The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Forthcoming US presidential election

    I have followed with keen interest and from the vantage point of being in America at this auspicious time, the national conventions of the American Republican and Democratic parties in Cleveland Ohio and Philadelphia Pennsylvania respectively. I am also anxiously looking forward to the election in November. This is because whatever happens in the USA has ramifications all over the world. As it is popularly stated, “when one sneezes in Washington DC, the rest of the world catches cold”. USA whether one likes it or not, is an exceptional country. It is the most powerful economic power in the world. Its currency is the reserve currency of the world leading to its accusation of dollar imperialism. It has the most powerful military in the world with a reach that is unmatched by any other nation on earth. This military power is deployed in space on earth, under the sea and in strategic silos in many parts of the world. It has salt water navy that is deployed on all the seas of the world. When there is a human crisis of hunger and outbreak of pandemic disease, it is the USA that most of the world looks up to. It’s farmers who are four percent of its population has the capacity to feed the whole world. America constantly renews itself through the ingenuity of its people, immigration from all over the world and belief in God and some kind of what its historians and politicians used to call its manifest destiny. Needless to say America is largely a faith based country of the Judeo-Christian tradition

    In spite of all these great attributes America has some shortcomings and internal problems. Internally, the country is severely divided between the forces of its racist and slave holding past and those of the liberal present that believes in its founding credo that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator to certain unalienable rights among which are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It is also separated by the extremes of wealth and poverty as well as those who believe that the problems of our world would not be solved by resort to force always but by dialogue, diplomacy and mutual understanding. President Dwight Eisenhower, a former Allied commander in Europe during the Second World War who subsequently became US president had occasion to warn his country to beware of being taken over by the military-industrial complex, that is to say, those forces who constantly wish to put AMERICAN industrial power and processes on war footing for the benefit of the rich minority of less than one percent of the people who use their awesome power to dominate and manipulate national politics. There is also the vicious racism which pervades all sectors of the American society, be it employment, industry, the military, church and state education, health, politics and policing. Because of the disadvantaged position of descendants of slaves in relation to that of their slave-holding masters, it has proved impossible to bridge the social and cultural gap that separates the two. Thus blacks had been kept down by lynching and Jim Crow in the past and by unemployment and poverty in the present and police brutality manifesting in unrestrained shooting of young black peoples without provocation. Admitted that there is black on black violence in the urban ghettos in which blacks are confined, the general violence in America is aided by the so-called second amendment to the USA constitution allowing citizens to carry fire arms. This widely misunderstood right has led to loss of millions of lives of Americans in needless violence. There are studies showing more lives have been lost due to gun violence than lives lost in wars in which America has been involved. In spite of several pleas by the current US President Barak Obama and weeping parents, Americans are held down by the gun lobby of the powerful American Rifle Association which funds election of several members into the US Congress. These then are the fundamental issues facing America which those running for the presidency and the Congress have always been called upon to address during elections every four years.

    The current struggle for power is between on the Democratic Party’s Hilary Rodham Clinton, former First Lady to President Bill Clinton, former Senator representing New York State and recently American Secretary of State. Opposing her is Donald J. Trump, a boasting billionaire also from New York. He made his fortune in property development in many parts of the world and in casino and gambling. He is given to amassing wealth by unscrupulous ways such as setting up a university and duping people to part with their money by suggesting to weak-minded people that he could teach them the secret of becoming billionaires like himself. In short he is a totally objectionable character but he has been able to touch the sore nerve of general distrust of politicians and discontentment of those Americans left behind by the forces of globalization that has led to manufacturing industries and therefore jobs being transferred to Mexico, India, China and other underdeveloped countries with cheap and skilled labour with lower wages and less rigorous environmental regulations. Trump is promising to possibly deport all illegal immigrants taking away jobs from Americans and build a wall against future immigrants crossing the Mexican border into the USA. In a world torn apart by terrorism which he says is inspired by Islam, Trump has said he will ban all Muslims  from coming to America and Newt  Gingrich, one of his supporters and former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives wants to go further by deporting Muslims from America. Trump says American under him will abrogate NAFTA, WTO, Paris Protocol on climate change and tear apart NATO unless members pay up. Many of what he is saying resonates with blue-collar white workers in the United States because many of them are not well informed due to their little education. Those who know Trump say he does not mean what he says and that he is a demagogue who will say anything to get elected. In my life I have seen this type of AMERICAN politician before in the person of the Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who ran as a Republican presidential candidate against President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964. Goldwater famously said “moderation in the defense of Liberty is no virtue and extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice”; he also threatened to use nuclear weapons against American adversaries and was promptly defeated in a Johnson landslide victory.

    The difference this time is that the Democratic opponent of Trump, Mrs Hilary Clinton carries quite a bit of electoral baggage. First no woman has ever run for president of the USA before. Thus she is seen as some kind of a threat to deeply held idea of the place of the woman in AMERICAN society. Second she is a Clinton and many Americans do not like the idea of dynastic succession. Thirdly, she has antagonized the poor base of the Democratic Party by being too close and cozy with Wall Street of bankers and the rich. Fourthly, while Secretary of State, she used private server for her e-mails thus exposing secret USA documents to enemy hacking. This has led to FBI investigation in which she came out in unfavorable light. And finally, she has been unreasonably accused of being responsible for American foreign policy debacle in Libya and the Middle East in particular leading to destabilization of the entire region. She has also been accused of being the brain behind American accommodation with Iran over that country’s nuclear power ambition which saw Iran foreswearing nuclear ambitions for the foreseeable future in exchange for lifting of global sanctions against it and guaranteed by the USA, Britain, Russia, China France and Germany. The forces in America egged on by Israel that would have wanted a war with Iran remain dissatisfied with the Iran deal justifiably thinking Iran would in future break the agreement. Some of what Mrs Clinton is being crucified for are totally unjustified but that is politics!

    There is no doubt in my mind that Hilary Clinton will be a great president. She is probably the most prepared person by experience for the post.   President Barak Obama openly stated this at the Democratic Party’s convention and most people agreed with him. All things being well, she will be elected president in November. This is of course with the proviso that no damaging e-mails are released by   Wikileaks/Russia and no major acts of terrorism in America or Europe traceable to the Islamic caliphate or ISL breaks out before November. The world will be much safer if and when Hilary Rodham Clinton, rather Donald Trump, joins Angela Merkel of Germany Theresa May of Great Britain in the increasing club of female leaders of the world.

  • Rising nationalism and world peace

    As a student of history it is a matter of concern to see incipient nationalism rising all over the world. The connection between this and war is crystal clear to me. In Europe, the then political centre of the world during the period of European imperialism, the clash of interest and the struggle for world domination led to the First World War. That struggle was underpinned by the clash of cultures and ideologies of pan-germanism, pan-slavism and what can also be described as pan anglo-saxonism signifying the desires by Imperial Germany, czarist Russia and imperial Britain to assert their superiority over their rivals. There was also what one can loosely call some kind of racism in the struggle. The argument then usually centred around which country had the largest army or the biggest navy. The strategy then was to ensure no one country had superiority in both arms of the military. The Air Force was still not in the equation then neither were there any strategic forces as constituted today by nuclear armaments. This was going to come into the equation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The unresolved issues of the First World War led directly to the Second World War which exposed the vulnerability of human civilization to self-destruction unless care was taken. Clash between super powers armed with nuclear weapons has become inconceivable and unthinkable. But this has not eliminated the outbreak of proxy wars as had been the case in Korea, Vietnam, the liberation wars in Southern Africa from the Congo to Angola, the two Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe) Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa itself. Some kind of proxy wars were waged in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Columbia by factions supported by different global military and ideological patrons. We have not seen the end of this trend even after the collapse of global communism. National interests previously camouflaged by ideology has now reasserted themselves in places like Ukraine where a supposedly democratic regime under Vladimir Putin has severed the Crimea peninsula from independent Ukraine and has virtually divided the country into two by supporting ethnic Russians to lay claim to the eastern half of the country as part of Russia abroad. This has led to sabre-rattling by NATO in its preparedness to defend its new members in Poland and the Baltic Sea against resurgent Russia driven by nationalist pride.

    The Chinese too are no longer manifesting proletarian brotherhood in their relation with Vietnam over rival claims in the South China Sea. China is striking out to put feet down in the area by reclaiming land in the sea and building military bases and challenging even the United States in international waters in the South China Sea.   This has led the United States selling advanced fighter bombers to Vietnam with which it fought a bitter war in the 1960s. Shinzo Abe in Japan is seriously thinking of expunging from its constitution the clause against a big military imposed on Japan by the Allies after the Second World War in view of threat constantly posed to it by North Korea under its erratic and irrational young leader. Japan also has its eyes on reclaiming the Kuriles islands seized from it towards the end of the Second World War by the then Soviet Union. No one can predict the future of peace in Asia because of several flash points and the fact that the nuclear weapons states of North Korea, China India and Pakistan may be joined by the technologically advanced countries like Japan and South Korea if the opportunities present themselves.

    The republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently said he would not be averse to South Korea and Japan having their own nuclear deterrence by becoming nuclear weapons states so that they can defend themselves apparently in a thermonuclear war as envisaged by Trump. India and Pakistan are so much against each other that if there is a place today of likely possible use of nuclear weapons, it will be the Indian sub-continent. The rising nationalism and antagonism there between the Muslim fundamentalist government in Pakistan and the Hindu nationalist government in India  does not augur well for the future of peaceful relations between these largely poor countries of almost one a half billion people in their combined population.

    The most frightening situation is in the USA and Europe. The rise of Donald Trump, an unprincipled megalomaniac who will tell any lie to be elected president of the most powerful country presents urgent and immediate danger to world peace. This is a man who lied about something as simple as the ethnic origins of his parents when he claimed they were swedes when in fact they were Germans. A man who sets up a so-called university simply to rip off unsuspecting poor people he deceived about making them instant millionaires like himself. A man who inherited millions of dollars from his father yet claims he started from nothing and self-made himself. This is the man who claims he wants to make America great again by seeing all previous international treaties like the ones setting up the WTO, NATO and NAFTA and the Paris climate change protocol as chiffon de paper only good for the waste paper basket. He is preying on the discontent of blue collar workers who have lost their jobs because of movement of some manufacturing industries to China and Mexico. His trump card is immigration and Islamic terrorism. He said he would deport all illegal immigrants numbering about 11 million people and build a wall to shut out migrants from Latin America whom he sees as rapists, drug peddlers and criminals taking jobs from Americans. He would bar Muslims from coming to the USA. He also says he would put tariff of up to 40 percent on goods entering the United States. His tirades seem to be good music to the ears of largely white working class Americans who fear that they are being overwhelmed by immigrants thus reducing the relative population of white people to that of non-white peoples. This demographic trend made the former President George Bush to say he feared that he may be the last republican president of the USA. Nativism and nationalism are driving Trump to advocate for fortress America turning its back on the rest of the world in a policy shift of isolationism not seen since the end of the Second World War.

    If Trump wins and disrupts the global economy and existing Defence architecture, then the entire world will be up for grabs by the most powerful countries thus taking us back to a politics of war-lordism seen in places like China in a previous era.

    The recent BREXIT by Great Britain falls into the same pattern of nationalism of blaming other countries and peoples for one’s national problem. Inward looking sometimes leads to lashing out against other people in a rising tide of negativism and nationalism. The most dangerous part of this trend in Europe is that it is spreading and manifesting itself in France where Marine Le Pen, leader of the French right is threatening to take France out of the European Union if she wins the presidential election in France next year. If she tears the EU apart, then the architecture for peace in Europe would have been destroyed. Already Germany’s right wing party is rearing its ugly head and condemning what it calls Angela Merkel’s wilkommenkultur, a reference to Germany welcoming over a million refugees from the Middle East. This Merkel’s policy, in my view, was really an unwise policy by the German government in a country which has not completely assimilated the three million Turks who migrated to the country after 1945. If the right wing parties take over in the European continent and begin to expel unwanted nationals of other countries, there is bound to be reaction. Compounding this problem is the increase in terrorism fuelled by fundamentalist ideology being exploited by some fanatics claiming to be Muslims where as they are simply anarchists with strange agenda. This impending Armageddon may yet be avoided if these right wing elements lose in the elections that are coming up soon or if world leaders realizing the futility of possible conflict begin to rein in their supporters or begin to moderate their rhetoric and instead of policy of hate and division begin to practice and advocate politics of international interdependence, tolerance.

    We in Africa delude ourselves if we think the gathering storm will not affect us. No part of the world will be spared from global melt down occasioned by political differences mercantilist economic competition and policies fuelled by racial or national hatred. This is why we in Nigeria should get our act together instead of dissipating our energies in unending political debates and planning to tinker with the constitution instead of seeing our inability to make any system work as the reason for our seeming developmental inertia. This is the time to build a virile country with a strong economy and defence. We must see beyond our national horizon because we as a country whether willingly or not carry the burden of defending Africa’s interest on our back

  • Corrosive effect of corruption on Nigeria’s security 

    Some three years or so ago, the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a conference on Nigeria’s foreign policy at the foyer of the ministry’s beautiful Abubakar Tafawa Balewa House in Abuja. I remember Professor Ibrahim Gambari, then Under-Secretary-General for one of the divisions in the UN Secretary-General’s office saying our soldiers participating in UN peace-keeping operations in Darfur were poorly kitted. He said their equipment was below what the UN expected and what Nigeria in the past conformed with. This was an important matter because the UN reimbursed Nigeria for all its expenses during peace-keeping operations. The then Minister of Defence who was previously chairman of the PDP, the then ruling party gave a lame excuse that party bigwigs who got the contracts might not have performed well. He then casually dismissed the observation as if it did not really matter. I sat down there shocked about the levity with which state affairs was being handled in Nigeria. This was at a time when as a country we were going about laying claim to a seat on the UN Security Council  to represent Africa, and secondly, our candidacy was also based on the fact that we had participated on several UN peace-keeping and peace-enforcement operations . There we were, losing one of the planks of our credentials for permanent membership of the UN Security Council because of the greed and unconcern by one of the key persons in government.

    This reminds me of what a Zimbabwean minister, an academic colleague, asked me in 1990 about why during military regimes, Nigeria always got its act together but that during civilian regimes, there was a decline in the quality and dedication to service of the political leaders. Of course as a democrat I had no answer and it would have been out of place for me to endorse or support his observation. Even if he was correct, the behaviour of our men in uniform going by recent revelations leaves much to be desired.

    How can one explain the top echelon of our army and air force embezzling billions of Naira and millions of dollars meant to purchase arms and ammunition for soldiers in war time? These people were not only undermining the security of the country, they were also sending officers and men to die during unequal engagement with enemy troops of the Boko haram. Some of them had the temerity of trying unwilling soldiers in court-martial for refusing to go to the front with guns that would not fire!  National security should be sacrosanct. All officers and men should know this and if they have forgotten then there is a need to teach it not only to our security forces but to all citizens. In other climes, these military looters would have been tried in military courts rather than in civilian courts followed by a horde of so-called Senior Advocates eager to share in the loot and laughing all the way to the banks at the country’s expense.

    What can the country do? What can poor Buhari do? How many of our fights can he be expected to fight especially in a country that has seen so much misrule that it is almost inoculated to bad news and official thievery and dereliction of duty?

    Recently, the new Inspector-General of Police accused his predecessor of going away with 24 cars and his deputy inspectors-general and assistant inspector-generals went away with eight cars each. The question to ask is why is so much spent on cars and little or nothing spent on investigating tools and gadgets. Is this not the police that always claim it has no vehicles when people being robbed call on them for assistance? Are there no auditors any more in the various ministries and departments of government?

    A friend of mine told me recently that we all know that our country has gone to the dogs. He said our emphasis is what to do to reverse the situation. One hopes we have not gone beyond redemption. My suggestion is that there is a need for moral rearmament on a national scale. Our places and leaders of various religions should be called by the president and enlisted in to this campaign to rebuild Nigeria. We should encourage people who have gone astray whether caught or not to come forward and give testimonies of where they went wrong and vomit what they have like gluttons consumed even when they did not need to eat. They should demonstrate penance and be ready for restitution. We need to teach Nigerians to demand their rights from leaders who are not performing. Stomach infrastructure alone will not do. Man shall not live by bread and butter alone! There is also a need to challenge our people to work hard and that hard and honest work will be rewarded. Our people must be told not to celebrate people whose sudden source of wealth is not known. A review of all national honours since 1960 should be undertaken so that those who had earned them illegitimately should be dishonoured. In fact the award of national honours should be suspended until this suggested review has been carried out to remove those who are unworthy from the pantheon of national heroes.

    There is also a need to embark on serious educational campaign to all adult citizens and children in schools through teaching of good citizenship so that everybody would know that they are stakeholders in a future Nigeria where honesty would pay. Whatever has been surrendered by looters and whatever assets had been seized and monetized should be put into a special account from where special projects that will empower the people would be funded. The N300 billion that politicians had claimed since 2007 for so-called constituency projects must be recovered to be used for community projects as determined by the people. From now on, budgeting must be done in such a way that the people must have input into the process so that people’s concern can be factored into governance.

    Of course there is no country that is free of corruption. The difference is that punishment is usually sure and swift. This should be the way forward in Nigeria. The law is no respecter of persons. May I say I particularly admire the state of Israel which in recent time has jailed respectively a President for rape and a Prime Minister for corruption and is currently investigating a  sitting Prime Minister. It is only when we know impunity will be punished that people will sit up. People always respond to the stimulus of pain and pleasure; when people know that what they have illegitimately acquired could be taken from them or their children when they pass on, then the primitive accumulation of wealth now prevailing in Nigeria would become history. We need to know that all earthly wealth will end here on this terrestrial plane and that we brought nothing to this world and when we go we will take nothing with us. All that we think is important and pride ourselves in acquiring is vanity and our efforts at the end of the day is futile. This is the message our mosques and churches should be preaching. What will it benefit a man if he has the whole world and loses his soul? What is important is not how much one has but what good name and reputation one has built. Our heroes as a people should not be the rich and the powerful but the solitary workman providing for the needs of his family from the sweat of his labour and being contented with whatever he has achieved by dint of his exertion and hard work. This is what all our religions teach us and if we are true to our faith this is what we should try and do.

  • Nigerian politicians and “awoof” mentality

    Professor emeritus Akin Mabogunje, NNOM, shared with me a lecture he delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Oba Kayode Adetona chair in politics at Olabisi Onabanjo University recently. The thrust of Mabogunje’s lecture was that for a long time our country had been run on an economy in which resources appear inexhaustible and that no matter how buffeted the economy might have been, no apparent damage was noticeable until now when chicken has come home to roost and we are all going to pay for the sins of the past in one way or the other. One military ruler was once quoted saying that after all he had done to the Nigerian economy, he was surprised that the economy had not collapsed! I cannot vouch for the veracity of what the military ruler allegedly said but I can say without any fear of contradiction that much harm had been done to the Nigerian economy and yet it is still standing. We as a country are extremely lucky to have a resilient economy that has survived this far. Venezuela, a country of about 20million was producing eight million barrels of crude oil a day compared with Nigeria’s production at the best of times of two million barrels a day for a country of 170 million, yet Venezuela has collapsed while in spite of the terrible looting of its treasury, Nigeria wobbles on like a drunken sailor.

    We are told that the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate rejected the N10 billion each allocated to them to build their residences. No reason was given for this but the report said they are living in their homes or perhaps in hotel suites and apparently drawing financial allowances for this. The question to ask is what happened to the previous residences of their predecessors? Were they also privatized like the ministerial houses and sold to their occupants at paltry and ridiculous prices? Are we going to be building official residences for Speaker after Speaker and their counterparts in the Senate? These two houses are debating according immunity to those who become speakers and presidents of the Senate as well as recognizing for purposes of pensions to the so-called principal officers for both houses. In the USA where we are told we borrowed these oversized legislative outfits from, it is the Vice President who presides over the Senate and in his absence the leader of the majority party. It is high time through legislation or constitutional changes we did away with this anomaly of president of the senate. Perhaps minor constitutional changes are actually needed now such as part time members of a unicameral house and severe pruning of members and reduction in the number of the multitudinous impecunious states. The time for a French-like presidential system combining the British parliamentary system with American presidential system has probably come if we are a serious country.

    What has informed the writing of this present piece is what I read in the Nigerian newspapers recently about the pensions and gratuities of governors their deputies and proposed pensions and gratuities of so-called principal officers of the National Assembly, that is, the Senate and the House of Representatives and presumably the state houses and local government legislative assemblies. Since it was not controverted, an ex-governor of Akwa Ibom State would earn as pension  of N300 million a year  plus six new cars every two years, medical expenses of his family at home and abroad, security detail, personal assistants and two houses, one in Abuja and the other in Akwa Ibom, annual holidays abroad for his entire family. I am using the Akwa Ibom case as a template for other states although I assume less-endowed states would not go as wild as Akwa Ibom State has gone. The fact remains that all the states of the federation have allocated this kind of outlandish and obscene largesse to their departing state executives and their deputies. These laws were passed during the time of plenty and awoof economy. One wonders if this kind of thievery can now be justified when states and even the federal government are not paying salaries when due. Even if we were still living in a time of plenty, can we in good conscience justify these humongous financial benefits to people who not only benefited while in office through unaudited so-called security votes? I call on President Buhari to shine some light on this unearned income by people who served their states for between four and eight years. In most cases the same people are again in the Senate or in the federal executive. Take for example the current Senate president who will like to retire on millions of naira while also collecting millions of naira from his impoverished Kwara State to add to his billions! And this in a country where government is not able to pay workers minimum wage of N18,000 a month! This is just not right and if things continue like this, the whole creaky state structure will collapse like a pack of cards. A house built on spittle cannot last. It is in the interest of all of us to do what is right before, in the words of George Rude, the crowd takes over affairs into their hands in a blind fury to correct the injustice in our country.

    I have not included the president and vice president in this veiled criticism of politicians not because politicians at that level are saints while those on other levels are Devils. I am convinced that anybody who has served at the apex of government at the national level deserves some rewards as long as they are not outrageously obscene. If they are, they should be radically pruned down. I do not see why anybody, be he a former president or vice president, should earn a pension of more than a million naira a month. Most of us after years of serving the country in our various capacities make do with a fifth of that amount a month. If we are going to be called to make sacrifices, everybody must be seen to be doing the same. The days of awoof is hopefully over and if we have excess money or windfall, we should learn how to save and invest for the future of our children because no generation has the right to squander what rightfully belongs to all generations. Oil that has gotten into our heads and made us drunk is a wasting asset which will soon finish or become useless and worthless as a result of alternative source of energy the search for which is driven by concern for the abused global environment suffering from hydrocarbon emission. This idea of putting aside money for the future was what informed Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and the province of Alberta to buy into blue chip companies all over the world against a future of scarcity of resources and lean years. I personally had an opportunity to suggest this to a previous civilian vice president of this country but the idea was dismissed as inappropriate for a large country with a huge population which was just an excuse for continued and continuous looting of the national exchequer.

  • Monguno: A decent man finishes his earthly work

    In Kanuri culture, the word shettima signifies learning and leadership. Although nowadays it can just be a name parents give to their children but in the past it was a title conferred on scholars or leaders. It has the same meaning with the Arab sheikh or Sai’d or Syed. Among the Mandinka speaking people, the word Sekou, like in Sekou Toure connotes the same meaning. During the first republic there were five politicians that dominated the politics of Borno. The numero uno among them was Shettima Kashim Ibrahim (Sir Kashim Ibrahim), the first central minister of education in the early 1950s who later became governor of Northern Nigeria after independence. He was the first indigenous education officer in the north of Nigeria and it was him who largely recruited the other Kanuri leaders and ensured they went to school at the expense of the local government. The four other Kanuri leaders were Waziri Ibrahim who served as minister of economic development under Sir Abubakar and later leader of the Great Nigeria Peoples Party during the 2nd Republic who was noted for championing the idea of “politics without bitterness”. He later married the first daughter of Sir Kashim Ibrahim. Then there was Zanar Bukar  Dipcharima,  a flamboyant politician who was also in Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s independence cabinet. Then there was Ibrahim Imam who was leader of the Borno Youth Movement who later allied with the Action Group of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the politics of the First Republic and finally, Shettima Ali from the village of Monguno not far from the shores of Lake Chad where Kanuri culture was at its purest. All these people dominated the politics of Borno for years  and stabilized the place to the extent that it was one of the most peaceful divisions in the North of Nigeria. Although in the 1950s when there were problems in Borno, Sir Kashim Ibrahim left his ministerial post in Lagos to become the Waziri of Borno and rooted out all signs of dissidence and disaffection. Borno was the first place to be islamised in Nigeria and it was from there the rest of Muslim Nigeria got its light. The Kanuri are justifiably proud of their contribution to ancient and modern history of Nigeria. It is therefore a sad thing for many people to see Borno descend to this abysmal level of terrorism of the Boko haram insurgency.

    Alhaji Shettima Ali Monguno epitomized all that was good about Borno culture and civilization. Like any young man in the 1960s the name of Shettima Ali meant only one thing to me, this was that he was a member of the Northern People’s Congress which was antithetical and opposed to the Action Group of which my own brother was one of its leaders. Several years later, his name came up when I was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lagos. This was in 1976 when the awards and ceremonial committee of the university came up with names of people to be awarded honorary doctorates of the university during our convocation ceremonies. I was an elected member of Senate. In those days, we normally supported whatever our vice chancellor the late Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi brought to Senate. Professor Ajayi was not only my teacher, he also held the key to my future progress and promotion in his hands. So it was suicidal to frontally confront the vice chancellor. I do not remember what happened to me but I put up my hand to say Senate should reject the nomination. I had nothing against him but against the regime of General Yakubu Gowon which had humiliated university teachers by evicting us from our flats for declaring industrial action against the government because of poor remuneration. Secondly it was our perception that none of the people in that government particularly a man who for years was minister of mines and power which supervised the petroleum in industry could be awarded a honorary doctorate for honesty as the citation stated. We said how could anybody pronounce another honest when he had no access to intelligence report. I was supported by my fellow elected members of Senate and surprisingly by Professor Lallage  Bown, a British professor who was very close to our vice chancellor  who argued that she was always surprised that Nigerian universities did not find any of their fellow academics  suitable and deserving  of award for honorary degrees. Professor Ajayi, tongue in cheek then asked me to make a nomination and I said “Mustapha Adeoye”. And he said who was that and I said “The leader of the Agbe Koya “ a group  of farmers in western Nigeria rebelling against taxes and neglect. That led to much laughter and the nomination was withdrawn.

    I now regret this for many reasons after I had had opportunity to know Shettima Ali. First of all, I can say that politicians of the First Republic were largely clean and honest. After writing biographies of Chief S. L  Akintola, Chief F.S Okotie-Eboh and Sir Kashim Ibrahim, it is quite clear to me that the leaders of the First Republic were not correctly portrayed in existing literature which simply parroted the  unproven allegation  of the military that overthrew the civilian administration of the First Republic. Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Sir Kashim Ibrahim had no houses in 1966 and the Prime Minister and the Premier of the North who were killed could not have been guilty of corruption.

    I got to know Shettima Ali intimately from 1978. He was then the pro-chancellor and chairman of council of the University of Calabar and I was Director of the Nigerian Universities Commission office first in Ottawa and later Washington DC. Most of the then new universities came abroad to recruit staff. Shettima Ali was also a member of one committee or the other in the United Nations. He was therefore a regular visitor to New York and Washington DC. I remember welcoming him sometimes at the airport and as he comes out of immigration he would be carrying his brief case and I would ask him where his box was and he would smile that he never travelled with suitcases. He would explain that he always travelled with his trademark dark long kaftan, under wears, and toilet bag in his brief-case while wearing another dark kaftan. He told me whenever and wherever he arrived, he would send to laundry what he was wearing and change to the clean kaftan in his brief case. He jokingly said no one would know how many clothes he brought abroad and that he did not come out for fashion parade. I found this extremely humble and ennobling from a man who had occupied many positions in our country including being president of OPEC at one time or the other. He never threw his weight around and if he waited to be brought to the office and the driver was late he would show up in a taxi. Everything about the man was different from the way lesser Nigerians behave while in public office. One day I raised the issue of corruption by public servants and he agreed that the level must be brought down. He then told me that the only property he had outside his simple house in Maiduguri was a house in Lagos. He told me he was sold the land as a member of the cabinet during the Gowon regime and he kind of forgot about it until a friend asked him whether he had built on it. He said he told his friend he had no money. This was the minister of petroleum! He said he was then told he could give the land to a contractor who would then build on it, use it and after about 20 years transfer it to him. He said for that advice he would not have owned any property in the then federal capital after almost two decades of service in government.

  • Iraqi war and Chilcot report

    The media in the UK is awash with news and commentaries about the report of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq 13 years ago on the ostensible grounds that the Iraqi president, Saddam Husain was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). We all know that the intelligence report presented to both the American and British publics was fabricated and false. I can still see in my mind’s eye, General Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State  waving a piece of paper in the UN Security Council (UNSC) in which it was allegedly stated the volume of uranium imported from the Republic of Niger and with which Saddam Husain was planning to make nuclear weapons. A UN weapons inspection team was sent to Iraq but found no evidence. George Bush, the American president supported by Vice President Cheney, Wolfowitz, General Schwarzkopf and the defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the so-called new conservative group were determined to go to war to illegally remove a sitting head of state based on spurious grounds that Iraq was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. In order to make the invasion look like an international operation in consonance with the UN idea of collective security, the United States government got the unquestioning support of the British government led by Tony Blair. Public opinion in the UK was against the war. A demonstration of about one million people converged on Hyde Park to try to prevail on the government not to join the war. Even the governing Labour Party was split down the line but the then Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently operating with the spirit of special relations withthe United States was determined to demonstrate more loyalty to the USA than to the British electorate.In actual fact, the reason for war was more personal to George Bush who felt Saddam Husain planned to kill his father. Secondly after the 9/11 attack on the most important  American institutions like the World Trade Centre in New York,the Pentagon in Washington DC, failed attempt to bomb the White House,the American government was looking for a way to demonstrate power to impress the American people. In spite of the fact that almost all the 19 members of the Al Qaida group involved in turning civilian planes into weapons of war and terrorism that killed about three thousand people in the USA were Saudis, America decided to visit their sins on hapless Iraqis. Reasons were cooked up and an assemblage of the willing was put together to support American invasion of Iraq.

    It is now academic whether the decision of the British to join the invasion was as significant as the British public is now being made to think. I am personally convinced that the Americans were determined with or without Britain to go to war.The war was a mistake no doubt about it and the consequence of the war has left the world unsafe and dangerous. The British are now up in arms against Tony Blair for causing the deaths of 170 soldiers while not recognizing the250 thousand civilians who were incinerated through carpet bombing and the use of indiscriminate force against a legitimate government that posed no threat to the USA and Great Britain. Iraq was destroyed. Saddam Husain and his sons and grandson and several members of the Baathist party were killed. The most stupid thing the invaders did was the dissolution of the Iraqi army and all its security forces and the promotion of Shiites to replace the Sunnis who under Saddam Husain were the dominant force in Iraq. They may have been driven by the ideals of liberal democracy but the Middle East as it has now been realized is not the place to experiment with democracy.The consequence of the war is the destruction of the entire Middle East. The same thinking that outsiders have the right to dictate to other countries how to run their countries is still prevailing in the chancelleries of most countries in the West. This was what led to western instigation of so-called Arab Spring the result of which was the intervention in Libya, the support for rebels in Syria,  Oman,Yemen ,Tunisia even Algeria. Only Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and theEmirates were spared from western meddlesomeness. The question to ask is whether the world is safer today than in 2003 when this whole thing began. No part of the world is safe today. The recent attack on the prophet’s mosque in Medina shows that no place is safe or sacred from attack by these non-stateactors.

    Our own problem in Nigeria with Boko Haram is not unconnected with the NATO intervention in Libya which led to the killing of a sitting head of state and the dispersal of a stockpile of weapons across the Sahara desert being used by Al Qaida in the Maghreb, Al Qaida in West Africa and Al Shaba in the Horn of Africa.The African Union tried to persuade NATO not to get involved in Libya but they were brushed aside. I am not proud that the Jonathan administration connived with the West in its intervention in Libya.

    Intervention in Libya took place under the Obama and Cameron administrations. This is why the Cameron government understands the predicament of Tony Blair who is being threatened withprosecution by families of soldiers who died in the Iraqi war. Some are even asking that he should be dragged before the International Criminal Court in Hague in Holland. I am afraid Tony Blair will be protected by the Anglo-Saxon establishment in the UK and the USA .The kind of public opprobrium Tony Blair is being subjected to compares sadly with the almost total acquiescence and approval for George Bush in the USA. This shows the difference between American and British politics. British politicians are more accountable to the public because of the parliamentary system in which members of cabinet are subjected to questioning during debates and question time in parliament. The American system epitomizes more the Montesquieu’s idea of separation of power and the cabinet is not directly answerable to Congress except during special hearings in Congress. Perhaps the most important thing is that the USA is a world power and not answerable to any power but itself. American deference to the UN is a matter of convenience. Of course Russia also only pays regard to the UN when its own national interest is notinvolved.

    Unfortunately one of the recent tendencies in international relations is for powerful countries operating either under UN auspices and cover or even without it to take unilateral action against those they have problems with.This has led to most countries that feel threatened now to resort to nuclear armament as a deterrent as is the case with Israel, Pakistan,North Korea and clandestinely Iran. In all this, it is the poor people who suffer. One of the double standards people allege in the case of the Iraq war was that unlike post Second World War Germany and Japan, no thought was given to post conflict reconstruction in Iraq. We now have a situation in which a country with an old civilization has been destroyed and the contagion has spread to Syria with her own old civilization destroyed and the rest of the Arab world and other countries in the world living in fear of non-state terrorism whether in the garb of Islamic State (IS) or various variants of Al Qaida and theiraffiliates. In the meantime the world has witnessed massive migration and dispersal of people not seen since the Second War. Millions of Arabs have been reduced to beggary, destitution and even prostitution. Europe has also witnessed instability as a result of massive migration causing disaffection in many countries in Europe and leading to the rise of right wing fascist parties or tendencies in France,Hungary Britain, Slovakia, TurkeyGreece, Germany and Austria that have borne the weight of these migrations. The recent BREXIT vote in Britain is directly related to the possible fear of migration from Turkey and the rest of Europe. These are difficult times. The future political development of the world is pregnant and no one knows what it will bear.

  • Brexit and its aftermath

    I was in London about two years ago when the referendum on whether Scotland would exit the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland was held. Mercifully the Scots seemed to have had doubts about the wisdom of abandoning a time tested union. The entire United Kingdom in this new referendum has decided to leave the European Union  to which the Conservative government of Edward Heath took them into  in 1973  about 43 years ago. The British Prime Minister David Cameron gambled like his Labour predecessor Harold Wilson did in 1975 by directly consulting the British people about whether to stay or leave the European Union apparently believing in the good sense of the British to stay but he was disappointed by the result. It needs to be stated that the leave vote was not overwhelming. It was 48 to 52 percent. But whatever the margin was, it was still a clear decision to leave. Many people in the United Kingdom are however unhappy about the result. Scotland and Northern Ireland, two of the constituent nations making up the United Kingdom voted clearly to stay in the European Union. The capital city of London also voted to stay and more than four million petitions against leaving the union have been signed within the first week after the referendum. To me, all these will amount to nothing. The deed has been done and the consequence will remain for years to come. The Scottish government has gone to meet the EU officials about its desire to stay in the European Union. It is also threatening to hold another independence referendum which it lost two years ago. There is of course no certainty that the Scots would vote to sever ties with the United Kingdom if the Scottish government were to run precipitously into a new referendum. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party which is almost a spent force is also joining its Scottish counterpart in threatening a dissolution of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland has not said much apart from Sin Fein the nationalist party there unconvincingly saying it may call for unification with the Republic of Ireland. The problems on the issue of possible union of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland are so fraught with danger of renewed civil war that no serious politician would dare raise the issue at this volatile time. Nothing is really predictable these days.

    There is of course no doubt that the economic repercussions of BREXIT would have serious ramifications in the United Kingdom. Its economy would definitely contract gradually during the next two years of its negotiation to exit the European Union. Its currency is weakening and there is a long term forecast that the pound sterling will be at par with the American dollar which will be almost a 20 percent depreciation. The result of this may be positive or negative. It will make British goods cheaper on the world market but the negative aspect is that imports like oil to Britain will be costlier since this is priced in dollars and there is not much left of North Sea oil. Inflation will rise and there will definitely be job losses arising from headquarters of multinationals moving their European operations out of London to Dublin, Paris or Frankfurt.

    The political instability that exit from Europe has already created can be seen in the disarray in both the Conservative and Labour parties. The Conservative Party would not have a new leader until the end of August and Jeremy Corbyn  has just lost a confidence vote in his leadership by the labour parliamentary  party. Ordinarily he should have resigned but he is banking on the illusion that the rank and file of labour members outside parliament are with him. He foolishly thinks they approve of his lack-lustre performance since his election last year. If he does not go, the Labour Party may witness history repeating itself with the coming into being of a new party as happened in the 1970s when the brilliant Roy Jenkins formed the Social Democratic Party and took substantial members of the Labour parliamentary party with him. No one knows what will happen this time and the situation in the Conservative party is also not clear.

    In the Conservative party, Boris Johnson the openly ambitious and flamboyant London mayor may put people off because of his putting his own interest above that of country. The man who was riding the horse of anti-immigration to achieve the BREXIT victory is now saying he would not insist on banning immigrants coming to Britain in exchange for access to the European Union. He says there was more in the campaign than just anti-immigration. Yes there are other things but the poor electorate was sold the dummy of a stop to immigration and impliedly an expulsion of those who are here already in order to create jobs for Britons and school places for their children as well as huge funding of the national health services through retaining and transferring to it 350 million pounds sterling allegedly being transferred by Britain every week to the European Union. It has now turned out that the BREXIT campaign was based on outright lies. If Boris Johnson loses, the current Home Secretary Theresa May could emerge as consensus candidate. The political vacuum is creating instability all around Britain and anti-social elements are beginning to vent their pent up anger and racism on European immigrants and visible minorities of Blacks and Asians. People are being bullied, heckled and physically assaulted on the streets and told to go back to their home countries irrespective of how many generations they have stayed in the United Kingdom. This dangerous trend is being watched by the security people and politicians are being asked to rein in their unruly supporters.

    The BREXIT no doubt would have negative effect on the European Union itself. There is fear that other members may follow BREXIT. France under Marie Le Pen, its racist and right wing politician may take a page out of the British exit. If that happens, the European Union will disintegrate. This is why the British will be harshly rebuffed when it dreams of negotiating a new deal that will guarantee it the advantages of the free market without commitment to free movement of labour. The European Union too will see its influence and its market and economy diminish by BREXIT and even the global economy will witness a decline in growth as has been predicted by the IMF.

    The British are living in the past of “RULE BRITANNIA, BRITANNIA RULE TH E WAVES “. Some of the BREXIT campaigners are citing Australia and New Zealand as already asking to trade with Britain as if that can replace a near market of over 500 million people in Europe. On the day of the referendum result, I heard one of the leaders saying Ghana had indicated its readiness to enter into new trading relations with Britain. What a joke! This shows the level of propaganda the BREXIT people will go. Of course Britain will survive as a viable country; the question is whether it will thrive. The USA would do all in its power to assist the British but it would not choose Britain over Europe no matter how many times the Obama administration parrots, tongue in cheek, the so-called special relations with Britain. Britain is in post-industrial phase of its development relying mostly on service industries of banking, insurance, legal services, shipping, aviation and international education and tourism. All these can be wiped out by growing racism and xenophobia.

    African countries will not be seriously affected by BREXIT. Our trade nowadays is mainly with China, India, European Union and to a lesser extent the United States. The coming decline in the United Kingdom’s economy will lead to diminution in technical assistance. This however cuts both ways. Besides the time has come when we should depend on ourselves and pull up our countries by our own bootstraps. The economic volatility which BREXIT caused would however settle down and one sincerely hopes Scotland can be persuaded not to trigger the liquidation of the British Union.

  • Food security in Nigeria

    I travelled two weeks ago to the University of Ilorin for a lecture in their Department of Political Science precisely to Masters Students in International Studies. I could not but notice the immensity of the university’s campus. It stretched beyond what the eyes can see. It reminded me what a former Israeli ambassador to Nigeria told me about the abundance of land in our country most of which lie fallow without being used. He then ruefully said how his country and the Arabs were fighting over little tracts of desert land. He added that if Israel had just Kwara State as its land, it would be able to feed the whole world.This is not an exaggeration after all four percent of the Americans who are farmers produce more than enough food to feed the whole world and to maintain a good price for their produce substantial portion of which yield are routinely destroyed. It is not only the University of Ilorin that has huge land which is hardly utilized; many of our universities are in the same league when it comes to the size of their campuses. I sometimes wonder if our people know that land is wealth. God really loves us in this country that He has endowed us with so much land ranging from mangrove to rain forest; to Savannah and Sahel; each of this zone is suitable for different agriculturaluse.

    Recently housewives in some parts of Nigeria particularly Lagos were crying about how expensive tomatoes and peppers were! And yet our land is crying for cultivation while our youth are riding motorcycles all over the country including in the villages supposedly making a living as motorcycle taxis. The question of food security in our country is assuming significant dimension. The peasant agriculture that we had been depending upon is no longer adequate and we must do something about it. We can begin by challenging all our universities both state and federal universities that have faculties of agriculture to go into commercial agriculture by turning their unused lands into commercial farms. The federal government can afford to endow each university with anything from half a billion to one billion Naira with the proviso that the money is a loan which will be deducted from their normal allocations spread over a period of five years. This way the money will not be misappropriated, misapplied or stolen. The challenge to be given to these universities would be to feed the towns where they are located by providing enough food for the people to buy. If there are a hundred universities that have agricultural faculties and feeding our people, then our country will be secure and we will be self-sufficient in yams, maize, cassava, soybeans, black eyed beans, plantains, millet, sorghum not to talk about peppers, onions,tomatoes and all kinds of fruits that our tropical climate is suitable for. Our universities with faculties of engineering would be challenged to produce appropriate technology to add value to what would be produced by these commercial farms. We will then do away with graduates of agriculture looking for jobs in the banks and engineering graduates riding okada.

    I know some people may say this cannot be done or that it cannot work because it has not be done somewhere before. Why don’t we do it and make it work so that people can come to learn from us for once? Why are we always learning from others without contributing to the quantum of knowledge? What I have suggested here may not fall within the parameters of economic orthodoxy. But who cares. If it works we would be better for it.

    What better time to try all kinds of strategies just to get this country out of dependency on oil and gas and the blackmail we are being subjected to by the insatiable demands of those claiming  the right of ownership to these wasting assets. The only way our country will develop is through industrialization and agriculture. We must be able to add value to our produce. We must not only be able to feed ourselves we must also be able to export our agricultural produce after adding value to them. Land is such a valuable asset. We must not just allow it to lie fallow without exploitation.

    I remember as a child in primary school we had school farms. We grew yams, maize and groundnuts. At Christ School Ado–Ekiti, we had farms growing yams maize and groundnuts and we had young farmers club which even had apiggery. This is why I do not understand why our faculties of agriculture are merely producing theoretical farmers without huge experimental farms to inculcate practical agriculture into the lives of these students. The time to try new ideas hascome. I remember as a young professor in Canada, some of my students were young people living on the farms with their parents and just hungry for education so that they would know what was going on in the world. I have a dream that one day farming will be so lucrative that after a good degree in the humanities, people will go back to the farm to make a living out of mechanized agriculture not the hoe and cutlass  type invented by our great grandfathers centuries ago which we have not improved upon as if we are brain dead.

  • The BREXIT Debate

    About a year ago, the British were faced with the choice of Scotland seceding from Great Britain and becoming a separate country after hundreds of years of forming the Union of Great Britain with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Pollsters said it was going to be a cliff-hanger and that the outcome of the referendum could go either way. It was a very interesting debate. The Scots felt that they could survive without being part of Great Britain. They apparently thought the North Sea Oil would be sufficient for them especially bearing in mind that their population was less than five million. The Scots also said they could go into a financial arrangement whereby the British pound would continue to be a common currency and that they would continue to owe allegiance to the British Crown which of course has a lot of Scottish blood in its genealogy. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen mother, was actually Scottish.

    Those who wanted to keep Scotland within Great Britain felt that Scottish exit would diminish the importance ofGreat Britain in the world and may expose Scotland to some kind of insecurity especially at a time when Russian planes where constantly violating British airspace. Those who wanted to keep Britain together also felt the British economy, which is the fourth largest economy in the European Union, would provide a better investment environment for Scotland rather than what the little Scottish market would provide. Interestingly, English nationalism has also been rising just like Scottish nationalism. The little Englanders led by Nigel Farrage, actually wanted England to stand on its own and do away with what he called the ‘Scottish burden’. He also felt that since the English had almost become the majority in Wales, England and Wales could form their own separate country while Scotland goes its own way. There was not much said about Northern Ireland, presumably because it was felt that the unification of the entire Ireland was a matter of time especially when it appears the Northern Irish Catholics would outbreed their Protestant counterparts. The entire question was very complex. Mercifully, the referendum came and the Scottish nationalist lost their bid to separate from Great Britain. Throughout the time of the debate, the Queen of Great Britain did not intervene. Constitutionally of course she was not supposed to, but it was clear from her body language that she wanted the union to remain.

    Now, the debate is about Britain leaving the European Union. The same little Englanders joined by Boris Johnson, the flamboyant former Mayor of London are campaigning on the basis of the need for British sovereignty. They argue that Britain had ceded so much power to the European Union and that Britain was no longer in control of its own affairs, especially as it concerns immigration. They claim Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans were flooding into the country to exploit the social welfare state, particularly, collecting unemployment payment as well as benefiting from free health service that are available to tax-paying British citizens. They also argue on purely nationalistic basis, that many Europeans who flood into their country do not speak English at all and that many parts of Britain especially England are now inhabited by non- English speaking people. This particular argument is not really a honest one because there are a few cities in England like Bradford where Pakistanis and Indians predominate and you are more likely to hear Urdu spoken than English in some of these places.

    The strongest support for the BREXIT people are in small English towns, particularly in the North, while the south and the London Metropolitan area, where there are many people of different races are likely to support those who want to stay in the European Union. Those who want to stay, led by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, are using almost the same argument as was used in the Scottish debate. They argue that a British exit would diminish the importance of Great Britain in the world. It would also lead to insecurity, they argue. Their strongest argument however, is the economy. More than 60 percent of British trade is with the European Union. They also argue that most multi-nationals headquartered in London and doing business in Europe, would move their headquarters out of London to either Paris or Frankfurt, thus further undermining the British economy. Friends of Great Britain, particularly the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have advised the British to stay in the European Union, so also has leaders of Europe and Cameron has cynically said that international leaders supporting Britain’s exit from Europe are probably Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the ISIS leader Abubakar al Baghdadi. The chance of Britain leaving the European Union is 50- 50. There is no doubt that immigration has become a sensitive matter in the world, not only in Great Britain but in the United States, where Donald Trump, the Republican candidate is running strongly on anti-immigration sentiment. There is a rising nationalism all over the world and it is becoming almost an irrational force. We have seen this kind of sentiment before and if not well controlled, it always leads to crisis and even war.

    It is surprising that the British have forgotten a little bit of their history and that withdrawing from Europe is not a solution to their problem. In fact, engagement with Europe is always in the interest of peace. One would have thought that the British would remember that between 1914 and 1945, hostility between France and Germany plunged the whole world into two world wars with a cumulative loss of more than 50 million people, either through direct action or because of collateral damage. The rapprochement between France and Germany which forms the basis of the European Union has been one of the solid foundations of peace in Europe and in the world. Britain should be supporting this enduring peace between France and Germany, the cornerstone of the European Union. If Britain withdraws, there might be temptations of other countries to begin to leave the union and that ultimately, Germany and France may also go their separate ways and the world would be the loser because then peace would not be guaranteed.

    It is one of the cardinal principles of the United Nations to support the idea of regionalism and world order. Regional bodies are seen as building blocks for global peace. A British exit from Europe would strike a deadly blow to this concept. Vladimir Putin’s policy of Russia defending the interest of all Russians in Eastern Europe has led to war in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea by Russia. There are Russian minorities in the 15 former countries that form the Soviet Union and Putin’s policy of defending Russians everywhere is a manifestation of rising Russian nationalism if not militarism. Countries in the Eastern periphery of the European Union like Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, some of which have substantial Russian minorities already feel threatened by Russia’s expansionism. For the sake of balance of power, this is not the time for the western alliance especially the European Union to begin to disintegrate. This may create a room for adventurism on the part of Russia, which would invariably lead to war.

    A new dimension has unfortunately been introduced into the debate when a young labour member of the British Parliament, Jo Cox, was murdered by an apparently insane English nationalist who not only knifed her but also shot her, while shouting ‘Britain first, down with traitors’. This violence is unheard of in British recent history. The home of parliamentary debate has now witnessed thuggery and violence in their highest form of murder. It is hoped that this is not a rising phenomenon and English thuggery at football matches is also a part of this manifestation of tendency towards violence. Whatever the case may be, it is hoped that whatever the British decide would not lead to more violence of those who support exit and those who oppose it. The British generally are commonsensical people and I believe they would vote to stay in the European Union as the Scots did last year. Interestingly, the Scots this time around are supporting Britain’s stay in the European Union.

  • Need to inform about government policies

    I overheard a lady saying to her colleague that she prefers Jonathan’s corruption to Buhari’s change. Needless to say I was sad and felt very bad that this lady does not understand what the present government is doing and nobody is informing her about why things are this bad!

    One might say the lady in question is not well informed. But when one hears comments from apparently knowledgeable people saying the same thing one gets worried. It is axiomatic that change must involve moving from the known to the unknown and in most cases this may mean going through some tough time with the hope that things overtime will be better. Shouldn’t everybody know that Nigeria operates a mono economy of oil and gas and that the price of crude petroleum has declined by 60 percent? Consequently the foreign exchange accruing to Nigeria has fallen by 60 percent. This little money coming in is largely used to import refined petrol and a few other things. The result of this is the scarcity of foreign exchange and falling value of the Naira.  This is simple logic and it does not require a degree in economics to understand this law of demand and supply. If we had saved money at time of plenty when oil was selling between $100 and $140 a barrel, we would not be in this bind. If we had maintained our refineries, we would not be importing to our shame refined petrol to power our vehicles and industries. This was not because we did not vote humongous amount for so called turnaround of our refineries. We did but the money was serially stolen. I remember writing about this when the roguish Abacha awarded TOTAL petroleum company a contract of $100 million for turnaround maintenance of Kaduna refinery. I wrote to ask how much a new one would have cost. My reward was detention in Child Street Military Camp for months for having the effrontery to challenge those who were robbing the country blind. If we had used the petrol money to diversify our economy and go into mechanized farming, open up the country by building railways, ports and roads, there would have been growth and development and we would not have the scourge of Boko Haram and Niger Delta insurgency because the youth would all have been gainfully employed and would have had no time for the devilish things they are doing to our country. If we had not had venal politicians looting the treasury to the point of emptiness we would not be where we are today.

    The worst type of stealing took place under the totally disoriented and incompetent Jonathan who apparently was not in charge of things under his watch or he personally joined in and encouraged the feeding frenzy of money eaters. I find it really offensive that Jonathan will be going around the world saying how he fought corruption by giving phones to farmers and how this simple innovation of his put an end to corruption in fertilizer distribution. My God! Does this man know what he is saying? Does he remember allegedly giving his cousin $40 million for doing nothing? Does he remember alienating hectares of prime land to himself near Abuja Airport ostensibly for farming which allowed his minister of the FCT Bala Muhammad to do the same for himself with flagrant impunity thus taking property which is our commonwealth and converting it to personal property?  I hope Buhari will visit the Abuja land racket where civil servants and politicians built estates and where land bought at N50 thousand was sold at a hefty price of N560 million as revealed during the Badeh trial. When Buhari probes the NNPC and Central Bank of Nigeria, people will break down and cry like babies about how their lives and country have been irredeemably ruined. Some of us who have worked all our lives and saved money have now seen the value of our savings wiped out by the declining value of the Naira.

    Poor Buhari; these are the economic problems caused by previous governments which he now has to tackle. Sometimes I wish Jonathan had won the election. I believe he would just have woken up one day to find that he had no country but his Ijaw heartland to run because he would have carelessly given all the money in the Central Bank to political jobbers, friends, family members, hustlers and so-called Niger Delta militants and others scattered all over Nigeria telling him how wonderful a job he was doing. I personally think he was saved from this eventuality by the Nigerian people who mercifully relieved him of a burden he did not have the capacity to carry. So instead of going about and celebrating himself, he should be apologizing to Nigerians for betraying their trust.

    What then is to be done? I pray for good health for Buhari. Even though government is not a one man business, but I do not know anyone who has the determination and capacity of Buhari to save us from ourselves. It is important to institutionalize the anti-corruption campaign by building legal structures to tackle it. Special courts made up of a mixture of lawyers, academics, clerics and workers should be set up to take on cases of flagrant stealing and corruption. Cases must not last more than three months so that we can do away with the prevailing legal rigmarole benefitting and enriching lawyers

    Whatever has been recovered must be made open and deployed to fix roads, railways, airports seaports, schools, universities, hospitals and such public things that people can identify with and big signboards should be placed in front of them declaring them to be what has been done with stolen public money.

    Anybody involved in acts injurious to the people must be named and shamed and banned from holding public office for life.

    Governments at all levels must embark on campaigns of informing the people and the reason why things are as they are and for how long the people should bear with government. There is a need to tell the people to be patient and patriotic and instead of complaining they cannot find tomatoes and peppers they should be told to plant them behind their houses especially those of us outside Lagos where there is enough land. The president, the vice president and the federal cabinet and governors and state commissioners must hold regular press conferences to intimate the people about the direction of government.

    I support restructuring of the polity but the time of crisis is not the right time to embark on such fundamental reforms as being advocated by some well-meaning persons and by some political opportunists who while in power did not see fit to champion the cause  of true federalism, resource control and other emotive slogans. What this country needs right now is peace in our time. There is too much insecurity in the land. My heart hankers after the past when I used to drive alone from Lagos to Jos to Maiduguri to Yola and down to Jalingo, to Gboko to Ogoja, Calabar, Aba, Onitsha, Asaba, Benin, Lagos. Or Lagos to Ilorin, Jebba, Mokwa, Kontagora, Tegina, Kaduna, Zaria, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto or Zaria, Panbegua Jos, Bauchi, Potiskum, Maiduguri. These are routes I have personally driven on. Who can do that today without fear of kidnappers, assassins, herdsmen carrying Kalashnikov rifles and even the dread of pot holes and huge craters on the roads? The point one is making is that we need to be able to move around our country again without molest and unnecessary fear. The first task of government is personal security of its citizens. Any country that is not in motion is a dead country. We must move around and open our eyes to great possibilities of our country. By so doing, we may be able to discover that in spite of our obvious differences, there is more that binds us together than divides us.  We may be able to overcome our sometimes irrational prejudices.

    Just as the government has much to do, we the citizens also have much to do. We should cut down our senseless taste for foreign goods, food, wines, champagne, and clothes and eat and drink and wear only what we can produce. We should be proud of who we are and stop being miserable mimics of foreign cultures. There is no reason on earth for us to eat foreign food and if we must eat them then let us add value to our corn and turn them into cornflakes. We should grow our own rice and even wheat. There is enough fish and poultry in this country to stop importation of them just to name a few. We look better in our Kaftans, agbadas  babanrigas and other wares than in the totally unsuitable three piece suits in the humid tropics where we sweat and smell as a result of wrong dressing. This times call for campaign of patriotism and we need to begin now with the federal ministry of information leading the way and all of us following this struggle of a life time.