The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • History as Allegory

    History as Allegory

    There are times when a writer must shift dialectical gears by focusing on developments in a totally different society in other to grasp and appreciate what is going on in his own society.  An allegory could be a compressed story—or in this case an event— which illuminates and deepens our understanding of another story or event. In its constant disputation with humanity, there are times when history wears as an allegorical garb as it beams its light on totally unrelated events.

    When it was written twelve years ago after violent racial riots broke out in Paris, the essay that follows this short introduction could not have foreseen or anticipated that what was unfolding was a mere precursor to murderous mayhem which would years later shake modern France to its very  foundation and prepare the ground for the emergence of Monsieur Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

    It was not the Germans that eventually set Paris ablaze. It was internal contradictions, particularly an ill-digested unitarism parading as egalitarianism. But crisis often brings out the best in organic nations. With the great French Left ossifying into historic irrelevance, with the centre imploding and with rightwing extremism on the rampage, the best of France came together to elect their youngest president ever.

    At the level of banal textual explication, it is always a sobering and humbling affair to peruse what you have written ages ago. You marvel at the prophetic acuity of what you got right and the appalling presumptuousness of what you didn’t. Above all, you are compelled to marvel at the fate of historically deaf societies.

    Is Paris Burning?

    Adolf Hitler once came upon what he thought was the final solution to the French question: Conquer France and burn down Paris. The spat between the redoubtable Germans and their equally formidable foes across the Rhine was as historic as it was memorable.

    In the run up to the treaty of Versailles which was to lead directly to the emergence of Hitler and the disaster that was the Second World War, the American negotiators were baffled by the intense hostility of the French to the Germans. One of them, appalled and alarmed by the unreasonable and impossible demands for reparations the French were piling on their fallen tormentors, walked up to the French prime-minister, Georges  Clemenceau, a.k.a the tiger. “But sir have you ever been to Germany?” he was asked.

    “Never! But twice in my lifetime, Germans have been to Paris”, came the terse reply. Clemenceau was of course referring to the national humiliation of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war and the beginning of the First World War when German tanks and armory rolled relentlessly to the gates of Paris.

    Had the old man loitered around long enough, he would have witnessed an even more humiliating fiasco in the Second World War when Hitler’s panzer divisions rounded the Maginot line and tore their way into Paris with time, men and material to spare. The French military High Command was left wondering what hit them.

    The cocktail of mutual contempt and condescension had reached its ultimate potency. For the Germans, beautiful Paris in all its gothic grandeur and baroque splendour was the ultimate symbol of the cultural arrogance and merciless superciliousness of the French. Let it be obliterated from human memory.  And let the proud frog-eaters eat the humble pie for thinking that the Germans were barbarians from Bavarian peat bog. You cannot claim to be arbiters of taste and culture without commensurate firepower. As far as historic grudges go this was probably the ultimate.

    Hitler eventually conquered France and Paris, but the plot to incinerate Paris soon got lost in a maze of strategic priorities. In any case, since the deranged Austrian corporal thought he was going to be there forever, there was no point in hurrying. Paris was thus spared by sheer providence. But the plot to torch it spawned a conspiracy industry and a whole series of counter-factual treatises. The most magnificent and chilling of these is the book titled: Is Paris Burning?

    In early November, the great city finally obliged. But this time, it was not a new Hitler or the Germans settling historical scores. It was a self-inflicted catastrophe. The enemy was within. For almost fortnight a, most of France and Paris in particular was lapped by tongues of fiery flames.

    It was no longer a question of whether Paris was ablaze but whether it would burn to ground. The inferno fanned inwards, from the huge ghettoes that ringed the city, ——the periphérique as they are called—  and hell-holes of a marginalized and deprived underclass made up mainly of immigrant communities from Africa and denizens from the new French racial underground. As they made bonfires of national vanities, the lie of racial integration that Republican France had lived exploded in her face. It was not a pretty picture.

    But France was not alone in facing this moment of truth. All is restive on the western front. Everywhere, western civilization, as we know it, is in crisis. Historians will probably pinpoint the outgoing year as the precise point of departure when new realities finally vanquished old myths.

    From the United States and most of Western Europe, the images of 2005 are not very reassuring. If Hurricane Katrina exposed the soft underbelly of racial inequities and the hollow myth of the American dream, particularly with regards to those who were forcibly incorporated into the project, the metropolitan mayhem in England in July showcased an acute post-colonial crisis for the colonizing metropolis: how to handle the claims of  former colonial subjects and their descendants in the post-empire society.

    The claims are pressing, and they have led to scenes of utmost horror in even the most refined and civilized of western societies. In 2004, Holland nearly tipped over into the pit of racial conflagration when Theo Van Goth, the irreverent and iconoclastic film-maker, became a victim of a horrific racially and religiously motivated ritual murder. He was repeatedly stabbed and then shot. A knife was then firmly planted in his chest with a note.

    Pleasant and diffident Amsterdam woke up to find that its multiracial innocence and cultural tolerance was under siege. In Germany where the immigrant Turkish minority are contemptuously referred to as “gastarbeiter” and are not considered worthy of citizenship even after thirty years of residence, a tense face-off may yet explode in violence. In Belgium with its sizeable immigrant community from central Africa, a copycat version of the Paris firefight blossomed briefly before it was stamped out.

    Like some monster arboreal species, the tree of western domination is beginning to bear interesting fruits; some pleasant to the palate and some utterly repelling.  Who would have thought that children of immigrant parents soundly educated and brought up within the British value system would one day take up arms against the same society?

    Who would have thought that those whose parents were grateful to be plucked from the clutches of poverty and pandemic in the Third World would one day rise in fiery indignation and in total defiance of the hosting state and the timidity of their placid ancestors?

    But for the post-Katrina calamity and its horrid images, who would have thought that there still exist in the United States ghettoes and slums that would make the hell-holes and urban zoos of sub-Saharan Africa look like paradise on earth?

    As the great French philosopher would observe, the times are truly out of joints. Yet it is the French model of racial integration that must be of utmost interest to the modern world as it finally unravels at the seams. This is because it is the most ambitious, the most noble, the most visionary, the most republican and perhaps the most radical attempt to create human society anew from the ashes of feudalism.

    Despite their revolutionary rhetoric, the founders of America were not starry-eyed idealists. They never believed that humankind was created in equality. Some of them were avid slave-holders.

    The abolition of formal slavery notwithstanding, human and civil rights had to be fought for every inch of the way, thanks to the heroes of the civil rights movements and ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances like the recently deceased Rosa Parks. Britain took the easy way out: a great fudge and a typically British compromise. Let it be a multi-racial and multi-cultural society once the core values of the nation are respected.

    But in their hubristic high-mindedness the founding fathers of modern France had no such inhibition. The great war-cry of the French revolution was liberty, egalitarianism and fraternity. Every inhabitant of French soil must become French. No French citizen must be discriminated against on the basis of racial origin or mode of worship.

    In most official forms in France, there is no reference to racial origin or mode of worship. The state is the father of all, the imagined patriarch of an imagined national community, the great umbrella offering shelter to all in a Gaullist meltdown. It is of course an impassioned humbug, a monarchical unitarism gone haywire.

    But it worked for its time. And so a Leopold Senghor from Senegal and a Houphouet-Boigny  from Ivory Coast found themselves as honorary Frenchmen delivering impassioned speeches at the French assembly as elected deputies. And Jean Bokassa, the deranged despot from Ubangi-Shari, found himself weeping more than the bereaved at the burial of Charles de Gaulle.

    What then happened, and why is Paris burning? The great French model is a classic example of how a revolutionary ideal can atrophy and ossify into a deadening dogma. The law may be the law, but human beings will always be human beings. The great French revolutionaries never reckoned with France becoming a huge unwieldy empire in its own right, a gargantuan machine of colonial terror and oppression.

    As the empire expanded and the logic of human domination unfolded, great waves of immigrants from the colonized domains also began to seek shelter and solace in the colonizing dominion. The homogenizing mill, filled to capacity, began to feel the strain of ungainly grist and the laboratory began to belch smoke.

    Unlike their fathers who were eternally grateful to be granted a toe-hold in a saner clime, it is the immigrant children and grandchildren who began to see through the smokescreen of post-colonial abracadabra. Some of them who were lucky to escape the slums have performed at the highest level of sporting endeavours for their new country. Many have died in wars for the fatherland. Yet something did not add up.

    You send a set of speculative applications for employment to officialdom, one with an aristocratic sounding French surname, the other with a Muslim name or some lip-cruncher from Equatorial Africa and it is the one with the perfect French patronymic that gets interview appointments while the colonial abomination ends up in the dustbin. Try this for housing, and you get the same result. The law may be clear, but you cannot blame the poor official. In a situation of great scarcity, people tend to take care of their own first.

    This, then, is the great social contradiction that has brought  France’s immigrant youths to arson and mayhem. The conclusion remains inescapable that despite the French Revolution and the radical rhetoric, France remains very much a stratified and hierarchical society. Yet as the economy shrank due to dwindling largesse of from the former empire, an uncompetitive workforce and the consequent loss of entrepreneurial initiative, it should be obvious that you can only redistribute wealth you have created in the first instance. And you can only provide employment when you have created job opportunities.

    France is faced with tough decisions compounded by the burdens of political memory. It can go the way of untrammeled capitalism: roll back the great Gaullist state, give free reign to human greed and enterprise and welcome the savage competitiveness which is the secret of the American economic miracle. The result may be new found prosperity but also the disappearance of a whole way of life, particularly the sedate ambience and cultured lassitude that have defined France for generations, in short the Americanization of France which its elite hate with a passion.

    On the other hand, France may hand over the state to monsieur Le Pen and the rabid right. In which case, the rampaging immigrant youths would be told that France was meant for the real French and they can either take it or lump it. The ensuing repressive ferocity would then turn the land of liberty, fraternity and egalité into an anarchic slave-holding camp.

    It may then be time for a new French revolution.  Toussaint L’Overture , the great revolutionary of African descent, who had urged the triumphant French revolutionists not to substitute a race-based aristocracy for the class-based aristocracy they had dismantled would be turning in his grave in righteous fulfillment.

    France should not be ashamed. In the drive to nudge humanity to a higher telos, republican rhetoric has always outpaced harsh reality. Ask the timeless China of Confucius. Ask the ancient Roman Empire with its slave-holding economy. Ask the old Athenian democracy.  It is then left to human will to bridge the gap between ideal and actuality.

    But if societies that have thrown up such political visionaries and outstandingly humane thinkers come up for short in the ideal human communion, one must shudder at the fate of people who have denied themselves the capacity to produce either.

    • First published in 2005.

     

  • The “Honest Man” joins his ancestors

    The “Honest Man” joins his ancestors

    Snooper mourns the passing of the great Yoruba poet, playwright and philosopher, Professor Akinwunmi Isola a.k.a Honest Man.  A proud admirer of this column, Isola was a man of spectacular personal integrity, lightly held and playfully protected. His life was like one of his plays: a classical enactment of the adventures of an old gentleman-griot in the ancient Yoruba tradition; a seamless combination of story-teller, sage and statesman of orality.

    In the consuming sadness of these times, it is more difficult to write about the dead than to comment on the living. It was obvious that all was not well when snooper placed a call to the distinguished dramatist one afternoon a few months back only to be confronted by a weary drawl instead of the customary urbane cheerfulness, It was to be our last exchange.

    This column owes it as a debt of obligation to write about the life and times of three outstanding Nigerian literary heroes who recently departed: Ben Obumselu, Francis Abiola Irele who once drank yours sincerely under the table at a bar in downtown New Orleans in 1991 and now Akinwunmi Isola. This debt of obligation will be discharged in due course. May the soul of the amiable thespian rest in perfect peace.

     

     

  • A Day in Yenagoa

    A Day in Yenagoa

    IT was pre-dawn, and the impossible metropolis of Lagos was already astir with commerce and commotion. Sex workers and miracle hawkers were returning home. Your sharp nostrils could pick the scent of expired passion and expectant humanity fired by the opium of faith and optimism. Lagos is the Mecca of hope and great expectations. To fail in Lagos is to be felled by adversity. The great outlying suburbia was already emptying its denizens on the commercial and business districts of Ikeja, the administrative capital of Nigeria’s meta-city.
    There was something unnerving about the great mass of humanity shuffling to work or worklessness as the case may be. The gainfully unemployed mix with those who are employed without much to gain. Akin Ambode is faring extremely well, but this great conundrum of unplanned and unregulated urbanization requires huge resources and great ingenuity to tackle and deserves to be put in some global context.
    A friend who has since become one of the nation’s premier business moguls told the columnist that visiting Beijing for the first time forty years ago, he could sense the great economic ferment unleashed on the nation when he opened the shutter in his room at dawn only to be confronted by an endless mass of humanity slogging their way to work on foot with the ferocious discipline of a column of ant workers. China has since overtaken the US in economic might.
    Lest we forget, one was headed for Yenagoa, the capital city of Bayelsa, for the very first time, and what a historic visit it turned out to be. The former fishing hamlet and premier domain of the Ijaw people, Nigeria’s fourth biggest nationality, does not register or resonate as one of Nigeria’s iconic cities. With its remoteness, its sheer inaccessibility, its fetid and festering mangrove swamps, the ungainly one-street capital is not a preferred tourist destination. But it is morning yet on creation day, as they say.
    This early dawn, you could already pick the fragrant odour of akara ball as it surged and hissed from huge frying pans. Even this early and despite the dark mist, the newspaper stalls were already hosting the first plenary of the people’s parliament, or tribunal of the tribunes. This raw feral forum comments on everything under the sun and does not take hostages. Occasionally, when passions outpace logic, proceedings end up in a free for all fistic fire-fight.
    But this morning, it is Bayelsa for breakfast. One’s only connection with the state is a tenuous and transient one indeed. A decade and three years earlier in 2005 after its incumbent governor, DSP Alamiesegha, was arrested and detained in Europe on the suspicion of money laundering, yours sincerely wrote from exile a piece for an international magazine predicting that by the time the article was published, the former Squadron Leader would have slipped his mooring and arrived in Yenagoa to a heroic and tumultuous welcome.
    It was as eerily prophetic as it could get. DSP struck on the dot of the hour to wild jubilation and applause in Yenagoa. He was led to the State House in a carnival-like procession by his people. Looking back, this was the zenith of glory for Alams. Thereafter, it was a swift descent into official disgrace and eventual death.
    He was replaced by his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, who thereafter commenced a steep and starry ascent that carried him to the portals of the Nigerian presidency. But time remains the ultimate healer. Judging from the mood in Yenagoa this morning, Alams remains a celebrated icon of his people.
    This morning, one had arrived at the Hangar at the domestic airport with some trepidation. Your companion, a former military supremo, had tried to drive the fear of flying deep into the marrow by hinting that the preferred shuttle mode is “a Bristol helicopter flying fixed wings”. Having been flown in all kinds of air-borne contraptions during the civil war, he could no longer be fazed by any aircraft as long as it takes to the sky.
    Mercifully, it turned out that it was a regular plane on a scheduled early morning flight to Port Harcourt. But the old fear of flying returned as you took your turn to board only to catch a glimpse of a female pilot checking the instruments. Why must it be today of all days that a female pilot would be in control? This might well be the preferred exit route, you thought as you crashed on the seat. Aeronautical assassination was probably on the menu.
    After a smooth take off, concern for safety evaporated as the plane eased itself through the cloudy sky and turned sharply towards the Atlantic Ocean. A practised aviator was in control. We were informed by the cockpit that excepting unforeseen circumstances, the journey was to last no more than forty five minutes. It was time for a power nap.
    In what seemed like an eternity later, you found yourself being driven in a two-car convoy towards Elele, Ahoada, the famous East-West intersection which connects Bayelsa State to Greater Nigeria, and then towards Yenagoa. Although technically in Rivers State, we were informed that that portion of the road had to be constructed by Bayelsans. If they want to be linked with civilization, let them get on with it. Unitary federalism is not a tea party.
    As we trawled through the sprawling metropolis formerly known as the Garden City, nostalgia began to get in the way of excitement. This was the city of mamba and mesmerizing music. The strong early morning winds brought back the odour of the great Igbo forest and vegetation just to the north. Aba, the great commercial hub, was a mere forty miles away. Owerri, the former municipal village, was sixty miles away through an old route that passed through a place called Mgbirichi.
    As a Youth corper, one was a restless denizen of these magical Mesopotamia of post-colonial Nigeria. Like a phoenix, they rose from the ashes of a destructive civil war. But forty two years have elapsed since you last set eyes on these places. You feel like a returning apparition. Forty two years is a long span in the life of an individual. To get a proper perspective, in forty two years, General Yakubu would have been born, he would have joined the army, would have ruled Nigeria for nine years and would have been ousted by his colleagues and still with two years to spare.
    By now, we were approaching Yenagoa, still very much a one-street capital but with a flurry of constructions going on at a furious, frenetic pace. Yenagoa is a city in a harried and harassed hurry. The sandy, inhospitable terrain is the ultimate nightmare of the cavalier civil engineer ; not amenable to instant edifices or casual road construction. In the absence of visionary political engineering and an overarching vision of the multi-ethnic nation, perhaps something can be said for proliferating state creation.
    Your companion had all along maintained a calm meditative pose. You decided to rouse him with a historic bait. Forty two years earlier, Murtala Mohammed had created six additional states with a famous broadcast in which he said no jubilation or protest would be tolerated. It was the high noon of military messianism. A week later, this same week forty two years earlier, Mohammed was killed in a failed putsch. Where was our man that fateful morning?
    “I was at a pre-briefing in Alabi’s (Isama) office before a proper Supreme Military Council meeting when we started hearing what sounded like martial music. Dimka was his subordinate officer known for his drinking feats. Alabi could not contain his scorn and anger. I barged into a nearby office looking for a proper radio. All the officers in the room including Wyas stood up to attention. We later on discovered that half of them were implicated in the coup.” My companion calmly intoned.
    It was a very dangerous thing to do. The old Nigerian military was a scary proposition. But this is a story for another day. By now, the convoy had been swept into the iconic Bayelsa State House. It was a reception fit for notables . The atmosphere was electrifying. To receive us at the entrance was the governor of Bayelsa State, his wife and entire kitchen cabinet. A tall impressively built man with an oak-like presence, Henry Seriake Dickson was as warm, polite, courteous and effusive as they come.
    From the wild cheers that punctuated his remarks, the quality crowd that fawned on him and the militant-looking denizens that formed an informal guard of honour all the way to the DSP Alamiesegha Hall where the lecture was taking place, it was clear that Ijaw nationalism of a strategic and intellectual hue had relocated to Bayelsa State. Something is astir in this remote and forgotten corner of Nigeria which may put paid to internal colonialism.
    Ijaw nationalism seems to be picking some painful lessons in power projects from the Jonathan tragedy. As a minimum condition for constructing hegemony in a multi-ethnic and bitterly polarized nation, a group, more so a group originating from minorities, must seek to build bridges and keep old friendships in a state of constant repairs.
    The Jonathan project was hobbled by juvenile triumphalism, alienating arrogance and a bizarre bravura made all the more bizarre because it was public knowledge that Jonathan owed his ascendancy to an opportunistic brainwave on the part of a deluded leader rather than the balance of political forces on ground. Like a disappointed lover, the same prefect has vowed that the Ijaw people will not taste power in a long time.
    Perhaps that would afford them the opportunity to rebuild a natural paradise devastated by man’s inhumanity to man. Henry Seriake Dickson is already showing himself as an exemplar in that direction. As he reeled off facts and figures over hurried breakfast last Monday morning, you got the impression of a man on top of his brief. Having long dismissed him from a distance, one was pleasantly surprised to discover that he trained as a lawyer and had a stint in the police force.
    Far more intriguing last Monday was what can only be described as a play of political signifiers across rigid binary divisions. You were supposed to be in enemy territory judging by antecedents, a state run by the accursed PDP.
    But if the progressive views of inclusive governance and the inevitability of the radical restructuring of the nation coming from the man in Yenagoa are anything to go by, one can sense a looming restructuring and realignment of political forces which will convulse the nation to its foundation and lead to a smashing of old hegemonic blocs and the emergence of new political groups.
    It has been quite a day in Yenagoa.

  • Okon is overthrown by snakes

    These are serpentine times in the nation. Slithering creeps abound everywhere. They climb all skyscrapers and burrow in all man-made crevices. They lurk in the most private chambers and luxuriate in the most public of places. It was not long ago when it was reported that the slimy reptiles had invaded the presidential office, forcing the occupant to adjourn presidential proceedings till further notice. Not since Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King where a huge snake was sighted making torrid love to an old woman had such dark and morbid imaginings seized control of a society.

    As absurdities mount upon absurdities in this country, as darker comedies supplant dark comedies, you begin to wonder how it will all end. How will future writers describe this period?  How will future satirists portray a society where snakes steal money from humans? From the Garden of Eden to the Gathering of Pythons?

    As soon as it was reported that executive snakes had swallowed proceeds from scratch cards bought by JAMB candidates, there had been a dramatic rise in incidents of snake bites all over the country.  Adverts suddenly went up in newspapers requesting for the services of snake charmers. In a remarkable case of reality beating fiction at its own game, a serving senator was reported to have invaded JAMB office with a retinue of crack snake charmers ready to charm human snakes and snaky humans. The borderline between fictional reality and realistic fiction has evaporated in Nigeria.

    As it is to be expected, Okon has been in the thick of action, gathering dangerous snakes from every nook and cranny of the nation and keeping them in a humongous iron cage inside the abandoned garage which he called a “safe house”. Every morning, the mad boy would begin by berating and lambasting all the snakes asking the culprit among them to confess, failing which they all would face mass execution. He had even brought in a man called Baba Tonkere who is reputed to be the most fearsome snake charmer in the whole country to facilitate confession and possible plea-bargaining among the snakes.

    “I been dey do JAMB for twenty years now, I never sabi say after snake don swallow my money na fake result dem dey give Okon. I don cram dem Soyinka man from head to toe, but each time dem fat crooks dey tell man say I know make cut off mark, so na today today I go cut off your yeye head”, Okon screamed at the terrified snakes.

    On Friday, the whole compound erupted in massive commotion. Yours sincerely woke up to phenomenal hisses and distressed whistling coming from Okon’s safe house. A revolt of snakes, or more properly a coup among serpents, appeared to be underway. The snakes, led by a vicious viper, were trying to break loose from the safe house. Snooper opened the shutter from his bedroom and there was Okon trying to whip the viper back into the cage with an iron staff as Baba Lekki hobbled about in senile ecstasy.

    “Okon, Okon, where is Baba Tonkere?” snooper shouted at the mad boy.

    “Ha oga, dat one be like dem case of baba don catch fire and you dey ask for him beard. Dem mad cobra come bite him blokos and he come run comot Lagos quick, quick shouting Ledumare, ledumare!” the mad boy retorted with a sadistic grin.

    “Snake come kaput and snake charmer don kaput. No case submission. Na dat one dem Yoruba people dey call amodemaja, when you capture hunter and him dog together”, Baba Lekki sneered and burst into a sadistic laugh.

    “Oga, no mind baba oo, him head no correct again. Him dey cry since dem court finish dem for the Oba wahala for Ibadan. Him wan become local oba”, Okon sniggered.

    “God forbid that one. I am Lambert Alekuso, the Elegiri of Agbadagbudu, Bada of Mokore, Ikolaba of….”  It was at this point that a strange overconfidence led Okon to a fatal error of judgement. The vicious viper broke through the iron cage and all hell was let loose with Okon and the deranged old man taking to their heels as wild snakes overran the compound.

     

  • An Unwarranted Reinstatement

    An Unwarranted Reinstatement

    There are times in the life of a country when the extraordinarily opaque meets the extraordinarily obtuse. The decision of the federal authorities to reinstate Dr Usman Yusuf, the Executive Secretary of the NHIS, is a classic instance of this. Coming at a time when recent ethnic tension in the country appears to simmer down and when the inter-elite misgivings arising from the herdsmen imbroglio is subsiding, it appears that there are some ethnic supremacists somewhere bent on seeing just how far they can push the luck of the nation simply to try their own luck.

    There was nothing urgent or compelling about this reinstatement to warrant the disruption of the healing process of a much traumatized nation. No one is questioning the government’s right to hire or fire; or its prerogative to discipline or reward its staff accordingly. But coming at a period when there is a nation-wide suspicion of the government’s alleged lopsided appointments, its nepotistic violations of federal principles and its tendency to view federal patronage as a function of feudal patrimony, the timing could not have been worse for the image of this government.

    Despite official denials of sectional bias and the anguished rebuttals by President Buhari that his administration is ethnically skewed in favour of a particular region or section of the country, the conclusion is inescapable that there still exists in this administration and particularly in the presidency, a cabal bent on forcing its medieval absolutism on the rest of the country no matter the apocalyptic consequences.

    Once again, the Buhari administration has shot itself in the foot through its tendency to commit unforced errors. This is not the way to build institutions or lay a strong foundation for modern governance. This persistent assault on federal principles and regional sensitivities can no longer be viewed as a manifestation of individual eccentricities or personal peccadilloes. It speaks to a concept of governance that is as medieval as it is misbegotten. It can only thrive when and where the ruled are seen as emancipated serfs in joyous servitude.

    No matter how dissembling or dissimulating, there is no way a government can hide its ideological inclination or political worldview for long. What appears to be playing out in this government is a fundamental clash between the ethos of bureaucratic modernity and the dictates of a worldview rooted in patrimony and prebendalist proclivities. Whereas bureaucratic modernity must dispense justice with abstract and impersonal rigour no matter whose ox is gored, medieval patrimony changes the rules at will particularly where feudal princes and principalities are concerned.

    This primordial partisanship is incompatible with the founding ethos of a modern nation-state which is rooted in the first principle of modernity: a modern nation can live with its kings because the kings are modernized enough to know that they no longer own the nation. It is also trite to observe that an emperor cannot survive his empire. A feudal potentate in a nation-state is an impossible anomaly, but that is only if citizens see themselves as citizens rather than as feudal peons.

    This is why we must gird our loins against medieval tyranny as it seeks to federalize itself over the nation. Rather than shoring up the residual vestiges of a superannuated feudal order as a guiding political philosophy, heirs of aborted modernity in other sections of the country must join other forces to push the nation in the direction of genuine modernity.

    The modern state is powered by a discrete interspersing of power among various sectors with the ruling apparatus as coordinating organ. Even then, the ruling apparatus must respect the various loci of power and areas of jurisdiction. A situation in which the presidency, exercising the authority of the president, goes over the head of a superintending ministry to reinstate a subordinate under probe and after proven allegations of misdeeds, does not bode well for state discipline. It is an invitation to anarchy and civilian despotism.

    It is noteworthy that since the purported reinstatement of the NHIS boss, demonstrations have broken out in the ministry while various organs of civil society have risen as one to condemn the reinstatement. Given the obduracy and self-righteousness of the government, it may be asking for too much to ask it to reverse its own directive.

    But it must be pointed out that an anomalous situation which does not conduce to discipline and bureaucratic order now subsists in the ministry in which a subordinate seems to have the full measure of his supervising minister. It is either the minister is reassigned or immediately removed. This ought to have been an excellent opportunity for a cabinet reshuffle. But it appears that in this matter as well, the president’s indecision is final.

    In the alternative and as it is the normal practice in civilized climes, the minister should not wait to jump until he is pushed. Since this is an implicit vote of no confidence in him, the minister should do the needful to protect and preserve his own honour and integrity. The lack of a culture of honourable resignation is also part of the problems militating against the ethos of bureaucratic modernity in Nigeria.

    This morning, we republish an article first published six years ago during the Jonathan regime on the honourable art of resignation. Except for some minor editing we leave the main body untouched. Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

     

     

     

  • The Honourable Art of Resignation

    It is beyond speculation that the Nigerian state faces a crisis of grave magnitude. But the absence of a critical interrogation of officialdom in relations to the fundamental principles of modern governance leads to an even more terrifying moral and political void.  In the circumstance, some fundamental principles on which modern governance is anchored which always seem to elude us must now be brought back to the front burner.

    One of these is the honourable and noble art of resignation. Resignation, like preferment itself, is an integral part of the arcane rituals of domination which preserve the integrity of governance. Without integrity, there is no hegemony. This is because domination cannot be based on force and coercion for long.

    It is with sadness and weary resignation that we note that the noble and honourable art of resignation is a stranger to these climes. Africans simply don’t resign. They are forced out. Even when they are recalled from the Diaspora, resignation is not part of their social framing. The culture of resignation always seems so strange and un-African simply because it is a product of politics with principle and public service powered by visionary self-sacrifice and the suppression of ego.

    Yet in moments like this even as the state appears a hopelessly lost case, a few resignations might help. In civilised climes, whenever a government suffers a major public policy reversal or retreat, a few resignations are inevitable. Resignations are the secret elixir for a failing government. Like a magic balm, they help to soothe frayed nerves and reassure the public that the sacred covenant between them and the rulers is intact. More importantly, resignations help to restart the stalled clock of governance. A national project is, after all, not a one-crisis wonder.

    Accompanying this festival of fear and trembling and in fact prompting its dark arithmetic, is a tectonic shift in public awareness and citizen participation in governance. Since it was caught napping by this paradigm shift, it is obvious that this government needs help from concerned and patriotic Nigerians about how to get going again.

    Enlightened self-interest dictates so. This is not about any transformation agenda. That is gross self-delusion. But there are fates worse than imaginary transformation. Having shot itself in the foot by a badly misjudged public policy and with its major economic plank consumed by public adversity, this government must be helped back to its feet in the national interest.

    At no other point in our history have ethnicity and the ethnicisation of the presidency become more obvious and damaging to the national spirit. To be sure, this is a phenomenon that predates Jonathan. Every presidency that Nigeria has produced, from Shagari to Jonathan through Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, has resorted to playing the ethnic card when the going gets rough. But with Jonathan, this tribal caterwauling has reached its crescendo and ultimate nation-disabling possibility. This is not a sensible game for a minority group just coming into its own. Jonathan must rein in the antics of his excitable rabble-rousers.   .

    In looking out for help, the government must first help itself. Humility dictates that the Jonathan administration must now go back to the drawing board. But it must shed some ethical baggage. For some of his advisors to go about pokerfaced as if nothing has happened is infuriating and damaging to the logic of public order and responsibility. Even in Stone Age societies, arrogant incompetence and lack of elementary wisdom could not be rewarded with cosy preferment. The wages of public obloquy is swift resignation.

    All those officials who staked their prestige, authority and dubious acclaim on a misbegotten public policy that has badly backfired at such a huge cost to the national fabric must now resign and give way for Jonathan to inject fresh blood into his team. However skewed and rigged against the poor and the wretched of the earth, even neo-liberal economics is predicated on a certain western rationality.

    That rationality has its obligations. Margaret Thatcher, the hand-bagging matriarch of monetarist economics who once famously pronounced that there was no such thing as society, was forced to resign when it became obvious that she had become a disruptive and bitterly divisive figure in British society. It is only in the heart of darkness that public officials want to eat their cake and have it.

    Honour is a major platform for the national project, and a major plank for a truly nationalist ruling class. Without honour, there can be no national project or a nationalist class for that matter. The Nigerian nation is predicated on a series of overlapping and interlocking paradoxes. The paradox of the Nigerian post-colonial polity is that honour has become an essential commodity.

    An essential commodity is a necessary commodity. But in the cruel semantic irony introduced by military rule, an essential commodity is a rare commodity that is not readily available.  Yet without honour anchored on core values and a fanatical adherence to their dictates, there can be no coherent or cohesive national project or a Nationalist elite worth its salt.

    It is only in rare and extreme cases that you find people resigning from public office on their own volition or out of respect for personal and public integrity. Resignation is simply out of it even where the official has become a hazard to public health. The problem is that public offices are often viewed through the prism of ethnic quota or tribal census. You are not in office to represent or project certain ideals but to promote and project certain primordial loyalties. Nobody ever willingly spits out a juicy morsel.

    In the ethical void, certified thieves are often given a hero’s welcome when they return to their ancestral homesteads. As the Americans famously said of Mobutu, he may be a bastard, but he is their bastard. As long as primordial loyalties override national interests and core values, there will be no nation or a national elite class that is worth its salt. In that case, the very idea of Nigeria as a nation will be a mere notion or notification of intent for a very long time.  This is not some grim prophesy but a statement of fact. Without a pan-national ruling class to drive its core values, the nation is a nullity ab initio.

    Painfully, it must now be added that our major religions and some of their principalities have not been of any help to the nation in driving its core values and building a nationalist ethos. When religious notables romance with political notables who have swindled their way to power, and who have brought their nation to economic ruins, doubts prey on the minds of ordinary folks about the efficacy of honour and principles.

    In the north, a feudal protection racket based on organised religion has allowed the scions of the oligarchy to get away with blue murder. But it is now obvious that this protectionist racket has overreached itself as political sharia has mutated into the real thing, threatening the base and very basis of the theocratic order imposed by Usman Dan Fodio.

    As it is at the moment, only the hard-pressed Nigerian military is standing between the north and a blood-soaked enactment of Afghanistan on African soil. The twelfth imam will not come from the Sultanate but from the old empire of Idris Alooma.

    In the south, particularly in the roiling urban centres, the phenomenon of Pentecostal predation in the guise of prosperity preaching and other forms of spiritual racketeering have led to massive alienation and a dazed withdrawal from the state as a source of succour and solace. This has led to all kinds of anti-social activities ranging from violent robbery, kidnapping, extortion and the rise of mafia-like criminal cartels. Since this is based on the spiritual magic of wealth without hard work, the negative radicalism of it all keeps everybody very busy and both the rich and the poor permanently awake.

    The question must now be asked as to whether our extant religions can drive a nationalist ethos without being adapted and subordinated to local conditions. But it is also obvious that because of its transcendental message, religion goes beyond nation space and time. In fact Islam is implacably contemptuous of the nation-state paradigm. Yet it was not until certain European nations overthrew the colonial suzerainty of the Catholic Church that they came into their own as the true embodiments of the will of new states.

    If a political elite cannot overcome political and economic difficulties, it is hard to see how they can overcome spiritual contradictions and religious roguery. In fact as it is evident in contemporary Nigeria, religious roguery is an ideological apparatus of the state often deployed in hegemonic battles for the consciousness of the populace. Once the state is absolved of the responsibility for the prosperity of the populace, penury becomes a marker of personal worthlessness and divine disgrace.

    In the light of this multi-dimensional elite failure spread across spiritual, economic and political realms, there are those who believe that a national elite that cannot manage national integration will also mismanage national disintegration. The Nigerian political class is so corrupt and incompetent that it is simply incapable of the cultured and civilized procedure that led to the dissolution of the old Czechoslovakia.

    It takes empire builders to build an empire even where it has lapsed into disgrace, just as it takes genuine nationalists to build a nation even in ruins. Those who cannot build anything cannot maintain anything. This is why we must return to first principles. One of these is the culture of resignation. Let us return to the honourable art of resignation.

     

    • First published in 2012

     

     

  • Hegemonic Parties and their Discontents

    Hegemonic Parties and their Discontents

    The Fourth Republic came into being in a profound crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state. Otherwise known as the Obasanjo Settlement of 1998, it was designed to placate a major section of the country which felt aggrieved about the way Abiola’s electoral victory was handled. But it was also designed to reassure another section that its interest will not be jeopardised as a result of its role in the national tragedy.

    Described by one of his most brilliant sector commanders during the civil war as a man with a unique sense of history, Obasanjo’s choice and particularly the purpose could hardly be faulted: he was a safe pair of hands who could not be pressurised into taking wrong decisions or panicked into premature hostilities. Above all, he was regarded as a political orphan among his people and was not expected to unduly favour them with contentious preferment or undue patronage.

    The Fourth Republic was thus conjured into existence through a deliberate and delicate balancing of elite sensitivities and geo-political affinities. Twice, during the civil war and the NADECO insurrection, Nigeria had almost disappeared in a maelstrom of ethnic hostilities. As it was to be expected, the Nigerian kingmakers were more concerned about elite cooperation and national stability rather than justice or equality. Hence the foisting on the polity of a big, all-inclusive party to act as national umbrella just as it was the case in the earlier republics.

    It will be recalled that upon the demise of General Sani Abacha, his successor, General Abdulsalaam Abubakar, actually wanted to continue with the discredited transition programme before he was swiftly countermanded by those who had put him there. An unambitious and apolitical officer who quickly wanted to hand over to civilian and head home, it was obvious that Abubakar was unaware of the damage done to the Nigerian political fabric by General Abacha’s draconian crackdown.

    Now eighteen years down the line and despite the remarkable elite pacting, it should be obvious that the Fourth Republic is beginning to fray at the edges and frazzle at the folds as new realities and unforeseen circumstances settle in which require urgent reconceptualization and a possible re-invention of the nation. Elite spoil-sharing can never address the hierarchy of needs of the average individual, nor can it foresee potent flashpoints in unitarist contentions.

    The greatest threat of military rule to the democratic evolution of society is the rupture of civil institutions and their normal pattern of growth. Of the three arms of government, the legislature is usually the worst hit. While the two other arms manage to function even under the most despotic military rule, the legislature is completely truncated. You cannot legislate from your bedroom.

    Consequently each time civil rule resumes, the old rules and procedures have to be relearnt and mastered all over again. The situation is not helped by a sudden shift of templates such as happened when Nigeria adopted the American presidential system over the British parliamentary model that was in place before independence and civil war. In a swift genetic modification, the parliamentary primus inter pares was expected to mutate into an omnipotent presidential Caesar.

    Yet despite their political grandstanding, not a single one of Nigeria’s past military leaders was so politically radicalised as to sacrifice his professional career for deep social engineering and political reconfiguration such as happened with the Nassers, the Mengitsus, the Ghaddafis, the Sankaras and ,nearer home, the Rawlings.

    None of them had the courage, the confidence and the deep conviction to exchange their military boots for civilian shoes. Even while relentlessly upstaging the civilian class and psychologically undermining them, they considered themselves first and foremost as professional soldiers on civil posting.

    But while holding the country by the political jugular, their professional hustling and foray into military politics was to lead to a fracture of military cohesion on more than one occasion. It was a situation of double jeopardy for the nation. The militarization of the polity has eventuated in the politicization of the military institution itself.

    A polity and its political parties are not made forever.  In a multi-ethnic society still shedding the garb of prolonged and prohibitive military rule, hegemonic party formations are said to be in crisis when none of the dominant political parties in contention can gain nation-wide traction in terms of its mastery of urgent national issues or the ability to secure an emotional identification of the people with its programme through sustained surrender to its authority or universal endorsement of its legitimacy.

    When viewed from this perspective, there can be no doubt that Nigeria is in the grip of a major crisis of hegemonic party formation. This in itself may be a symptom of a more fundamental crisis of political leadership or even a manifestation of an endemic crisis of nationhood and the post-colonial state itself.

    Whatever it is, the pan-Nigerian electoral momentum which carried General Mohammadu Buhari to the gates of the presidency has all but evaporated. Indeed, were elections to be held at this moment, it is possible that the Daura-born retired general may still prevail but with the wild enthusiasm that marked his first coming now restricted to his far north ethnic stronghold.

    The smell of elephantine decay is in the air and last week as distressed elephants began roaming the Nigerian political forests in number, there was widespread feeling that another endgame was approaching. One did not have to wait for long. The world shook and trembled as the main elephant or major mammoth delivered himself of a bombshell which tore through the land. General Olusegun Obasanjo has struck again. The Fourth Republic will never be the same again.

    As a national political gadfly, General Obasanjo is used to a level of public opprobrium and scathing indignation. This is not the first time he is attracting considerable odium and revulsion from sections of the populace as a result of his opinion. His book on Major Nzeogwu was burnt in public places in the north and mildly ticked off even by a loyal subordinate like the late Shehu YarÁdua.

    But since last week, something is beginning to happen to the Owu born war-lord which may presage a momentous change of tide in Nigeria’s post-military politics. In most controversies that he has been embroiled, there has always been a fine equilibrium between Obasanjo’s die-hard adversaries and his avid enthusiasts.

    This time around, the balance of forces has evened up in such a way that makes Obasanjo appear very vulnerable and subject to complete demystification. The bombardment has been relentless. The way many have pounced on Obasanjo suggested a bi-partisan initiative that is well-rehearsed and well-oiled.

    By midweek, what would have been Obasanjo’s talisman against invectives and political adversity, the launch of the new Coalition for Change, arrived with a thundering whimper. It was a damp squib from Ota. As far as launching a new political initiative goes, this was a catastrophic miscue. To seal its fate as a visionary and progressive initiative as well as Obasanjo’s career as a political messiah, the great soldier went and conscripted a blue-eyed boy of military autocracy to front for him as the putative commander in chief. The party and parade were dead on arrival.

    The Coalition for Change may yet be galvanized into a mass movement as events unfold and the unforced errors of the ruling party become more and more pronounced with each passing day. But for now, it appears the main aim of its sponsors is to de-market and delegitimize the dominant parties in a way that could lead to a major state convulsion.

    While the APC’s flip flop and opportunistic floundering on the issue of restructuring do not portray it as a party with a sense of mission and destiny, the PDP remains a burnt-out case of moral leprosy without any possibility of redemption in the nearest future. Unfortunately, events of last Friday also compel the conclusion that Obasanjo’s considerable talents do not include mass mobilization.

    This is where Obasanjo’s bombshell begins to assume a negative importance for reasons other than what he has to tell us. No matter the merciless excoriation, one thing no one can take away from Obasanjo is his uncanny ability to connect with the political pulse and temperature of the nation particularly in moments of grave political adversity. How he deploys this uncanny ability, whether for opportunistic self-monumentalization or for genuine state empowerment and nation-building is entirely a different matter.

    What Obasanjo has handed down to us is a glimpse of a society in deep political trauma; a nation slouching its way towards Apocalypse itself. No matter the merciless excoriation, no one can take away Obasanjo’s political clairvoyance. The political prophet is often a combination of shrewd judgement and merciless deduction from circumstantial evidence and privileged information.

    As the first military and civilian ruler of the nation, Obasanjo has access to confidential briefings from national and international “spook” circuits. Those who are asking us to ignore Obasanjo as a vexatious nuisance and concentrate on the forthcoming elections should ask themselves whether elections are possible or even realistic in the face of continuing mishandling of the National Question. Elections, as this column has repeated ad nauseam, do not solve fundamental issues of nationhood such as the current conundrum between farming and animal husbandry.

    Since you cannot give what you don’t have, Obasanjo’s prescription for the national malaise has shown him at his politically weakest and intellectually most vulnerable. It is like prescribing Aspirin for deep brains injury. At the lunch of Coalition for Change in Nigeria, there was no deep reflection on the National Question, no fundamental interrogation of the crisis of nationhood that hobbles Nigeria, no message of hope based on a rigorous intellectual dissection of the astonishing wealth and biodiversity of the nation. The occasion was entirely taken up by theatrics and empty grandstanding.

    It is a measure of the grave enormity of the crisis that around the time this political tomfoolery was going on, the Ghanaian president was delivering a brilliant and moving tribute in the home of the South African musical legend the recently departed Hugh Masakela. Up till this moment, there has been no comparable tribute from Nigeria. In a country that measures progress by rice pyramids and yam tubers, matters of culture must take a back seat.

    It is just as well that by the end of the week, Obasanjo had backed away for now from the formation of a new party describing the putative coalition as a movement rather than a political party.  But judging by the performance of the two hegemonic parties and their miserable failure to address the fundamental structural deficiencies of the nation in a forthright manner, it will take exemplary political skills and statesmanship to head off a crisis of the state arising from a meltdown of existing party formations.

  • Lord Lugard was here….

    After open air jollifications at the intriguing Waka club on the Catholic Mission street last Sunday, snooper paid an unscheduled midnight visit to the famed Lagos Lawn Tennis Club to commiserate with a friend whose son recently lost his mother in law. The feel-good atmosphere was as hilarious as it was infectious. There was a dancing retired admiral, polite and amiable to the hilt in the true officer and gentleman tradition, and plenty of chicken suya.

    All hell broke loose as we were departing and snooper’s gaze fastened on the plaque of former presidents.

    “Hmmm, I didn’t know that Lord Lugard was your founding president”, snooper observed in innocence. Our host, sensing an insurgent trap, exploded.

    “Is that the kind of foolish question you should be asking after taking our beer and suya?”, he snapped. Snooper kept his peace but the host was far from satisfied. Charging snooper to the car, he railed in Lagosian lingo. “So ti e ri awon omo ale ara oke yi. (See these upcountry louts!)”

    Baron Fredrick John Dealtry Lugard must have been laughing in his grave.

     

  • Baba Lekki solves three national riddles

    As the controversy over Papa Doc’s latest e-pistol ( oooops, or is it epistle?) rages on in the land with no sign of abating, it is meet to report on certain ominous developments which may presage some imminent trouble for the leta-bomber. Wading through tons and heaps of newsprint devoted to the satanic verse last weekend, snooper stumbled on an interview granted by a young Fulani aristocrat who vowed that insha allah, it was going to be baba’s last letter.

    Worried by the terminal finality with which the threat was issued and knowing the fiery northern power brokers not to do things in half measures, it was a distraught Okon who went in search of the vagabond and footloose political diviner from Ibadan. The crazy boy caught up with the old contrarian at Igbo Efon borne aloft by hoodlums and hysterics singing lustily as they tossed a mock casket in the air.

    A ti gbe baba rele, a ti gbe baba rele

    A tigbe eee, atigbe ee baba rele  

    As a frantic Okon attempted to drag the old man away from his outlaw admirers, Baba Lekki stalled and put his foot down. “Okon, I have little time for your lumpen-bourgeois chicanery. You can only ask me three questions”, the old crook screamed as he dragged Okon to a quiet turf away from the rowdy din.  Knowing when not to press his luck with the old man, Okon meekly complied.

    “Baba, wetin be dem problem with dis Coalition for dem Change business, abi coalition na collision?” the crazy boy demanded.

    “Coalition for change mean say old coalition don change. It means that baba don get a brand new band”, the old man sneered.

    “Baba dem kukuruku people don write dem UN  say dem done leave obodo Nigeria like dem Kanu boys. No be say market don dey close be dat?” Okon moaned in distress.

    “A Republic of rogues will father rogue republics”, the old man thundered.

    “Baba, this dem APC people dem done come with dem restructure wuruwuru again. Dem no get shame?” Okon rued half-aloud.

    “Ha, Okon leave those ones. After they have finished restructuring their restructuring, there will be nothing to restructure again”, the old man snorted with cruel relish as he jumped up.

  • His letter bomb arrives, once again

    His letter bomb arrives, once again

    May you live in interesting times. It may well be that the deep and inscrutable Chinese had Nigeria in mind when they issued the above period advisory.  We surely live in interesting times in Nigeria. As soon as the latest cameo of General Olusegun Obasanjo vigorously cantering and capering to Highlife music with his beloved spouse went viral, yours sincerely told whoever cared to listen that the former president was about to unleash another parcel bomb.

    Before then, an eerie silence had enveloped the Abeokuta hilltop mansion of the former president. Dancing while the nation is in dire distress is not the usual pastime of a man who believes that God is yet to create another Nigerian like himself. It is usually a strategic prelude or diversionary camouflage for an impending ambush. The old war-lord did not disappoint.

    He struck at the appointed hour in a landmark bombshell which shook every corner of the land. It was a blistering invective dripping with venom and vitriol and at the end of it all, the former commander in chief virtually ordered his former subordinate officer to find his way back to his cows at the end of his tenure or to attempt to hang on at his own peril.

    After that, and as he is wont to do, the retired general retreated behind an impenetrable wall of silence, willed deafness and political cunning. Those who are lampooning and lambasting the former head of state do not seem to understand what motivates Obasanjo or makes him tick either. The old man has the skin of a rhinoceros. Snooper has been studying the retired general for over forty years.

    In all his testy crusades against reigning governments—most of which he helped to install— only once did the general chose to return to the site of his verbal carnage and that was when the old Daily Times chose to publish a garbled version of Obasanjo’s searing critique of the government of Shehu Shagari as the endgame approached in 1983. The Owu-born general promptly shot back with a vitriolic rebuke of the compromised paper, just in case its NPN confederates missed the message.

    Obasanjo’s latest intervention is perhaps the most intriguing and daring of all.  It is shot through with desperation and political brinkmanship. Unlike the Second Republic when he could rely on the military, particularly the dominant rump of the post-Gowon coalition, as Deus ex machina, or as with the Jonathan administration when he relied on a potent country-wide opposition and revulsion with Goodluck, this time around, the old general seems to have run out of a hegemonic enabler. Uncharacteristically, Obasanjo is rooting for a national coalition which remains as inchoate as it is incoherent barely a year to fresh elections.

    The danger may well be that while our attention is deliberately riveted on the wrong script, the real game may be proceeding apace. As the servant in The General in His Labyrinth famously observes: “ Only my master knows what my master is thinking about”. The general is a master of political subterfuge and self-fulfilling prophecies.

    Consequently, somebody somewhere may be loading the dice secretly in favour of an extra-constitutional interim government after enough chaos, facilitated by General Buhari’s obvious leadership deficits, has crippled the nation or an outright military intervention to stave off violent disintegration arising from senseless bloodshed.

    Yet, it is noteworthy that in all his past sorties against evil governance, only once did General Obasanjo ascribe the problem facing the country to clannishness and nepotism. This was in a famous Faculty Lecture at the University of Ibadan in June 1985 which also doubled as a coded red card for the Buhari military regime.

    Before then two civil war heroes, Generals Benjamin Adekunle and Alani Akinrinade, in open disdain for what was perceived as General Buhari’s obdurate sectionalism, had begun canvassing for confederalism as the antidote to the prevalent climate of ethnic chauvinism. With the military plot to oust Buhari well in place, Obasanjo warned those who believe that Nigeria belonged to their ancestors to have a rethink.

    Thirty three years after, history seems to be repeating itself, and both times as epic tragedies: in the same man and even as a returning head of state, patent patriotism is trumped by the perversely primordial.  But General Obasanjo steaming pap should be taken with caution and circumspection. Political insanity is doing the same thing all over again and expecting a different result. For the past thirty five years, each time Obasanjo has risen up in arms against a sitting government, it has always been to canvas the same solution: a change of costumes and actors.

    Yet It is curious that it has not occurred to the general that the reason for his Sisyphean odyssey, this constant rolling up of a boulder against the hill of incompetence and ineptitude in the Nigerian political firmament may have to do with a fundamental misconfiguration of the nation which prevents the right leaders, the right leadership recruitment process, the right parties and the right psychological conditioning of the political elite from emerging.

    But there may be some method to this madness. One might actually conclude that there is a point in pointlessness. No matter the state of the venture, the venturer or adventurer must not suffer losses. While the nation seems to have arrived at the scrap yard of failed states due to wrong prescription, Obasanjo and his selectorate caucus have actually increased their power, their prestige and their plutocratic wealth. The poorer the country has become, the richer its ruling quango has turned out.

    If this is not a crisis of structure, of a hegemonic party formation in terminal crisis, we wonder what it is. It is only at this level that one can join profitable issues with the retired general for the purpose of illuminating the path and passage of a tortured and tormented nation.  This is what this column intends to do next week and if not shortly thereafter. To serve as an appetizer, we bring you this morning, this column’s observations on General Obasanjo’s famous excoriation of the Jonathan administration and the possible fall-out as we saw it even then.