The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • As Ukraine is fed alive to the Russian Bear

    As Ukraine is fed alive to the Russian Bear

    The international order is never more interesting and perplexing. After months of waffling and warbling, and with casualties mounting on both sides , the hazy outlines of Pax Trumpiana now appear in bold relief. It is as simple as it is disconcerting. Before our very eyes, the brave and heroic people of Ukraine are to be fed to their Russian tormentors. Having thrown everything they have into battle, having fought the invaders with fierce determination and unusual bravery, taking horrendous casualties and the apocalyptic devastation of a beautiful and alluring landscape in the process, the Ukrainians are now faced with the humiliating prospects of being forced to surrender without a whimper.

    For this international miracle to materialize, all it took was a long transatlantic phone call between two powers leaving out the complainant in the cold. By the time the call was over, Zelensky’s goose had been cooked. All that remained was for the terms of disengagement or surrender to be worked out with some concomitant sweeteners thrown in to humour the Ukrainians. There will be no return of occupied territory or talk about reparation. In one short, sharp surgical move, Trump has removed the source and basis of Ukrainian self-defence, which is American munitions.  You cannot fight without weapons. He has also peremptorily precluded the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO, an act which the Russians believe would jeopardize the strategic interest of their country. As for the UN and its other ancillaries and accessories, Donald Trump treats them with such contempt that they could well be mythical apparitions without any value worth talking about.

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       It is a brand new world. Nobody would have believed a day like this would come when a sitting American president would treat international organizations which are largely the creation of Americans and which rely substantially on American subventions with such hostility and sheer disdain. But here we are. The major irony in all this is that while withdrawing into the shell of isolationism, the American president is insisting on acting out America’s role as the world’s preeminent law giver and principal custodian of global custom. America’s combination of isolationism and rampaging globalism such as the proposed takeover of Gaza and annexation of Greenland will provoke countervailing actions from equally prosperous and well-heeled countries defending their own national interests.

       The defeat and liquidation of Ukraine will serve as a playbook for China’s occupation of Taiwan, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, Israeli obliteration of the Middle East as we know it and possibly the annihilation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Rwanda.  As the conflict shapes up, the possibility of nuclear confrontation cannot be ruled out since biting is part of fighting. Unlike the earlier epoch of colonization when the invading colonizers shared the same faith and values, this one will be a clash of faith, of culture and values in all their countervailing hostilities. The human race has never been closer to self-determination of a most profoundly ironic hue.

  • Elephants and the Castle

    Elephants and the Castle

    • A Convergence of Consequences

    There are some big elephants in the sitting room. And when elephants converge before a magnificent castle, it is usually a sign of unusual developments. Elephants are known to have a long memory. But with the humongous mass of their brains, nothing less must be expected except by foolhardy and feckless humanity .They are usually placid and easygoing without the ferocious temper of a rhinoceros or the tempestuous rage of a hippopotamus.  But that is until they sense danger or the perpetrator of some old infractions in the neighborhood. That is when all hell is let loose with the infuriated pachyderms pulling out and pulling up everything in sight or out of sight in elemental rage. The jungle can no longer contain the plaintiff and the defendant. This is when the hunter becomes the hunted.

     Like the ghost of Banquo at state dinner, Bola Ige, a master poet, intellectual pugilist and political prizefighter, seems to be whispering from beyond: Tell my perjurers and assailants that I did nothing unworthy of poetry and philosophy! That is only two of the three Ps, leaving out perhaps the most important P, which is punitive politics in a postcolonial penal colony. Ige himself would be the first to let you know upfront that he was not a saint and that politics in a fractious, multi-ethnic and multi-faith polity seething with primordial envy and animosities is not for saints. Even then, it beggars belief that a   nation’s chief law officer could be slain like that in his bedroom without the assailants caring a hoot about the consequences. Here was a man who could not hurt a fly, despite all appearances to the contrary. He was armed only with his abrasive tongue and nettling pen and it was with these that he whipped political fools and other chancers into line.

      But Abuja is not the most benign habitat for literary generals. Before Ige, its most famous poet who was a warrior-general was militarily liquidated by his colleagues. Sensing danger, many of us who felt close enough railed from a distance that leaving the comfort of his ethnic fortress in a towering huff for the killing fields of Abuja was a bridge too far. But we were sidelined and testily ignored. Caesar must cross The Rubicon. Ige had privately told some of our mutual friends that he could not understand how a teacher of Literature could have the temerity to be telling him what to do in politics. Like Cicero, his Roman progenitor, who had his tongue literally pulled out, it was our own Cicero’s proud and noble Ijesa heart that was shot to pieces.

       But it is well. Almost a quarter of a century after his dastardly assassination in his bedroom, James Ajibola Idowu Ige seems to be having the last laugh over his tormentors. First, and in a remarkable piece of finely honed historical denouement, the late Cicero of Esa Oke appears to be presiding over the funeral rites of the group he belonged to and of which he was the undisputed intellectual and political master of the game. It is a remarkable funeral pyre, an enchanting spiral of decline, dissolution and death enacted as a consuming public spectacle. Judging from the bits and tidbits of information being released by his family, his close associates and acolytes and the cagey pushback this has elicited, it is becoming obvious that Ige’s elimination was hatched and executed from the innermost sanctuary of state liquidation. But we must warn that nothing last forever. The Nigerian postcolonial state is not an organic formation but a brittle ensemble of deadly intrigues and Byzantine conspiracies against the people of Nigeria. Judging from the deadpan and poker-faced revelations of recent weeks, it is just possible that countervailing elements from a rival power formation now have access to classified information which they may not be averse to insinuating into the public domain if only to put some Nigerian tin gods permanently out of political contention. Beyond the public purview, it is just possible that another deadly power struggle for the soul of Nigeria has commenced and it is going to be nasty and messy.

       It is only in the Third World that people act without expecting repercussions for their actions.  Sometimes, the sheer wickedness of humanity is ascribed to God himself. But as Dele Giwa, the martyred Nigerian superstar journalist, once hauntingly put it, nobody mocks God and the rewards of villainy are often handed out in life. In the fullness of time, karmic retribution often appears strange and unreal if not totally bewildering to the onlooker. This is the beauty of historical development which on the surface appears to obey only its own law and inner logic. The public excoriations and private torments our former military and civilian dictators are currently experiencing may appear to be against the run of play, but they are the logical consequences of past infractions against a nation and its people that they owe so much.

      The impunity of lawlessness is often a reflection of lawlessness as the organizing principle of a society in the trauma of transition. No one, however highly placed, should exploit the void to conduct themselves with abominable lawlessness. Order, or some semblance, will eventually return to question disorder. In postcolonial societies transiting to modernity, the unstructured and ungoverned nature of things makes impunity to wear the garb of divine immunity. But that is only before hitherto unseen and unknown countervailing forces rise to the occasion, forcing a resolution of the crisis or a tense deadlock as the case may be. It is known as the return of the repressed.

       This much is evident in the other elephants that have taken up residence in Nigeria’s palatial sitting room in recent times. Namely, the protracted legal tussle over the Mambilla Hydro-electric Project which has exposed the soft underbelly of official impunity in Nigeria in all its cancerous possibilities. There is also the statement said to have been issued on behalf of Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar asking the South-West populace to accept the reality of Sharia rule over their considerable Muslim segments. Yoruba self-determination groups have been implacable in their umbrage. These are dangerous developments indeed that tug at the heart of the National Question and could lead to a recrudescence of ethnic, religious and geo-economic tensions in the nation. Both Obasanjo and Buhari have already had their day in the court of International Arbitration. It was a sad day for Nigeria.

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    If the two gentlemen were expecting national commendation for their yeoman’s labour in Paris, the gale of rebuff and recrimination should serve as an indication of the seething national misgiving about their conduct in office. As for the Sultan and the insidious charter of domination however diplomatically coded, the furious rejection of his suggestion even by traditional die-hard Muslim adherents in Yorubaland should inform him that the days of extending feudal hegemony under the guise of some  pernicious narrative of superior compliance are over. In a multi-ethnic nation, the rising tide of ethnic nationalism appears to trump religious overlordship of some dubious vintage. The instant uproar in the west ought to serve as a cautionary reminder. Allow me to conduct my Islamic religion as I deem fit, is a joyous Yoruba refrain. Fundamentalist adherents of an Islamic credo that has nothing but debilitating poverty and political anomie to show may scoff at this, but it is this eccentric and idiosyncratic syncretism that is the strength of Yoruba culture which has allowed the people to survive ages and epochs of adversity from invading hordes. Nigeria is in a state of tense and precarious equilibrium. We must refrain from doing anything that could tip the balance into anarchy and chaos which are the usual precursors of the collapse of regular politics.

      In advanced societies, the collapse of regular politics can have adverse and ruinous consequences for the ruling classes. This is why Donald Trump is currently kicking their butt about in America with aplomb and cruel relish. Governance of fickle humanity requires constant vigilance and continuous inventiveness. In what feels like an outstanding feat of magical realism, Trump has just revoked the security pass of his predecessor. Once the ruling classes allow the initiative to slip either through carelessness or a stalling of vision, it opens the door to either demented demagogues of the right or deluded messianic crackpots from the left, depending on the balance of forces. Donald Trump is an exemplary product of the regnant contradictions of contemporary American society. He does not possess the intellectual wherewithal or the political temperament and emotional intelligence to make a dent on America’s social, economic and political problems. But he will so muddy the waters that resetting America will be a herculean task for his successors until one of them is able to rediscover the magic that made America an exceptional country.

      In less advanced societies with weak structures and weaker institutions, the precipitate collapse of regular politics can have more catastrophic consequences for nations and their traditional ruling classes. Twice in Nigeria in January 1966 and December 1983, it led to state collapse with the first one accompanied by virtual nation-collapse culminating in a thirty-month civil war. In post-independence Africa, the collapse of regular politics has led to civil wars in Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Algeria, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau and Libya.

        It is within this broad context that one must express grave concern and particular disappointment about the outcome of a recent gathering of political notables and their freshly recruited satraps ostensibly to feel the pulse of the nation and to offer new insights about how to take the country to greater heights. On both counts, it was a dismal failure. It was a celebration of trivia and platitudes about who did what to whom in the run up to the last presidential election and its aftermath. If this is a peep into the embryonic formation of what is shaping up as opposition force in the next presidential election, the ruling party might as well go to sleep with a Do Not Disturb sign screwed to the door.

     Those who are principally fixated on the dreary outcome of an electoral process without focusing attention on the shambolic state of opposition forces will have plenty of tears to shed when they come to grief once again. By then, those who rely on traditional disruption of the electoral process in its concluding phase would have become so enervated and exhausted by their errant exertions that they would have become a spent political force with the status of extinct volcanoes. By the prevailing logic of a fractious, multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, power can only be forcibly wrested and will not be shared out except by stringent and pacted elite negotiations.

       What the gathering left unsaid is more eloquent than what it actually says. The unstated fact is that they have been rendered hors de combat even before the commencement of battle. In Literary Theory, this is known as “the effectivity of the absent cause”. In this case, the absent cause which the political notables could not bring themselves to reflect on is the complete homogenization of the Nigerian ruling class which has made it impossible for the so called opposition to come up with an authentic alternative vision of the country since nothing can distinguish or set them apart from the ruling faction apart from their infantile tiffs. This unification of elite consciousness is a direct result of politics without principles and party formation without coherent ideology. If this is where we are almost a quarter of a century after his martyrdom, Bola Ige will be frantic in his grave.

  • The smouldering volcanoes of Eastern Congo

    The smouldering volcanoes of Eastern Congo

    • Open fractures of the nation-state paradigm in Africa

    Eastern Congo, a peripheral part of the inter-lacustrine region(among lakes) of highland Central Africa, is an achingly beautiful chunk of tropical Africa. Its enchanting and alluring landscape ought to be the nearest thing to a Garden of Eden on earth. Surrounded by majestic lakes and a range of dormant and active volcanoes with its rich and alluvial soil feeding off the volcanic nutrients, it is capable of growing anything. Beneath the soil are what can only be described as an embarrassment of mineral riches making the Democratic Republic of Congo potentially the richest country in the world. But never in the history of humanity has such potential and putative wealth been accompanied by such appalling human suffering, such biblical horror and such existential miseries.

      Since flag independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 and since the gruesome murder of its founding president, Patrice Lumumba on January 17th, 1961, in an open western conspiracy, the people of Congo have never known any peace or happiness. The Congo is a vast and open concentration camp of unbelievable atrocities and man’s inhumanity to man stretching far back to the nineteenth century when King Leopold seized a huge chunk of tropical Africa for himself and his family naming it with oxymoronic bravura as “the Free Congo State”.

    Several decades later after the monstrous tyrant was forcibly divested of his holding, the “freedom” had cost the people of the Congo a third of its people either amputated or summarily executed for failing to submit to forced labour. Never in the history of humanity and modern capitalism had the world seen such a penal colony. It is a vision of hell which is still engraved in the memory and imagination of the Congolese people, a people known for their docility, joyous hedonism and animist submissiveness to fate.

    To enhance analytical integrity, the historical canvas ought to be expanded. It has not always been like this. When Portuguese adventurers arrived at the ancient Kongo Kingdom around the middle of the fifteenth century, they met a thriving, prosperous society far superior in political organization and social cohesion to the rudimentary, semi-feudal kingdom they left at home. They searched for the mighty military force that underwrote the sophisticated structure. Alas, there was no army worth the name but a ragtag military unit brimming with ill-assorted hunters.

     The Iberians could not believe their luck. They proceeded to decimate the African kingdom and over several decades virtually the entire populace had been enslaved to be transported to the new colony of Brazil via the slave port of Luanda. In the course of formal colonization, the old kingdom was to suffer three different types of colonial rationalizations: Belgian, French and Portuguese. One can then imagine the kind of intellectual disorientation, cultural schizophrenia and spiritual deracination people who once belonged to the same organic political kinship have been forced to go through.

     Last Tuesday as hordes of alienated and de-civilized humanity rampaged through the empty battle-weary streets of Goma looting everything on sight even amidst blazing guns, one began to think the unthinkable and question the unquestionable. Is the Democratic Republic of Congo as it stands—or is not standing—simply too big, unwieldy and chaotic to remain as one unified country? Nations are made for people and not the other way round. As it is, the stricken enclave is not a passable democracy, if you remove the force that underwrites the travesty in Kinshasa. Neither is it a Republic nor an organically unified nation. Between Goma and Kinshasa are three thousand miles, most of it impenetrable jungle punctuated by anarchic mining enclaves ruled by the law of the gun. Between Kinshasa and Gbadolite, Mobutu’s former fortress and redoubtable retreat on the border with Central African Republic, there is another thousand miles. A modern country with a well-heeled army, a vigilant citizenry and the most sophisticated security and surveillance network would be hard put to manage this, not to talk of a patchwork country that cannot even boast of a durable military force.

       It was a top Nigerian military kingpin who once famously admonished his compatriots that he did not know about a country that has survived two civil wars. Let him come to the Congo and see African wonder at work. In its sheer mellifluence and catchy refrain, the old Congolese music is an enchanting balm for the soul. But so is the chaos and horror that course through the history of the place which must remind one of unfinished business. There have been at least a dozen civil wars since the dawn or din of independence, and still counting. In living memory, Goma itself has changed hands so many times that one can be forgiven for thinking that its capture or conquest is an alternative military academy test for rebel commanders specializing in asymmetrical warfare.

     Now, it has changed hands once again this time with the rebel M23, openly aided and abetted by Rwandan forces, heading for the scenic and beautiful city of Bukavu. Earlier, it was reported that demoralized and defeated elements of the Congolese Armed Forces who had fled from the fighting were driven back on Lake Kivu by units of the Rwandan army ordering them to go back and surrender to the rebel force. It doesn’t get more tantalizingly postcolonial and African to the bargain. All the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, could offer was that he would not sit down to negotiate with Rwanda.

     Whoever told the poor fellow that Rwanda wants to sit down with him? It reminds one of a historic footage of a stricken and cancer-ravaged Mobutu still insisting that he was the legitimate president of old Zaire while being helped to his feet by a bemused and elderly Nelson Mandela as a quietly indignant Laurent Kabila watched with mischievous relish. It was taken on a frigate moored off the Atlantic Ocean in Angola as Kabila’s forces surged through the outskirts of Kinshasa. In a question of days, the old morbidly corrupt dictator would be history. 

      Ever since 1996, or more appropriately since the Rwandan genocide, Paul Kagame has been the big elephant in the Congolese living room. It is useful to note that while the armies of neighboring countries appear to have gone into serious decline as a result of internal national contradictions, Kagame has gone on to build a prime, punitive military machine which has transformed into an unchallengeable terror for the whole region. This is in addition to building a modern prosperous economy. The fear of Rwanda is the beginning of wisdom. For those who might have forgotten their history, it may be useful to remind them that it was the Congolese that first drew blood. For decades, the two countries lived together in peace and harmony sharing kinship ties and organic cultural amity until the Congolese authorities, in a feat of harebrained opportunism and spiteful condescension suddenly woke up one day and expelled all the Congolese Tutsis with the war-cry: A tree trunk does not become a crocodile simply by spending time in water. This was in addition to serving as a haven of destabilization for retreating Hutu rebels that have lost out in the apocalyptic meltdown of the Rwanda state after the genocide. Kagame, a tested insurgent, accepted both insults with his miserly grin, organizing cross-border raids into the DRC until the rump of the Hutu army was decimated and render hors de combat. The Kabila uprising presented Kagame with an opportunity to try out new tricks from the playbook of state decapitation. There was no need for an inch by inch contention to conquer the moribund Congolese postcolonial state since in a cruel policy of deliberate re-forestation of his country to prevent his paradise being overrun, Mobutu in over forty five years of inhuman predation never built any passable road, the rebels simply airlifted themselves to the precincts of the capital after capturing the main cities. There is an iconic picture of the younger Joseph Kabila brandishing his assault rifle after liberating Kisangani.

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      Almost thirty years after seeing off the monstrous Mobutu, Paul Kagame stands triumphant over the volcanic debris of the entire region. He appears unchallenged and unchallengeable as the new emperor of the Eastern Congo. Nothing is standing in his way. There is a new boldness and contemptuous clarity in his current moves; a hunger for annexation which he can get away with very easily.  And here is why. The AU is in dire straits and cannot pass any military muster. The UN is fighting for its own survival in the hands of a rampaging American president who does not care a hoot about what Africans do to themselves. The less the merrier. Having lost several peacekeepers of South African origins in recent days, the UN is wisely refraining from joining a nasty African fray it cannot hope to win.

       We are at the threshold of a new international order. Having been repeatedly snubbed by both Russia and Israeli and having been steamrolled into compliance by America’s virtual withdrawal of strategic fiscal support, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is taking it all in the chin with a wince and a grimace, the wise Iberian nobleman that he is. He might have recalled that an earlier UN Secretary General, the equally respected and well-regarded Swede international diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, was killed in an air crash on 18th September, 1961 while brokering peace for the selfsame Congo. There is only so much a single person can do in a world out of joints.

      It is now hard to see how Africa can avoid a Pax Rwandan in the Eastern Congo. It is hard to see an African statesman with the possible exception of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a fellow former guerrilla chieftain, that Kagame truly respects or has regards for. The withering putdown of South Africa and its president shows the extent of Kagame’s disdain for contemporary African leaders. Yet a way must be found to bring him to the negotiating table. If Africa had been blessed with truly visionary statesmen, they ought to have found a way of addressing the Congolese Conundrum, that is unwieldy, unviable and chaotic African nations imposed on the continent by imperialist fiat with appalling human suffering and bestial dehumanization.  The Congo should be at least three countries. But it cannot be done by hostile interlocutors without throwing the continent into millennial chaos. The problem with the forcible annexation of an African nation as proposed by the Kagame Doctrine and its rampart militarism is that it will blow the lid off a veritable Pandora Box.  The original crisis in post-independence Congo signposted the crisis of the postcolonial state and nation in Africa. Sixty five later we may be witnessing its apocalyptic denouement.

  • America in ebullition

    America in ebullition

    The return of Donald Trump in triumphant relish to the power sanctuary of the White House from where he was virtually expelled four years ago is a defining moment in American and world history. It will be recalled that the real estate magnate did not go lightly. It took dark and dire warnings from the military echelons to dissuade him from staying put. But this did not stop him from encouraging a massive civil disruption which led to bloodshed and mayhem. One of the first things Trump did on getting to the Oval Office this past Monday was to sign an Executive Order granting state pardon to all those convicted of taking part in the uprising, a thousand, six hundred and sixty stalwarts in all. It is a deeply divided and culturally polarized America all against itself with the rest of the world looking on askance and perplexed.

       When applied to politics, ebullition is a condition of turmoil and turbulence leading to generalized disorder and deep anxieties. It was introduced to Nigeria’s pre-independence political lexicon by Adegoke Adelabu, a remarkable political prodigy of Nigeria’s pre-independence politics who was killed in a car accident about sixty seven years ago. He had titled his survey of pre-independence politics in Nigeria as: Nigeria in Ebullition.  Adelabu could well have been thinking about America in particular and the world in general in the Trumpian era of multi-lateral meltdown. Donald Trump has made it clear that it is America that matters to him most and not some bogus mythical order known as world order. The rest of the world must either key into this American neo-Exceptionalism and frenzied one-upmanship or seek the nearest exit door.

      Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the brainy American president and former university professor, who put the League of Nations together, must be turning in his grave. An ebullition either simmers down or it boils over into anarchy and chaos. An early indication of how things can shape up is the fact that a day after Trump issued his blizzard of executive orders eighteen states had already taken him to court to challenge the constitutional validity of the forfeiture of citizenship by birth which is enshrined in the American constitution. The Illinois Police chieftain has let it be known that people under his command will not be part of any attempt to forcibly deport illegal immigrants. A police officer who battled against the invaders of the Capitol on the 6th of January, 2021 and was subsequently injured was heard muttering about the fundamental injustice and unfairness of it all. How did God’s own country come to this sorry pass?

      History often unfolds in a neat symmetry and cruel symphony. Eighty year ago in the early summer of 1945, America emerged as the undisputed world leader and the greatest military power the world has seen up to the point. In terms of imperial reach and global influence, America represented the zenith of human capacity and aspirations. Not even the Roman Empire could hold a candle to it in scope and scale.  America’s might was further symbolically showcased by the fact that it was enacted against a background of apocalyptic carnage and the ruins of old Europe; the nuclear evisceration of Japan and the virtual obliteration of several German cities. Eighty years after in 2025, a haunting and hugely symbolic reenactment of America’s global dominance and grandiose superiority over other nations was beamed to the world as Donald Trump is sworn in as the forty seventh president in a ceremony marked by medieval pomp and postmodern pageantry. It was a very cold morning in Washington, and only the arctic blast that banished the celebrators to the inner sanctuary of the Oval Office spoke to the need for some caution and soberness.

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      But Donald Trump does not do things in half-measures. A master of hyperbolic bombast and factual exaggerations, he manufactures his own truth when acute truth stands in his way and tells his own story when faced by actual history without being incommoded. But you must give something to the old boy: his courage and indomitable will in the face of damning odds. Donald Trump reminds one of those great American heavyweights. No matter what you throw at them, they just kept coming until something gives. Last Monday as the man gave his underwhelming Inaugural Address, you focused on the hardened features to see if something would give way. Trump was wearing half a miserly grin and half a nasty sneer on a face already contorted and distorted by a paroxysm of rage and loathing.

       It was not hard to see why this moment of ultimate triumph was also the moment of ultimate despair. America’s democratic triumphalism was being enacted against a background of conflicting and confusing signals. The Middle East lies in ruins, its land blitzed into a millennial fiasco where former inhabitants could no longer recognize their own residence while their faith in the inviolability of their culture and religion has been contemptuously brushed aside by American munitions delivered by Israeli proxy. But unlike eighty years ago when America stood like a colossus unchallenged and unchallengeable, this time around there are loud external murmurs and internal grumblings. Inwardly, America is a deeply fractured and self-isolating polity. Equally interesting was the fact that the convoy of vehicles carrying aids and relief materials through the desolate and devastated streets of Gaza had barely reached their destination when Hamas started shooting in the air in a victory celebration. Something does not quite add up. Were these not the same fighters that the punitive and unforgiving Israeli fighting machine was alleged to have put out contention?

    The arctic stillness that mugged its waters last Monday morning suggested that even the nearby Potomac River felt like something was amiss despite the Trumpian razzmatazz. The ancient American political elite and their old ruling classes have suffered a stupendous walloping.  While reveling in martial glory and the political grandeur of liberal democracy particularly after its triumph over Socialist nations, the American ruling classes neglected and failed to act on what the average voters consider the most important needs of existence: food, shelter, medical care and quality education. The long list of Democratic presidents, hooked on fustian rhetoric and elevated platitudes about democracy and the inalienable rights of man, simply forgot the fundamental principle of liberal democracy: it is neither plausible nor possible on empty stomach.

      Neither can it be sustained or defended by a horde of medically afflicted, ill-educated, shelter-less and economically resentful rabble tottering on the edge of the abyss. Since democracy is a game of numbers, this déclassé combo of the barely educated bristling with religious superstitions together with the multi-racial underclass, constitute the most potent danger to liberal democracy anywhere in the world. This is a lesson taken to heart by China, Russia, leftwing rulers and the authoritarian Arab monarchies. You cannot pursue earthly military glories at the expense of your own people’s wellbeing and happiness. They will come for you eventually.

    Donald Trump, an astute salesman, celebrated con-artist and an implacable rebel against America’s established order, must have been listening in to the fierce rumbling from below while waiting for the opportune moment to cash in. The dramatic reprieve offered the old ruling class by a Joe Biden presidency turned out a damp squib with an exhausted, enervated and perplexed Joe Biden looking very much like a tragic victim of a cruel historic burlesque. Last Monday as a crestfallen and visibly distressed Joe Biden sat in the Oval office while Donald Trump, his bête noire, harrumphed his way through an inaugural address which gave the outgoing president scant regard or respect, it was clear that the new president has come to bury his old adversary rather than to cut him any slack.

       America has seen better times. This was not a normal succession order. It looked more like a churlish and victorious commander reading the riot act to the leadership of a defeated and utterly demoralized enemy force. Barack Obama sat as if transfixed, his legacy and two major victories together with the audacity of hope they revived for this racially, economically and culturally divided land in mortal danger. His no-nonsense wife pointedly stayed away.  America is in radical ebullition which may boil over into commotion and chaos. The array of antagonistic forces already ranged against Trump should be noted. What should also be noted is the fact that the current animus against the system is not driven by a passion for social and political justice but by a thirst for political vengeance and social retribution. 

      Trump himself in the dark paranoid furies and unforgiving trauma that drive him epitomizes this tendency. There is nothing in him or about him which indicates a grand vision of a better society or a better world and the intellectual and visionary wherewithal to bring this about. His core supporters are even worse. As American history has taught us, the imperative of a better and more inclusive society is never driven by unenlightened hobos and rural yokels.  This is the remit of visionary intellectuals such as the American Founding Fathers. Trump may end up inadvertently correcting some of the anomalies but at great social and political cost to the nation. That is just about it.

    In 1945, the League of Nations lay in ruins as the collateral damage of the Second World War. But the process of creative destruction and the decolonization project that went with the war threw up a slew of visionary statesmen who were to put together the rubric of what came to be known as the United Nations which has turned out a better, more inclusive and far more coherent version of the older body. Eighty years after in 2025, the United Nations is mortally wounded as a result of American unilateralism and contempt for civilized global norms. It will take a new generation of global statesmen to help repair the damage and to set the world and America on a new course.

  • Okon arranges his own loan

    Okon arranges his own loan

    As historic hunger coursed through the land, all has been quiet on the Okon front. These days, the crazy contrarian is more overheard than heard. And when he ventured to speak, it is in barely audible whispers, as if the mad boy is afraid of his own shadows. Okon has lost all his old ebullience and elocution. Field Marshal Hunger is indeed an equal opportunity terminator, not distinguishing between tribe or tongue, or between creed or credo. All is game. After a series of savage budget cuts and stringent austerity measures which reduced the entire household to the status of a penal colony with the dreaded scourge of famishment laying a siege on everybody in sight, Okon was overheard complaining to no one in particular. “He be like if say na hunger dem one take drive everybody comot Lagos. Yam we no fit chop. Garri man no fit smoke again. I hear say food still plenty for Etinam and Itigidi. Make man come begin waka go home.”

      Last Wednesday, as yours sincerely was enjoying a mid-morning reverie, Okon suddenly jumped in. “Oga, I wan quickly reach dem bank for Allen make I collect free loan like everybody. As I come miss tradermoni, I no one miss dis one”, the mad boy hollered beaming a devilish smile.

    Read Also: Northern CAN lauds Tinubu on inclusive governance

      “Ah wait Okon, wait. First thing first”, snooper admonished, jumping out of bed in alarm.

      “Oga, na you dey mention name. I never mention any Yoruba bank dem name ooo”, Okon cautioned.

       “Ok, what is your collateral?” Snooper demanded.

        “ Oga, sebi collateral na kolanut after loan? Make man collect loan first”, the mad boy snorted. Sensing a banking hall disruption and upheaval of apocalyptic dimensions, one began remonstrating with the crazy one. “Is Baba Lekki with you in this one?” snooper inquired.

      “Ah dat one hunger don dabaru him head. Him de groan every night and him dey cry, osiki, osiki ooo. I come ask am wetin be osiki and him say na old name for Egusi soup. But dis morning him say him wan go sign condolence letter for Bode George.” Okon sniggered.

      “Okon, it is not Bode George. It is a distinguished businessman and man of learning and culture”, snooper corrected the mad boy.

       “Wetin consign me about dat one? Yoruba people na the same”, the mad boy screamed and stormed out. 

  • Institutional decay and the ancient tradition

    Institutional decay and the ancient tradition

    • Towards a reform of the Yoruba kingship system

    A royal drama of succession has just wound down in the storied metropolis of Oyo. While it lasted, the whole world waited with bated breath to see which way the pendulum would swing. This is not the first time people would be witnessing such fierce and bitter contention among royal siblings who can trace their genealogy to the same primogenitor, and it will not be the last time as long as the authorities fail to do the needful to reflect changing times and their changing ethos.

     The Yoruba royal institution has suffered so much battering and indignities in recent time that it will take years if not decades to redeem its image and return it to its old prestige and pristine grandeur. Luckily, traditional rulers do not die every day. So, there is plenty of room for much needed reforms of the Obaship institution. All this may just be warning signals or indications of an approaching end of an epoch. The fact that three major Yoruba towns, namely Ogbomosho, Ilesha and Oyo, have been plagued in quick succession by much discord and rancour particularly among the ruling elite of the cities is a dire omen which should not be ignored.

       When you combine inevitable institutional decay with the irreversible onslaught of modernity, this is the most likely outcome and it is often so bizarre and fanciful that the audience can no longer be separated from the drama, like worshippers hypnotized into mass frenzy in a religious revival. The drummer no longer communicates with the dancer and the wondrous symphony of shared cultural affinities is lost. Disharmony and disruption of rhythm reign supreme and mere confusion is unleashed on the community. Sometimes, we have seen the process work perfectly and seamlessly, that is if the voice of the oracle is also the voice of the most powerful, most influential and richest in the land. But all hell is let loose when there is a rupture of consensus; when the oracle is seen to be misled and misleading to the bargain leading to a crisis of spiritual confidence.

      In certain communities, this oracular confusion or mendacity is viewed with such displeasure that both the oracles and the ancient deities were assembled for summary execution. Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God opened with such apocalyptic bloodletting when the people felt that the old gods could no longer pass muster and promptly took them out for open dismemberment. Surveying the Homeric gore and other indignant infractions of the sacred procedure from the optics of his myth-ridden and god-suffused Yoruba people, Wole Soyinka chided Achebe for a dogged and relentless secularization of the profoundly mystical.

       Well, let the profoundly mystical beware. And let those who casually dispose of their gods and oracles also beware. These ancient curios are nothing but ideological state apparatuses with which the old pre-colonial state instilled terror and compliance in the populace and through which they contain the murderous mobs and the hysterical masses. It is not out of frivolity that Peter Morton, an early visitor to the new Egba settlement of Abeokuta, described members of the Ogboni Confraternity, those grizzled custodians of the Yoruba Deep State, as “mystery-mongering greybeards”. Little wonder that these ideological apparatuses retain a lingering efficacy beyond the superannuation of their material and historical basis.                                                                                                                         

     But human memory is short and brittle indeed. Those who accuse Seyi Makinde of a political sleight of hand and of reaching for a metaphysical deus ex machina to leverage his secular authority in this matter might have succumbed to habits of forgetfulness. It is not the first time this will be happening in the checkered history of the Yoruba people. At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, the oracle is made for humankind and not the other way round. Makinde has not discarded it. But in the circumstance, he has done the wisest and most politically savvy thing to reach the oracle through a different spiritual medium, in this case, the distinguished and much garlanded spiritualist and Ifa priest, Professor Wande Abimbola. According to his school mates at Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, the professor was known as Wande Iroko in that youthful incarnation, a storied cognomen which bespoke the native prowess of his forbears.

       Almost sixty years ago after the incumbent Alaafin, Oba Gbadegesin Ladigbolu, joined his ancestors, the struggle to produce the next Alaafin became so rancorous and hate-filled that the military government of Western Nigeria was forced put a lid on the deadlocked process citing the civil war and the need for all hands to be on deck. Upon resumption of the search immediately after the civil war, the authorities jettisoned the old spiritual mediums and went for a new one in the person of the much revered Oni of Ife, Oba Adesoji Aderemi, who immediately went into spiritual seclusion. After seven days of deep consultation, the great man emerged to inform the emissaries that the oracle was in favour of any of the contestants whose father ”has done it before”. (Omo eniti o ti seri)

      The royal cap fitted Prince Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi and from that point, he became the last man standing.  Nobody could fault the old Oba because of his matchless integrity, his unimpeachable character and sterling reputation for fairness and justice. Please note that the Ife monarch had no business extending any sympathy to the son of a man who was his stubborn political adversary and an unwavering NCNC supporter.  So far, nobody has faulted Professor Wande Abimbola’s equally fearsome reputation for honesty and integrity. By his own admission, he was approached by members of the Oyomesi in council to juggle with the finding of the oracle, a move which he stoutly rebuffed. Had he compromised or succumbed in any manner, the whole thing would have been an exercise in futility and there is every possibility that the ancient town would have erupted.

       That possibility can still not be lightly discounted. The sparse crowd that accompanied the new king to his royal domain suggests a deeply divided royal metropolis. It is a long time the new Alaafin’s branch of the royal household produced an incumbent. He himself has been away in the Diaspora for quite some time without any sterling connection with the home crowd. He is acceding to the throne of his forefathers in an emergency, so to say. He will need to reach out to numerous former rivals in the extended Atiba dynasty. This is not the first time a leading Yoruba monarch has been forced to master the ropes while on the throne. He will need to assemble a team of first class royal groomers. An obviously humble and unassuming fellow, he will need to stamp his authority on his domain as quickly as possible. There is some need for improvement in mien and carriage. Oba Akeem Abimbola Owoade will not be the first leading Yoruba monarch to learn on the job and to go on to excel, surpassing all expectations. The polity is surfeit with glorious examples.

      Lastly, it must be noted that this less than edifying episode is a confirmation of the institutional decay and decline of the royal rampart which was the pride of the entire Yoruba race and the old Oyo Empire.  First, the empire succumbed to the feudal cavalry mounted from the new Sultanate outpost of Ilorin. But this only resulted in displacement and disparagement rather than total destruction. However, if the colonial irruption stripped it of the power of enforcement and coercion, the relentless onslaught of modernity has shorn it of its feudal prestige and aura of invincibility. In the event, any selection process anchored on these pillars of legitimacy is bound to end an unworthy charade. This is what has just played out. There is an urgent need for a reform of the process.

    The role of the Oyomesi in this royal fiasco is not particularly ennobling. They have come to see the selection of an Alaafin as a once in a lifetime bazaar and royal round tripping. The Ifa oracle itself must be exhausted and impoverished after the latest round of royal extortion. This would have been unthinkable in generations of yore when the empire was at the zenith of its power and glory. They would have tasted the swift retribution meant for those in breach of royal regulations. But it must be remembered that they are products of their age and time, just like the fabled Elesin Oba who refused against the demand of timeworn tradition to follow his principal to his final resting abode. No single individual however exceptional and heroic, or class, or creed, or guild or caste can be made to bear full responsibility for institutional decay or systemic unraveling. Everybody must have made their contribution either in fault or by default. This is why Governor Makinde must give the Oyomesi some breather by dropping the threat of prosecution once the old men have indicated a willingness to buy into the new order.

    Read Also: Alaafin: Makinde changing Yoruba traditional institution from analogue to digital — Oluwo 

      It is in the light of the institutional degeneracy that many critics are calling for an outright abolition of the whole indigenous ruling system. This is akin to throwing the baby out with the tub water and the tub itself. This is not possible or feasible except in a situation of momentous revolutionary upheaval and total convulsion which opens the door to anarchy and chaos. Except we are enamoured of the situation in Sudan,  the Democratic Republic of Congo and the CAR, the subsisting multi-ethnic and multi-identity framework of postcolonial Nigeria does not admit of such violent disruptions. The traditional institution is the least of Nigeria’s problems. As a matter of fact, despite its hobbled nature, the institution has been closest to the pulse of the people. When the local rulers are drivers of the process as farmers or traders, they foster accelerated agricultural growth and development. This is a process yours sincerely has monitored in several Yoruba communities. When blessed with wisdom and judgment, indigenous Obas and Baales also settle communal strife and douse inter-communal friction in a way that is beyond the vision and capacity of the political class.

      Given the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious nature of the nation, the performance of its indigenous rulers is bound to be mixed and uneven, even when it is true that they were all put in the colonial slammer. Whatever the systemic infirmities and frailties, it will be difficult to persuade an average Yoruba person to let go of the system. The same is also true of people in the ancillary states of Kogi, Edo, Delta and Benue who share some cultural affinities with the Yoruba people. In the last century since the collapse of the old indigenous order and triumph of colonialism, Yoruba Obas have become endlessly resourceful in political matters and ceaseless self-inventing when it comes to crowd psychology.

      Of these remarkable sovereigns, none was more versatile and gifted than the last incumbent to occupy the Oyo throne. The late Alaafin was a scholar, a journalist, a historian, a boxer with a lethal left hook,  a dancer of exemplary skills and an occultist of great power.. He was also a man of immense personal charm and electrifying magnetism. Barely five years after acceding to the throne of his ancestors both Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade, the two leading Yoruba musicians, were already singing his praises to high heavens. It is a tough act to follow and the new Alaafin should not even bother. He should follow his own instincts and lay down his own example through his God-given endowments. There lies the path to distinction.

      As we can see from the above, it is not over yet for traditional rulership in Yorubaland, despite the tumult and turbulence occasioned by the onslaught of modernity. But some fundamental tinkering with the process of selection is imperative at this point. To the various princes of the Atiba clan, it is  apt to remind them that but for the quick thinking, bravery, farsightedness and capacity for reform and innovation of the founding father, the entire dynasty and perhaps the throne itself could have perished in the ruins and rubble of the old capital at Oyo-Ile after the empire finally crumbled. To fight bravely and to retreat courageously is the hallmark of the Oyo people. It must not be said that a lion gave birth to lizards.   

  • James Earl Carter, an appreciation

    James Earl Carter, an appreciation

    There is absolutely no contradiction in being a very good person and a great politician at the same time. James Earl Carter, the 39th president of America and son of a peanut farmer from rural Georgia, was such a person. He was a decent and humane fellow: caring and compassionate, but firm and principled where and when it mattered. There was a touch of nobility of spirit about him. The outpouring of global grief and appreciation which occasioned his death in late December and burial this past week attest to the fact that the world has lost one of its authentic political icons and moral lodestars. It has been quite a while that virtually the entire world has been united with America in grief and appreciation of a global statesman.

      Let it be noted that the toxic debasement of politics in our contemporary world has turned politics into a most endangered profession and politicians an object of much hate and revilement. But it has not always been like this. In its rudimentary origins, politics was regarded as the highest and most selfless service one can render to the society and to humanity at large. Many philosophers of yore conceived of politics as the principal avenue for humanizing and refining humanity, and for bringing out the most noble and endearing traits about the human species. It may be the case that as the reality of human deviousness and greed kicked in, and as fierce competition for increasingly scarce resources became the order of the day with stronger and more powerful nations and people preying on weaker nations and people, many concluded that the old vision of politics and society is idyllic and completely out of touch with evolving realities. The brutal urgency of accumulation and need to protect what is accumulated often bring out the worst in everybody inducing a more elevated state of nature requiring harsh regulations and restrictions depending on the stage and state each society has reached. It has been noted that if human-beings were angels, there would have been no need for government.

      As we can see from the above, the pollution of politics and the estrangement of the practitioners of statecraft from the very society they are supposed to develop and uplift through the cult of stirring heroism has been long in coming. It did not begin yesterday. It is perhaps the greatest paradox of human civilization. In Things Fall Apart, the classic of pre-colonial communal living in a supposedly idyllic African society, Chinua Achebe paints a graphic picture of how much of what was gentle and amiable about Okonkwo, the hero, had been pressed out by the dictates of a harshly competitive society which brooked no failure and where the worship of power, wealth, prestige and fame was all that mattered.

     The reader is shown flashes of Okonkwo’s old generous and adorable side in his tender and affectionate relationship with his daughter before he was transformed into a monster by his society. It was a pact with the devil. The celebrated wrestler had already witnessed Nnoka, his lay-about rebel father, dumped unceremoniously in the evil forest reserved for failures and social misfits. He did not wish to make a return trip even though Nwoye, his own son, was already showing encouraging signs of ending up a failure like his grandfather. Here, nature and unpredictable genetic configurations steal a cunning match on humanity. No person has as yet been born that can confer subsequent success and sterling achievement on their family.

      Jimmy Carter was one of those few people, moral avatars of the age, who saw the need to leave their society and the world at large in a better state than they had met it. Such rare breeds strive to bring out the best in their contemporaries and the finest sense of responsibility from other nations. He was a visionary of the immense possibilities of humanity despite crippling challenges. Despite the debilitations, the devastations of war and the possibility of atomic self-annihilation, Jimmy Carter was a man of muscular faith, a stout and unwavering believer in human capacity for redemption and the ceaseless self-inventions typical of his own nation, despite its political failings and ethical failures. A man of profound intellectual capabilities, the late American president was no naïve dreamer or idealistic crackpot. He knew what he was doing, where he thought humankind should be and the challenges. The sunny smiles etched against the background of a gloomy aloof visage sums it all up like Antonio Gramsci before him: Optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect.

     By the time he passed at the ripe old age of a hundred last December, he had already achieved several firsts and distinctions, most of them after he left office and politically posthumous, in a manner of speaking. He had become the longest living American president and by far the most successful out of office. His global efforts as a stellar statesman fighting for the advancement of democracy and good governance, his efforts at eradicating global disease, his quiet demeanour with its understated steeliness, his innate good breeding which made him to refrain from rowdy interventions and unwarranted public censoring of his successors and above all his humanity which knew no colour, creed or caste not to mention his matchless probity and immaculate integrity, have all combined to put him in a class of his own.

      Here departs an authentic leader of the global conurbation; an American president for all humanity and not for his deeply traumatized sectarian enclave alone. Whence cometh another? A visionary sometimes lives to reap the fruits of his costly labour. The greatest lesson that Jimmy Carter has taught the world is that there is life after partisan politics. Put in another way, there is life after political office and office after political life. It is just as well that Jimmy Carter, somewhere down the line, renounced and foreswore interest in material accumulation. He had famously declared that he was not interested in riches and wealth which could have sullied his vision of human society and compromised his integrity. More often than not, you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.  After his presidency, the frugal and abstemious Carter returned to the same modest house he had lived with his wife who predeceased him in a marriage that had lasted a whopping seventy seven years. It was the longest presidential romance in American history.

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      In all likelihood, Jimmy Carter never really forgave Nigeria for not measuring up to expectations and living up to its continental and global responsibilities. He might have thought that given its humongous natural resources and prodigious human endowments, Nigeria is the natural leader of the Black race with the capacity to serve as a transforming hub for the black race and a Mecca of Neo-Enlightenment. For a moment, there were some propitious stirrings, particularly during the mid-seventies and then a descent into the hell of military despotism with the flickering light of civilian governance brutally snuffed out. But after widespread irregularities and massive electoral fraud benchmarked what was supposed to be a post-military restoration in Nigeria in 1999, Carter, who had personally monitored the election, could not hide his displeasure and left the country sad and dejected.

       In retrospect, perhaps the revered American statesman was being a tad idealistic and politically naïve. Untrammelled despotism, and one marked by widespread murder and savage repression, takes it time to work through a system, particularly one marked by multi-ethnic, multi-religious polarities and countervailing modes of economic production. Despite its economic, political and racial cleavages, America is a far more open and liberalized society than most African postcolonial societies. It was this possibility of impossibility that had taken Jimmy Carter, a virtually unknown peanut farmer with no sterling name recognition and one term governor of Georgia from the rural and rustic precincts of Georgia, to the gate of the White House after the 1976 presidential election when he defeated the incumbent, President Gerald Ford.

      But being an unknown quantity, with its magic of unpredictability and capacity for strategic surprises, also has its drawbacks. The Washington Lobby, notorious for wheeling and dealing and for crony card-shuffling, gave Jimmy Carter a taste of hell. He was very much an outsider in uncharted territory and with his known aversion for anything that reeks of the unscrupulous and shy distaste for deal-making, the former naval officer came a sad cropper. As the economy stalled and became unresponsive to Carter’s kind and compassionate brand of capitalism, murmurs of disapproval and disapprobation came to be heard around Washington and the rest of the country.

     After the Iranian Embassy hostage fiasco, the floodgate of condemnation opened and it was clear that the owners of America wanted their country back, and wanted it to revert to the default setting of messianic destiny and American Exceptionalism. Having been resoundingly beaten at the polls by Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter returned to his Georgian rustic redoubt. It was this dismal denouement that led detractors dismissing him as being more of a successful ex-president than a president. But the truth is more complex and nuanced. Carter might have pushed through more consequential and reform-minded bills than most American presidents in living memory.

      For its aficionados, the sheer beauty of history is the way it unfolds in a strange and totally unpredictable manner giving way even after wars and chaos to only minute incremental changes within the dynamics of its own unpredictable momentum. The dramatic resurgence of radically conservative social forces which led to the ousting of Jimmy Carter in America also produced around the same time the ascendancy of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. The shrill no-nonsense daughter of a Methodist alderman put the fumbling and blundering Labour Party led by Jim Callaghan out of its misery. The two ideological soul mates unleashed a brutal programme of Neocon social engineering on their respective societies which brooked no compassion for the weak and poor. Thatcher’s war-cry was that there is no such thing as society. But after twelve tumultuous years in power, the British public sent unmistakable signals of being tired of her divisive and polarizing antics.

      Four and a half decades later the poker game continues as the world arrives at another interesting conjuncture. In Britain, they have just brought back Labour to power after a series of disastrous Conservative governments marked by corruption, public deception and the most unedifying patent of medieval cronyism. And America has just recalled the impossible Donald Trump. In a swift disavowal of virtually everything Jimmy Carter stood for and worked for, Trump has vowed to repossess Panama Canal and to forcibly annex Greenland. If this is a sneak preview, weaker nations and people must brace up. Jimmy Carter was yet to be lowered into his final resting place at that point. After almost six hundred years of unrivalled hegemony, the nation-state paradigm may be coming full circle. We have already seen a preview in Israel’s pulverizing dissolution of the Middle East as we know it. Before things simmer down, there is going to be a hell of caterwauling out there with the possibility of the odd nuclear browbeating. But everything that has a beginning must have an end. May the good lord continue to shower his blessings on this great friend of Africa and the Black race.       

  • New Dimensions in the Long Revolution: Coded battles for economic and political modernisation of Nigeria

    New Dimensions in the Long Revolution: Coded battles for economic and political modernisation of Nigeria

    Honorable members of the board, it is a pleasure to welcome you to this inaugural meeting of The Nation Journalism Foundation. We live in very interesting times when events happen at a furious and breakneck speed, often inducing generalized apprehension and an eerie sense of disorientation among the populace and the ruling classes themselves. It has been said that journalism is history in a hurry. But we live in a world where unfolding events themselves in their wild improbability and sheer impossibility make history itself feels like fiction in a hurry. In such circumstances, history, however outlandish and improbable it appears, remains the infallible guide and guardrails.

    It seems like yesterday, but it is coming to almost twenty years ago when this writer delivered an inaugural address on May, 6th, 2006 at the launch of Sahara Reporters at the Empire State Building in New York. The address was titled, The Blogger As Nemesis. In our detailed analysis, we drew attention to the emergence of blogging as a profession in Nigeria, a development which we thought would put paid to the dominance of official news and information and the complicity and collusion of the mainstream media, sections of which had played a heroic role in the termination of military rule, with official lies and mendacity.

      Almost twenty years after, we can look back with the benefit of hindsight and through the prism of our current perplexities and perturbation as a nation to that particular period of our national life. It was coming to the tail end of the Obasanjo post-military dispensation. The euphoria about seeing off the military to the barracks was beginning to wear off. New national contradictions had made their way to the centre stage. In fairness to the Owu-born general, he had run a fairly competent if not visionary economy. Obasanjo’s project of formal demilitarization was also brilliantly executed with the support of old military acolytes like General Theophilus Danjuma.

    Obasanjo

    It was in the next phase of deepening the democratic process that Obasanjo came a sad cropper. In fairness to the general, you cannot give what you don’t have. The general was particularly ill-equipped for this task. He had already stoked the fire of future instability through the perplexed levity with which he handled the sharia challenge to his suzerainty and his heavy-handed devastation of Odi and Zaki Biam communities. Despite setting up the EFCC as a proactive corruption-fighting organization, the issue of the third term gambit, and the outlandish bribery that went with this, set the tone for the political and economic malfeasance that has dogged the Fourth Republic. After that, Obasanjo was a spent force waiting to unleash the final damage to the country in the form of a succession programme that lacked both integrity and fairness. The remaining time also afforded him the opportunity to complete the electoral brutalization of his own people.  

    The address at the Empire State Building at the launch of Sahara Reporters presages and projects the rise of the impish and intrepid former Student Union leader to the portals of global superstardom in the crucible of disruptive communication and instant news dissemination. At that point in time, Sowore was not a trained journalist. Neither was he known to have taken any internship in any newspaper house. And it was not as if he was a lone moral exemplar in a dark void. He was merely cuing in, shrewdly and probably intuitively, to the shattering of the old canons of journalism by the advent of disruptive developments such as the rise of the internet, the abolition of the old notions of time and space by globalization, the irruptions of new modes of mass communication which bypass the ancient fossilized newsroom and its archaic and decaying typesetters as well as the arrival of the new phenomenon known as Citizens’ Journalism.

    It is as rowdy and disrespecting of the old order and its institutional restraints as anybody can imagine. Anybody with an access to a computer and an upmarket phone is a prospective journalist. And anybody with a modern lap top is a publisher in waiting. For a postcolonial society which had just managed to throw off the yoke of military tyranny in the course of a long transition to modernity, it has been quite a journey from the epoch of Public Letter-writers who served as the solitary channel for communicating private grievances to the colonial authority to the age of bloggers who can call out anybody on anything.

    That bright and clear New York morning, the Empire State Building where the launch of Sahara Reporters took place was sparsely populated. Although fairly well-known as a student union leader, particularly famous for wrestling the late Admiral Joseph Okhai Akhigbe to the ground over a dispute about examination time table while the latter moonlighted as a Law student at the University of Lagos, he was yet to enter proper national consciousness at that point in time. The place was filled with Sowore acolytes and a few die-hard admirers. Yours sincerely was in the habit of infiltrating Sowore into complacent and complaisant ancient Yoruba circles in seedy dimly lit drinking joints of Brooklyn and Queens in New York for dueling matches over political developments back in Nigeria which were as rowdy as they were filled with friendly imprecations and joyous expletives.

    Read Also: Akpabio flags off medical outreach to support Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda

    Taking one to the airport later that year, Sowore noted cryptically that the Yoruba were withdrawing their intellectuals and that something was cooking. What was cooking was an inch by inch Normandy Beach-like operation to retrieve the region from General Obasanjo’s electoral blunderbuss. It ended four years later as Rauf Aregbesola triumphantly reclaimed his stolen mandate. Meanwhile in the intervening eighteen years, Sowore had transformed himself from a democratic street fighter, a sophomore samurai, an equal opportunity protester to the baron of disruptive communication, a master of insurrectionary journalism and globally lionized star of the post-military protest in Nigeria whose exploits and derring-do at the behest of his nation are permanently etched in the memories of his contemporaries.

    One may of course disagree with Sowore’s method and tactics, his rather ill-conceived notion of revolution as Espresso Coffee. But it is a measure of the young man’s amazing transformation and emergent national stature that a few days back, he successfully called out the nation’s premier crime bursting agency over its decision to conceal the identity of the nation’s biggest ever would be landlord. To be sure in doing this, the EFCC might be acting under some furtive gambit of secret negotiation to achieve maximum result but in a nation tired of official collusion and complicity with humongous crimes against the commonwealth, it was no surprise that it blew in its face. This is how far we have come in the battle against state criminality and we may have the advent of citizens’ journalism and disruptive countervailing disclosure of information to thank for this development.

    Going forward, it should now be clear and straightforward that we can no longer rely on fighting state criminality and economic heists committed against the nation by relying on old methods and methodology. Because Nigeria is struggling to be free of the hegemonic shackles of an entrenched plundering ethos derived from harmful worldviews that have kept the nation in a permanent state of normless levitations, it is going to be a hard slog; a brutal toe to toe contention.  We are in for a long revolution.  Contrary to Sowore’s own notion of instant revolutions characterized by brisk victories and irreversible gains, a long revolution is often accompanied by momentous slides and reversible momentum. Battles you thought had been fought and won simply come back to haunt you in another guise. Instant revolutionaries of yesterday dissolve into thin air. The shambolic state of Labour Party and its now motorized bicycle riders ought to serve as a telling reminder that ersatz revolutions not based on acute and accurate reading of the totality of circumstances of a multi-ethnic nation are dead before arrival.

    The current political hostilities over tax reforms are nothing but coded battles for the political and economic modernization of the country. They are just the tip of a huge iceberg and it is imperative that economic modernization is accompanied by political modernization, otherwise modernization is imperiled by counter-modernizing forces in their hegemonic resilience and resplendency. Unless the modernizing forces thrown up by the contradictions of the moment manage to discover the pan-Nigerian concert needed to impose a modernizing hegemony on the current chaotic ensemble, nothing can be guaranteed.

    This is why there is something fortuitous and fortunate about the coming of The Nation’s Journalism Foundation at this particular time. Eighteen years into the advent of Sowore and Sahara Reporters, the political situation appears more complicated while the reality is even more colorful in Nigeria. Although powerful blows have been struck against the ramparts of authoritarian misrule and savage despotism, their Praetorian Guard remain intact. The full arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the debut of even more sophisticated modes of faking reality (Deep Fake) have led to a deepening of doubt about official disclosures and the officiality of any disclosure itself.

    While the living tremble in fear, even the dead are rattled in apprehension. In the fierce struggle to debase and defame reality, actual reality appears unrealizable, a mere approximation of the real thing. We have arrived at the post-public preview or purview as the case may be. Who in his right mind would have believed that it is possible for an Accountant General of a federation to steal almost the entire federal coffer under his care, or that a serving official would build for himself an estate of over seven hundred duplexes while invoking the bible? Actual reality is unrealistic, as Franz Kafka will put it.

    This is the intriguing environment in which The Nation’s Foundation for Journalism will operate. There is a plethora of other organizations operating in the field. It will strive to distinguish itself by refining its own operative parameters. Based on its antecedents, it cannot, and will not, project itself as an adversarial antithesis to the state. Rather, it will promote active dialogue with state and non-state actors, seek occasional interactive engagement with officialdom, open its portals to countervailing views as long as they operate within the bounds of decency and decorum and actively seek the maximum welfare of traditional journalists through constant workshops, interdisciplinary training  with relevant national and international agencies and programmes of retraining and retooling as well as exposure to emerging trends in the profession.

    The present generation can only do its best, hoping to pass the baton to future generations. Thank you all.

    •Being a welcome address to the inaugural meeting of the Board of Trustees, The Nation Journalism Foundation by the Chairman of the board, Professor Adebayo Williams held on Wednesday, 4th December, 2024.

  • On the management of mismanagement

    On the management of mismanagement

    At bay in Olduvai Gorge

    Olduvai Gorge is somewhere in East Africa, in modern Tanzania to be precise. Inside its humungous crevices, the oldest human habitations were discovered some time ago. That was until recently when what appeared to be some far more ancient dwelling caves were discovered at Iho Eleru in contemporary western Nigeria. Taken together, both human habitats confirm the scientific hunch that it was in Africa that what has come to be known as human civilization sprouted until humankind began the long trek to Asia, Europe and other parts of the globe. As the founding continent, the African DNA produced the later prototypes of humans and remains the warehouse of its original wiring. If the Iho Eleru hypothesis receives scientific validation, it can be advanced that Nigeria is home to the vestigial remains of what became the basis of modern civilization.

    This is probably why when left to their own devices or when they find themselves in more amenable and conducive circumstances, Nigerians often exhibit extraordinary mental latitude, a physical resilience and astonishing creative capacity which propel them to the top of their game anywhere they find themselves. Yet tragically enough, and despite its vast human resources, Nigeria as a nation has become a top candidate for ultimate state failure and a poster boy for poverty and underdevelopment. How does one explain the horrid mismatch between potential and actuality, and between the oceanic plenitude of natural resources and the parlous condition of the people which has reduced many to the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence reminiscent of their Iho Eleru primitive ancestors?

        When you are in a hole, you must stop digging. A propaganda blitz which hides the roots of failure and the principal cause of illness from the afflicted does not enhance the possibility of swift recovery. Truth is an antiseptic cotton wool which clears the wound of its septic rot. Without this, the wound will continue to fester and suppurate. Let us face the truth so that it can cleanse and clear our wounds for proper dressing. These are not the best of time to be a Nigerian. Our national and international stock has never fallen so low. The level of de-civilization, de-institutionalization and consequent dehumanization witnessed in contemporary Nigeria is enough to send shivers into the heart of the most civilized denizens of the troubled nation.  The consequences of decades of economic brutalization of the people and the mindless plundering of national resources are here with us.

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    Everywhere you turn, there are dangerous signs of looming implosion, apocalyptic signals of the end of the times as we know it and the heavy rumbling of a heaving behemoth just about to topple over. The virtual administrative and economic collapse of the famous University College Hospital in Ibadan last week after the stars of the national eclipse finally pulled the plugs on the institution should be a worrisome index of the disorientation and dysfunction that have overtaken us. Before our very eyes, electricity supply in the country has become a criminal franchise in which people with stone hearts and utter lack of regard for state regulation of enterprise hold the entire populace to ransom without any consequence. Bent on squeezing the last penny from an already bitter and pauperized citizenry, they even go as far as to spurn state directives not to offload the cost of procuring new meter bands on the overburden people. So far it appears as if it is the state that is feeling the heat in this economic confrontation with non-state actors.

    Such is the criminal impunity of these people that a top Lagos State official told this writer last week that they can actually get away with murder because they are a monopoly with the capacity to blackmail even the state itself. To buttress his point, the official cited many legal cases pending in court against these power Mafiosi. Even when rulings are obtained against them, they simply refuse to comply. In some instances, it is the officials themselves who goad the consumers to commit infractions only to turn against them after they have collected gratification. In other instances, they employ rogue units within their organization in sting operations only to turn round to accuse the owners of premises of grave infractions.

    It is a colossal and gigantic scam against innocent people in which monthly targets are set and monthly targets have to be met at all cost. As it is and as the nation begins to resemble an Olduvai Gorge of cave people deprived of one of the wonders of modernity and civilization political primitivity is clearly going to meet economic primitivity head on. This is going to be far more severe in consequences than the polite and civilized manner of resorting to self- help. Perhaps we are already seeing the precursor to this final settling of scores in the attempts to torch the facilities of power-supplying consortiums. Like the struggle for oil in which oil thieves are requested by government to prevent oil theft, this one is possibly going to take an equally vicious and absurdist dimension before we arrive at Eugene Ionesco’s terminus of termites.

       The scales of decades of political, economic and spiritual decimation of the country are now falling off our eyes revealing a level of vandalization and elite delinquency probably unique in the history of class formation anywhere in the world. Even our colonial masters must now be secretly wondering about the end-product of their experimentation and the possibilities of an apocalyptic endgame in which semi-Asiatic hordes square up to Nubian mongrels. Having inherited this level of mismanagement from another elite formation within its own party, the government has come up with a rash of measures including the odd fire brigade approach aimed at stemming the rot. But it is also acutely and critically aware of how far it can go without threatening the basis of its own ascendancy.

       Not being radical or revolutionary in its original impetus or inspiration, the government knows how far it can go in a particular direction without bringing down the roof of the unstable coalition that propelled it to power. Hence the resort to what can only be described as the management of mismanagement, a temporizing and stonewalling stratagem of power pragmatism which tries not to give offence to the few that really matter  while ignoring the many that don’t. In the circumstances, anybody expecting any wholesale or holistic restructuring program from the administration is wasting his time at this point. What advocates and lobbyists should do is to raise the game and the level of discourse rather than resorting to old, shopworn rhetoric about devolution of power, fiscal federalism and all what not. Those who do management of mismanagement are not in the least interested in such a display of power virginity.

       But even then and despite all this, such is the fractious and unstable nature of power pragmatism and the management of mismanagement that they are often confronted by the echoes of their own political and economic limitations. Management of mismanagement is a skilled science of political gamesmanship which requires creative brinkmanship and the brilliance of the ultimate trapeze artist. It cannot afford to indulge in ambitious economic and political reform because failure in the project may invite more revolutionary intervention or radical anarchy.  Yet as business-friendly and as politically inoffensive as the ruling administration may be or want to appear to those that matter, there are many who believe that floating the naira and plugging the loopholes in the forex gaming known as subsidy removal have done irreparable and incalculable damage to their business. They are now poised for war.

       At the opposite side of the spectrum are enemy nationals who are engaged in a campaign of permanent economic destabilization of the nation as long as their skewered and schizoid ideal of the nation does not prevail. With their access to the media, they subject the ruling party and its leading lights to merciless excoriation on a daily basis and they in turn respond through their hirelings with commensurate firepower making it feel as if the country is on a permanent siege. It can now be seen that even the management of mismanagement has its work cut out for it to prevent Nigeria from tipping over to the Olduvai Gorge of primitive cave-people and savage hunter-gatherer. At the rate at which we are going, we are not very far from this terminal debacle of the Black race.

      Management of mismanagement, or the capacity to prevent a terrible situation from further deteriorating, is not the best option for a nation rendered economically and politically destitute by a delinquent elite formation. But it has advantages over sheer mismanagement. Although it can never and will never be able to deliver on ambitious economic and political transformation of the country or drive political equity and social justice, it can prevent the situation from tipping into anarchy or prevent the hostile factions from coming to blows by strategic appointments and skillful allocation of resources. How long this will last and how long the ruling cartel can hold forth depends on its capacity to feel its way through the minefield and deliver on the largesse.

  • The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all…

    The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all…

    A funereal pall hangs over most of New York on this bright mid-November morning. All is eerily quiet on the western front. The streets have been cleared of the electorally vanquished. The protocol of liberal grandees has disappeared into their suburban dens. But the victors are in a triumphant procession. It is a strange victory indeed. The odd, doleful and lugubrious Black vagrant could be seen occasionally punching the air in a gesture of defiance while spurting some insensate nonsense. Donald Trump, the grandson of a drafter dodger expelled from the Bavarian principality, carries all before him.

        Not even his greatest and most implacable political adversary could doubt the scale and scope of the electoral disaster the anti-democratic heathen and convicted felon has inflicted on the Democratic Party and various armchair critics—yours sincerely included— the world over. It has taken a serially and severely flawed person to bring out the worst about America and to remind us once again that democracy is about numbers and not about wishful thinking or romantic exhortations.

    The oligarchy of self-interest trumps all when it comes to modern liberal democracy. When self-interests conspire to gain ascendancy, all other interests, including national interest, must take a back seat. America has taken a look at its own inner demons and recoiled in horror and terror. The time for expansive nobility will come in the fullness of time, but not this time around. The stakes are just too high for any sentimental twaddle.  The time for the generosity of spirit which facilitates equality of outlook will soon arrive once again but not this time around. The economic outlook is just too bleak for that kind of suicidal high-mindedness. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

    And so they all voted for Trump in droves and high number while shrugging it all away in the privacy of solitude as a small price to pay for survival in a harsh environment deliberately created by Trump and other economic confederates. One bird does not have the luxury of informing the other bird about a fast approaching pellet. And so they all voted for Trump in droves and in the conspiracy of privacy which later became damning and shaming public knowledge. It is not a thing to be proud of and that it is why the jubilation has been muted in many circles. But as Catch-22 has famously taught them, one’s concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers real and immediate is the product of a rational mind.

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     Black people fearing the prospects and possibility of economic  extinction above all other mortal fears; clergy people who dreaded the possibility fiscal annihilation more than the prospects of Trump’s moral infamy; women who believed more in presidential macho and machismo than in the feminized wiles and charms of a female president of the greatest military power the world has seen; Black men who simply abjured the possibility of a Black woman as commander in chief and of course the teeming mass of urban and suburban White males who simply pooh-poohed the idea of a woman, and a Black woman for that matter, as the president of the United States of America. By the time they all came together in a granite composite of contraries and contradictions, it was all too much for poor Kamila who fled from public view as the evidence of rejection and comprehensive shellacking began to mount on that historic night.

       America has once again shown the world how historical momentums are made and lost. It will take quite some time before it came together like this one once again. It has happened once, when the brilliant and magical Barack Obama broke all the barriers of race and religion and shattered the glass ceiling of colour and creed to emerge as president of the United States. Hilary Clinton almost completed the race, having won the electoral majority only to be thwarted at the Electoral College. But that is probably why they are having this implacable and ferocious backlash in America. Once bitten and twice about to be stung, no dice.

      America has taken a bad beat from its own inner demons. Democracy and its finer ideals and capacity to produce men and women who are driven by the visionary ideal of a more humane and better organized society have receded to their lowest ebb. It will take time to recoup and regroup. It will take energy, drive and superhuman will. It is too early to write off this nation of sturdy immigrants. Trump and his cohorts will make this possible. This is why there is a ring of historical inevitability about the coming of this particular fellow and the return of the shining city on the hills. Uncle Sam will be back.

    This column is on annual leave.