaker who at least was a respectable local hunter plying his trade between Area 4 and Oke Alagutan in the virgin forest abandoned by the Owu people when they were sacked by the allied forces. So, if you see somebody with a rusting Dane gun prowling around the bush in Asokoro, don’t run, it may be your friendly law maker answering the call of duty. As for Yahaya Bello and his party hacks, those who procure nightfall before sunset will surely reap the rewards of premature darkness.

An older version was published in 2007.

 

WHILE we are still at it, it is just as well that it is in the public domain that the Hate Speech Bill, the latest official talisman for containing growing restiveness, has already met a gruesome fate at an international court of competent jurisdiction. But it is not over until it is truly over.

What remains to be seen, since the monster the bill is pretending to slay is still very much with us, is whether the federal authorities will comply with the ruling or whether they will continue to revel in growing international outlawry and delinquency.

For some time now, the entire nation has been gripped by the furore generated by the Hate Speech Bill. Implacable exponents as well as adamant defenders have lined up on both sides of the divide. Given the intensity of passion and the extreme, fundamentalist positions taken by proponents and opponents a violent collision of altars would seem inevitable.

Never in history has a nation been closer to war over mere verbal disputation. Even the Americans, sensing the need once again to operationalize what they call immigration control at source, have been known to make discreet inquiries from one of the principal combatants. With excitable folks from the tropics, you can never be sure when the real shooting will commence.

Yet it may all be a grand diversion from the real, urgent and monumental problems confronting the nation.  To be sure, in serious climes, what has come to be known as hate speech in Nigeria is swiftly criminalized. There are extant laws to deal with those whose utterances are deemed to threaten the racial, ethnic, religious and regional cohesion of the nation. Wise nations then move on to find lasting solutions to what led to the verbal infractions in the first instance.

But in Nigeria, the act of the speech has become the hate act itself and consequently therefore a subject of an omnibus, all-encompassing civic inquiry which puts the very notion of free speech as a fundamental right of all freeborn citizens of a modern nation in acute jeopardy. Professor J.L Austin, of the Speech Act Theory fame, will be laughing quietly in his grave.

This feudal inquisition, which attempts to scuttle current hostile interrogations of the nation,   is a major diversion from the real issues confronting the country. As we have seen, the acrimonious contentions only serve to accentuate the ethnic, religious and cultural polarizations of the nation.

To hide its malign incompetence, the post-colonial state in Africa and particularly in Nigeria has become very adept at throwing red herrings at the populace when the going gets very tough and as a strategic containment of untoward reality. Like hungry dogs going after lean scraps of meat, the whippersnappers of change and urgent reforms are encouraged to fight themselves unto death even as the possibility of change and reform recedes.

Hate speech as we have come to know it, is a very pressing challenge for the Nigerian post-military state indeed. But it is a reflection of something more fundamental. In its raw and crude essence, it is a violent verbal repudiation of the state and the nation as we know them.

But whatever its destabilising potential, it is still a long way from the real thing, which is an armed critique of both the state and the nation such as we are witnessing with the Boko Haram insurgency, some variants of the herdsmen insurrection and the climatologically induced confrontation that is brewing between sedentary farmers and roaming pastoralists in some parts of the nation.

Like its military forebear, the current Nigerian state relies on hard power rather than soft power. That means that its punitive and proactive power derives essentially from military might and coercion rather than the power of conciliation and persuasion and the legitimacy that flows from broad consensus and principled example. It is a civilian military state, a rousing post-colonial contradiction if ever there is any.

However that may be, the federal authorities cannot afford to be embroiled in armed confrontations in multiple sectors. For those who can see beyond the spoils of electoral wars, the increasingly violent and farcical elections which have turned Nigeria into a laughing stock in the comity of nations and growing restiveness on the streets is a sign that the contradiction between an autocratic civilian state and genuine democratic order is coming to maturity.

Unlike the Boko Haram phenomenon and other insurgencies which are agrarian in nature and currently rural-based, what lies behind what we choose to call hate speech is an increasingly radicalized urban rebellion against the state which relies on the dissemination of fake news, vile propaganda and counter-hegemonic firepower to destabilize and render the state hors de combat.

This government has been subjected to relentless intellectual bombardment which obscures even its minor achievements and cancels them out in a maelstrom of hostile interlocution. In many respects, the Buhari administration has been its own worst enemy. With its military survivalist instincts, it has barricaded itself in and cycled the wagon around the precincts of Aso Rock.

You cannot beat people and expect them not to cry. In a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation with countervailing and often mutually unintelligible sets of values, the reaction to pain and punishment must differ, depending on divergent cultures and political habitus. In such polarized nations, wise and judicious rulers do not seek to impose their cultural values and ethnic as well as religious prejudices on the rest of the nation. They seek consensus and principled conciliation.

Rather than looking for death sentence for those who criticize the government and subject it to merciless, withering criticism, what should concern and us is why some of our compatriots have turned themselves into enemy nationals and why almost sixty years after independence it has proved impossible for Nigeria to fashion out a set of core values which will drive the nation’s developmental and democratic aspirations.

Hate speech, when politically motivated, is cold war on its way to turning hot. In the desperate political theatre of Third World countries, the two can work hand in hand and in a seamless manner with hate speech inexorably leading to war while the unfinished business of war can also provoke hate speech.

Stripped of the verbiage and political blackmail, hate speech is nothing but a continuation by other means of the vicious and violent struggle for the control of the Nigerian state that has gone on for almost sixty years since independence. It is a bitter and blood-soaked contention which has resulted in a civil war, several military coups, civilian uprisings, religious insurgencies and several constitutional and unconstitutional attempts to redraw the colonial map of the nation.

It is a war in which the victors have no time to empathize with the vanquished and in which the vanquished are not in a hurry to forgive the victors or forget the past. The post-colonial state is viewed as a hostile alien construct to be conquered and violated at will rather than as a site for the aggregation of competing elite claims.

As the winners barricade themselves in to ward off hostile interlocutors, increasingly farcical and violent elections must follow as a means of legalizing and legitimizing the anti-democractic chicanery.  In the event, all the heinous electoral crimes the PDP was accused of in its baleful sixteen-year rule are now staring us in the face once again.  In the circumstances, Nigeria appears fated to Sisyphean futility and of being permanently stuck in a political groove.

Since force is the organising principle, only raw and unrefined violence matters. In its chequered lifetime, it is only once that democratic forces have been able to prise open the forcible closure of the Nigerian state. The rest has been marked by increasingly violent siege on the state and brutal reprisals until something gives.

Unfortunately, the core opposition groups, serially thwarted in their bid to capture state power, can only resort to railing and ranting, or at best they can take to vile and hateful propaganda in order to destabilize the nation and make it ungovernable. But since they lack statecraft, the capacity to build bridges and the ability to engineer transnational coalitions, state power will continue to elude them no matter the venom of the hate speech.

On the other hand, the dominant power groups that have shown that they have what it takes to capture power and retain it with ruthless efficiency have also demonstrated that they lack the modernizing impetus required to transform the nation politically and economically as well as a natural passion for political and social justice.

It is a classic Nigerian conundrum and it shows why hate speech, as a weapon of anti-state offensive, will persist no matter the draconian legislation we come up with and why the current political tension will subsist until we muster the courage to address the real problems facing the nation.

 

 

 

And Okon comes up frozen

 

BEING prone to delusions of grandeur in which he sees himself as the saviour and deliverer of his people, Okon sometimes entertains very dangerous thoughts. Whenever he succumbs to such scams from his own fertile imagination, he becomes quite unruly and uncontrollable at home. He nods curtly at his superior and drives the cleaning lady mad with his merciless superciliousness.

For some time now, the mad boy has been cleaning and de-freezing the fridge with a ruthless efficiency that borders on the obsessive. He would take out everything in the freezer, clean it up until the bottom metallic drawer is glistening and then replace everything with meticulous precision. Whenever I asked him whether anything was the matter, he would reply that it was the environmental sanitation people.

On the last occasion which was two days ago, snooper caught Okon in the early hours of the morning listening intently to the newspaper review. That morning we cottoned up to the last bit of a news item which announced that an ex-governor’s assets had been frozen again. Upon hearing this, Okon dashed into the kitchen and started fidgeting around.

Luck finally ran out for Okon the following morning. I was having a blissful pre-dawn nap when an approaching commotion roused me out of my reverie. A crowd was singing and dancing towards my house singing the kind of abusive songs normally reserved for juvenile thieves. As soon as I called Okon and I didn’t get a reply, I knew what had happened.

I ran outside only to have my worst fears were confirmed. Lo, it was Okon, naked, bound and strapped being led to the house in a ritual of humiliation. The leader of the vigilante group was a fearsome youth with a no-nonsense mien.

“Okon, what happened?” I asked the stricken rogue.

“You dey ask what happened? Is that the question? We catch this Ete rogue for fishing depot. He come dey scream like hyena because cold come catch am, yeye man”, the leader said with a vicious grin.

“I no kuku steal dem yeye fish, I no dey eat dead fish”, Okon mumbled.

“Shut up omo ole Ifo, if you no dey eat fish wetin you dey do for dem freezer?” the leader screamed as Okon shivered with fright.

“So Okon what happened?” I asked again as I began to lose my patience.

“Dem say dem freeze am, I go look inside dem fridge, he no dey, dem say dem defreeze am, I go defreeze dem freezer, he no dey again”.

“What is this?” I snapped.

“Ibori’s money”. Okon answered.

“Oh my God!!”

“So, when dem say dem done freeze am again, I say dis one must be ogbonge and okampi freezer put together. Na im I come go depot”.

“Let’s go, dis one na crazy man”, the leader said rocking with laughter.

 

 

First published in 2007