Category: Jide Osuntokun

‘The new china leadership would have its hands full with domestic problems of how to meet the rising expectations of its people. To the outsider, China appears a homogenous country, but it is not. People in China’s Tibet, inner Mongolia, and the northeast that are heavily populated by Muslims would be as difficult to control in future as they have been in the past’

The Chinese Communist party has now elected a new politburo of seven with Xi Jin Ping as the General Secretary and First Commissar of the Armed Forces. In this position, Jin Ping would be Head of State or President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His father was one of the leaders of China under Chairman Mao Zedong. In other words, he’s almost a prince of the Communist party. He is known to be a conservative who toes party line and he is far from being a doctrinaire communist. He is a practical politician who is committed to keeping China together and would not brook opposition from anywhere in the country or in the party. He is more relaxed than previous leaders, but beyond this relaxed exterior is an iron will.

In his public statement, he acknowledged that there is a disconnect between party and people and that members of the party are corrupt and that wealth of the country is not evenly distributed. He committed himself to a prosperous China in which everybody shares in the wealth of the nation. He said very little on foreign policy. He did not say whether he would tighten up the hold on Hong Kong or abandon the policy of one China and two-economic systems in which Hong Kong is allowed to embrace capitalism. In any case, one wonders if China today can really be called a communist state, it seems to us outsiders, that what the Chinese practice is a gerontocratic oligarchy masquerading as a Socialist party. Leadership within the party is arranged by the leaders and the people are just faced with a fait accompli to which they must acquiesce.

Jin Ping said little also about Taiwan where more than 60 million Chinese have their own democratic government and unlike before have abandoned the pretence of being a nationalist government waiting to cross over to the mainland to take over from the renegade communists. In the past, new leadership in China would routinely make sabre rattling noise about unification of the Chinese people and referred to Taiwan’s leadership as capitalist running dog. It seems the Chinese on the mainland and the island of Taiwan are now too comfortable making money to allow the little matter of politics to interfere in their economic interest. Millions of tourists are going each way between Taiwan and China and there is massive investment of overseas Chinese money including that of Taiwan in the phenomenal economic development of People’s Republic of China. Obviously, Xi Jin Ping would want this to continue.

The man who does the day-to-day running of China and who would be replacing Premier Wen Jiabao is Li Keqiang. Apart from these two men, there are five other men on the standing committee of the politburo. Not much is known of the seven of them except that they are all mainstream members of the Chinese Communist party.

What happens in China is of global importance. In another 10 years, it is surmised; China would be the largest economy in the world and would have eclipsed that of the United States. China would still be relatively poor in terms of per capita Income because of its huge population of over 1.3 billion, a fifth of the global population. Whatever happens therefore in China would reverberate all over the world. If the Chinese economy dips it would drag the whole world economy down with it. Already many countries in Africa and Latin America that produce a lot of raw materials are now dependent on the Chinese market and for us in Nigeria, that is dependent on the American market for the sale of crude oil and gas, the Chinese market would increasingly become an alternative because of America’s desire to free itself from the stranglehold of oil exporters, particularly those in the Middle East and I believe including also Nigeria.

It should now be public knowledge that America is doing everything to free itself from dependence on foreign energy source. Soon, America would be producing as much oil as Saudi Arabia because licenses have been given out for drilling not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but in Alaska and on the Atlantic Coast and America is also producing a lot of oil and gas from shale and tar sands and parallel development is also going on in Mexico and, Canada, the result of which would lead to continental North America being self sufficient in energy. On top of this, America is also unlike Europe, building nuclear power plants which in spite of its recent problems are a clean source of energy. The upshot of all these for us in Africa and Nigeria is that we would increasingly need the Asian market dominated by China and India until such a time when they too become energy self sufficient.

The new china leadership would have its hands full with domestic problems of how to meet the rising expectations of its people. To the outsider, China appears a homogenous country, but it is not. People in China’s Tibet, inner Mongolia, and the northeast that are heavily populated by Muslims would be as difficult to control in future as they have been in the past; but what would challenge the ability of this new leadership will be in its relations with the United States and Japan; as well as Russia which shares thousands of miles of frontier with China with conflicting claims along the Usuri River area over which they fought a land war in the 70s. It seems China and Russia have agreed to bury the hatchet and to live in peace with one another, but claims over territories are not easily forgotten and this may be causes of conflict and disagreement in the future.

Resource hungry China is locked in claims over uninhabited islands in the South China sea involving sometimes the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and even Malaysia; but the most serious conflict of claims is in the North China sea where the Japanese and Chinese are laying claims to the same islands with different names to the Japanese and Chinese. The Americans are also strengthening their pacific fleet and loudly asserting that they are a pacific nation with interest in the pacific. China is building its first aircraft carrier as an indication of its desire for sea power. It is not likely the United States would allow China to humiliate Japan in the ensuing conflicts over these uninhabited Islands and its resource rich territorial waters. Whatever happens, the future of China would not be secure without positive relationship with the United States which today is the largest market for Chinese goods and it is on this market that Chinese prosperity depends for now. The Chinese are also the largest holders of American bonds and because of this, America is beholden to the Chinese. In other words, there is a symbiotic relationship between America and China. Which means the future of the world would depend on a bipolar relationship between China and the United States, but for years to come, the United States would have an edge over China in terms of power and ability to deploy and project it.

The death of Olusola Saraki the Waziri of Ilorin and the god-father of Kwara politics was most unexpected and Kwara politics will never be the same again. Olusola Saraki born of an Ilorin father and a Saki mother was a quintessential Yoruba man with Fulani heritage. He trained as a physician qualifying in 1961 in England. He came home to set up a medical practice in Lagos and achieved great success by having the retainerships of several companies and industrial houses in Lagos. It was surprising to many of his friends in Lagos when he decided to go into politics in Kwara and he bestrode the political landscape of Kwara like a colossus for several decades. He made governors and unmade governors until he was able to make his son Bukola Saraki governor and his daughter Gbemi, senator. He wanted Gbemi to succeed her brother. This was not to be because Bukola Saraki rightly had a different opinion. Father and son had to part politically but before long both were reconciled and certainly Olusola Saraki must have died a fulfilled man knowing that his legacy will survive in his children. Some of us for historical and ancestral reasons have abiding interest in Kwara politics. It is our hope that the passing away of Saraki will usher in peace, stability and development in Kwara state and that Kwara will become part of the mainstream of Yoruba politics for which it has always been.

Before the death of Saraki, Hope Harriman, a foremost Estate Surveryor who had contributed hugely to the development of this profession in Nigeria passed on in distant Washington DC. I got to know Mr Harriman very well at a time he was married to Deola my cousin and whenever I met him, he was always excited about talking about their two sons whom he affectionately referred to as his Ekiti Boys. He was very proud of these young fellows whom he sent to Cambridge where he himself had studied. Mr Harriman was in Government College Ibadan with my late brother Abiodun in the late 1940s. He was a colorful man and highly cerebral just like his late brother Ambassador Leslie Harriman. He was a member of a group called the Patriot. He was an Elder statesman who was worried about the decline of Nigeria. As an Itsekiri man, he agonized over the threat against his people posed by the larger neighboring nationalities of the Ijaws (Izon) and the Urhobos. He did whatever was possible to bring peace to Warri and Itsekiri land. He was an avuncular man who enjoyed life to the fullest. He will be sorely missed.

The assassination of General Mohammed Shuwa in Maiduguri came to most people as a shock. General Shuwa, a Shuwa Arab/Kanuri man was one of the heroes of the Nigerian Civil war. He was a rather dour and quiet military man who was not as successful as Benjamin Adekunle, the famous black scorpion of the 3rd Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Army. It is ironical that both Gen Shuwa and Adekunle have been living in relative obscurity and isolation after their heroic actions in the civil war. I wish the Federal government will do something to ennoble Adekunle who is still alive and for the family of General Shuwa who had passed on to eternity.

The demise of Justice Kayode Eso in faraway London also came as a surprise and I would be writing separately about him because he deserves a full length treatment and homage as the best Chief Justice Nigeria never had.

Coming nearer home, the cold hands of death struck within my family in the passing away of my older brother Peter Agboola Osuntokun a gentleman, if there was ever one. A man who inspite of the fact that he was not cerebrally endowed, worked very hard to leave a legacy behind. He would be missed by the family particularly by his immediate children and wife and by the larger Osuntokun family. In the same vein, Yemi Ogendegbe whom I have known as a brother since 1956 when his father was Western Nigeria Regional Minister of Works. Yemi and I were also in later years at Ibadan Grammar School after I left Christ School for my higher School Certificate Course in Ibadan. He was a very handsome man, pleasant and gentle to a fault and also had a wonderful smile. It was a shock to me when I heard that he died suddenly without being ill. My heart goes to Mama who is very much alive in her 90s and to Yemi’s siblings. His death just shows graphically the futility of life.

The passing into glory of these titans should raise fundamental questions in the minds of our leaders and should make all of us understand that we are but mere players on the stage of life and that no one lives forever and that power is transient that wealth itself is of limited value. J.J. Rousseau says that’ all men are born equal in the sense that they are all born naked’. We brought nothing into this world and when we go, we will go with nothing. This is why King Solomon says all accumulation of wealth is vanity because at the end of the day, the man who accumulates wealth will not be here forever to spend it. All of us and particularly our leaders should try and have a sense of history and be moderate in whatever they do. Power is not the end of life and it is what one brings to life that matters. Building mansions and estates and buying jets and having fat accounts when the vast majority of humanity is suffering may bring us fame for some time but this will not endure and one day, the owner of life will call us home. This is the lesson in this horrible year or ANNUS ORIBILIS.

The year 2012 is a leap year and I am ordinarily not a superstitious person but in Nigeria, we always say that leap years are bad years. They are years when horrible things happen. This has been the case in Nigeria this year. There are so many deaths of important people in this country this year. The ones that come readily to mind are the deaths of Professor Tokunbo Sofoluwe the young Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, Oba Oladele Olasore, Wole Adeosun, Lamidi Adesina, Hope Harriman, General Muhammad, Peter Agboola Osuntokun, Yemi Ogendegbe and Olusola Saraki. Tokunbo died suddenly in harness without warning and broke all our hearts. He was not only a wonderful mathematician and computer scientist, he was also a wonderful man. He made an impression on everyone who met him and his death was a personal loss to me. Not only because I saw him as a younger brother, but also because his older brothers were my school mates and friends. Tokunbo was like a junior brother that I never had. I still think about him all the time and sometimes wonder why good people die young. But God is a mystery and He alone is his own interpreter and I believe when we get to heaven, he will make it plain to us. Tokunbo’s death created a void in the lives of many people which will be difficult to fill.

I remember also the late Professor Adebayo Olumide, foremost neurosurgeon who passed on in Ibadan recently. He was a first class surgeon, a gentleman, more like a gentle giant because of his height and disposition. We were together in the USA in 1980 when he spent a sabbatical year in Washington DC. My heart goes to his amiable wife Ronke, a daughter to Sir Samuel Manuwa and to his children who were little when I last saw them. Bayo will be missed for his wit and gentle manners.

Another horrible loss was the death of Kabiyesi Oladele Olasore, the Ajagbusi- Ekun, Aloko of Iloko who joined his ancestors a few months ago. Kabiyesi was a fine man in everything. A chartered accountant, a banker, a former minister of the Federal Republic, a businessman, an educationist, a philanthropist and a public spirited man. He was a gentle soul, an amiable man who felt concerned about people. He loved people and he tried to draw people close to him. I did not get close to him until he became the Aloko and a couple of times, he invited me to come to Iloko to visit with him. Unfortunately, I was too busy to take up his invitation and I regret I did not do so. I once stayed overnight in his excellent hotel in the sleepy town of Iloko. What is most impressive about him is his commitment to his hometown and its development. When he was Secretary of Finance in the federation, I believe he caused a contract to be awarded for the dualisation of the road between Ife and Ilesha and he insisted that a spur to Iloko must be part of the award. He built an excellent secondary school in Iloko, the facility of which will put to shame several so called universities. One wonders why he never converted this school to a university especially now that all kinds of mushroom universities are springing up daily. Oba Olasore was a Christian. He used to come to the Holy Ghost services at the Redemption camp and when my wife was alive, his sister used to be a guest at our camp house. I believe Kabiyesi was born in Kano, he spoke Hausa well and he had a global view about life. He will be sorely missed.

Before him another titan in the accountancy world, Chief Wole Adeosun also a former minister and managing director of First bank also passed on to glory. Chief Wole Adeosun worked in NAL Merchant Bank, a foremost merchant bank in Nigeria. He was also involved in economic policy formulation in the country for several years. I remember him travelling with us to the far East when I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as special adviser to the Minister. Both he and Oba Olasore were relatively young and in their passing, Nigeria will be the poorer for it.

Just as we were settling down and digesting the implications of these losses, news broke that the former governor of Oyo, Alhaji Lamidi Adesina had passed on. Lamidi Adesina was a columnist in the Tribune for several years and he was a diehard supporter of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his politics. It was therefore not surprising that he was elected on the platform of the UPN into the House of Representatives during the second republic. Alhaji Adesina’s politics was centrist and a grass roots man. He had his ears to the ground and he knew what the people wanted, he was different from Alhaji Adedibu who belonged to the other side of the coin of Ibadan politics. Adesina was a professional teacher and in whatever he did, the teaching profession influenced him. I remember when he became governor, I had occasion to visit him in his Molete home. I had a personal mission that I wanted to accomplish during my visit. I will not go into details but the gist of it is that I wanted him to reconcile the Awolowo and Akintola’s political factions in Yorubaland and I wanted him to do this through a signal appointment of a young man who in his own marriage had reconciled Akintola and Awolowo’s faction of political tendencies in yorubaland. Alhaji Adesina received me with kindness, consideration, respect and commended me for my action. Even though he did not carry out my request, I know he consulted with the late Chief Bola Ige. I would not know what Chief Ige said, but the appointment did not come through. There wasn’t much money when Alhaji Adesina was governor so in terms of physical achievements, there were no dramatic things that he did as governor under the Alliance of Democracy Party but he maintained peace and civility in the state and brought into governance respect for law. He kept a lid on the excesses of party supporters especially in a situation where Yoruba people felt aggrieved by the persecution they suffered under Abacha and naturally wanted to give bloody noses to those perceived as Abacha’s supporters in Ibadan. It is a pity that Alhaji Adesina took ill and died at a time when the ACN needs his advice especially in these difficult years of preparation for politics of 2015.

• (To be continued)

The Sahara desert has historically not been a hindrance to people’s movement from North to south and vice versa and from East to West. Events happening in one part of the Sahel (shore of the desert) eventually reverberate in other parts of the Sahel. The camel euphemistically called the ‘sheep of the desert’ has always provided means of transportation across the desert. Goods like gold and even slaves and kolanuts have usually found their ways into the Maghreb and beyond through Trans Saharan trade routes. Whilst goods made in the Maghreb and Europe and the Middle East have always found their way into the savannah and rain forest regions.

By the 14th century or even before that time the Arabic script and its local variant, the ajami were widely used in Kano and Katsina, Goa and Timbuktu as a result of diffusion of arab and Islamic culture into these areas. Islamic civilization flourished in the savannah and the Sahel to the point that the Islamic centre of Sankore in Timbuktu provided a training school for the ulama of many cities in the savannah and Sahel. Many of the products sold in morocco for example, the famous Moroccan leather were actually goat skins from Gobir and Zamfara. The point being made is that modern international frontiers are relatively new in these parts of Africa. The people still move easily across national frontiers without realizing they are moving from one country to another. This is why the infiltration of West Africa by Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al-shabab from Somalia into the Sahel and our own home grown boko haram with possible external links are now causes for worry.

We now have a situation in Mali where the Toubou or taureg people have taken over the northern part of Mali and are destroying sacred burial grounds of the past Islamic leaders as a part of salafist opposition to the Islamic shrines which they see as anti-Islamic. The city of Timbuktu in particular is being destroyed as part of this salafist campaign and a part of the West African civilization is crumbling before our very eyes. But what is actually very dangerous is the division of Mali along ethnic and racial lines. The area being claimed by the secessionist group in Mali is not coterminous with racial divide between Tuareg and Blacks. In any case, the tuaregs are a wandering people without any particular homeland that can be said to be their original home. In which case, their new country in northern Mali will be a replication of Mauritania where blacks and moors live together in an unhappy marriage.

The situation in the Sahel as a whole, not just northern Mali, has become a cause for worry for important players in the global community particularly the North Atlantic Powers. America and France in particular, have strategic interest in this part of the world. Since the collapse of Libya under NATO pressure, a lot of arms have found their ways into the hands of insurgents in the sahelian part of West Africa including our own part of the Sahel. This is why we have a community of interest with the countries in the west to impose a pax Africana on the Sahel. The UN Security Council is seized with the question of peace in northern Mali and the Sahel as a whole. If Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb is not stopped in Mali, then the same situation will repeat itself in Niger, our Northern neighbor and also in Chad in our North- East where there has been a history of rebellion by their Saharan tribes.

What is to be done? ECOWAS is being prodded and goaded into sending troops into Mali so that the country can assert its sovereignty over its territory including the secessionist northern Mali. This will be in consonance with the Africa Charter of the AU which enjoins on all African Countries to respect their colonial boundaries. Once this principle of inviolability of international borders is breached, no one can predict where it will lead. It certainly could lead to irredentist wars in Africa because of the artificiality of our borders. This is why the secession in northern Mali is not in any body’s interest. It has also been suggested that drug traffickers are beginning to use this territory as transit camps to the Maghreb and southern Europe. The flow of arms into these areas can also destabilize the whole of West Africa and lead to the collapse of many states and consequential movement of huge population that can destabilize the entire world. The armed rebels in possession of hand carried missiles may pose threat to civil aviation across the Sahara desert.

The US and France are apparently prepared to provide logistical support for military intervention in Mali. For this purpose, an ECOWAS force of 3000 soldiers is being assembled to which Nigeria would probably contribute some battalions. Exactly how many soldiers would be necessary to achieve success has not been fathomed out, but anybody with a sense of military history should know that the kind of force that would be needed is not going to be one or two brigades but perhaps a division or two. The area involved is larger than France even though sparsely populated. In other to effectively occupy the area and to uproot these ‘dessert rats’, one would need to defeat them in detail. After their defeat, there will be need for an effective occupation. It seems to me that the ECOWAS leaders have not grasped this. In the history of Chad that we know, France was never throughout its colonial days able to hold the area together. And since 1945 to the present day, the government has not been able to do this. This is simply because of the hostile environment which is comparable to Mali.

It is hoped that the West African force when it goes into Mali, will receive massive French and American logistical assistance particularly the provision military helicopters and combat aircrafts so that what the ground troops will be used for will effectively be mop-up operations. Anything outside this is doomed to fail. ECOMOG was not able to defeat rebels in Liberia and Sierra-Leone without the support of the UN and the additional intervention of British forces in Sierra-Leone in particular. And this is an area much more militarily hospitable than the inhospitable environment of the desert where ECOWAS troops will be fighting much more formidable opponents with the knowledge of the environment and a foe also driven by the fervor of Islamic fanaticism.

There is perhaps no option other than military intervention. ECOWAS cannot simply acquiesce with the dismemberment of a fellow member. But in intervening, it must aim at success because failure will not only expose the organization’s weakness, it will encourage either secessionist forces to rear up their ugly heads. But for me parroting General Colin Powell, no country or group of countries should embark on a military expedition until it has overwhelming power to compel success. A force of 3000 troops in a desert the size of Northern Mali is in my own estimation not overwhelming enough and it seems to me an invitation to failure or to a war of attrition lasting many years.

My children who have had to leave Nigeria largely because of unfulfilled expectations and are now living in white man’s countries, where they are settled and doing materially well for themselves, but largely lack psychological fulfilment have always asked me what I thought was Nigeria’s main achievement since independence in 1960 apart from the fact that we have remained a country in spite of the various fissiparous tendencies that have been pulling us apart and culminating in a civil war between 1967 and 1970. The euphoria over independence in 1960 now seems to have been misplaced and for many of us, it is a distant dream that has now become a nightmare.

In 1960, I was a strapling teenage boy in class 5 at Christ School Ado-Ekiti, arguably one of the best boys schools in Nigeria. Every time I write about Christ School, I’m always full of emotions. When I tell my children about Christ school, they always think of an idyllic environment until they get to the place to find out that Christ School is not out of this world. Christ School remains for me the source of my inspiration and the reason for whatever success I have in life. I remain eternally grateful to our teachers especially to the young Britons who left the comfort of their homes to come to Ado-Ekiti where there was neither pipe-borne water nor electricity in those days. Our school had a giant generator that worked between 6:30pm and 10:00pm in the evening, during which time we had evening prep and evening devotion before light out. It is a matter of joy that even up till today, through the efforts of the old students and the government of Ekiti State, Christ School has maintained its reputation, distinction and its environmental uniqueness in its location at the Agidimo Hills. How I wish Nigeria had made as much progress as Christ School has made since 1960.

In 1960, we celebrated independence with joy and dancing and we were feted to a sumptuous dinner while female students from Anglican Girls Secondary School, Ado-Ekiti were invited. To us boys, this was the icing on the cake, because many of us were too shy to look girls in the face, not to talk of talking to them. But on that day, some of us learnt how to talk to girls. When I tell my children this story, they always marvelled at our innocence in those days. But that was the truth. I remember that we always felt that students who had so-called girlfriends were doomed to failure so instead of wasting valuable time on poppy love and letter writing, we were advised to spend our time in reading books. Our strict upbringing then reflected positively later on individual and collective achievements of Christ School Boys all over the country. Our discipline was also rooted in the love of Christ and the struggle for righteousness which when attained, made us excellent citizens. Our people would not steal; tell lies, compromise with evil. Some people have suggested that this is why there are not many rich Ekiti people, which is probably true, but I believe we are a contented lot, because of our peasant integrity we are able to speak truth to power and if possible suffer the consequences without flinching.

I do not want to sound arrogant and to think that there were no other schools that were operating at the same wave length with us. I’m sure there were. The various Government Colleges in Ibadan, Umuahia, Ugheli, Benin, Barewa, Keffi and their female counterparts were also operating on the same wave length. There were also sectarian colleges like Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha; St. John’s Secondary, Kaduna; Holy Ghost College, Owerri; Loyola College, Ibadan; St. Patrick’s College, Asaba; Stella Maris, Port Harcourt; St. Gregory’s, Lagos; were all involved in training future leaders of our country and bringing them all in the ways of the Lord. The point that I’m making is that if we had followed the slow and steady way of doing things before the so called oil boom era, when we were overwhelmed by the corruption and the curse of oil, Nigeria would have been a better country than what it is today.

In my youth, we could travel from Lagos to Kaduna, Kano Enugu and Port Harcourt and Kaura Namoda and Maiduguri by train. Admitted that the pace was usually slow, but one was sure to get there in one piece. There were even what we called passenger and goods trains. Road haulage was almost unheard of then. The roads were safe and there were no armed brigands and robbers waylaying people on the roads. In fact, people who had cars preferred driving in the nights and many times when I was involved in this as a child I used to wonder why we had to do that. We were told it was safer because the oncoming automobiles or trucks would have seen the headlights and therefore slowed down. There was no fear whatsoever of being waylaid. The Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) provided lights in the cities. Each city or district had its own generating plants. Unlike the behemoth that we have today where everything is concentrated in one centre and once the centre fails, the whole country is plunged into total darkness. As a young lecturer in the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus in 1972, I still enjoyed regular supply of power generated by the private English company in Jos that provided power for the Plateau before it was taken over and run down by the National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA). Schools in those days provided excellent education. The standards were very high and our A levels that is, Advanced levels and Higher School Certificates which were pre-requisites apart from concessional entrance examinations to entering university, were of high standards and probably the equivalent of first degrees nowadays. So what happened to this idyllic picture?

We used to have five years development plans at Federal and Regional level and even at the University of Ibadan our Vice-Chancellor, Kenneth Onwuka Dike also ran quiquennial plans which means that there was planned development and this was measurable in those days unlike what we have now, where there are no plans at all or in the words of the military “rolling plans”. We are daily told about contracts being awarded but which were usually abandoned unfinished. The result is the growth without development that we have now in this country.

A lady colleague of mine and an excellent medical scientist tearfully told me of the unbelievably high incidence of sickle cell anaemia in Nigeria. This she said can be prevented through education and counselling. We have the data; we know that millions of Nigerians, probably one out of every two carry the sickle cell traits and are blindly going into marriage without advice and bearing sicklers who would become permanent sources of worry, if not sorrow to the couples involved. In a caring and civilised society, there would be policies to tackle this, but not in Nigeria.

As individuals, there are brilliant and brainy Nigerians who can match their equals anywhere in the world. A Dutch friend of mine said years ago that some of the most brilliant individuals he has ever met are Nigerians but as a collectivity, Nigerians are also the most stupid people that he has ever met. We are like a country of the blind being led by the blind. We all celebrate Obama’s victory and delegations upon delegations of Nigerian officials troop to China yearly in search of so called foreign investment. Yet some of the same officials cart our money to deposit in Chinese, Lebanese, British and American banks. We are a country of importers, but hardly would you find exporters. Our industry lies in selling other people’s goods and not in production. We make cheap money as commission agents and brag about it. We build palaces and even some copy palaces they’ve seen abroad and wear gaudy dresses and make attires from damask and laces that are ordinarily used for window blinds and chairs in civilised climes of the world.

We need to change course. We need to go back to planning. We need to go back to God. We need to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness from our children. If we don’t do these, in the words of James Baldwin, it would be the fire next time. Our mono economy that is totally depended on hydro-carbons would soon crash and chicken would come home to roost when either hydro-carbons become environmentally unfashionable or America and even China, and India become energy self-sufficient. This may sound alarmist, but these three countries that I have just mentioned are working seriously to solve their energy problems as quickly as possible. This would leave us high and dry because after 56years of hydro-carbons production and refusal to diversify our economy and to industrialize while totally neglecting the agricultural sector, we would find out that we have nothing to fall back on.

If we were a serious country and have invested hugely on education as was done in places like Japan, Germany and the USA, then we would have been able to tap our people’s grey matter and harness this for production. But as in everything, our policies of neglect, abandonment of what is good and needful would haunt us for a long time to come.

The election of Barak Obama four years ago was a victory for non-racial democracy. Obama is therefore a transitional leader that is taking America from its racist past to a glorious future where it will be the quality of one’s mind and not his race that would be the objective measurement of one’s character. In the 1920s, President Harding was virtually driven out of office because rumours had it that his skin colour was changing and that he probably had black blood in him. Whether true or not, the poor man died apparently in frustration and desperation.

It would have been unthinkable some decades ago for someone with Obama’s look to even aspire to be a senator not to talk about being the President of the United States. In the 1960s, Obama would not have been able to freely have a cup of coffee or a meal in a restaurant in the southern part of the Unites States unless he went to a black restaurant. He would not have been able to sit anywhere in a bus except at the back because the front rows were reserved for whites. If he was pressed, he would not have been able to ease himself in any toilet in a restaurant as whites would normally be able to do.

When James Meredith was admitted to the University of Mississippi, he had to be protected by federal troops sent in by the Kennedy administration because the then governor of Mississippi said James Meredith would only be admitted on his dead body. In short, as a result of President Lyndon Johnson’s reforms of the 1960s and the activism of the supreme court of the United States, Americans of all colours do not only have rights under the law but these rights are justiceable. What the Obama elections represents is the triumph of reason over imbecility in American social and political life.

There is still racism in the United States sometimes this is hidden and sometimes this is open. The so called Tea Party Movement within the Republican Party is openly racist and sometimes depicting Obama as a monkey and asking him to go back to Africa where he can have as much bananas as he likes. Sometimes the expression of freedom of speech in America can go to the extreme, the kind of extreme that makes it possible to ridicule Islam on the recent film on Prophet Mohammed that created a lot of problems globally for the American government.

The former President Jimmy Carter said that white Americans have suddenly woken up and realized that they elected a black man as president and they are very scared and many of them see the coming election as a way of changing the situation. This is an uncomfortable truth but it is no less the truth. The Financial Times of London owned by the Murdock group that also owns the rabidly conservative if not racist Fox network in an editorial opinion sometimes in August 2012 said that this coming election is the last chance for white Americans to take back political power. It came up with some crude statistics that the number of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and native Americans by the next decade would outnumber those of the whites and that a coalition of this visible minorities may in the foreseeable future dominate American politics.

This is of course nonsense but it is remarkable that a prestigious newspaper like the Financial Times would give vent to this crude racism. Mitt Romney, the republican candidate dismisses Obama’s supporters as government dependents, that is, those who cannot do without government support while his own supporters he will want us to see as the real Americans of the traditional American dream. That is those who build themselves up by their boot straps. Ordinarily if Mr Obama were a white person, he will easily be re elected especially running against a man who is a bishop in the church of the Latter-day Saints otherwise known as the Mormons, a sect that many Americans see as strange.

Apart from that, Romney has a lot of skeletons in his wardrobe especially centring around sharp business practices and underpayment of taxes. Obama inherited from President George Bush two wars and a doddering economy that was on the verge of collapse. The iconic motor industries of Detroit particularly General Motors and Chrysler had to file for bankruptcy before the Obama administration intervened and saved them. If they had collapsed, millions of American jobs would have gone down the drain. The same thing can be said of American banks and insurance companies involved in the mortgage scandals that were rescued by the Obama’s administration yet 8% of Americans are unemployed but it could have been worse. In the area of foreign policy, Obama is winding down the war in Afghanistan after he had done that in Iraq. He is trying to avoid being sucked into another war in Iran and Syria and his use of drones has saved many American lives who would have had to be sent across the boundary of Afghanistan to Pakistan to fight the Taliban. His administration has managed to stay on the side of the people in the so called Arab Spring Movement.

He has not been able to bring peace to Israel and Palestine but if re-elected, he may be able to do this because he will no longer be constrained by the power of the Jewish lobby.

Personally I wish he will be re-elected. This is for psychological reasons from seeing a black man in the most powerful position in the world. But in reality, we Africans have not benefited much from the Obama presidency. The only benefit if at all is psychological.

I sometimes ask myself what exactly is going on in this country. Why are things so bad and why have the roads in the country collapsed suddenly? Why do we budget trillions of naira every year and there is no noticeable change in our lives?

Why are most of the industries closing down and their premises converted to churches? Why is there so much insecurity in the land? Apart from the Boko Haram phenomenon, students are killing fellow students and at every little provocation, people are pouncing on each other and beating each other to death and people are burning each other alive because of petty thievery.

We are suffering as a people in the midst of plenty. The insecurity in this country has become a fundamental issue that government must tackle. The situation has gotten so bad that when burglars visit your house in the night and they try to force their way into your house and you shout at them asking who they are, instead of them taking to their feet and running away, they would unashamedly announce that they are burglars and would ask you to open your door before they force their ways in. Things are that bad that when you go to bed nowadays, you sleep with one eye open.

Our houses are like fortresses surrounded with high walls and barbed wires on top of them and burglary iron bars across the windows. We are just lucky in this country that the incidence of fire is not as frequent as it is in other parts of the world because escape from an inferno would be near impossible. Our electricity supply is terrible and irregular. We are in the rainy season when the demand is not so high because of the cold weather condition, we are being told that the dams are full; the fullest in 29 years and that they may collapse. When the dry season sets in, we will be told that there is no water in the dam which is why there is irregular supply of electricity. There is no aspect of our lives as a nation that one can celebrate right now. I do not blame President Jonathan for all the ills of our society, our problems started a long time ago and they seem to be culminating to the present chaos our country is in. But there is a need to demonstrate leadership because it seems the federal government is biting more than it can chew and it seems to me that there is a need for devolution of power and responsibilities. This is what the so called constitutional review should be about. It should not be about creation of states because we cannot afford additional states.

At present, the cost of the huge bureaucracy that we have at all levels is 80% of our budget while sometimes less than 20% is used for capital development. This should be the other way round because no developing country can survive under this heavy over bureaucratization and governance cost. One sometimes wonders why in spite of close to 60 billion dollars of crude oil export and growing GDP, at about 7% per annum, our infrastructure seems to have collapsed. In all my life, I have never seen the network of roads in Nigeria being this bad. When we did not have oil, we were able to travel from the North to the South, from the East to the West on motorable roads. Those who did not want to use the roads had the alternative of railways. However, since the so called “oil wealth”, it seems as if everything has gone to the dogs. The collapse of the roads started with Obasanjo’s government when substantial amount of the country’s wealth was used to pay off Paris and London Clubs’ debt. At that time, we all thought this was a good idea but it should not have been at the total neglect of the country’s physical infrastructure. I also remember Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Minister of Finance and current Minister of Finance telling us in a closed door meeting that after the debts had been paid, one billion dollars out of what would have been part of the debt repayment would be used for roads rehabilitation and reconstruction annually. Now, what has happened to this promise and where is the money?

There are so many questions to ask but space would not permit us. Our government needs to know that we need to change course. People want to see roads being rehabilitated and if needs be, being reconstructed. We have the people; we have young engineers coming out of universities and polytechnics. These people need to be engaged and we also have the resources. We need a Marshall plan in this country to keep everybody working and to keep the country developing. We need to depart from orthodox economics to Keynesian economics. This is not far from what the Chinese did and today everybody is running to China for foreign investment and technical assistance. In all my life, I have never seen Nigerians this despondent. It is even affecting our profile abroad. I was so angry with the international media that did not show our President attending the funeral of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister who died recently. It was so infuriating seeing only South African President and the President of Rwanda and even Thabo Mbeki, a former South African President being given media coverage than our own sitting President. During the last Olympics, every country was excited about winning medals; we were the only large country which did not win any single medal. This general decline of our country is affecting us in every respect. We used to be a proud people but what can we be proud of now? We are a giant with clay feet and we are gradually becoming the laughing stock of Africa. We are largely irrelevant globally and being an oil-producing country is no longer a ticket to ride because all the countries in West Africa now have discovered oil in their territories. Is it not ironical that Nigeria is now importing diesel from Niger, our northern neighbour which has discovered crude oil and which now has a functioning refinery as contrasted with our moribund four refineries necessitating our corrupt importation of refined petroleum?

I am calling on President Jonathan to summon a national conference on national moral rearmament and strategies for future development. If we do not do this, this country will either implode or explode. There is no time to waste. May God have mercy on our country. Everything should be put on the discussion agenda. One hears the statements by some not well-informed persons saying national unity is non-negotiable. What is the meaning of this? Was Nigeria not made by man? All human institutions are of necessity imperfect and our national unity is not an exception. If not negotiated as had been the case since 1914, 1946, 1953, 1957, 1959, then we are heading for a national precipice. It is only the living that can enjoy whatever advantages national unity confers on Nigerians. In a situation where people are being killed because of where they come from or their different faiths, it behoves upon us to discuss and establish a constitutional modus Vivendiand a structural architecture within which hands and limbs will be preserved while we live together and if this cannot be negotiated, then unto thy tents o Israel may be the only way out as was the case in Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union.