The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Okon services a non-performing  loan

    Okon services a non-performing  loan

    You can trust  Okon Anthony Okon to be in the thick of the social and political fray in times like this. A week after escaping Natasha’s dragnet, he was his old chirpy self again, bragging that the whole drama was part of an elaborate scam. As soon as another banking scandal broke and another society lady declared wanted for money laundering, the mad boy has been running commentary and offering gratuitous advice to prospective detainees and their presumptive detainers. At times, he would boast that he was an EFCC consultant on debt recovery with services ranging from sleep deprivation to raising a colony of wild and remorseless mosquitoes to facilitate disorientation and eventual disintegration in prison cell. Among his achievements, he claimed to have serenaded one ancient detainee out of hiding by singing Cecilia, an old Simon and Garfukel  classic, to her.

       One morning,  Okon barged into my bedroom, panting and heaving like a demented horse. “Oga we don obtain dem list of dem AMCON debtors, na dem Yoruba people boku dem place, from A to Ziii. Yoruba people na obonge thieves”, the mad boy screamed.

    “How do you know?” snooper asked rather indignantly.

    “I don look dem Gbajue list Elisabetically and dem,,,”

    “Okon, what is that?” snooper asked in alarm.

    “You know when dem count from dem “a” till dem tire?” 

    “ Oh you mean alphabetically”, snooper moaned in exaggerated displeasure.

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    “ Oga, if you like make you you call am Albertically. But na Yoruba people go finish dis obodo. May be na the lagoon water dem dey drink”.

    You would have thought that a man huffing and puffing like this was himself above board. One morning, Okon ran into my room claiming that he was being pursued by EFCC debt collectors. Okon had taken a non-performing loan from a local bank.

    “Oga, he be like if say fire don catch fireman ooo”, the crazy one moaned.

        “What did you use the money for?” snooper asked in alarm.

        “I use am to service Saro woman for Amukoko, but….”, the boy said with a sheepish grin.

        “Then you must discharge your obligation immediately”, snooper screamed.

     “Oga discharge ke?  I never even begin to gallop sef before dem mad Saro woman go blow him whistle say time don go and money don burn. So na non-performing woman who come take non-performing loan. Finish. Make them EFCC go look for dat Yorubaman for First Bank who come vamoose and leave Okon alone ooo”, the mad boy crowed.

       At this point, the dustbin woman started screaming.  “Oga gudumorin ooo. He be like if say Saro woman and dem EFCC dey look for Calabar boy oo. Dem say him take Leone. Saro woman come dey speak dem old Oluku language”.

         Upon hearing this, Okon jumped out through the window and fell into the sewage tank.

  • Beyond the debacle

    Beyond the debacle

    After theatre comes thunder. Now that the political somnambulists in Rivers State have wandered their way into a sucker punch, all is quiet on Lord Harcourt’s Beach. But the politically naïve and foolishly optimistic always find some straw to cling to in the hope of finding some restitution in the face of unremitting tragedy. It all adds to the suspense. And since Nigeria is a country of one political drama per diem, it helps to sustain the adrenalin surge in the audience as drama becomes the national diet which keeps the nation permanently on edge.

    Before the national assembly endorsed the suspension of constitutional order on Thursday, the rumour was rife that somebody way up in the Aso Rock hierarchy was about to get his political comeuppance in the hands of irate lawmakers who were fed up with all the political shenanigans going on. It turned out a damp squib. But rather than wild jubilations, the circumstances call for sober national introspection.  We need to probe why after twenty six years of post-military rule, genuine democratic rule continues to elude the nation and why the democratic process is often imperiled by complex, countervailing and overdetermined forces which often compel us to live dangerously. To do this, we need to return to the Rivers State imbroglio and its squabbling political elite.

       On further reflection, it might have been a political death wish, but how any of the major protagonists could not see this coming is an affront to rectitude and political common sense. We warned. We cautioned. We admonished them. This was a duel programmed for mutual self-demolition. But they were too far gone. It seems to be in the DNA of the post-military breed to gamble with everything until there is nothing left to game and gamble except gambling with gambling itself. Then what is left is for the gamblers to be taken home, and that is if there are takers. Politics in a distressed polity mirrors the preoccupation with serial coup-plotting in a distressed military formation. In the game of thrones, even the victor presumptive is hostage to political misfortune.

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    Two weeks ago, this column issued the final travel advisory on Rivers State. It bears repeating today:

    “Once again, we warn that an extraordinary state of emergency looms in Rivers State. It is going to be extraordinary because it will involve a complete militarization of the state with the possibility of fatally undermining the prospects of the principal product the nation depends upon at this moment. This column is not interested in the outcome of the ego tussle in Rivers State between lapsed godson and former godfather but the extent to which the battle will impact on the democratic prospects of the nation and its continued viability. It is unfortunate that the political common sense that Nyesom Wike demonstrated by making sure an Ijaw person succeeded him and forcing this through has now completely disappeared in a miasma of mutual hatred and contempt”. Travelling Theatre and Travelling  Thunder, The Nation on Sunday, March 9, 2025.

      Last Tuesday, thunder struck at the ancient theatre of Riverine political deities, sweeping away all extant democratic organs with full militarization of the enabling structures of governance. Once again, the political cohabitation between godfather and former godson has ended in tears and tragedy. In any fledgling democratic system, a state of emergency in any part of the federation represents a profound political setback. It truncates the learning process and further de-acculturates the political class from the democratic norms which they have never fully imbibed as it cuts them off from the principal source of their livelihood and state patronage. In an unruly environment in which politics is weaponized to confront real and imaginary feelings of age-long victimhood, many of the demobilized and disbanded party henchmen and honchos will resume petty crimes or heavy infractions where the state is most vulnerable. This is likely to compound the security situation in the coming months, a situation which will in turn invite scary state reprisals.

       It is unfortunate that it has come to this once again Rivers State and the fabled state’s political juggernauts have returned to their homestead from the forest bearing ant-infested firewood. Yoruba drummers always warn their masquerades against climbing aladin-clogged trees. (Aladin is a tough, no-nonsense ant mutant with a ferocious bite which can send the victim into a delirium of pains leading to swift disembarkation or precipitous fall. In olden days, this oblique warning was usually sounded by the drummers whenever Alapansanpa, the Ibadan master masquerade justly celebrated for its power and the potency of its whiplash, approached the area known as Isale-Ijebu which was brimming with no-nonsense and non-obliging sub-ethnic irredentists who always had their firearms well-oiled for confrontation. They could not be blackmailed or bamboozled by the cultural dictates of the host community.

      Ogundeji sogigun

      Magun’gi aladin

      Sogigun

    Caution and discretion always prevailed in this explosive encounter between man and masquerade among the Ibadan natives. Their principal historic luck is ethnic homogeneity. Unfortunately and as a result of ethnic mix and age-long anxieties about ethnic domination, violence and armed confrontations have been the recurrent decimals of politics in River States since the coming of the politics and strategy of alignment with dominant nationalities. Subtle persuading and sophisticated bargaining have no place in the political lexicon. The political entrepreneurs holding the people to ransom will not let go. Thrice in twenty six years, the state has witnessed a breakdown of law and order as a result of the revolt of political subalterns against their masters with dire consequences: Amaechi versus Odili; Amaechi versus Wike and Wike versus Fubara.  Rotimi Amaechi was said to have been a mere office boy in Peter Odili’s clinic, but he went on to send his former boss into political coma from which he is lately rousing.  Nyesom Wike, the former local government chairman, became the agent of the political defenestration of his boss, benefactor and enabler. And now, Wike himself is fighting for his political life in the hands of his anointed son, political collaborator and acknowledged guru of financial hocus-pocus.

        In the absence of consensus, conciliation and compromise among the political elite of the state,      

    what  plays out in Rivers State and to a less extent in many other parts of the nation is the unmediated subalternization of politics, a play of giants in which strongmen of means, material and munitions prevail and the whole nation feels like a vast military garrison superintended by a hostile colonial force. That is until stronger men emerge. A direct corollary of this is the robotization of political hierarchies in which human actors are compelled to act like unfeeling and unthinking cyborgs in the face of overwhelming economic tariffs until the subaltern finds his voice. The dire effects of this twin-incubus on the post-military polity are better imagined in terms of party cohesion, internal discipline, energetic but legitimate dissent, lawful associations and the credibility and legitimacy of the parties themselves as authentic agents of national development and genuine democracy. It is curious and very interesting that some of the bitterest and most unsparing denunciations of the State of Emergency in Rivers State are coming from disaffected party insiders, former ministers, special advisers etc who are still nominal party members until they formally renounce their party membership. It says a lot about the state of the parties and the kind of democracy we shall leave for posterity at the end of it all.

      Why this is so is the debate we should be having while we still have the time rather than  rancorous sparring sessions about the legality or otherwise of the presidential abridgement of the increasingly rowdy proceedings in Rivers State which has for now put a lid on the executive, legislative and judicial rascality in the roiling rivulets. It is a reflection of the grave polarizations in the polity that matters of great security implications are treated with levity and viewed from the partisan lens and the cold suspicion that there must be something in it for the powers that be no matter where it is all leading the nation. Even where the body-politic is hemorrhaging on all fronts, it is seen as a smart career move from the man they have learnt to fear and hate in equal measure. This is straight from the Machiavellian play-station: it is better and more secure to be feared than to be beloved.

     But since no single individual however politically talented and exceptional can have complete mastery over the competing and contradictory power dynamics of his society, it follows that bad can flow from good and good can flow from bad. There is also the law of unintended consequences to contend with. Whatever the impure motives ascribed by his implacable political adversaries to the declaration of a State of Emergency in Rivers State, what is obvious is that the president has thrown the warring factions, particularly its two leading political gladiators, a lifeline.

       By sparing Siminalaya Fubara the impeachment axe that could have decapitated his political career despite his obtuse calling for insurrection, the obdurate political neophyte has been given an opportunity to reassemble his scrambled wits and put his political house in order. Nyesom Wike has also been given the chance to reorder his political priorities and master his choleric tantrums. If after six months in political purgatory, nothing has changed, then something will give. The respite should also afford President Tinubu an opportunity to begin to give serious considerations to the kind of political legacy he hopes to bequeath this fractious and dangerously polarized nation. Let no one deceive him that all is well.

  • Empress Natasha visits Obong Okon

    Empress Natasha visits Obong Okon

    As the Natasha affair degenerates into ethnic sabre-rattling among some cultural groups and their affiliated unions, the dreaded Ebira Cooperative Assembly has issued a proclamation from their deep forest reserves around Ogaminaza demanding for the manhood of all Efik/Ibiobio free born citizens for sacrifice to appease their native deities for the grave injuries done to their daughter in the senate and the resulting loss of repute and means of livelihood. Failure to comply will result in the forfeiture and confiscation of such manhood and their owners as may be deemed appropriate.

      Not surprisingly and since dry bones were being freely mentioned in the presence of an old woman, Okon was the first to jump into the fray.

     “Oga, he be like if say na dis Godswill  boy go finish all dem Efik and Kukuruku men. Dem Efik elders say make him sumbit him discharge papers but him no gree”, the mad boy noted with a wink.

      “And what is discharge paper?”

    “Ha oga no be dem thin dem go take go Rainbow Laboratory for Calabar to see if na true, true? Rainbow no dey waste time”, Okon sang with relish.

    “Get lost, idiot!” yours sincerely screamed at the urchin.

     But knowing the capacity and reputation of the dreaded group for the enforcement of their writ, all hell has been let loose at the National Assembly. Some serving and undeserving senators were sighted on the hallowed precincts of the senate fearfully clutching at their midsections and emitting a groan of acute discomfort. Okon joined the fray again and was having none of that nonsense.

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      “No mind dem yeye people. Na dem emergency loot dem dey hide. Dem no dey use dem head and dem cap again like dem Kano wuruwuru man. Na dem blokos and dem dross dem dey use for now. But dem don forget say Oyinboman sabi dem foolish Afrika man, well well.” Okon exploded as he fidgeted frantically probably thinking that his temerity had taken him too far. It did not take him long to find out. A few days after, the mad Saro dustbin woman charged into the living room, heaving and panting.

    “ Ha oga katakata come burst for Freetown. He get one better Oyinbo woman for outside who say him come see Okon ooo. Him name be Natasha. I don see her dey cry for inside television before before. Na touch and don’t go. Okon don carry firewood ants inside your bedroom. Dem don soak him garri finish ooo”, she charged breathlessly. Upon hearing this, Okon back-heeled and scaled through the perimeter fence, screaming “Ah, market don mature oooo at last!”

      “Ha Okon, wont you say hello to your visitor?” yours sincerely called out.

      “Oga, I no want dem woman trouble ooo. She don dey cause trouble for Efik people since him dey Secondary school for Abak. Him get one boy like dat…”

       “Okon, enough of that rubbish. What do we tell the lady?” snooper demanded, brimming with mischief and mirth.

       “Oga tell am say man don perish for Otedola Bridge”,

  • On the trail of misguided modernisation

    On the trail of misguided modernisation

    Misguided modernization is modernization gone awry, which can be as terrible as not modernizing. To modernize is to change and improve certain categories of human practice and activities in a way that brings them at par with best developments available elsewhere. This is not the same thing as merely aping developments from the west which is properly speaking westernization. But there is a scientific universality and unifying essence to human development irrespective of place and geography which render that distinction nugatory at best. This is because the west has been at the vanguard and frontiers of human development in the last six hundred years or so. Think of the Industrial Revolution, the Copernican Revolution, the internationalization of slavery and the hegemonic ascendancy of modern capitalism and Liberal Democracy and you begin to understand why modernization often appears to be synonymous with westernization.

       Yet because of the horrors of colonization and its epochal consequences, the easiest thing to do is to slander a country that is down and out on its luck. That does not require a lot of hard thinking, or does it? The hardest part is to come up with concepts, theories, abstractions and postulations that can help us find our way out of our rather unflattering circumstances. This, admittedly, is not a job for everyone. Thinkers are special breed. Not all academics are thinkers and not all thinkers are academics. As Hegel notes, “if reality is inconceivable, then we must forge concepts that are inconceivable”. The idea of a Professor Ibn Khaldun, Professor Confucius, Professor Obafemi Awolowo, Professor Karl Marx, Professor Georg Lukacs, Professor Jean-Paul Sartre and Professor Antonio Gramsci confounds in its sheer absurdity. Yet these avatars of cerebral ruminations laid the groundwork for the transformative reappraisals of the human condition in their various societies without laying claim to any special status.

    Modernization depends on the leadership-type that has seized hold of a country at a particular point and its vision or lack of it. Whereas some projects of modernization build their case from top to bottom incorporating insights gleaned from developed countries without substantial domestication or modification, others build their case from bottom up incorporating only insights and ideas that fit their purpose and original plans.

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    The first recalls the SAP protocols of General Ibrahim Babangida and his cohorts which eventually led to mass pauperization, de-industrialization and massive flight of capital without actually modernizing the economy or enhancing its fundamental categories whereas the other recalls the labours of creative and original Third World intellectuals such as Obafemi Awolowo, Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Mahathir Mohamad and their attempts to build an economically viable and industrialized society from scratch. Last week while some notable politicians were busy plotting how to capture power, a group of notable eggheads gathered under the auspices of the Obafemi  Awolowo Foundation to deliberate on how the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence is having an unprecedented impact on economies, the foundation of nations and the global order in general.

      This is how it always begins and telling disparities begin to emerge within societies, nations, regions and within nations which often lead to unbridgeable and unmanageable gaps. The disruptive possibilities of the AI revolution are such that it can be described without exaggeration as only a shade short of a cosmic intervention in human affairs. This columnist has dwelt on such possibilities before at a Convocation Lecture delivered at FUNNAB five years ago (27/1/2020). Nothing will be the same again once humans create robotic humanoids capable of thinking and acting like actual beings. Unequal growth and development will pile up and proliferate. All the earlier political, economic and spiritual injustices and inequities among societies, nations and people associated with earlier technological leaps and scientific revolutions will pale into insignificance. Unlike before when they were formally colonized, this time around it is nations, people and societies stranded in the interstices of aboriginal existence that will beg to be colonized, to be incorporated into the rubric of civilized existence.  Societies and nations already crippled by a lack of sustainable modernizing imperative will find themselves treated like humanity’s poor cousins, uninvited and unwanted with their hordes of refuges screaming to be let in.                                                                  

    The crisis of misguided modernization afflicts a society in many ways, some of them direct and others opaque and oblique. But nowhere is it more obvious and impacting than in the crisis of tertiary education particularly in postcolonial nations of Africa. Here, the ideological dragnet of colonization throws a sanitary cordon on officials and officialdom making it impossible for them to think straight or to think beyond isolated bits and pieces of knowledge and information making holistic and systematized awareness and understanding of the swift currents of history unattainable. Once a society gets the education of its citizens wrong, it gets almost every other thing wrong. Ask those who escaped such as the rampart Chinese, the resurgent Singaporeans, the resolute Indians and the redoubtable Vietnamese. These nations and their people, despite being subdued and subjugated by invading conquerors at some point in their history, have refused to surrender the cultural and educational initiative to the logic of the invaders.

    The result is that once the conquerors depart, these ancient cultures are able to resume their march towards self-determination and self-actualization. Today, these nations are in the vanguard of emergent alternative visions of human emancipation and societal wellbeing forcing the hegemonic western civilization into a dramatic retreat on many fronts. The result has been a resetting and redrawing of the international order such as are witnessing in many theatres of human agency. Unfortunately, no African country as yet is showing up on the list of these agenda-setting societies. This is because they have in the main inherited the historic debilitations as well as the epistemological conundrum of their conquerors.

     Rather than attempting to leap out of the hell-holes of despair and programmed underdevelopment, they have been digging in furiously. Sometimes it is not out of a weak will or apathy but often a result of well-intentioned but clearly misaligned policies whose origins can be traced to a sense of inferiority traced to the disorienting propaganda of imperialism. This is clearly a good case of what is good for the goose not being very good or healthy for the gander. The educational and cultural needs of developed countries cannot be the same for underdeveloped and developing countries.

      A few weeks back, the Nigerian authorities announced what it thought was a major bonanza for the people of the old Western Region. This was the conversion of the iconic Yaba College of Technology to university status with the old HND scrapped and exchanged for “proper” degrees. On paper, this is supposed to be a major breakthrough. But when examined closely, it is rebranding which is actual de-branding. Whoever can imagine the American authorities waking up one day to rebrand the famous MIT as a university , or Georgia Tech and all the other world famous technological institutes in America as universities? Can the British authorities suddenly decide to rename Imperial College as Imperial University?  What about the great Zurich Polytechnic from where Albert Einstein wrote all his landmark papers, or the remarkable educational communes that litter modern France? The fact is that the excellent reputation and brand of these great institutions and schools inhere in their very name. To rename them is to obliterate their great brand.   The same goes for Yaba College of Technology.

     To be sure, a case can be made against the stigmatization and deliberate inferiorization of polytechnic education in Nigeria which has led to a great disparity in remunerations and unjust ceilings in terms of aspirations and expectations of reward. On paper, this stigmatization and inferiorization can actually be traced to the entrenched and protracted class warfare between the teeming proletariat and emergent bourgeois master-class in Britain which led to the founding of polytechnics and red brick universities to cater for mass education while they shut out the gates of the iconic universities to the rabbles and hoi polloi except the best and brightest of them. It is then left to structured discrimination and entrenched prejudices to ‘normalize’ these unwanted outliers.

      Unfortunately, this entrenched prejudice and class-based hostility was carried over to British colonial holdings in Africa and the Third World where polytechnics were deliberately stripped of status and prestige and made to feel inferior to the universities in terms of reward and remuneration and in terms of aspiration and expectations. They were supposed to produce the lower bulk of the civil service, undistinguished artisans and woebegone subalterns and coolies expected to find their way in the larger society while the elite universities were reserved for the production of the postcolonial mandarinate that will take over the running of the country from the colonial masters. It is remarkable that Lord Fredrick Lugard, the colonial progenitor of Nigeria, found the time and means to establish the University of Hong Kong during a solitary tour of duty while the University College, Ibadan had to wait for another forty years. It was obvious that decades after, Lugard still bristled from his bruising encounters with the robust and rambunctious Lagos colonial elites.

      The Nigerian authorities ought to be congratulated for restoring respect and parity to polytechnic education.  The minister of Education, Tunji Alausa  and Idris Bugaje the Executive Secretary of NBTE, deserve a pat in the back. One must not be seen making away with bundles of nails when their younger acolytes are building an edifice. However, the stick appears to have been bent too far in the other direction. Any developing country still needs its polytechnics. They are the base and hub of industrial transformation and economic modernization. Ask China, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Sixteen years ago at the Convocation Lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, the columnist raised these issues in an attempt to restrain the federal authorities from embarking on misguided modernization by forcibly rebranding the Yaba College of Technology as a nondescript university thus robbing it of the potency of its brand                                                                        The lecture presented an alternative paradigm based on progressive developments elsewhere. The convocation lecture has been republished once in this column. This column has no intention of revisiting the issue. It was an eagle-eyed reader and former student now a professor at the University of Lagos who drew our attention to this a few days ago as he passionately pleaded with the columnist to revisit the lecture. What we have done this morning is to highlight the salient issues from the lecture.

  • Polytechnic Education: A Recipe for Visionary Leadership and Governance in Nigeria

    Polytechnic Education: A Recipe for Visionary Leadership and Governance in Nigeria

    The 19th Convocation Lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, Tuesday, March 8th, 2010.

    Excerpts.

    But what is a polytechnic?  As the name implies, a polytechnic is not a university. But this ought not to be a crime but a mere emblem of distinctive identity. In its classical state, a polytechnic  is a non-university higher educational institution focusing on vocational education. There are three factors at play here which often account for the erosion of parity and esteem when the polytechnic community is compared to the university community.

       First, is the false notion that because polytechnic education is mainly vocational, it is merely functional and work-driven. This notion ignores the fact that in certain disciplines, a polytechnic education is more rigorous and quality driven than their university-based counterparts. This explains the preference of employers in fields such as banking, Finance, Engineering, Accounting and Technology for polytechnic graduates over their universities counterparts. In these fields of human endeavour, the polytechnic graduates often arrive “perfectly tuned” and programmed for easy and immediate absorption.

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

      The third factor arises from the fact that entry-level qualifications for polytechnics tend to be lower than those for universities and the staff generally less qualified. While this is true, this stigma ignores the human capacity for self-improvement and continuous exertion. There are sandwich degree programmes and other avenues for self-realisation for those who start the relay race of education at a disadvantage. In certain circumstances, teachers with lesser qualifications, because they have more to prove, are generally more focused and more ferociously determined to impart quality education than their better qualified colleagues. Although there is usually no short cut to pedagogic distinction, it is so that under the right atmosphere, these disadvantaged students and teachers often come into their own, and it is where you end up that matters rather than where you begin from.

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

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

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

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

      Several decades later, the country is still jogging in the jungle of misguided modernization. Once there is no organic nationalist elite bent on driving the project and process of modernity, a nation labours in vain.

  • Travelling theatre and travelling thunder

    Travelling theatre and travelling thunder

    • On the dark and dismal underbelly of democracy

    May you live in interesting times, pray the wise and inscrutable Chinese.  We surely live in interesting times in Nigeria. Humour and human absurdity sit impeccably with tragedy. It is as if they were born at the same time, like twins. They may well be twins. The same circumstances that produce torrid laughter also lead inexorably to torrents of tears. How does one explain the rash of uncomfortable but intriguing developments in the polity: the legislative imbroglio in one-party Lagos State which now appears to have run its unruly course, the unfurling executive and legislative fiasco in Rivers State which may consume the state and democracy itself if the road to compromise and conciliation is spurned, the unconstitutional decision by four northern states to impose a holiday on schools in their domain for the observance of the Ramadan period of fasting at a time when the descendants of Ibn Saud himself are relaxing the harsh Wahhabist franchise of extreme and severe dogmatism in their country to accommodate the relentless onslaught of modernity. Something was always going to follow the swift and savage execution of Jamal Khashoggi in their Istanbul embassy. There is also the constitutional impasse in Oshun State, a domain famous for its combustible and regicidal aptitude.

     Lastly, what of the riveting sex scandal involving the accident-prone senate president and a stormy female petrel by the orientally forbidding name, Natasha? That one has now led to a legislative legerdemain. As it was famously asked of Helen of Troy, is this the face that will launch a thousand ships? As the nation blindly and furiously thrashes about in the trauma of economic and political modernity, all these may be contradictory and countervailing forces trying to impose their will and purpose on a chaotic ensemble. The critical intelligentsia and organic intellectuals of the postcolonial state cannot afford to sit back and watch without providing some impute towards a sane and sober resolution of the crisis before it tips into anarchy and chaos. Political comedy is always dogged by historical tragedy. The Alarinjo , otherwise known as the Travelling Theatre, is a famous sub-genre of the impressive dramatic repertoire of the Yoruba people.

      With its merry band of singers, drummers, dramatists and the odd magicians, it goes from town to town entertaining people with improvised dramatic sketches, allusive stitch-up and much dancing and singing. As an urbanized and considerably civilized people of the rain forest, the Yoruba people know how to entertain and enrich themselves about the cultural and political development in their environs. Whether it was by accident or by design, discerning people always noticed a dramatic upsurge in the traffic of the itinerant troupes across Yoruba cities in periods preceding great social upheavals and commotion. This was what happened in the period leading up to what has come to be known as the wetie insurrection in the old Western Region. The great dramatist, Hubert Ogunde, was permanently on the road. Dramatic literature became a great conveyor belt and purveyor of social unease and looming confrontation. Thunder followed theatre. This is always after all constitutional avenues, with their legislative, judicial and executive entwinements have been thoroughly besmirched and compromised, leaving only the road to anarchy.  

    This is why the selfsame Yoruba people, with foxy humour, let it be known that while it is always a grand spectacle to watch a mad person and his funny antics, nobody wants to own up to paternity or parentage. But the Yoruba also insist that we do not allow a mad man to conduct his mother’s funeral the way he deems fit. Otherwise, the crazed fellow may be tempted to barbeque the body and parcel it out to guests as choice meat. Having been storied victims of several constitutional debacles in colonial, postcolonial and military Nigeria with many of their illustrious children consumed by the inferno, the Yoruba political elite, with Lagos as its current arrowhead, ought to tread more carefully. A man whose mother has been killed by a mad person ought to take extra-caution on sighting a local mechanic. The hour of triumph is often followed by moments of tragedy. This is why Ann Morrow Lindberg, wife of Charles Lindberg, the great aviator-hero and the first person to fly across the Atlantic in a solo-engine aircraft, titled her memoir, Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead. Lindberg’s son was kidnapped shortly after his historic triumph, never to be seen alive again.

       The Lagos legislative debacle could have been better handled by all sides. Party supremacy is paramount in all organic democracies. That is why you have designated whips cracking the whip occasionally when a member goes rogue or appears permanently set against party dictates and ideological leaning. If the case worsens and rebellion or complete apostasy looms, there are heavier sanctions in store, including suspension or dismissal depending on the infractions. This is imperative to maintain party order, discipline and cohesion. The tragedy of military rule is that while it leaves the judiciary intact and with the opportunity to grow and develop even if in a severely suborned manner, the legislature is cleanly decapitated with no chance to thrive. It is compelled to start afresh when democracy resumes. With no experience to fall back upon beyond the ceremonial foppery and the routinized violence of gavel-smashing, the legislature soon becomes a den of deadwood and sundry delinquents. How many times did Lagos State legislators either collectively or individually report Obasa’s infractions to their superiors? If they ever did, what was the outcome?

      But having been presented with a fait accompli, having been completely caught off guard by those they are supposed to superintend and monitor closely, the APC nomenklatura ought to have been more guided and circumspect in their reaction. They ought to have cut the legislators some slack. The route they have taken, that is the vengeful humiliation and arm-twisting of the law-makers, is the surest route to further de-institutionalization of an already crippled institution. However uncomfortable and inconvenienced by the rebellion the party hierarchs might have been, they ought to have known that the democratic process is about institution-building and procedural scaffolding and not about individual supremacy and ego-massaging. Several times in his career, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was roundly defeated by opposition within his own party. But the old man took it in the chin. Each time, he emerged with his stellar status as a career democrat undimmed and undiminished among his teeming followers.

        The politics of militarization is a direct consequence of the militarization of politics. Despite all this, the APC and its ranking echelons still have many things going for them which still make APC the party to beat in Lagos State. First is the ethnic homogeneity of the core voters of the state. But it is a homogeneity whose complexion and complexity is changing every minute. Second is the fact that as functioning political parties, neither the derelict PDP nor the near-defunct Labour Party is in any position to mount a viable challenge to the hegemonic hold of the APC in the state. Noisemaking in declining newspapers has never been known to win any election. Finally, the threat of military rule continues to recede into remote antiquity except as a prelude to the final unraveling of the nation.

    If that is the situation in Lagos State, an ethnic heterogeneity subsists in Rivers State which makes the state very susceptible to combustion and commotion. As the fourth largest ethnic nationality in Nigeria, the Ijaw people will not sit idly by and watch the only state they control in the nation slip through them by some legislative rascality.

      Once again, we warn that an extraordinary state of emergency looms in Rivers State. It is going to be extraordinary because it will involve a complete militarization of the state with the possibility of fatally undermining the prospects of the principal product the nation depends upon at this moment. This column is not interested in the outcome of the ego tussle in Rivers State between lapsed godson and former godfather but the extent to which the battle will impact on the democratic prospects of the nation and its continued viability. It is unfortunate that the political common sense that Nyesom Wike demonstrated by making sure an Ijaw person succeeded him and forcing this through has now completely disappeared in a miasma of mutual hatred and contempt.

      Finally since Shakespeare said that all journeys must end in lover’s meeting, we seem to have come to the paradoxical intersection where amorous journeys end in abrupt termination of longing and desire. The mix of politics and sex can be an explosive and irresistible combination, a sure bet for sensational and scandalmongering headlines. From time immemorial, sex among the upper reaches of the society has always tickled and titillated the fantasies of the lower masses. But it has been historically proved that unless it is accompanied by other potent drivers of signal failure, sexual sleaze does not always lead to locomotive derailment of state machinery. England, France, Italy and the US are prime exemplars of the uses and usefulness of executive randiness. Tropical Africa, with its torrid equatorial passions, its combustible gamesmanship and its surfeit of Alpha male predators launching at everything in sight and skirt, cannot be an exception. That is until sexual gaming enters into a potentially fatal contradiction with a predominantly feudal culture.

    Read Also: 31 more states and theatre of the absurd

    The winsome and alluring Natasha is fast becoming the Queen of Stitch –Up in the post-military dispensation. The comely senator is of Ukrainian and Ebira provenance and if that explosive combination does not emit danger signals, you are on your own. Ebira brio meets Ukrainian defiant pluckiness. It appears that an innocent brush past her, a gamey glance, an uncomplimentary comment or an unfriendly gambit in the distribution of power largesse can get you on her expanding list of sexual predators or potential political paedophiles. The casualty figure is quite impressive. It reminds one of a joke about Maradona in his waning years. Since he could dive even from a mile, the referee and the players were advised to give him a wide berth. A famous contemporary declined his offer of a handshake after a nasty clinch for fear that the impish former pickpocket from the Buenos Aires slums may head for the grass.

    But Natasha, a serving senator of the Federal Republic, appears far more deadly and dangerous than a mere footballer. The senate president would do well to take note.  She reminds one of those powerful female figures of history who took their men to bed only to have them summarily beheaded thereafter. Having been directly implicated in the overthrow and subsequent murder of her husband                                                                                                                                                                                                      the dithering and dilatory Emperor Peter 111, the German-born Empress Catherine seized power and went on to rule feudal Russia with iron resolve and cruel severity for the next thirty two years. Those who were rumoured to be her lovers disappeared mysteriously. Luckily and providentially, Natasha does not have the political wherewithal to reenact that version of Asiatic despotism in Nigeria. But having engineered her suspension for six months in a clumsy and untidy legislative putsch after declaring her lawful petition against the senate president dead on arrival, Godswill Akpabio must from now have to watch his back for the rest of his tenure and probably beyond.

    Despite his winning joviality and infectious bonhomie, the senate president has not been a model of decorum and rectitude, neither has he conducted himself with the dignity and gravitas expected of the number three person in a country that ought to be in a hurry to develop. If the furious and vengeful Senator Natasha were to find common cause with the numerous forces trying to unhorse him, Akpabio could find himself in very uncomfortable circumstances in the coming months. Before our very eyes the Travelling Theatre has once again berthed at the weakest link in the chain of democratic development in Nigeria just as it did in the First Republic. It will amount to foolish and futile optimism to ever imagine that thunder does not strike twice in the same place.   

  • Beyond the apocalypse

    Beyond the apocalypse

    General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a master in the dark art and metaphysics of annulment, whether physical, democratic or national,  was on hand again penultimate Thursday to impose himself on and dominate the Nigerian environment once again thirty two years after surrendering power in dismal and distraught circumstances. In an autobiography that has since gone viral, the Minna-born general tried to absolve himself of complicity in the greatest democratic tragedy that has befallen the nation since independence and to plead for mercy and understanding from his compatriots. In the process, he has triggered off a trail of abuse, recriminations and shrill denunciation the type normally reserved for historical scoundrels. It is as if many Nigerians have been waiting for an opportunity to pounce on IBB.

     As it is said in the book of Job(31.35), “mine desire is that my enemy hath write a book”, it is obvious that thirty two years after, Nigerians are still traumatized by the ignoble drama surrounding the abrogation of the democratic will of the nation by a group of military officers, a development which they trace, directly or indirectly, to their current economic distress and political woes. If few Nigerians outside the loop of power understood what was going on in those days of utter confusion and political perplexity leading to and after the summary dismissal of the electoral sovereignty of the nation, fewer still do after reading Babangida’s mea culpa which has been dismissed as a litany of lies, misinformation and disinformation by irate Nigerians.

    General Babangida has touched some raw nerves. It is curious that Babangida who claimed ignorance of the poorly worded unsigned document announcing the annulment while he was still a sitting military ruler and all-powerful president was on hand to endorse the annulment two days after. Not only that, a few days after formally ceding power, the general  still had the daring and temerity to be announcing new military postings from his Minna redoubt through Chief Duro Onabule his veritable mouthpiece, a development which was swiftly countermanded by the duo of Abacha and Diya in the name of “service expediency”. Perhaps it was only then that the general finally roused from his trance and political somnambulism. As Arthur Nzeribe, his closet collaborator, wickedly and disdainfully put it, the general lost command.

      Yours sincerely was in Abuja penultimate Thursday to witness the historic spectacle. As one of the severest critics of the general when it became obvious that the transition was a grand charade, namely: The Transition As Transfiction; Alternatives to National Suicide, The Game is Up, At the Barricades, The Lonely Long Distance Runner, The Birth of Tragedy, Bridge Over Interim Waters, Remember Rueben etc, General Ibrahim Babangida remains a figure of deep historical fascination for this writer. There is an odd, deeply psychic entwinement between artist of power and the power-artist beyond abuse and vulgar recriminations. Perhaps as Gbolabo Ogunsanwo famously intuited, there is a Babangida in every one of us. The story of Babangida is also the story of Nigeria. One is deeply enthralled by how a deeply endowed and politically resourceful man could lead the nation and himself to such a cul de sac  from which it has never recovered. It speaks to some satanic foibles and deeply malign misconfiguration which are at the heart of the Nigerian Conundrum and which also makes the struggle for power and ascendancy in the nation far from being a beauty pageant.

      So when the opportunity to witness this historic gathering of the Nigerian consortium arose, it was too good to be passed over. But due to some distractions, the party missed the deadline and by the time we arrived at the venue, the gates were firmly locked with all vehicular movements prohibited as a result of the presence of the incumbent president and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In the event, rather than being well-seated inside the hall, we found ourselves outside among a crowd of berserk humanity pulling at everything and violently pushing and shoving everybody in a journey that ended in a brick wall of fierce looking security people who avoided direct eye contact so as not to be seen committing a heinous breach of protocol. After a lull, we were approached by a new set of security personnel who led us through a private door that suddenly opened into the gallery above the hall where the technical crew were ensconced as they captured the extravaganza for posterity.

      It was indeed a spectacular pabanbari, a historic showstopper straight out of the surreal cinematography that gave us The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Minus the numerous dead who have paid their death duties to mortality, almost everybody who is anybody in the national eclipse of sixty years since the advent of the military was seated in that gloriously phosphorescent  hall like some alchemists of geo-political perdition. General Gowon did not disappoint anybody. Armed with his usual arsenal of platinum platitudes, amiable and good-natured Jack went on and on about how he owed the restoration of his rank to the celebrant and how earlier, he nearly made the young Major Babangida his aide de camp.

    Without any sense of irony, Gowon went on to assert that Babangida’s regime was the most consequential for the nation.  In the case of General Obasanjo despite having dismissed Babangida’s regime as deficit in honour, credibility and integrity in the heat of his collapsing Transition programme, he went on to shower sedulous praises on his subordinate and political benefactor urging him to take the possible backlash against his autobiography as an example of “bad belle”. The earlier quarrel between the two about who is a fool at seventy has been forgotten but the Nigerian jury has returned an open verdict of misadventure by mutual semantic cancelation.

       It might have been due to the combination of exhaustion and exhilaration but in the trance-like sedation one suddenly felt transported back to early Jacobean period in England watching the remarkable play, Volpone, or the Sly Fox, by Ben Jonson, a merciless satire on lust, cruelty and greed compounded by grand deception. Written around 1605/1606, Ben Jonson could well have had post-independence Nigeria in mind and devious military rule in the country and its unique exemplar in view. The main character, a man known as Volpone, already wealthy from dubious and fraudulent exertions, piled up additional riches duping people by pretending to be on the verge of death. Among his clients were the wealthiest citizens of the land. In the end, manipulated by his own manipulation, his ruse falls apart. He starts out fooling everybody but ends up fooling himself, a fool in fools’ costumes.

      At least the real Volpone, (or is it the fictional Volpone?) receives his just desserts and is punished for his diabolic trickeries. Nigeria’s problem can be traced to serial tragedy without catharsis or the prospects of it. Impunity which is a symptom of lawless anomie and a disordered society reigns supreme. No society can make meaningful progress in such circumstances. Having escaped punishment for abolishing the sovereignty of the Nigerian electorate, General Babangida has come back to demand to be paid for his pains, and he got it handsomely with a seventeen billion pay cheque. It is akin to being rewarded for fouling up the community pool. The Nigerian ruling class is unable and unwilling to purge itself of political and economic miscreants.

    Read Also: August 24 for the third edition of “Beyond Emotions

       It is important to locate the current regime within the continual crisis of the abdication of ethical responsibility given the balance of extant forces by the time the military was forced to return to the barracks. Like all its predecessors in the post-military dispensation, the regime is not a product of a revolutionary momentum or organic radical stirring within the society, despite the upsurge of separatist rumblings in many sections of the country.

    It is a product of a unique conjuncture: a coming together of hitherto countervailing forces, namely a sizeable chunk of the progressive elements from the South West and vital conservative groups from the core north. The occasional creaking of the engine and the clattering of the wheels notwithstanding, if only the coalition can push through some fundamental reforms which are at the heart of  political and economic modernity without coming unstuck, Nigeria would have avoided a situation in which a handful of military officers can act in a way that alters the fundamental trajectory of the nation and a situation in which they condition themselves to confuse their personal destiny with the larger destiny of the nation.

       By the time he was driven from power, Babangida had become a major casualty of his own machinations. As a veteran coup plotter himself, Babangida knew when the odds were overwhelmingly against him. Sani Abacha had so loaded the military dice against him with strategic positioning of his arch-loyalists that he could take him down at any moment. It was the culmination of a power struggle which began the moment Abacha saved him from Major Orkar. In the confusion that followed, Abacha could easily have neutralized Babangida and taken over. But the dark-goggled general from Kano knew that he was such an object of disrespect and ridicule among the officer corps that a momentous bloodbath could have ensued.

    Shortly afterwards, a group of officers wrote to Babangida asking him to remove Abacha as Army Chief to save the army and the nation from further ridicule and disrepute. Afraid of inviting Abacha’s apocalyptic ire, Babangida dithered and vacillated for a while before settling for a compromise. Abacha was kicked upstairs but allowed to keep all the power and appurtenances of army chief including the official residence which he refused to vacate. So riled and miffed was the gentleman-officer who was designated as Chief of Army Staff, the excellent and impeccably conducted General Salisu Ibrahim ,that he exploded on the eve of his retirement that his beloved army had become “an army of anything goes”.

      In the case of Mamman Gulu Vatsa, it was obvious that the much admired poet was a victim of his own professional delusions and political naivete. Despite early youthful bonding and friendship, professional rivalry tore the two future generals and former classmates apart. The outward show of conviviality and camaraderie did not mask the rivalry and rancour. It was said that after General Babangida’s victorious putsch, Sani Abacha had approached him to retire Vatsa but Babangida told him to hold on. Unknown to him, Vatsa had been sent as a decoy to follow Tunde Idiagbon on pilgrimage to Mecca so that he did not constitute himself into a military nuisance when Babangida made his move. This was why he signed on late upon his return to Mecca.

       At the swearing in, Babangida jokingly asked his friend not to sign in Arabic language but Vatsa kept a stern straight face. But after returning to Abuja as minister, Vatsa began jumping and humping around letting everybody know that WAI was still in operation in the federal territory. This was like running a red rag in front of Babangida’s bull, or declaring his own autonomous territory. Shortly afterwards, Babangida gave a speech ominously hinting that those who were trying to cause problems for his regime would be neutralized with incisive professional skill. It was obvious that Vatsa’s goose had been cooked. Shortly thereafter in December 1985, the Gulu-born soldier-poet was arrested and charged with coup-plotting never to regain his freedom.

      It was the beginning of a period of bloodletting and officer-wastage that was unprecedented in the history of the nation culminating in a politically prohibitive annulment of the freest and fairest election in the history of the nation all because of a handful of military officers. If General Ibrahim Babangida seeks restitution and genuine atonement for his infractions against his nation, he should go about it the right way. The obscene spectacle in Abuja penultimate Friday was like putting the wrong foot forward.     

  • IBB comes clean, but is far from cleansed

    IBB comes clean, but is far from cleansed

    And whilst still talking about a sense of an ending and the perfect symmetry of historical occurrences, let us for now say one or two things about the gathering of Nigeria’s postcolonial and post-civil war ogbologbo that swarmed inside the capacious bowel of the nation’s premier hotel in Abuja this past Thursday. It was a beautiful mid-February morning. It was a year short of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Murtala Mohammed, the man who willed Abuja into existence from a primeval forest bristling with hard rocks. Virtually, all the surviving military titans from that era were there directly or by proxy, one or two of them now leglessly infirm. Fifty years after they seized power from General Yakubu Gowon, their winning combination was still in place and in power so to speak. The very foundation of Abuja shook with new money and new power. There was hardly any space left for private planes to park.

       There is always something surreal and unnerving about the calm, placid serenity of Abuja. Like an ancient mythical mine, you know that this is a scene of crime. But you also know that it is a site of stupendous and spectacular riches.  Only the deeply criminal can speak to the deeply criminal. Like its Paris counterpart which is known to warehouse about six million dead souls, the Abuja catacomb houses legions of political, economic and military casualties. The survivors go on to lap at the sweet candies of plutocratic wealth and its fragrant bars of pure honey. If a child refuses to die, he must taste bearded meat.

    Read Also: IBB’s ‘Journey in Service’

      This morning, they all thronged the hall to honour and pay compliments to the man who is arguably the most consequential soldier to have ruled post-civil war Nigeria either for good or bad. General Babangida’s charisma, his capacity to attract people and his mesmerizing gifts remain unmatched in Nigeria’s post-civil war political firmament despite being hobbled by old age and sundry ailments. It is hard to imagine the all-powerful Maradona in this state as he came clean and contrite before his abjured compatriots. But judging from some of the scathing and scalding rejoinders, it is obvious that coming clean is not about to cleanse IBB and absolve him of historic responsibility in the conspiracy against Nigeria. It all speaks to the ephemerality of power and its appurtenances. When you have it, use it for the greatest good of the greatest number. Or the infraction against the greatest collection of black souls anywhere in the world will haunt you forever.

  • The time of their time

    The time of their time

    There is a dramatic and faintly mystical quality to their final exit. Elders who have been mumbling and sighing for over a decade that they have arrived at the Departure Lounge and were merely waiting for their boarding passes received the summons to board. Within a week, Nigeria has lost two of her most prominent political gladiators and Old Testament pathfinders, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Pa Edwin Clark. They were no doubt avatars of the colonial and postcolonial coliseum, that blood-splattered site of agonistic contention. They no doubt hid their bruises and wounds very well, crying in the rain and relentlessly seeking combat and confrontation as if their life depended on the punishing schedule.

    Given their gladiators’ regimen, it is a miracle and a great riddle that they lived for so long and to ripe old age, exceeding their makers allotted timeline of  three scores and ten years by over two decades. When they departed this past week, it began to feel like the end of an era. Perhaps we are beginning to see the final working out of what began sixty three years earlier with the implosion of the fabled Action Group, the subsequent collapse of the First Republic and the seizure of the dominion by the military faction of the ruling group, a seismic development whose ripple effects continue to be felt in the nation’s political firmament.

      Consequently, this piece cannot be a critique of political praxis but a celebration and eulogy of the life and time of four of Nigeria’s greatest sons and daughters ever. These personages were no doubt titans of Nigeria’s modern history. The two aforementioned political giants were severely flawed human-beings and conflicted individuals. But the criticism of their politics can wait until they have been properly interred. It is the time to roll out the gongs and drums of celebration and ululations rather than the whistle of disapproval and disapprobation. Let us enjoy the vignettes, cameos, mementoes, bits and tidbits of their rich, colourful if occasionally controversial life and see if we can come up with tropes of redemption about their storied exertions, their heroic disavowal, their memorable derring-do and their willingness to tempt fate and martyrdom in the pursuit of their ideal of a just and egalitarian society.

      If we are to maintain a fidelity to historical accuracy, it will not be accurate to maintain that the two titans were the first to sign off. Shortly before them, there were two other notable departures, but simply because the other two were not political luminaries, their death has been less heralded. Yet in a curious and mysterious sense, their own departure now seem to complement and reinforce the feeling that an age of giants was winding down and we may just be lucky to capture the last snapshot for posterity. Bidding us a final goodbye a few months short of his ninetieth birthday was the man who wrote the cheques, Chief Olabode Emanuel, the old Gregorian, a vastly successful international businessman and publisher with octopoidal reach and range. There was a ferocious focus and steely armature about him which suggested a man not to be lightly crossed if you are not a feckless yokel from the provinces. On the few occasions one had the honour and privilege of sitting close to him, he came across as a man of immense refinement, cultivation and culture; a citizen of the globe. On those few occasions, the two of us often exchanged wary and cagey glances with each wondering just how much the other knew without letting on. He was a money man for the ages without any hint of extravagance or fiscal incontinence. 

      The last titan and the first to depart a few weeks back is a woman. By the time she departed, Khadijat Adebisi Edionsere had already passed into legend and folklore as a woman of Croesus-like wealth and riches. If you are wondering what a mere woman is doing among a conclave of elders, then you are wrong, dead wrong and you do not understand Yoruba culture. The Yoruba people appreciate the power of power and the means of immense means which they believe is a transgender affair. Certain women become “unsexed”, cultural monument as a result of their wealth and power. As Ebenezer Obey sang sonorously and suggestively: “Agba loto Oro lo o hun niti Iyalode Egba”. A powerful woman can no longer be excluded from the conclave of the Oro cult.

      It was said that in the late sixties, bank officials who were mystified and pleasantly bewildered by the daily haulage of raw cash coming into her accounts promptly nicknamed her as the “cash woman”. It is a golden tradition that harks back to the glorious era of Madam Efunroye Tinubu, Efunsetan Aniwura, Humani Alaga, Bisoye Tejuoso, Janet Alatede, Abibatu Mogaji and some other female figures of remote antiquity such as Moremi and Oya. Last week’s Friday a grateful Egba nation sent off one of its greatest daughters and it was a   carnival-like procession throughout the city ending up in a punishing traffic snarl right up to the main venue of Abeokuta Sports Club. As a frail and autumnal master crooner Ebenezer Obey dished out memorable lyrics from his extraordinary musical tribute to the late magnate, the crowd swooned and applauded.

     At a point, a lithe and winsome lady appeared on stage swinging methodically and aristocratically to Obey’s beat. She was a dead ringer for her late illustrious mother. Many of the state dignitaries that converged on the stage would have been in their infancy when Ebenezer’s Obey’s classic rendition came out at the tail end of 1971. It all goes to show that life   goes on and must go on. Life may often appear like a cruel continuous punishment, or just one damned thing after the other, as an English cynic dismissed it. But it depends on the meaning you give it. This is what makes life bearable, despite its wicked absurdities and brutal contingencies.

    Read Also: Clark: Time to commit to true federalism, says Afenifere

     There are times in life when fate seems to conjoin you with certain colourful and larger than life personalities who can only make meaning out of life by subjecting it to their own eccentric interpretation and idiosyncratic narrative no matter how odd and unhelpful such narratives have become in the light of new developments. Chief Ayo Adebanjo was one of such titanic personages and you always sensed where you stood with him whether he was wearing a benign scowl or his trademark boyish grin. It is fair to conclude that in the in the closing phase of his political career we were in the same book but not on the same page.

    This was to lead to some awkward moments and a particularly nasty public spat at the Tola Adeniyi book launch where this columnist was forced to give the late chief some candid roasting. Moments later, a well-known public intellectual who was not well known to the columnist at that point in time, accosted one and said that he had never imagined that anybody could engage the master pugilist in a toe to toe contention and in public purview, too. But a few weeks after this encounter, the old Action Group stalwart was smiling and winking conspiratorially at his former blue-eyed boy as one sat under the canopy at his  Ijebu Ogbogbo homestead to honour him on his ninetieth birthday. As far as he was concerned, it was all in a day’s work.

    The circumstances of our first meeting were no less awkward but far more heroic and cheering. At one of the exploratory meetings preparatory to the convening of an All Politicians’ Summit in 1995, I was assigned to the task of manning the gates to prevent any embarrassing infiltration or the customary state shenanigans. It was the brainchild of a group of patriots including some top journalists, well-heeled Yoruba tycoons and some topnotch technocrats from the middle belt. After the annulment of the June 12 presidential election, the incarceration of MKO Abiola and the brutal hammering of the political class by General Sani Abacha, this group of patriots came to the conclusion that the military juggernaut was the greatest threat to the civilian class irrespective of whether they were from the north or the south. If they didn’t hang together, they were going to hang separately.

    That night, Chief Adebanjo sauntered into the expansive lobby of the hotel with his friend and constant companion, Chief Olaniwun Ajayi. A cherubic smile of faint disapproval hovered around Adebanjo’s face as he sized one up while Ajayi remained his calm, urbane and diplomatic self. As one ushered them to the hall, Adebanjo cleared his throat. “So tiri awon ara ile ee?” he grunted to his friend. “Have you seen your friends? They say they want friendship and reconciliation and yet they have brought a Fulani boy to come and man the gates here in Lagos. What type of rubbish is this?”  Ajayi merely chuckled diplomatically. Later on as the proceedings got underway, Chief Adebanjo began tirelessly complaining about a briefcase under the table that was getting in his way. Somebody then told him about the owner of the briefcase and that he was the person who had ushered them in. Upon realizing their error, the two old men burst into prolonged laughter that resonated around the hall.

      Let us leave our readers with an incident which showcases Chief Adebanjo’s remarkable sense of irony and his biting humour. After delivering the eighty fifth anniversary lecture of the Yoruba Tennis Club in September, 2001, yours sincerely was hosted to dinner by Yoruba grandees and leaders of business in the vast lobby of the hall. As Chief Adebanjo who had earlier survived a major health scare was about to tuck into a glass of wine, he was cautioned in a low tone by his friend that somebody was around and was indeed approaching. “Ara ile e ti mbo”. It was obviously his doctor. “I am not doing what you asked me not to do oo” Chief Adebanjo mumbled like a child caught in familiar pranks. “Ti e loju”, the doctor observed with a frown and then disappeared. Almost two decades later, yours sincerely inquired about the doctor from his patient. “Ha, you see, he has since gone to join his maker”, the old Action Grouper responded with mischievous solemnity. Papa was one hell of a fellow. May his great soul rest in peace.

  • Extreme colonisation and its consequences

    Extreme colonisation and its consequences

    The life and times of Sam Nujoma

    Sam Nujoma, the founding president of Namibia, has died at the ripe age of ninety five at a time of widespread global anxieties and unease. Popularly regarded as the father of modern Namibia, the former freedom fighter is also credited with giving his country the relative peace and stability it badly needed to progress after decades of war with apartheid South Africa and the lingering trauma of German colonial atrocities in the old South West Africa. Without any doubt, he was the last of the Mohicans, a group of revered African titans who had physically fought for the liberation of their respective countries and whose words carried a lot of weight and clout on the continent and far beyond. The Namibian leader left at a point Africa needs these avatars to navigate the inclement weather and rough seas ahead.

    As President Donald Trump tightens the economic screws on the global jugular, it is obvious that the world is on the threshold of new developments. The American president and his billionaire bouncers do not have what it takes to bend the world to their will, but they can be a major disruptive force particularly for vulnerable Third World economies and their stalled political momentum. Every dark silhouette often leads to light just as many highways end in a cul de sac. It is then left to human grit and ingenuity to plot the way out of the maze. Apocalyptic suffering and improbable miseries sometimes bring out the best in a people. It is like a furnace which purifies and makes them stronger. The leadership is energized and ennobled by the tumult and tempest.

       Although it is often said that there is no point arguing the order of precedence between a flea and a louse, or between two types of colonial dominion, it must also be noted that there is colonization and there is colonization. In one species of colonization, reliance on overwhelming physical coercion and routine physical liquidation leads to genocide. Genocide is described as the deliberate and systematic killing or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide has always been part of history and the human condition, depending on the stage the human capacity for self-elimination has reached. From the biblical annihilation of the Jews by the ancient Egyptians, the extermination of the native Indian populace by the Spanish conquistadors after the destruction of the Inca Empire, the ethnic cleansing of the American populace to the systematic liquidation of the of the original inhabitants of the old Kongo Empire around present day Angola by the Portuguese invaders, the world has grown accustomed to human inhumanity to fellow human-beings.

       As the very last colonial power to emerge from the bowels of rapidly modernizing Europe, the Germans fed themselves with the delusion that their historic tardiness and lateness to dinner was as a result of their attention to details, Teutonic proficiency and superior abilities. They had famously carped that while the Brits and the French only managed to behead their kings, they (the Germans) had decapitated a whole European intellectual tradition through a succession of gifted and brilliant master-philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Karl Marx. Despite the bombast and balderdash, the fact remains that at that point in time, Germany, compared to their European rivals, was a backward nation-state relying on the fabled firepower of their military machine but lacking in any template for humane governance of their overseas dominions and for a more just and egalitarian society.

      In the event, they went after their colonial subjects in Africa with such gusto and brutality resulting in memorable bloodshed and genocide of the local populace in Namibia and old Tanganyika. Before the Germans were expelled after losing the First World War, the entire Namib corridor was foaming in blood.  Many natives perished. Repeatedly massacred for refusing forced labour and the confiscation of their land, the Herero and Nima populace fled northwards and eastwards to join their ancestral cousins in Botswana and Angola never to return to their original homesteads. Even then it took another major global conflagration before America and the European masters could resolve the German Question.

       Unfortunately for the Namibians, it was a case of double jeopardy. The Apartheid apparatus that had seized the territory from the Germans was not any better position to rule with compassion and political justice and the situation soon escalated into a full blown war with SWAPO linking up with other forces of liberation and self-determination in the region. This was the violent and combustible crucible that threw up Sam Nujoma. Barely formally educated like Patrice Lumumba who had only four years of regular education before being thrown into the melee and political maelstrom, Nujoma pursued private education and self-improvement with vigour and vengeance until it became impossible.

    Nujoma had to endure the private humiliation of working as a cleaner and sweeper in Windhoek. But with his unwavering commitment to the liberation and emancipation of his people, it did not take him long to establish his credentials as the natural leader of the new movement. And naturally too, it did not take the authorities much longer to come for him. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for three years. But he escaped to Tanzania where he was warmly welcomed by Nwalimu Julius Nyerere. Thus began for the future president, a long period of exile which was to last about three decades. His wife was only able to join him after spending two decades in the most humiliating and degrading of circumstances in Namibia. It did not bend or make Nujoma to waver. With his winning and winsome smile and the charismatic swank of a natural aristocrat, Nujoma was very prepossessing indeed. But his calm and friendly mien hid a ruthless streak which would not be lightly crossed. It helped very much that his mother was a princess of one of the most fabled clans in the land. His father was famous for his integrity and for saying it as it is. Shortly after his son’s incarceration, the elder Nujoma was also summarily impounded by the authorities who sent him to jail in Pretoria. He was later to die from tuberculosis contracted in prison.

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    For this writer, the most iconic and enduring image of Sam Nujoma was of the hero of the Namibian struggle kissing the tarmac at Windhoek Airport in 1990 upon his return to his native land after a three decade exile. Moments later, he was to extend the same courtesy to his mother who had been part of a cheering crowd to welcome him. Mother and son had not seen each other in thirty years. Talk of the heroism and sacrifices at the behest of a beloved nation! It was not a surprise that Nujoma’s chronicle of his heroic exertions was titled, Where Others Wavered. Needless to add that in elections held later that year, Nujoma and his party, SWAPO, romped to victory. There was no need for rigging or vote-buying. He went on to rule his country for the next fifteen years, serving three consecutive terms against the constitutional stipulation of a maximum of two terms. But this did not alienate him from his compatriots who remained grateful for his selfless struggle for their emancipation and for the international prestige, political stability and relative prosperity he has brought the country.

     The passing of this great son of Africa is an opportunity for reflection, particularly as Trump’s unilateralism and isolationist globalism unleash their contradictions. We are entering another epoch of colonization this time marked by extreme economic aggression against weaker nations. Nationhood will count for nothing. African countries struggling with stability and unable to feed their populace will have a hard time convincing Trump that the real estate should not be put to better use. The current travails of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has ceased to exist as an organic country with scant international attention is an indication how much the international community attaches to flag independence.

    Perhaps this is the time to rediscover the visionary magic and political idealism of Africa’s founding fathers, particularly those who fought for the independence of their countries. As we have seen in Africa and the rest of the world, nations that start off with a coherent set of ideals and political goals often retain a residual discipline and cohesion long after they might have gone into ideological abeyance or the recession of radical vision. Even where political careers ended in failure, the architecture remains as a beacon of hope amidst the ruins of aspiration. Such countries tend to handle the politics of succession and the threat to stability much better. Perhaps this is the whole point of politics with conviction and parties with ideological foundation. African countries without such a core foundation will continue to roil in political instability and economic miseries until something gives. Nujoma should be commended for bequeathing a country to his people.