The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Arab winter

    Some years ago, the whole western press and governments were excited about the  so-called Arab Spring manifesting in revolts in the streets of Arab capitals like Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, , Cairo , Damascus, and  in a few places in Oman , Morocco,  Yemen, and even in the emirates.

    What started over the death a young man selling fruits in Tunis who was killed by the police after allegedly resisting arrest led to regime changes in some of the Arab countries. The causes of the revolts were deep. Some arose as a result of anger against sit-tight dictatorship occasioning corruption of many of the autocratic regimes. Secondly, many of the regimes maintained themselves by brutal secret policing which included tortures, killing of opponents , abridgment of fundamental human rights, if not total intolerance of these rights . Thirdly: unemployment and hopelessness on the part of the youth and the urban and rural poor. Fourthly: the pressure from outside through the press and western -inspired telecommunication highway and the spread of western political and economic ideas in the days of globalisation.

    In the case of Libya, there was definite western subversion of the Muamar Ghadafi regime and outright military intervention by NATO, when it seemed the Ghadafi government might survive. NATO’S intervention happened because of deep-seated western hatred of the regime and the revolt merely presented it an opportunity to get rid of a troublesome presence.

    What followed is generally well known. The Tunisian regime was the first to fall, followed the Egyptian regime and then Libya. The Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique de Salut (FIS) tried to seize power in Algeria but the deeply entrenched FLN government led by Mohammad Abdul aziz al Bouteflika that had remained in power for decades was able to militarily suppress the incipient revolt. General Muhammad Mubarak was not able to do this in Egypt because the armed forces there broke ranks.

    The revolts in Oman, the emirate states and Syria took sectarian turn and became a struggle between Shia and Sunni. Saudi Arabia, the big elephant in the room, stood steadfast and was able to assist the Emirate states to put down some of the rebels while Oman had no problem in dealing with its malcontents. Yemen was a difficult case because of its poverty and Iranian interest in supporting the apparently Shia majority.

    Syria was a difficult and complex country, having a Sunni majority but for almost four decades ruled by a family of Alawites (Shia) represented by Bashar al Assad who is the second brutal dictator of the same family. His father had ruled for decades before him. Within Syria was not only Sunni, and Shia arabs, there were also orthodox and Assyrian Catholics, Armenians, Kurds as well as a small group of people speaking the ancient tongue of Aramaic.

    To complicate a complex situation the Russian federation that had been an ally of Syria since the soviet era had a military and naval base on its Mediterranean coast. Russia felt and feels it was being relegated to play a second fiddle to the USA in international relations with particular reference to the Middle East which is geopolitically more important to it than to the USA. It is therefore not surprising that the so-called Arab Spring in Syria has now turned to winter. The winter of despair is not only in Syria but in Yemen, Iraq and to a certain extent in Egypt, the most important of the Arab states.

    We have now witnessed the utter destruction of Syria and its ancient civilisation. The same is true of Iraq where one of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia has virtually been erased. The unity of Iraq has been reduced to an academic question and the country is split along sectarian and ethnic lines of Sunni, Shia and Kurd, and a new independent Kurdish state is being carved out of Iraq. Arab lands in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have been turned into shooting range and their people into target practice where new weapons are being tested through Arab surrogates or through direct military engagement by Russia.

    I recall the late president of Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor, the iconic intellectual statesman referring to Arabs, Jews and Africans as “a trilogy of suffering peoples.” How very apt this description of Arabs and Africans is! Of course, the Jews, like Africans, have suffered much injustice historically and are still targets of campaign of hatred. Although the Jews in the state of Israel can justifiably be regarded as oppressors of the Palestinians, the trilogy of suffering people is apt .Egypt, where the Arab Spring initially succeeded in getting rid of the kleptomaniac Mubarak regime is back in the hands of another pharaoh, General Ahmed al Sisi. It is only God or death that can remove him from office.

    The whole idea of forcing democracy down Arab throat has proved futile, and the average Arab in these ruined countries must be asking themselves what benefits have accrued to them from toying with this imported democratic ideology. Serious and fierce wars are going on in the Sinai where an affiliate of the Abubakar al Baghdadi’s caliphate is waging a terrorist campaign against the Egyptian government. Syria eventually may have to be partitioned into three spheres, Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Mosul the biggest city in Iraq, like Aleppo in Syria, is being destroyed as part of the struggle with the caliphate or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  Yemen is going through a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia supported by the west through expensive sales of weapons to the Saudis. Libya no longer exists as a state and it has been reduced to a land where warlords carve out different fiefs and where the ordinary man is neither safe nor secure.

    It can easily be said that Arab lands, from North Africa to the Persian gulf, are under severe strain where internal division have been magnified by sectarian differences which, for geopolitical and economic reasons, are being exploited by Russia and the USA. For a long time to come, the Middle East is going to remain distressed, disturbed and destabilsed with dire consequences for all countries in the region, including Turkey, and with possible spillover to Europe which has now become a victim of forced migration, which is creating negative result of populism and xenophobia.

  • The Russians are coming

    Many years ago, Hollywood released a hilarious movie entitled The Russians are coming, depicting the paranoia that surrounded American-Russian relations during the anti-communist campaign championed by Senator McCarthy. Not Senator Gene McCarthy, but Senator Joseph McCarthy who led the infamous movement between 1947 and 1956. The thrust of McCarthyism was to see communism in every liberal idea and to persecute and prosecute those who had what was regarded as “Un- American” or perhaps anti American proclivities.

    Quite a few decent academics and talented left wingers in the arts suffered unjustly from this campaign before wise counsel prevailed. But in spite of the more rational view of Russia that followed, distrust of Russia persisted. Any politician who broached the idea of rapprochement with Russia was treated with disdain and distrust. This was understandable in the Cold War years of 1949 to 1994 before communism collapsed in Russia and the Russian empire disintegrated into fifteen ‘’independent states,’’ some of which, like the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia,  have become members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).  Ukraine, the biggest in terms of population after the Russian federation, and having its own nuclear weapons, surrendered them for the right of independent existence guaranteed by the big powers of the USA, France, Great Britain, Germany and the Russian federation.

    Unfortunately, Russia violated this solemn pledge by seizing the Crimea from Ukraine and supporting secessionist forces in Eastern Ukraine, apparently in its pursuit of protecting “Russians abroad.” Vladimir Putin, Russia’s eternal ruler,  has not reconciled himself with the reduced stature of his country from being a super power to a second-rate power in possession of nuclear weapons enough to bury the world several times over just like the USA . He forgets that power is not measured by how much destructive power a nation has, but how much soft power it has. The Russian economy is not more than ten percent of the American economy and is way behind its Chinese counterpart. Indeed, if we are to look at the world today, it is a unipolar world and may, in the nearest future, become a bipolar world of the USA and People’s Republic of China.

    Russia nowadays survives on export of oil and gas and armaments, which exposes its economy to the vagaries of changing commodity prices.

    In spite of this scenario, the Russian federation continues to hanker after big-power status. This is why it is defending unto death its naval and military bases in Syria, in spite of damage to its own economy, and in spite of laying waste Syrian territories and lives just to maintain a murderous Bashar -al-Assad in power.

    The same tendency is manifesting in its hostility to the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as to Georgia, Ukraine and any successor states of the old Soviet Union that tries very hard to be independent in fact and in deed, by toying with the idea of joining NATO like Georgia and Ukraine would wish if left alone.

    Russia is, technically speaking, a “democratic “state, perhaps more like a state of “guided democracy,” to use a terminology popular in the 1960s and 1970s. What the antagonism between Russia and the USA in recent times has proved is that beneath the veneer of ideological differences between communism and capitalism, which characterised their struggle during the Cold War, were geopolitical contestation and consideration of power. Russia had expected the withering away of NATO after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, as a mark of amity or, at least, understanding that things have changed. After all, even an anti-communist like Great Britain’s communist hater, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, had described Mikhail Gorbachev as somebody she could do business with.

    What was left of communism was dealt a death blow by Boris Yeltsin who created the Russian federation. It was the expansion of NATO to former Russian area of influence in Eastern Europe that seemed to have irked Russian rulers that nothing has changed. But can Russia embark on a new arms race without permanently damaging its economy?

    This was why Putin favoured Donald Trump over Hilary Clinton in the last U.S. election. He seemed to have thrown at it all possible effort, including throwing caution to the wind. Putin’s hands are all over the place in the secret meetings between Trump surrogates and Russian operatives, including Russia’s long-serving ambassador in the U.S., the suave and avuncular Sergei Kislyak.

    The Trump people were rather naive that they were not being watched by American intelligence. I was on official visit to Russia in 2005 with a colleague from the presidential Advisory Council. We were well received and lodged in an official hotel by the Russians. I made several calls to my daughter in Canada. The Russians wanted me to know that they were listening! Whenever we went for meeting, someone would go into my room to open my box and scatter my clothes on the floor.  I got the message and I stopped phoning.

    Now that Trump has won,  the latent American Russophobia has been soused and is fighting back,  and seeing Russia meddling with and plotting against American democratic system of government.

    There is nothing wrong in Trump wanting to reset Russo-American relations and allying with Russia to stamp out international violence and terrorism and reduce general tension in the world.  Some of the people around the new president who are alleged to be white supremacists also want to forge a “white power “alliance in what some of them see as a future racial struggle for world domination.

    It seems to me that, at least temporarily, the Russians have miscalculated and this is seen in Trump’s desire to increase arms buildup by a ten percent increase in military budget, which neither the Russians nor the Chinese can match.  Trump is doing this to blunt any attack on him as being soft on Russia. But, at heart, Trump, for whatever reason he has, wants to reset the relations between his country and Russia in the nearest future on the grounds that in international politics there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interest.  He said this much in his recent speech to Congress when he said some of the current American allies were its enemies in the past. He was apparently referring to Germany and Japan. However it must be said that a Russo -American rapprochement will not be bad for the world.

  • Agony from lack of electricity

    Under normal circumstances we do not always have electricity in my area of Ibadan.  Whenever we have it, the current is usually so low that it does not always carry our air conditioners. Even at that I sometimes hear people in my house asking for how long we are going to have power; the question always suggests that power will go off in a rather negative expectation of inefficiency and inadequacy.

    In a situation like this, my generator, like those of many Nigerians,  is the regular power supply while the public power supply is the stand by. This is however not sustainable. The cost of diesel is now so high that very few people can afford to run their generators for more than a few hours in the night.

    People in my area reached a gentleman’s agreement that all generators must be switched off by ten at night .The people in my area are much civilised. They don’t want to keep those who do not have generators awake at night by the noise coming out of their generators. The other more compelling reason is that thieves and robbers usually target houses which have generators. I used to think light keeps away intruders. Apparently this is not the case in Nigeria!

    Recently my generator broke down irretrievably and it was hell for me. It has been unusually hot in Ibadan in recent times. I also have writing and reading schedules to meet which cannot be done in the dark. In my desperation I got in touch with friends about how they were coping.

    Somebody told me what another friend, a widow, did when she could not cope. She called her children to file immigrant status for her in the U.S. Luckily this was before Trump took over the White House by storm. She sold all her stuff including the house she and her husband laboured to build and to which she was sentimentally attached. This must have been traumatic. The lady however said she has had it with constant struggle just to live. She wanted to spend what was left of her life in some comfort and certainty of services needed to keep her sanity.

    When I was told about this solution, I said I won’t go that route.  Unlike when I was young, I can no longer bear the cold of the winter weather. I was given another option of installing solar panels on my roof. The cost which I was told was the cheapest I can get was one million six hundred thousand Naira. I asked what I would get for investing this huge amount. I was told I will connect my fridge to this solar power and will have lights in my bed room and the sitting room while alternately switching lights on and off as I move around the house. I was also told that I would have to switch off the fridge at bed time to preserve the power stored during the sunny day.  Air conditioning, even in my bed room, would be out of it.

    I discussed my predicament with friends who advised me against the solar power option because I was told it will all end in frustration after committing so much funds to the solar project. Now what should I do? Whenever there is no light I dress at home like Fela Anikulapo Kuti, meaning going around in my birthday suit. Luckily, I do not get too many visitors coming to my house unannounced. . Luckily, I have a  jalabiat which I can quickly throw on my naked body if someone was visiting without long notice..

    This is the plight which the sale of NEPA to friends of the previous regime has inflicted on me and on many Nigerians. So what do I do? I suppose I can continue to pray. But I have an advice for those who should generate, transmit and distribute power.

    Before the centralisation of power generation and distribution in Nigeria there were independent power generating power plants in each city. Certainly, there was an independent power station in Jos that originally serviced the tin and columbite mines on the plateau as well as supplying power to Jos and neighbouring villages.  I saw this with my own eyes in the 1960s. If I am correct, cities like Kaduna, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano Enugu and Ibadan had independent power stations.

    I do not remember Ibadan being in this kind of darkness in my youth. Of course, we did not have air conditioning then and the numbers of homes with power were not as many as they are today. But this is not an argument against decentralisation. This is what is done in more advanced countries where when there is a breakdown of power supply in one area, power can be sourced and transferred to areas that temporarily lacked power. What I am suggesting is building of more generating power stations independent of one another and directly supplying their consumers in areas in their immediate neighbourhoods.

    I will suggest a visit by those in charge of electricity supply in Nigeria to the RCCG city near Lagos that has its own turbine fired by compressed natural gas and supplies power 24/7 to people living in the city. I am sure there are some other private settlements like this in Nigeria. Imagine if every major city in Nigeria did this instead of the pollution-causing individual diesel generators bringing not only pollution but respiratory diseases to adults and children alike. We have tried every measure to solve this power problem without success. Shouldn’t we try something different to show we are not collectively suffering from insanity? Because when one does the same thing and gets the same results without changing, it is a sign of lunacy.

    This is what has been happening in all areas of Nigeria’s life since the intervention of the military in Nigeria’s politics in 1966 when they brought their commandist structure and world view into our national life. This has destroyed the basis of our competitive and cooperative federalism. We can see the dead weight of this tendency on our education, sports, and infrastructure and, particularly, finance where so much money goes to the center where it is routinely stolen.

    While on the issue of electricity we must as a matter of urgency have a mix of fuel and sources of power including hydro power, coal, gas, and possibly nuclear. The latter may sound a bit academic because of our unseriousness as a people. The fact is that our children in diaspora including mine have the experience and competence to do this if attracted back home.

    People like me have been complaining about our electricity inadequacy; our children inherited our grumbling.  I pray we hand this country to our grandchildren better than the way we found it.

  • Rubbing salt into Nigeria’s sores

    Many Nigerians are beginning to get exasperated over the kid gloves with which people who are alleged to have illegally enriched themselves at the expense of the Nigerian state are being treated. Cynicism is beginning to develop in the minds of our people that nothing will be done to those accused of crime of embezzlement and corruption. In fact people are saying you only hear about the huge sums people have cornered into their pockets and after that the whole story will disappear from the news to be replaced by more grievous news of greater stealing.

    In the meantime the suspects will go ahead and hire some of the most expensive lawyers in the country to take their briefs and argue their cases before the courts of law. Sometimes these lawyers will ask their clients to settle their cases out of court by surrendering portions of the stolen money.

    I have no problem with people hiring lawyers to defend themselves. What I object to is people being asked to surrender part of their loot or enter into agreements to pay by instalments  while being granted  unlimited freedom including involvement in the same vocation that was previously abused and exploited to steal money in the first case.

    Yes, freedom is a fundamental right of everybody but it can be abridged in the interest of justice for the larger society. Freedom is not absolute. It should come with responsibilities. I do not agree that an office holder being tried for corruption should be free to go around politicking and campaigning.  There ought to be a show of remorse and demonstration of sense of contrition. In the absence of these feelings, what we have is the corrosive effect on the larger society and especially on the youth that bad behaviour is acceptable in Nigeria.

    We are talking of billions of Naira. At the last count, about a trillion Naira has been recovered; yet there as yet been no clinical examination of the Central Bank (CBN), Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defence and Nigerian Customs Service, all of which were nests of unbridled corruption in the last regime. I know that this government cannot find out everything that happened in the past but let us deal expeditiously with the cases we have in hand. Cases have been in courts since 2007 without judgement being passed one way or the other and some of those who had cases to answer have found their way to legislative and executive position at federal and state levels.

    Our lawyers have developed a specialty in dragging cases interminably by asking for frivolous adjustments. Cynics are even asking if there can be justice through the courts especially when it has transpired that judges at all levels of the judiciary are being corrupted by senior lawyers who are arranging with their illegally rich clients to buy judgements sometimes from judges who apparently do not need much encouragement before selling judgements.

    This reminds me of the late Justice Kalu who was chief judge of Borno State in 1982 before being made appellate judge of the Court of Appeal in Kano who famously said he sometimes would like to jail criminals and their lawyers when it seemed to him that lawyers had misconstrued their job as perverting the cause of justice.  He argued convincingly that the job of a lawyer is to ensure justice is done to litigants and not just to his clients. His argument then sounded esoteric until recently when a former Nigerian governor was convicted along with his lawyer in London.

    If it seems justice cannot be secured in Nigerian courts, then we are in trouble of people resorting to self-help. This will be bad for all of us. This is why we have to stop the present trend going on in Nigeria. Imagine people keeping billions of Naira at home or in banks with fictitious names or hiding monies in shrines then taking government to court after the seizure of their loot.

    For example, Andrew Yakubu, who claims close to ten million dollars were gifts from unknown persons. If they were gifts why bury them in a vault in an unused house in a slum in Kaduna? Instead of hanging his head in shame, he has now headed to the court asking government to return his money. He is following the example of others who when humongous sums of money were traced to them and seized, they claimed they were gifts from all sorts of people including dead relatives. Recently, a former minister from Lagos State who confessed to illegal possession of government money and had paid back substantial amount suddenly went to court, saying his fundamental rights are being violated.

    Some of these people should have kept quiet and hope that over time their sins would be forgiven and forgotten. There are times when silence is golden.  These are such times. As it is to be expected, some of these people’s tribal cohorts have started issuing statements supporting their “son” and “daughters” of the soil and arguing that their seized monies should be returned to them.

    We have reached a point where people are embezzling money they do not need and cannot spend in several lifetimes. Some of these hidden monies cannot be openly spent without people asking questions; and this explains why they are buried in anonymous accounts or hidden in vaults. We may yet exhume monies buried in people’s farms if our security people explore well.

    I honestly believe that as a people, we have to collectively tackle the problem of corruption. It seems to me that we must collectively define what constitutes corruption and collectively design the way of attack. The poor salaries and the uncertainty of employment may be at the root of official corruption. For example, the late Lee Kwuan Yew,  for many years prime minister of Singapore , said the way he ended corruption in his country was by paying public servants so well that it made no sense stealing state funds .

    When I was ambassador in Germany, my colleague from Singapore earned six times my salary! To be able to do what Singapore did,  we have to have a thriving economy and the right size of bureaucracy .The late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, our first president, said corruption in Nigeria arises out our politics of poverty. This he defined as the fact that most politicians in Nigeria came from poor homes and knew poverty at close contact and quarters, and having tasted power and money would not like to go back to the state of poverty.

    But it would have been better if our politicians and governments and the Nigerian elite generally could build an enduring industrial economy that will create sustainable wealth for all of us instead of selfishly taking care of themselves and their families. Our approach to solving the problem of corruption, l am afraid to say, has been haphazard and episodic rather than wholehearted and comprehensive.

  • Adieu Prince Adewale Aladesanmi

    About two months ago, I got a call from Mr Kayode Alabi one of my seniors at the famous Christ School Ado-Ekiti who has relocated back to his home town of Ado from Lagos. I was very happy to reconnect with him. After returning from London where he had spent a very long time, he came back to Lagos and worked with our mutual friend the late Senator Kunle Agunbiade. My association with Alabi (Oga Kayode) goes back beyond Christ school. His mother as I recollect, was a successful textile trader and rich woman in the 1950s. She was therefore quite influential in Ado of those days. Kayode her son lived briefly with Chief Oduola Osuntokun, a young dashing and handsome budding politician at that time. Chief Osuntokun was not only a parliamentarian, he also played the centre-forward for Ekiti football team. He was also the second graduate in what is now Ekiti State. But he was better known as a strict disciplinarian. Because of this reputation, influential Ekiti families sent their children to him for grooming. Chief Osuntokun did not spare the rod. I know this because I was a reluctant victim of his philosophy of spare the rod and spoil the child. I recollect that Chief Peter Ajibade, SAN, former Attorney General of the old Western State was one of the graduates of the Osuntokun School of discipline. Kayode Alabi and Prince Adewale Bejide Aladesanmi were later to follow. It seems in retrospect that from the Osuntokun School, one went to Christ School. Even after entering Christ School, Chief Osuntokun kept an eye on his wards either by making them cut the grass in his yard or cleaning his compound as part of the compulsory early morning work every Christ School boy had to do before going to classes. Chief Osuntokun at this time was a rising star in Ekiti. He was a member of the Western House of Assembly. He shared with Chief Anthony Enahoro, brilliant debating skill which was highly valued in parliamentary system of government. The leader of government and later Chief Obafemi Awolowo valued this attribute. By 1955, Chief Awolowo made Chief Osuntokun Minister of Works and after the election of 1956, Chief Osuntokun became Minister of Finance in the old Western Region and he was only 34 years old. This was the Osuntokun who mentored many Ekiti people including those I already mentioned and others like Chief Afe Babalola, Architect Alade, professors Adelola Adeloye, Fola Esan and of course, his younger brother, Kayode Osuntokun and  many others. I was a small boy in those days but I remember and to quote Chukwu Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu – “Because I was involved”.

    Prince Aladesanmi who now belongs to the ages was one of the “Osuntokun boys” I grew up knowing as a brother. He was extremely fair and handsome. He was well liked by people. Sometimes in the 1950s, I do not remember precisely the exact year, there was a big ceremony in Ado when I believe Prince Adewale was presented to the public in some kind of ceremonial bath in which he was carried around the town as a future king. In Ado, princes were called “Oba” and princesses were called “oja”. During my primary school days, I knew a few of these princesses and princes because of the closeness of Chief Osuntokun to Oba Aladesanmi, the father of the departed Adewale. At a point, Chief Osuntokun’s immediate younger brother, the late engineer Edward Abiodun Osuntokun, one of the first Ekiti boys to attend Government College Ibadan was a fiancé to Princess Yetunde, the first child of Kabiyesi. In short the Osuntokuns were part of the royal fabric of Ado-Ekiti. This writer at a time in my last year at secondary school was quite close to one of the Ado princesses!

    I say all this to show that the death of Oga Bejide was a personal loss. I had not seen him for a long time. When his father, Kabiyesi Aladesanmi “Waja” in 1982 or thereabouts, I came to sympathize with the family but I did not see the prince. Neither did I see Adedeji who was my friend, classmate and age mate. I only saw my former friend the princess that I was familiar with. Two months ago, Prince Adewale called me more or less from the blues. I was pleasantly surprised. He told me his friend Kayode Alabi had given him my number. He wondered why I had not been visiting him. He reminded me I had travelled all the way from London to see him in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1965 and yet I won’t come and visit him in Ado. He then said “Don’t you know the immense contribution of your family to Ado-Ekiti?” I apologized to him that I will soon come and see him in Ado. Then he added “your pounded yam is waiting for you”. My readers can then imagine the shock I had when Oga Kayode Alabi phoned me wailing that he has lost one of his best friends and wondering what to do. I felt guilty and regretted not seeing and saying fare well to a brother. If I knew he would pass on so soon, I would have gone to Ado to see him.

    Prince Adewale, I believe, made his own mark. He lived the leisured life of a prince as a young man. He was known all over Ado as someone who was special. When his colleagues were struggling to go to the local universities in Nigeria, his father,Kabiyesi Aladesanmi sent him abroad to prepare him for a bright future possibly in industry, commerce, government and on the throne. He justified his father’s confidence in him. He studied accountancy and banking in Newcastle upon Tyne. He rose to the rank of general manager in the banking sector before he retired into business and the corporate world as a member of a few boards before settling down into the life of a prince and head of his father’s family. He combined the refinement of a modern man with deep knowledge and commitment to his roots. He will be sorely missed and he has carried to eternity solid and treasured knowledge of traditional institutions and culture of Ado. ERINWO AJANAKU SUN BI OKE!

  • Ibori return to ‘fantastically corrupt country’

    David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister while briefing her majesty the Queen, Elizabeth the second of Great Britain about an official visit of President Muhammadu Buhari described our country as “fantastically corrupt”. He however added that President Buhari was not corrupt but he has inherited a corrupt country and he needs all the help he can get from the international community to make a success of his regime. Many commentators said Buhari should have asked for an apology for the derision with which his country has been treated. Buhari, a simple soldier, asked ruefully what he would do with an apology when what he needs is the return of the billions of pounds stashed by corrupt leaders in British banks.

    If there are people who  still believe Buhari should have asked for an apology, the return of Ibori in a chartered aircraft to Benin, followed by a long convoy of cars to Oghara his home town where he was celebrated by virtually the entire town, has settled the argument. Corruption is as Nigerian as apple pie is American. It seems our people have willed the commonwealth to their leaders to do whatever pleases them with it. In other parts of the world, an ex-convict would go quietly home to his family and lie low for years hoping that people would see his contrition and forgive him of his crime. But not in Nigeria where ex-convicts return to society on horseback or on the backs of their poor people who while sweating carry the unrepentant renegade on their backs while dancing wildly after consumption of poorly produced local liquor. What a life!

    It was not just the ordinary people who may have been rented to demonstrate support for Ibori. Political elite in Delta State and perhaps in other states in the South-south and possibly in other parts of Nigeria went to felicitate with Ibori. Senator Nwobosisi had earlier on, on behalf of Ibori, boasted that while in prison, he was responsible for electing his daughter into the House of Representatives and he also claimed he helped Bukola Saraki to become Senate President. Obviously Nwobosisi himself became a senator because of Ibori’s backing from prison.

    Before he returned home from London, it was reported that the Delta State government had paid him several millions of Naira in back gubernatorial allowances and other financial support befitting a former governor in spite of the British saying he robbed the state blind an offense for which they sentenced him to 13 years. He was released after serving half of his time in jail.

    The result of all this is that the international community is likely to sit on the proceeds of corruption in their countries’ banks. They will argue that if they returned the money, our various governments may return same to the thieving looters. This of course will be a convenient excuse for not releasing the money which can be put to better use in their countries. It is a case of fools would soon part with their riches.

    With the kind of leaders we have in this country, Nigeria is in trouble. One thing that baffles me is the general ignorance of the people, not just the uneducated but the apparently superficially educated persons who always demonstrate more enthusiasm than wisdom in politics. Some of these people do not mind Ibori soiling his hands and spoiling the name of our country. They will go on to say he is not the only one who is guilty as if this is a justification for his bad behaviour. Unless there are laws preventing this type of people from aspiring to the highest post in the land, one would not be surprised if Ibori runs for the presidency. His supporters would argue that the British were unfair to him and would cite the fact that a corrupt Nigerian court had said he had no case to answer when he was faced with 170 violations of the criminal code. Although the EFCC appealed the case and technically the case has not been dispensed with. This is the problem. How many corrupt cases have been decided even during the current dispensation?

    Many of the previously accused individuals are now senators earning humongous salaries and allowances as well as collecting millions of Naira as former governors. Until everybody realizes that there is a possibility of revolt by the suffering masses which in blind fury would terminate our lives, our leaders will continue to behave with the impunity which makes them inured to all criticisms.

    Recently the police displayed millions of Naira seized from INEC officials after the bye-elections in Rivers State. These monies were allegedly given to the officials of the electoral body by the governor of Rivers State. The governor has denied the accusation but we have some kind of evidence of Nigerian currency running into hundreds of millions displayed by the police as if they were chiffon de papier – mere pieces of paper as the French will say. When I saw this, I was depressed seriously because our national currency has been so thoroughly abused that one feels humiliated working to earn the dirty money so carelessly displayed by the police. With the Naira so easily available to be dispensed by governors, is it any wonder why the Naira value has so totally collapsed? In a country where salaries are not being paid when due, the sight of so much money on display can make the poor desperate. This desperation manifests in the current wave of kidnapping and waylaying of people on the highways.

    All people of good conscience must support this current government to rein in this monster of corruption. This brings me to the unkind, uncaring and hateful rumours peddled over the president’s medical condition. This is a man trying to slaughter the demon of corruption for which some are wishing him dead. Can people not make a connection between the vastly reduced price of crude oil on the world market and Nigeria’s total dependence on earnings from much reduced oil production because of sabotage in the Niger Delta and our present economic situation and recession? When apparently sane people tell the government to immediately diversify the economy, I ask myself whether these are serious people. To do that will take time. If we want to grow enough rice to feed ourselves and industrialize the country to stop imports, will these not take some time? All this whingeing will amount to nothing unless we radically boycott all luxuries we current indulge in and make use of local goods. I want to end this piece by parroting Buhari’s words that if we do not kill corruption, corruption will kill this country.

  • The creeping insecurity

    On Friday January 20, I was traveling from Ibadan to Lagos when others and I ran into what seemed to be armed robbery some kilometres on our approach to old Ogere toll gate. The time was half past five (5.30pm) in the evening. From about 100 meters to where the shooting was going on, we saw cars, trucks and tankers turning back to face us and we too quickly turned colliding with each other as we struggled to reverse and turn back. After some anxious moments, we could not move and like sheep, we all waited to be slaughtered. After a while, vehicles from Lagos suddenly started moving on their way to Ibadan and beckoned to us that all was clear. The only evidence of what had transpired that I saw was an old Toyota estate that was riddled with bullets. Who were these marauders?  Only God knows. Later the following day, I heard that they were the proverbial herdsmen. I won’t bet on it unless I had concrete evidence. I say this because before the menace of these so-called criminal herdsmen, I was in November 1995 shot at towards the approach to the Sagamu junction on my way to Lagos. The following year at the Ibadan end, a huge stone meant for my head shattered the windscreen of the Toyota Camry I was driving. I remember Sunday my personal assistant screaming at me saying  “ Oga no stop” to which I angrily replied “Na today de born me?” Since that incident the Ibadan-Lagos express way has been reasonably safe. I can say this because I travel on the road quite regularly. However may be I have been lucky because I have heard my friends tell me their harrowing experiences on the road. I have always tried not to travel too early in the morning or late in the evening. My golden rule is to sleep in whatever town I find myself at six o’clock in the evening. The problem now is that our country is becoming unsafe no matter where you are.

    I remember with nostalgia several trips either from Ibadan to Jos or from Maiduguri to Lagos or from Lagos to Calabar and on to Jalingo, Yola and Maiduguri, Kano, Zaria, Kaduna, Tegina, Kontagora, Jebba, Ilorin and finally to Ibadan. I did some of these trips alone or with my wife and children just soaking up the beauty of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. Those were probably the golden years of Nigeria. I can attest to the beauty and goodness of the ordinary Nigerian. He was not envious of other people neither did he covet what others had. He just wanted to be left alone to eke out a precarious living as a farmer or fisherman. When I read about the Boko Haram tragedy, I weep because I know the terrain where the bombing and fighting is taking place and I fear some of my former students in  the universities of Jos and Maiduguri may have fallen victim of the insurgency in some parts of Plateau, Bauchi, Yobe, Gombe Adamawa, Taraba and Borno itself

    Some three or four years ago, a friend and colleague of mine from Bauchi State told me he was going on a flying visit to Azare. Knowing the terrain, I told him to go to Jos and then Bauchi and then to Azare. He laughed and said that would be suicidal of him to take the road to Jos because on seeing him, a Fulani man, the local people would kill him because of this he said he would drive to Kaduna then Kano and from there to Bauchi. This was some kind of Israelite journey. To be sincere, I did not know things were this bad. Now even driving from Abuja, the seat of the federal government to Kaduna has become problematic because I am told the road is infested by all kinds of highway robbers and ethnic militants. The picture is not good at all. The north-east is not safe because of Boko Haram. The Delta is unsafe because of Niger – Delta militants. Cattle rustlers are making the north-west problematic, the Biafra militants are challenging government’s hold on the south-east. The Fulani herders are making life difficult in the north-central zone. It is only a matter of time for peace to disappear in the south-west. The area is now under threat of Ijaw militants from the Niger Delta and herdsmen from the north. The picture of countrywide insecurity is complete. In this kind of environment, we should forget about foreign investment without which the problem of unemployment will become more acute.

    What is responsible for this? The first answer is poor policing. The centralized federal police has failed and states or zonal police should be encouraged. This will be local people who would know the terrain, the language of the people and who will be able to collect information and intelligence unlike the Abuja police that suffers a disconnect with the people they are policing.  Secondly, we have to find a way of devolving political and economic power from the centre to the states /zones. This country cannot be successfully run by a poohbah from Aso Rock  The wretched states that cannot pay workers’ salaries have exposed the futility of state’s creation and we must consequently revert to viable and sustainable regional or zonal governments . Thirdly, the present government must seriously set in motion a process of designing a social welfare package for the poor and the unemployed. The present plan to give N5,000 monthly to the abjectly poor must be broadened to include the unemployed, the infirm and the handicapped. I find the plight of cripples lying across highways risking their lives while begging dehumanizing. It cheapens life in my view. A country is judged by how it treats its dead and its handicapped. We are failing on both scores.

    If everybody is made to partake in the commonwealth of Nigeria, anti-social behaviour will be reduced. Fourthly, we must create jobs through direct state intervention. There is so much to do in this country that I find it galling to be told there are no jobs. We need to build railways, roads, sea and airports, schools and universities, hospitals, homes, factories and farms and many other social infrastructure. We can print money, which will lead to inflation but this will be taken care of by the value of the labour of millions of people building the country. Some of the cost can be recovered through reduced corruption or no corruption at all. We can also reduce the yawning gap between the salaries of those at the top and the slave salaries being paid to the poor. We can also downsize the bureaucracies and deploy those who are willing and able to work to fields and factories of production. Fifthly, we must take a second look at the transhumance that is at the root of herdsmen/farmers problem. We must collectivise, with all the problems it will involve, the activities of herders in ranches so as to prevent these constant clashes that are destroying our country and exacerbating inter-ethnic conflict. Every effort must be made to affirm the rights of indigenes to their land whether in the country or in the city. If land is needed, it must be acquired within the context of a willing seller and a paying buyer. My assumption is that all Nigerians have ancestral land and it will be unfair to deprive any one of his God-given right to the land of their forefathers.

    In the interim, before constitutional changes can be effected, the Nigerian Police must take the following steps. Highway patrol in shifts of six hours duration in a 24-hour unbroken chain must commence on all federal high ways and major cities. This is what the thousands of cars donated by the states to the police are meant for and not for convoys accompanying police officers wherever they go. All guns in the hands of unauthorized people, including herdsmen must be retrieved and called in. If this is not done quickly, it will give fillip to those advocating strategy of the grave by asking everybody be allowed to carry arms as they do in America, I say God forbid. There ought to be a federal law imposing life imprisonment for crimes of kidnapping, highway robbery and assassination.

    Finally our religious leaders should be charged to admonish all their followers to respect the teaching of their religions as to the sanctity of human life. Anybody going out of this narrow path should be dealt with expeditiously by the state. The capital punishment imposed on people who commit these crimes by Lagos State should be adopted by the federal government. Punishment must be sure and swift. This is the only way we will put an end to a state of countrywide insecurity where life is becoming nasty brutish and short.

  • Kudos to PMB on the Gambian problem

    When our late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who doubled as our foreign minister for a while said in October 1960 at the United Nations General Assembly plenary session that our country will protect the interest of the black man wherever he may be, people felt that this was an unrealistic ambition. Sir Abubakar, as we all know, was not given to making statements without having ruminated seriously upon it. He came to this conclusion because of the pain most African leaders felt about the humiliation of the black man in the hands of largely racist colonial governments in Africa at that time. This was also the onset of the Civil Rights movement in the USA when dogs were unleashed on blacks justly demanding to be treated as human beings. The most galling of these indignities was in Southern Africa stretching from the then Belgian Congo to the Afrikaner controlled Republic of South Africa where blacks were herded into the so-called Bantustans created to emphasize the division of black South Africans along tribal lines in an attempt to weaken the wind of change which the British Prime Minister had said was blowing through the whole of Africa which the colonial regimes must take note of so that they are not caught unprepared when the wind  would become an hurricane.

    It was in the light of this political ferment that Sir Abubakar committed Nigeria to supporting all black men struggling justly to be free. This speech from a conservative leader of the most populous Black Country whose friendship was highly valued in the Cold War years of the struggle for world supremacy between communism and capitalism must have shocked policy makers in the West.   From that time onwards till today, the foreign policy of Nigeria has not deviated from protecting the interests of the black man. Nigeria may be careful about meddling in the affairs of the historic black diaspora in north and South America and their struggle for equality. This is because our leverage on the powerful countries of the United States and Brazil is rather inconsequential. But in the Caribbean islands, Nigeria has played significant roles there particularly in its high profile diplomatic and cultural presence in such countries as Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The point I am making is that Nigeria has been consistent in batting for the black man as much as its economy will permit. Nigeria bore almost 35 percent of the budget of the liberation committee of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) resident in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This was apart from direct financial and military assistance to national liberation movements of various countries from those of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. One of the first international roles of independent Nigeria was participating in UN peace-keeping in the Congo in 1961. We must not forget the burden which Nigeria happily bore in the cause of African liberation and which it continues to bear in its disproportionate budgetary support for the African Union even today.

    In recent years, there have been attempts to refocus Nigeria’s foreign policy away from political consideration to economic issues now that the continent is largely free from overt political domination. But one thing that has remained is our country’s role in the lives of black people particularly in West Africa and the continent as a whole.

    Defence of democratic regimes is now part of Nigeria’s foreign policy goals. Even during military regimes, Nigeria continued with this policy while critics said Nigeria was defending a system of government denied to its people. This embarrassing situation must have hastened the reluctant exit of the military from the seat of power in 1999.

    When “civilian” government headed by Obasanjo came to power in 1999, it was natural for it to continue to embrace the new doctrine of supporting democratic regimes in addition to defending the interests of the Blackman worldwide. This informed President Olusegun Obasanjo’s intervention in Togo, São Tomé and Principe, Guinea–Bissau, Liberia and to a certain extent in Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Sierra Leone just to ensure through preventive diplomacy, that the region did not dissolve into avoidable fratricidal conflict as before. What informed Nigeria’s policy was trying to put out the fire in the house of your neighbours before being consumed in the conflagration when the fire spread to one’s house. In other words, the policy is not simply based on altruism but enlightened self-interest. This preventive diplomacy will continue to operate no matter who is in power in Nigeria. Of course this assumption is based on peace in Nigeria as well as a strong economy to back its foreign policy. The populace would also need to be carried along so that nobody grumbles about domestic problems being left unattended to while the country is busy pacifying other countries that may be distressed in the region.

    When the situation in The Gambia with a population of about one and a half million  people and combined armed and police force of about 2400 deteriorated following the refusal of its sit-tight President Yahya Jammeh to vacate his position, Nigeria had to step in. President Yahya Jammeh has ruled the small country sandwiched within Senegal for 22 years after overthrowing its president, Sir Dauda Jawara in a coup  d’état. A presidential election supervised by his government was lost and a new man Adama Barrow won the election. Yahyah jammeh admitted defeat for some days and later began to find excuses to remain in power. The ECOWAS leaders met in Abuja and issued an ultimatum to Jammeh to step down. Two countries were critical to this decision. These were Nigeria and Senegal. Once Buhari showed leadership in spite of the problems at home, Senegal showed resolve and the others followed. To ensure global support, Nigeria led others to secure UN Security Council support. President Buhari after three trips to negotiate with the recalcitrant Jammeh sent first a naval frigate to cruise around the coast of the country as a precursor of proposed combined military operations involving also the army and the Air Force; then he sent a detachment of Nigeria Air Force. A Hercules C130 moved about 800 troops to Senegal while Nigerian planes put pressure on the recalcitrant Jammeh by buzzing the capital of Banjul to show resolve and determination. What followed was expected. The Chief of Staff of the Gambian army, General Ousman Badjie issued a statement that his troops will not fight his West African brothers and subsequently pledged his loyalty to the new President Adama Barrow who had earlier on been sworn in in the Gambian embassy in Dakar, Senegal. By this time, the troops ready to strike had been bolstered by a token company of Malian troops. The fate of Jammeh was in the balance. He was offered asylum in Nigeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Guinea. He apparently chose finally to go to Equatorial Guinea where he shares sit-tight political consanguinity with the Equatorial Guinean President Tewedoro Macias Nguema who has been in power in the oil-rich country for decades. Buhari must ensure Jammeh signs a guarantee of non-interference in the affairs of The Gambia and Senegalese and Nigerian troops should remain in the country to ensure peace and security while removing from command positions all Jammeh’s appointees.

    Buhari has resoundingly won his first foreign policy challenge and he deserves our congratulations. I was disappointed that some members of our Senate did not rise to the occasion. The criticism of Buhari by senators Ike Ekweremadu and Chukwuka Utazi for sending troops to The Gambia without Senate approval is totally unpatriotic and uncalled for. The intent of the constitution they quoted is not to tie the hands of the president in foreign policy emergencies but to ensure that Nigeria does not declare wars without Senate approval. No war broke out in this case and the AMERICAN example which some of these people always quote permits the president to seek approval post troops’ deployment in case of crisis necessitating quick action. It is not in the interest of Nigeria to belittle the effort of the President and to deride him when celebrations are called for.

  • Ebonyi’s governor’s sharing of the state’s riches

    I read in one of our national newspapers, a statement attributed to Governor David Umahi that plans are on the way to pay “monthly stipends to former lawmakers and local government chiefs in Ebonyi State”. He went on to say he would send a bill to the House to this effect. His press secretary Emma Anya quoted the governor as saying “my aim is to carry everybody along especially the political class, that’s why I will be approaching the House of Assembly to ask for approval so that those legislators who are not on seat now and former local government chairmen can continue to be paid. I believe this is how we can get them to help in developing and creating wealth in our state”. I felt very sad about how low we have descended in this country that we have a governor who thinks this way. How does paying ex-legislators help to develop and increase the wealth of a state as suggested by the governor? What does he mean by “political class”? Is there such a thing sociologically speaking? A group of freeloaders cannot constitute a class. This kind of thinking shows our buccaneering approach to politics. Politics is regarded by some Nigerians as their own farms where they go to harvest. They sometimes do this on farms which do not belong to them. This is the way I see this “Ebonyi formula” of sharing the commonwealth among a few people while the vast majority of the people are suffering. This is why our youth are okada riders and politicians. When one goes to the village and meets a young man and he is asked – “young man what are you doing for a living?” – the answer is “I am into politics” as if politics is a job or a professional calling and not just a call to serve. And this is why the approach in Ebonyi to sharing the state riches among politicians is so wrong that it deserves to be challenged. This sharing is planned for one of the poorest states in the country.  It raises the fundamental question of what platform or manifesto was this man elected? Is paying all politicians who had previously held office part of his manifesto or that of his party? This kind of irresponsible behavior justifies the call from Chief Emeka Anyaoku that these so-called states should be scrapped so that we can return to regional governments that served our people very well and threw up people knowledgeable in the art of government and not village champions as we have today. It is also because we practice this form of centralized federalism in which states that have no resources at all can share in the wealth generated  and derived from other parts of the federation and are therefore not accountable to their people or to anybody about how state funds are spent. If we have fiscal federalism and Ebonyi revenues are derived from rice farmed by poor people using ancient tools of hoes and cutlasses, their government would think twice before abandoning the people to pay stipends to politicians who previously held office on the grounds that the transient governor wants to carry everybody along. If we do not stop this practice in Ebonyi, it will create precedence and every state including the centre will follow suit and begin to pay anybody who had previously held one kind of office or the other. It will spread to all former board members at state and federal level, all former chairmen of boards, all former non-career ambassadors and so on. Sometimes ago, some members of the National Assembly asked that their members be granted immunity and be paid for life. I do not know whether this suggestion has been surreptitiously passed since the legislative budget at the federal level is shrouded in secrecy. To imagine these ridiculous suggestions are coming during recession when there is just no money anywhere, one wonders what our politicians will do when we come out of recession. Nigeria carries the victor ludorum as the country with the highest percentage of its budget going to administration. We are totally over governed with 774 local government administrations 37 states administrations that is including the federal capital territory and of course the elephantine federal government . We are so over administered that there is no money left for development. Our rulers at all levels get away with murder so to say.

    It is because we as a people without protest have accepted the humongous golden handshakes and allowances being paid to all former chief executives and their deputies at the federal and state levels that our politicians want to take us for a ride. In Akwa Ibom, former governors are entitled in cash and other allowances well over N100 million a year. Less endowed states are not far behind. Recently Edo State government is planning to spend N300 million to build houses for the former governor and his deputy. Presumably, this largesse will be extended to all former state chief executives in the same state. This is also the practice across the whole country. I am really sorry for this country because one wonders where we learnt this from. Is it also borrowed from the American system? Our people unreasonably point to America when they spring this corrupt practice on us. First of all, this does not happen in America. Secondly, Nigeria is not America. The entire budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not even as big as that of New York fire department. We should stop comparing ourselves with America and face squarely the fact of our underdevelopment. Sometimes the action of our governments suggests that we are not only physically underdeveloped, we are also cerebrally and mentally under developed. This is the only way we can understand the poorest state in the South-east of Nigeria and one of the poorest states of the federation planning to start paying former office holders in the state when they are not holding pensionable jobs. This action will be outrightly illegal and could constitute a threat to public order and security if the common people were to challenge the government for its insensitivity.

    I pray that the audit departments at state and federal levels should be well staffed and should be made aware of their responsibility to stop any errant governor from frittering away the riches of the state on frivolous grounds not provided for in the constitution. The public, the press and NGOS in the country should wake up to protect public interest so that what belongs to the commonwealth of Nigerian peoples at federal and state levels are not appropriated by a few . Democracy is not government by politicians for politicians.

  • What is in a name?

    During the 2016 Christmas holidays, two little Osuntokun boys, aged  nine and  11 years and resident  in London  named “Beloved “and “Anointed “came to greet me as their grandfather  and as it is to be expected of these precocious lads, they asked me all kinds of questions. They saw a picture of me and Queen Elizabeth and the older of the two boys recognized the queen and asked me innocently: “Does she know you grandpa?”

    Before I could answer, the younger boy said “yes the queen knows everybody”. I explained to both boys, even though I had met her three times over the years, that the queen cannot possibly know me but that she knew I was a Nigerian because that was what she was told by her protocol officer who presented me to her. Then the boys moved round to view other photographs on the wall. They saw a picture of one of my children when he was young and asked “who is this boy in Afro hair cut?” I told them his name was Oluwaseyi. “Is he an Osuntokun too?” they asked. I told them he is. Before they continued, the older boy who had a Samsung tablet in his hand had opened it and Googled “osuntokun”. He then read out some entries about some of the OSUNTOKUNs and frowned unexpectedly when he said “what is osuntokun syndrome?” and asked if it is a disease. I told him it is a medical condition named after Professor Kayode Osuntokun who apparently first identified it. It is an “inherited familial disorder involving an inability to sense pain and auditory imperception where hearing is normal but the ability to make meaning of speech is lacking. Sensations such as temperature, pressure and touch are still able to be felt” The child still said he did not like the idea of his surname being identified with a disease. I told him that that’s the way of the world and that when he grows up he will find out about Newton’s law of gravity  and Albert Einstein’s laws of relativity and other  scientific principles identified with individuals for their intellectual achievements and that then they will be proud of one of their forbears.

    Now to the kernel of this essay. Why is it that Nigerians like to bear strange names these days? Beginning with my two little grandchildren. Why did their parents prefer names like “Beloved “and “Anointed”? What is wrong with “Oluwaferanmi”, “Oluwawemimo” which correspond to those strange English names?

    This reminds me of a young lady on admission to one of our universities who wrote her name as “God is great “ Igwe . The computer could not handle such a long prenom and the name came out as “Great Igwe “and that is the name that will be on the certificate of this lady when she graduates. Of course we know that the wave of Pentecostal Christian revival has led to a revolution in the first names of our children. We now have names such as “Overflow” “Victory at last” “Open heavens” “Blessed Assurance” and less jaw breaking names such as “Glory”  “Harmony” “Blessing” “Dominion” “Trinity” “Daily bread” “ Thank God” “God knows” “Good luck” among many  others. Thank God we have not got to the extreme of naming our children “Yesus” and “Jesus” as the Ethiopians and Spaniards do!

    Names such as “Long John”  “Clerk” “ Cookie”” African face” “Big boy”  “Government” “Chamberlain “ “Bismarck “ and even “Hitler” have traditionally been given to children in the Niger Delta. This was because of the Niger Delta’s long association with Europeans. I remember a distinguished former ambassador of Nigeria from the delta jokingly saying the Niger Delta people did not know us upland Nigerians until the white men who were their neighbours across the seas forced us on them in so-called country of Nigeria. He meant it of course as a joke but the truth is that there was a symbiotic relation between the coastal and up country people for mutual sustenance. Still on strange names, I remember an incident when I was ambassador to Germany. A Nigerian asylum seeker apparently from the Niger delta flew to Frankfurt with a Nigerian passport with his names as “Otto Von Bismarck”.

    The German immigration officer had to call his boss who asked the Nigerian “Du bist Otto Von Bismarck?” Somebody translated it to this intrepid Nigerian “Are you Otto Von Bismarck?” To which he answered in the affirmative. The immigration officer then spoke to him in German and English “herstliche wilkome”, “well come home”. For those who do not know the significance of this name, it is the name of the founder of modern Germany. I wonder what the reception would have been if his passport had read Adolph Hitler! It is not only in the Niger Delta that one finds people with non-African names. The Creoles and their descendants in Lagos also bear names of those who either enslaved them or who rescued them from slavery. Some people in the neighboring EGBA and Ijebu areas took on such names as Pythagoras Williams, Benson, and Cole just to appear civilized and westernized. Recently I met one man called Kissinger Chukwu! I could not but laugh.

    One thing I know is that the parents who are carried away by religious fervor and fanaticism are wasting their time because when our children grow up they will change these names to names they can live with or else their friends in school would not allow them to have peace because they will be the butt of jokes.

    There is nothing new under the sun. When I was young, my dad gave English or biblical names to his boys and girls. We had names like Joseph, Samuel, Edward, Keturah Rachel, Benjamin, Ezekiel, Peter, Enoch and Moses .My father named me Johnson to my future surprise because the name is not in the bible. Two of us were given English names, namely Edward and Johnson which my father picked up in the then Gold Coast (Ghana) when he went there in search of the Golden Fleece! I stopped bearing the name when I entered university following the examples of Dr Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe and Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo who dropped their biblical colonial names like hot potatoes to signify their rejection of British colonialism. Those were the days of Mbonu Ojike, one of the early Nigerian nationalists whose motto was “boycott the boycottable”. He certainly felt we did not need European and biblical names to assert our humanity. He was right and still right today. Not everybody in Ojike’s generation listened to him. Certainly not Anthony Enahoro, an old boy like my brother Edward of Government College Ibadan both of whom seemed to have liked those English names. This must have been the influence of the white teachers in Government College Ibadan of those halcyon years.

    When the British came to Nigeria and asked for the names of our people they got such answers as “Ojo” “Nnamdi” “Zanna” “Muhammad” or “Tamunobere”. Then they would say “what is your father’s name?” The children would remain quiet because they did not know their father’s names. Even if they knew it, it was taboo to mention ones father’s names. Then the British began to call the first names of our people and then attach to them the names of their towns. So you had “Ojo Ibadan “Aminu Kano” “Nnamdi Onitsha” and so on. This was particularly the case in the colonial army the West African Frontier Force (WAFF).

    The names in the northern part of our country reflect the coming of Islam in some cases as early as 800AD (9th century) in Borno. This has had ramifying effect on the culture and mores of the people. It is in the area of names that the impact of the Islamic culture has been total. But even here, there has been attempt to Africanise some of the Arabic names. Thus we have “Muhammadu “Ahmadu” “Yakubu” “Aminu “and so on. We of course still have names such as “Tanko” Ganduje”Ardo and others which are obviously not of Arabic origin. I remember my Sudanese friends jokingly asking me why we Nigerians put “u” after every Arabic name.

    The Yoruba people have a saying that our names reflect what is happening in our homes and lives of our parents when we are born. This is why names prefaced by “Ade” such as Adeniji, Adegoke, Adejoke, Adewunmi  etc connote royalty “Akin” as in AKINJIDE, Akinwunmi, Akindele etc connotes courage. There are names one is born with if you are twins such as Taiwo and Kehinde and Idowu and Alaba and other names like Ojo , Aina , Ige and Ajayi that children bear to reflect the way they came into this world . I am for keeping our culture and what better way to preserve our culture than by preserving our languages and keeping our names rather than having foreign names. We should leave the white men to bear such names as Bullock, Bull, Stone, Bird, Pigeon and such funny names only white people can bear.