The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Patience is a good patient

    Oh me gad!!! Oh me gad, as the Yankees will say. Dollar, dollar, dollar!! There is dollar everywhere but not a single greenback to spend. A feisty American lady who became hard of hearing after decades of tumultuous hell raising reportedly rejected the entreaties of her son to accompany him to the hospital for further examination from an ENT specialist. “I have heard enough!!”, the great dame reportedly shot back in defiance and damnation.

    But it does seem as if in contemporary Nigeria, you can never be deaf to the rumblings of the almighty dollar. To be hard of hearing does not extend to hearing about a hard currency like the dollar. Just about the time we thought we have heard enough about the daily dose of bales of currencies publicly and privately hidden, and the revelations of humongous state larceny, the inimitable and inevitable former first lady, the dame of melodrama herself, Patience Faka Jonathan, aka Mama Peace, has tumbled out again with something meant for the Guinness Book of record.

    Just what will one do with this Patience woman? At a time you thought she will fade away quietly, she has returned once again to seize the national imagination like a recurring nightmare. Readers of the column would have noticed that we have been very patient with our own Patience. This is probably due to an old-fashioned sexist gallantry of not impugning another man’s wife, no matter the provocation.

    Her irresistible rise to the top of the social ladder is stuff for legend and folklore. There is a hint of aborted greatness about this feisty woman. Her starry ascension is a classic study in patient and patented social climbing, notwithstanding the claims by incorrigible columnists that she was a pepper soup hawker. The hawker may yet become a social hawk in the fullness of time. Patience, a steaming pot of pepper soup on their face if they ever cross your path or show up in a glitzy hotel located in the Okrika waterfront.

    But this deluge of dollars is something else. A whopping twenty two million dollars has been traced to accounts belonging to her and opened with criminal chutzpah. But just when you thought that there might be some remorse and a sense of shame at the revelations, Patience has rallied back claiming legitimate ownership of the accounts despite the outlandish forgeries and criminal impersonation of her subordinate staff.

    When will enough be enough in this country? Rather than slink away in shame and misery, the former First Lady has let it be known that the money was meant for hospital bills and sundry medical expenses. Twenty two million dollars for hospital bills and sundry expenses?  Even by Third World standards of sleaze and infamy, this is quite a gory record. Such has been the daring and defiance that Patience has almost turned the table against the EFCC, virtually making that hardworking organization to look like a pack of shameless inquisitors.

    The last word is that the former First Lady has hired a battery of financial gurus and banking whizz kids to defend her medical bills. It promises to be a roforofo fight. Patience has no patience with hostage-taking. Why are we so blest? No mind them o jare . Na bad belle they worry them. Abi kilode gan? APC is not good medicine for the fiscally incontinent, and this is not a matter for common Patient Medicine Stores. (PMS). Let them try good old Epsom Salt. After all nobody can say that Patience is not a good patient. Please pass on the sick bag. When they become truly hungry, they will return to their own vomit. Snooper will be glad of another death.

  • The Master Guitarist at Seventy

    The Master Guitarist at Seventy

    “Whenever I hear the word culture that is when I reach for my revolver”. This quote famously misattributed to a great insider of Nazi Germany, the obese, bejeweled Hermann Goring, is a classic example of how the very notion of culture may rub people the wrong way, particularly when national pride comes in the way. Yet the entire Nazi project was itself a misbegotten cultural venture. Culture is what defines a people in their material, spiritual and intellectual essence. This is why it is often important to sidestep failure in politics in order to highlight success in other realms of human endeavour.

    On September 22nd, the great Nigerian cultural icon and musical superstar, Sunday Adegeye, aka King Sunny Ade, will turn seventy to great aplomb. The mesmerizing, serially gifted Ondo-born crooner and electrifying stage wizard has been with us for so long that he seems to have become a permanent fixture of the Nigerian post-colonial culturefest. That Sunny is only turning seventy is a glorious tribute to formidable staying power and indomitable will. Nigerian politics has something to learn from Nigerian music about human resilience and the capacity for ceaseless self-surpassing.

    But the word at the moment is that Sunny Ade has mysteriously absconded from the Nigerian scene for a sojourn in America, the land of endless possibilities. Like all kings, Sunny Ade is a man of confounding mystery. The bet is that Sunny will be back on time, and in the full radiance of old African royalty. The supreme irony of Sunny Ade’s life is that although born into royalty as an Ondo prince, it has taken his famed guitar and monumental self-belief to canonize him as a global monarch of mellifluous music.

    Yet in another important respect, Sunny Ade’s life confirms our dictum that great expectations often happen in great but unexpected ways. The word out there is that the young Sunny Ade fled his Oshogbo homestead for Lagos on the pretext that he was going to “university” but in reality to pursue his fledgling musical career. Decades later and as a crowning feather to a glorious career, Sunny was appointed a Visiting Professor of Music at the notable Obafemi Awolowo University without having seen the four walls of a university. It doesn’t get more dizzying and gravity-defying.

    Four years ago in pursuit of the stated and avowed mission of this column to honour Nigerians who have really and truly distinguished themselves in their field of endeavour, this column paid tributes to Ebenezer Obey, the other Yoruba musical titan and Sunny Ade’s great rival and historical counterfoil, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday ( “A Master-musician at seventy”). The personal parallels and points of socio-cultural convergence between the two musical geniuses remain the same and we must seek approval to borrow generously from the earlier column.

    Music is one of the greatest creations of the human species. The love of harmony and concord is at the root of civilization and human development .So far nothing can rival the harmony of sweet music. The great musician is also a healer, a divine shaman and seer rolled into one and operating at the shifty margins of hope and honourable delusion. Let’s face it life itself would have been intolerable without these psychological sweeteners. Often conceived in scary solitude, music is executed at the level of communal rapture. Music is the food of the soul.

    If Obey had become a great lawyer or medical practitioner as his parents had secretly wished, he could not have contributed more to the development of culture and civilization. If only Nigeria could produce politicians who work so hard, so diligently and so assiduously at their game. In less than fifty years, Sunny Ade together with his great Yoruba contemporary have taken juju music to a realm that could only be dreamed of at the beginning of the last century. In fact at that point in time, there was nothing like juju music.

    It is a befitting tribute to these two great musical maestros and illustrious sons of the Yoruba race that they have turned the dreams of our forefathers to sweet actuality. Juju music has been transformed beyond our imagination. Today, the Nigerian nation and the Yoruba race are culturally richer and thanks to the fruits of their endeavour, their worthy descendants have placed the nation on the global map.

    Perhaps no two other musicians have completely dominated the musical scene of their society like the two titans. Beginning from the end of the sixties, Obey and Sunny seized the musical imagination of the Yoruba society by the scruff of the neck.  Fifty years later, the duo are still at it in their different ways. While Obey ventured into gospel music, bringing his great genius for enchanting rhythm to bear on spiritual songs, Sunny, the son of a master organist, is still entertaining audience with his explosive foot works.

    It was originally a musical union of contraries, forged in great rivalry and tense competition. In many respects, one was the perfect foil for the other. While Obey was calm, demure and a bit frozen and rigid on stage, Sunny was gamey and enterprising, darting and strutting like an energetic peacock; while Obey affected the airs of the traditional musical aristocrat, Sunny ambled about like a cosmopolitan modernist; while the one was a great composer of memorable lyrics with delectable rhythm to match, the other was a master craftsman and instrumentalist of juju music as electrifying orchestra.

    The rivalry and urge to excel drove each to the very frontiers of improvisation and ingenuity. They both brought great innovations to bear on the genre they have inherited. Each kept the other on his toes. Obey has disclosed that he often composed in toilets and the strangest of places and could go on for several nights without sleep. Both were lucky that their era coincided with the advent of modern technology and the amplification of sound brought about by electricity.

    Often, the innovation would backfire and things would go comically awry. In their passion to radicalise the music, the form sometimes went beyond the content. For example, when Sunny Ade introduced the electric piano to juju music, it elicited a sharp jibe from Ebenezer Obey:

    Olomolanke o le gberu de Dugbe

    E se oooo

    Thereafter, the wheeled monstrosity made a dramatic disappearance from Sunny Ade’s musical repertoire never to reappear. Both musicians also suffered witty taunts and condescending jibes from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who often counselled the upcountry yokels not to stray into areas of music beyond their professional competence. It was rumoured that Ebenezer Obey in particular took more than Afro beat percussion from the great musical genius and cultural icon, a situation which elicited some friendly fire from Fela:

    Esu lonse onimoto to pami laja ooo

    Esu lonse onimoto to pami laja

    Aja ti mo fi np’oya meta meta 

    Dende oro re….

    In celebrating the great duo, what is often forgotten is the influence of their local cultural milieu or what we propose as the tyranny of the mother culture on their music. In the case of Ebenezer Obey, the leisurely aristocratic beat with its brilliant talking drum as gloriously finessed by Mutiu Kekere Jimoh, the diminutive prodigy, reminds one of the Shakara music so beloved by the ancient Egba aristocracy.

    Shakara music with its sonorous crooning has influences of northern music as carried across Iseyin and the old Oyo plains. In the case of Sunny Ade, the pulsating muscular beat bears echoes of the coastal contacts of the old Ondo merchant class as seen in the music of the great duet, Suberu Oni and the Why Worry Orchestra and of course many forgotten and unheralded yoyogbe and gbatueyo folk musicians from the bowels of Egin  culture and civilization.

    The talking drum is a great innovation in traditional music with its own intricate dynamics and inner logic. It is worthy of further scholarly inquiries.  Depending on the mood of the drummer and the occasion, the talking drum sometimes complements the lyrical beat. At other times, it subverts the overall architecture of music by rebellious innuendoes. And when it is short of victims, it subverts itself like an eccentric ventriloquist.

    For example, when Ebenezer Obey sang the praise of Eji Gbadero who was later to meet a gruesome end at the executioners ’stakes, the talking drum went into a rapture of delirious approval:

    Omo Gbadero, dami, dami dami

    Ariwo majesin kii p’alakara

    Dami dami dami.

    But as soon as Sunny Ade begins singing about two lady fish hawkers in Ita Faji, the impish drummer began quietly upbraiding his master:

    Obinrin dudu obirin pupa

     Olorun maje o kuku obinrin.

    As it is in politics, so it is in music. In the dialogic imagination of the post-empire Yoruba people, there can be no authoritarian master voice. Snooper takes immense delight in decoding this class struggle even within the arena of music. Perhaps a peep into the very origins of juju music is in order at this point.

    As we have pointed out, juju music is very much a twentieth century phenomenon. The name juju itself is a corruption of voodoo, or African magic. Lagos was where it all began. There, freed slaves, their descendants and other metropolitan wannabes brought music back from Brazil, the Caribbean and Latin America. Lagos was a melting pot and port of strange music. Snooper could even detect a dash of the Dominican meringue music so beloved by the assassinated Trujillo aka the goat..

    Juju music began as lower class music fit for palm wine bars located in the inner city of old Lagos. It was the native antidote to High Life music and its more accomplished and refined instrumentation which was meant for the new coastal elite and burgeoning middle class. There were many great  artists of juju music who preceded both  Obey and Sunny but of particular historical significance were Ojoge Daniel, Julius Araba,  Fatai Rolling Dollar, Tunde King, Rose Adetola, Kokoro, the blind minstrel, Tunde Thomas a.k.a Nightingale and the great Ijesha crooner, I.K Dairo. As Einstein famously observed, a genius can see further because he is climbing on the back of earlier geniuses. These were the men on whose back Obey and Sunny rode to greater stardom and prosperity.

    There was also the intangible element of luck which Napoleon rates higher than sheer competence.  Obey and Sunny have been fabulously lucky in the historical conjuncture that threw them up. Sometimes there are priests without a religion and sometimes there is a religion without priests. The arrival of Obey and Sunny on the stage and the scene coincided with the dramatic explosion of petrodollar revenues.

    Tycoons, ersatz billionaires, emergency contractors, military buccaneers, land speculators, board members, metropolitan middlemen and sharp-eyed financial fixers also arrived on the scene. This new-monied class rewarded Obey and Sunny for their pains on a scale that was hitherto unimaginable and drove them to rarefied heights of self-surpassing excellence. Sectaries of class contentions should note that we are describing a historical process and not conducting a moral inquisition.

    Of the two musical avatars, it was Sunny Ade that was obviously more innovative and restless. There was a becalming and befitting equanimity about Obey which reminds one of the old Yoruba nobility. But it was Sunny Ade’s permanent experimentations, his restless innovations and creative edginess that eventually propelled him to global superstardom. According to Sunny himself, he was forced to borrow from modernist music when the ancient Yoruba instrumentations proved too archaic and simply inadaptable.

    But when it works, and when the form does not appear to outstrip the content, the fusion of the modern and the ancient is a glorious collage of superior music. The murmurs and tremors of internal dislocations as the medley marinates can be quite disarming and beguiling at the same time. It is a moot point as to whether Sunny himself knows how a particular beat will end or whether he simply surrenders himself to the corralling power of sheer musical genius.

    Thus a classic like omo wumi begins like a temperate semi-Highlife beat only to mutate into pulsating Ilorin drumming and echoes of Dadakuada music in the Oyinbo onitaba and bami shererere section. A wonderful panegyric to the ancient Alaafin throne and its current king incorporates the stately royal drumming of the ancient Yoruba Empire with unforgettable lyrics of feudal state power and its storied custodians. A brilliant homage to Erelu Abiola Dosumu turns praise-singing into a sublime art with its catchy rhythm and distant echoes of the Eyo masquerade and old Lagos royal beat.

    It has been said that when a man is diligent in his work, he will stand tall and walk before kings. In the case of Sunny Ade, he has not only walked tall and stood before kings, he has become a king in his own right, and before our very eyes too. He has done both his country and nationality proud. As he begins his autumnal descent into immortality, here is wishing the master guitarist many happy returns.

  • The Obasanjo Formula revisited

    The Obasanjo Formula revisited

    (Elite Pluralism or Electoral Federalism)

    Like all medical perplexities, the Nigerian patient has many physicians. Unfortunately, none is as yet a psychiatrist of collective hysteria. Hysteria defines the Nigerian condition. It drives the people to extremes of passion: from tender loving to mutual loathing, from reasonable cooperation with authorities to irrational confrontation with the state, and from kindness to many to cruelty to all. The human condition has never been richer in sheer diversity; or more intriguing in its seething and sizzling contradictions.

    As military rules recedes into remote antiquity in Nigeria, the contradictions of domesticated democratic rule are opening up. One of these contradictions is the very fact that the “open” society has now allowed Nigerians to have an idea of the glaring imperfections of democracy as naturalized in Nigeria. This is the longest spell of civil rule in the history of Nigeria.

    The First Republic lasted six years and the Second Republic four years. The Third Republic died invitro. With seventeen continuous years of civil rule under its belt, the Fourth Republic has even managed a historic regime change, with opposition elements defeating an incumbent government in the presidential election of 2015.

    Yet rather than thank God for little mercies and use the opportunity of relative stability to pose questions that will deepen the democratic process, or engage in fruitful and creative strategizing that will boost social justice and political inclusiveness, Nigerians have been quarrelling and bickering  over irrelevancies. It is all in the nature human societies, particularly when people believe they have been short-changed in the name of change.

    So, once again it is the season of open cynicism when men and women on the boil complain and question everything under the sun. But this monologic narrative about suffering under change does not exhaust the story in its diverse possibilities. Indeed, it is curious that we complain endlessly and rightly too about the legislature, the judiciary and the executive without appreciating the underlying irony or the conditions of possibility.

    These strident complaints seem to have come to a head with the administration of General Buhari for three interlocking reasons which may not be obvious to the president and his harsh interlocutors. First, given the circumstances of his current ascendancy, people complain because they believe that this ought to be a listening government.

    Second, they complain because they believe that they have a government strong and resolute enough and with the capacity and resilience to absorb criticism without toppling into self-absorbed intolerance. Finally, people complain because it is seen as part of change or a longing for change. The whole Buhari project itself, it can be argued, is anchored on a relentless electoral critique of the PDP project of perpetual power without responsibility.

    It was a political siege lasting for a whopping sixteen years and three epic presidential slugfests beginning from 2003. There is no evidence that Buhari was part of, or ever bought into, the military conspiracythat foisted General Obasanjo on the nation. The only time the two military heavyweights ever collaborated was during the short-lived Association for Good Governance- or something to that effect-formed after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election. Predictably, the whole thing ended in a fiasco as a result of multiple political ambushes.

    Having been a serial victim of electoral malfeasance himself, it will be very strange if President Buhari were to be seen opposing or rejecting necessary electoral reforms and the structural adjustments which will put the electoral destiny of the nation beyond the manipulative reach of a few people or an oligarchic cabal.

    Yet even more curious is the fact that in all the noise about restructuring, fiscal federalism, political reform, modernization etc.., we have been slow tocome up with the notion of electoral federalism in opposition to elite pluralism or the plutocratic politics so beloved of our retired generals and the dominant faction of the political elite.

    Electoral federalism presents a major challenge to multi-ethnic and culturally polarized nations, but it is also a nation-enhancing formula for overcoming primordial divisions. By giving sinews and strengths to the smallest units, it ensures that no part is made to feel electorally unimportant or surplus to hegemonic requirements.

    But even more importantly, the voting template is structured in such a way that no single unit or combination of two hegemonic blocs can determine the electoral fate of the nation.  In elite pluralism, once the political barons have made up their minds, two elite formations can combine to impose their rule if not vision on the rest of the society.

    The perils of elite pluralism and plutocratic politics can be seen in General Obasanjo’s recent assertion that he (Obasanjo) and three other people gathered together to impose General Buhari on the nation. Coyness and self-effacement have never been part of the former president’s virtues, particularly when it comes to political self-advertisement. Yet it is quite intriguing that on this occasion, perhaps jolted by his own dangerous indiscretion, Obasanjo issued a public retraction and ate his own word.

    But the Owu-born warlord need not be remorseful or sorrowful about this indiscretion. This is the nature of politics and democracy in Nigeria, particularly after the advent of military rule. The selectorate select and then ask the electorate to elect. If the selectorate fail to select, there would be nothing for the electorate to elect.

    This was how Obasanjo himself came to be in 1999 and in 2003 when he steamrolled the entire nation by unilaterally electing to act on behalf of the selectorate.  Again in 2007, Obasanjo, in a rather crude show of unilateral power, appropriated the will of the selectorate to impose Yar’Adua and Jonathan on the nation having failed in his bid to extend his tenure. The electorate had no choice but to elect accordingly.

    The only known exception to this iron law of electoralism in Nigeria was in 1993 when General Ibrahim Babangida,  panicked into careless brinksmanship, failed to select and the electorate elected an unanointed and unselected MKO Abiola. All hell was let loose and the election was summarily annulled by the full selectorate.  Having failed the nation in this military-ordained transfer of power to the extent that he imperilled continued military rule, Babangida was lucky that he was only forcefully shunted aside for General Abacha, the ultimate enforcer, to gather the reins of power and the scrambled wits of the military oligarchy.

    But not being very intelligent or an astute reader of the wider political currents, Abacha mistook his historic brief as the final undertaker of military rule to mean continued military rule or at the very least his own transformation to a civilian despot. His old military cohorts such as Generals Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, whoin their political delusion still thought there was something to play for were swiftly impounded and thrown into the dungeon of the dead and dying. But in a historic clearing of the clogged deck facilitated by external interests, both Abacha and Abiola had to be eliminated to pave the way for General Obasanjo.

    Having been the major beneficiary of this occult democracy and the deadly manipulation of elite plasticity in Nigerian politics, it is understandable if General Obasanjo continues to be enamoured of its schemes and scheming. Obasanjo himself and his disastrous impositions are prime examples of what is wrong with this type of command democracy and its manipulations of narrow elite consensus and institutional incoherence in the country.

    There is always a ring of fait accompli to this kind of oligopolistic politics and the manipulation of elite fault lines by a few supermen in a multi-ethnic country cobbled together by colonial interlopers, since nature abhors a political vacuum.  The danger with this kind of politics is not that it is inherently evil or amoral. It is more dangerous than that.

    Since it is unable or unwilling to avail itself of the need for the constant restructuring and the architectural revamping of the polity which throws up new talents and energies needed to galvanize the nation it is constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel and throwing up expired non-starters such as we have seen with Obasanjo and his jaded impositions. Its mere existence therefore becomes an iron and binding justification for its continued existence as we have seen in Obasanjo’s unguarded outburst.

    For example since the advent of the Fourth Republic and owing to the reality of structural marginalization and political amputation arising from the civil war and hegemonic politics, there is no evidence that a military general or political figure of commensurate stature from either the South South or the South East has ever taken partin the oligarchic deliberations which precede the foisting of a ruler on the whole country.

    The current turmoil and turbulence and the cries of exclusion and marginalization from those parts of the country should serve as a warning that we cannot continue to exclude significant sectors of the nation from its power configuration. Something will give and if care is not taken the force of inevitability will lead to the inevitability of force.

    The Americans who we like to ape for the wrong reasons are also conditional democrats. Their founding fathers also knew that the election of a nation’s president is too important to be left wholly in the hands of the electorate with its untamed and often unwise rabble. They therefore came up with the idea of an electorate college as the ultimate arbiter of who becomes the president of America.

    Consequently, when they are voting for a president, Americansare also selecting the electors who will act as the ultimate umpire in conjunction with the state legislatures, the governors and the congress. But America is a land of constant restructuring and ceaseless self-surpassing. When this inventive 1787 contraption ran into stormy waters in 1800 in the historic Jefferson-Burr presidential duel, they quickly came up with a structural amendment which has since undergone several amendments as unforeseen circumstances develop.

    In the light of the foregoing and given the sheer scope and magnitude of state corruption that has been revealed to the public by his fortuitous advent, General MohammaduBuhari will be the last member of the old oligarchy to ever rule Nigeria. The retired general should seriously ponder his strategic role and historic destiny as the final undertaker of the old Nigerian ruling class in all its political, economic and electoral turpitude and should not allow himself to be misled by hawks insisting that the current configuration will do.

    This is why the president, rather than seeing those who are clamouring for the urgent restructuring of the political, economic and electoral organogram of the country as irritants and closet adversaries should see them as allies seeking to help him midwife a new Nigeria. As it is, the general appears torn between the false claims of those who insist they brought him to power and the wider and more legitimate claims of the Nigerian masses who swept him to power to save them from their tormentors.

    Given the current mood of the country, if the retired general should choose to run in 2019 based on a revalidation or mere recombination of the existing formula rooted in the coalition of two hegemonic blocs, there is every possibility that the nation might dissolve into terminal anarchy and chaos. Here is hoping that President Buhari will not be the last ruler of Nigeria as we know it.

  • Okon survives WAI mugging only to speak ill of the dead

    As the rumours of the death of a leading Second Republic politician who has contributed immensely to the political and economic misfortunes of the country began to gain considerable traction, Okon has been huffing and puffing with malicious gusto asking the almighty God to make sure that the departed crook and sleaze merchant rot in the hottest part of hell.

    For days, Okon has been nursing the wounds he sustained in a nasty street brawl while posing as a rogue WAI official arresting pedestrian violators of the overhead crossing at Oworo. But given the nasty mood in the country, it was obvious that an irate populace was not about to buy into the new WAI nonsense, particularly given the background of economic and political miscreants roaming the streets without any remorse or shame. An angry crowd had pounced on Okon and handed him the beating of his life. He had been carried home with his nose bulging, his uniform torn and his swagger gone.

    “Ha oga, katakatadey for town.Famine dey road and hunger dey highway.  He be like if say dis WAI thin no go work dis time oo. Dem come wire man well well for Oworo. Why WAI now, dem Ibo man dey scream as him dey slap man like dem Taekwondo boy”, the crazy boy moaned.

    “Okon, you are a fool. There is time for everything. We have told the man that you cannot step into the same river twice”, snooper offered. But the crazy boy’s capacity for swift recovery is a tad short of the miraculous. A few days after this and resplendent in resource control attire with Marrakesh fez cap to match, Okon barged into the sitting room with Baba Lekki in tow.

    “Oga, man wan quickly reach demolosi man’s residence make man sign demcondomness register. He don reach time make we dey tell demyeyepeople dat God go punish dem”, Okon announced.

    “Ha Okon, but I heard that the man was going to be buried in Israel where he died”, snooper noted.

    “Israel ko, Ishmael ni”, Baba Lekki jeered with a vicious grin.

    “Ha oga you dey behind news. When dem tell dem illustrate village wife dat Israel be dem place where demdey wake after three days dem woman ask make dem bring dem body quick quickbecosdem useless man must never to wake again”,Okon retorted.

    “So what will you put in the condolence register?” snooper asked.

    “I go ask God make him punish the crook, make him never know peace and make hunger dey wire him as hunger dey wire us”, the mad boy drooled endlessly.

    “But Okon, you don’t speak ill of the dead”, snooper said hushing up the crazy rogue.

    “Ogana Yoruba wuruwurube dat. If a man don die, how come he dey ill again?”Okonrejoined as he dragged out his drunken accomplice.

  • Two Brazilian Miracles for Nigeria

    Two Brazilian Miracles for Nigeria

    The 2016 Rio Olympics has now come and gone. But the stupendous hangover lingers on for the host nation and arguably the most successful participant. When Santa Claus beautifies the Brazilian samba everybody wants the beat to go on forever. The Rio Olympics has been adjudged as a spectacular success, one of the most inspiring and splendidly organized ever. A week after the events, there remains the sweet scent of human triumph against impossible odds.

    For Brazil, the host nation, it is the equivalent of a modern miracle; and there is a magical hint of the comeback country in all its gravity-defying essence. Given the seemingly laggard preparations, there were many who swore that the games would never take off or that if they ever did it would be so miserable and dismal, that the foolhardy Brazilians would be forced to hide their head in shame. Up till the opening ceremony, there were whispers that Brazil might throw in the towel. It was as if the endemic tropical languor was about to overwhelm this mammoth nation. But Brazil threw its hat in the ring instead.

    The reason for the singularly unoptimistic and bleak view of Brazil’s prospects is obvious. In recent times, the country has been so traumatized by a series of interlocking political and economic crises that it appeared to the outside world that something was about to give. The president who was facing impeachment over allegations of corruption was eventually impeached. In the event, the feisty and indomitable Dilma Rousseff was forced to watch from the sidelines an opening ceremony which was supposed to be a personal coronation; a site of great historic triumph.

    But far more serious was the fact that the economic miracle wrought by the immediate past president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which had seen about forty million Brazilians lifted from the trough of abject poverty to the portals of prosperity had stalled. The much beloved Lula himself was in disgrace and political ruination having been found guilty of corrupt practices. The fetid Brazilian slums otherwise known as favelas normally bristling with feral violence and social implosion were rousing once again as implacable returnees lurk with intent.

    So serious was the situation that on the eve of the opening ceremony workmen were still working round the clock even as harried artisans could be seen feverishly trying to put finishing touches to structures that seemed destined to remain monuments to architectural folly. And then there was a looming plague known as the Zika virus. But the Brazilians pulled off a dramatic coup. It was a feat of national redemption which will remain evergreen in the annals of the nation-state.

    After the opening ceremony which completely silenced cynics, this immense former Portuguese colony and slummy backwaters of underdevelopment left no one in doubt that it intended to make the Rio Olympics an incontrovertible evidence of its arrival at the front seat of modernity and rationality. In the words of Ade Ojeikere, the fine and ever perceptive columnist of The Nation who was there: “With the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics, the Samba land can safely be called an industrialized nation”.

    The last World Cup? It has been said that the hour of gold can also coincide with the hour of lead. If the last World Cup was a national triumph for Brazil, it was also a site of a great national calamity. For most denizens of this soccer crazy nation, Brazil failed woefully where it mattered most and that was in the department of the alternative national religion: football. For this deeply religious and superstitious people, the event is often referred to as “the bad thing” and it has entered national folklore as a day of dark portents.

    They are referring to the clinical decimation and disembowelment of the Brazilian national soccer team by a pack of German hard boys in a historic 7-1 drubbing at the semi-final stage of the competition. The entire nation went into a grief-stricken coma. The Maracana stadium, the Mecca of soccer, had seen floods of Brazilian tears before, particularly in the historic fiasco against Uruguay in the 1950 final, but never before on this industrial scale. Men wept and women wailed even as old people sobbed uncontrollably. It was as if the nation has been hit by a major earthquake.

    For this writer, the enduring symbol of this Brazilian soccer debacle is frozen in the image of a beautiful Brazilian girl who suddenly toppled and lurched forward on her seat as if shot from behind when the Germans crashed in their fifth goal. It was the most tragically sublime expression wounded national pride that one has ever seen and will remain with yours sincerely this side of the abyss of transition.

    But it was the Brazilian masters who had stabbed themselves in the back. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat the past. For decades, analysts have been warning that the fluid and free-flowing Brazilian soccer template with its carefree naivety and lack of meticulous focus is very vulnerable to the relentless Panzer-like soccer of the Germans and the sublime cynicism of the Italians and Spaniards. In 1982, not even the magic of Eder, Socrates, Zico, Junior and Falcao could save a brilliant and iconic Brazilian team from the relentless goal-poaching of Paulo Rossi.

    A week ago, everything, including the God of soccer, came together seamlessly this time for the Brazilians in the Olympics soccer final against the inevitable Germans. It was a Brazilian team redolent of  future greatness. In an epic feat of national redemption, the Brazilians have managed to overcome the unrestrained flamboyance and lack of coordination. The soccer still flowed as if the masters were dancing to the samba. The brilliant individual flourish remained and so did the deft magical passing.

    But the Brazilians have learnt how to “kill” space going forward and to quickly fall back when dispossessed. In the event, the game stalemated into a deadly midfield duel with neither side wanting to take unwarranted chances which could disrupt the rigid militarized formation. In the ensuing penalty shoot-out, it was Neymar da Silva Santos junior, the eccentric Brazilian genius, who made the difference. Politically, economically and in the soccer department that mattered most to the nation, the Brazilians have come back from the dead.

    This inspiring Brazilian double miracle commends itself to a nation like Nigeria as it struggles to overcome its internal difficulties. It is brimming with tropes of redemptive resources. Like the Congo Democratic Republic, this mammoth former colony also shares some major similarities with Nigeria. They are both domains of immense natural resources and variegated economic possibilities.

    But Brazil could have been in a worse shape than Nigeria. Although Portugal was technically the very first modern nation-state dating back to the twelfth century, the ancient Portuguese were bearers of a rudimentary modernity shot through with pre-modern irrationality and superstitious fetishes. In terms of civilization and enlightenment they were only marginally better than the ancient Africans they enslaved. But they had superior firepower and a genius for global seafaring.

    Yet since the Portuguese had no conception or concept of the nation-state, all their prized overseas possessions, including Brazil itself, were treated as a mere extension or ancillary to the metropolitan homeland. At a point all the colonies were incorporated into the metropole in the first tri-continental kingdom the world has seen. At another point when the Iberian heat became threatening the entire Portuguese royalty relocated to Brazil and this was the case until a series of local revolts put an end to the royal road show.

    This was why all the Portuguese colonies in Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, descended into huge infernos of war and chaos as the struggle for liberation and decolonization got underway. You cannot give what you don’t have. Portugal itself underwent a revolution to see off its ancient ruling caste only in the last quarter of the last century. But all this was mere antiquated stirring in a superannuated feudal tea cup. It was a case of the blind leading the blind.

    Yet unlike their indigenous African counterparts, the Brazilian white-settler ruling class have taken the task of modernizing their colonial behemoth far more seriously. This has proved the difference between Brazil and Nigeria. In constant and continuous exertions lasting almost six hundred years, the Brazilians have seen off their colonial conquerors, their imported royalty, their meddlesome military and lately their hegemonic white master-class currently fighting a rearguard battle for a return to the retrogressive status quo. Nigeria has not even thrown up an organic and cohesive nationalist ruling elite.

    So while we are ruing the paucity of medals from Rio, let us also remember that this is a reflection of the endemic Nigerian disease of confusing the symptom with the real ailment. Medals are for heroic and well-organized nations. Until a truly modernizing elite arrive that will drive accelerated development and deepen the democratic process in Nigeria, medals will be few and far between. This is the lesson of the Brazilian miracles.

  • Giving a dog a good name

    (A primer of political insults)

    Oh dear, of dear!! What do you do with these impossible Nigerians and their reckless impetuosity? It has been said that you give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. But what do you do about a fellow who gives a dog a good name in order to hang himself? It is only in Nigeria, with its explosive contradictions, that such impossible paradoxes stalk the land.

    But political insults have been with us from time immemorial. They jazz and sex up political discourse often creating an independent academic industry in the process. In addition to calling Margaret Thatcher Rhoda the Rhino, Dennis Healey, the recently departed old bruiser of British politics, once likened an attack from an opponent to being savaged by a dead sheep. Another British political heavyweight who was himself nicknamed “Tarzan” was known to have dismissed an opponent as a semi house-trained polecat. After being repeatedly pestered by his opponents to confirm whether he was a vet, a Roman senator finally exploded: “Are you ill?”

    Snooper’s favourite political insult of all time came from Nancy Astor, the feisty British aristocrat and game-changing politician. After finding herself in a hostile crowd of rustic farmers, one of them came forward to ask her whether she even knew how many toes a pig has, Nancy returned with a withering stare and then calmly ordered the lout: “Take off your boots and count, man!”

    Of late the print and social media have been awash with the story of a man who chose to treat his canine pet to a presidential patronymic. The rogue satirist, in full exercise of his fundamental human rights, chose to give his dog the name Buhari. When this was not achieving enough combustible traction, our man decided to emblazon the name on the poor dog whereupon he proceeded to lead it on a walk through Sango Ota, an area heavily populated by northern adherents of Islam.

    The miracle of it all was that Mr Joe Chinakwe lived to regret it. He lives in an area known for its tame and temperate response to social roguery. In some areas of the country prone to instant and prompt reprisal against what is considered religious and social affront, he would not have lived to regret it. Those affronted by Chinakwe’s conduct did the right and civilized thing by reporting him to the police. The police, without seeking to undermine his human rights, did the right thing by slamming Chinakwe with the charge of conducting himself in a manner prejudicial to public order. It is unfortunate that thereafter, barons of ethnic hate took up positions on either side of the divide.

    If we are going to live together in this country, and until we aggregate some core national values from the push and pull of continuous striving to build a viable nation, it is important to recognize and understand the cultural and religious sensitivities of our disparate people. In some Nigerian cultures dog meat is regarded as a heart lifting delicacy, whereas in other areas, the dog is regarded as a filthy animal to be treated with astringent disavowal.

    But even more politically important is the fact that however much President Buhari’s stock appears to have dipped and the diminished in some sections of the country, he remains a figure of mass adulation and messianic adoration among the Northern Nigerian masses who regard him with a fanatical and religious awe. From the political and cultural perspective, it is foolhardy and reckless of anybody to give his dog such a public presidential cognomen and then to proceed to walk it through a potentially hostile corridor.

    When cornered, Anakwe was alleged to have changed tack, claiming that he was a big fan of President Buhari and that he merely wanted to draw attention to his heroism and valour. This is surely a strange way to treat one’s hero. What all this suggests is spineless mischief of the low life, itinerant hawker variety. The fact that Mr Anakwe was initially unable to meet the generous bail condition suggests an existence at the hazy margins of society more miserable than we imagined.

    While one must take a very dim view of the tendency in certain parts of the country to resort to savage and barbaric reprisals, it is now imperative to start building the blocks of affection and mutual trust in this deeply polarized country all over again. A flourish of goodwill and official magnanimity are in order if we are going to jumpstart this process.  The Presidency should not allow the impression to deepen and to be frozen in the political consciousness that it does not warm to a section of the country simply because it voted against it in the last presidential election. Whoever ordered it, the case against Anakwe should be discontinued forthwith.

  • Lagos, the Black megalopolis

    Lagos, the Black megalopolis

    There is always something magical and enchanting about great cities. They seem to have a character of their own. You feel them and you feel for them, as if they are living entities. Their pulse and pulsations register with you. You pray for them and even imagine their travails. You sense that beyond their architectural wonders and epic feats of engineering lies the history of impossible labour and costly exertions. All great conurbations evoke this feeling of being alive and kicking. This is simply because they are a great tribute to modern national pride or ancient ethno-hubris. Just imagine how many lives were lost constructing the Egyptian pyramids or the ancient Chinese walls.

    Yet great cities also provoke irrational hatred and malice in people who believe that their own ancestors have been cheated. Rome was reduced to rubbles. Carthage was so fearsomely smitten out of existence that it was only in 1985 that a treaty was signed to forget the past. Paris was going to suffer the same fate in the hands of Adolf Hitler. But when Albert Speer, the great Nazi architect, finally arrived at the beautiful French capital, he was so overwhelmed by its grandeur and sheer magnificence that he decided that if the craven French could create such a human wonder, the Germans, with their Aryan hubris and superiority complex, ought to be able to come up with something even more spectacular. It was a pipe dream.

    It is said that adversity often provokes the greatest creative spirit in a people.   Now that it is clear that Nigeria is beset by urgent developmental challenges, it is time to begin to think out of the box. There is a time for everything. If Nigeria were not to collapse under the weight of political and economic malfeasance, it should be obvious by now that the era of those who seek access to power as an avenue for luxurious living and unearned social privileges has come to an end. We either come up with our first eleven as pathfinders or we end up with our last eleven as pallbearers.

    Thinking out of the box is not synonymous with reinventing the wheel. We have once suggested that Nigerian developmental planners should come up with the concept of autonomous zones which will drive accelerated development and the rapid industrialization of the nation and which must be allowed to develop at their own pace without interference from an overbearing but already overburdened centre frozen in unitary rigor mortis.

    These zones, with five in the north and five in the South and with Lagos serving as preeminent national hub, will serve as magnetic lodes for attracting investments and unleashing  gigantic human resources now trapped between abandoned farms and collapsed factories. They must be linked with an effective rail and road network and can be grouped around the old River basins and existing strategic landmarks such as the ancient city of Kano and the important commercial and entrepreneurial nerve centre of Aba. If we are serious, Aba should be able to link up with Port-Harcourt in a generation, just as Lagos is linking up with Abeokuta to its north west, Badagry to the west and Ikorodu/Shagamu to the north east.

    These were the thoughts that preyed on one’s mind last Monday as one witnessed the signing to law of two historic bills by the governor of Lagos State Akin Ambode. The first bill, the Lagos State Property Development Law, is a much hailed and welcomed breather for the law-abiding citizens of Lagos state in the sense that it criminalized the much dreaded menace of armed land grabbers and murderous miscreants known as “omo onile”.

    The activities of these people have turned life into hell for well-meaning investors and developers who are often subject to serial swindles that is if they manage to escape with their life. A lot of people have not been so lucky. Many have been wasted. But it is not only the “omo onile” who are involved. There are also organized criminal syndicates who forcibly expel people from their land and who act as if they are above the law. It is a practice that dates far back.

    Those who are not so young must remember the exploits of a leading Lagos socialite of the mid-seventies who specialized in eliminating legitimate landowners and rival speculators by coming up with perfectly concocted alibis until nemesis caught up with him in the guise of General Obasanjo during his first incarnation as a military ruler. Obasanjo made sure that justice was not only done but was seen to have been done.

    As many developmental experts have noted, the issue of land is at the core of modern development. Radical theorists of economic growth and rapid expansion have in fact come up with the template that links accelerated development to official valorization of landed resources and their judicious redistribution. You can only begin to talk of the possibility of rapid modernization when land is divested from the feudal clutches of titular barons of antiquity and other seigneurial speculators without any vision or notion of the modern society.

    Yet like all human enterprises, this one is also prone to abuse and open mismanagement. When the power of administration and arbitration is vested in a government of disoriented tribesmen lacking in rationality and the imperative of modernization, the allocation of landed resources can also lead to bureaucratic bottle necks, sharp practices and the advent of a new landed gentry which fuels social injustice and a perpetual class warfare between the possessed and the dispossessed.

    As it has been famously noted, all the remedial measures on earth can hardly help the poor when the earth is monopolized by a few. The Lagos State government under Ambode would do well to guard against this anomaly in order not to exchange prehistoric monkeys for primitive baboons.

    As the economic, political and cultural hub of the new nation, Lagos has taken its manifest destiny very much to heart. Ever since its forcible incorporation as a British Protectorate in the middle of the nineteenth century, the sprawling metropolis has served as the intellectual, economic and political pacesetter for the rest of the country. The urbane civility, dignified regality and royal courtesy of its succeeding monarchs are well documented.

    The patriotism of its famed anti-colonial pamphleteers and cultural nationalists is the stuff of heroic legend. The decorum, integrity and fair-mindedness of its early business class echoes through history and folklore. In the run up to independence Lagos was a shining exemplar of inclusive politics of a pan-Nigerian hue and multi-ethnic vigour which ought to have served as a template and redemptive trope for post-independence Nigeria. But this gathering of all tribes at the shrine of the new nation has evaporated, leaving a fractured and bitterly polarized nation.

    Although predominantly a Yoruba town with an infusion of ancient Edo nobility, the psychic energies that drive Lagos towards metropolitan stardom and its destiny as the first authentic African megalopolis are multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-racial. With its Brazilian returnees, its Sierra Leonean recaptives, its stranded Nupe warrior-class, its Igbo traders, its runaway Hausa soldiers and former European adventurers marooned by choice, Lagos is an authentic mélange; a statement of intent by Africa. This colonial and post-colonial hybridity has helped to foster a sense of oneness and belonging for all bar a few hiccups arising from competition for increasingly scarce resources.

    Why then, apart from its obvious advantages, does Lagos seem to excel and to be far ahead of the rest of the country in terms of spiritual independence, economic buoyancy and political gamesmanship despite the advent of military despotism and civilian autocracy? The magical answer lies in political will and sheer economic daring which confirms the thesis about the superiority of thinking outside the box. Lagos has been well-served by the political wizardry and fiscal devilry of its Fourth Republic leaders.

    Looking around the hall last Monday morning as Governor Akin Ambode signed the two bills into law, one cannot but be impressed by the dynamic energies among all the branches of government which is sorely lacking at the federal level. Inside the hall were the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Funmilayo Atilade, the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon Mudashiru Obasa,  the Attorney General, the chairmen of the two committees and of course the top technocrats and bureaucrats who worked the system behind limelight.

    But nothing that is worth it comes cheap. The synergy between the Lagos executive and its judiciary is the product of a series of modernizing reforms pioneered by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo while he served as Attorney General of the state. It has seen the Lagos judiciary top the national table as the best-equipped and best remunerated judicial entity in all of the federation. The succession plan is well-delineated and had never been subject to unwarranted external interference or undue political disruption. Everything works seamlessly. It is a system that has bought into modern rationality.

    Despite the occasional legislative firefight and the odd internal power struggle there is also an organic coherence and cohesiveness between the Lagos State legislature and the executive which owes its sustainability to shared vision and what is known as elective affinity. They are birds of the same feather, sired from the same political loin. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, Lagos has been ruled by the same dominant political tendency, no matter the internal mutations, whether it is AD, AC, ACN or APC.

    This total politics, reminiscent of the total football of the famous Dutch masters of the seventies, is often a political beauty to behold in motion as it fires on all cylinders in its vertical and horizontal mobilization of elites and masses alike. It is a tribute to the superior organizational acumen and political wizardry of one exceptional individual, his tested loyalists and engine room strategists. It has created exponential wealth for the state and enough resources to commence a comprehensive welfare package which will rival the modernizing project of the avatar from Ikenne.

    Lagos State has been lucky that unlike what usually obtains at the federal level, it fell at the onset of the Fourth Republic into the hands of those who actually fought and resisted military tyranny. Needless to add that they are also cosmopolitan, well-travelled as a result of political adversity, and well grounded in the complex dynamics of the modern economy.

    The pay off has been tremendous and even epochal. The political cohesion has enabled Lagos to weather the antics of post-military civilian autocrats and to see off their barely veiled aggression in major legal duels which have become constitutional landmarks for the Fourth Republic. The Local Development Authorities created by the state may remain “inchoate”, but it is the inchoate and incoherent mindset of those who believe that all parts of the country must develop at the same pace and tempo that will eventually spell terminal disaster for the nation.

    Either as a British Protectorate, colonial enclave or post-colonial state, Lagos has bucked this dire unitarist arrangement. It is a model of strategic restructuring combined with relentless modernization without any frills or fanfare that commends itself to other parts of the country. This is the heroic legacy that Akin Ambode has inherited. A gifted economic thinker, strategic planner and deeply deliberate administrator, there is nothing to suggest, in fifteen months of brilliant governance, that he is unworthy of these glorious antecedents. Lagos is the first truly African megalopolis.

     

  • Okon leads Bring Back Our Boys

    There were you in Summer 1996? It was twenty years ago when the Green Eagles at the Semi-final stage of the Atlanta Olympics performed one of the incredible soccer feats of all time by going ahead to defeat the mighty Brazilian football team after clearing a two-goal deficit. In the final game, the eagles went ahead to trounce Argentina to become Olympics soccer gold medalists. Despite the draconian rule of General Sani Abacha, it was a golden moment for Nigeria, to be eternally savoured and never to be forgotten.

    Snooper remembers watching the epic match in Birmingham, England with his eleven year old son now a looming and looping adult of American basketball proportions. On the dot of twelve midnight, with the situation apparently hopeless and with Brazil and Romario threatening to increase the two-goal lead, the boy was sent to bed as there was school the following day.

    Shortly thereafter, a modern football miracle began to unfold. The Eagles not only cancelled the two-goal deficit but went ahead to score a spectacular goal which ironically reminds one of Brazil’s concluding flourish against Italy in the 1970 World Cup Final. When the younger snooper was told of the result the following morning, he was so incredulous that he raced downstairs to switch on the tele-sport. And there it was starring the young man in the face.

    On Wednesday, as the Green Eagles locked horn with a German team notorious for its precise passes and Teutonic thoroughness, one was gripped with fear laced by nostalgia. Miracles hardly repeat themselves and 1996 is not 2016.Nigeria’s soccer feistiness has since disappeared. In the event, it turned out a damp squib as a drained and exhausted Nigerian Team took on the Germans and their machine-like ferocity.

    Yours sincerely had hardly settled down to watch the match when the screen began flashing that the Germans were a goal up. Thinking that it was a glitch which would clear up when the telecast came back to its senses, it turned out that the Germans were actually looking to increase their lead. The Eagles were lucky not to be submerged. As soon as the match ended, Okon shambled in with a tipsy Baba Lekki in tow. Since the last confrontation about budget padding, the boy has been on his best behavior.

    “Oga, no be di thin we dey say be dis? Make dem bring back our boys come help dis yeye boys make dem stop disgrace country?” the crazy boy moaned.

    “Which boys?” snooper inquired.

    “Our boys dem Oyinbo people don capture with dem Boko Halal. Dem Alaba boy dey play for dem Austria, dem Dave Alli for dem England, Dave-Kanu for Wales, Iponkiri for dem Sweden, Badegi for even common Ghana and Lakukulala for dem Belgium,” the wacko boy screamed.

    “Okon, you are fool. I don tell you say Lukalu is from Congo and Boateng is from Ghana.” Baba Lekki drunkenly interjected.

    “Baba na burukutu dey worry you. Congo dey Zaria and Badegi na Nupe. Oga dem thin be say make una give us mobilization and TAM money make we go finish dem for Abuja.” Okon gloated.

    “And what is TAM?”

    “Ha dat one na turn around maintenance. Suppose dem Kukuruku soldier come say make we turn back quick quick? You no fit argue with dem. Dem go remove your eye with clipper, so make man turn around jeje”.  It was on this note that snooper dismissed the duo.

     

  • On the imperative of modernization

    On the imperative of modernization

    (Political barbarism versus economic vandalism)

    According to optimists of ultimate state redemption, Rome was not built in a day. All empires and nations take quite some time getting into their stride. They do not just get up and start walking. On the other hand, it is also known that mighty empires and nations do not always succumb to a single major wound. Like the Roman Empire, they perish from a thousand wounds, a great elephant besieged by a determined pride of lions.

    Sometimes in late1984, Dr Lasisi Olusola Soile, a much adored former teacher turned colleague of this writer, came to the office to lodge a stern complaint about the state of the nation. Before one could offer a word of solace, this most unflappable and unruffled of men sank into a nearby chair to continue his jeremiad. “At least the Roman Empire lasted about a thousand years. But in our life time, we have witnessed the rise and fall of Nigeria”, the late scholar rued on.

    This was a time when the foraging for essential commodities had turned men of timber and learning into testy and rowdy children on endless queues. Thirty two years after, the queues have disappeared even though Nigeria still runs a primitive economy which does not produce enough milk, eggs and sugar to feed its populace. Essential commodities have become non-essential. The professoriate has been thoroughly pulverized. The nation itself has descended several notches in the ladder of decay and desuetude but it is still miraculously hanging on against all existential odds.

    Fortuitously, it was the general from Daura who was in charge of cleansing the Augean stable left by a corrupt and dissolute political class then just as he is currently in charge grappling with a more humongous mess left by a diseased and debauched political elite.  That time, General Buhari came as a youthful, lean, angular, no-nonsense implacable military autocrat whose word was law.

    But this time around, it is as an aging, weathered civilian and bloodied veteran of several judicial combats who has gone to hell and back and whose word is no longer law. As this column has repeatedly cautioned the general, you cannot step into the same river twice. A Heraclitean flux is in operation. Time does not stay still.

    A few months into his first tenure, General Mohammadu Buhari paid a scheduled visit to the Sokoto Caliphate, the seat of modern Nigeria’s dominant power masters. In royal banter, an exultant and effusive but infirm Sultan Abubakar famously inquired about his august and distinguished guest: “Ina dogo? (Where is the tall one?) Today, many Nigerians are beginning to ask the same question.

    But it is not the man from Daura that is actually missing in action. What is missing is a Nigeria that has failed to significantly modernize its political and economic parameters. Given the momentous discovery that the security branch of the executive turned money meant for the procurement of arms for the defence of the territorial integrity at a most critical point of national vulnerability to an all-comers bazaar of political gamesmanship, given the current scandal of padding that has engulfed the House of Representatives and the alleged forgery of standing rules in the senate, it should be obvious that what we are dealing with is a primitive and pre-modern mode of governance that has no equivalent anywhere in the world in its sheer lack of modern rationality with its ethical mooring.

    A vandal is a primitive member of an ancient Germanic tribe that exults in willful destruction and wanton desecration. If we categorize those fellows in the creeks who wantonly and willfully destroy pipelines and oil installations as vandals, then what do we call members of the political class, particularly the National Assembly, who destroy our economy through mindless looting and who desecrate our politics through electoral violence and the violation of the sacred legislative rule of procedure?  It is a case of economic vandalism cancelling out political barbarism.

    This is why the cries for restructuring are a coded signal for the swift modernization of the nation’s economic and political categories. Such a modernizing imperative is not just about outer “structure” but must entail a stringent internal restructuring and the structural modification of the character and psychology of the Nigerian political class which will make them amenable to the institutional rationality which undergirds the governance structure of all modern societies no matter how they arrive at political and economic modernity.

    Whether we choose to restructure first or we choose the more revolutionary imperative of comprehensive modernization which will sweep away all the cobwebs and limpets of feudal anachronism and political barbarism from this land is now beside the point. We just cannot go on like this without the turbulent contradictions overwhelming the creaking structure. If care is not taken, it is actually the uneven nature of political consciousness among different sections of the country which we wish to will away and the sharply differentiated modes of economic production among the diverse components of the country which may eventuate in a violent and forcible restructuring of the nation.

    As it is at the moment and no matter the veneer of modern governance,  the Nigerian political system is largely powered by a primitive will to corner and accumulate power for its own purpose without the will or the urge to use such power to re-engineer the society or a visionary impulse to ameliorate the sorry plight of hapless citizens, while the economy is driven by a primordial and anti-modern will to appropriate the entire fiscal patrimony and resources of a country for ignoble reasons.

    This combination of political barbarism and economic vandalism explains why the Speaker of the House of Representatives in a twenty first century Nigeria can blithely and openly declare that budget padding is not a crime. Let Malam Yakubu Dogara, who is said to be a lawyer, be informed that although budget padding is not a crime and is consistent with established practice in the most advanced democracies, it is flagrantly criminal for a few representatives to gather together to pad a budget after it has been assented to by the entire house.

    This is criminal forgery and an attempt to oust and usurp the authority of the house reeking of felony and treason. Can anybody imagine what the civilized world will make of this shameless bêtise? It is improbable that the speaker of the American lower house having been implicated in such criminal perfidy will not summarily fall on his sword.

    But we must not leave the real ailment to procure treatment for its ephemeral and superficial manifestations. This infraction is a mere symptom of a deeper malady and must have been going on for quite some time until the advent of the rogue whistleblower. Illegal padding is symptomatic of uncoordinated and slipshod budgeting which is not tied to definite national planning or a visionary economic grid. It is opaque, chaotic, open-ended, whimsically arbitrary and lacking in rigour and rationality. It is what the Yoruba call “ wa mu tire” or “bosikona”  budget, a shorthand for the political economy of primitive accumulation.

    If the presidency cares about the reputation of the government and the ruling party, it should steer clear of this messy matter. It is not for the government to aver that it has not uncovered any evidence of padding. That is presumptuous, pre-emptive and an open contempt for the law-enforcement agencies. It is an unfortunate usurpation of the rights of a critical arm of government and it bodes ill for the much storied crusade against corruption.

    With tempers flaring on the streets, on the social media and in desperate homes about current economic hardships and with sundry groups taking up arms against the fatherland, this is a critical moment for the Buhari administration. It may also become a defining watershed for an administration that rode to power on the cusp of much goodwill and national euphoria. Trapped between the political expediency of regime and party survival and the ethical imperative of doing what is right and proper for the nation, APC has opted for grim self-preservation.

    Yet the only lesson taught by this is that in bitterly divided and polarized countries, the struggle for restructuring is an important plank of the battle for modernity. But while restructuring, shorn of unprincipled opportunism, is basically an intra-class contention in which a hegemonic faction of the ruling class faces relentless pressure to share power and responsibility from marginalized and probably more visionary fractions of the superintending class, the battle for modernization is an inter-class power struggle in which the whole society rises against the control of its political, economic and spiritual destiny by an oligarchic cabal.

    This struggle against absolute sovereignty, enacted in different theatres across the globe at different points of history and with society-specific means, has been the most important step humanity has taken toward the modern and modernist society. It shows why modernization is not synonymous with absolute westernization although in Africa given the mode of colonial rationalization some modes of westernization are inevitable in the construction of modernity.

    It is often left to individual societies to find the inner strength and resilience to confront their internal demons in the journey to self-actualization. After the Russian Revolution Vladimir Putin has had to confront the rogue oligarchs. In China after the triumph over the feudal warlords, the battle for the liberalization of political and economic space began even as Mao himself lay prostrate inside the Forbidden City. In South Korea, the entire populace rose to subdue the oligopolistic chaebols and the rampaging generals. Ditto for the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Cuba and the Latin American political volcanoes.

    In any society where meaningful steps to modernity and political rationality have taken place, the people have never been passive objects of history but active subjects and participants in the perpetual drama of human existence. In post-independence Nigeria all the meaningful steps taken towards emancipation and the journey to self-actualization have taken place when the entire society or significant sections rise in fury against their tormentors. This can be seen in the battle against civilian autocracy in the First and Second Republics, the intellectual siege against military despotism as encoded in the struggle to entrench the will of the people after June 12, 1993, and the struggle against a corrupt oligarchy and nascent ethnic hegemony culminating in the historic election of 2015 which dethroned a ruling mafia.

    No matter what anybody says or thinks, the election that has brought General Buhari is an important milestone in Nigeria’s journey to self-actualization. But a milestone is not a terminus. It is only a crucial and historic reference point in a long slog to freedom. In General Buhari himself we see a classic manifestation of the contradictions and cunning of history: a man who was part of an oppressive band leading a vanguard of the oppressed. History is still unfolding and it is not over yet. This is why the retired general and the APC must undertake a constant reality check. The only favourite of the forces of modernity is relentless modernization.

  • Okon pads his budget and heads for Iyanfoworogi

    As the economic hardship bites harder in the land turning hitherto strong men into human fiascoes, snooper has devised a series of stringent austerity measures to stem the steamrolling tide of economic adversities. In addition to physically tape-ruling yam tubers and monitoring the outflow of foodstuff from the pantry like some ancient teacher, yours sincerely has stopped the unbudgeted inflow of country bumpkins and upcountry yokels to the house by cancelling existing visas. These days snooper tells his agrarian folks that he prefers to visit them, which is what the Americans call immigration control at source.

    But trust Okon to find his way round the severe economic blockade. Unknown to snooper, in addition to his petty pilfering of foodstuff and moving the yam tape whenever his master chose to be away, the crazy boy has resorted to the twin strategy of padding and anticipatory approval of emergency expenditure. Playing on his master’s failing and fading memory, Okon conspires with market women to pad the budget and inflate price without any decorum or discretion. One morning, the pyramid scheme collapsed on the mad boy.

    “Okon, we budgeted ten thousand for meat, why has it turned to fifteen thousand?” an irate snooper demanded.

    “Oga na me pad dat one. Market and kitchen don catch fire”, the mad boy whined with a sheepish smile which further infuriated yours sincerely.

    “And what is padding?” snooper growled.

    “Ha oga, you no sabi padding? Where you come dey for obodo? Everybody dey do am, dem house, dem soldiers, dem judge. Even dem  Dogara boy come say padding no be crime. We come dey paddy paddy kontri, abi no be so?” the crazy boy snorted.

    On that note, snooper elected to sue for peace from the implacable loony. But the kitchen erupted again.

    “Okon, where is the omelet?” snooper thundered .

    “Ha oga omelet o ma late ooo”, the crazy boy sniggered with venomous relish.

    “Then you give me scrambled egg”, snooper raved.

    “Oga even dat one dem done scramble. And dem don poach dem poached egg.  Even dullard sabi say when dem dollar don climb over 400 to one naira, egg must to disappear”, Okon retorted. At this point, snooper opened the steaming dish gingerly placed on the table by the mad boy and was confronted by something that looked like boiled unripe pawpaw instead of yam.

    “Okon what is this nonsense?” snooper stuttered in implacable rage.

    “Ha oga na new yam be dat. I go market and dem women tell me say no yam, but dem say if I wan buy new yam, make I go dem Iyanfoworogi village. I come reach dem village near Ife and dem old man come tell me say for dem village yam dey grow for tree. Him come show me dem tree with dem  obonge breadfruit. Na him I come buy one sack. Oga dem say him good. Boku  vitamin C, D, A, K, L P G dey there. Efen Viagra sef he dey there”, the mad boy whooshed and winked.

    “Don’t tell me that nonsense! Okon before I come back you must leave this house”, snooper thundered and stormed out.