Category: Jide Osuntokun

Anyone who has either lived in North America or has followed the politics of the United States as they affect the destiny of Black Americans cannot but be touched by the death of General Colin  L. Powell. If he were a white man, the death of such an important person would still have been a great loss to the world. But as a former army infantry General, chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Adviser,

Secretary of State, war hero and a black man and a member of the Republican Party, his life and rise are remarkably attractive and worthy  of celebration having achieved this in a hostile environment.

General Colin Powell was born to a Jamaican immigrant father and mother in the Bronx, one of the rundown areas of New York City 84 years ago. His father worked very hard but his little education could not carry him very far. He was however determined to see his young son get the education that he did not have. With family encouragement and his own determination, young Colin worked in the evenings on part-time basis in a Jewish toy store until he finished high school at the age of 17. The question of going to a regular university did not arise because of the penury of his father, but he found a way around this by enrolling in the ROTC (Reserved Training Officer Corps) where he trained and graduated as an infantry officer. He had a passion for military service and this first took him to South Vietnam as a young junior officer during the war against the revolutionary cadres of the Vietnamese infiltrating from North Vietnam to the South of the divided nation in the 1960s. these were the poorly clad ragtag rubber slippers-wearing guerrilla fighters known to American journalism as Vietcong during the Lyndon Baines Johnson‘s administration in the latter part of the 1960s. Colin Powell even as a young officer so distinguished himself that he went back for a second tour of duty rising to the rank of Colonel before President Richard Nixon in 1975 wound up the war that killed over a million  Vietnamese, military and civilian, while the Americans and their Allies lost 282,000  in a war that spilled over to Laos and Cambodia.

Colin Powell’s rise in the army was gradual, steady and not meteoric. But policy makers in the Army and Defence Department took notice of the excellent army officer. As an army officer, he kept his political views to himself but he did not hide the fact that he believed that every American can rise to whatever position he desired if he had the talent and was prepared to work very hard. He was not oblivious of the ingrained racism in the country at large and in the military in particular but he had the credo that if offended, one should get very mad and move on with life.

When President Ronald Reagan took over the American presidency from Jimmy Carter between 1981 and 1989, the Republican Party took a sharp turn to the right politically speaking and blacks in the country suffered neglect;  yet in the last two years of the Reagan administration from 1987 to 1989, Colin Powell was made the first black man to serve as National Security Adviser and when President George H. Bush became president after Reagan, he was appointed the 12th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the United States military and a Four-star General, an accomplishment rare in the American military. He served in this position from 1989 to 1993.

He was chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff when America invaded Kuwait to expel Saddam Hussein’s forces from that country. This was the time he enunciated what was called the Colin Powell doctrine that if, and when, America goes to war, it must go with overwhelming power and force to defeat the enemy and after which it must withdraw and not be involved in state building. This was first tested successfully in the US invasion of Panama from December 20, 1989 to January 31, 1990 and the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait on January 17, 1991 to February 1991. These were short and precise missions which Colin Powell could justifiably be proud of. But as a military man he did not relish the putting of young men and women in harm’s way and he believed that force must only be used as a last resort.

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The outcome of these two military promenades into Panama and the Gulf shot him into national spotlight and people began to see him as a future president.

When President George W. Bush took over the presidency from the morally-damaged President Bill Clinton over his affairs with a female intern in the White House, the new president, looking for a morally upright man of impeccable integrity found it in Colin L. Powell whom he appointed as Secretary of State on January 20, 2001 after he was unanimously confirmed by the usually partisan senate. He served in this position till January 26, 2005. He was in this position when Al Qaeda launched its attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon and a botched attack on the White House which ended on a field in Pennsylvania – thanks to the heroic effort of passengers in the plane who fought the terrorists until the plane came crashing down in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Passion was naturally inflamed in the USA after suffering loss of more than 3,000 souls, most of whom were Americans and others from different countries in the world.

It was not clear who were the sponsors of this terrible terrorist attack that inflicted more casualties on America than Pearl Harbour in 1941. The war party headed by the President  George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz for various and different reasons were bent on going to war to assuage the feelings of the people of the United States. Their youthful president on visiting the site of the disaster in New York promised retribution and crusade against terror which after advice about the loaded meaning of “a Christian war against Islam” changed it to war against terror . The president gave orders to topple the Taliban regime that hosted the Al Qaeda that was responsible for the attacks on the USA and to defeat the Taliban in detail in a war the whole world regarded as a just war if there was ever a war that was just.

The Afghan regime fell quickly but mission creep led America to embark on nation-building  in that country which was finally ended  in ignominy after almost two decades by President Joe Biden in 2021.  While the Afghan war was still on,  the  hawkish group surrounding the president decided that the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein must be gotten rid of because he allegedly had what was called ‘weapons  of mass destruction’ ( WMD).

Colin Powell’s advice against this was brushed aside even though as Secretary of State, he would have to sell this to the whole world. Nevertheless, the president gave the orders to invade Iraq and to capture or kill Saddam Hussein, the country’s president. The war began in 2003 with the United States and its willing allies bombarding already weakened Iraq after the first Iraq war. In one way or the other, this war which lasted till 2011 contradicted the Colin Powell doctrine because the allies not only defeated and hanged Saddam Hussein, but embarked on nation-building the end of which we are yet to see.

To justify this war, Colin Powell had to go before the UN Security Council to present unconvincing and spurious evidence including alleged Iraq’s purchase of uranium from Niger Republic. Nobody believed that Iraq had the possession of so called WMD otherwise known as nuclear weapons and no one wanted to risk the coming of nuclear cloud over Europe as Saddam Hussein was allegedly planning to do. Colin Powell as Secretary of State during these times could not totally exonerate himself from guilt  if only by association, and his misleading the world in the United Nations to justify America’s invasion of Iraq using a bad intelligence report dented his image of transparency and integrity. The world can however not judge him too harshly because he could not escape the limit imposed on him by the principle of cabinet collective responsibility.

This was a man in 1990 and 2000 who was being seen as a Republican president and he might have won a presidential election as a war hero but for the fact that his wife, Alma said no to presidential ambition and he himself felt he did not feel a call to serve at the highest office in the land. A grateful country gave him a presidential honour and respect even as an elder statesman whose opinion counted and was always sought.

I met him once just as I met Condoleezza Rice once not one on one, but in a small group and I was amazed about the similarity of their views on Africa but particularly on Nigeria. Both were disappointed about the so-called latent potentiality of Nigeria and wondered when this potentiality will become actualized. Both of them also said what Africa needs is strong institutions not strong men that is the so called “African big men”.

Colin Powell used his influence to see to the emergence of South Sudan as an independent country after suffering for years under the jackboots of Arab military adventurers from the north. Africa owes him a debt for this. Colin L. Powell  has played his part in the march of American black people for full acceptance and in this role he paved the way for the Barack Obama presidency even though he was a Republican who  campaigned quietly and voted for a Democrat.

It is instructive that Obama kept non-performing Nigeria at arms’ length during his presidency and preferred to visit Ghana while ignoring Nigeria. The situation now is even worse and America in a thousand years is not likely to warm up to a doddering Nigeria on the verge of collapse.

Finally there is something intriguing about the fact  that successful black Americans like the first black congress woman, Shirley  Shisholm,  1969-1971 who later ran for president, Kamala Harris, the current vice president, Colin Powell,  Stockley Carmichael and Marcus Garvey, Wilmot Dubois and many others had their roots in Jamaica or somewhere in the Caribbean and my explanation is that coming from majority black countries gave them and their descendants courage and boldness to succeed in a white country while black Americans are almost genetically condemned to a sad feeling of inferiority.

I have been reading a relatively short but concise history of Igboho by the Onigboho of Igboho, Oba John Oyekola Bolarinwa, Ajagungbade II, with great interest. Apart from the curiosity of a scholar on any new manuscript, I have abiding interest in the history of the Yoruba of which Igboho is an important part of. I am also interested in the intra and external relations of the old Oyo Empire and this manuscript awaiting publication throws some light on what went on in the inner core of the empire.

Igboho in the Ibarapa area of Oyo State has been in the news recently as a Yoruba kingdom suffering from ceaseless attacks by Fulani herders who are making life impossible for farmers in the area.  This is part of a larger phenomenon pitching farmers who are protecting their livelihood against herders who seem to be determined to ignore the sensibilities of the farming community who are resisting the eating of their crops by cows driven through their farms by Fulani herders some of who are allegedly foreigners coming from central and West Africa.

This has led to local response from the people championed by one of their young leaders, Sunday Adeyemo known generally as “Sunday Igboho”. The writing of the book by Alaiyeluwa Bolarinwa is just coincidental and has no relation to the ongoing campaign for Yoruba self-determination championed by Sunday Adeyemo; in fact nothing was mentioned about this except the fact that Igboho is an economic cross in the upper Ogun area.

The other reason of my interest in this manuscript is the fact that I have unstinted interest in Oyo history as the “Baapitan” of Oyo by the grace of Iku Baba Yeye, His Royal Majesty, Alaafin Lamidi Layiwola Adeyemi III, the Alaafin of Oyo. Furthermore, as an historian, one must always look for new sources and data to validate or disprove existing knowledge based on what evidence was available to historians of the past of Oyo Empire like the Reverend Samuel Johnson who wrote the History of the Yoruba and whose manuscript was later published by his younger brother. We owe Reverend Johnson a debt of gratitude for rescuing Yoruba history from being condemned to oblivion. We of course now know there were gaps and omissions in his book. We also knew that he was reflecting the view of Oyo in his considerable effort to reconstruct the history of the Yoruba from oral traditions mostly collected from his stations as a roving missionary.

This current effort of Oba Bolarinwa helps to illuminate the past and to foreshadow the future of the reconsideration of the modus operandi of the government of the old Oyo Empire as centred on the Alaafin and his court. The book written to justify the primacy of the Onigboho among competing traditional rulers viz the Alepata and the Onibode of Igboho and some minor chiefs in the area also makes great contributions to the understanding of intra kingdom relations among several of the allied kingdoms in the area and underscores the centrality of Igboho in the strategy of relations among the various kingdoms of the Yoruba and related Borgu people in the Upper Ogun region of Nigeria. The discussion of the religion of the people in precolonial times and the advent of Christianity and Islam give the reader the picture of the complex religious map of Igboho.

Read Also: What I told Buhari about Sunday Igboho – Ooni

My main take from the story ably told by Oba Bolarinwa is the strain the Kabiyesi takes to assert the primacy of the Onigboho over other obas in Igboho. In doing this he seems to cut off the Onigboho’s umbilical cord from the Alaafin to which the Eleruwa of Eruwa from where the founders of Igboho claim to have descended from.  In other words, the Onigboho dynasty is also related to the Alaafin of Oyo’s dynasty. There is no doubt that Igboho was among the towns in the old Oyo Empire where the power of the Alaafin went unchallenged. The fact that the Alaafin Egungunoju relocated from Oyo-Ile (Old Oyo) whether first to Kushu, Kishi, Shaki or Igboho as a result of external pressure  from the Nupe in the 16th century and was accommodated by the people of those towns showed that the Alaafin could rule wherever he resided whether in Oyo- Ile or any other part of the old Oyo Empire. This is not strange in the history of other people and in other climes. There is hardly any part of Yoruba land where there were no Oyo settlers before and after the second movement of the headquarters of Oyo from Oyo- Ile to present Oyo in the 19th century. The fact that the dynasty of the Alaafin was able to move and re-establish itself with the full paraphernalia of the imperial court is a credit to the enduring nature of the dynasty which in one form or the other has existed since the 13th century remaining today as one of the oldest dynasties to rule consistently for such a long period.

From history of other kingdoms in Nigeria, say for example the Hausa kingdoms and their takeover by the Fulani  in the 19th century, original rulers have had to concede power or share it with new comers representing more formidable forces or higher civilizations. This is what seems to have happened in Igboho. This is political reality in the apparent eclipsing of the Onigboho by the Alepata who represents the suzerainty of the Alaafin over all other Obas in the Old Oyo empire and even today in Yoruba land at least politically speaking while the Alaafin will, I believe, concede the role of spiritual leadership to the Ooni of Ife.

From what is known and accepted facts about the origin of Igboho, there is no doubt that there were people in Igboho before Alaafin Egungunoju moved to Igboho during the 16th century Nupe invasion of Oyo Ile. Four Alaafin ruled the Oyo Empire from Igboho of which Igboho was part of after first relocating to Shaki and then moving to a more defensible place like Igboho. The original settlers in Igboho from Eruwa welcomed the influx of Oyo people who accompanied the Alaafin. This fact changed the history of Igboho just as the history of most Yoruba kingdoms changed after the southward movement of Oyo people after the final collapse of the Oyo Empire 1826-1830 following the rebellion of Afonja of Ilorin and the pressure of the Muslim jamaa from Ilorin which was later to contest for power and supremacy with Ibadan forces in Yorubaland. The Onigboho’s mistake in the past was the assertion of his independence from the Alaafin which if the Alaafin had conceded  would have eroded the influence of the Alaafin if not his power in and over Igboho. The presence of the Alepata and to a lesser extent the Onibode strengthened the hand of the Alaafin in the challenge the independent posture of the Onigboho posed.

The dichotomy of power in Igboho is not unique to Igboho, it is the result of the accident of history which we can do nothing about.  This same problems exist in Ogbomosho, Abeokuta and several places in present Osun, Ekiti and Ondo states where original Obas are locked in arms with new suzerainty representing more powerful forces behind them historically. What is important for the sake of peace among brothers is for the rights of the original Obas to be recognized while the power of the new reality is carefully delineated so as to avoid clashes. The sky is broad enough for all birds to fly at the same time. In a situation where the entire institution of traditional royalty is being challenged by purveyors of modern democratic civilizations, a crack in the unity of the traditional institutions will be suicidal. The current situation in Igboho where the existence of the entire town is threatened by Fulani herders and other terrorists, calls for unity of direction or else the whole town will perish. A people speaking the same tongue should not allow history to divide them and should not be victims of abuse of history. The culture of accommodation among the people of Igboho which existed in the past should guide them to the future. The people of Igboho and their competing Obas should also guide against the possible exploitation of religious differences among the claimants for royal primacy and their supporters. The past belongs to history while the future is what the people should look forward to. Victory does not always go to the swiftest and history is written from the prism of the victor. This is what the Onigboho’s history has demonstrated. There is absolutely no reason to divide Igboho into Oyo- Igboho and original Igboho because both are people from the same stock and they are all subjects of the Alaafin from whom all the competing Obas descend!

As a university don, albeit a retired one with the fancy title of professor (emeritus), I have the opportunity and privilege of interacting with young Nigerians particularly university graduates. Some of these may have been my students in the past in universities of Lagos, Ibadan, Maiduguri and the Redeemer’s University of Nigeria, Ede where I taught in the last 40 years. These young ladies and gentlemen come from all over Nigeria and their thoughts and concerns about now and the future of our country obviously vary in their perspectives and seem to have a North – South dichotomy just as the politics of the country. The ones from the North are not as effusive in ventilating their concerns and sharing with me their fears as their counterparts from the South.  They are not as engaged with the problems of the country as the ones from the South. The different reactions may be because of their degrees of frustrations. Accessibility to government employment and government resources varies in inverse proportions from north to South. My older former students from the south are involved in the struggle for the political rearrangement and restructuring of the country to guarantee equal accessibility to power for all Nigerians irrespective of religion and ethnicity. They are very prominent in the ranks of existing cultural and political movements that can facilitate their agenda. The ones from the north are already high up in their states or federal bureaucracies or political and academic elite. Some are permanent secretaries, deputy governors, university vice chancellors et cetera.

This is not to suggest that the opportunities open to those from the north do not vary from state to state. The ones from the far north are more likely to have better accessibility to power and positions than the ones from the North-central because of their large numbers meaning that the number of positions there is less than the quantum of those qualified and competing for such positions. This dichotomy even in the north is due to the greater impact of western education and Christian evangelization in the north-central which makes my former students there to have similar opinions and political tendencies with the ones in the south thus blurring the usual North/South divide.

In spite of whatever frustration they have, all of them, including those from the north and south do not give up on the country. Age has caught up with all of them and like us their teachers they are resigned to whatever the future may bring. They are more concerned with the future of their children than their own future. But in a situation in which one has been involved in teaching Nigerians over a period of more than 40 years, I have had contacts with two generations of Nigerians in some cases and it is the latter generation that the north/south divide in the country is most manifest.

The younger generation ranging from 25 to 40 which is the generation of my own children are more impatient than my previous former students. This is the generation that is totally dissatisfied with the condition of the country. No matter whether they are employed or not, they don’t see their future in our country. They tend to blame my generation for messing up the country and passing over to them a country that they claim has no future in a modern world  based on knowledge industries and governance. They are not amenable to our plea of patience.

The North/South division of the country in this group is very sharp. The southerners tend to migrate to countries like Great Britain, the United States, Canada, South Africa and many other parts of the world. They either first go there to acquire higher degrees before settling down there or they go there primarily to work and if needs be to study for higher degrees in the bargain. They marry and settle there and those with strong family ties occasionally visit home or come home to bury their old folks and sell whatever estates their parents may have built up over years of struggling. In some cases they sell their parents properties at distress prices because they want to cut their ties with the country they claim has disappointed them. Some are not as radical as those who want to sever their ties with their fatherland. Some still have the intention of coming back home apparently to retire in old age. They therefore send home money to build or buy houses for their future return and retirement. When these remittances are added together, they constitute the 25 to 30 billion dollars forex annually transferred to our national exchequer which those at home misappropriate or loot instead of using it to boost the value of the naira and for economic development of the country. If properly managed and utilized, this forex  when added to what our country gets from hydrocarbons  export is enough for the development of our country without the annual resort to borrowing money from the Chinese and others and thereby mortgaging our future to the demands of foreign Shylocks,

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It was the foreign remittances of the Chinese, Indians and Southeast Asians that provided the seed monies for the industrial take off of the economies of those countries. But what do we have in our country? The answer is blowing in the wind! What we get is the depressing governance characterised by kidnapping, banditry, religious fanaticism, terrorism, ethnic hatred, highway robbery, conflict between herders and farmers and so on. Here, we have had a federal government bogged down for six years of talking about grazing routes for cows and tolerating the killing of farmers by herders and openly demonstrating partiality for the side of herders in their wanton destruction of lives and property.

While everyone knows that modern pastoral farming has moved away from old time transhumance, we seem to bury our heads in the sand thinking that no one sees what we are foolishly doing. Unfortunately, the world is not standing idly by and by the time we wake up from our self-imposed slumber, the world would have passed us by.

This unfortunately is the lot of our young ones now and they are seriously voting with their feet and moving away in droves while those in government at states and federal levels seem apparently unconcerned. Indeed, Minister of Labour Chris Ngige openly said the government he serves welcomes the large migrations of young Nigerian doctors abroad because of the government’s lack of sensitivity to their welfare. He claimed that we have too many doctors and that he would encourage them to go abroad for better rewards for their services.

Nobody will argue that young Nigerians should be denied their freedom of movement. But this should not be seen as a panacea for industrial peace at home. If people leave their country, it should not be because they are pushed out by deliberate policy of government. It should be something done as a result of free will. Young Nigerians forced out of their country by deliberate policies of government are not likely to have sympathy for the future of their fatherland. In most cases this group is likely to be hostile and when they have the opportunity to speak for Nigeria, they are likely to denigrate the country.  We can see these tendencies in the militant demonstrations and abuse of our president on the streets of London, Tokyo and New York where he has visited in recent times.

I have been asked questions by young people about when the so-called potential greatness of Nigeria will be actualized. They argue they have heard so much about this since when they were toddlers and they still hear the same thing being said today by their leaders who seem to be so totally disconnected with the present reality to the point of not seeing the signs of total collapse of the economic, political and moral underpinnings of a great people whose educated girls are now all over the world selling their bodies in order to eke out a living.

The youth of any country represents the future. What kind of future awaits our country if our young ones dismiss our country as not having anything for them in terms of political and economic stability on which to plan their lives and the future of their children? This is the stark reality facing Nigeria. Our present is uncertain and our future is bleak unless we seriously reverse our present political alienation and over concentration of power in the centre. If for nothing else, should our current men of power not be concerned about the future? What future legacies are they laying? Is it a future of kidnapping, banditry, corruption, ethnic and religious terrorism?

These should be the thoughts that should be troubling our leaders as they trouble those of us who think. But unfortunately their preoccupation is with the revolving doors of power about who is in and who is out and about succession to power in a country whose foundation is built on shifting sands.

Jide Osuntokun

President Muhammadu Buhari in his national day broadcast said he welcomes a national dialogue to resolve what he called genuine grievances of those who felt his government has not been fair to them. The onus is on him to make the platform for such a national dialogue possible. Whatever form such a dialogue takes it must not be among politicians alone. Many politicians are time-servers lacking in elementary patriotism and are only interested in their own personal interest and not even in group interest which they purport to champion. There are other stakeholders in the Nigerian enterprise who are not politicians but who genuinely feel let down by the turn of events for the worse in recent years. Many of us who in our own little ways have contributed to the development this country have witnessed either as bureaucrats, academics, teachers, artists, business men and women, industrialists, clerics, trade unionists, artisans, journalists, students to which the future belongs, soldiers and police men and women and others too numerous to identify would like to air our grievances and suggest the way forward.

The opposite of peaceful discussion is war which no country in the modern age can afford. Certainly no African country should wish for this especially knowing how far behind we are in the development race. If ever things get out of hand in this country, we will all rue it because no country can survive two civil wars and hope to emerge intact from them. The guns and munitions makers all over the world would be too pleased to sell their merchandise to all those who need them without moral qualms. It was Winston Churchill who said “it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war” Any student of history will tell us that wars eventually end in negotiations so it makes sense to talk rather than fight each other  especially in the same country.

Those issuing inflammatory statements, no matter who they are, should be called to order. This is the only country we have; we must all stay here and resolve our problems to paraphrase what the young Major General Buhari said in 1984. If during negotiations the chasms that separate us cannot be bridged, then separation can be peacefully negotiated. We will not be the first people to do this. Even the previously dominant world power, the Soviet Union, broke into 19 independent countries peacefully and the world did not end. It is important for those us that are old not to begin to issue inflammatory statements about fighting compatriots to the bitter end as some politicians are saying in recent times. What exactly will we be fighting over? Is it over oil  which we all know is a wasting asset and the world has plan to transit to green energy and move away from dependence on hydrocarbons, or  is it over land for grazing cows in a world where beef in civilized society is no longer considered safe for health and environmental reasons or land for settlement of surplus population from one part of the country in another which can only be done through peaceful negotiations because no one will peacefully abandon  his or her ancestral lands for others except through conquest. In any case we need a radical policy to address the time bomb of our geometric population rise.

It is the non-inclusiveness of the Buhari administration in the eyes of some people that drive people to begin to suggest opting out of the federation. If our current electoral system creates this problem, we can learn from the German proportional representation which has seen Germany make up for the destruction it suffered during the Second World War by running all inclusive governments since 1949 in which coalition governments are the norms rather the exceptions. The dominance of one party is reduced by the agreement it had to reach to form a government. The quality of their leaders was also important. Both Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982) Helmut Kohl 1982-98) chancellors before Angela Merkel both had doctoral degrees and Merkel herself had a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry. Of course it is not the degrees they had that mattered but the  rigour that academic research puts on a student is a great advantage in tackling complex problems of development and national integration in an ideological divided land. Of course, political wisdom can be derived from lived experience and not necessarily from academic knowledge. I believe we can learn from other people’s experience.

It seems to me that all Nigerians are agreed that the form of politics we play and consequently the form of government we have are not working in the interest of rapid development of the country. It seems we are all agreed that there is a need for wholesale reform of our system of governance. Politicians are too far removed from the needs of the people while they seem to concentrate on their own interest. This manifests in the humongous salaries, allowances, severance packages they award themselves after they leaving office which makes the Nigerian system the most expensive in the world and totally unrelated to the size of our economy. This fact is not a North/South problem. It may in fact be an African problem for which we can blaze the trail in solving.

Can we not seriously reduce the cost of administration by pruning the unwieldy 37 states including the Federal Capital Territory and the 774 local governments? Do we need full time members of parliament at local, states and federal levels as we presently have? After paying the political and administrative officials, what money is left for development? We all know that little or no development is taking place because of this burden of administration. All these states and local governments were set up during the time of oil wealth but now that we are borrowing to pay staff, do we need all these governors and their innumerable commissioners and permanent secretaries?

I grew up in the old Western Region which has now been split into eight states whereas in the old days, they were all run from Ibadan by one premier, 11 ministers and about the same number of permanent secretaries. Apart from the huge reserves of money from cocoa which the Western Region inherited, it also saved money from its lean administrative structure with which it used to develop the region making it comparable to Ghana the leading African country at that time. The Northern and Eastern regions also had spare  resources by avoiding the kind of administrative burdens now imposed on them by the large numbers of states  and local governments in places which only had two regions.

People both in the North and the South have been clamoring for structural reform. The centre as it is presently configured has too much power and too many resources. That is why there is so much corruption that every new administration spends so much time probing its predecessor and wasting much time to clean the Augean stables before commencing its own work. Should we not therefore because of this recurring decimal of experience of corruption reduce the power and resources in the centre and transfer them to a vastly reduced number of states and local governments where the people live and where the political battles should be waged and not at the centre that seems to create so much acrimony leading to paralysis?

Can we also not tinker with our AMERICAN type presidential system and adopt the South African type where the president and his ministers are members of parliament? Nigeria is a complex and divided country and in the light of our experience, the American type presidential system is not working and will never work.  What we need is not an African monarchy but a system of consensus to preserve peace among our multitudinous people. Whatever will free resources for development should be our aim because the various incendiary eruptions tearing our country apart and into pieces can be traced to lack of development and consequently lack of employment for our youth. As long as we have an open mind, we should be able to meet and fashion out an original system suitable for our own unique political and ethnic plurality.

President Buhari should think of his place in history not just of Nigeria but of Africa and the black world. He should not just see himself as a local man but a world citizen. One is encouraged by the fact that in his recent statement at the 76th United Nations General Assembly’s meeting in New York, he mentioned the willingness and preparedness of Nigeria to be involved in an embryonic movement of African states and the African diaspora to fight racism and racial injustice all over the world. Charity must begin from home. He must ensure that there is fairness, equity and justice among his own people for the world to take  him seriously. Foreign policy is normally anchored on domestic policy and for a country to be successful abroad, it must carry its people along and be successful at home.

By Jide Osuntokun

There were solemn ceremonies at the sites of the terrorist attacks in New York, Shanksville in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in Washington D.C on September 9 to mark 20 years of the attack that killed about 3,000 people most of them Americans. The brutality and insanity of the attacks in which commercial jets were hijacked and turned into weapons of offence and flown into stationary buildings surprised and frightened the whole world.

This was the greatest attack ever seen on an otherwise impregnable United States. Not many people knew what exactly was happening. I remember I was in my office in the University of Lagos and went to have a chat with Professor C. S Momoh, our dean when I saw the attack on the American network, CNN and the dean and I dismissed the whole thing as one of those American violent movies. It was when I returned to my office that my wife called to tell me about attacks on America by terrorists using commercial aeroplanes. I had to rush back to the dean’s office to look again and to tell the dean that it was not a movie. Then fear grabbed me and I thought of Armageddon if the attackers were Russians.

Of course, the picture became clearer later on and we were told the attackers were Arab terrorists who were angry with Americans for generally disrespecting Arabs and the religion of Islam. Later it became clear that virtually all the terrorists were Saudi citizens of middle-class parentage. So, it was not some wild-eyed socialists wanting to strike a blow at capitalism. Recently, it is becoming clear that some Saudi officials may have had fore knowledge of the plan. What then could be the reason for these dastardly attacks.?

In 1996, an American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington had published a widely circulated book called The Clash of Civilizations in which he argued that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in post-Cold War world and that future wars will be fought not between countries but between cultures.  This book came after the popularity of the book by the Japanese-American historian, Francis Fukuyama who had in 1992 published his wide-ranging book The End of History and the Last Man to celebrate the West and capitalism’s victory over the Soviet Union and Communism. This prediction of the future was popular and fashionable among positivist social scientists and became influential among policy makers. So, it was possible that Huntington’s book was taken very seriously and used to possibly unravel the motive of the terrorists. But whatever it was, action was needed.

The young President George W. Bush had to placate the feelings of angry Americans by telling the crowd around him in the site of the attack in New York that whoever was behind the attack would hear from the United States. Once it was figured out that the attackers were members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group who had trained in the unruly and rugged Afghanistan then ruled by the Taliban, it was a matter of weeks before an armada of war planes rained bombs on the hapless country. America was joined by her Allies in the North Atlantic organization (NATO) and other countries such as Australia. This was the first time that this military organization was engaged in war outside the European theatre for which it was created in the first instance.

Before long the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan and Al Qaeda was scattered and bombed out of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden soon found safety in Pakistan apparently protected by the country’s military intelligence but was killed by American Seals in 2011.

The torpedoing of the Taliban regime witnessed mission creep and America and her Allies embarked on state engineering and building of a democratic and modern state out of the primitive emirate of Afghanistan. This became a doomed mission and the withdrawal by President Joe Biden of the remaining American troops by the end of August was rooted in political realism.

He has been seriously criticized for the untidiness of his withdrawal by the “war party” in America and Europe, but I think he did the right thing and history will be kind to him. He realized that no foreign power, whether Persians, Arabs, British and Russians have ever been able to conquer and hold the country from before the birth of Jesus Christ to the time of Russia’s withdrawal from the country in 1989. But the crusade or “war on terror” of the Americans later assumed a war against radical Islam.

The war against the Taliban had not completely wound down when President George Bush and Britain and other Allies launched an aerial bombardment of Iraq ostensibly to disarm its ruler Saddam Hussein of so-called “weapons of mass destruction” on March 19, 2003.  The world was sold the dummy that Saddam Hussein was a mere breath from having nuclear weapons. Documents suggesting he was buying uranium from the Republic of Niger and refining it to weapons grade level next step to splitting the atom were presented to the global community. Poor General Colin Powell, the respected Secretary of State of the United States had to present these false documents in the hallowed hall of the United Nations Security Council to convince a doubting world. Within three weeks, America and its coalition partners had captured the major cities of the country while resistance in the rural areas continued while its bellicose President Saddam Hussein hid himself. He was later captured and hanged publicly on December 30, 2006.

Ten years after the war began, the United States declared an end to the war on December 15, 2011. Since then, Iraq has gone through several wars first by Sunnis’ rebellion against Shia dominated government in Baghdad propped up by the Americans and then Al Qaeda in Iraq which later morphed into the most murderous jihadist group, ISIS led by Abubakar al Baghdadi’s caliphate whose hold on Sunni Iraq and northeast Syria was finally broken by the Trump administration which defeated Al Baghdadi in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. Abubakar Al Baghdadi then committed suicide on October 27, 2019.

Before this time, there was hardly any part of the Muslim Arab world that had not experienced some kind of political eruption which the West called “Arab Spring” which eventually turned into Arab winter. From Libya to Tunisia, Egypt to Syria and leading to the fountain heads of global civilizations being destroyed in Syria and Iraq, the so-called democratic  gains in the Arab world in Tunisia and Egypt have been rolled back with  the emergence of a military dictator in Egypt, General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi  getting rid of the democratically-elected Muslim president, Muhammad Morsi while  Iraq is presently ruled by Shia-dominated government backed by extremist Shia mullahs supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran while Syria has known no peace since attempt to overthrow its eternal family rule under Bashar al- Assad failed.

What began as a just war against terrorism almost became a Christian crusade against Islam. Of course, this was an unintended outcome but the great destructions and loss of millions of Muslim lives in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are the result.  Most of this was self-inflicted but many were induced by the West led by Americans who also in the process lost fortune and thousands of soldiers but not on the same scale and level as their opponents.

This calls to question whether there could have been other ways to assuage the anger of Americans short of war after the 9/11 attack of 2001. I personally feel war at that time against Afghanistan was inevitable but the war against Saddam Hussein was unjustifiable. The scars are not likely to be removed in the hearts of both the victims and their opponents for a long time to come until restitution is made by both Americans and their allies and the Muslim Arab world.

Afghanistan (khorasan) is not a nation but a conglomeration of different peoples majority of them being Pashtun (Pathans) who also form substantial part of the population of Pakistan. Other groups in modern Afghanistan are Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara, Aimaq, Turkmen , Balochs, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat and others . However the three largest groups are the Pashtun ,the Tajiks and the Hazaras. The territory now known as Afghanistan  was once conquered by Darius 1 of Babylonia  circa 500 BC and Alexander the Great of Macedonia in 329 BC among others. It once formed part of an empire stretching from Iran and extending to Delhi  in India ruled at one time by Persians (Iranians) and  at other times by the Rashidun Arabs. Mahmud of Ghazni, an 11th century conqueror who created an empire from Iran to India is considered the greatest of Afghanistan’s conquerors. Ghenghis Khan took over the territory in the 13th century, but it was not until the 1700s that the area was united as a single country. The people of Afghanistan were at a time either Zoroastrians , Hindus, Buddhists or pagans. It was not until between 8th and 10th centuries that the majority of the Pashtuns converted to Islam. The Pashtuns are largely concentrated in the South and parts of the East, the Tajiks are  mainly in the Northeast and western Afghanistan and Uzbeks are mainly in the North.

The modern evolution of Afghanistan can be said to have begun in  1880 after the end of the second Anglo- Afghan war. Before that time Afghanistan was part of various Persian empires and its history is tied to that of other countries in the region including Pakistan , India, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The first ruler of  modern Afghanistan was Ahmad Shah who united the various Pashtun tribes and by 1760 built an empire extending to Delhi and the Arabian Sea. When he died in 1772 the empire went into ruins, but in 1826 Dost Mohammad  the leader of the Pashtuns restored order. He had to contend with the British empire in India against whom the Afghans fought two wars between 1842 and 1880. The war was fought  by the British to prevent Russian imperial designs on Afghanistan then under their emir, Shah ALI Khan . Britain finally recognized the independence of Afghanistan on 8 August 1919  by a treaty signed in Rawalpindi and agreed that British India would not extend past the Khyber Pass. From 1919, Britain stopped giving subsidies to the country. Although Britain did not incorporate Afghanistan into the British empire it nevertheless controlled the country’s foreign policy for 40 years from 1880 to 1920. In 1926 Amir Amanullah declared Afghanistan a monarchy rather than an emirate  and proclaimed himself as King. He embarked on reforms to modernize the country and to limit the Loya Jirga ( the National Council). These reforms led to revolt against him, which forced him to abdicate in 1929. The country was not stabilized until 1933 when Mohammad  Zahir Shah became king. He ruled the country until 1973 . He lived to witness Britain’s withdrawal from its Raj in India and creating largely Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan  whose border with Afghanistan was disputed. In fact, Afghanistan voted against the admission of Pakistan into the United Nations in 1948.

In 1953, the pro- Soviet Russia General Mohammad Daodu Khan the cousin of the King  looked towards Russia for economic and military assistance while embarking on social and economic reforms. In 1965 the Afghanistan Communist Party came into being albeit secretly. In 1973, the prime minister Mohammad Daodu Khan overthrew the old king and the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan came to power. Khan abolished the monarchy and named himself the president with firm ties to the Soviet Union.  President Muhammad Daodu Khan himself was killed in 1978 in a communist coup d’etat and Muhammad Taraki, one of the founding members of the Communist party became president and Babrak Karmal became his deputy. Internal dissension marred the workings of the government and a revolt in the countryside led by guerrilla movement of the Mujahideen emerged to challenge the Soviet Union-backed government. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979 to bolster the Communist regime in the country. By early 1980, the Mujahideen united against the Soviet-backed Afghanistan’s army  and some 2.8 million fled the country for Pakistan, and another 1.5 fled to Iran . The Afghan guerrilla movement of the Mujahideen controlled the countryside while the Soviet troops and their Afghan supported government controlled the capital Kabul and major towns. The Mujahideen received support and arms from the USA, Britain and China via Pakistan, and by 1986 the Soviet army began a phased withdrawal from the country. By 1988, Osama bin Laden and 15 others formed the group Al Qaida (the base) to continue the war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. In 1989 the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union signed a peace accord in Geneva guaranteeing Afghan Independence and the withdrawal of 100,000   Soviet Russian troops from the country. This did not end the war of the Mujahideen against the Afghan government  led by Dr. Mohammad Najibullah which was still backed by the Soviet Union.   In 1992, the Mujahideen backed by turncoat government soldiers stormed Kabul, the capital, and ousted President Najibullah from power.  As soon as Kabul was taken the Mujahideen began to fracture, but eventually an Islamic State under Professor Burhannudin Rabbani was proclaimed. In 1995 a newly formed Islamic militia, the Taliban (students) rose to power on promises of peace after the exhaustion by war and famine. The Taliban outlawed the farming of poppies for the opium trade and banned the education of women and  imposed draconian Islamic code on the country  including public executions for a myriad of offenses. Millions of refugees again fled to neighboring countries. The former president Najibullah was in 1997 publicly executed while  Ahmad Shah Masood’s northern Alliance and Hamid Karzai’s  Pashtun Group in the South began to battle the Taliban for control of the country. Following Al Qaida’s attack on the U.S . embassies in East Africa, President Bill  Clinton ordered cruise missiles attack on the country .

Read Also: PMB and lessons from Afghanistan

On September 11, 2001 Hijackers commandeered four commercial air planes and crashed them into the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon  and a Pennsylvania field killing thousands of Americans and nationals of other nations. Bin Laden then based in Afghanistan was fingered as the brain behind the terrible attack. British and American air forces began aerial attacks  while the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan drove the Taliban out of Kabul and finally out of the country. Hamid Karzai, a royalist ethnic Pashtun, was sworn in as interim leader of Afghanistan in 2001. Amid increased violence and chaos NATO took over security in Kabul in 2003, the Organization’s first  military commitment outside Europe. In 2004, Karzai was elected president and by 2006, mission creep saw the NATO forces fighting Taliban and Al Qaida forces  in the southern portion of the country.

Thus began the involvement of American led NATO forces for twenty years under four presidents , Gorge  W. Bush,  Barack Obama , Donald J. Trump and now Joseph Biden who  rightly decided to cut the Gordian knot and withdraw from a senseless unwinnable war, having learnt from the failure of previous conquerors of the country. Biden has come under severe criticism  for the hurried and shambolic execution of the withdrawal. I personally think Biden took the right step to withdraw from the conflict with a foe who was ready to fight until death.

Afghanistan, a country of 40 million people, occupies a strategic place in Central Asia and it is this centrality of its location that makes the poor country important. Pakistan, which for ethnic Pashtun solidarity  had been supporting the Taliban and undermining US war efforts, may yet rue its support for the Taliban which now poses a threat to Pakistan itself, which has its own militant Talibans committed to overthrowing the government in Islamabad. If Pakistan is about to fall, the West may again have to fight the Talibans in Pakistan because it will be suicidal to allow a “ Mad Mullah “ to have his hands on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The same reason may force India to intervene. China with its huge investment in Pakistan and the fear of Islamic terrorists entering China’s Xinjiang Islamic dominated province  has an interest in watching what goes on in Afghanistan. Infiltration of terrorists driven by jihadi sentiments into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and on to the Russian Caucasus will compel Russia to be  careful of  its support for the Taliban regime unless it foreswears supports for Islamic terrorism. In all these scenarios, the United States does not have much to lose. Its wasting 3 trillion dollars and loss of 2400 soldiers and perhaps another 2000 Allied troops  over two decades of war has been  a misplaced effort and an exercise in futility. If America had studied the history of the failure of attempted foreign conquest of Afghanistan, it would not have repeated the history of failure.

James Baldwin, a black American essayist published under the title “ The fire next time” two previous essays namely “Letter from a Region of my mind” and “My Dungeon Shook” in 1963 the year when American black people and their sympathizers marched on Washington DC to demand civil rights ordinarily granted other Americans and this was when Martin Luther King jnr. made his famous speech – “ I have a dream “ where he pleaded that he had hopes of a future when his grandchildren will no longer be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character. The title “The fire next time “is from a negro spiritual about how God promised never to destroy the earth by water again after the great flood, but by fire.

This title is appropriate for the UN report on the future of the Earth which the Secretary General said was a “Red warning” of the impending destruction of the earth because of human abuse dating back to the time of the industrial revolution when greenhouse gasses  began to be emitted on to the global environment without ceasing until now when it is becoming almost an impossible task to take abatement measures to reverse what seems to be global environmental suicide and the end of this common patrimony of mankind damaged by human greed and carelessness. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s latest release paints a very dire picture of the condition of the global climate. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres describes the findings as “Code red for humanity”. The report clearly states that after a decade of collaborative work by hundreds of the best global scientists including meteorologists, geographers, climatologists, astrophysicists, computer scientists, marine biologists  environmental scientists and other such relevant scientists have come to the conclusion that unless serious mitigation measures such as radically cutting back  of greenhouse gasses’ emissions and reducing global warming by several percentage points so as to bring the global temperatures rise not above 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels from the present prevailing rate of warming well over this figure, the world will self-destruct. This report could not have come at a better time. There is unusual flooding in continental Europe, China, the Americas and Australia at the same time of raging wild fires in the western half of the United States and Canada, and in several countries in Europe particularly in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans with whole Islands in Greece and Turkey burnt down completely.  These fires virtually wiped-out flora and fauna in several Australian states in 2019/2020. What is more worrisome is the burning of more than a million hectares of virgin forests in the Arctic areas of Russia and American Alaska and the Northern territories of Canada. These fires in the Arctic are melting Arctic glaciers thus releasing huge volumes of water leading to sea rise which could possibly threaten coastal cities like our own Lagos, London, Miami, New York, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Rome, Paris and many great cities all over the world. Accompanying all these fires is the unbelievably high temperatures all over the world as well as the unseasonably heavy rainfalls in many parts of the world. These abnormal weather patterns are the result of the global climatic change.

Some politicians like the former US President Donald J. Trump dismissed the scare of climate change as part of liberal posturing of several politicians in the West driven by more enthusiasm than wisdom in the face of galloping growth of the China’s economy their competitor where politicians are not bound by unrealistic laws about the protection of the environment. Trump may be right in his ignorance.

The challenge is not to join China in polluting the earth but to join others in collectively preserving the global environment. Even China and India are now convinced about the need to reverse the current trend of environmental pollution. Europe and America which were through their automobile lifestyle and industrial production responsible for polluting the earth in the first instance before now presenting to the rest of the world  as a great threat to humanity caused not by all  but by the rich industrial world are now determined to take appropriate measures to reverse the trend. The idea of polluter pays principle subscribed to by the developing world in the 1990s appear irrelevant in the face of collective doom of climate apocalypse. This was why the whole world acceded to the Paris protocol of shared responsibility in protecting the environment to which all countries including the major polluters of China, India and the United States were signatories to in 2015. This treaty was hammered out over two weeks in Paris during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) and adopted on December 12, 2015. This Paris Agreement was seen as landmark agreement committing the leaders of the world to collectively secure the global climate through drastic reduction of all processes that degraded the environment. National targets were set and the industrial North pledged to aid developing countries to adopt clean energy rather than going through the old industrial processes of the North with reliance on coal as industrial fuel to generate energy for their industrial processes. This was the Agreement President Donald Trump walked away from when he took office in January 2017 saying the terms of the Agreement would be injurious to the U S economy. Happily, his successor Joe Biden has returned the US to the agreement and has pledged to reduce US greenhouses gases by half within the next decade through the replacement of gas fueled automobiles with electric cars and trucks and abandonment of coal as source of energy and drastic reduction in new oil consumption and oil fields development. Unless countries like India and China put an end to building coal fired power stations, the efforts of the US and Europe will come to nothing. If the world is to be saved, there has to be a revolution not only in production but also in consumption. The damage present agricultural production does to the environment through methane emissions of cattle, deforestation in places like the Congo and Amazon basins, widespread use of fertilizers, slash and burn agricultural practices in the developing world and worldwide destruction of flora and fauna and over fishing and sea pollution constitute major threat to the environment. There is also the fear of the struggle to save the environment is taking on the hue of ideology with the politicians on the right thinking it is leftist liberal ideas of green and socialist parties. This ideological cleavage is most noticeable in the United States, a critical state for that matter, among the members of the Republican party who put the economy over the environment.

However, the effect of all these problems are now clear even to the doubting Thomases who claim scientists are divided as to the cause of climate change and sometimes arguing that the whole thing is cyclical and that the global climate will repair itself. It is heart-warming that the recent G7 Summit in England saw leaders making pledges of drastic reductions in greenhouse gasses within the next decade with electric cars replacing petrol driven cars and with Diesel engines virtually phased out. The way out of the climate issue is not what governments alone can handle; it must be  a joint effort between governments and industry and the signs are good that industrial enterprises are also seized with the fight to save the environment.

The issue of mitigation measures to reverse climate change  may still be subject to debate but there is no doubt that there is growing global consensus on what drastic abatement measures that need to be taken and how technological adaptation can turn a losing battle to victory especially that the choice is not between economic development and environmental degradation. Green economy can be the way of economic development in the future. It is a matter of life or death for the small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific and the world owes the people there support by ensuring their homelands do not get washed away under them because of sea rise caused by global warming.

The coming Conference of Parties (COP 26 ) in Glasgow Scotland in November should present an opportunity for the entire world now faced with the current extreme consequences of climate change to do something tangible and measurable that each country can key into from the large and wealthy countries of the North and the industrial and rising China and India whose development would have to be cleaner than it is at the present and to the vast continent of Africa and South America whose contributions to the environmental damage in the past is minimal but which can become a problem in the future unless they are brought on board the global train of environmental enhancement.

For us in Nigeria we must think quickly about an economy not dependent on oil because in the future oil will no longer have any market and we have only ten years to adjust to this fact.

By Jide Osuntokun

I was personally excited about the recently concluded Olympics in Tokyo after the postponement from 2020 to 2121. The fact that the games held at all is a triumph of human will. There were many people who felt because of the coronavirus pandemic, the games should either have been cancelled or postponed again. But thank God, the International Olympics Committee and the government of Japan stood their grounds in spite of the withering campaigns against the games by the international media.

For me the Olympics was like a balm of Gilead ÿþ for the melancholy and depression I have suffered in the last two years from being cut off from my children and grandchildren – the only people I can absolutely trust as a widower. I needed something to take my minds off my own personal sense of loss. Secondly my life’s work as a patriotic Nigerian who had performed some public service as a university teacher, administrator and diplomat was becoming meaningless as a result of my country going to the dogs because of the onslaught of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, senseless murders by herders some of who are foreigners as well as the triumph of ethnicism over nationalism. I just felt my life’s work had been wasted while watching the whole country unravelling with those who should do something unwilling or unable to halt the rush to Armageddon.

The Olympics came in handy and I watched with keen interest as many sports that interested me. Some friends and relations couldn’t understand why I was so interested and engrossed with the games but there was no point in telling them about the therapeutic effect of the games on me.

Thank God for the Ancient Greeks who contributed many things to world civilization. I feel, apart from democracy and system of government, the Olympics remains for me one of the enduring contributions of Ancient Greece to world civilization. Its origin goes back to 776BC when Koroibos , a cook from the nearby city of Elis, won  the stadion race, a foot race 600 feet long. Since then with slight modifications, the Olympics were held in Olympia every four years from 776 BC for the next 12 centuries. After its humble origin, it metamorphosed into a religious festival in honour of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and goddesses. The festival of the games was held in Olympia, a rural area in the western Peloponnesus. The athletes that came to the games came from the several Greek city states and every corner of the Greek world from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Turkey in the east. The sanctuary where they worshipped Mt. Olympus is the highest mountain in mainland Greece. The games were modified to include the marathon in the modern Olympics in 1896.The Marathon located northeast of Athens was the take-off point of the race to Athens a distance of 40 kilometres. The marathon commemorates the run of Pheidippides, an ancient runner who carried the news of the Persian landing at Marathon in 490 BC to Sparta a distance of 149 miles in order to enlist help for the battle. The distance of the modern marathon was standardized as 26 miles 385 yards or 42.195 kilometres in 1908 during the London Olympics.

The first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896 thanks to the romantic love of the Olympics by Baron Pierre de Coubertin,  a French nobleman who had wanted to host the games in Paris but was prevailed upon to move it to Athens as a result of the interest by several countries  which suggested Athens should be the first host of the modern Olympics. The idea of the Olympic torch was introduced in the Amsterdam Games in 1928 but the modern Olympics torch relay was introduced in the Berlin Games of Adolph Hitler who thoroughly politicized the games as the triumph of his so-called Aryan race over all others.

The games have held since 1896 except during wars, with several additional sporting competitions including Winter Olympics and  Special Olympics for the handicapped  which was inaugurated in 1968.The Olympics have evolved so much that the ancient Greeks if they were to come to the earth again would not recognize the games. But what has been retained is the goal of Olympics which was to promote global peace, amity and concord. But despite the International Olympics Committee trying to keep politics out of the games, it has not succeeded. Sometimes because of political differences, there have been six instances when movements to boycott the games happened  as in  Berlin in 1936 when Great Britain and the United States threatened to boycott the games because  of the racism and violence of Adolf Hitler and his NAZI Party. They however later participated in the games. But to their regrets, Adolf Hitler refused to shake the hands of the American fastest man on earth then Jesse Owens because he was black. The First and the Second World wars forced the cancellation of three Olympics games in 1916, 1940 and 1944. Germany and Japan were banned from the games in 1948 because of their roles in the Second World War. South Africa was prevented from the games during their country’s racist policy of apartheid and the presence of the South Africans nearly ruined the Montreal Canada Games of 1976 when several African countries boycotted and  a doping scandal in the Moscow Games in 1980 led to the ban of Russia even though Russians participated under their Olympics Committee but without flying the Russian flag in Tokyo 2020. Individual athletes like Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting against racism raised what was called “black power salute” during their medals presentation during the Mexico City Olympic Games of 1968 creating a lot of rancour in the United States but support from American blacks who were being killed in American cities in the name of “Law and Order” which was Richard Nixon’s code words of putting the blacks where they belong in the ghettos of American cities.

This last Olympics games did not witness any protest and everything went well without a hitch, thanks to Japanese proverbial efficiency and planning. Unfortunately, the billions invested by the Japanese brought them no dividends. The television windfalls went to the International Olympic Committee and the American network, the NBC which had monopoly on the telecast. The athletes could not move around Japan to buy things because they were cocooned in the Olympics village because of the coronavirus pandemic. All the sales that would have been made by hotels, restaurants, shopping centres, museums, pubs and other watering holes were denied them unlike what happened in London, Atlanta, Rome, Sydney Los Angeles former hosts of the Olympics which saw billions rolling into their economies. I was at the London Olympics in 2012 and it was a great opportunity to purchase various emblems of different countries and to sample various international dishes and culinary delights at the main stadium in East London. Japan is of course a rich country so it was a matter of pride that they hosted the games at all despite the coronavirus pandemic. For those who think the American century has ended, the fact that the USA topped China in medals won across gold, silver and bronze is a manifestation of American endurance. China came second and Japan came third and that is a clear illustration of the economic power configuration in the world.

Charity begins at home and I again say how disappointed I was that our national anthem for whatever it’s worth was never played since we won no gold. Our performance was generally disgraceful; however I congratulate Efe Brume for her bronze medal in long jump and Miss Oboridudu for her silver in wrestling. We could have done better if we were well prepared, well organized and well-funded. I hope the two medallists will be well rewarded with at least houses in their places of choice. We must learn to reward people who have done us proud to forestall many of our people running under the flags of Italy, Great Britain, Bahrain and Qatar as was the case during this last games. As I have said before, we need to reorganize the ministry of sports to make it employment-generating for young people. South Africa and Egypt have well organized and well run league championships and athletics competitions. We used to have them in Nigeria.  We should bring them back. Let us start with secondary athletics and football competitions as was the case in my youth. We can then move to universities competitions and inter-states competition. With our inflated population of 200 million, we ought to be a sports power in the world. If we organize our sports well, there will be remuneration for sportsmen, masseuses, sports doctors, grounds men, stadia construction and maintenance, sports medicine, people in charge of logistics, advertisers, accountants, investment advisers, designers of sports wears, lawyers to draw up contracts, sports psychologists and team managers to name a few and these will be for individual teams and sporting organizations. I honestly don’t know why the various governments have not invested money in sports to reduce the boredom, tedium and unemployment amongst the youth which is what is fuelling youth rebellion, kidnapping and all kinds of anti-social behaviour in the country. I hope the young minister of sports can persuade his boss, the president to see sports as part of a way out of the morass and chaos plaguing our benighted country.