The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • The future of Nigeria – 2

    The corruption in Nigeria is fuelled by the oil wealth which unfortunately does not percolate to the ordinary man on the street. The few at the top of society especially in government, bureaucracy and the military have cornered resources and are wasting the national patrimony which is unfortunately based on hydrocarbon resources which are wasting assets. Corruption in Nigeria is not just a crime; it has become a developmental issue. If the resources sucked into this crime are available for development, much would be achieved in terms of improvement and enhancement of the infrastructure, education, health, and other developmental sectors necessary to put Nigeria among the developed countries of the world. Of all the countries in OPEC, Nigeria is one of the least developed and this is due to the fact that the national wealth is not seen as a commonwealth. This is therefore not a good augury for the future.

    The next 100 years would have to be different from this last century. The future is of course pregnant, nobody knows what it would bear. But as they say, the child is the father of the man. Unless we radically change the way of doing things, the next 100 years would be difficult. If we do not drastically control our population through appropriate demographic policy, our population would become a burden to us. The rate of growth of this population seemed to have stabilised somehow in the South-West perhaps because of education and the dwindling economy but in the South-East and in the North, the rate of population is still very high. In the North for example especially among our Muslim brothers, the fact that polygamy is tolerated by Islam makes it difficult to enforce any demographic policy unless the number of children is anchored on the woman rather than on the man. But in the South-East where polygamy is not too popular especially among the elite, it is still a matter of celebration when a single woman is able to have as many as 10 children. This sociological factor in population growth would have to be tackled. Religious differences will also have to be contained because it is not in our interest to have a clash of civilisations based on different religions.

    Religious and population bombs are going to be the greatest threat to Nigeria’s survival in the future. If we can deal with these two factors and reign in the rampant corruption and rapacity in the land and develop our economy away from the exportation of raw commodities, of minerals and farm produce and embark on an industrial economic development so that every Nigerian who wants to work can have work to do and also adopt a policy of careers open to talents and do away with any policy that smacks of affirmative action or discrimination, the next century should be a better century than this last one.

    With more and more Nigerians going to college and getting properly educated, and with the problems of the past being well known and being properly analysed, it should be possible for us to avoid the pitfalls of history if we learn the proper lessons from them. There are certain things that Nigeria must avoid. It is no use comparing Nigeria with America as some people glibly do. We are part of an old continent and we are not an immigrant society. Nigerians love their land and their soil. Different ethnic groups are associated with different parts of the country. The question of indigene-ship and settlerism can tear this country apart if not well handled. This is not to suggest that the movement of Nigerians should be restricted to their home origins but the rights of autochthonous people must be respected and not circumscribed and overwhelmed by new arrivals from different parts of the country. It will not be right for people of different ethnic groups living with others to enjoy double privileges of enjoying rights of abode and rights of origin. This is what is the cause of the problem on the Plateau and several parts of the North and may yet pose a problem in the South particularly in Lagos where the question of indigene-ship and settlerism is beginning to rear its ugly head. Ideally, all Nigerians should be able to live and work in any part of the country and enjoy the right of citizenship without hindrance but this has to be harmonised with the rights of native people and the successful balance of this in Malaysia should be the way forward.

    There is no country in the world that has no problems and Nigeria cannot be an exception. Our diversity was what necessitated our embrace of federalism as a system of government. Unfortunately, over the years, Nigeria has been moving towards a unitary system of government with consequent conflict. We should in the next century define state rights and find the appropriate economic structure that would preserve the rights of states to control their resources while contributing to a weak centre which would have then devolved powers to the states so that political competition would largely be at the state level rather than the do or die competition for control of the centre. If we do not go this way, we would not have learnt any lessons from the history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and nearer home, Ethiopia and Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau in our region. Even good old Great Britain has found it necessary to concede virtual independence to Scotland and Wales in order to maintain the appearance of the unity of Great Britain. If a country that is almost 1000 years old can do this, we should anticipate future political development that would have disastrous consequences in our country and put in process anticipatory policies to obviate disastrous consequences.

    The essence of knowing what is possible is to make sure that we avoid what is avoidable and this is particularly important in the life of our nation. Finally, there must be a divine hand in the fact that the largest concentration of black people is in the area of modern Nigeria. This is also the heart of Africa; this is the place of authentic African culture and if Nigeria cannot manage its diversity, then the future of the entire African continent would be in jeopardy. This is why we must embrace our destiny as a people, and deliberately through education, teach our people that we have a responsibility to generations of future Nigerians and the black race as a whole. In a rapidly globalizing world, where as a result of technology the world is shrinking, we cannot as a black race lag behind other races. If we do, our survival will be in doubt because we may be seen as freaks who are not fully human or some kind of untermenschen not ready or fit to compete with the rest of mankind. This may sound rather unfortunate mentioning the factor of race. But the point is that the racial factor has always been important in international relations and we cannot wish it away. The point to make is that we as Nigerians have a responsibility beyond our immediate frontiers. We owe it to the people of Africa at home and in the African Diaspora to be successful. The success of course will depend on how well we harmonise our differences at home and chart a way forward and take our rightful place in the comity of nations. This is our destiny; it should also be our charge and our bounden duty in the next one century.

  • The future of Nigeria

    One of the reasons for the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 was the economic complementarity of the two British protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria. In other words, it was an economic union but it is not certain that Sir Fredrick Lugard who was behind the amalgamation was prescient enough to hope that economic integration will lead to political integration. In fact, he tried to preserve the political, social and cultural dichotomies of the two regions of Nigeria as he met them. He did try to import indirect rule into the south-western part of the country with its strong indigenous monarchies which he wrongly equated with the northern emirate system and where there were no chiefs in the largely acephalous south-eastern part of Nigeria, he gave warrants to any strong man he could find in the society to become chiefs . This import of the northern emirate system into the south did not always work out. In fact evidence exists to suggest that it led to disaffection and revolt against the colonial government and its surrogates in the South. At an official level, the colonial administration tried to separate people of the South and the North with the effect that southerners living in the northern part of Nigeria lived in the strangers’ quarters or outskirts of towns appropriately named Sabon Garis (new towns). The same thing happened to northern Nigerians living in southern Nigerian towns. So there developed segregated townships, one for native and indigenous inhabitants and the other for their fellow countrymen and women coming from outside the regions. The two local administrations were also separated; the northern part of the country until the 1940s was ruled by orders-in-council meaning by the colonial officials in collaboration with the Emirs while there was an element of democratisation in the south beginning from 1923 when elections were held in Lagos and Calabar to choose educated Nigerians into the legislative council of Nigeria in which the representatives of the North were largely colonial officials. It was not until 1946 that attempts were made to bring the North into the mainstream of Nigerian politics and by this time, the sense of nationalism even though found in the South and in some pockets among educated northerners particularly teachers was not felt in the entire country. The effect of this was that it was easy for the British colonial officials to persuade the northern leadership of imaginary threat from their southern counterparts which led to a comment by a critical colonial official who said that if somehow Nigerians had disappeared from Nigeria even as late as the 1940s, civil war would have broken out between the British officials in the North and the British officials in the South. The point to note is that by the 1950s, Nigerians themselves inherited the prejudice harboured by the British colonial officials in the North and in the South. The result was that when political parties were formed in the 50s, the Jamiyar Mutanen Arewa (JMA) which metamorphosed into the NPC (Northern Peoples Congress) and the Action Group which developed from the Egbe Omo Oduduwa in the South-west were regional parties formed to challenge the nationalist pretension of the NCNC (National Convention of Nigeria and the Cameroons) formed as far back as 1944 as a mass movement and was later to change its name to the National Council of Nigerian Citizens. There was no national party that cut across all the various ethnic groups. This shows to a certain extent that amalgamation did not lead to political integration of the country and the seeds of separation and dichotomy that was sown in 1914 has germinated and grown into a strong tree.

    Nigeria has witnessed series of ups and downs including a civil war and ethnic, religious and fratricidal conflict in some parts of our country in which people of different ethnic groups have found it necessary to kill one another in order to assert and preserve their identities and hold on to indigenous rights and land. Nigeria has never in its history witnessed the kind of terrorism posed to its very existence by the Boko Haram sect. This is a sect that originated in Borno State and that has gradually spread to most parts of Northern Nigeria. The programme of this sect is not quite clear but its declared objective as unrealistic as it may sound, is to establish a caliphate in Nigeria where the Sharia will be in full operation. Leadership of the movement seems rather confused about the strategy for achieving this goal. In its campaign of terror which was originally targeted at Christians, members of the Muslim Ummah are now not being spared in this campaign of slaughter and terrorism. This is why it is difficult to see this movement as a purely Islamic fundamentalist movement. Poverty and hopelessness in the arid North-eastern part of Nigeria may be a contributory factor, but whatever its causes are, which are not very clear, the sovereignty of Nigeria over part of its territory is being challenged. There is evidence to suggest that Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and Al-Shabaab in Somalia have been lending support through training in the use of car bombs and other incendiary devices to the Boko Haram. This is the first challenge in the history of Nigeria where this kind of thing has happened and unfortunately, the use of bombs by this group or its affiliates or other disgruntled elements in the society have spread to such important centres as Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, apart from Maiduguri where killings on a daily basis have become the order of the day.

    The military since their intervention in government in 1966 had tried very hard to restructure the country in such a way as to minimise this regional fissiparous tendencies in the country by dividing the country into several smaller states for ease of administration and development. But it is a moot question whether the sense of separate ethnic identity among Nigerian peoples have been minimised. In fact some have suggested that the military itself as a way of control found it convenient to encourage this sense of separate ethnic identity among Nigerians. After the end of military rule, the politicians have not helped matters because they too have not been able to form country-wide political associations rooted in national ideology. The fact is that most political parties in Nigeria seem to be agglomerations or associations of people formed largely for sharing what is euphemistically referred to as the national cake. The result is that Nigerian politics is about sharing rather than baking the national cake and this sharing is done along ethnic lines and those shut out of the sharing usually feel left out to the point of eagerness to bring down the whole national architecture on everybody’s heads. While this is going on, the task of creating necessary infrastructure on which to build a virile nation and an industrial economy that would provide jobs for the teeming youthful population has been abandoned. It seems every successive government becomes more and more corrupt, inefficient and inept than the previous ones. There is no place in the world that is not afflicted by some form of the cancer of corruption. In the first world of Europe and America, this problem is dealt with using appropriate, sure and immediate sanctions to discourage others who may want to indulge in corruption. But in the third world countries, the crime of corruption has eaten deep into the fabric of society because of uncertain sanctions. In the case of Nigeria, it is not unusual to see people arrested for corruption but they are invariably released after a few days and nothing is heard about it anymore. This has made the problem to fester to such an extent that the public thinks nothing can be done about it. In third world countries such as Nigeria where institutions and structures are weak, leadership is almost everything. If leaders show the way, people will follow. In Nigeria, people tend to see a dichotomy between private and public morality. People who do what is proper in their private lives go ahead to indulge in public corruption. This is rather strange for a country of church and mosque goers. If there was a competition among corrupt nations in the world, Nigeria would be one of the champions.

  • General Benjamin Maja Adekunle: A tribute 

    Everybody knows that on the federal side of the unfortunate Nigerian-Biafran civil war, the recently departed Brigadier -General Benjamin Adekunle was the most successful field commander but also the most colourful and sometimes  arguably the  most controversial officer. He was also the favorite of the international press. I was a post graduate student in Europe and North America during the civil war and we followed the course of the war eagerly and Adekunle’s activities dominated the air waves. He was largely responsible for building a brand new army division through the recruitment hurriedly from Lagos and western Nigeria,  young men who wanted to see action and rushed  through training before deployment into the hot theatre of war .

    This was Adekunle ‘s Third Marine Commando division. Because of the origin of this army formation, it required sometimes unusual and unorthodox mode of discipline which Adekunle provided.The two other divisions, namely the First and Second divisions,  were formed around the nuclei  of well-trained and professional  army units of the pre-civil war years. Due to Adekunle’s indomitable will, he was able to make good fighting men from the new recruits that gained more and more experience and effectiveness as the civil war ground on. Adekunle’s marine commando was deployed in the difficult Niger Delta where with the cooperation of the navy, made an amphibious landing on the islands in the Niger Delta and from there fighting his way from the creeks into places like Bonny and Port Harcourt.

    Before this feat no one thought the army was capable of this kind of achievement. And from one island to the other, Adekunle’s troops between 1967 and 1969, cleared the present Rivers State  and the then Cross River State  Of Biafran troops and fought their way into the heartland of Igbo land capturing Aba, Owerri and Umuahia though they later  lost Owerri and  Adekunle had to be asked to go and rest and Obasanjo asked to take over from him. He promptly ended the war after reorganization and infusion of discipline into the ranks of apparently power drunk rank and file who became over confident of their fighting ability.

    The Second Division of the Nigerian army fighting through the then Midwest region managed to clear the region of Biafran troops but suffered heavy losses in abortive efforts to cross the River Niger from Asaba to Onitsha and huge losses at Abagana before it was able to link up with the First Division of the army which had fought its way from Makurdi to Enugu through  the northern heartland of Igboland. Without taking anything from the first and second divisions of the army and their commanders, General Muhammad Shuwa and General Murtala Muhammed  whose troops naturally met much stronger opposition from the Biafrans in their heartland, Adekunle’s  troops fought in minority areas until 1969 when Adekunle and his troops entered  Igbo land and virtually finished the war before the change of command from Adekunle to Obasanjo.

    Adekunle was a strict disciplinarian who on finding out that one of his officers, Captain Macaulay Larmude had shot an unarmed  civilian  in 1968 got him court-martialled and executed publicly to teach any other gung-ho officers who would not abide by military orders of operation.

    After the war when the cement armada clogged the ports of Lagos, the federal government called again on Adekunle to clear the ports. This was an assignment which, through his unorthodox methods, brought him more enemies until his association with some free-wheeling and high flying  Nigerian women led to his premature and unexpected retirement from the army, which was his life. Murtala  Muhammed’s short administration tried to rehabilitate him by sending  him on  a mission to assist the Angolans in their campaign against Portuguese colonialism. His remit apparently involved arming the Angolan cadres.

    This was a mission which at the end of the war of liberation of Angola in which Nigeria along with Cuba, and the defunct East Germany  helped defeat Portugal and South African forces in Quito Cuanavalle. This brought glory to Nigeria to the extent that the longest avenue in Luanda, the capital of Angola, is named after General Murtala Muhammed. Adekunle apparently, due to licentious living and poor management of his resources, fell on bad times that by the time the NPN government of Shehu Shagari took over in 1979, Adekunle pitifully became some kind of security officer sometimes seen standing unobtrusively behind campaign podium. Towards the end  of his death, he had been abandoned by Nigeria and died poor and unsung.

    On a personal note, I met Adekunle in the late 1970s when I tried to persuade him to write his memoirs. His response was that he knew too much about the country that if he wrote he would shake the Nigerian edifice to its very foundation. I tried to persuade him without success that I could help put his memoirs in diplomatic language that will still tell the truth without offence. Adekunle was a fascinating man. He was a true Nigerian. He was born in Kaduna. His father was from Ogbomoso while his mother was a Bachama from Adamawa. Adekunle himself had a wife from the Niger Delta. He spoke about 10 Nigerian languages including Fulfulde,Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Bachama, Ijaw and Efik.  When I met him, he reminded me of Napoleon who was a very short General like Adekunle with unusual military skill.

    He was a soldiers’ soldier. He was a credit to Sandhurst, that military academy that trained the first crop of officers and gentlemen of the Nigerian army. If the civil war had not been among brothers, Adekunle’s exploits would have gone down into history like those of his military colleagues in other lands. He remains an unforgettable hero of the Nigerian-Biafra civil war and his place in Nigerian history is settled.

  • Tribute to Professor Ade-Ajayi

    When Professor Ade-Ajayi turned 85 recently, a book with the title of J.F Ade-Ajayi, His Life and Works was presented with pomp and pageantry at the new University of Ibadan Conference Centre to celebrate an iconic figure in the history of African academia.

    Professor Ajayi was born in Ikole, Ekiti State to a doting father and an enterprising mother. His father was a local post man and a counsellor in the palace of the Elekole. Even with his limited exposure to western education, his father knew that the key to a bright future for his young son was education. He therefore billeted the young Jacob in the house of a local teacher so that he could have a head-start among his colleagues. Later, he was sent to Ado-Ekiti where he also lived with a teacher and friend of his father while he was going to the Ekiti Central School that later metamorphosed into the famous Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti. It was from Ado-Ekiti that at the age of 11 in 1940, Ajayi left for Lagos, the frontier of opportunity at that time and enrolled in Igbobi College for his secondary education.

    Igbobi College brought the young man into contact with other Nigerians. While in school, he never took the second position he also never played any games and rose to become as was expected school library prefect and from that time onwards, he and the world of books could not be separated. He was not only a bibliophile and a bookworm, he was also determined to go as far as his brain would take him. On leaving Igbobi College, he was too young to go to Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, the only university in West Africa affiliated with Durham University in England. He also did not have rich parents who could have sent him abroad. He contented himself with taking examination to the Yaba Higher College to read English, Latin and History.

    As providence will have it, University of Ibadan opened its gate in 1948 and Ade-Ajayi crossed over and was one of its first students. Three years later, he graduated with a general degree in English, Latin and History. He later went to Leicester University where he took a first class honours degree in History and he later went to the University of London for a PhD in History.

    He returned to Nigeria in 1958 and within five years of returning home, he had not only become a professor but one whose views were very much sought after at home but particularly abroad. With Professor Onwuka Dike, he blazed the trail of the study of African History and African Historiography generally. Before this time, Euro-American historians dismissed the idea of African history and asserted that Africa had no history and that if it had any, it must be the activities of the Europeans in Africa. One even famously said, Africa was a dark continent and darkness was not a subject of history. Ajayi and others both in Africa and some in Europe and America embarked on the diligent search and study of the African past. The absence of written documentation, they asserted did not mean the absence of history and that in any case, it is not the entire African continent that lacked written civilisation as can be evidenced by written materials on North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sudan belt of Africa, the eastern coast of Africa and the southern part of Africa where European and Arab accounts of the places provided substantial material for the study of the African past. Even where there were no documents, Ajayi and others led the world in the understanding of the usefulness of remembered accounts as contained in oriki, cognomen, oral poetry, kinglist, festival re-enactments of the past etc. Memorised history by griots and other professional historians in the courts of rulers who must remember their histories or lose their lives also provide materials for understanding the African past. Ajayi and others were able to unearth these golden materials for the purpose of elucidating the past of Africa and even foreshadowing the future. He and others taught Africa and the world, the fact that availability of written documents should not be equated with objectivity in history and that African history and other histories of other parts of the world should be studied from a multi-disciplinary approach from which even the sciences of archaeology, anthropology, botany, zoology, linguistics and the use of radio carbon-dating could be enlisted in unravelling the past of Africa.

    After Dike became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan and after he left in 1966 because of engulfing political problems in Nigeria, Ajayi became the torch-bearer of what later evolved into the Ibadan School of History. This school succeeded in establishing the fact and reality of African history and that it was a serious academic discipline worthy of pursuit. The impact of this school was in helping Africans and their leaders have confidence in themselves in the face of European denigration and psychological undermining. This led to the description of the Ibadan School as “a nationalist school of history” designed to challenge western orthodoxy that tended to see non-Europeans as inferior who had no history at all and that if they had any history at all, such history was not important.

    He was sought after and given generous grants to teach in American universities such as Stanford, Wisconsin, and North Western to mention a few as well as in British universities such as Birmingham, the School of African and Oriental studies of the University of London and even in Moscow. His reputation was so formidable that the Rockefeller Foundation generously endowed the University of Ibadan as Centre for African Studies. Ajayi’s scholarship carried him to the membership of the board of governors of the United Nations’ University in Tokyo of which he later became chairman. Ajayi did not just believe in the esoteric nature of scholarship, he applied his scholarship to give historical backing to the idea of the Lagos Plan of Action in 1970 arguing that African frontiers and boundaries were new phenomena associated with the ephemeral colonial phase of African development and that in the African past, African territories were open with no frontiers and that they meshed imperceptibly into one another. He was also one of those who set up the Association of African Universities (AAU) and he was active in the Association of Commonwealth Universities while he was Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos.

    Apart from helping to build the faculty of arts at the University of Ibadan and to help develop graduate studies in Ibadan, Ajayi was the one who built the University of Lagos from the ashes of ethnic rivalry to the pinnacle of a first class African university. Most of the physical landmarks existing in the University of Lagos today were built by Ajayi when he was Vice Chancellor.

    Ajayi’s life has touched the lives of several people in Nigeria and in the outside world. A grateful nation honoured him with the Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR) and he was also a winner of the academic laurel of the national merit (NNOM). He wrote several books and widely on several topics, just as mentored several students and he was a professor of professors because many of his former students have occupied and are occupying important academic positions in Nigeria and outside Nigeria today. Apart from being a seasoned academic, Ajayi was a thoroughly civilised man and a gentleman. A quiet worker not given to the loud noise of many of his compatriots and in his evening years, he devoted himself to the study of the Bible and the word of God. In all his endeavours, he was complimented by a virtuous and lively wife, Christine Ajayi who made the home environment so convivial for the flowering of the academic tree into which the academic mustard seed had grown. Ajayi’s life was also enriched by his four daughters and a son who are well grounded in their various academic and professional callings.

    Adieu our teacher, role model, inspirer and a great act to follow.

  • Political prostitutes

    Crossing carpet from one political party in normal democracies is very rare. The last time this happened in the United Kingdom was sometimes in the 1970s when some members of the British Labour Party left to form, along members of the old Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party. They did not cross over to the Conservative party. In the USA the so-called Dixiecrats who were members of the Democratic Party and who were mostly racists holding on to the old slave-holding and racist past in those states south of the Mason – Dixon line, left to join the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln which in modern times has ironically become a racist party against the tradition of its founders. In these democracies nowadays one would rather stand as Independents or quit politics entirely than cross carpet for the purpose of getting elected to any electoral positions.

    But in our clime and in our recent past, it was unusual to witness the current trend in Nigeria where politicians go up and down like a yoyo sleeping one night in one party and waking up the following night in a totally different party. In our recent past, especially during the First Republic, people formed different parties if they disagreed with their old parties. This was the case with Chief S.L Akintola’s party, United Peoples Party when he left the Action Group and KO Mbadiwe’s Democratic Party when in he left the NCNC. Sleep-walking from political party to another as it is the case today started in the Second Republic when the likes of Busari Adelakun, Akin  Omoboriowo and Chief Sunday  Afolabi crossed over from the  UPN unashamedly to the NPN. Of course in my lifetime I have seen strange things happen in Nigerian politics such as Dr. Michael Okpara and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu joining the NPN and even the stalwarts of the old Action Group the trio of G. S. Ikokwu , Anthony Enahoro and J.S Tarka who were opposed to reconciliation in the old Action Group deserting Obafemi Awolowo to join his enemies in the NPN.

    But we have never witnessed the kind of political prostitution going on now in current Nigerian politics where a former presidential flag bearer of one party would unashamedly cross over to attempt to get elected in to office of governor on the platform of a party he ran against flippantly saying that there is not much difference between the two parties! What dishonesty!. If politicians expect to be taken seriously, they must stay the course and show that they are not in politics for their bellies alone. There must be a higher calling than just making money and living well without work as most of our politicians tend to do.

    Recently Tom Ikimi  and  Ali Modu Sheriff the former governor of Borno crossed over to the PDP apparently to enjoy stomach infrastructure while pretending they left because of lofty reasons. For the former governor of Borno  to have been accepted into the PDP speaks volumes about what kind of party it is especially because of the current tragedy that has befallen Borno and the entire North-eastern part of Nigeria where some of us including myself invested part of our youth in helping to build. As for Ikimi, I was surprised when he said he is proud to have been a former foreign minister of Nigeria in a regime that was expelled from the Commonwealth when a national of our country was its Secretary-general, and a regime that defrauded the country of close to $10 billion spirited out of the country and lodged in private accounts some of which will never be found. Instead of boasting of being the regime’s foreign minister, Ikimi should cover his face in shame because he served in a regime that will go down in infamy.  In the history of contemporary Africa, never has so few destroyed the lives of so many in so short a time.

    Perhaps in the interest of our country, our leaders ought to take more seriously the mission of leadership in this benighted country. We cannot afford politics without principles and commitment. Political parties need to be known for where they stand on any issue. We cannot run our country on parties that change principles like taffeta and chameleon. If we are not careful in this country politicians will be totally disconnected from the people that there will be no need for political parties and we may therefore be forced to embrace the Egyptian or Indonesian model of guided democracy in which the military will play a dominant part which will be unfortunate and not in the long term interest of our country. Without their knowing it, politicians are gradually becoming the grave-diggers of democracy.

  • Unequal wars in Ukraine and Palestine

    Wars are terrible things to happen in the lives of anybody. Human beings right from the time Homo sapiens evolved from ape men have been in a struggle of survival of the fittest. Stone Age men fought with stones and sticks but from the Iron Age onwards, wars have become destructive to the point of the nuclear age when wars between nuclear powers would lead to the total annihilation of life as we know it. Albert Einstein, the father of the atomic age famously said he did not know what would be used to fight the Third World War but that he knew that the fourth would be fought with stones and sticks, indirectly affirming the fact that nuclear holocaust would end human life as we know it. Some scientists have argued that rats could survive a nuclear holocaust and they will inherit the earth after man must have willingly or unwillingly self-destruct. During the 19th century, the century full of wars in Europe, there began an argument about “just” or “unjust” wars. This was in reaction to certain ideas of some philosophers who argued that wars were a cleansing process for national resurgence and that triumph of a victorious country over another constituted an advance of civilisation and that this was the march of God on earth. Of course, it can be argued that wars of defence were just wars whereas wars of aggression were unjust wars but then military strategists would argue that offence is the best form of defence in which case the margin of difference between wars of aggression and wars of defence is very thin. But at the same time, there are wars that are unequal between bullies and weaker countries. American invasion of Panama, Grenada or even Vietnam was unequal war between the combatant nations. Whereas, wars between the British Empire and the German empire in the early 20th century between 1914 and 1918 were wars between equals. In fact it used to be said that a war between the British Empire and the German empire was like a struggle between a hippopotamus and an elephant. The British were supreme on the sea and the German on land. When the forces of the third Reich invaded Russia in 1941, the two powers were equally matched.The Germans had an edge over communist Russia and Germany seemed to have bitten more than it could chew by fighting wars on two fronts- the eastern and the western fronts.

    The nuclear age has led to proxy wars in which surrogates backed by rival powers fight each other without the nuclear powers being directly involved. In spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994, the spirit of the cold war is still much alive. The Russian federation always appears to take a position opposed to whatever position the western powers take on any given issue and conflict. In Syria and in Libya, these antagonistic positions are manifestly clear. Russia supports the Bashir al-Assad’s regime in Syria while the west is opposed to that regime. In Libya, Russia was slow to make its position clear thus allowing the west to walk over the Colonel Muhammad Gaddafi regime. The ideological differences in today’s global conflicts are not as sharp as before. The Russian federation is no longer a communist state. It is practising some form of guided democracy in which Vladimir Putin is acting like a Romanov Czar wanting to recover all the so-called lost territories of Russia. This is the only way one can understand why Russia annexed Crimea and it is prepared to dismantle what is left of Ukraine. Russia is arming the rebels of Ukraine with lethal weapons one of which has been used to bring down the civilian Malaysian plane killing almost 300 souls most of who are from Holland and a substantial number of these are children. This terrible disaster has happened to the Malaysian airline, the second such disaster within six months. The search for the disappeared Malaysian airline in the Indian Ocean is still on-going. The tragedy that has befallen the Malaysian airline would definitely lead to the bankruptcy of the airline, because it is inconceivable that anyone would board that airline again. While it is understandable that Russia may want to protect the rights and lives of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, it is dangerous for Russia to make the protection of Russians in all former Soviet bloc countries a state policy. A policy of this sort will lead to wars in almost all the 15 republics into which the Soviet Union dissolved. A full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine will be a tragedy because it will be an unequal war and the result will be so horrendous and there will be nothing anybody can do about it because western intervention will spark a nuclear war. The wars in Iraq and northern Syria with so-called Islamic caliphate of Iraq and the Levant for now can be seen as an internal war with possible serious consequences for peace and security in the entire Middle East.

    But the war between Israel and Hamas calls for sober reflection. This is a human tragedy of immense proportion. The war is totally unequal and by the time this war is brought to an end, hundreds of Palestinians would have been murdered while a few Israelis would have died. The Israelis have total control of the sea and the air.They are shelling from the sea and bombing from the air and lobbing artillery shells into a piece of territory in which human beings are packed like sardines. Palestine for almost a decade has been totally hedged in by Israeli blockade on one side and surprisingly by Egyptian blockade on the other because Hamas and the dreaded Muslim brotherhood are allies. Israel claims it is fighting a just war because since its creation in 1947, the Arabs were committed to its destruction. Most of the Arabs have backed away from this position but the Palestinians particularly Hamas have refused to recognise the right of Israel to exist in old Palestine. While their position is understandable, it is not realistic. Israel has come to stay and any force on earth that is determined to bring Israel down would go down with Israel in a nuclear incineration. But at the same time, should humanity just watch Israel using mostly American weapons and political support from the USA to slaughter hapless and helpless Palestinians who driven to the wall have been sending to Israel, ineffective crude missiles from the Gaza strip. For every Israeli citizen killed, the Jewish state is not only able and willing to inflict retribution based not only on an eye for an eye, but the life of an Israeli for hundreds of lives of Palestinians. Ideally, a two-state solution which the superpowers say they are committed to would be the best way out but the fear in Israel is that if a viable Palestinian state were to be created with full right of sovereignty over its waters and airspace, it will perpetually arm itself for a future showdown with Israel. On the other hand, a totally disarmed independent Palestine would be an easy target for Israeli aggression whenever there is a problem between the two countries.Yet a way must be found out for these two ancient suffering peoples to live together. Some have suggested a secular state of Palestine bringing back old Palestine in which Jews and Arabs live together which would be an ideal situation. This kind of proposition is not based on political realism yet Israel and Palestine is home to the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam with the holy sites of the three religions in the two countries. The eternal city of Jerusalem is also claimed by the two communities. The international community must step in and find a way for future peace between Israel and Palestine and if the problem is left to fester, the wound being inflicted on the Palestinians may again lead to a major confrontation between Israel, the Arabs, the Persians and other Muslim powers one of which is now a nuclear power thus cancelling out the nuclear advantage of Israel

  • Professor Ayo Banjo at 80

    Since the appointment of Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike as first African Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan, the position of the vice chancellorship of this premier university has been greatly sought after by distinguished academics. To be appointed vice chancellor of this university therefore, is a mark of honour and a demonstration of the high esteem in which the occupant of the vice chancellorship of the University of Ibadan is held. Professor Ayo Banjo’s appointment as vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan is therefore a great achievement. He brought to this position, dignity, honesty, competence, distinction and administrative savoire-faire fairness and firmness.

    At 80, it is my pleasure on behalf of many distinguished Nigerians who have passed through the portals of the great university to celebrate him publicly. Many Nigerians are familiar with the name of Ayo Banjo as an author of secondary school textbooks on English Grammar. The name Banjo is apparently quite common among the Ijebu sub-nationality of the Yoruba nation. The other well-known Banjos are associated with the exploits of that dreamer Colonel Victor Banjo, a Yoruba officer who fought on the side of Biafra during the Nigerian civil war and who was judicially murdered by Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegu-Ojukwu who accused him of treason. This other Banjo is not related to Ayo Banjo.

    I got close to Professor Ayo Banjo as a neighbour but I have always known him over the years as a lecturer, Professor, Dean of Arts and Vice Chancellor of the premier University of Ibadan. I have also known his family even if from a distance. When I was in the sixth form in Ibadan Grammar school, Professor Ayo Banjo’s father was the principal of St. Luke’s College, a neighbouring teachers’ college in Ibadan. Canon Banjo as we knew him, was a distinguished man, a teacher and at one time, a member of parliament in Ibadan. I also know some of Professor Banjo’s siblings like Gboyega, Kunle who was in Ibadan Grammar School the same time I was there and their eldest brother, who practiced general medicine successfully in Ibadan. It is not out of place to use the hackneyed phrase of Professor Banjo being an “illustrious son of an illustrious father”. It will not be totally incorrect to say that Professor Banjo was born with a silver spoon in his mouth because his father was a highly educated man and by the standards of those days of yore, he was a man of means. Professor Banjo had his secondary education in Igbobi College of which he is very proud. Igbobi shared with Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti my own alma mater links in the past especially with missionary teachers going to and from our two schools. So I can guess what kind of academic and moral upbringing Professor Banjo would have had in Igbobi College of those days. This was a college far removed from the hustle and bustle of colonial Lagos and was located at the outskirts of the town but of course, today, the college is completely sandwiched within the growing metropolis of Lagos. Igbobi College of Professor Banjo’s time was a very cosmopolitan college of young people from different ethnic backgrounds cohabiting in the various dormitories. The impression this would have had on Professor Banjo must have been very fundamental to his growth and development as a true Nigerian without ethnic hang-ups. After leaving Igbobi College and bearing in mind, his family background of economic sufficiency if not affluence, it was natural for him to want to go abroad for further studies, a desire which his father adequately met.This made it possible for Professor Banjo to be educated abroad before coming back home to work and to do research that earned him a PhD of Ibadan University in English. After his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, Professor Banjo taught English at Government College, Ughelli in what then was in the heartland of the Mid-west region an experience and opportunity which can only be dreamt of and dreaded today.The National Youth Service for young graduate does superficially but unsatisfactorily offer Nigerians to experience cultures outside their area of birth and comfort. But in the days of young Ayo Banjo it was a routine affair because the Western region and the other two regions, Northern and Eastern regions were agglomeration of different nationalities and tribes and our leaders were then genuinely building a nation, albeit with the help of the colonial officials out of the multitudinous ethnic groups embedded in the belly of the geographical expression known as the Nigerian state. We can only look back nowadays to that golden era when things were not as complicated as they are today and when the state was not dying from a metastasised corruption that is eating at the very fabric of the state.

    When I was dean of the college of humanities, of Redeemer’s University, Mowe in Ogun State, I had the honour of inviting Professor Ayo Banjo to deliver our maiden college lecture in 2006. We still talk about the erudition and scholarship of that lecture up till today. Humility comes naturally to Professor Banjo and for a man of his calibre and distinction, this ability of his can be very overwhelming to subordinates and lesser people. As a neighbour, he is involved in community association for the security of our neighbourhood.In all our meetings, he never allows his status to overwhelm less privileged and less cerebrally and materially endowed members of this association.  Whenever there is a misunderstanding in our neighbourhood, Professor Ayo Banjo, the Vicar’s son is always a peacemaker and would go to any length to reconcile those who are at logger heads against each other.

    He is an author and a good speaker who has been invited to several fora to present lectures or positions on given problems that the university community in Nigeria usually face. He has been a true scholar and has supervised several students who are now professors and has thus replicated himself so that his likes will always be found in the citadels of learning in Nigeria. Apart from being Vice-Chancellor of University of Ibadan, he has also served as Pro-Chancellor not once but twice of universities in Nigeria. He has also been involved with moderating the demands for higher salaries and better conditions of service by fellow academics because he enjoys both the trust of his colleagues and those who are at the helm of affairs of our country. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Ibadan and for all his services and academic achievements, a grateful nation honoured him with the highest academic accolade of granting him the national merit (NNOM). Professor Banjo can never be forgotten because of his transparency, his intellect, his humble demeanour and his intelligence which manifest at all times in whatever assignment he is given. Professor Ayo Banjo and other colleagues of his particularly those at the highest level of humanistic studies established the Nigerian Academy of Letters to co-ordinate the efforts and exertion of people in the liberal arts in their effort to put Nigerian scholarship in the global arena. He is a foundation member and fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. His effort has brought to the Academy, distinction and resources without which it would have been difficult for the academy to reach its present height of development and national recognition. The Academy’s membership and fellowship are now much desired by scholars in various disciplines in the liberal arts at home and by Nigerian scholars in the black diaspora. But for Professors Ayo Banjo, Ayo Bamgbose, J.F. Ade-Ajayi, Tekena Tamuno, Munzali Jibril, Tunji Oloruntimehin, Segun Odunuga and others, the Academy would not have come into existence and provide a paradigm for others to follow.

    It is our hope that the current and future generations would learn from people like Professor Banjo or else, our nation has no hope. It is a pleasure and privilege for me to have the opportunity to celebrate this great man of letters, this Renaissance man, this man of distinction, this amiable and jolly good fellow.

  • Professor Tunji Dare at 70

    Professor Tunji Dare at 70

    I missed attending the lecture and the book presentation and the merriment surrounding Tunji Dare’s attainment of three score and ten years. Welcome to the group which I joined two years ago. Age sometimes creeps on one and one is sometimes amazed about how old one is. When I celebrated my 70th birthday, it was with mixed feelings. I was grateful to God for being with me all these years and I was also wondering how fast these years have moved. I did not feel old but now, I have to act my age, I am sure Tunji must be feeling the same way. Radicalism and old age do not seem to go very well together. A radical or a revolutionary old man would be a curious combination and perhaps a misuse of words. Those of us who felt we were radicals when we were young can no longer lay claim to radicalism of any sort at our age. But since we are not dead yet, we must continue to speak out like Tunji Dare. So my dear brother, do not relent in campaigning for a country that we can all be proud of. I recently bumped into Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, distinguished former Nigerian foreign minister and UN diplomat in Abuja. He jokingly said that he was nominated as a member of the on-going national conference under the category of elder statesmen. He said he told his wife that he is now an elder statesman in Nigeria and his wife asked him to behave as an elder from now on and no more fooling around! But this does not mean that if we see anything wrong in our country we should not point it out no matter whose ox is gored. I was particularly delighted when I read in the newspapers, the comment of Cardinal John Onaiyekan of the Roman Catholic Church asking those in government not to see criticism of their roles as amounting to lack of patriotism and that people in government and those in opposition do not have a monopoly of patriotism. In other words, all of us have a stake in this country and as long as we wobble on in spite of our age as a state, those of us who have opportunity to speak out must not shirk our responsibility. Our responsibility is to Nigeria and not to any particular regime. If people like Tunji Dare and the rest of us keep quiet in the face of tyranny and bad government, we would have died many times before our death. Sometimes the coarseness of our criticisms is directly proportionate to the bad governance prevailing in the land.

    Tunji Dare has paid his dues as a journalist, a teacher, and a tribune of the people and the voice of the voiceless. In the satirical style with which he writes, he manages to send serious messages to those in power in hilarious ways without offence. Whenever I get my newspapers on the day he writes, I am usually anxious to see what he has written on and to sit back and enjoy the wisdom of his prose. Tunji Dare is certainly the best journalist employing satire to deliver his message and his punches. Even before meeting him physically, I already thought I knew him because of his writing.

    I first met him at an intellectual level when the late Nelson Mandela came to Nigeria and the University of Lagos and the then Vice-Chancellor of Lagos, Professor Nurudeen Alao asked me to prepare a citation for the honorary degree the university was going to confer on Mandela. I did not know that he had also asked Tunji Dare to do the same thing. After both of us had submitted our drafts, he then asked Tunji Dare to come to me so that we could merge our two citations. Tunji Dare as self-abnegating as ever, said my draft was more than adequate and that there was no need to merge the two and that he would publish what he had written in The Guardian and this was precisely what we did. I did not train as a journalist and I make no pretence to literary ability. On a jocular note, I remember a professor of English reading my autobiography some years ago and telling me that he was surprised that I can write well. I laughed and told him that I thought as a professor of History, I ought to be able to write proper English. In fact most of the best writers of English language are people with my academic background.

    Tunji Dare comes from Kogi State. He is a Yoruba man from that state and he is not ashamed to call himself a Yoruba man unlike some of his compatriots from that part of Nigeria who say they are Okun which I always find very funny because okun is a greeting in some parts of Ekiti, Kwara and Kogi and what it means is “Hello” or “How are you?” But apparently for political advantage of belonging to the north especially when belonging to the north carries huge advantage of jobs, political positions and power. On the other hand, associating with the Yoruba in the south was regarded as a disadvantage. It is like a Hausa man from Niger State, instead of saying he is a Hausa man he says he is Sannu which sometimes the Ijesha people derisively use to refer to the Hausa people. I hope that no group of people in Nigeria should feel so powerless to the point of having identity crisis; there is no need for the Yoruba in Kogi to call themselves Okun people. More grease to your elbow, Tunji. You are not an old man as far as I am concerned; you should continue to write with all the emphasis at your command and to make your views on the future of Nigeria known as you have done in the past. Who knows what the future will bring. And in the whirligig of time, some of your views may become prescription for this sick and doddering country. May God continue to be with you Tunji, may He continue to enlarge your coast. Speak out, and speak out loud. God did not create us for fear, rather He created us to dominate our environment. Your people are known for their intrepidity and you are a typical representative of the upright, courageous and truthful Yoruba in the periphery who have had to hold their own against all odds in order to survive and have survived very well.

  • Crisis of unemployment and underemployment

    The crisis of unemployment among the youths is a global problem. The United States that seems to have the capacity to create jobs and to absorb young people into industries, services and public sectors of its economy is also not spared. Unemployment in the United States in recent times ranges between six and eight percent. In Europe, the rate is higher and varies from one country to another.

    In northern Europe, the rate is just slightly higher than that of the United States but in southern European countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, the rate is bewildering. In Greece in particular among young people from 17-35 years old, unemployment is almost 50 percent. In the vast continent of Asia, unemployment is also a big challenge and in Arab North Africa and the Middle East, the rate of unemployment is also a serious threat to political stability in that region. Central and South America with the exception of Brazil and Chile is in serious trouble in terms of unemployment especially among the youths.

    Africa is almost a hopeless case. Unemployment in some parts of Africa among the youth is almost 80 percent in some cases. In Nigeria, the situation is serious and we are all sitting on kegs of gunpowder ready to explode at any time. Sixty percent of the graduates of universities and polytechnics annually troop into Lagos in search of jobs that do not exist. The manufacturing sector in Nigeria that should absorb young, willing and educated youths has collapsed where they existed or they do not exist at all. Since 1999, our economic policy has been the removal of the role of the states in economic development and job-creation under the slogan of allowing the market to take care of economic development.

    Centralised development planning that was popular in the 50s, 60s and 70s has been discarded as unfashionable because of poor management of public companies and corporations. Many of these companies have therefore been privatised and sold to people who instead of investing in them to create more jobs have themselves become scavengers, dismantling many of the plants and carting them away to be sold as spares outside Nigeria. Under the World Bank/IMF economic orthodoxy, creation of jobs now belongs into the province of private entrepreneurs and foreign investors.

    The role of the state is now restricted to the provision of private sector friendly environment while the lot of the unemployed has become a private affair of the individuals concerned and not that of government. It is true that state intervention in economic planning and development can sometimes be a deadweight on the state but we cannot always leave the fate of our young people to market forces and private investment. There may be a need as advocated by the late Lord Maynard Milton Keynes for massive state investment and intervention in job creation because without jobs, there can be no stability and if well managed state intervention by putting jobless people to work can lead to increase in national wealth in spite of whatever temporary inflation that may accompany it. A situation in Nigeria where young graduates are roaming the streets, riding okada or doing domestic jobs is a situation of unacceptable underemployment.

    In a developing country like ours, there are so many aspects of our lives that are crying for development; we do not have good roads, pipe borne water, electricity supply is fitful inadequate and unsatisfactory. Our primary and secondary schools’ buildings are a disgrace when compared with similar schools in southern Africa, we do not have adequate housing for our people, we do not have decent and functional ports and yet we have a coastline begging for development if only to decongest Lagos and save the people living there from their miserable existence. Our communication and transportation infrastructure is totally inadequate for our population. I can continue to mention areas of inadequacy in our lives.

    We have a huge population of about 170 million if we are to believe our census commission. With this huge population and with the highly developed manpower, we can do something in this country. Nobody is going to help us build our country; we have to do it ourselves. We should forget about such fanciful ideas like NEPAD, APRM and other strategies anchored on foreign investment. China that is now the second biggest economy in the world and is primed to overtake the United States very soon did not develop on World Bank/IMF’s advice but looked inwards and put its people to work and today, China is the most sought after destination where America and European leaders are queuing up to seek for economic cooperation.

    We may not have the Confucius ethics driving the Chinese people towards frugality and hard work but we certainly have natural resources and the population as well as the West African market if we are serious and determined to develop. We cannot stop educating our people because I have heard people saying, universities are turning out graduates when they know there are no jobs outside there. What we need to do is to declare a national emergency on employment and under-employment and also embark on the mission of physically building our country ourselves. We can do this by buying equipment, tractors, caterpillars and putting our young people to work on building our roads, railways, modern farms, houses, schools and ports with the supervision of experts, both local and foreign.

    The end product may not be as good as the ones built by expatriates but it will be the works of our hands. Anyone visiting India would notice that their roads and buildings and buses are a little rough on the edges but they can be proud that they built them. The problem of unemployment and underemployment is so serious in Nigeria that we must take unorthodox methods to tackle it. Those of us who are in employment are daily overwhelmed by the demands on our time, purses and generosity by young people seeking for jobs.

    We find it extremely difficult to send people away without providing some words of encouragement but this would not do. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. If young people cannot survive, they would do whatever is necessary including committing crime to survive. Young people are also not getting married because both young men and women have no jobs and this is destroying the moral and social fibre of our society. We are a nation that seems not to have a future because if the young people are not getting married and having children, then what future do we have? Even the Boko Haram insurgency is not unconnected with the apparent hopelessness of young people. Our leaders particularly our political leaders do not seem to understand or appreciate the seriousness of our situation.

    They are all bogged down by the politics of re-election. If we are not careful, there may be no country to govern after election. This is the time therefore for the federal government to summon a summit to discuss the problem of unemployment in our country. If salaries have to be cut especially among those who are earning well to fund Build Nigeria campaign, we have to do this. If we block economic seepage and leakage and the corruption at every level of government, there should be enough money to back this campaign to build Nigeria. I appeal to all those in position to take drastic measures to do this before we are all swept away in a sea of youthful fury.

  • Arab Spring and the West

    About three years ago, I had the privilege to go to the UN General Assembly as a delegate of Nigeria. This was at the height of the so called Arab Spring. During the session, the incipient conflict in Syria was under discussion. All the western countries that spoke from the podium of the UN at the plenary session condemned in unmistakable terms, the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad describing him in the vilest of terms calling him the butcher of Damascus and that there must be regime change in Syria and that there will be no compromise.

    The ambassador of Syria to the UN responded calmly to the accusation levied against Syria by the West. At that time, most of the one 170,000 souls that has now been lost were still alive. What the permanent representative of Syria told the world was that Syria was a delicately balanced country comprising the Shi’as, Christians, Armenians, Kurds, Sunnis, and a little Aramaic speaking group. The Syrian ambassador argued that the central government headed by Bashar Al-Assad even though belonging to the minority Alawite sect, part of the Shi’ites group provided the unifying cement binding Syria together and that instead of regime change, the West should support reforms.

    His message landed on deaf ears, the West was intoxicated by so called successes of the Arab Spring that had led to regime change, first in Tunisia then in Egypt and then the NATO powers intervened directly in Libya through massive aerial bombing, one of which wounded Muammar Gaddafi mortally before the so-called Libyan insurgents finished him off. There were manifestations of trouble and protests against the Sharifian monarchy in Morocco and the autocratic regime headed by Abdul Azeez Bouteflika in Algeria and there was massive Shia protest in the emirate states especially against the Sunni dominated monarchies by their Shia majority subjects.

    There were flickers of protest even in non-Arab Persian Iran, Saudi Arabia and in the Sudan but this did not constitute serious threats to the regimes there. The massive protest in Yemen led to changing of musical chairs from one dictatorship replacing another one. The removal of President Mubarak in Egypt by the massive protest against his regime gave everybody the impression that the Arab world was in the spring of a democratic change but what has now happened has not borne out his expectation.

    The Sharifian dynasty in Morocco has consolidated its hold on power, the FLN regime in Algeria has been able to put down at least for now, the Islamic movement for salvation (La front Islamique du Salut) and the so called revolution in Egypt after the initial victory of a party of the Islamic Brotherhood has now resulted into the dictatorship of Field Marshall Mohamed al-Sisi. Even in Tunisia where the so-called revolution started, the Islamic forces have triumphed over liberal democracy. The result of the military intervention in Libya is a tragedy unfolding. There is no peace in Libya and the weapons acquired by the Gaddafi regime are now in the hands of different militia forces.

    These weapons are also being used by forces of the Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and possibly by Boko Haram. It is difficult to see what the West and the rest of us have gained from the promotion of democracy in North Africa and the Arab world. After two invasions of Iraq by the West, first on the grounds of Iraqi aggression on Kuwait and secondly on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Iraq remains totally torn apart and into pieces among the Shi’as, the Sunnis and the Kurds. The patchwork of a democratic regime left in Iraq after the withdrawal of American forces is now in total collapse.

    Iraqi Kurdistan is virtually independent of the rest of Iraq and the Sunni Arab northern part of Iraq from Mosul stretching all the way to Syrian Allepo hasnow been declared the nucleus of a new Islamic caliphate. Young Muslims all over the world who are looking for action and adventure are rallying to the flag of the new caliphate. This is a caliphate that believes in taking Muslims back to the period of pristine Islam of the Caliphs after the death of Prophet Mohammed.

    America and the rest of the west are faced with a difficult choice of what to do, poor President Barack Obama under attack of the Republican Party of the United States wants to flex American muscle but does not seem to know how to do it. America is now fighting the so-called Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant along with a curious combination of forces from Shi’a Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah (the party of God) apparently from Lebanon and Syria. America and the West are apparently afraid that the so-called Islamic caliphate may become an abode of terrorists who may threaten the interest of the West in the Arab world and Arabian Peninsula as a whole.

    The problem America will now have to deal with is how to convince Saudi Arabia, its main Arab ally and a staunch Sunni power to go along with it in fighting the caliphate which apparently is a Sunni creation. The situation in the Middle East is a very serious situation, dividing the Islamic world into two-armed coalitions one Shi’a and the other Sunni and behind the Shi’a is also non-Arab Persian-Iran with ambitions of nuclear weapons.

    On the Sunni side, is Saudi-Arabia and Egypt and if threatened, one of them may feel obliged to develop its own independent nuclear force to deter Iran. And not too far away from Egypt is of course nuclear weapons-armed Pakistan which is largely a Sunni country. The Islamic world has not faced this kind of division for a long time. What even makes the situation more serious is that the Shi’a has an organised clergy from grand Ayatollas to small ordinary Imams whereas on the Sunni side, there is no hierarchical organisation of the clergy.

    America may be tempted to stand aside from the internecine religious conflict in the Middle East after withdrawing from Afghanistan in December 2014. America also does not need Middle East oil as it used to do because with the Shale oil and fracking gas, America is going to be energy sufficient within the next five years.

    But even so, can America withdraw to fortress America leaving the Middle East to stew in its own juice and yet still remain the number one power in the world? These are going to be the issues for the presidential elections in the United States in 2016. In the meantime, Arab humanity will continue to suffer in Syria, in Palestine, in Yemen, in Libya and in Iraq. Even where there is some semblance of stability in the Arab world like in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the Gulf States, the stability there is not solidly rooted on the wishes of the people without which there would be no regime endurance.