Category: Jide Osuntokun

Sometimes in March, I wrote an article on the presidency that Asiwaju of Lagos, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was inheriting and I called it an “impossible task”. At that time the enormity of the current problem facing our country was then not clear and it is still not clear as I write and would not be clear for months to come. But we can imagine what is likely to come from cursory look at unfolding situation especially on the economic front centring on the operations of the central bank in the last eight years. It seems the CBN was run with little regards for the Act setting it up. The bank operated two official rates  of exchange while another rate operated in the so-called “black market” or parallel market thus the country had three rates of exchange with a gap of about N300 permitting round tripping by those favoured with the official rate. This led to widespread corruption involving the officials of government and their friends who became billionaires overnight without sweat. Those who had captured the state then kept the CBN governor in place no matter his indulgence in illegalities such as his involvement in presidential party nominations and having companies abroad and other illegal activities such as unilaterally giving foreign exchange allocations to whosoever he favoured. One thing that is not clear is how much those who were charged with supervising his actions including legislative oversight committees knew about all these shenanigans and whether he was the victim of state capture or a willing tool in its execution.

The BBC news African anchor recently wondered loudly  why anybody would want to be president of Nigeria. I have also wondered why and I am sure many people are of the same view. I once wrote in this column rather sacrilegiously that if our Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven above and was asked to rule Nigeria using the same present structure and constitution, he would not succeed. There are many things wrong with Nigeria apart from the rapacious corruption of its people. One of the greatest problems is the political and constitutional structure. Every other thing is like pouring petrol into a car that has no engine and expecting it to run. Only Nigerians with their penchant for believing in miracles where common sense is required will expect better things in a structurally faulty machine.

Before the  election was held, I told everyone who wanted my view that the election would be fiercely contested but at the end Tinubu with his widespread support in the  Northwest, Northeast, North-Central and Southwest, leaving only the South-south and Southeast to his competitors would win  and also because of a divided opposition. This has happened as predicted not only by me but all those who have an intimate knowledge of the politics of Nigeria. It is simply amazing that the losing factions of the same party the old PDP, each faction led by known politicians of the old regime, are in the election tribunals each arguing that their faction won. In the meantime the task of governance happily continues.

Let me advise President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to first study the situation properly before promising things he may not be able to deliver. I understand his promising the youth, students loans and support for autonomy in their institutions so as to eliminate strikes and industrial actions in tertiary institutions. This country had a regime of students loans under the Yakubu Gowon regime but its administration and operations failed because the loans were not paid back.  What is needed is resuscitation of scholarships given by LGAs, states and the federal government. Promising autonomy for tertiary institutions is the right thing to say but this should be part of a holistic policy on education at pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary levels. There is a need to set  up a working committee on education to work out a realistic programme on education for now and the future. Let it be known that there is a fundamental change in many aspects of our national life rather than temporary or episodic pronouncements on what ails our country.

Since everything the new government has to do must depend on the economy, the first action of the government must be focused on the economy. There is overhang of about N50 trillion debt on the country and expectation of another N11 trillion to balance this year’s budget. Thank God Tinubu is not a novice on economics.

I am delighted that his pre-election promise was that he would eliminate the subsidy on petrol. He has happily announced the end of subsidies on petroleum which in the last decade or so enriched without measure, a few entrepreneurs and their federal civil servants accomplices. He must not prevaricate on this. But he must assemble a formidable team to educate Nigerians that we cannot continue with the  subsidy  regime that has ruined our economy  irredeemably. There will be serious opposition but he must ride this out by explaining to the people the implication of borrowing money to subsidise consumption. This is a bad policy that will lead to our national ruin. Abolition of subsidy has led to astronomical prices of petrol, though still below what is prevailing in our neighbouring countries  of Benin, Niger, Tchad, Cameroons and other ECOWAS countries to which Nigerian expensively imported petrol has been smuggled to. But there will be gains in other areas. The money being used to subsidise petrol consumption will be free for increase in electricity generation and distribution physical infrastructural development, educational and health enhancement as well as funding a formidable military.

The government must also follow up on its plan to add value to our primary produce through industrialisation.  Cocoa, cotton, palm products, rubber, cassava, yams, soya beans, peanuts, tea, coffee, shea butter, gum Arabic and different kinds of spices should be produced on industrial scale for local consumption and export. We should also wisely examine how we can benefit from our hardwood timber while at the same time embarking on reforestation to enhance our environment.

Oil and gas are the big elephants in our room so to say. We do not have time on our side because current researches will perhaps within a decade render unprofitable oil and gas exploration and exploitation. This is because of the global concern on climate change for which emissions of greenhouse gases arising out of the industrial and transportation use of hydrocarbons are largely responsible.  Therefore we need to maximise the benefits from our possession of hydrocarbons while the sun shines. This will require production of crude oil at optimal levels and if possible flouting the limit of OPEC allocation which we have not been able to make for years. This will require education of the people in the oil producing communities and enlisting their support through government development activities in the area as well as ensuring that the international oil majors in Nigeria demonstrate corporate social responsibility for the communities where they operate.

Unlike in the past when chiefs and local potentates in the Niger Delta benefited from largesse coming from contracts from oil companies, the people particularly local entrepreneurs must be given jobs that they can do without the intermediation of the chiefs. Through this the security forces will be able to ferret information from local people who will have a stake in the oil economy. A stop by all means possible must be made to end illegal oil bunkering and damaging of oil pipelines either through enhanced policing or cultivating and employing the services of the militants in the Niger Delta. The end in this venture would justify the means. We need to quicken the expansion of the currently profitable NLNG so as to benefit from the energy thirst locally and internationally. I deliberately leave my recommendation on oil and gas and other extractive minerals to the end because we should break away from over dependence on export of crude petroleum and all raw materials without adding value to them. We have waited and suffered too long importing what we should be exporting. Asiwaju Tinubu within a year must make his presence felt in our lives through the improvement of the economy. He can only do this through collective effort of all Nigerians.  This government will hopefully benefit from the Dangote refinery which is expected to start producing refined petrol and other by-products by next month, all things being equal.  The moribund government refineries which have perennially been “turned around” should be sold as they are and government must cut its losses finally. This hopefully will put an end to our importing what we should be exporting. Without opening a can of warms there is a need for a clinical audit of the subsidies regime over the last two decades and the participation of the CBN and officials of NNPC in the economic ruin of Nigeria which has led to the more than a thousand percent devaluation of the Naira. If money has to be collected from guilty parties this has to be done in order to resuscitate the economy. Through the policy of industrialisation and adding value to local products, jobs will be created for the masses. 

A policy of protection of home industries will readily recommend itself to the new government. The textile mills all over the country must be resuscitated. They should also be supplied cotton through aggressive growth of the right kind of cotton seeds perhaps imported from Egypt and the Sudan. Importation of textiles should be banned to our country. Nigerians should be told to wear textile materials produced and sown in Nigeria by our own tailors.  Imagine the millions of jobs that will be created this way. Our people look more dignified wearing our locally sown apparels than wearing suits in the forbidden heat of tropical Africa.

Our youth should be deployed to build the country through encouraging all graduates of engineering and architecture to form engineering companies to be allocated minor roads and houses to build. Government should prevail on cement companies to give special allocations to government housing schemes all over the country. This should not be a policy of the federal government alone but all the state and local governments must be involved in providing mass accommodation. This is not only socially important, it will also go a long way to solve our unemployment problems.

Nigeria is an agricultural country and we need to pay more attention to feeding our people and exporting to Africa and the rest of the world. We should be able to grow all the corn that Africa needs. In the United States, 4% of their population feeds the United States and contributes the largest share of food aid to the starving countries of the world. We do not have any natural impediment against successful agricultural production in Nigeria. We can produce all the rice that we need in this country if we adopt the right policies. We can build on the extant rice policy; removing whatever corrupt practices some of its beneficiaries employed and apply the same successful policies to other grains like corn, sorghum and so on. We are the largest producer in the world of cassava and yams and sweet potatoes. We can expand production of these for the home and world markets. One crop in which we have environmental and climate advantage but we have refused to take whether because of ignorance or laziness is the growth of Irish potatoes. When I was ambassador in Germany, interest was shown in our potatoes which incidentally are available in winter when Europe and North America are covered with snow. I was told that if we could guarantee regular supply, European markets would absorb all our production. This is an area on which the Plateau State can be encouraged to focus upon.

If we are to have sustained and successful agricultural revolution, we must make it pay for those involved in it. There are three ways to do this. We must mechanise production through state support. We must revive the cooperative movement by which agricultural unions would be aided to come together to seek government support and loans from the banks, and finally, we must revive the commodity boards to guarantee fair and stable prices for agricultural produce. To succeed there will be need for local, state and federal mobilisation. All primary and secondary schools outside the urban areas should be enabled to have school farms as we used to have in my youth. The aim of the economic rejuvenation programme must be to rebuild the economy of the country within two years while the question of the constitution and structure of government should be tackled by the third year of the present administration.  I am also assuming that with a revived economy and with jobs for all those willing and able to work will go down the terrorist rampage and brigandage going on in many parts of the country particularly in the northern part. This administration must make it clear to the military that the campaign against terrorism in the country must not be seen as an avenue for the military to corner substantial portion of the economy. The military must justify its budgetary allocation through complete defeat of the terrorists and must ensure the total pacification of the country within the shortest time possible after a decade of fruitless allocation of resources to the campaign against terrorism. This administration must be determined to once and for all build all areas of the country to stop the present unhappy situation where 80% of new graduates from tertiary institutions flock to Lagos or emigrate abroad in search of economic sustenance.

Unlike nowadays, the secondary school that a child went through is fundamental to the future development and progress of a child. This is because most of the historic secondary schools like Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, have  traditions and credos that shaped and nurtured the students when they come to the schools in their formative years. I know this is true of those of us who are now very old. Those of us who can reflect on our educational past to influence the present and the future should do so for the sake of posterity.

When in the last quarter of 1955, Canon Leslie Donald Mason, the then principal of Christ School Ado Ekiti gave me a ride in his old Rover green automobile as a prospective student, I was meeting a white man in close contact for the first time and I had problems getting used to his Northern English accent. Of course after a few months in 1956 of entering Christ School Ado Ekiti, I had no problems understanding every word he said to us. This could be in the chapel daily or whenever any teacher was absent and discovering this during his supervisory promenades around the school, he would come in to teach us.

As young children, we were amazed that he knew everything under the sun. It did not matter whether it was Algebra, Geometry, History literature, English language or Latin which appeared to me as his favourite subject. I remember his use of the Latin book Fabulae facility’s (easy stories). He was always happy to teach us and we were also happy to learn from his wisdom. He also had a way of writing in cursive which was different from other teachers. He was a class by himself. We sometimes debated among ourselves that his Masters of Arts degree MA) was in classics. I don’t know what gave us this impression. Perhaps we heard it from older senior students and to us then classics meant all aspects of knowledge and that was why he could teach any subject under the sun!

Our daily routine in the school was that we usually assembled in the chapel in the morning for devotion which was conducted by Canon L. D. Mason. He was always immaculately dressed in shorts and nice short sleeves shirt and a tie. When after the students and members of staff would have sat down, he would quietly walk majestically to the pew to conduct the service. The service was usually very short. We sang a hymn and he would then exhort us to be of good and godly behaviour. He would then walk out and the students according to their classes would march up the Agidimo Hill accompanied by a brass band like soldiers going to war. Thus began our daily academic activities. We actually approached our studies as if going to war! We came to school to learn and to learn how to be good Christians on top of what our parents had taught us in our different homes.  We had no time for frivolities characteristic of some schools where young boys and girls wasted their time writing so-called love letters to friends of the opposite sex. Although Canon Mason was single, he did not teach us to shun the company of the opposite sex. We just felt it was not right and that the time for such things would come at the appropriate time. Those of my classmates who wasted their time doing such things did not do well in life.

On Sundays, we would have full morning and evening services conducted by the same Canon Mason. Sometimes the evening service could be delegated to one of the senior tutors or the senior prefect. It was customary for a sermon to be delivered during the morning service but this was considered unnecessary during the evening services. Any casual visit to Christ School may have had the impression that the school was preparing us for the priesthood because we prayed not less than eight times a day, prayers were central to the life of a student. Some of the principal’s friends and regular visitors were George Vellacourt and Bishop Gordon Vining the secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the Anglican bishop of Lagos respectively.

The principal served in loco parentis throughout the week. If we were seriously sick, we would be taken up the hill to his house for attention. I was asthmatic as a child and was taken to his house many times where I was propped up in bed and given hot tea and food by him or his cook. The principal was very gracious to me in particular bearing in mind that my senior brother, Chief Oduola Osuntokun, his deputy was a politician and a nationalist who felt compelled to sometimes disagree with him perhaps as a symbol of colonialism! If things got serious when students were ill, the poor man would take one to the general hospital in Iddo-Ekiti which was the only hospital in the whole of Ekiti. Sometimes he could arrange for one to be taken to Akure which had a bigger hospital.

Canon Mason was most particular about two things: our character and academic knowledge.  He paid attention to the reports written every end of the school term by the house masters who commented on our character sometimes unfairly. He also took note of the number of times one went on what was called “school imposition” inflicted on errant students for minor offences. Students on school imposition were made to cut grass on Saturdays for the number of hours specified in the imposition. This was usually at the instance of the school prefects. For serious offences such as stealing, disobedience of school regulations, misbehaving in the chapel or on the way to the chapel could attract what was called “school detention”. This was always announced by the principal during the solemn Friday afternoon service in the chapel. There would be pin drop silence and the principal in a quavering voice with tears in his eyes would announce the students’ names and what offences they had committed. He would usually say he was going to grant such students another chance “not by merit but as an act of grace”. We tried very much to stay out of these kinds of offences that would attract the entire school’s attention.  

No matter how brilliant one was, Canon Mason would not be impressed if he got the impression that one was badly behaved. He would say this in the reports at the end of each term that were sent to our parents .He also paid great notice to a child’s academic progress from forms one to five. He knew a child’s strength. When we chose what subjects to offer in the University of Cambridge overseas school certificate examinations, he would follow it with keen interest advising where necessary because some parents sometimes wanted their children to follow certain professions even when the children were not talented in those areas.

Canon Mason also followed one’s progress after leaving school and was always proud to know how many of his students had entered the University of Ibadan. I remember when I visited Christ School in 1961 while at the Ibadan Grammar School Higher School; he wondered why I had not taken the concessional examinations to the University of Ibadan instead of wasting my time in a Higher School.  I now wonder about this because I had one of the best results in my class! Unfortunately in our time, there was no career counselling. Everyone wanted to follow the footsteps of our teachers. This was why in my class, we ended graduating in academic subjects instead of in professions. He took pride in how many of his students came out in grade one and how many distinctions each student got. The results would be pasted on the school notice board for younger students to see and to celebrate and to also emulate. Whenever we visited after the release of these results, Canon Mason welcomed us with open hands and asked us our next plans.

He was not much of a sportsman and he delegated this role to any of his colleagues who were sportsmen in their youth. But he brought to the school the game of ROUNDERS, some kind of a cross between cricket and American baseball. Apparently this game must have been played in England but as far as I know Christ School was the only school that played and enjoyed the game. Canon Mason sometimes came to watch inter house competition in the game of Rounders. He set up a health centre where he treated students with sores in their feet and also taught older students to perform the same act on any other student who may have cuts and wounds which did not require going to hospitals. He also taught us bricklaying and carpentering and we built some cement reclining seats around the school for relaxation on the lawns. He also encouraged us to get involved in agriculture and we had a school farm where we grew peanuts, yams, corn and vegetables. We rotated farming, carpentry or bricklaying every Wednesday afternoon when we had a break from our rigorous academic pursuits. He ensured we had a full and useful life as students.

His love for us did not end within the portals of the school but throughout our lives. We loved him back equally and I have never heard anybody say something unbecoming of this great man from the north of England.

The love for the school he nurtured in us made my 1956-1960 set to donate some class rooms to the school just about a decade and a half after leaving school when we were ourselves struggling to find our feet. This sacrifice was the least we could do to remember the school and its contribution to our lives under the tutelage of Reverend Canon Leslie Donald Mason MA.

The news ÿþhas been on for a while that former president, Donald J. Trump who always felt he is above the law went away with several classified documents ordinarily belonging to the American people. All attempts to persuade him to return these documents failed until the Department of Justice (DOJ) felt compelled to get a warrant served on him to release these documents. When he resisted, the FBI was asked to raid his private mansion in Mar-a-Lago in Miami in Florida.

Some of these documents have been retrieved from him while he is challenging the government’s action in the court. These documents were generated when he was the president of the United States and they were of security importance which requires  that they be locked up in the National Archives for periods ranging in many countries from as long as 30 to 100 years. In some cases, they may not be made available to the public for ever.

Not everything connected with JF Kennedy’s assassination has been made public. President Trump during his campaign for the American presidency promised he would make this public but he fulfilled his pledge in the breach. In Great Britain, it used to be 100 years after the event but the period has been reduced to 30 years. The French are more conservative and I am not sure you can access public records that are as recent as 50 years and in the in case of the archives at the Quay D’Orsay (Foreign Office), the  documents are locked  up for many years.

The reason why nations guard their secrets is that many crimes have been committed in the so-called national interest in the past which the present is not proud of. Experiments such as using human beings to test the effect of syphilis on black people in the USA or some terrible diseases or the effects of radiation on humans and such things in the past which if revealed may cause serious national problems. It is better to let the past belong to the past without opening wounds. If what the white race did to non-whites were exposed, world peace could be jeopardised. Just as nations have secrets, companies and merchant houses keep things locked up in their archives never to see the light of the day.

Now back to the American situation. Just at the time when President Trump was being excoriated it transpired that President Joe Biden had skeletons in his cupboard. He too has secret documents from his time as Senate member of Foreign Relations Committee and documents from his time as vice president. These documents were found in his private office in Washington DC and his home in Delaware. Documents continue to be found in some of his other homes as I write. The difference in his case was he volunteered the information without waiting for an FBI raid. The sticking point was that he found this out in November before the 2022 Congressional elections and waited until now to make the revelation. The Republican Party rightly felt the president was not truthful and that he should be probed. Earlier on, the US Attorney-General had appointed a Special Counsel to probe the former President Trump and in order to appear even-handed, a Special Counsel to probe President Joe Biden was also appointed.

The new Republican dominated House of Representatives has indicated its readiness to not only probe Biden but some radical right wing members to impeach the sitting president as was done to Trump when he was president. Hardly had the ink dried when it transpired that former Vice President Michael Richard Pence also have secret documents in his home and office in Indianapolis. This has taken the steam out of the Republican Party’s action to put the president in the dock!

The question has now arisen about the nature of classification of official documents in the USA. Some of these documents are mere briefs prepared for the president and vice president in the ordinary nature of their jobs or background briefs for them when traveling or when having cabinet of national security meetings. Some of the documents may be of serious security in nature. But it seems too many documents are classified which need not be.

Secondly, some government officials including presidents and vice presidents think documents with them while in office belong to them rather than to the government. But the law mandates every administration to hand over to the national archives all documents in their possession when they leave office. These do not belong to presidents, vice presidents personally and they are not the types of documents that are ordinarily deposited in every presidential libraries of former presidents located in their home states.

We have not heard the final story on the American situation and we will not have the final story until the Special Counsels’ report. One interesting thing is that former president, Barack Obama, has come out unscathed in all these stories. It is to his credit that no dirt has been found on him throughout his public life despite all efforts by his enemies to pin something on him.

What is the situation in Nigeria? There is a national archives in Nigeria located on the grounds of the University of Ibadan with branches in Enugu and Kaduna. The one in Ibadan was inspired by the late Kenneth Onwuka Dike, the first Nigerian vice chancellor of University of Ibadan and the doyen of Nigerian historians. There is a law ordering all governments, especially the federal government, to deposit all documents of a certain age in the national archives but in a country poorly administered and governed, this is the least concern of those in government.

I wrote two books of first republic politicians namely chiefs S.L Akintola, last premier of Western Nigeria and Samuel Okotie-Eboh, federal minister of finance both of whom were killed during the coup d’état of January 15, 1966. I went to the premier’s office in Ibadan in 1972, six years after the man was in office hoping to access his official documents. I was told by the officials that his papers had been burnt because there was shortage of space and yet the National Archives was located a few miles from the secretariat. The officials told me that the papers of Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, his successor had equally been burnt. I was reduced to tears and I had to write my book from remembered history and oral interviews backed by newspapers in the university library. 

Several years later in 2016, I wanted to write the biography of Chief Okotie-Eboh, I went to the Federal Ministry of Finance and it was the same story of absence of documents. I searched everywhere for any information on the man who ran the economy for 10 years, who founded the CBN, the Stock Exchange, the mint and other financial institutions and  there were no documents on him. Then I went to the internet and found out his 10 budget speeches are available in Stanford University in California.

The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs did not have any copy of his annual budget speeches. Eventually, only Chief Phillip Asiodu had copies in the entire country. He graciously lent them to me for the assignment. I have been in government before but in a tangential role as adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I am not sure the ministry had a policy on archives. It is not too late for somebody in our executive arm of government to send a bill to parliament stating the process of archival retrieval both at the state and federal levels including all the embassies of Nigeria where vital documents are found.

I remember serving in the glorified but ineffective Presidential Advisory Council on International Affairs and our properly articulating every advice and proposals we submitted to the president. I sincerely hope all those memoranda will be kept if not for present usage at least for historians in the future. One of the problems those early academic historians who wanted to reconstruct our past had was the absence of documentary sources. This should not be the problem for those coming after us. This is why I welcome autobiographies and biographies of our leaders because they will constitute veritable sources among other sources of our history in the future.

We should not be talking about oral tradition for a largely literate society in future. We can learn from what is happening in America and keep our records. It is important to know how decisions are made and who contributed to making these decisions so that we can learn from our failures and successes. If there is any country in the world which needs to keep records it is Nigeria.

I was not a child when the first military putsch in January 1966 took place. I was in fact a gentleman in my final year of undergraduate university education at the age of 23 plus and was politically savvy and well exposed domestically and internationally. I had spent the second year of my undergraduate education in the University of London in an exchange programme with that university particularly the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the Queen Mary’s College (QMC). I was on the ring side in the conflict that wracked the Action Group (AG), the governing party in the Western Nigeria in 1961, because my oldest brother Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun was a high ranking cabinet minister in government since 1955 and at the age of 34 and was minister of finance when I was in the primary school. The crisis that afflicted the Action Group (AG), the internationally acclaimed best organised political party in Nigeria at that time was a tragedy for the Western Region and Nigeria as a whole. This was because the Western Region was a pace setter in many areas such as public finance, education, sports development, public administration, industrialisation, agriculture, urban development and housing. It was able to do this because it inherited huge amount of funds from the marketing board set up to manage the ups and downs in the  world market prices  of cocoa which at that time was the main export of Nigeria as petroleum is  now the money earner for Nigeria.

The crisis in the Action Group arose as a result of personality clash among the leaders which was sometimes camouflaged as ideological conflict in the direction of the country especially when the crisis broke open. But certainly, the Action Group was not an ideological party initially. It was a mass rally essentially to protect western Nigeria’s interests; some might say to protect largely Yoruba interest.

The crisis arose as a result of frustration in the leadership after its failure to emerge as the governing party at the centre of the federation in 1959 on the eve of independence after the western Nigerian premier, Chief Obafemi Awolowo had moved to the centre while the leader of the opposition, Chief S.L. Akintola had exchanged positions with his leader by becoming premier of western Nigeria. It was the inability to manage this exchange of positions that brought conflict into the party which the NPC/NCNC federal government exploited to destroy the party. This intervention set in motion, a chain of events which the politicians directly involved could not have foreseen. It led to widespread rigging of the elections in Western Nigeria in 1965 and disequilibrium in the federation following the ethnic baiting and displacement of the NCNC and invariably the Igbo core members of the party from their predominant positions in the federal government. The genie of ethnic politics was released and this upset the radical elements in the Nigerian army particularly its officer corps which was largely dominated by Ibos. The ordinary man on the street was completely fed up with the chaos in the country. There was almost total breakdown of law and order in the Western Region including even the federal capital of Lagos marked  by widespread arson in the urban areas and burning and other incendiary attacks on rival politicians.  There was also ongoing rebellion among the Tivs of the Benue valley protesting against political oppression in the hands of the NPC northern Nigerian government. Soldiers and armed mobile policemen were deployed in the Western Region and the Middle Belt of Nigeria. Things were so bad that cabinet ministers were trained to use guns for self-protection. It was obvious that the politicians had boxed themselves into a corner and they apparently did not know how to extricate themselves from their situation. The deployment of soldiers in the disaffected areas exposed the soft underbelly of the politicians and exposed their dependency on the soldiers for the stability of the country and their very positions on the soldiers.

When the coup d’état of January 15, 1966 took place, the telephone communications were severed and the politicians were isolated. In the Western Region, even cabinet ministers did not know what had happened and thought the premier was killed by hired thugs of the opposition party. They were in fact planning to swear in Oba C.D. Akran, the minister of finance as the new premier in the absence of Chief Remi Fani Kayode who they believed had been kidnapped. It was not until the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcast the news that the widespread nature of the coup d’état became quite clear to all and sundry. The initial reaction in the Western Region and Lagos was excited welcome of the coup leaders who were celebrated as liberators from what was perceived as corrupt leaders. Many students and their teachers accepted the broadcast of Major Chukwuma  Kaduna Nzeogwu  that the leaders removed were completely irredeemable thieves who were selling the economic future of the country and who also deserved to die. The shock of the violence shook the country to its very foundation and there was no time to settle down and clinically evaluate the situation. Even the much blamed Major General Thomas Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and his Unification Decree No 34 was widely celebrated at least by the academia and the southern media as a forward move to build a united country.

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What was clear even at that time was the sincerity of Major Nzeogwu. This was an idealistic young man who did not quite know the history of his country. Nigeria was neither Turkey nor Egypt and Nzeogwu  was not Mustapha Kemal or Gamal Abdel Nasser  and  in the case of Nigeria, a determined military leader could  not alter its destiny.

By the time in July 1966 when the second coup d’état took place, it was clearly and obviously a retaliation for the lopsided killings of northern and western army officers and the heads of government in the north, west and the federal. By this time, the initial enthusiasm and welcome of the military had waned and fear of the unknown had descended on the nation especially bearing in mind the ferocity and widespread killings of military officers and civilians largely from the East in the north of the country. From this time onwards Nigeria was on the slippery slope towards the civil war which did not settle the fundamental problems of this country. This centres around the political imbalance in the federation which was well articulated by the dictum of Professor John Wheare, that a federation should never be so organized that one section of it should be so big that it would overwhelm all the other sections put together.

This problem has remained intractable despite attempts such as creation of states during the civil war but even this attempted solution has been vitiated by subsequent haphazard and irrational creation of more states designed to maintain the dominance of one part of the country over the other and inadvertently destroying the federal basis of the Nigerian union.

Let us pray for a better country

It is early in the year and I have been praying for the only country of which I am a citizen. I have had opportunities for becoming a citizen of one country or another apart from Nigeria but I gave the chance up either because I had absolutely no need for it or because I was certain all will be well for me and my children in the country of my birth and where I am somebody by the grace of God. In recent times I have sometimes wondered if I took the right decision on this issue especially when Nigeria legally permits dual citizenship.

In recent times, it has become really embarrassing for me when I have had to wait for months while my passport has had to remain in the consulates of countries, I am trying to go to either for academic conferences or for family reasons such as visiting a child or grandchild. It seems foreign missions in Nigeria have taken a collective decision to frustrate Nigerians travelling to their countries by holding on to our passports on the grounds that they are investigating us before visas are issued. The reading public will be surprised that even I, a former ambassador is subjected to this humiliating treatment. Can we blame them? This is because our country has become in the words of President Donald J Trump a “shithole” country. Sometimes in 1999 or thereabouts, I wanted to travel to Germany, a country where I had served previously as Ambassador of Nigeria for five years and I was asked to bring all kinds of documents including letter of invitation, hotel booking and my bank accounts. I did and I was issued a two weeks one entry visa. I did not quite examine the visa when I took the train for a day’s trip by Euro train to Paris. The second day after the trip, I went to the airport to go to Germany. I was checked in and I had a £500 return ticket from London to Berlin. When at the last check in point before entering the plane, I was told that my one entry Schengen visa had been used and that I could not go to Germany. I was shocked and it was at that time that I realised that I had been issued a one entry visa by the German embassy in Lagos. I went through the humiliation of my luggage being removed from the plane as if I was a criminal. Of course this caused the delay of the flight to Berlin. I wondered what the people inside the plane would have thought about me another Nigerian involved as usual in one crime or another. Needless to say I lost the money for the flight since the cost of the ticket was not refundable.

On return to Nigeria, I protested to the German embassy for the shoddy treatment. Anybody who knows me will attest to the fact that I don’t wear my status on my shirt sleeves. I am not the type who will loudly say “Don’t you know who I am?” I however felt so bad that I called Professor Jibril Aminu who was at the time chairman of the foreign relations committee of Senate. He sympathised with me and he said something that kept me thinking. He said “Jide, we should stop going to these foreign countries and stay in our own and this will limit the opportunities these people have to humiliate us”. I agreed with him but I said to myself that but for the fact that one had a child abroad, what will I be going anywhere for. This made me remember that as an assistant professor in Canada in 1970 at the University of Western Ontario, my resident permit was solicited for me by the university and all I had to do was maintain a residence for five years and I would have become a Canadian citizen with a passport that would have allowed me to go anywhere in the world without visas.

Again in 1971, as a lecturer in the University of the West Indies, I was being asked to apply for a house loan and citizenship but I turned it down to hurry back home to go to the then University of Ibadan Jos Campus. Now at that time Nigeria was a great country and had the prospects of being greater so I was not doing my country a favour by rushing home. I actually wanted to be part of Nigeria’s march to greatness. I have not had any regrets since then because this country has given me opportunity to serve at some considerable height in the politics and administration of the country.

In my evening years, things have turned sour for me and my country. This is no time to want to travel abroad. The cost of flying is extremely prohibitive. The so-called annual personal travel allowance (PTA) of  $4,000 are no longer available even when you have the Naira equivalent and your passport could be kept indefinitely in the vault of a foreign embassy waiting for issuance of visa. This is the current experience of an average middle class Nigerian. It seems we have lost our respect and no one wants us in their Lilly white country. We have become a victim of our sordid reputation as a country of criminals and the wretched of the earth no matter our educational attainment or previous national or international status. Yet compared with our colleagues abroad, we are in no way inferior to them but our skin pigmentation and the reputation of our country have condemned us to the status of the undesirable and the miserable.

My people say poverty is not a crime but unorthodox method of getting out of poverty is certainly a crime. Peddling drugs and trafficking in people particularly women, fraudulent and all kinds of sharp practices such identity forgery and credit and insurance theft are crimes in which my people have been known to indulge in for instant wealth and monetary gratification. These are the issues that make countries and people despise us.

If we want to get our country back, we must adopt the credo of calling what is bad a no-go area in our individual and national lives. The coming elections important as they are will not change the image of Nigeria unless we change our national character and avoid what has made us become a people and country to be avoided.

A friend of mine asked me if I noticed that when traveling to Nigeria from abroad these days one hardly sees any foreigners in the plane unlike before when the first and business classes would be full of foreigners. It seems we are being avoided as if we are lepers and yet this is the biggest economy in Africa.

My prayer is that this country will be great and grand again. The struggle for greatness has to be a collective one. We as individuals must not only be the best we can be, we must also more or less challenge our country men and women to do the best for this country. If you see something wrong say something. If one is demanding for bribe and you know about it, call the culprits to order. If contracts are given and not executed, call our people to the streets to demonstrate against the contractors. If someone is impersonating another person to write examinations, call for a citizen arrest of such an evil person. If a doctor or a nurse ill-treats a patient, call such people to order. If a lecturer is late to class or demands sexual gratification, make a report of such lecturers to the authorities. If a student is seducing lecturers for marks, protest to the authorities and if government officials refuse to perform their duties call them to order through public protest or call the attention of the media.

We must embark on a campaign of moral rearmament to save this country and to get our reputation as a great country back. People in Singapore and Malaysia do not need visas to go to Europe or the Americas because there is no reason in the world why anyone from those two countries would want to leave their warm countries to go and settle in cold forsaken Europe and the Americas. Yet we became independent countries around the same time. They also don’t have to go through the hassle of applying for so-called foreign exchange because their currencies are convertible. There was a time in this country when the Naira was king and was joyfully accepted outside our country and it was almost getting to the status of West African currency because it was traded in countries from Dakar in Senegal to Yaoundé in the Cameroons. Our country can become great again but we have to work hard for it and it is doable.