The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Gabisiu Ayodele Williams: Gentleman, good man

    I was very sad when I heard about the demise of Dr Gabi Williams.

    I have never met anybody so considerate of others as Gabi Williams. ‘The child is the father of the man’ is a cliché that is well known.  Coming from a privileged background gave him a sense of noblesse oblige throughout his life.

    Gabi was born to an affluent Lagos family 81 years ago. Both his mother and father were Muslims. Young Gabi went to Ansarudeen Primary School, Alakuro, on the island of Lagos, and then to Methodist Boys’ High School, also on the Island of Lagos. His parents, though Muslims, were liberal enough to permit the young Gabi to acquire a western education wherever it was available. So, as soon as Gabi finished his school certificate examination, and, having performed very well in the sciences, his parents sent him to Great Britain for his Advanced Level in the sciences which he completed within a year with the idea of studying medicine. Medicine was his choice because in those days law was the preferred career choice of his contemporaries in Lagos and among his uncles and cousins – his cousin the late justice Fatai Williams became the Chief Justice of Nigeria.

    Armed with an impressive set of A-Level results, Gabi was admitted into Saint Mary’s medical school and graduated with MB, BS in 1963. After his internship in the same hospital, he proceeded to the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Heath in Baltimore, Maryland, for his postgraduate studies. Having acquired an excellent medical education, Gabi could have remained in either Britain or America to build for himself a prosperous private medical practice. However, Gabi came home because he knew his Lagos environment needed his service.

    Gabi became a medical officer of health in Lagos and was later elevated to Chief Health Officer of Lagos. The federal government, appreciating his sterling quality and service, brought him into the federal service where he rose to the post of Director of Disease Control and International Health. It was in this capacity that he represented Nigeria for a considerable number of years in the executive boards of the WHO, UNDP, and the WHO Special Programme of Research and Training on Tropical Diseases.

    Gabi’s achievements were made easy by the contribution to his life of his equally talented wife. Bisola, his wife, graduated from the University of Ibadan. She joined the federal civil service and rose to the esteemed post of Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, during the tumultuous years of the Ibrahim Babangida regime – her Christian belief shielded her from the pressure and pull on her by very powerful people to bend the rules in their favour. The strong guiding hand of Gabi’s wife was many times decisive on the choices Gabi Williams made in life. Certainly, marrying a virtuous woman was an added advantage to Gabi Williams.

    At home in Nigeria, Gabi once served as chairman of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. As a result of Gabi’s deep knowledge and practical experience in the spheres of public and preventive medicine, he on several occasions gave lectures in his areas of specialty at the universities of Ibadan and Lagos.

    He retired voluntarily from the federal service in 1993. Although retired, he was not tired: Gabi wrote bestselling books on health matters. He continued to play sport – Gabi was a sportsman right from primary school where he developed a love for ping-pong – particularly squash as a young man and, in his later years, golf, which was almost an obsession for him. He was a member of several social/sports clubs in Lagos.

    Gabi was a happy-go-lucky kind of a man, and he never wanted anyone to be sad around him. He laughed infectiously, and as a doctor his attitude was that life is short and should be lived well.  He definitely lived well without being hedonistic. There was never a whiff of scandal around him. He was a gentleman to the core. There were two things that he had encyclopaedic knowledge about, namely, medicine and lawn tennis. If he was available, he ensured that he was in England during the finals of the Wimbledon tennis championship. When global beaming of this championship became available, he always sat by the television not wanting to be disturbed or distracted from watching his beloved passion of tennis. One interesting thing about his love for tennis was his preference for grass-court tennis, which is the defining feature of Wimbledon. He did not show the same kind of passion for the Australian, French or American Open championships. This makes one feel that Gabi was an Anglophile at heart, and he did love almost everything British. Of course, he was ‘au courant’ with advances in medicine worldwide and was very concerned about how the quality of education was declining in Nigeria.

    He was also concerned about the quality of life in Nigeria, notably, the consequences of the collapse of the electricity sector and the lack of supply of potable water in most parts of Nigeria. This was a real headache for somebody with such a deep knowledge of public health.  He had to be self-sufficient in these two areas in his own home through the use of a borehole and giant generators and this made him concerned that if this was happening to him in Victoria Island, where the elite and well-heeled people live, what would be happening in the poor areas where the vast majority of Nigerian humanity live? He used to ask for my views about the direction of our politics, somehow feeling I might have an understanding of what is a complex problem of an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.

    Dr Williams cannot be easily forgotten. His laughter,  his joie de vivre, his sharing whatever he had, his love for fellow human beings, his generosity, his friendship across generations, his patriotic love for his native Lagos and his love for Nigeria as a whole and his wish that Nigeria would realise it’s destiny… It is a pity he didn’t live to see Nigeria’s potentiality become a reality.

    My late wife, Abiodun, and I and our children enjoyed the love and joy of being welcomed into the Williams’ house and being cared for after I lost my wife. I pray to Almighty God to repay him with eternal bliss.

  • Political fragmentation and consolidation

    The changing of parties in the National Assembly in Abuja has created some kind of crisis and depending on who you are, Nigeria seems to be entering a long dark tunnel while optimists feel it is a good thing for birds of the same feather to flock together rather than political parties being an all-comers affair without any ideological or moral cement binding members of political parties together and separating each party from the other.

    The leaders of the APC have said the party will come out of this dark tunnel and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Cynics may even say the light at the end of the tunnel may be that of an onrushing train to create a serious crash. Whatever the case may be, it is better that real parties evolve from the present chaos. There is a need for the emergence of broad ideological parties that can  either be identified with people oriented party  as opposed to those who believe the people should eat from the crumbs falling from the rich men’s tables. There is a need for parties to be identified with the principle of political and economic restructuring of the country in a broad sense to give more powers to the periphery or what in Europe is referred to as subsidiarity and those who believe in the status quo that is not working.

    Even within parties it will not be strange to have left wing and right wings of the parties as one finds in the Labour and the Democratic parties in the United Kingdom and the USA respectively. The parties of the left usually agree on social democracy which most right thinking people would ordinarily subscribe to. Opposed to this political tendency will be the Republican and Conservative parties of the United States and Great Britain respectively with their beliefs in cut throat capitalism and survival of the fittest. Although this soulless political tendency is moderated by a sense of noblesse oblige in which rich and aristocratic people feel they have a responsibility to bring up the less fortunate people in the society.  This is why even Conservative and the Republican parties in the UK and USA respectively subscribe to payment of the dole and welfare cheques to the poor and the unemployed. I am sure we can find these tendencies in Nigeria for people to coalesce around rather than around ambitious people who are just using the people to get power with which they loot the treasury and rob the people.

    We need to build political parties around ideas rather than the ambitions of money bags who made their monies by ripping off the system and appropriating what belongs to the people and putting it in individual pockets. If both the APC and the PDP can organize themselves around well-articulated visions and specific missions, then something positive may yet come out of the current political shenanigans going on in Abuja.  Perhaps after this consolidation of parties, a case can then be made against carpet-crossing that has become the bane of Nigerian politics which now present politicians as commodities for sale and for purchase. These politicians may not know this, but the people are watching. There is a growing cynicism in the country that politicians are all the same and are all looking for regimes of “food is ready come and eat” without any consideration of where the food is from and how it was prepared. The ordinary people are beginning to join the “share the gari” politics during voting for candidates at election time and this tendency is captured in the saying of “Dibo ko se obe” meaning vote and get money to make stew. This tendency was carried to an extreme when the current governor of Ekiti who had not paid salaries for eight months on the eve of the last gubernatorial election, sent each civil servant and teachers N3,000 before the election and  gave N4,000 each on day of election to those who voted for the PDP. The APC would have been foolish to allow lightening to strike it twice by not rising to the occasion and be fooled again. This reminds me of the judge in the commonwealth of Massachusetts in the USA who publicly declared that he usually receives bribes from any two opposing parties in litigation before him but will then go ahead to give judgement correctly according to the law. He says he could not be bought! There is some logic in this case.

    Permit the digression. I blame the president for what has happened to the APC. He came in saying he belongs to “nobody but to everybody”. He surrounded himself with people of little or no political value. For six months, he refused to appoint his cabinet. He has not even finished constituting the boards of parastatals more than three years of coming into office. He has thus left in the cold politicians who made his victory possible. He publicly said politicians were unserious noise makers and distanced himself from the people who know the game of politics and have successfully played it at state and federal levels. The engine of politics everywhere in the world is oiled by what is referred to as pork barrel politics which means spending to benefit constituents for their political support. Rather than do this, Buhari has surrounded himself with his ethnic cohorts there by opening himself to charge of nepotism and parochialism. On top of this is his general lassitude and non-effective handling of the rampage of the killings by herders in the country. I sympathize with him a bit on the chaos in the country because he is not the one to do the fighting and if his security people are not performing what can he do? He can change them of course but I suspect the problem is so deep rooted that a clinical diagnosis would be required.

    As the Yoruba would say – the calabash is intact while the watered has been split .This means we can fill the calabash again with water. The president now knows his job is cut out for him and there can be no prevarication. If I were him, I would change the cabinet in consultation with the APC governors. Give Oshiomhole marching orders to build a closely knit party and find money for serious party bureaucracy either by surcharging all political appointees or soliciting for material support from government contractors. He should also form a committee of party leaders from all the different zones of the country to advise him on the way forward. Above all he has to deal ruthlessly with all those killing fellow Nigerians whether they are herders, cattle rustlers, farmers and all other kinds of brigands and kidnappers. He also has to spend more on the poor and the disadvantaged. He must ensure the ongoing infrastructural development and roads construction gather pace to make a difference in people’s lives. In other words, he must recover the lost good will of the people. He also needs to show more result in his war on corruption which appear to have consumed most of his time and attention these three years.

    I personally do not see any of these people running around in the National Assembly capable of solving the problems of Nigeria because many of them are the problems. These are the same people who led us to this deadlock in our developmental trajectory by doing nothing especially when we had money .They left the roads in dilapidated state and kept the country in darkness while purporting to spend billions on the power sector. The insecurity now tearing the country apart reared its ugly head during their time in government and in power. What is now needed is a strong government backed by a strong party with well-articulated and well-argued principle and programme and it will be left to the people to choose between  going to the promised land or going back to Egypt as my pastor would say. Our people would have to choose between transparency and honesty of political leadership and going back to “come and eat” ideology of the recent past.

  • Apapa ports of national shame

    Nigeria has 853 kilometres of coastline running through seven of the southern states of the federation, namely Lagos, Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Cross River. Any of these seven states has the potential of having a sea port that could have been developed if we have had visionary planners.

    When the British developed the port of Lagos after its bombardment in 1851, the idea of being the main port of Nigeria had not crystallized because the idea of a country called Nigeria had not dawned on the British or anybody for that matter. But by the time of amalgamation in 1914, the British realized that Apapa did not have the capacity to be the main port of Nigeria. In spite of several attempts to expand it, the water was too shallow and what later became Victoria Island was too rough for a port. The British then decided to build a port in the eastern part of Nigeria in the area of Diobu and named it Port Harcourt after the then British Secretary of State for the colonies, Sir Lewis Harcourt. But before the port became operational, the First World War broke out in Europe. Money became scarce and the development of the port suffered. After the war, money for reconstruction became a priority and development in all the British overseas territories fell into abeyance and before long, the Second World War broke out in 1939 and ended in 1945.

    Britain itself needed funds from America like other parts of Europe from the Marshall Plan and what would have been a major port in the eastern part of the country was a victim of historical accidents. After independence, rather than build a port in Port Harcourt to complement Lagos, the federal government decided to build Tin-Can Island as an extension of Apapa with the same road approach but without railways which are the normal features of ports everywhere in the world for delivery of exports and evacuation of imports.

    I do not know any port anywhere in the world where goods are evacuated by trucks and lorries. That is the history of the tragedy of Apapa. Perhaps a functioning railway to the port would have made the difference. But what we have are the thousands of articulated trucks snaking through the roads of Lagos and trying to enter and come out of the Apapa Port to the discomfort of road users, residents of Apapa and the drivers of these trucks who live and sleep rough on the streets for weeks. When they finally exit what is effectively their prisons, they drive like escaped prisoners sometimes killing fellow road users. The story of the chaos is made worse by the presence of oil storage tanks in Apapa necessitating oil tankers coming into the port to lift oil to various depots in the country.

    In a normal country, the fuel being carried in fuel tankers would have been piped. But not in Nigeria. The pipes have been waylaid and broken into by petrol thieves who in spite of danger to themselves and the society continue their nefarious activities. If we were a sane country, our four refineries located in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna would have been producing optimally and we would not have had to be importing petroleum products and there would have been no oil storage tanks and fuel tankers to lift oil to different parts of the country. The roads of Lagos would not have been the killing fields they are today.

    The result of this haphazard planning or no planning at all is incalculable. Lives have been ruined. Expensive properties have been damaged beyond repair. Vast areas of prime land have been polluted. A major quarter of Lagos has been ruined and made almost inhabitable. The economy of Nigeria has suffered and billions of revenue that could have been used to develop the country has been lost. The uneven development and concentration of all maritime activities in Lagos has led to massive migration of undesirable jobless people to Lagos thus swelling urban proletariat in Lagos and consequent increase in crime.

    What I find most amazing or distressing is the fact that the federal government that rakes in trillions of Naira from the activities in the port finds it difficult to spend just a fraction of it to keep the goose that lays the golden eggs alive. It is simply short-sightedness. When the issue of Apapa is being discussed in parliament, people will be asking why money needed for the port is not shared out on federal character basis, forgetting that without revenues there will be nothing to share. It is gratifying to note that the federal government is taking palliative effort to once again solve what has become a malignant problem. I wrote about this crazy situation in Apapa about five years ago and nothing has changed and yet a layman like me can proffer straightforward solutions both short term and long term solutions.

    First we must immediately close the port for a few weeks and ask competent companies to work day and night to fix the roads. When fixed, the roads must be continually maintained. The Nigerian Ports Authority must be made to allocate substantial amount of its revenues to the maintenance of the roads and ports facilities. On the alternative, the Apapa Port can be transferred to Lagos State to run and maintain and pay royalties to the federal government like New York in the USA. The long term solution is to immediately plan seven new ports in the aforementioned seven coastal states preferably in collaboration with foreign private interests. In this way, Lagos will be spared of the scourge of being overrun and overwhelmed by trucks and people from up country.

    Hopefully when Dangote completes his refinery, the tank farms in Apapa will be rendered redundant and will have to be closed down. The new Lagos – Kano railways should also begin at the port so that trains and not trucks will evacuate imports.

    One hopes we would have learnt a lesson from the tragedy of Apapa Port. The Lekki – Epe axis with the exclusive economic zone planned for the area, the new airport and ocean port and the Dangote refineries coming up there ought to call for serious thought about evacuation of goods from that axis so that we don’t repeat the Apapa tragedy a second time there. The time to make sure this does not happen is now!

    A fourth bridge across the lagoon terminating in Ikorodu to link up with Ikorodu – Shagamu Road is of absolute necessity or in the alternative, the Lekki- Epe express can be continued to Ijebu Ode from where vehicles going to Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and the eastern states can then proceed. The possibility of linking the Lekki – Epe axis with the national railway should also be a priority if we are to avoid the present Oshodi- Apapa nightmare. Until our illiterate legislators realize that Lagos is the linchpin of the economic development of Nigeria, they will continue to treat Lagos as if it were just another state subjecting it all the time to debate about allocating revenue on federal character basis while cleverly forgetting that Lagos contributes 90 percent of excise duties and the various taxes on manufacturing and services in Nigeria. Service deserves its rewards must be additional principle to the much ballyhooed federal character principle when the case of Lagos is being considered.

  • Peace like a river in Ekiti

    The election in Ekiti has come and gone. Kayode Fayemi has been re-elected by the Ekiti electorate while his competitor, Olusola Eleka on the other side has been rejected. Both ran on the records of Fayemi and Fayose and the Ekiti people preferred the Fayemi record. We don’t have to go into details and comparisons again. That was done during the electioneering campaign. President J.F Kennedy after his victory over Richard Nixon and at his inauguration in January 1961 said the work of government was not done in one administration or even in a life time or in a generation.  But that work must begin to rebuild once again on what may have been achieved in the past and to mend what may have been damaged. One administration builds on the records and achievements of a previous administration. A new government  inherits whatever problems a previous one leaves behind. It is going to be obvious to Fayemi that he will have to find a way to pay half a year’s unpaid salaries, pensions and gratuities that have not been paid for a year.

    My worry is where will Fayemi find this humongous amount to pay to workers in Ekiti? There is no doubt that Ekiti is a poor state. It gets, along with Gombe, the smallest allocation from the federally collected and distributed revenue. It generates very little revenue internally. The internal revenue that increased under Fayemi fell precipitously under Fayose. Unless a way is quickly found to  increase internally generated revenue, or get the federal government to pay whatever it owes Ekit in terms of reimbursement for  repairs and reconstruction of federal government roads in the state, Fayemi will find it hard going.

    There is also a need for the federal government to repair and possibly dualise the Ado – Akure Road, Ado- Osogbo Road  through Okemesi- Imesi Ile  and Ado – Ilorin to link the state with neighboring states of Ondo, Osun and Kwara to increase the tempo of trade and economic activities in the state and in that part of the Southwest. This is the time for the federal government to assist Ekiti to get over its problems ahead of the coming 2019 elections.

    It is also likely that the coming Fayemi’s administration will usher in  increased private investment and interest in the state. With Fayemi’s penchant for serious planning and clinical diagnosis of matters of governance and economy, we will expect him to have a well reasoned blueprint to bring back Ekiti to economic and political health. This will also mean running an all-inclusive government of all factions of the APC and independents who can offer disinterested advice. Fayemi should also talk to the  Fayose people and let them know the election is over and what is needed is everybody’s commitment to stabilty peace and development which should be a non-partisan  issue. He should remind the Fayose people that in spite of his views  on the PDP shenanigans of 2014, he accepted  Fayose’s controversial victory.

    Of course Eleka has made the usual Nigerian post-election noise about rigging. This is to be expected. All politicians do the same thing. It is part of the ritual. But what Ekiti people are interested in right now is moving the state forward in economic development. Some of us have not been visiting Ekiti for a while because of the apparent instability in the place and the unruly behavior of political thugs and the  over excited politicians who seemed to have taken over the state and  were driven by more enthusiasm than wisdom in their demonstrations of irreverence and intolerance with people who disagreed with them.

    Fayose no doubt did his best but it is time to move on. The world is like a stage and everyone has its role. Whether for good or ill, Fayose has played his part and history will either be kind to him or not. We need a new and different paradigm moving forward. We must know the strength and weakness of our state. In terms of human capital, there is no state that can beat Ekiti. We must ensure that the state does not lose  its competitive edge in this regard. The next generation must be given the opportunity to prepare for the future by making sure that our educational institutions are well endowed to deliver in this regard. Fayemi as an old Christ’s School alumnus should ensure support for that school and other schools like it by  giving them the opportunity to become boarding schools like it used to be when we all went there and from there we developed not only our intellect but our character. To me character is everything. I hope the incoming government will also help Ekiti State University (EKSU) to be self-sustaining. Ekiti is a civil service state but must it remain so?

    The outgoing government was said to have sent employment letters to thousands of people as part of mobilization towards the last election. Of course, those letters would have to be disowned. What the new government should do is to encourage entrepreneurship in Ekiti by bringing the Bank of Industry ( BOI) to Ekiti in a big way to support small industries and enterprises in Ekiti. He should encourage retiring civil servants to go into business not by sitting  in Ado or any of the towns in Ekiti but by moving to Lagos and Abuja to hustle like everyone else.  Bill Gates in his well-publicized meeting with the Federal Executive Council correctly said the reason for our primitive and unproductive agriculture is because the banks don’t give credits to farmers. Fayemi should lead in this regard by putting seed money into a leading bank and asking that bank to lead the way in helping our farmers to contribute to the economy of the state.

    I have always worried why our intellectual power has not made any impact on our environment  and over all economic development in Ekiti. We should be making things rather than just teaching in the universities all over Nigeria and being civil servants waiting to become permanent secretaries with regular salaries while illiterate businessmen are making millions. I don’t want to be misunderstood. Teaching at any level of our educational institutions and being civil servants are important but those are not the only important things in life. A situation where for example, Ijebu Ode can raise more money than the whole of Ekiti is a challenge that we should rise up to meet.

    Of course I know we have the disadvantage of distance from the coast which historically has remained a centre of opportunity. But we must bridge this geographical gap. This is why we welcome the federal government’s promise of extending the new railway planned to link Ibadan with Kano having a spur to Ado- Ekiti. Ekiti is a cocoa-growing state and it produces some upland rice  and with enough encouragement, the state can grow the special rice that is much in demand  in the urban areas of our country and particularly in northern Nigeria. With encouragement we have enough granite that can provide resources for polished granite for the building industry. We have some minerals which are not tapped yet and we have  an agricultural economy that needs modernization.

    I remember an Israeli ambassador telling me some years ago that if Israel had as much land as Ekiti, it would be able to feed the whole of Africa. Since our people are not intellectually deficient, we should challenge ourselves to do something with our land. In these days of environmental and green movement, we should invest in promoting Ekiti as an environmental paradise  by encouraging green tourism.

    All these ideas will not materialize unless we have peace like we used to have. At a time, one could drive to anywhere in Ekiti at any hour of the day and night without being waylaid and robbed. Those days need to be brought back. Ekiti people may be poor but they were never thieves. We can rebuild Ekiti to the level of our vision if we are determined and ready to invest in the land of our birth and to ask ourselves what we can do for Ekiti and to be determined to leave the state better than what it was when were young.

    I bear testimony that John Kayode Fayemi  will make us proud and will provide the kind of leadership that will carry us in our journey of economic development which will be anchored on peace and stability in our state.

  • Gathering storms outside our country

    Our country’s concern with the rampage of the Boko Haram in the northeast and the problem of the killer herders in many parts of the country as well as the  activities of the criminal  cattle rustlers and other self-defence gangs have led to most people being unaware of the gathering storms in our immediate neighbourhood particularly across the Sahel in west, central and eastern Africa. This region is usually known as the western, central and eastern Sudan, that is, the land of black peoples. Because of the lack of physical obstacles in the Sudan, movement of people across the whole region is regular and constant. With the movement of people comes the spread of ideas whether negative or positive or whether destructive or constructive. Our internal security problems are serious enough not to talk about the infestation of the Sahel by ISIS and Al Qaida in West Africa and the Maghreb. It is generally believed that with more efforts, our security forces should be able to dominate our national environment and eliminate the various threats against our national existence. But the problem in the Sahel if not taken care decisively may make the present security situation a child’s play with the problem that may yet confront not only the country but the whole of West Africa and our eastern neighbours of Chad and Cameroon. Already there is credible intelligence according to the Wall Street Journal that ISIS-WA was responsible for the kidnapping of the Dapchi girl’s in February this year. This means there is already a linkage between local terrorists and the ISIS headquarters or its remnants in Syria and Iraq.

    Countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad are already struggling for their national existence under the onslaught of ISIS and Al Qaeda. It is rumoured that ISIS – WA is led by Abu Musab al Barnawi who is said to be the 23-year old son of Muhammad Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram. The problem with tracking down these terrorists is the mystery surrounding them. But in the western Sudan, they operate openly challenging the legitimate governments in those areas. In 2013, they nearly took over Mali but for the intervention of French troops and later German troops all operating under the EU military support for the governments of the area. These terrorists exploit ethnic or sectarian tensions between the Tuaregs on one hand, and indigenous Soninke and Malinke people and between Sunni and Shiites. They have been destroying cultural artefacts such the libraries in Timbuktu and Sufi sites in the Sahel. The United States has now joined forces with the EU to try and confront the militants. In fact there is a secret war going on in the Sahel in which EU forces and Seals from the US army and US Air Force are involved. The commander of US special operations in the Sahel, Major General Marcus Hicks recently issued a statement in which he said that ISIS and Al Qaeda represent major threats to the whole of West Africa and that the threat is growing. These forces are growing in the whole of the Sahel and the Chad basin in particular. It seems that the foreign elements of ISIS have moved to the Sahel following their defeats in Iraq and Syria.  If allowed to grow, they may cut off West Africa from contact with Europe through threat posed to civilian aviation in the region. The growing threat led to special operations in April this year code named “operations flintlock” involving 1,900 elite special operations forces coming from African countries presumably including Nigeria but with Chad providing the bulk of African troops perhaps because of the existential threat posed to Chad from Libyan militants.

    The militants are apparently not operating in joint campaigns but as separate forces as ISIS West Africa with about 3500 troops; Boko Haram is estimated to have 1500, Mali based JNIM (Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin) a militant group formed by merger of Macina based Ansar Dine or Al – Mourabitoun with the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb is said to have 800 troops.

    Al Shabaab based in Somalia is an offshoot of Al Qaida and is reputed to have anything from 4000 to 6000 active troops. For now, these terrorists share intelligence and communication with their Middle East sponsors but they have not yet started coordinating their operations. This does not mean they will not do this in the future.

    Of immediate concern to Nigeria is Boko Haram and offshoots of ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Chad basin posing existential threat to Nigeria, Niger, the Cameroons and Chad. The European and Americans are in this secret war because of the threat the militants pose to western interests. The danger to western personnel was demonstrated when four US soldiers were killed in operations in Niger in October 2017.  With the decline in the number of children families have in the West, the number of spare soldiers available for foreign missions is going drastically down and this means Africans will have to fight their own wars in the future perhaps with drones and air support from the West. If there was no threat to western interests, we would be abandoned to our fate.

    The point must be made that these terrorists like their counterparts in the Middle East do not distinguish between Christians and Muslims. Everybody in their way is either enslaved or put to the sword. It is even not clear if these terrorists are Muslims because there is no Islamic injunction asking people to be forced to be Muslims. Many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion whether Christianity or Islam historically. The world thinks mankind should have moved away from mortal man thinking he can fight for God as if God was not strong enough to fight for Himself.

    The conclusion to this piece is that we should not leave our defence in the hands of foreigners because they cannot be trusted. When their interests are not threatened, they will walk away from their current military disposition. We should be prepared to defend ourselves either singly as Nigeria or jointly with our neighbours in the Chad basin and West Africa.  This requires preparation and joint training and regular war games. I remember a few years ago when we were approached by the USA about building defence infrastructure in our country for defence of West Africa against future and immediate threat. Other West African countries were also approached. Our people felt they could not compromise our hard fought independence and rejected the offer. Our northern neighbour, Niger Republic accepted the offer. Today the biggest military airport to serve the whole of the Sahel is nearly ready in the north of Niger Republic near the city of Agadez.  It is significant to note that Boko Haram has not made any significant threat to Niger perhaps because their troops are better kitted and provisioned than ours.

    The challenge to our existence is not going to come from nation states like our neighbours but by non state actors like terrorists and we must be prepared to meet the threat. We must increase military spending by training and equipping special mobile forces that can be airlifted in a jiffy to distressed areas within our country and those of our neighbours when called upon. It is better to put out fire from our neighbours roofs before it reaches our own roof. Having large sedentary armed forces have become old fashioned. We must develop our own Seals, Green berets and such specialized forces that can keep us safe when attacked by forces from within or without. We can call on our friends in the international community like the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France and China to help train and equip such forces that would be needed in the future. We must be eternally vigilant because eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. The greatest threat to any country is the presence of fifth columnists within its borders. To prevent this from happening, every Nigerian must be made to feel a sense of ownership and have a sense of belonging in the Nigerian project. At the end of it all, good governance must be the foundation for internal and external defence. But we as a country must be prepared to defend our country by building the right kind of security forces for now and the future. The external threat to Nigeria is real.

  • Troubles on the Jos plateau

    In 1972, I returned to Nigeria from Barbados, a paradise island in the West Indies to Jos, another paradise in Nigeria. The University of Ibadan had in 1971 set up a college in Jos at the request of the military governor of the then Benue-Plateau State, police commissioner, Joseph Gomwalk, a graduate of zoology from the University of Ibadan. He had allegedly approached Ahmadu Bello University for the same mission but was turned down obviously because the idea of a university in the minority area of the North was anathema to the powers-that-be in the Northern Nigeria. Apparently with  the support of General Yakubu Gowon, the head of state, the University of Ibadan acceded to the request of Benue-Plateau State. The late Professor Ayandele was appointed principal of the college. I was one of several young men deployed to the place by the University of Ibadan.

    We had a glorious time and for some, it was the first time they were in Jos to experience what was like in a temperate region of Nigeria. The population was still small so the weather remained cold all the year round unlike today when the massive population of recent times has brought in its wake relative increase in the temperature of the place. In the 1970s, people used heaters during the wet season unlike the air conditioning of today. Vegetable like strawberry and even apples could be grown on the plateau.

    Our students came from all over the country but generous allowance was made for our catchment area. Some of us lecturers were not too much older than our students so we had close but respectable relationships with our students. We also had great encouragement from the state government that provided accommodation for staff and students. The buildings provided had to be refurbished to make them suitable for use. But what was important was the sense of national service which we all had. Even as a lecturer, I represented the college along with the principal in the main senate of the University in Ibadan. The government of the state made offers of land individually to us just to encourage us to stay. With the exception of one person, none of us had the foresight to acquire property in a place we considered too far from our homes in the southern part of Nigeria.

    I used to visit a friend, the late Sola Onoviron, a veterinary doctor in Vom which was the Centre of Excellence in veterinary medicine in Nigeria. Anybody interested in pedigree dogs just had to go to Vom.   I acquired a Labrador golden retriever  from Vom. One could not but be captivated by the beauty of Barkn Ladi after Bukuru. The rolling green hills were so inviting that I promised myself that I would retire there in my old age and build a small bungalow and surround myself with a field of lettuce, potatoes, peppers, onions and tomatoes as well as a herd of cows and become a farmer and a gentleman in the idyllic environment of the plateau. This is the same wonderful dreamland where people are being slaughtered like chicken without any feeling whatsoever. How can all the promises of our national life end like this?

    In my life I have had the greatest times in Barbados and Jos in spite of the medical challenges my late wife and I had in the town leading to the loss of a son who was born prematurely. In my service to this nation, I also taught in the University of Maiduguri. The difference between my stay in Jos and Maiduguri was that I was barely 30 years old in Jos whereas I was 40 when I went to Maiduguri. To also imagine that Maiduguri that brought me so much joy has now also hit the rocks makes me sad indeed. I have prayed and fasted for both places and I know peace like a river will again flow in both places.

    The obvious questions to ask are what are the reasons for the collapse of civil governance in both places. For almost a decade, the military has been trying to maintain peace in the areas without much success. There is no doubt that the military has tried to stabilize the two places but internal security is really not the duty of the military. The armed forces internal operations fight with their hands tied because internal pacification cannot be fought as a total war with possible huge collateral damage. This is why the approach to restoration of peace must be through carrots and cane. We must find a way of taking out those causing trouble by unleashing law enforcement on them through arrests, trial and sentencing and those who have to go to jail must go to jail and those who have to leave this earth must be made to do so. Punishment must be swift and sure and there must be no prevarication. Once the military has stabilized the two areas of disaffection, civil authorities must be made to assert themselves.

    It is sad that the affected areas outside the north-eastern part of Nigeria is the old Benue-Plateau State now broken into Nasarawa, Plateau and Benue states which  along with equally disaffected Taraba and Adamawa states are essentially the bread basket of Nigeria.  Farmers and herders have always lived together peacefully in these areas before with mutual benefits of the animal faeces fertilizing the land of the farmers while the animals forage on grass in the areas. It is true that our population has increased exponentially but this is no justification for wild criminal and murderous behaviour. If when this madness first broke out people had been arrested and dealt with, we will not be where we are today.

    It is no use blaming the president alone. We have a structural problem. We need to restructure immediately the security architecture of our country. There is no country the size of Nigeria whose police is centrally organized and controlled. We must have state and city  as well as community police to run side by side with the federal police which should be in charge of inter-state crime and general internal surveillance. The duties of these police forces must be spelt out to avoid conflict and promote coordination and cooperation. In the United States and Canada, universities are even allowed to have campus police. Without peace there cannot be development. We deceive ourselves if we think the arrangement that sufficed to secure the country in 1960 will still be enough for the huge problems of securing the country today.

    Restructuring the country is not a zero sum game. If we do not make haste while the sun still shines, it may be too late for this country. If we dilly-dally and allow the whole country to blow up in chaos, we will all suffer including those who want to maintain the extant structural status quo. Even if we do not take on the question of political restructuring now, the imperative of security restructuring is staring all of us in the face. We must bite the bullet, so to say, and get on with the job. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we want to run a modern state of law and order or a backward state that is a butt of jokes in the international community. Question will be asked whether in the face of incessant killings, a new kind of UN mandate of administration should not be imposed on Nigeria. It is not far fetched; speculations are being bandied around whether the international community can tolerate wanton killing without some action. We are being watched so that it can be publicly declared that the black men cannot rule themselves. This will be an eternal shame not only to this generation but generations to come.

  • MKO Abiola remembered 

    There have been several comments on the recent recognition by President Muhammadu Buhari of the victory of Chief MKO Abiola in the presidential election of 1993. I congratulate our president and the Abiola family for the appropriate though belated recognition of what happened in history.

    Some have suggested that the action did not go far enough and that the man should be declared president-elect posthumously and the details and tallies of the votes declared. I say to those who say this that half a loaf is better than none. Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa and foreign minister has re-echoed what Babangida said was one of the reasons for cancelling the election which was that the federal government owed Abiola’s company N45 billion for telecommunications job and that if Abiola was sworn in, he would have had to pay himself that humongous debt owed his company. He made a valid point about paying Abiola’s family the debt owed their father. It is only fair.

    In the struggle for exercising the mandate freely given to him by millions of Nigerians, Abiola’s businesses employing hundreds of thousands of Nigerians were deliberately destroyed. These businesses ranged from book and news paper publishing, agriculture, shipping, oil and gas, bakery, estate development and so on with tentacles spread across Africa, Middle East, Europe and America. The federal government should look into how it can ameliorate the hardship of the Abiola’s family by liquidating the debt owed him. Never in the history of this country has a single man done so much in the areas of religion, sports and journalism to bring the country together as Abiola did. At a time he was funding the training of the national soccer team and he had his own football club and was supporting athletes to the extent that he was named the greatest backer of sports in Africa and not just in Nigeria. He was also building mosques and churches all over Nigeria. He was the largest financier of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), a body which brought all Nigerian Muslims together.

    I remember him asking me to explain to him in 1991 the problem between Yemen and Somalian refugees who were being sunk in the Red Sea by Yemeni navy because they were not wanted in their country. Abiola was  much pained by the fact that Muslims were doing this to fellow Muslims that he travelled to Saudi Arabia to put pressure on the Yemenis. He was to be shocked later in 1993 when his Muslim brothers put ethnicity over religion by withdrawing support from him after he had won the presidential election because of the accident of his birth in southern Nigeria.

    I first met Abiola in 1977 in Lagos. I was a senior lecturer then in the University of Lagos and I wanted to start on the side so to say, a publishing company to augment my miserable salary as an academic. Since I was a writer myself, I thought I could edit other people’s manuscripts and publish them under my company’s name. I was introduced to Abiola as somebody who could help. His answer was that I should come and work for him full time. That put paid to my plan because I was not ready to abort my academic career. The next time I met him was 1988. I was special adviser to General Ike Nwachukwu, then minister of Foreign Affairs. Abiola had the idea that we should campaign for reparations from the West for centuries of slave trade and slavery for the black man and decades of western colonialism. We bought the idea which Abiola said he was ready to bankroll. This was at a period of so-called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) forced on us by the IMF and the World Bank because of the debt overhang in our country and in Africa generally. We felt we should fight back with cry for reparations and that rather than owing western creditor countries and their financial institutions, they were the ones who needed to pay historic debt of mans inhumanity to man and genocide of the cruel deaths during the trans Atlantic transportation of Africans to the Americans and the white man’s introduction of guns and fuelling of inter-tribal wars in Africa to aid the supply of slaves to their ships waiting on the coast. In this way, we argued, they ruined Africa, weakened us for eventual defeat and military subjugation and colonial rule and planted the seed of racism in which Africans were traded as chattels.

    The late professors JF Ade Ajayi and Ali Mazrui were recruited to the cause to provide unassailable academic backing for the project. The reparations struggle became a continental project supported by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU/ AU).

    In 1991 while I was ambassador in Germany, Abiola phoned me that he needed to see Aliyu Mohammed, then secretary to the federal government who was on admission in a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany but that he had no visa. He was flying in his private jet en route to London and wondered if I could arrange for a visa waiver for a few hours.  It was a difficult request but we pulled strings and it was agreed with the German Auswartiges Amt (foreign ministry) that I could pick Abiola in my representational car, take him to the hospital to visit his friend return him to the airport and that was what I did. Needless to say he was immensely grateful. That same year, he called me that I should contact Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart for the price of an armoured car.  I asked him what he wanted to do with it he said General Obasanjo was attacked by robbers on his way to Ilorin inside a Peugeot 404.  He said it would have been a national humiliation for Nigeria’s former head of state to be killed just like that. I sent him the details of what he asked me but I am not in a position to say if the car was purchased and given to his friend Obasanjo.

    I was not surprised that he was elected president in 1993 because this was a man who genuinely cared for others. When I was forced out of my job in a hurry in 1995 as a NADECO ambassador and returned to Nigeria in 1995, Abiola was already in military detention without trial for treason for declaring himself president according to the will of Nigeria’s people. Question of my seeing him in prison did not arise and I had given interviews about how the policy of the then Abacha government would lead to isolation and alienation of our nation from the international community. I did not know I was a marked man. I travelled abroad in December 1997 and on my way back in 1998 was picked up at the airport and separated from my late wife and confined in military detention on Child Street in Apapa, Lagos. I stayed with eight other people in small office meant for one person during working hours but where we slept on the floor at night. There was no provision for food and since I was not prepared for my ordeal, I had no money on me. I would have died of hunger but for the generosity of Brigadier Oviawe, a fellow detainee who shared the food brought daily for him by his wife. Fellow detainees included Chief Durojaiye and one Moshood Fayemiwo, who I understood was a journalist. There were many young army officers ranging from lieutenant to colonel and some businessmen. At a point I started hallucinating that could I have been in a coup plot without my being conscious of it? One day, the camp commandant Lieutenant – Colonel Omenka presented us to his boss, Brigadier Sabo Ibrahim and when he was asked who I was, he casually said I was one of the professors throwing bombs in Lagos. I screamed that if that was true I should be tried and executed immediately. They both laughed because they knew they were lying.

    I was subsequently released – I heard – because of the intervention of people like Chief Shonekan, late Ambassador Hamza Ahmadu and General Ike Nwachukwu.

    Fayemiwo my young fellow detainee who was in underground detention who we were told had turned grey because of lack of sunlight and had converted to Christianity from Islam had prophesied that Abacha would die before October 1998. I was still being visited by sympathizers when the news of Abacha’s death was announced. I thought Abiola would be speedily released to go home to be with his family but alas it was not to be and he continued to be kept until his suspicious death in front of an American delegation a month after Abacha. One hopes the action taken by President Buhari would lead to national healing. Some of us are still alive by the grace of God and for me this grace is sufficient.

  • Architecture and urbanization in Nigeria

    In Nigeria for example the story of urbanization is linked with its recent history. In Southwestern Nigeria, Lagos was the only city worth being called a town when the British Navy bombarded it in 1851 and occupied the city in 1861. Even though the population was just a few thousands, the potential for growth was there. Since its invasion and annexation, Lagos underwent some development to make British hold on the city worthwhile. By the nature of British imperialism in West Africa which took the form of minimal investment and maximum dividend of exporting raw materials to Europe, there was little interest in making the town beautiful through planning. When the British took over the whole of Nigeria by 1914 with the abrogation Of Egbaland’s independence, they then began to think of planned development of some of the Nigerian cities.

    The Yoruba people who lived in the southwestern part of the country had the unique feature of urbanization without industrialization.  This was because a century of warfare between1796 and 1896 forced people to see security in numbers and to therefore congregate in large cities. As a result of these wars, new settlements developed in Ibadan, New Oyo, Ogbomosho, Ile-Ife/Modakeke, Ilorin, Offa, Oshogbo, Ilesha and Abeokuta to mention the bigger ones. These settlements developed rather rapidly expanding outwards from the centre dominated by the palaces of the rulers.  Ibadan, the biggest of them had no palace and the town developed as some kind of expanded conurbation of villages intertwined together. Abeokuta was slightly different because of the presence of European missionaries and liberated African slaves from Freetown who attempted to run, without success, a modern municipal government in the town. The Ife, Igbomina, Ekiti, Ijesha, Owo and Akoko towns were much smaller and older than the new towns or expanded ones that grew up as a result of Yoruba civil wars of the 19th century. Apart from Benin and Ode Itshekiri (big Warri), there were no towns east of Yoruba land. The Igbo people lived in villages and little settlements based on lineages and clans. The same was true of the Urhobo, Ijaw,(Izon) and  Ibibio although some little Ijaw settlements grew up in the Niger Delta  in response to the slave and palm oil trade. In the Middle Belt of Nigeria, there were no big settlements except in small places like Bida, Idah, and Wukari. But in the Islamic north of Nigeria, there were many towns that grew up around trade with the southern parts like Ibadan and Oyo before the advent of the British. Kano and Katsina faced the Mediterranean coast of Morocco through the trans-Saharan trade routes. The evolution of kingdoms from about the 10th century in Kano, Katsina, Birnin Ngazargamu, Kukawa, Zaria and Gobir with Islam providing the cement that bound people together provided opportunities for urbanization in this part of Nigeria. What emerged therefore, before the coming of the British, were functional settlements with little or no thought about urban planning.

    Some thought about planning began with the amalgamation of southern and northern protectorates and the colony of Lagos in 1914 when serious work of administration began. This was however halted or delayed by the outbreak of the First World In 1914. Sir Fredrick Lugard, who hated what he called the “insalubrious environment” of Lagos and the seditious tendencies of its educated people decided to build a totally new capital around Kaduna River in the centre of the new country. He had his plans well laid out but the outbreak of the war hampered the progress of Lugard’s Kaduna. He also wanted a new port in the eastern part of the country to decongest the port of Lagos. Thus began the building of the port and to humour and get the support of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord William Harcourt, Lugard named the city, Port Harcourt after him. Because the war halted the importation of coal from Britain, the colliery in Udi Hill was developed and a new city of Enugu among the Wawa people began to grow as a planned city. Richmond Palmer the resident of Borno also decided on a new planned city in Maiduguri as the new capital of Borno after its previous capitals had become unsustainable due to the ravages of war and desert encroachment. With this development commenced the era of city planning in Nigeria. Where it was impossible to build new cities, so-called Government Reserved Areas (GRA) were developed adjacent but far removed from neighboring older settlements. In Lagos, the Ikoyi plains were opened up for planned development and adjacent virgin areas were annexed to several other cities like Kano, Zaria, Jos, Lokoja, Ibadan, Benin and even at provincial and districts headquarters for planned development. These GRAs were well laid out and planned among other reasons to separate the natives from the Europeans who were susceptible to African epidemics of diseases. Africans were barred from visiting the reservations except they were domestic workers in the employment of the Europeans. The houses there were adorned with beautiful flowers and the streets were  laid out as avenues lined with exotic trees sometimes imported from the south-Asian sub-continent. Sometimes farther away from the European quarters were built planned areas for junior workers in the employment of the colonial administration. The vast majority of the people continued to live in conditions prevailing before the coming of the British. Sometimes roads following the footpaths predating colonial rule were widened into roads and in major cities, the harshness of the environment was tempered by lining the streets with neem trees   imported from India which some believed could be used as prophylactic against malaria.

    Serious planning of urban centers in Nigeria only began on the eve of independence when by the 1950s Nigerians began to take control of government.

    Housing estates sprang up in places like Bodija in Ibadan and Ikeja, Ilupeju. Surulere was planned as “New Lagos” to decongest the native city of Lagos. A new town of Victoria Island was developed from the swamp of the lagoon to take advantage of the Bar Beach on Victoria Island. Housing estates sprang up in Kaduna, Kano, Jos, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Owerri.  The Anglo-Dutch oil company exploring and exploiting crude petroleum in the Niger Delta built a vast estate for its workers in the town. These estates were but little drops in the ocean of housing demand. Because of the pressure of population, the planning made very little aesthetic impact and value on the country as a whole. This lack of impact was most noticeable in Yorubaland because of its rapid and unplanned urbanization since the end of the 19th century. Kaduna, Enugu and Port Harcourt for a while remained good examples of planned development. The intense rural-urban migration all over the country complicated matters. In the case of Lagos which remained the federal capital till 1991, the city was simply overwhelmed by rural dwellers who brought their life style of garbage disposal, burning of refuse and open defecation into the city. Furthermore, the infrastructure of the city could just not cope with constant drift of the population to Lagos caused by its bright lights and those running away from persecution and civil strife up country. As chaotic as the place appears to be, it was seen by people up country, as a province of opportunity. The discovery of oil in Oloibiri in 1956 and its exploitation particularly since the end of the civil war  in 1970 has transformed the economy of Lagos from that of an administrative headquarters to that of a thriving commercial city with all its dire consequences. With the stupendous earnings from oil in the 1970s the federal government responded to the uncontrollable growth of Lagos by building two planned small towns at the outskirts of Lagos namely Festac and Satellite town. These were well planned and well laid out settlements with necessary infrastructure of roads, water, and electricity. When completed they appeared beautiful but this was for a while. Before long, the two towns became slums due to overcrowding, lack of maintenance and alterations in their master plans. They soon became indistinguishable from the overcrowded slums of Lagos.

    The chaos of Lagos was what compelled the military authorities in Nigeria to build a brand new town of Abuja between 1976 and 1991. Even before the movement to Abuja, some cities like Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano and Maiduguri witnessed their state governors uprooting the neem trees lining the city avenues to make room for bigger roads or city light. This was apparently done in the name of development. They forgot conservation could be part of development. What took the colonial administrations half a century to plant and nurture were simply uprooted on the orders of young military governors with no eyes for aesthetics or environmental enhancement. It did not appear that anybody prevailed on the military governors not to cut down trees that provided some shade in the blinding African sun. Certainly not the body of architects or those of them in the civil service who were too busy protecting their civil service appointments. Thus most of our cities became concrete jungles in an African environment which should have been known for its greenery

  • Architecture and urban development

    Architecture is one of mankind’s most visible forms of expression. That is what architecture is right from the time of the pyramids in Ancient Egypt to the pantheon of Ancient Greece. Mankind has always expressed his culture through architecture.  Cheikh Anta Diop, the late Senegalese scholar in his monumental study of Egyptology has asserted that Ancient Egypt was a black African civilization. In any case, in the long history of human evolution, we know man became man on the African continent. This is to suggest that Africa has always been in the centre of architecture and any Nigerian architect is following the footsteps of those ancient architects who built edifices in Egypt and followed this up by building the Nubian pyramids, great Zimbabwe, the great mosque of Djenne in Mali, Saint George Church in Ethiopia, Al Azhar University in Cairo and Al-Qarawiyyin University Fez in Morocco which happens to be the two oldest universities in the world.

    Nearer home, we have the exquisitely designed Sankore University in Timbuktu. The pre-Fulani emir of Kano, Muhammadu Rumfa built a grand mosque in the 15th century and invited Muhammad Abd al Karim al Maghili from Tlemcen, now in Algeria, to worship there. Al Maghili was so impressed that he lived in Kano for some time and wrote a book on the obligations of princes and dedicated it to Sarkin Muhammadu Rumfa to advise him on governance. This was almost a century before Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his famous book The Prince.

    The point to make is that the history of architecture is intricately related to the politics, culture and the religion of a people. Religion here does not necessarily mean the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In fact, most of the architectural wonders of the world are associated with Greece, Roman, Persian .Babylonian, Moghul and other Asian monuments and artefacts which are not necessarily connected with the religions of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. In other words, the evolution of the urban environment is key to human civilization.  Politics, trade and conquest have however facilitated the spread of any unique civilization in time and space.

    Homo sapiens started as hunters and later food gatherers before they settled into lives of growing and domestication of their food and animals needed for civilized existence. Gradually, man moved from Stone Age to Iron Age where they could make iron tools for defence, offense and domestication and domination of their environment. Most societies evolved along monarchical institutions with the earliest settlers becoming first priests and later kings. Neighbouring settlements coalesced or were conquered to become larger settlements and eventually kingdoms. Some other societies evolved along segmentary or acephalous lines in which societies remained in little settlements. One thing that is clear is that whether societies developed monarchical institutions or republican institutions, no appreciable advancement in human civilization could be made until man evolved into urban settled life. In other words, without urbanization, there can hardly be any kind of civilization whether in the, Hellenic, Roman, Asian or African world. The great civilizations in the Ancient world, whether Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Chinese, Hellenic, Roman, and the Mogul empire in India flowered after cities emerged. Without cities there can be no Arts, civilized government, houses of worship, planned development, trade, politics and other forms of civilized institutions. The point to make is that villages and rudimentary lifestyles are not synonymous with civilization unless if one believes in the new wave of green politics where zero industries and rural communities and romanticized closeness to nature are the new-fangled dream of post-industrial societies. But in the real world, urban living has been fundamental to the civilized world and this urban life has also shaped man’s view of culture.

    Traditionally, the Greek Architect and town planner Hippodamus of Miletus (500 BC) is regarded as the first town planner and inventor of the orthogonal urban layout. This was the received wisdom until recently when Professor Ahmad Hassan Dani, one of the world’s leading archaeologists revealed interesting details about the ruins at Moenjodaro the 4500 year old city settlement north of Karachi, Pakistan and proclaimed it the oldest planned city in the world. It should be noted that architects in times past built or designed cities not just mere houses, official residences, palaces, chancelleries and offices. For a long time to come, modern town planning was dominated by Grecian-Roman concept of urban life. The iconic cities of Rome, Venice and particularly Paris (La ville Lumiere) bear testimony to this Grecian-Roman legacy. The beautiful cities of Modern Italy, France and the Iberian Peninsula generally bear the imprimatur of the Grecian-Roman legacy. Many of the great cities of Europe like London and Paris were founded by romans or rebuilt by them, thus leaving a legacy of urban planning for the future. It is commonly known that Paris is an excellent city. Paris was conquered in 52 BC by Julius Caesar’s forces building the new Roman city of Lutetia on the old site. But this city has undergone several metamorphoses in the hands of   architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant who so impressed the founding fathers of America that his services were requested for in 1791 to help design their new capital of Washington DC.

    Perhaps the person who had the greatest impact on Paris was the great architect, George- Eugene Haussmann who was hired by Napoleon the third to give the city a new make up between 1852 and 1858. This modernization of Paris has had ramifying effect on city and urban development all over the world since then. Cities were not just built for their functionality alone but for their aesthetics as well. The 19th century saw phenomenal growth in European population and power following the industrialization of Western Europe. This was followed by another age of European expansion overseas. This second wave was different from the earlier phase of peopling the Americas and Australasia. This second age of globalization involved carving out African and Asian countries as colonies and protectorates as markets for European products coming out of their industries. This age of imperialism abroad also saw tremendous growth of European cities. The rapidity of this growth made planning difficult if not haphazard. Most cities became degraded by slums where industrial workers lived in squalid circumstances. The history of urbanization since then has been dominated by what can be called tales of two cities of slums and planned cities side by side with all the consequences of crime and political divisions between  the  haves and have nots creating revolutionary situation in country after country.

    The story of urbanization in Africa and particularly in Nigeria is different from that of Asia and particularly that of the western capitalist world. The Asian story of whatever urban planning that existed until recent times is vitiated by its huge population and until recently technological backwardness.

  • Moving to a new capital in Abuja

    Now we have a bright new capital whose construction has ruined the country financially because of the corruption that surrounds the entire project  from planning  to execution. It is only in Abuja that  people have become billionaires by using their positions  in government to acquire acres and hectares of public land which were then sold at humongous prices to others whose sources of income are not ascertainable . Estates have been developed by shady characters who charge exorbitant rents or leave the houses locked up unused while the middle level civil servants have no where to stay .

    One cynic said half of the houses in Abuja are vacant! The master plan of the city has been so distorted many times that each new administration starts by bulldozing buildings built without approval . It is a moot question if we have made a success of our new capital in  Abuja. The city was planned for about a million people, it is now six million and still growing . The insurgency in the northeast of the country  and in Plateau and Kaduna states has added to the unplanned migration  to the city of people in search of security .The infrastructure cannot cope with the crowd of villagers not used to urban life .

    Surrounding the city are unplanned settlements running for miles but unseen by casual visitors. The cost of land or housing is beyond the reach of even  the middle class who have no access to the public treasury . Abuja is an artificial city without an urban soul and politics is killing the place whose residents and power brokers are totally disconnected from the rest of the country. The problem with Abuja  and its future lies in the belly of time . What will happen in five  years time to its ten lane expressway running for about fifty kilometers from the airport to the city when Nigeria’s oil would not bring in the kind of money our government is used to? What will happen to its infrastructure when those with huge estates  or their successors who are not paying taxes are asked to cough out capital gains tax? How does a huge city survive without industries ? Many of the inhabitants are traders and influence peddlers who have no idea about the sustainability of their city.

    The thirty states structure of the country is generally known to be economically unsustainable. Workers are not being paid in many of the states. In spite of this it is an incontrovertible fact that the capitals of these unwieldy states have witnessed some planning and development. It is not unheard of to see gaudy mansions in the middle of nowhere especially in the Eastern part of the country or in some of the state capitals. Some of the governors’ official Residences are bigger than  Aso Rock ,the Residence of the president of Nigeria. New roads have been constructed in some of the state capitals . Some have even witnessed urban renewal involving pulling down of ancient houses, burial grounds and shrines .

    Lagos has witnessed beautification  with flowers and greening with exotic flowers and palm trees .Some of these examples have been copied by other states and there seems to be a race among state capitals of which of them will have the longest traffic flyover.! As uncoordinated and chaotic  as our planning may be, there’s no doubt that there is no African country that has spread developments this widely . What we need to do is to improve on our infrastructure, build better roads , rail lines, airports and better communication to link up our cities seamlessly and support this development with massive industrialization and diversification of the economy . This will allow people to stay in their states instead of migrating to Lagos and other cities in search of ever elusive jobs !This is of urgent necessity and  it is a matter of life and death  in view of our galloping population which is projected to make us the third most populous country after India 1.4 billion , China 1.3 billion and Nigeria 1billion people in 2050.

    Ironically the south east without a history of urbanization may do better than any of the other parts of Nigeria in modernization of its built environment . This is because apart from  Port Harcourt, Aba and Onitsha the towns there are relatively small and may be easily redeveloped.  In fact in recent times Calabar the capital of Cross River State is assuming the accolade of the most livable city in Nigeria .The people  of the Eastern part of Nigeria are also used to living close to nature in the bush and the spatial culture  of their settlements would lend itself to small  planned towns . These communities can then provide a paradigm of development for the whole area. The north and the west are not going to be easily redeveloped. The towns like Ibadan ,Kano  ogbomosho,  Kaduna , Katsina, Ilorin, Ilesha , oyo , Oshogbo,  and Maiduguri are too large and over populated . To pull some of the areas down will cost dislocation of families and prohibitive amount of money to rebuild and may lead to rebellion. Ibadan ,Kano and Ogbomosho are over one million . Yet we do not have the technology to make these cities work . The best country in the world in terms of urban development is Germany . With all their know how only Berlin and Hamburg have more than one million people . That is why the country is regarded as a model green country. It takes enormous money and technological  know how to run a country efficiently and successfully. There is going to be less and less money  in Nigeria because of advancing technology that may make hydrocarbons   Export on which our economy depends, unattractive as energy source within the next few years . This will present Nigeria with a challenge unless our governments take the bull by the horn and make citizens pay  adequately for municipal services .  Even If the money is available we  do not have the technology to run modern cities . It is a no win situation. Already sixty or more percent of our people in the Southwest are living in  cities and by 2050  ,80 percent of Nigerians will be living in the  largely unplanned cities. The import of this is that we must find solution to this massive urbanization before it is too late  . The obvious noticeable result  of this is that the urban environment in the South West seems the most degraded in today’s Nigeria partly because of bad governance , lack of foresight and systematic planning and of course the pressure of population growth in the cities due to rural urban migration.For example the city of Ibadan described by a visitor from Canada in 1970 as “the biggest slum he has ever seen “could have been  better than that  this if the government were conscious of its responsibility. The opening up some outskirts of the city by the expressway from Lagos to Oyo could have been accompanied by well laid out plan of development rather than the continuation of the antediluvian ways of building houses any where spaces were available without respect for town planning regulations which were obeyed in their breaches. The erstwhile active and efficient Town planning department of the 1960s seemed to have gone to sleep or have become moribund in the city of Ibadan .The apparent death of town planning is exemplified in Ibadan by the fact that as soon as expressways are constructed in the city ,unplanned markets usually spring up across the  very motorways to make nonsense of such planned easy movement of vehicles .This dynamic chaos has led to rapid growth and attraction to the city where as far as town planning is concerned all things illegal are permissible! Added to this is relative peace in the region and consequent migration from the distressed areas of Nigeria in the Niger Delta, the land hungry eastern Nigeria and the northern part of Nigeria afflicted by religious violence . Nevertheless, the northern cities are faring better because of the strong political hold on the country by northerners who can divert resources there to ameliorate the decaying urban environment. Unless there is a restructuring or devolution of power to release more funds to the periphery in the states or regions it is going to be downward spiral for the urban areas of Nigeria as a whole and the more urbanized west and north of Nigeria will be more exposed to the inevitable urban decay.

    In conclusion unlike for example  in France , Italy and Spain we cannot see any unique Nigerian architecture emerging in our towns and cities . This may be because the concept of Nigeria has remained a geographical expression, if this is so ,we can at least begin to see emerge Yoruba ,Igbo , Hausa  architectural designs just as we see in our arts and crafts .It is of course true that modern architecture in Nigeria has a relatively recent history . But it does not seem the voice of architects is heard when new estates  are planned . It is doubtful if the body of architects made much or any contributions to the planning and development of Abuja. It seems Nigerian architects define their profession narrowly to mean designing houses , colleges , institutions and offices but not the built urban environment. The architectural association needs to be a little bit more vociferous in urban planning and development in Nigeria as was the case in other known civilizations like those of Greece and Rome. In the meantime we  as individuals and our governments  should embark on tree planting in our cities in consonance with world wide demand for environmental enhancement to mitigate the effect of global warming occasioning climate change .Nigerian cities through tree and flower planting can be made beautiful and environmentally sustainable. We do not need to wait for foreign aid or technical expertise to plant as our fore fathers were doing in our distant past.