Category: Jide Osuntokun

In 1962, I was in Ibadan Grammar School for the Higher School Certificate course preparatory to direct entry into the University of Ibadan. I was in a privileged position, echoing Odumegwu Ojukwu’s book; Because I was Involved, to watch the crisis that affected the Action Group that was the governing party in the Old Western region of Nigeria. The Western Region stretched from Ilupeju and Mushin all the way to what is today Delta and part of Bayelsa states. The region was the golden region of Nigeria. Oil had been struck at Oloibiri in what is today Bayelsa State but oil was not yet king. The economy of Nigeria largely depended on cocoa in the Western Region, groundnuts in the North and palm oil in the East. The Western Region also produced a lot of rubber and hard wood timber. Through the marketing boards established by the British colonial administration, the Western Region of Nigeria had accumulated reserves of millions of pounds. These funds as well as taxes raised in the region were deployed by the Action Group headed by Chief Obafemi Awolowo from 1951-1959 to develop western region. It was a region of first in everything from Free Universal Primary Education to integrated development involving industrialisation in the then Ikeja and Epe divisions, farm settlements and plantations of rubber and palm tree in many parts of the old region. Roads that were earth routes before were then tarred and made motorable. There were tremendous expansions in secondary school education so as to absorb those who were coming out of the Universal Free Primary School and tertiary institutions such as Adeyemi and Olunloyo Colleges of Education were established while the University of Ife was at an advanced stage of planning. There were also investments in tourism with the redevelopment of Lafia Hotel and various catering houses in the provincial headquarters as well as the building of the Premier Hotel in Ibadan and the acquisition from its owners of the Airport Hotel in Ikeja. The first television in Africa, south of the Sahara began transmitting in 1958 from Ibadan and the first modern stadium in Nigeria, the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan was also built to coincide with internal self-government in 1957.

These great landmarks gave the Action Group confidence that it could replicate on a grand scale the development in Western Nigeria and in Nigeria as a whole. This led Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1959 to resign as Premier in order to contest the federal election of that year with the hope of becoming the Prime Minister of Nigeria. The leader of the Action Group at the Federal House of Representatives, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, a formidable campaigner and skilled and adroit debater and parliamentarian was then asked to take over as Premier in Ibadan. It is of course now well known that the Action Group did not win the 1959 Federal election as it had hoped and Chief Awolowo subsequently became the leader of opposition in the House of Representatives in Lagos. As Premier, Chief Akintola was in office but not in power and this was the crux of the problem that later led to political crisis and vested interest on both sides fed fat on this problem. I have dealt with this extensively in my book on Chief Ladoke Akintola: His Life and Times published in 1978 by Frank Cass of London. The Yorubas have a saying that if there is a crack in the wall, lizards will find a passage into the house. Chief Awolowo’s enemies from the East and the North moved in to exploit the situation. There was an attempt to meet in the House to deal with the problem through a vote of confidence but the federal police was absolutely partisan and took the sides of the Akintola faction thus leading to a free for all fight in the house with the head of Kessington Momoh who was a supporter of Chief Akintola almost broken into two. This led the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the West.

In 1983, I was at the University of Maiduguri as Professor and the Dean of Faculty of Arts and I watched History repeat itself when the police commissioner, Mohammed Jida in public used his swagger stick to remove the cap of Mohammed Goni, the Governor of Borno State while the Federal government looked on and did nothing because Goni belonged to the GNPP which was in opposition to the NPN, the governing party at the centre. Just as the crisis in the West eventually led to military takeover in the country, the crisis in the North-East also resulted in the same scenario. The situation in Rivers hopefully is not history repeating itself but there is no doubt that the Commissioner of Police Mr. Joseph Mbu has become a problem in his partisanship by favouring one faction apparently supported by people in Abuja against the government of Rivers State.

We cannot afford to undermine this current democratic regime that many of us suffered for. I was in detention for six months under the administration of General Sani Abacha, many people died including people like M.K.O Abiola, Kudirat Abiola, General Shehu Yar’Adua, Chief Alfred Rewane and a host of other distinguished Nigerians who narrowly escaped being shot dead in broad daylight in Lagos such as the late Alex Ibru and Baba Abraham Adesanya amongst others. General Obasanjo narrowly escaped with his life when his death penalty was commuted to life. A lot of people went into exile and those who did not go into exile went underground.

The people who are currently benefiting from this democratic regime were not the people who fought for it and this may be the reason why it seems to me they do not really value what we have. A regime of laws not of personalities is what this country deserves and nobody should be above the laws of the land and nobody should be favoured over others. The question of the partisanship of the federal police raises once again the question of the need for state police. The argument against state police is that it would be misused by those who control the levers of power in the state; but what is happening now with those controlling the Federal Government using the police against state authority and thus undermining the neutrality of the police has destroyed the argument of those against state police. What those of us who have seen it all should impress on the younger generation is the need for moderation in whatever we do in this country. So I say to the political leadership of this country ‘softly softly’.

It is the sovereign right of every country to control immigration into its territory. The British are not an exception. I personally have sympathy for the British because of the exploitation of the social welfare state in the UK by unscrupulous people from all over the world. Enoch Powell, the Conservative Minister of Health, from 1960 to 1963 and Shadow Defence Minister, 1965-1968 issued the statement referred to as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech sometimes in 1968, when he foresaw what unlimited immigration could do to Great Britain in terms of racial conflict.

Powell was a former Professor of Classics and a one-time war hero with a bright political future in front of him, but he lost all these because of his intemperate language against immigration, although not necessarily against immigrants. Powell was branded a racist by his opponents and Edward Heath, the then leader of the Conservative Party had to get rid of him as Shadow Minister of Defence and this brought to an end, a glittering political career of an effective conservative minister.

When the young English soldier was killed in broad daylight by two people of Nigerian ancestry, some people may have suggested that the prophecy of Powell is coming true. There has also been race riot in places like Bradford and Wolverhampton and the violence that sometimes happens in areas inhabited by visible minorities in the greater London area is sometimes caused by racial resentment. This is unfortunately seen as the inevitable result of non-white immigration into England.

At the height of British power, its empire spread all over the world and among a multitude of different races. At the end of the British Empire, some of these people have followed the British home. Of course the British themselves have left their physical imprints on virtually all the continents of the world, from Australia, to New Zealand, to Canada, to the United States, to South Africa, to the Falkland islands and even to places where the British did not directly rule such as Brazil, Argentina, and several other Latin American countries to which the British have contributed immigrants. The British are therefore not a people who should be running away from their history and one of the positive contributions of the British people towards civilization is their tolerance of other peoples. Of course this has not always been so, because as an empire builder, the British have always imposed themselves on others by brutal force, but that was in the past. And the future of Britain lies in its multi-racial approach to life. As the most senior member of the Multi-racial Commonwealth, the British cannot walk away from their legacy. And as a trading nation, they cannot afford to damage their relations with other countries because of a discriminatory immigration policy.

We have not seen the details of the new law, but a law that would target certain countries such as Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, and Pakistan, which may make sense because perhaps these are the countries from where illegal immigrants flock into the UK, but it is likely to be misunderstood by the nationals of these countries that the policy is racially motivated. This policy to me is an advertisement of the failure of British Immigration policy. Is there no other way that the policy can be made to work without asking people to deposit three thousand pounds before being granted a tourist visa that expires after six months? How would the money be returned to the owner? Would this money be paid into the coffers of the various British High Commissions and Embassies all over the world, and then collected from them whenever the visitor returns to his own country of origin? Will interest be paid on the three thousand pounds deposited for six months? And what would happen to somebody who just wants to spend a week or less in the UK? What would also happen to people who have been visiting the UK for years without overstaying their welcome and whose track records are known? There are so many questions begging for answers. As an Anglophile, I would not want anything that would damage our relations with Great Britain to be done. Yes, these are difficult times economically for the whole world and particularly for Europe, but these difficult times would pass. We should be very careful in beginning a process which may lead to ill-feeling and reciprocity by other countries affected; because after all, reciprocity is the kernel of diplomatic relations.

Some of us who are old still remember with fondness and nostalgia those days when our passports said we were Nigerian citizens as well as commonwealth citizens. I remember my student days in England and in Canada without having to get a visa. That is a long time ago. The world is definitely more complicated than before and things are changing rapidly, not necessarily for the better, but also not necessarily for the worse. We should try and manage our relations in order not to do incalculable damage to existing friendly relations among nations. I remember trying to get a visa to Germany some years ago and the humiliation I went through before being granted a one entry visa to Germany for a duration of two weeks, not even six months or a year; and this is a country where I was an ambassador for five years. Since the visa was a Shengen visa, I took the Euro train from London to Paris return and then try to go to Germany by air from London, and after having been checked in and was about to board the flight, my passport was checked and I was told that I had used my one entry visa to Germany to another Shengen country, France and that my visa was no longer valid for entry into Germany. This was after my luggage had been checked into the plane and I had gone through immigration. I now had to be returned to London, and my luggage removed from the plane. This is a story that I hate to tell and on my return to Nigeria, I told my German friends in Abuja and they were very apologetic about what was done to me in Lagos. Since that time, I have never tried to travel to Germany and I have no intention of ever going there, even though I had beautiful memories of my stay there. First as a research student and later as Ambassador Extraordinary and plenipotentiary and I still remember Germany’s role when the Abacha government detained me because the German Embassy protested about my detention. This should make me remain a friend to Germany forever. I believe that the love between me and that country is not lost. I remember mentioning my treatment in the hands of the German embassy to my brother and friend, Professor Jubril Aminu, former Ambassador to the United States and then Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, who jokingly said, “Jide, we should stay in our own country and stop going to other people’s countries”; this to me was a good advice which I think most of us should keep. But for some of us who have children abroad, what do we do?

It is a pity that in a globalised world, we are having to face this kind of problems of discrimination essentially based on how one looks and the pigmentation of one’s skin. This does not augur well for global peace which we spend a lot of time and energy in building. As somebody who for a long time has been involved in the foreign policy formation of my country, I would hate to advice on policies based on race in our relations with the outside world. Let us hope things don’t deteriorate to that level. The world is too fractured already with religious conflict and incipient clash of civilisations. It would not be wise to add racial divide into this complex situation.

When the BBC and CNN reported that a 25 year old British soldier had been killed in Woolwich, South of London, by Muslim fanatics, my mind immediately went to Arabs or Pakistanis as possible culprits. When the photographs of two blacks were shown without their names being mentioned, I immediately felt they must have been West Indians who converted to Islam. I came to this conclusion because as a graduate student in London, I sometimes witnessed violent eruptions from West Indian young men. Then when the news report said these two young men were of African descent, I could not in my wild imaginations guess that they would be Nigerians. Eventually, when they were said to be people of Nigerian descent and with the Abdulmutalab experience in mind, I immediately felt they may be my compatriots from the north. This is a story of prejudice because that is what it is, and it is unpardonable. Eventually, the truth came home and the two of them were Nigerians of Yoruba Muslim descent. Even this last statement would not be correct because the two of them were born into Christian middle-class background and both were named after the Angel Michael.

The story is that they converted to Islam in London in 2008 and that both of them came under the same tutelage of a violent Muslim cleric as was the case of Mohammad Umaru Mutalab. This case is very embarrassing. The Nigerian community in London and presumably our High Commission, rightly issued statements that Messrs Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo were born of Nigerian parentage in London and that they have never visited Nigeria before and that they are British and that Nigerians should not be tarred with the brush of terrorism as demonstrated by these two madmen. Their statement included several names of people of Nigerian parentage who are British and who had been representing Great Britain in European and Olympic competitions. These are celebrated British heroes and heroines. They argued that the British should then accept the wheat with the shaft and that Nigeria and Nigerians should not be blamed for the errant behaviour of these two murderers.

One cannot but agree with this statement, and it is noteworthy that our government has remained correctly speechless, even though embarrassed by this crime. This is a case of premeditated murder. Michael Adebolajo a few years ago visited Kenya with the sole aim of enlisting in a jihad against western interest led by the murderous terrorists Somali Al-Shabab. He was apprehended and handed over to the British High Commission which arranged for his deportation to London. The behaviour after the murderous act in London of these criminals was totally unheard of. Instead of running away from the scene of crime, they waited to be photographed while haranguing the British passersby and shouting that they committed murder because their Muslim brethren were being killed everywhere in the world. When the police finally arrived, instead of surrendering and facing the music of British justice, they crazily rushed at the Police who of course brought them down in a hail of bullets. The British police then took them to the hospital where they received apparently first class treatments that saved their lives. They are now going to be taken to the Old Bailey to face justice. I wish the death penalty were still in the English Law book, so that these two pit bulls can be put down.

It is going to be hard for Nigerians or people of Nigerian descent to be treated gentlemanly in England as from now on. One only hopes that British sense of justice would prevail at all times so that people do not suffer unnecessarily for other peoples’ crimes and that no one should be made a victim because of similarity of names. Nigerians and people of Nigerian descent all over the world have been thoroughly embarrassed by this murderous and criminal behaviour of these two young men. The British press has not been very helpful in this particular case. They have tried very hard to create the impression of Nigeria as a violent country by linking these young men’s behaviour with the Boko Haram terrorist group, whereas there is no connection whatsoever. The behaviour of these two people is due to the over liberal tendencies in the western world where violent people are treated with kid gloves.

I did part of my undergraduate studies in Queen Mary’s College in East London and whenever I am in England which is quite often, I tend to go on a trip of nostalgia by visiting the old school and I am often amazed on how the whole area seems to have been taken over by Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Not only that, at the tube stations along the way, you sometimes hear young radicals talking about declaring the Sharia in England and making every person subject to it. These young people are never cautioned and those of them who publicly embrace Al-Qaeda are allowed to roam the streets without any challenge. I am of course in agreement with the British Law of Freedom of Speech, but sometimes, this can often be taken for license. It is this kind of licentious environment that allows young people to be brainwashed to the extent of playing revolutionaries on the streets of London. In his recent broadcast to the American people on the use of drones to the take out Al-Qaeda leadership, President Obama said that the challenges posed to security in the world is going to come not from foreigners, but from home grown terrorism. What he said would also apply to Great Britain. While foreign terrorists should continue to be monitored and prevented from creating havoc, those born in Western countries and who as a result of this enjoy basic freedoms, should be equally watched in order to prevent a repetition of this terrible incident.