The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • What is America’s national interest in the Middle East?

    What is America’s national interest in the Middle East?

    It used to be said that America’s national interest in the Middle East is mainly the access to reasonably priced petroleum which is widely located in Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and other states like the UAE, Kuwait and Iraq. The Persian state of Iran also produces large amount of petroleum and has vast amount of crude petroleum deposits. Of course since the removal of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran in 1979, by Ayatollah Mohammad Ruhollah Khomeini, Iranian oil has been out of reach of the Americans. Now that petroleum is becoming not so popular as fuel because of concern of climate change, it is reasonable to suggest that the presence of petroleum is no longer a major commodity of attraction for America in the Middle East. After all, the USA virtually walked away from the Orinoco valley in Venezuela which harbours the largest amount of crude oil in the world because of political problems.

    The USA itself has vast amount of untapped crude petroleum in Alaska in the Gulf of Mexico and other places in America. The scientific innovations surrounding the use of liquid hydrogen and the adaptation of the internal combustion engine to electrical vehicles has reduced the need of petroleum to drive automobiles. There is therefore bound to be a quantum reduction in the use of hydrocarbons in the world if not now certainly in the future. Of course hydrocarbons at least for the next thirty or so years would continue to be a commodity of high value but the reduction of the significant need of hydrocarbons  means a radical decline in its value. It therefore follows that if the Middle East is going to remain relevant to America, it must be because of some other reasons. The location of The Suez Canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea must be an important consideration for interest of a big power like the USA or any other power because whichever power has the command of the sea controls the world.

    The Middle East is almost at the centre of the world linking the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean together. The Middle East is the centre of human civilisation and home of the three monotheistic universal religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and whatever anybody may say, religion for a long time to come, will remain a potent force in human history and action. Because of considerations of security, the United States and the other major powers of the world like China, Russia, India just like Britain and France before them will continue to have serious interest in what goes on in the Middle East.

    When war broke out between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis early in October, most people were surprised about the speed with which the countries of the western alliance namely the USA, Britain, France, NATO and the EU rushed to Israel to declare that that they would support Israel militarily and financially.  Was this as a result of collective Western guilt of the various acts of antisemitism culminating in the holocaust or because of joint Israel- American military and intelligence research, understanding and investment? The USA virtually transferred the executive branch of its government to Israel with its president, foreign secretary and Defence secretary meeting with Israeli war cabinet to plan the country’s strategy of attack against Gaza and to decide what the country would need to execute its attack on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. Those of us who are keen observers of international relations knew that the love affair would not last when other vital interests are threatened.

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    After about a month of Israeli bombing of Gaza, the rest of the world began to question the disproportionate collective punishment visited on the Palestinians by the Israelis. It got so bad that the Arab leaders refused to meet with President Joe Biden who wanted to go to Jordan to meet with them. They refused to meet with him because they alleged that the “Arab street” would be hostile to such a meeting. This is a case in which “public opinion” trumped diplomacy. This is also a case where American dollars liberally donated to Kingdom of Jordan and to Egypt annually had no effect on the behaviour of the political leaders of those countries and the American president had to return home to Washington shamefully.

    America hopefully learnt a lesson that even-handedness and diplomacy would have paid it better rather than relying on arming militarily, the state of Israel against a ragtag Palestinian terrorist group like Hamas. America has also deployed vast amount of military assets like sea power, combat aircrafts, and several marines warning states in the Middle East not to get involved in the conflict. Ironically, it is the USA that has been bombing so-called Iranian backed groups in Southern Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen on the pretext that American troops in the area were being attacked. It seems America wants to draw into the conflict, Iran so that a joint Israeli-American airpower may jointly remove Iranian troublesome presence in the Middle East. The United States seems to have forgotten the warning of former American president, General Dwight Eisenhower that the United States should guard against allowing the country to be taken over by the military industrial complex. War does not solve all problems and by abdicating other means of political resolution of the problem between the Palestinians and Israelis, a great lesson was missed. The war party in Israel and the United States and their representatives in Congress seem to want to plunge the Middle East into general conflagration.

    The United Nations has been rendered ineffective because Israel has the support of the UK and the United States, two permanent members of the Security Council and have regularly vetoed any action that would have made Israel realise that there are better ways of solving the Middle East problem without its regular resort to war and sabre rattling. The result of this is that once rendered ineffective and redundant in the Middle East, the UN will remain like that in other theatres of military conflicts like say in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine which poses existential threat to global peace and human survival.

    If the Israeli-Gaza war continues for long, it may radically affect the moral standing of the USA and her allies and increase racial conflict in the world with Arabs feeling that their lives do not matter in relation to those considered superior to them. When racism is added to religious fanaticism, a terrible brew which the world will be forced to drink will be the result with terrible consequences. The carefully designed Abrahamic/Ibrahimic diplomatic outreach between Israel and the Arab states has become the victim of the military policies of Israel and America in this Gaza-Israeli conflict and will be difficult to resuscitate. The economic consequences of this war if it metastases into general regional conflict will have dire consequences in the world. It is already affecting medium oil producers like Nigeria and Angola whose markets are being taken by cheaper oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia sold at discount because of the uncertainty of the times.

    It is certainly not in America’s interest to plunge the whole world into war fuelled recession. It is simply concerning that with generous aid of $5 billion annually, America cannot shape Israeli foreign policy in such a way that it will synchronise it with overall American policy and interest in the Middle East without sacrificing Israeli security.

  • The United Nations and the Israeli-Gaza war

    The United Nations and the Israeli-Gaza war

    The United Nations General Assembly ( UNGA) one of the principal organs of the United Nations , recently passed an almost unanimous resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in the ongoing military operations in the Israeli-Gaza conflict because of the thousands of largely civilian Palestinians and particularly children and women and the elderly being bombed out of existence by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) following the October 7 massacre of 1400 Israeli civilians and soldiers peacefully attending a fete just across the Gaza fence on the border with Israel as well as the kidnapping over 200 hostages by Hamas commando forces. It was obvious that Israel would have to retaliate to keep alive and credible its military superiority over the Palestinians and the wider Arab world in the Middle East, a superiority that has been demonstrated over and over in several military contestations since 1948.

    The question now is whether Israel has gone beyond proportionality in its retaliation. The UN Secretary General says it has. It should be said that the war is not a fair conflict between two conventional forces but between a powerful Israeli force made up of an army, navy and a modern air force and a ragtag Hamas combatants. It is the most unequal contest one can imagine anywhere. The problem is that the two people are fighting a just war. After the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, holocaust and various anti-Semitic discriminations all over the world except in Africa, the Jews are entitled to a homeland even if their claim to Palestine belongs to biblical past while the Palestinian claim belongs to recent historical past. The two peoples are fighting what can be called a just war if any war can be so described.

    When the Israelis were attacked on October 7, they occupied a high moral ground in fighting back. After shedding thousands of human blood deemed out of proportion from the tragedy of October 7, the whole world is beginning to question the justification of a war largely against millions of defenceless women, children and old men simply because they are associated with the Palestinians who committed crime against the Jewish state. The United States which unusually committed itself to the Israeli cause leaving no room for possible arbitration has now found itself running around the Arab world and Israel itself asking for “military pause” rather than a ceasefire in the conflict. The backing of Israel by the United States has left it only supported by its western alliance while the rest of the world in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Russia are supporting the Palestinians.

    Of course, it does not really matter the number of countries supporting the Palestinians because what matters is the critical force of those supporting Israel. But the question of morality hangs very much on the side of beleaguered Palestine. Israel has also unfortunately acquired the enemies of the United States because as a hegemonic power, America despite what good it does for the world has many enemies. The way the Americans with its open diplomacy are telling the whole world what fiscal and military support it is giving to Israel has alienated itself and Israel from the whole world.

    This is the situation the United Nations has to deal with. It is natural for people to feel sorry for the underdog in a conflict and this is the situation in this conflict. The UN through the massive support for the Palestinian cause by the General Assembly has left the Secretariat of the UN no other choice than to manifest the support of it for the Palestinians. It has several offices and agencies ministering to the need of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank of the River Jordan. A large number of them or almost a hundred have been killed by Israeli bombs and artillery shells. Even though the Security Council, more or less the executive council of the world body has found itself deadlocked because of the rivalry between the USA and Russia and China cannot outrightly force a ceasefire on the two parties to the conflict, the Secretary General has found it necessary to issue statements asking Israel to avoid committing war crime and genocide against the Palestinians. This is a serious accusation which the Israeli government finds very onerous.

    From emotional arguments in the General Assembly and much more in the Security Council, the Israeli delegation has had to wear the yellow Star of David and to say that when six million Jews were killed in concentration camps in Europe, the whole world kept quiet but that they have said “never again” will they allow themselves to be slaughtered without response. This is a powerful argument which the world cannot ignore. The response of the world must be to find a workable territorial architecture in the Holy land to allow a secure and defensible Israel while at the same time finding a territorial arrangement for Palestinian self-determination. It will require swapping of territories and other arrangements that would guarantee statehood for unarmed Palestine whose security would be guaranteed by the Security Council. There are countries in the world that do not have armed forces and which saves large amount of money for development. Countries like Costa Rica, Kiribati, Dominica Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco and some of the small principalities in Europe do not waste significant resources on unnecessary armed forces. So a Palestinian state that only maintains internal peace with police force will not be unique in the world while Israel will continue to protect itself with its forces both nuclear and conventional. This suggestion will not be easy to work out but it is doable and workable. There is however no viable alternative.

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    Other suggestions such as a secular Israel-Palestine in which Arabs and Jews are free to live side by side and practise their religion will not work. What is primary consideration for the Jews is that they must control the security of the state, a state that is available to all Jews to run to when they are physically threatened. There is also the talk of the West Bank and other pieces being merged with the Kingdom of Jordan since the present Kingdom of Jordan is inhabited by almost 50 percent Palestinians. The Kingdom of Jordan would not agree to forfeit its identity in an extended Palestine- Jordan state. Some have suggested that the Palestinians could be assisted to settle in other Arab states. There is evidence to suggest that the Arabs are not amenable to this. This is not a serious suggestion because it will not fly because it does not meet the psychological needs of the Palestinians who see the land of Palestine as ancestral home where their ancestors are buried.

    The post of the Secretary General of the United Nations is not an easy one. With the limited resources at its command and with wars and conflicts all over the world, the UN is as effective as the world powers want it to be. Whatever each UN Secretary General may personally wish and be inclined to do, the limitation of his office imposes on him/her what can be done. It’s an office which puts a lot of demand on the holder even up to making supreme sacrifice as was done by Dag Hammarskjold who died in harness in the Congo in 1961 during the Congo crisis.

    Israel must understand the position of the UN Secretary General instead of angrily reacting to it as if the Secretary General is anti-Israel. Banning officials of the UN to Israel is not the way to go because Israel may need the organization in the future. Israel must walk back its position in which it hitherto had support from the whole world which had so much to learn from it rather than delude itself on overwhelming support from America and inheriting America’s enemies as its own. Africa must make its voice heard as a neutral continent owing nothing to Israel which in the past collaborated with apartheid South Africa to make a nuclear bomb; neither does it owe the Arabs which for years before the Atlantic slave trade were involved in this nefarious trade. It is nice to state this so that the whole world can realise that like an elephant Africa has a long memory.

  • Ancient and modern political institutions in Nigeria

    Ancient and modern political institutions in Nigeria

    Some of the dynasties in some of the Nigerian principalities like those of Ile Ife, Benin, Oyo, Argungu, and Wukari are about 1000 years old. They have survived in one form or the other through the ages going through transformations, dynastic marriages and foreign infusions as the environment demanded. The point I want to make is that the current political leaders do not have much to teach the holders of traditional political titles who are the embodiment of ancient wisdom passed from past generations to them.

    Political party formation apart from protest movements against certain urban levies such as water rate in Lagos is just about a century and a half years old compared with our ancient traditional institutions. This is why modern Nigerian politicians, military or civilian, have many times found themselves relying on traditional leaders for advice. Nigerian politicians always find traditional rulers useful during the time of crisis or when they need political support or traditional legitimacy. This was particularly the case during military regimes when politicians were out of combat to put it in military language. 

    In the First Republic, politicians legitimatised themselves in office by having traditional rulers confer honorific titles on them so that they could be addressed as a chief and not ordinary mister. The ones in the North of Nigeria preferred to be addressed as “Alhaji” to separate them from ordinary men. There was a tendency during the military regime for positions of traditional political leaders of emirs or Obas to be hotly contested by serving or retired military leaders as happened first in the North and later in the Southwest of Nigeria. In other words, traditional leadership continues to remain so relevant that not only top civil servants, university lecturers but also business tycoons and military officers want to become traditional rulers rather than to support those who find traditional political institutions undesirable, undemocratic, obscurantist and therefore unnecessary and should therefore be abolished. 

    In the current democratic regime, politicians are afraid of outspoken traditional rulers to the extent of either trying to muzzle them, buy them off and if they cannot be muzzled, to just remove them from office. Despite this tendency, there has been nowhere in Nigeria where concerted efforts have been made to abolish them. This is because the ordinary people who have no love or trust for politicians want to keep their traditional rulers as embodiment of their collective culture and tradition. Among the Igbo, the Tiv and others who are by tradition socio-politically segmentary without a long history of centralised political tradition and consequent powerful traditional rulers ruling over vast pieces of land have tended to create brand new ones. This is because they assume that those of their compatriots who have centralised political institutions are at a political advantage in competition for political power in the Nigeria.

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    Two events in the Southwest in recent times have troubled me. These are the judgment of removal from office by an Ogbomosho High Court against his royal majesty, the Soun of Ogbomosho, Oba Afolabi Laoye as if he were a minor political office holder and, the invitation of the members of the Oyomesi (Council of kingmakers led by the Bashorun or prime minister) to the office of the EFCC to answer queries over their purported choice of an Alaafin, a choice apparently unacceptable to the incumbent governor of Oyo State.

    Before the summon to the EFCC office, the Oyo State governor had openly said “the position of the Alaafin was not for sale”. These two events happening in two of the most important Yoruba kingdoms call for introspection and profound thinking about our cultural future. In our tradition, once the king has gone through traditional rites at Ipebi ,  that is  the end of the process and only God can remove him from office.  This does not mean a traditional ruler is free to commit illegality but we must not treat their positions with levity and expect everyone to later respect them after they have been shaken up through legal or executive humiliation. We cannot undermine them publicly and expect them to recover. But we have situations where in some instances in Yorubaland and in the same Oyo State, a ruler who had been in office for over 20 years is summarily removed from office by judicial fiat and the traditional institution is thrown as it were to ruins without anyone thinking about societal consequences.

    Law should always take into consideration the societal demands and necessity before judgements affecting the society are passed. We are not dealing with textbook judgements but with the lives of people. The legislatures in states where there are recognised ancient stools should pass legislations forbidding the toying with traditional kings by the courts or political leaders once the kings or Obas have been installed or where traditional institutions charged with their selections have discharged their responsibilities according to ancient unquestionable rites.

    The present situation in Oyo where members of the Oyomesi are being dragged before institutions created by modern politics should not be allowed without raising a point or two. The Oyomesi is a thousand year old institution created by ancient Oyo which by age and practice has come to stay and should be regarded as superior to any ephemeral institution that may be removed or replaced by another one because of the vagaries of changing modern African politics.  We must also scrupulously guard against the introduction of the two monotheistic universal religions of Islam and Christianity as qualifications for the throne in Yorubaland. We pride ourselves of seeing religion as a personal choice and not a condition for ascending traditional thrones.

    One of the important lessons we must learn from all these interventions by politicians and the courts in areas totally beyond their power and understanding is that we must so codify the laws of our traditional institutions that politicians in government and the judiciary do not have the power to influence the choice of our traditional rulers. The institutions should protect themselves by pruning down the number of ruling houses which originally were one dynasty before as a result of growth became several. We can learn from the tradition in Benin, a sister and related principality, where only the first child of an Oba has a claim to the throne. If that would be too drastic, we can have just two alternating families which in the case of Oyo since 1900 have become two. Once the Oyomesi chooses a person from the right family, the head of government’s role is mere ratification and crowning. This is what happens in normal climes where constitutional monarchies remain and the question of a king on the throne being sued and removed from the palace will not happen. This is simply a travesty of tradition and we must avoid situations where elected rulers as happened recently in Kano, simply removed a king with gubernatorial fiat. This must never be allowed in Yorubaland as happened in the past or where the stipends of rulers were stopped or reduced to pennies because of politics. After having said this, the behaviour of our rulers must be beyond reproach and they must hold themselves to higher standards than those expected of politicians. They must realise that at the end of the day when their subjects reject them through their misconduct, no higher ruler except God can save them because the voice of the people is the voice of God.

  • The Israeli-Palestinian crisis

    While discussing the fate of Jews, Blacks and Arabs sometimes in 1963, Leopold Sedar Senghor, the great African philosopher, poet, author and first president of Senegal referred to them as a “Trilogy of suffering peoples”. As an African, one can empathise with the Jews and Arabs as part of the tripod of victims of the powerful western imperialism. The West dominated Africa and left the aftermath of discrimination following the slave trade, slavery and colonialism on Africans and people of African descent. The Jews suffered from the Spanish Inquisition, anti-Semitism generally in the Anglo-Saxon world pogroms from the Russians and poles and the holocaust from Nazi Germany and their Frankish cousins, the French. The Arabs did not fare better until the vast oil discoveries in their lands in the 20th century. The Palestinian problem goes back to the British mandate established over Palestine in 1918 after the First World War.

    Before that time, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1917.  The Ottoman Turkish Empire suffered defeat along with the German Empire in 1918 and like Germany, Austria- Hungary (the Hapsburg Empire) and Italy lost all colonies and subject territories ruled over by Berlin, Ankara, Vienna and Rome. During the war, Lord Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary had promised the Jews a home in Palestine while also telling the Arabs there they would be free from Turkish rule thus promising the same territory to Jews and Arabs .This is the kernel of the problem. When it became impossible to do this  following ethnic violence between the two Semitic peoples, the Jews and the Arabs, Britain transferred the problem to the United Nations which favoured the creation of two states in Palestine, one Jewish the other Arab.  Israel declared itself an independent Jewish state on May 4, 1948 and the American president, Harry S. Truman recognized the state the same day and thus began the origin of tacit and open American support for Israel no matter what it does.

    Since that time the Jews and the Arabs have fought over the issue of who owns Palestine in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006.  This is apart from battles and skirmishes directly between Israelis and Palestinians over decades since 1948. The United Nations has passed many resolutions on the Israeli- Palestinian question, the most famous of which was passed after the 1967 war. This resolution number 242 asking Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders which at the same time guaranteed secure borders for Israel was deliberately nebulous and totally unenforceable. The United States has routinely vetoed any resolution that may be injurious to the existence of Israel and other resolutions have been obeyed by Israel in the breach.

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    The pivotal role of the United States in unravelling the knotty problem of Arab- Israeli question came between 1993 and 1995 during the Presidency of Bill Clinton when an agreement between the two sides were signed in Washington DC after serious negotiations in Oslo permitting the two peoples working towards a two states solution (The Oslo protocol). Unfortunately, the excitement and enthusiasm did not last long and the old enmity resurfaced. The emergence of the current Binyamin Netanyahu government with his heavy dependence on right wing nationalists who would rather take the entire old Palestine as a Jewish homeland has made the possibility of some kind of two states solution virtually impossible. Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been frozen in time and there has been regular encroachment by Israeli settlers on the West Bank. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s control of the West Bank of the Jordan River has become ineffective while Gaza has been fenced in by the Israeli administration thus reducing the situation in Gaza to what critics have described as an open prison in which more than two million Palestinians are herded. It has now been revealed that it seems the Netanyahu policy was to encourage the extremist HAMAS group in Gaza in order to reduce the possibility of a two state solution by exposing the weakness of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and making it totally untenable to negotiating with HAMAS which does not even recognise Israel. In the meantime, most of the Arab states had reached a modus vivendi with Israel. Recognition had come from Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, the Gulf States, Qatar and under considerable American pressure, Saudi Arabia was seriously considering recognising Israel under the so-called Abrahamic (Ibrahimic) accord.

    The position of the Palestinians had become hopeless and no one was seriously talking about a two states solution and the Netanyahu government was encouraging Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In Israel itself, there was the ongoing paralytic protest over the government’s decision to whittle down the power of the Supreme Court over legislations. Critics have suggested that the government somehow was not paying attention to warnings about security breach before the Hamas’ military wing struck on October 7, in which 1400 Israeli citizens were killed and the kidnapping over 200 people living in settlements near Gaza Strip.

    This was a great tragedy for Israel which had lived under the illusion that its security was watertight. Most of its Western allies led by the United States rushed to Israeli defence and declared that Israel had the right to defend itself. This Carte Blanche is being exploited by Israel to mean total destruction of Gaza and not just the Hamas party and government. The world-wide demonstrations against Israeli bombing of the Palestinians have forced the Western powers to advise Israel not to impose a regime of collective punishment against the Palestinian people. More than 5000 Palestinians have died under the fire of Israeli bombs not only in Gaza but in the West Bank.

    Israel is saying it did not just wake up to levy this war on the Palestinians. They were provoked by the murderous rampage of Hamas on October 7. The policy of Israel is to totally wipe out Hamas and to make it impossible for them and their successors to levy war against Israel. Israel has been involved in asking about one million Palestinians living in Gaza city to move out of the city towards the southern part of the Gaza Strip before it commences ground military operations to wipe out all traces of the Hamas government in Northern Gaza. The world is also getting worried about the conflict metastasising into a wider conflict possibly bringing Iran and consequently the United States into the conflict. This fear must be behind President Joe Biden’s private warning of the Israeli government not to overreact.

    The question to ask is what Israel would then do with Gaza city after its military operations. Will it take it over and cleanse it of its Arab population? Will the PLO be installed there at the point of the gun? These are questions which the Israeli government must think through before its military operations in Gaza.

    Whatever the outcome of the current crisis in Israel, the critical players must find a solution to the problem of how to satisfy the national feelings of the Palestinians while guaranteeing the security of Israel. Whatever the formula may be worked out, the Jews have no other home than Israel. Anything short of that is a non-starter. Some have suggested a secular state in the whole of old Palestine in which Arabs and Jews will be free to practise their religions. That will not work because Islam and Judaism are not just religions but ways of life. Having suffered the genocide of the holocaust, the Israelis will never agree to any regime in which they are not in total control of their own security. These are the fundamental issues and the world must be seized of the way out of the complex problems. The United States which has from 1948 injected itself into the middle of this complex situation is perhaps the only country that can guarantee Israeli security and persuade the country to find an acceptable geographical solution to the Palestinian problem in which the twin siblings of Israelis and Palestinians can live securely and exist in the same womb.

  • Secret of longevity:  A practical approach

    Secret of longevity:  A practical approach

    I have just watched a video produced by the American journalist Dan Buettner on longevity in Netflix and I was so impressed by the details of the experimental research conducted that I decided to give my readers a brief discussion of it and also fill whatever lacuna that I find exist in the write up. Of course, no knowledge is absolutely complete. The Bible says that there is nothing new under the sun. Some people may also be wondering why I am writing about something that is not as topical as the Israeli-Gaza war which I agree is perhaps the most important issue facing the world right now, even more important than the Russia-Ukraine war because of the possibility of the crisis spreading to other parts of the combustible Middle East. The crisis is not just a flash in the pan; it has a long gestation and it is not likely to end very soon so there will be plenty of time to discuss the issue.

    The Netflix video on longevity based on the experience of a reporter who has followed the subject of his enquiry for 20 years is based on careful search for places where people live for 100 years all over the world. For practical logistical reasons, the writer did not include Africa as part of his study. He concentrated on Japan particularly the Island of Okinawa in the south, some isolated village in Sardinia in Italy, a village in Costa Rica in Central America and Loma Linda in southwestern Bernardino County in California.

    Any knowledgeable person on wellness will immediately find connecting factors in all the four areas that may promote longevity. First of all, they are not huge sprawling urban conurbations. The village identified in Okinawa as an abode of centenarians, is inhabited by hard working men and women who did not believe in any retiring age and who felt one must continue to make use of the brain and body until it is practically impossible to move. It is their belief that if one continues to work, the body will not give up. The people also ate sparingly and their menu was largely vegetables, fish and fruits. The people also managed to socialise by communal meetings, physical exercise, celebrations, dancing, singing and laughing. Something as simple as laughing was considered very important for long life. According to the study, the people avoided much starchy food and sweet potatoes were considered very essential part of their diet. It is now generally known that avoidance of red meat or any meat at all is a key to long life. Ancestral belief of their Buddhist religion was also a central psychological rallying point for the elderly of the Okinawa community under investigation.

    The writer did not want us to jump to conclusions with one study alone so he decided to look at a Sardinian community in Southern Italy which did not live exactly as the Okinawans did. This Italian community indulged themselves in typical Mediterranean menu of pasta, bread, fish and meat cooked in copious amount of olive oil and ate a lot of fruits. The location of this village on a hill was significant.   Even the church which was the centre of the village activities was located on the highest part of the village. The significance of this was that those who felt compelled to go for early worship in the morning must be prepared to go up the hill to fellowship with one another and praise their God. Without their knowing it, the people throughout their daily living developed healthy lifestyles and burnt out excess fat on daily basis and did not need to take cholesterol tablets. Many of the elderly people in the village considered pensions unneeded because they were working their fields and producing virtually all the fresh food they ate. Like the villagers in Okinawa, the Italians even though belonging to different faiths, were very strong in their beliefs. Unlike the Okinawa villagers, the Italians drank socially different kinds of wine but the most important thing is that everything was produced locally. The Italian studies suggest there was nothing wrong with eating carbohydrates laden foods as long as one ate sufficient amount of meat or fish and large amount of vegetables and drank moderately. The elderly kept working rather than abandoning hard work to younger people and that if one could no longer do hard work, one should learn other things to keep oneself engaged. One must never be too old to do something.

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    The third community examined is located in rural Costa Rica in Central America. I was particularly interested in this subject because this was largely a community of transplanted Africans (African diaspora). The people chose to work all their lives not by choice but by destiny. They were hardy cowboys, farmers and their tough women took care of the business aspect of their husbands’ lives. They ate sparingly but had a lot of fruits in their diet. The land they tilled was not large but they produced enough to keep bodies and souls together. They had good social lives and age was not a barrier to dancing, drinking and singing. The people also had strong faith in their Catholic religion. They also laughed a lot and were contented with their lives and their government despite its limited resources had an effective and efficient medical service covering the entire country. It was therefore not surprising to find many of the people living above a hundred years.

    These three studies on rural societies had many things in common. The communities were not touched by urban craze of fast, processed and homogenised foods; rather they ate what is now called organic food straight from the soil.

    The researcher realising that most people in the world live in urban areas decided to find a community that was not isolated and that was reasonably urban but small as well and that is how he landed in Loma Linda In California. Loma Linda is by American standards a small place of about 26000 inhabitants of mixed racial population. It is of course famous for its medical university but perhaps much more famous because of the number of centenarians in the community. It is also largely a Seventh Day Adventist community that is almost vegetarian and alcohol abstaining. This is a thoroughly modern American society using cutting edge technology in all areas of life but at the same making the Seventh Day Christian theology the centre of its life.

    Unlike the other communities previously studied, Loma Linda is not isolated and it is well known as a centre of modern medicine and medical conferences. What cuts across the four communities studied over a period of 20 years is the fact of total engagement of each person with the community, absolute belief in their faith, a sense of purpose and lot of fruits and vegetables in their diet. It is only the Loma Linda community that abstains from meat or fish as a source of protein and from alcohol. The Italian and Costa Rican communities eat all things but maintain its health through physical activities such as demanded by the nature of their environments. The Okinawans seem to indulge more in socialised living and communal work without any ideological mumbo jumbo!

    The most relevant of the four studies is the Loma Linda because it is more realistic and can be embraced and practiced by all those who are willing without embracing the Seventh Day Adventist ideology .The more vegetables and less meat or animal proteins we eat, the healthier we are. This appears to be the trend in most parts of the world today and it is environmentally friendly in a world where all abatement measures need to be considered if we are to save the only living planet we have. If the researcher on longevity had had the time, resources and logistics for global spread, he would have been surprised by the number of communities in Africa where people live over a hundred years because they live organically, eating own grown food, lots of vegetables and little meat because of lack of means and hunting animal and catching fishes for protein. My home town Okemesi and many other towns in Nigeria used to be like that and I believe villagers still live longer than towns’ people with minimal medical support by government.

    In conclusion, we may ask how important it is for people to live for a hundred years or more. It is not worth living very long and in this case until one hundred unless one lives those years in reasonable health and happiness. There is a general saying that it is not how long one lives that matters but how well. There is no point living long in ill health, penury and consequent sorrow and unhappiness. Medical science will also confirm that longevity is in the genes and it does not really matter how some people live their lives, they will still live long. But if one has a cursory look at people who live long, one will discover that there are certain factors in their lives predisposing them to longevity. These could be their hard work, commitment to certain purposes in life, feeling of being needed and having a larger horizon than the ordinary people.  

    Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman, soldier, politician, writer and war-time leader lived till he was 90 years old, yet by ordinary reckoning he shouldn’t have lived that long. His father Lord  Randolph Spencer Churchill died at 45 and Winston himself was a rotund, chain smoking and hard drinking man but he made up for these by his public life and writing. This should be an encouragement for those of us elderly public intellectuals who continue to write even in our evening years.

  • Why America’s politics is global politics

    Why America’s politics is global politics

    Some people especially in the so-called third world say we should worry more about what goes on in our countries rather than be bothered by the political wrangling in the United States. There is some sense in this statement but nobody, not even the Russians and Chinese can afford to ignore happenings in the USA. This is simply because America and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to bury the world five times over. The Chinese are not far behind them in their ability to end all our lives.  There are signs that the three of them are planning to resume underground nuclear tests which they have not done for decades. The American dollar is the reserve currency of the world, the printing of which only America has control over.  The movement of the BRICS nations to have another reserve currency is inchoate and lies in the future and not in the next decade. Much work needs to be done as to what currency that would be among those of Russia, China or India whose interests are not and will not always be the same.  Or perhaps BRICS is working on a brand new currency which will take time to work out the details.

    It took the first and the second world wars to put America at the military and economic pre-eminence it is today and the whim  or strategies of a few countries will not remove it from there until the world is convinced that there is concrete and safe alternative.  The recent invitation to economically insignificant state like Ethiopia and bankrupt country like Argentina to join BRICS in 2024 casts a shadow of doubt on the intention and seriousness of the organization. The power of the American dollar is backed by America’s production of strategic and critical goods and the overwhelming power of the American military and not just the fact and ability of manufacturing consumer goods.

    In other words, America’s ability to project power globally is a critical part of what the world has reluctantly accepted as a reason for the ‘dollar imperialism’ at least for now. The fact that most of the major countries of the world have Diasporas in America is another reason for global interest in what goes on in America. If people sneeze in Washington DC, the rest of the world catches cold still remains true as it was before. If America tears itself apart, one may not be sure of which faction will have its hands on the nuclear button.

    Sometimes last week,  Joe Biden the president of the United States in an emotional lecture entitled “The legacy of Senator John McCain and the work we must do together to strengthen our Democracy” delivered at the opening of Senator John McCain’s library at the University of Arizona in Phoenix said America was about to lose its freedom and democracy if it allowed  undemocratic MAGA extremism in the Republican Party to dominate not only the Republican Party but the country as a whole. This was at a time of dysfunctional propensity seen in the Republican threat to shut down the government by its members in Congress who are in the majority. President Biden said former President Trump was playing to the dark side of the American soul which he said was antithetical to American idealism of equality and freedom. He harked back to the idealism of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 about “the self-evident nature that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that all Americans must rise to secure those rights together without allowing any man or movement to abridge those rights. Although he tried very hard not to mention Trump by name, but everyone knew who he was talking about. The divide and differences in the American population are too glaring not to notice. This divide was what Trump was implicitly exploiting under the rubric of MAGA (Make America Great Again). Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party were cleverly exploiting the various elements of diversity and divide in America ranging from race, gender, sexual preferences, divide between the poor and the rich, the educated and not too educated, management and Labour, Christian and Jew, Pentecostal and orthodox, citizens and immigrants (whether legal or illegal), southerners and northerners, urban and sub urban communities and country bumpkins and urban residents.

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    In short, between liberals and conservatives, between gun lovers at home and those who would use guns to bruise the noses of those opposed to America abroad and between isolationism and a globally engaged America. There is much in the United States for any populist politician to use to divide the country. These were the points made by the American president and that Americans must stand up firm and not allow its institutions and the constitution to be destroyed. He continued to mention the fact that the American constitution is the only one or at least the first one based on idealism of equality even if it had not always measured  up to its founding principles. He brought the memory of John McCain to bear on the point of working together despite the divide of politics and ideology.

    He said Trump was  always denigrating America and calling the most powerful military power in the world weak while at the same time insulting the memories of fallen soldiers  including the president’s own son who contracted disease while serving as a Major in Iraq  and  also serving officers at the highest level of the military. Trump called General Mark Milley, retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America’s highest ranking officer, a traitor for assuring his Chinese counterpart at a time of tension between China and the USA during the Trump presidency that America was not interested in war or about to attack China.

    The contact between the top military commanders of the super powers was routine to avoid miscalculation or wrong judgment. The seriousness of this incident led to special military arrangements made to protect the General who accused Trump of wanting to be a dictator. Trump had during his presidency ignored the routine payment of respect to Allied soldiers in the vast military cemetery in France and had once said he had no respect for captured soldiers like McCain who spent five years in Vietnam captivity. It can easily be dismissed that President Joe Biden was campaigning for re-election in 2024 and that there is no apparent threat to democracy. But one would be missing the point. Misunderstanding the power of the president as absolute, refusal to accept the results of elections and goading one’s supporters to almost militarily invade Congress and refusal to transfer power in orderly fashion after a concluded election constitute a threat to democracy and a blow struck against democracy and the American ideal and example to the whole world. America would lose the symbol of being the light at the end of the tunnel for a troubled world would have been lost for ever if the republican extremism was allowed to prevail.

    Listening with attention to this particular lecture of President Biden in Phoenix Arizona brought back to memory of the Republican candidate for president in 1964 in the same Arizona the heart of Republican extremism. Senator Barry Goldwater scared the whole world by saying “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue” especially at the time when the world was just getting out of the Cuban crisis which almost turned the Cold War into a hot war of thermonuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Happily, President Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater who like Trump was determined to exploit the anger and uncertainty about socio-political changes in America into politics of confrontation to the discomfiture of the whole world.

    Let’s hope America would again rise as a body to reset the course of American history as a bastion of democracy.

  • Sinning and expecting grace to abide?

    It is generally known that Nigerians go regularly to places of worship whether mosques or churches in millions. This regular congregation in the places of worship is an external manifestation of our religiosity but only God can judge who true believers are. Whatever the case may be, the topic of my discussion is very well understood by our people. Grace is not earned and it is freely given by God to whom He wills but at the same time it is everyone’s belief or assumption that divine grace is only available to those who are righteous before God and for me righteousness means in layman’s word doing the right thing before man and God.ÿþ The question is – are we doing the right things now that our economy has virtually collapsed to indicate we are eager for economic revival?

    When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was elected president, most of us expected a sea change in appointments and administration. This is based on the fact that Tinubu is not Buhari and by education and professional backgrounds, they are different from one another. Tinubu is a professional accountant and a full time politician. Buhari is an accidental politician but a professional soldier trained in the art of soldiery expecting orders to be obeyed without question.  Buhari is used to military hierarchy in which orders radiate from the top to the other ranks and questions are never asked unless one possesses superior force to countermand the existing order of things. Even though Buhari ruled the country for eight years answering no questions, he still thought he had transformed himself from a military leader to a politician. If he thought so, most of us did not think so. He however ruled the country as a weak and old soldier who allowed his inner circle of friends and relatives to do whatever they liked with power and the country’s patrimony.

    Buhari appeared to have been following Obasanjo’s record of wanting not only to be a military head of state but also a democratically elected politician. Obasanjo as military leader was not like Buhari. Once Obasanjo’s transformation from military into politics took place, he had to rapidly learn the art of politics. Some will argue that Obasanjo never really lived down the military nature in him which had almost become innate to him despite his transformation as a politician. But he remained a strong leader till he left office almost micromanaging the country in spite of having a cabinet of ministers and advisers. Obasanjo publicly told the nation that whatever number of advisers he had, he was not compelled to take their advice.  He distinguished himself by his strong leadership and the national spread of his appointments sometimes to the detriment of his own region and ethnicity.

    I remember a highly distinguished female academic pointing out that in all the years of Obasanjo in government, he never found any Yoruba woman good enough to be in his cabinet but rather preferred women from other parts of the country who were light years behind their Yoruba compatriots in education. Obasanjo used to say since his Yoruba people did not vote for him, he was not obliged to favour them. Whether this was a wise thing to do or not the answer is blowing in the wind!  He remains in my estimation, the best president we have ever had. He was the exact opposite of Buhari who appeared bereft of ideas and just left his ministers to get on with the job the way they knew it. Because his political and circle of friends were limited, he was constrained to pack his administration with ethnic and religious cohorts.

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    This is not the way a genuine politician like Tinubu should go because he has to maintain equilibrium of forces within his party while at the same time breaking new ground and charting a new path to separate and differentiate himself from his predecessor. I hope he can do this and be seen to be doing it!

    There are far too many appointments a president makes under our strange presidential constitution perhaps higher than in any other country. This is why some of us have pleaded in the past for a proper federal or confederal constitutional arrangement permitting the division of power and consequent division of appointing powers. Tinubu has made just a few appointments and people are already accusing him of nepotism and ethnic favouritism without allowing the full picture to be on the canvas before jumping at him.

    I sympathize with Tinubu who is faced with the task of rebuilding the shattered economy of a country, from the doldrums of which his predecessor has left it. The seriousness of our economic predicament is so bad that our total foreign receipts are not sufficient to pay interests on our foreign debts not to talk about its amortization. The Buhari government not only borrowed money for infrastructure and consumption  in terms of salaries and allowances but also committed future regimes to continuing payments of debts  in years to come as seen in his printing of N22  trillion without assets to back this huge amount which means we are condemned now and in the future to almost double domestic production and exports to keep the Naira afloat. For those crying about the falling Naira, the action of the previous government has foredoomed us to this parlous situation. This I believe is the reason why the present government is out there searching for experienced and steady hands to rebuild the economy. In doing so there is the temptation to be insular and the government must guide against this.

    There are great and knowledgeable people all over Nigeria and genius is not regionally and ethnically or religiously located. This should be the credo of the government. This government must not limit its critical recruitment to those who voted for it alone like Obasanjo and Buhari, two pseudo democrats who refused to see politics as difference of opinions and ideas but as a question of loyalty. In fact, it makes political sense to recruit substantially from areas that did not vote for one than concentrate appointments on areas that voted for one. This will broaden the base of support for the government that everybody knows is doing a yeoman job of rescuing the economy from total collapse.

    I want to remind my readers to a point Oluremi Tinubu, the First Lady, made solemnly in the Aso Rock chapel after the swearing in of her husband. She said her husband has come to help fix Nigeria and not in government for personal financial aggrandizement. All those who are pushing the government in any other direction contrary to what the First Lady publicly declared in the house of God should be shown out of government so that the president can see the trees rather than just the dark forest.

    I hate to see this government make the same mistake as the previous government thus opening itself to accusations of being ethnically or religiously driven. I know politics is a matter of spreading the spoils of office and rewarding supporters but this is not a normal time in Nigeria and we must rise above mundane and pedestrian politics of the belly.

    Even though we run a federal constitution in which the states are technically co -equal with the federal government, but this is on paper. How many states can do without the federal government under our extant constitution? Although ideally each state should generate its own revenue and make agreed contributions to the centre in a normal federal regime but in our own constitution of inverse federation, most of the revenue goes to the centre which then distributes revenue based on agreed formula. In other words, we have one of the most unitary federation which amounts to contradiction in terms. Under this constitutional arrangement, the federal government ought to be able to show the light, as Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, our first president would have said and the people will follow. As things are, the state governments are behaving as if we are not in a situation of economic emergency. How can we justify the multitude of political appointments at state and federal levels all of them having to be paid and accommodated at state expense at a period of economic emergency? The people need to see that their leaders are genuinely making sacrifices by cutting down perquisites of office and reducing the number of political appointments to the barest minimum. Why should a governor going to commission a project be followed by a retinue of 40 cars, ambulances and a press bus all led by screaming motorcycle outriders. What cannot be justified at the state level should be disallowed at the federal level and the instruction must be passed down the political hierarchy. We just cannot continue like this while our people are living in squalor and the world everywhere is passing us by. For how long can we in Africa bewail our backwardness and underdevelopment and blame colonialism? Nobody is going to give us our rights in this world unless we fight and demand for them. But we cannot fight for our rights if at home we run down our country in grinding poverty while our rulers live in absolute and abundant wealth as has been made public in the series of coups happening in west and central Africa and in the regimes of sit tight rulers and their foreign backers who have simply captured the states. The successful outing of President Tinubu at UNGA would mean nothing if Africa simply goes home and does nothing while foreign mining interests and the national governments continue their exploitation as before without any change in the lives of the suffering humanity living in our countries and justifying the sobriquet of Africa being the dark content even now in the 21st century.

  • A visit to the famous Normandy beaches in France

    A visit to the famous Normandy beaches in France

    The talk of war in West Africa over the military takeover of Niger Republic brought to my mind the destructive nature of war which politicians may not be totally aware of before plunging their countries into war. I wrote my doctoral thesis in 1970 on an aspect of the First World War and I know more than the average Joe on the street of the effects and consequences of war on humanity. The First World War led to total casualties of about 40 million dead and wounded, 20 million of which are estimated to have died half of which were civilians and about 20 million are estimated to have been wounded. On top of this was the Spanish influenza which broke out in 1918-1919 infecting about 500 million people globally and killing 50 million of them. The Second World War was the most destructive in human history with 35 to 60 million estimated to have been killed. The total for Europe alone was ÿþestimated to have been 15 million to 20 million, more than double the First World War. About six million Jews died in Hitler’s concentration camps. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people including 8.7 million soldiers and 19 million civilians. Germany suffered about 5.3 million dead mostly in the Eastern Front and 3.1 million Japanese died trying to conquer Southeast Asia.

    Winston Churchill, the famous British Second World War leader sometimes in 1941 during the beating back of German air blitz over Britain said “we shall fight on land, in the air, on water and underwater, and we shall never surrender”. Thanks to the tremendous support of the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States, the allied powers overcame the axis powers with total German and imperial Japan’s defeat in 1945.

    Towards this defeat was the D- Day allied amphibious landings, the largest amphibious operation in history from June 6 , 1944 in Normandy after the failures of such landings in Dunkirk, northern Belgium by the British expeditionary forces in 1940 when about 350,000 troops had to be evacuated under fire of the superior Wehrmacht  and in the Dieppe  raid in 1942 in Northern France which failed miserably after thousands of British and Canadian troops were wasted and those not captured had to be evacuated. The fighting in Normandy continued until July 1944, clearing German troops and pursuing them across the border in Germany. The D-Day was a costly operation. Statistics about the dead and the wounded are simply astounding. A total of 4,424 allied troops were killed on the D-Day itself more than 5000 were wounded. In the ensuing battle of Normandy, 73,000 allied forces were killed and 153,000 were wounded. Around 20,000 French villagers were killed mostly from bombing and shelling. The exact number of Germans killed are not known. Historians esti mate that between 4000 and 9000 were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone. About 22,000 German soldiers are among the many buried in the vast cemetery in Omaha beach.  The famous Atlantic wall stretching from Normandy to Norway which the Germans had built awaiting the kind of landings witnessed in Normandy was not sufficient to keep the allied forces out of the Atlantic beaches of German occupied France. General Erwin Rommel, the famous German general had indeed detected that the so-called “Atlantic wall” was not going to be effective but before anything could be done to make the series of coastal batteries effective, the landings took place. As an aside: Not many Germans visit these sites despite the fact they attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. There are five beaches namely Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword on which troops were landed in 1944. The largest of them were Utah and Omaha which were given those names by the American troops who landed on them. British and Canadian troops landed on Gold, Juno and Sword, some hours following the Americans. The entire operation “overlord” was carefully planned in England and the vast armada of ships, landing crafts, tanks and artillery and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were put under the Supreme Allied Command of the American, General Dwight David Eisenhower aided by the British General Bernard Montgomery. This landing was coordinated with continued military pressure on the Germans and Italians by the previous allied landing  on Sicily and Southern Italy and also to put an end the Soviet Union‘s  complaints of being left to fight the Germans alone on the Eastern front.

    Without going into the details of the military operations, it suffices to say the success of the landing paved the way for eventual allied victory over Hitler’s Germany. But it must always be borne in our minds that Hitler had had to withdraw some divisions of German troops from the western front to confront the Soviets on the Eastern front making the allied task easier.

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    Next year will be the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Unless one has seen the areas of operation and the vast cemetery of the dead, one would not appreciate the enormous courage and dedication men displayed pursuing a cause which they believed was worth fighting and dying for.

    The curiosity to see this led me to go to Normandy some three weeks ago precisely on September 3 after driving from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for almost 500 kilometres to Cherbourg, a naval port on the Atlantic North east of France.  This gave me opportunity to see French villages and villagers which one does not encounter while visiting Paris and thinking all France was like the superficial glitz of Paris!

    Thanks to my son, Seyi who though an engineer, was as keen as myself to see the Normandy living historical museum. It was for this cause he flew from Atlanta to rendezvous with me in Europe. He had promised me this trip as my 80th birthday present last year which he has now belatedly fulfilled. Thank you son. The visit particularly to the cemetery left a lasting impression on me and I suggest all leaders of the major countries like the United States which keeps the memory alive by its elaborate maintenance of the final resting place of the young men and their leaders who died for a war most may not have known the causes. The leaders of the Russian federation and that of the People’s Republic of China should also visit these vast cemeteries and other major powers that are still preparing for war who of course have vast cemeteries of their own war dead to remind them of the futility of war. After the First World War, ordinary people were so incensed in Europe that some writers began to suggest that when diplomacy breaks down leaders of potentially combatant nations should be given swords or boxing gloves to fight it out! 

    Wars should never be fought ever again but that is a forlorn hope. Man is naturally an aggressive animal and has been fighting for land (lebensraum) or domination of others since time immemorial and would perhaps continue to do so until he self-destroys himself. There are people who say there are many spinoffs of weapons into useful civilian lives but that is no reason for the mass murders and homicide and suicide committed by man usually for causes that could have been ironed out by diplomacy.  There are cynics who say the world is overpopulated and that wars have periodically reduced human populations but I argue that through deliberate policies, population can be reduced without the horrors of war and human suffering and possible total annihilation.

    The development of nuclear weapons has introduced into the art of war, the frightful elements of total war which if the genii is  allowed to come outside the bottle, the result of atomic holocaust will put an end to human and animal and plant life the way we know it. This scenario made John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the celebrated American president to say in 1962 that in the event of a nuclear war, the “living will envy the dead”. J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves who perfected the development of the atomic bomb would probably agree with the physicist Albert Einstein who said if there is a third world war, the fourth would be fought with stones and sticks because civilization as we know it will not survive a third world war.

    Before leaders plunge the world into regional or global conflicts, they should seriously think about the aftermath and realize that there are tested, better and less costly alternatives to war as Winston Churchill is heard to have said that it is “better to jaw-jaw than to war-war”. He is right and the earlier the world’s leaders learn about the veracity of this statement the better for mankind.

  • All hail the new Soun of Ogbomosoland

    The news of the choice of Pastor Afolabi Olaoye, widely known as ‘Pastor Ghandi’,  as the new Soun of Ogbomoso came as a pleasant surprise to me, but apparently not as a surprise to the new king himself and those who know the history of Ogbomoso. The new Soun apparently was told of the efforts of his prominent father, Prince Samuel Oladunni Olaoye, to be the Soun of Ogbomoso in 1940. Unfortunately, Prince Oladunni Olaoye could not realize his dream.

    Prince Olaoye, as his father was known, was a civil servant who retired as a Director in the Western Region’s Ministry of Works and Housing in 1969. He was a tall and personable man with much presence wherever he was. Prince Olaoye was pivotal in rallying the Ogbomoso community in Ibadan in taking the body of the assassinated Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Ladoke Akintola, his close friend, home to Ogbomoso for a befitting burial after the coup d’état of January 15, 1966.

    The new Soun has now realized his father’s dream. Prince Oladunni Olaoye had wanted to be king in 1940. He was passed over, even though he was the popular choice, because he was the grandson and not the son of the reigning monarch as tradition required at that time. That tradition was subsequently changed such that the grandson or great-grandson of the monarch could aspire to the throne.

    The new Soun grew up as a privileged son in the home of an educated father, a Baptist Christian, as most of the educated elite of the town were. He had the best education going to the University of Ife, graduating in English and Literary Studies and then getting a Masters’ of Science degree in Labour Relations and Management Science at the University of Ibadan.  He has been involved in consulting in a wide variety of areas including management, investment and other areas within the American and African Business Environments.

    He is also privileged to be following in the footsteps of his royal uncle, Oba Oladunni Oyewumi, a thoroughly modern king and a liberal Muslim who told me that his credo was that religion was a personal calling. He said he insisted that a child could choose one of the universal religions of Islam or Christianity. Indeed, his children were allowed to embrace either of the religions while he remained a practising Muslim to the end. Interestingly, whether by accident or by design, the new Soun is close to Prince Oyewole Oyewumi, one of the children of the late Oba Oyewumi Ajagungbade III. This is a veritable example of the absence of rivalry amongst the princes of the town.  This is important for amity and cooperation, which is necessary for peace and development of the town.

    The new Soun is well endowed with savoir-faire. This is necessary in this day and age for what is needed to make a kingdom move forward. Ogbomosho seems to have the tradition or penchant of choosing highly exposed candidates for the throne as happened to the father of Soun Oyewumi who was well known in colonial French West Africa as a business man and of course the just departed Oba Oyewumi who made his fortune in the new Plateau State and now the new Soun who knows quite a lot about the world.

    Ogbomoso is a very important kingdom in Yorubaland, sharing borders with Ilorin Emirate, a Yoruba Kingdom now under Fulani rule against which the remnant of the Oyo Empire, particularly Ibadan the successor, fought wars in the 19th century. Ogbomoso has produced three Are Ona Kakanfo (Generalissimo) of Yorubaland, the last of which was Chief Ladoke Akintola. 

    In other words, the position of Ogbomoso was considered pivotal in the history of Yorubaland. Happily, Ogbomoso’s relations with Ilorin and the entire Northern Nigeria remains peaceful due to the friendship of the last Soun who built his wide ranging businesses with the North and the Emir of Ilorin was a regular visitor to the Soun’s palace when Oba Oyewumi was on the throne.

    The new Soun should continue the traditional visit with his neighbours in Ilorin and even Bida in Nupe land.

    I got to know the new king by accident precisely in 1992 when I was Nigeria’s ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. He was a young man posted to the Redeemed Christian Church of God ( RCCG) “Living Waters” parish founded by my  late wife, Pastor Abiodun Osuntokun . The posting of the young Pastor Folabi Laoye was meant to relieve my wife from the arduous work of being a wife of an ambassador and also taking care of social activities as demanded by her position and then doing the 24 hour job of a minister of God.

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    The young pastor was like a younger brother or nephew of mine. He and my nephew, Bankole, were like twins in their social escapades before God called him. Pastor Ghandi, as he is generally known, worked closely with my wife for one year without much friction despite different doctrinal approaches to the work of God. I met Omo, his young wife of Bini parentage who grew up in Yorubaland. They were both our guests for considerable period in Germany. The young pastor, I could see, was really a man of faith whose loyalty to the church and the awesome power of God was not diminished by the fact that it took quite a while after marriage before his wife had children. His exposure to foreign Christian congregation began in Germany but got to fruition in the United States where his talents were doubled by the grace of God.

    He ministered to the ordinary and the important people in the society and by the turn of the last century, his fame as a successful African pastor in the United States was so high that in 1999 he was a guest of the new democratically-elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo during his swearing in as head of state. I can say without being immodest that I was present at the beginning of his missionary journey.

    His mission as Soun of Ogbomoso, according to his statement, is to be a shepherd to everyone in the town – Christians, Muslims and Traditionalists. I pray he does this successfully.

    The new Soun must appoint those needed to minister to the variety of faiths available in his kingdom and with that in place, he will have peace of mind and time to worship his own God the way he is used to. The task ahead is how to use his considerable influence and contact to bring development to Ogbomoso and build on the legacies of his immediate predecessor in office. Peace is a necessary condition for development. He must always remember that Ogbomoso can be very volatile as religion and injustice are two issues that can easily be exploited by social and political malcontents to precipitate chaos. I have no doubt that that the new Soun would be just and fair to all the people at all times because he would not need any material benefits from his position as the ruler of the town.

    He should not allow himself to be pushed into rivalry with the Olugbon, Aresa, Onikoyi and other Obas in his territorial domain or even with the new Alaafin when he is chosen and crowned. He should visit the new Alaafin when he is appointed and begin an era of peace with Oyo, something that was missing previously. He should also be friends with the Olubadan who shares with Ogbomoso the fact that unlike other Yoruba Obas and just like the Soun, the traditions in Ibadan are not buried in mysticism and obscurity.

    I celebrate with the Ogbomoso people with whom I am very familiar having written books on Chief Ladoke Akintola and Oba Oladunni Oyewumi Ajagungbade III, whose son Oyewole is married to my niece Ajibike, and I consider myself involved in the welfare of the Ogbomosho kingdom.

     May the new Soun’s time be peaceful and prosperous and may Ogbomoso witness peace and tremendous development during the reign of Soun Afolabi Oluseyi Olaoye.

  • National images of selected countries and Nigeria

    National images of selected countries and Nigeria

    All countries are competing peacefully with one another  to be loved and for investment as well as for election into Committees of the Specialized Agencies of the United Nations and other international organizations unless they are members by right.  It is therefore important for countries to have good image in the comity of nations whether for elections or not. Just like human beings, it is good for countries to have good images which invariably impact on people’s perception of citizens of such countries.

    Every important country in the world has an image that may be universally or regionally imagined. Anybody following this kind of thought also knows that the image of a country reflects on the image of its citizens. An American is perceived as loud, domineering, carefree and physically imposing. There is also the “ugly American” image which is a negative way of seeing the violent nature of America. This kind of categorization is not in any way scientific and is usually based on perception and may not be totally true because not all Americans will fit this description. We all know that “national character” may or may not be true and we are always advised to avoid it because it may not pass the canons of objectivity. The “big American” is a useful mirror of the American country which is vast from east to west and from south to north which in flying time could take five to six hours in any direction. The largeness of its size somehow is reflected in the way Americans perceive the world. The fact that the United States has appropriated the name “America” is a manifestation of the natural arrogance of the United States which was historically perceived as its manifest destiny to lead and to dominate others.

    During the JF Kennedy era of American obsessive determination to conquer space, members of the administration were jokingly referred to as the “New frontiersmen” harking back to American history when the conquest of its vast western territories was regarded as its manifest destiny. This idea of a manifest destiny led to unnecessary military adventures in its history from its 19th century conquest of Spanish Cuba and the Philippines to its wars in Korea in 1953 and Vietnam in 1965 onwards and its victory over communism which an American historian  Francis Fukuyama described  in 1992 as the “end of history and the last man”.

    The point I want to make is that America and Americans have an exaggerated opinion of their country and for a long time the world has bought into this exaggeration.  The number of Nobel laureates in American universities and the scientific innovation and copyright of products in the United States bear this greatness out. Whether one likes America or not, one cannot deny the greatness of the country despite its shortcomings as seen in the pandemic violence and rampant racism which people have to cope with. The Chinese and Russians in coded diplomatic language constantly refer to America as a country afflicted with the virus of “international hegemonism”.

    Of course the image of a country is most of the time, determined by its historical evolution. Britain and I suppose the British are known for their bulldog tenacity, their spirit of making the best of any difficult situation. Their imperial achievement of having an empire on which the sun never sets gives every Briton the attributes of administrative cleverness, cunning and sophisticated culture. The fact that such a small country wielded power beyond its limited  natural and human resources confers pride on its citizens and the British are known for their arrogance and carriage and keeping “a stiff upper lip” indicating being resolute and unemotional when faced with adversity. Some episodes of their history such as their several victories over the Spanish, French and several campaigns in Africa and Asia and recently in their so-called “ war of Britain “ when in spite of Hitler’s bombing armada in 1941 the country survived to fight another day.

    Germans are well known for their philosophy, music, spirituality, discipline, scientific approach to life, sophisticated engineering, cleanliness, obedience to order and their toughness. All these derive from their history. This has led them in spite of the tragedy of defeat in the Second World War to build, like Japan, one of the most industrialized countries in the world with little natural resources but depending on the brains and brawn of the people.  Any visit to Germany and seeing the Autobahn crisscrossing the country will show one how the mind of Germans works. This approach is reflected in how Germans think and behave wherever they go and people’s perception of them. Historically in Nigeria, any medicine from Germany was deemed efficacious and effective. Any equipment from Germany was regarded strong whether it was automobiles, telecommunications, electricity and medical equipment. This reputation has paid very well for the export market of the country and made Germans preferred citizens to deal with because of their acclaimed efficiency.

    As for the Chinese, their inscrutable visage points them out in a crowd. Their engineering feat is beginning to be recognized everywhere. Their ability to live anywhere and to share knowledge with people in the underdeveloped parts of the world is beginning to attract clientele to their country. The fact that they have developed their country through their own bootstrap without looking to other people for assistance has brought a sense of pride to the country.  On account of this, people have a good image of the Chinese even if they are known to drive a hard bargain.  Chinese are known not to ask many questions when doing business in the underdeveloped world and do not frown on corrupt politicians in the underdeveloped world. What the Chinese think of other countries is hidden in their minds. But they are racist as anyone and they regard non-Chinese as barbarians at least in past and hopefully not in the present. Their “long March” to development is well known and their toughness is well recognized. Their cultural civilizations as evidenced by their cuisine and artistic traditions have given a first class image to the country. Nevertheless everyone knows that they could be very wicked if one crosses their path or if they refuse to obey the authorities of their country and life could be a trifle to them and perhaps this is understandable to a country of 1.4 billion people.

    The small state of Israel punches well above its size internationally. This should not surprise anybody because Israelis see their country just like the Americans see their country as “God’s own country”.

    In the case of Israel, men of the Judeo- Christian traditions numbering billions of people do not make a distinction between Biblical Israel and the new Israel. People go on pilgrimage to the holy land as many times as they can afford it. Nigerian Christian’s are avid goers to Israel as pilgrims. Because of this, the country and its peoples’ image are at high level well beyond the stratosphere. Even if one dismisses this as emotional, Israel has turned what is essentially a desert to a flourishing country of vineyards and engineering feat and making highly priced medications and chips and machinery used in aerospace, the military and hospitals. The country and its people have great reputation in agriculture, engineering, intelligence, defence and manufacturing. Israeli scientific innovation is highly rated everywhere and because of this, Israelis are well regarded everywhere including even among their enemies in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Their leaders have the pride of first class country despite the  mutual racism  between them and  Arabs as well as against Africans who are derisively referred to as “Kushites”. Nigeria has benefited from their performance as road, agricultural and water engineers from the period after independence till the present.

    The eye does not see itself but as a Nigerian I have some ideas about our public perception at home and abroad. We have the image of hardworking people who easily learn how to get on in a technological age. Because of the presence of highly educated Nigerians abroad particularly doctors, we are regarded as highly educated and knowledgeable people. There is hardly any country in the world where one would not find a Nigerian no matter how inhospitable the climate may be such as in Alaska or Yemen. Nigerians at one time were said to be the happiest people on earth. They are fun loving and at the same time very religious. Some may argue that their commitment to their beliefs is superficial but who is to say except God.

    The negative image of Nigeria and Nigerians is that we are a corrupt country of corrupt people.  Some people see us as lazy and indolent people who like money but are not prepared to work hard for it. This negative image is captured in what a director of Coca Cola international once said while addressing African recruits for his company in New York and called an African who wanted to ask a question a “Nigerian”. When he was asked how he knew he was a Nigerian, he retorted that when he is in a midst of African young people, “the one who is trying to put his hand in my pocket is a Nigerian”. People laughed but this is not funny! Nigerians are involved in fraudulent practices such as identity and bank fraud. Many have also been caught in social welfare fraud and credit card fraud. These involved in these sordid acts are an infinitesimal proportion of the Nigerian population.

     Nigerians are feared by other Africans because of our sharp practices. Some admire us for ability to look our adversaries in their faces even when we are wrong unlike other Africans who will accept whatever lowly treatment they get in the hands of foreigners. Because of our peoples’ boldness, some nationals of African countries wish they were Nigerians on account of our peoples’ boldness. When taken together, the positive and negative image of Nigerians is not very flattering and this is why we suffer in the hands of Immigration officers all over the world for the offence a few. It is about time that our people know that every Nigerian is an ambassador of this country whether he or she is at home or abroad because others watch us as representative of the whole country. We need to change this overall image of our country because it is affecting our economic development and the future of our country.