The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Ololade

  • Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and the burden of genius (2)

    •(Intrigues as petroleum minister grapples with challenges of office)

    Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu is a supporting actor in President Muhammadu Buhari’s ‘change’ fiction or drama of ‘change’ if you like. At a glance, he seems an ideal ambassador of ‘change’ but has he the political and ideological bent to actualise Mr. President’s anti-corruption crusade in the oil sector? Has he the nerve to turn his office into something more than an economic labyrinth and political jailhouse? If he fails, his name and reputation will suffer for it.

    There is no gainsaying the Nigerian corridor of power is booby trapped to thwart genius. A rabble of genii has fallen in recent past to her decadent pleasures and cruelties. By their deeds, they become a profanation of sterling stewardship in public office. After Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Reuben Abati to mention a few, one gets the feeling that entrusting a genius with a Nigerian public office is an exercise in futility. It’s akin to tying the Mediterranean with palm fronds for storage against drought.

    Time was, when the argument was entirely against the ‘system’ thus making a case for the genius. But a new school of thought emerges and it advances the perspective that the genius should no longer be let off the hook by the simple technicality of his perceived powerlessness against a corrupt system and hostile work environment. That is simply one way to look at it and it is a grossly skewed portrait of the status quo presented in defense of the genius.

    Managing a public office is no walk in the park, particularly in Nigeria. Yet the Nigerian genius with an Ivy League education and impressive track record eagerly accepts to serve the country, with promises of hope and positive change. It is always fascinating to see such individuals however, morph into grotesque apparitions of the patriots they were meant to become. Annoyingly, they do so with unpardonable cheek and a swivel-it-finger-in-your-face stance.

    Kachikwu should be different. He should be that interpreter of ‘change’ who keeps his wits about him. He shouldn’t fall to the lure of the decadent and all powerful ‘system.’ Can he?

    His predecessors suffered irreparable loss of self. Kachikwu shouldn’t. Avarice, extreme confidence and god-complex are familiar hyper-states that destroyed preceding genii. These familiar evils stifled their minds and enslaved them to vulgar luxury and other unimaginable obscenities. Lots of promising folk have extinguished in name and status on this charred, crimson path. It takes a man of unusual integrity and strong personality to tower above such decadence.

    In the unfolding drama of ‘change,’ greed is the depravity that Kachikwu should shun. The ‘young oil Turks’ and the aging cabal dominating the oil sector have overtime, evolved an enduring culture of acquisitiveness, self-centeredness and mediocrity as the benchmark of stewardship and moral fibre in the sector. With the connivance of the immediate past administration, they created and sustained a daemonic lyre of gluttony and lust as the language of transaction and service in the oil industry.

    Consequently, the need for competence and accountability was serially altered into an imperial hankering for unearned dividends and mechanised pilfering. Public service in the oil sector thus split in two, taking on the forms of a vulgar gladiatorship by perverse civil servants and leisure-class banditry by aberrant oil magnates.

    At the twilight of the last administration, Nigeria came face to face with the garish licentiousness and dishonesty of the characters that ran the oil industry aground. President Buhari swore to retrieve the country’s looted funds from these bandit breed. To this end, the nation is treated to a tragicomedy of the feverish hunt and prosecution of culprits at home and abroad. While it is too early to give the president kudos for operationalising his anti-corruption crusade beyond platitudinous jingle, one cannot but appreciate the haunted glares of the culprits as they scurry for safe havens abroad, their trails littered with their plundered and pasty spoils.

    Kachikwu had better take in the imagery of nemesis and remorse. Let it guide him as he serves as the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

    Lest we forget Kachikwu’s assurance to Nigerians that although the challenge of cleaning NNPC will be a bumpy ride, it will be exciting. He promised that it will eventually yield positive results. Positive results for whom? It’s about time the NNPC boss understood that Nigerians are more aware and interested in their affairs. Nigerians are paying his salary and they deserve more than his subtle retractions and fragile excuses.

    Until the lingering fuel scarcity became the plague of the country, fuel was being sold at N86.50 per litre. That pleasing reality eventually morphed into a grisly and enduring nightmare. Nigerians expect him to evolve a regime that would make fuel more affordable to the citizenry and eliminate insititutionalised corruption in the NNPC. Nigerians expect him to furnish the country periodically, with details of the workings and actual proceeds of the oil industry. It is not only the president that he is accountable to in such respect. There are a lot of other products refined from the nation’s crude oil; in the spirit of accountability and his touted love of transparency, let Kachikwu furnish Nigerians with transparent account of the workings of the oil corporation periodically. Nothing should be done in secret anymore.

    It’s about time Nigeria stopped watching helplessly as her public officers, NNPC top executives inclusive, meet with oil magnates in hotel lounges and suites abroad – I hope Kachikwu really understands this. Any such meeting done in secret with a select few often reek of suspicious or malicious intent against the progress of the nation’s oil sector and the country in general.

    It could be rewarding fellating Kachikwu’s ego but that would be disastrous to his persona and career as a public servant. Nigeria needs Kachikwu to evolve and uphold professionalism and a moral culture impervious to degeneration and machinations of the oil industry’s bogeymen.

    If Kachikwu succeeds at his current brief, the ricochet of his exploits would serve a greater purpose than justifying President Buhari’s second term agenda, if actually the president nurtures any such ambition. Besides ameliorating the pains of the citizenry, his sterling success and patriotism at his job, will stand him in good stead for more significant leadership role in future. Kachikwu needs to evolve an enduring moral code unyielding to any baggage from his past – if any such baggage actually exists – and amenable to higher responsibilities in future.

    Agreed, moral codes could be somewhat obstructive, relative and counter-productive, particularly when pitched against a vicious circle of leeches and reprobates but ultimately, moral codes are of inestimable benefits to civilisation. Without them, we are vulnerable to the degenerate barbarism of gluttony, amorality and wanton tyranny of the self-seeking and covetous. It was a lack of moral code and personal ethics that ruined the names and reputation of immediate past genii in Nigeria’s power circuits.

    Picture a future with an unsullied Kachikwu, Okonjo-Iweala, Babatunde Fashola, Reuben Abati and their likes in sensitive public offices and as drivers of the Nigerian State. Imagine a future whereby such men and women are peacefully ushered off the corridors of power after meritorious service in the interest of the collective – that would be a future to die for no doubt.

    Kachikwu should understand that public service and valour need to be humanely planned, not cashed in upon or taken advantage of with a haughty smirk and condescending smile. There are all sorts of questions and consequences to ponder before the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, adopts his next economically or politically expedient measure.

    Let’s hope Kachikwu understands that at the end, he would be judged by how adroitly he scorns or tones to minimum, the arrogance implicit in leadership and the corruption characteristic of power. Right now, Kachikwu is too ordinary. Nigeria needs him to be extraordinary.

  • Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and the burden of genius (1)

    •Intrigues as Petroleum Minister grapples with challenges of office

    In few months, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu will be seen as a national boon or disaster. He will be hailed as a round peg in a round hole or tirelessly maligned as the fig that lets down the leaf; the affliction that has to be concealed or expunged. Until then, Kachikwu will stew in metamorphosis. The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) dissolves into multiple identities characterised by the oil industry’s familiar bogeys, even as you read.

    His transformation is akin to Daniel Orowole Fagunwa’s mythical forest ghommid’s. Other beings pass through him  as if he were a wraith. He is like Fagunwa’s ghommid, who transforms into a tree, an antelope, a raging inferno, a bird, water and a menacing snake. While Fagunwa’s mythical creature assumes more or less the characteristics typical of its new category of being, Kachikwu struggles to preserve his individuality, mostly the capacity to think and act humanely, against the power and intimidation of Nigeria’s oil cabal.

    Yes, Kachikwu, despite his brilliance and touted vigour, may hardly be a match for Nigeria’s predatory band of oil Turks and cliques in the energy sector. But his office demands that he assumes a front, thus his frantic posturing and pretension to purpose and valour. It would be delightful however, to see Kachikwu succeed where his predecessors failed woefully but he needs generous doses of forthrightness to do that. He needs to be a man or the best form of public servant that his employer, President Muhammadu Buhari, wants him to epitomise. Can he?

    Despite his initial braggadocio or what is known in street parlance as Initial Gra Gra (IGG), Kachikwu seems woefully handicapped to effect the needed turnaround in the nation’s oil sector. Perhaps he isn’t, he simply glamourises the knack for making ill-advised commentary and pledges before assessing his capacity to withstand backlash and deliver on his words.

    Take for instance, his circus acts in the nation’s oil sector – his recent “I am not a magician” riposte to Nigerians groaning under the weight of the lingering fuel scarcity predates a recent report by The Cable, an online medium, that credited Kachikwu with the information that the nation’s refineries are working at 30 percent capacity as against the minimum 60 percent required to generate profit.

    He was quoted thus: “Personally, I will have chosen to sell the refineries, but President Buhari has instructed that they should be fixed. After they are fixed, if they still operate below 60 per cent, then we will know what to do…The 90-day ultimatum for the refineries to be fixed will end in December and Port Harcourt Refinery looks like the only one that will meet the deadline, but we will wait and see what happens at the end of the 90 days.”

    It is over 90 days and if you take the pains to skim over the folds of officialese and doleful cliffhanger nuggets contained in his disclosure, you just might find that Kachikwu may have tacitly prepared our minds for one of his several failures or his only failure perhaps. Earlier, he said that in view of the nation’s low refining capacity, there was need to establish more refineries in the country. “I am pushing to build new refineries next to our existing plants in order to boost the nation’s refining capacity for the common good,” Kachikwu stated, explaining that the new refineries will be developed by private investors and that NNPC will simply provide them spaces close to the existing refineries to enable them share key facilities such as pipelines and storage facilities.

    If you consider this in light of his alleged preference for selling off the refineries, you could be forgiven for getting lost in the NNPC head honcho’s maze of double speak and embarrassing retractions. Following his recent cancellation of the oil swap deals instituted by the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and his Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, the NNPC boss did a cartwheel to tactfully rescind his decision.

    Apologists of Kachikwu claimed he was only doing the president’s bidding but critics of the NNPC boss earnestly aver that President Buhari couldn’t have taken the decision without the knowledge and approval of the NNPC boss. Whatever the case, Kachikwu is either a talisman that the presidency reckons with or a human sound bite employed to unquestioningly rubber-stamp Mr. President’s caprices. Is he?

    It would be recalled that major oil tycoons became jittery and desperate to save their businesses in the wake of the NNPC’s cancellation of Offshore Processing Agreements (OPAs) and Crude Oil Swap (COS) deals entered with them. This was because their businesses plummeted in the absence of the several shady deals entrenched by the immediate past corrupt regime. Likewise, the federal government placed a ban on 113 oil vessels for perceived infractions. The presidency has since lifted the ban on the 113 tankers and the NNPC has tacitly reinstituted the controversial OPAs and COS, it would seem.

    Earlier, the Ahmed Joda-led Presidential Transition Committee had recommended to President Buhari to carry out a comprehensive audit of all OPAs and COS deals entered by the NNPC. The committee said the audit would help government identify and claim any reimbursements for excess crude oil lifted under the controversial OPA and swap arrangements to establish the quantity of products delivered based on a fair and transparent audit process. Kachikwu subsequently hinted that all Production Sharing Contracts, (PSCs), Joint Venture Contract Agreements (JVCAs) and all other contracts between the NNPC and its various partners would be reviewed to reflect actualities in the global oil and gas industry. He stated that as part of the measures to optimise the marketing of Nigeria’s crude oil and secure new market potential, the number of off-takers for the proposed 2015/2016 term contracts, which would emerge after a planned rigorous competitive bid had been pruned from 43 to 16. The corporation however, extended invitation to few oil companies affected by the cancellation of the deal.

    Despite Kachikwu’s show of running the process in the spirit of transparency, fears abound that the he is impotent against the intimidating clout and pressure from certain quarters that he favoured the same corrupt oil firms responsible for the misfortunes bedeviling the nation’s oil sector.

    Given his sterling achievements in academia and the private business sector, Kachikwu seemed every inch capable for the onerous task of sanitising the grossly corrupt and ailing oil sector, at his appointment as Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and NNPC boss. A doctor of Law, Kachikwu graduated with distinction from the University of Nigeria (UNN) Nsukka and he was the best graduating student from the Law School, winning seven of the available nine prizes in 1999. He holds the LLM Harvard Distinction and was best graduate in 1980 with specialisation in Energy, Petroleum Law and Investment. Kachikwu has more than 30 years experience in policy- making positions in the petroleum industry serving in various capacities thus he seems well equipped for the job but for a snag, he is a Nigerian genius.

    Nigerian genii seldom fluorish in public office. Ultimately, they serve as puppets or impractical characters enabling the greed and mediocrity of their principals or associates in corridors of power. Kachikwu, like such genii, has betrayed little character or justifiable individuality so far.

    However, in the wake of his controversial “I am not a magician” statement and his subsequent apology, Nigerians, despite their impatience, need to exercise greater patience with him. His high office couldn’t have obliterated his fabled genius, as it did, the smarts of his predecessors after all.

    Yet if a public officer truly reflects the character of his principal or employer, the presidency becomes the teat from which Kachikwu sucks his new identity. The impact so far, has been enlightening. Nonetheless, Kachikwu is either a failure or success in process.

     

  • Babatunde Fashola’s bitter pill of expensive darkness (1)

    Somewhere within the bulk of Babatunde Fashola, a champion lurks in chains – the people’s champ. Until he is freed, the two-time governor of Lagos state and incumbent Minister of Power, Works and Housing, will continually manifest as a spent idol and plaything of President Muhammadu Buhari, in the eyes of his most virulent critics.

    Someday, Fashola will be President or Senate President perhaps. The former governor of Lagos state fulfills the latent prospects of becoming something more than a romanticised icon and overhyped minister cum mascot of the ruling class. It could be thrilling to see him serve Nigeria in more esteemed and valuable capacities. Until then, it would be electrifying to see Fashola revivify the comatose power sector.

    Will he? This is hardly a rhetoric about his capacity to resolve the nation’s electricity woes; Fashola will resolve Nigeria’s power problem – if he could get over himself and actually merit the plaudits unctuously heaped upon him by a lapdog press, sycophantic loyalists and other groupies constituting Camp Fashola.

    Right now, Nigeria ails in the vicious grip of a comatose power sector managed by a tyrannical and inept workforce. The country needs the healing touch of an ingenious Minister of Power, Works and Housing. Sadly, Fashola is not up to the task. Not yet. The former Lagos governor suffers the rare affliction of the proverbial patrician lord. Thus like the brittle creature, he is handicapped by hubris and his genius asphyxiates behind a wall of aristocratic disdain.

    This explains his insistence that Nigerians have no choice but to accept and swallow the hike in electricity tariff as an unavoidable bitter pill. Subsequently, the Consumer Rights Advancement Organisation (CRADO) sounded the alarm over the arbitrary tariff, lamenting that Nigerians pay the highest tariff per kilowatt in Africa. According to a statement signed by the group, “Before this increment, Nigerians have been paying the highest tariff per kilowatt in Africa and contiguous regions. We pay higher than Egypt and countries with stronger economies,” the statement said. The statement was released in the wake of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)’s implementation of new electricity tariff for residential and industrial users across the country on February 1. Under the new tariff regime, according to CRADO, customers covered by the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) who currently pay N13.91 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) will witness an increase by N9.60. Consumers under the Eko and Ikeja electricity distribution areas who currently pay N12.87kWh and N13.61kWh respectively will witness a N10 and N8 increase respectively in their energy charges. Electricity consumers covered by Kaduna and Benin Discos who currently pay N16.90kWh and N12.54kWh will witness an increase of N11.05 and N9.26 respectively in their energy charges.

    For commercial consumers in Ibadan and Enugu who currently pay N25.18kWh and N24.01kWh respectively, their energy charge will increase by N12.08 and N13.35 respectively. CRADO maintained that despite the fact that metering is the contract equipment between the electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) and electricity consumers, the DISCOs have continued to exploit Nigerians by the extreme billing system for majority of consumers, while deliberately refusing to make available prepaid meters.

    As there has been no significant improvement in service delivery, most consumers are also not metered in accordance with the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of November 1, 2013, which stipulates that within 18 months gestation period, all consumers must have been metered. Nonetheless, the DISCOs imposed the arbitrary tariff increase, with unflinching support from Fashola.

    Classic Fashola; flaunting that compassionate yet menacing disposition that heralds the infliction of a necessary evil on poor, helpless citizenry, the minister insisted that the electricity tariff increase was a bitter pill that Nigerians must swallow, for the country’s growth. It is obvious that Fashola is unaware of the tyranny of the DISCOs on helpless electricity consumers.

    Recently, residents of Millennium Estate, Ijaiye, Lagos trooped to the neighbourhood office of the Ikeja Distribution Company (IKEDC) to protest unfair billing regime imposed on the residents. According to them, they pay over N100, 000 bribe to IKEDC officials in the zone every month, to prevent them from disconnecting their homes and making away with their electricity cables. Residents in the estate without prepaid meters pay an average of N5, 500 monthly for non-existent electricity supply yet IKEDC, Ijaiye-Ojokoro zone, refuses to provide them prepaid meters. Instead, they allegedly request for bribes from the residents in order to facilitate prompt supply of the meters. One of the zonal office’s marketing manager reportedly bragged that IKEDC will deny the estate electricity supply until the residents learn to fear them and treat them to more mouthwatering bribes. Thus is an example of how DISCOs’ officials tyrannize poor, helpless electricity consumers – they expect to be deified.

    Worse evil are perpetrated by DISCOs’ field operatives and administrative staff in my Ogun state neighbourhood. Several communities in Owode, Ijako and Ota have been living in darkness over the last seven months yet the DISCOs keep bringing exorbitant bills to the residents. It is at the backdrop of these impunities that Fashola authorised a draconian increase in electricity tariff by wily DISCOs.

    However, at a recent meeting with operators in the power sector in Lagos, Fashola, while inspecting ongoing works at the Alagbon substation in Ikoyi, admitted to reporters that the right thing should have been to improve electricity supply before increasing the tariff. But he claimed it was not possible considering the rot the incumbent government inherited from the previous administration of Goodluck Jonathan.

    It is interesting to note that although Fashola admitted that the  imposition of the tariff increase was wrong, he had no trouble damning a legislative order that he stayed action on it. He suffered no scruple forcing it down the citizenry’s throats, calling it a bitter but necessary pill. There is no gainsaying Fashola goofed by imposing the tariff increase on electricity consumers without attendant improvement in power generation. Why force the citizenry to swallow bitter pills for the DISCOs’ ailment and his administrative weakness? Why not direct the DISCOs to make the prepaid meters available to everyone before increasing tariff?

    If Fashola were really in control and truly efficient at his new brief, he would not empower the DISCOs to fleece the citizenry via a tariff hike for electricity that is yet to be enjoyed. Rather he would direct the DISCOs to fix the distribution end of the electricity equation before embarking on tariff hike. And the power minister’s obsession about nuclear power stations resounds as a pathetic joke. Fashola should attain passable efficiency at managing the country’s power stations before getting high on the possibility of building nuclear power stations.

    Electricity tariff shouldn’t  increase when the extant law for such increment was not followed in consonance with Section 76 of the Power Sector Reform Act, 2005. Fashola’s disregard for a subsisting court order of May 28, 2015 and a subsequent warning by Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos, barring increase in electricity tariff establishes his contempt for the rule of law even though he is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).

    The minister insisted that the tariff increase reflects the realities that the DISCOs are facing in the sector. Many Nigerians scoff at his justification, insisting that improved services should precede the increase. And that is justifiable enough. But the almighty minister disagrees.

    In respect of the arbitrary tariff, Fashola perpetuates himself as a patrician lord that acts without feeling – this makes him seem cruel in indifference and remoteness from the people’s woes.

  • A parable on moral courage

    I have seen courage flower in the face of the impossible. Such valour is frequently ascribed to an innate strength and unparalleled humanity of the courageous. It is no physical strength. And very few of the world’s bravest warriors possess such valour that defies brawn and accentuates moral vigour.

    Victor John, 15, showed such courage in a damning moment; thanks to John, the entire clans constituting Ungwan Sankwai, Tyekum and Ungwan Gata villages of Bondon district, Kaura LGA of Kaduna State were saved from total extermination by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

    Although many of the bereaved are wailing the brutal massacre of loved ones even as you read, the survivors owe their lives to the 15-year old who sighted the invaders marching on the community. John alerted his father and reportedly went from house to house to wake up their neighbours and warn them of imminent death. Eventually, his father evacuated some of his siblings but his mother and other siblings weren’t so lucky; they were hacked to death by the invaders.

    Like the Kaduna teen, Hugh Thompson, an American army pilot could be said to have exhibited moral courage in the face of odds. Thompson landed his helicopter between a platoon of American soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. Then he ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. For this act of moral courage, Thompson, like John, suffered repercussion; he was hounded and reviled by the American establishment.

    Such is the consequence of moral courage. It begets a price. In the case of Victor John, it cost him his mother and siblings. And for being morally courageous, Thompson was vilified by the American military – the establishment attempted to conceal the massacre and court-martial him.

    Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. In involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; to spurn the invigorating embrace of comradeship; to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage comes persecution and any other form of repercussion that exposes the individual as a defenseless mark to be preyed upon.

    Gani Fawehinmi had moral courage, so did Martin Luther King. Malcolm X had it and Wole Soyinka epitomises it. Predictably, perpetuators of such morality are either maligned by fate or ascribed rogue status by the state. Routinely they are accused and charged for treason. But in their touted notoriety subsists the irony of an incontrovertible metaphor; they usually represent the best of mankind and civilization in their time.

    The contemporary youth however, personify a very sad contradiction of humanity and courage epitomised by John, Thompson, and the late Fawehinmi to mention a few. Essentially, they represent Nigeria’s sad decent into the gallows of inhumanity. Like a fugitive quirk you find no word for, the contemporary youth grows like a scar on his clan and the nation’s psyche. Much of what he symbolses indicates decadence and rot thus the manifestation of a Nigerian youth divide incapacitated to the finer traits of citizenship and humanity.

    This glaring lack manifests virtually in every aspect of our life as a nation; the Nigerian society evolves as a perfect reflection of the nation’s youth. Given the quality of the nation’s youth, the country suffers the preponderance of cowards and shadows of men populating its youth divide and the future of the Nigerian state.

    From a tender age, the Nigerian youth is socialized to be corrupt and inhumane; the process starts very early in life in the family unit. Many parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see their child cheat and oppress his peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see him evolve into a ‘lovable’ brute at a tender age; they claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

    Thus from adolescence through adulthood, many parents greet every dishonesty perpetrated by their wards with cheer, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason; parents nurture them in their wards and the latter perpetuate them in attitude, till they start procreating and perpetuating within their lineage, grosser forms of shamefulness and bestiality.

    It starts from the very little things; like grooming the child to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.

    Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena; if I may insult the poor animals by such comparisons to them.

    Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; and at the end, we have brutes and foetal adults running our lives and determining our future.

    At this juncture, many would perhaps dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 170 million-strong families or thereabouts. Really? If that be the case, why is it that their voices and deeds resonate and tower above the humanity of the ‘moral few’ if such divide ever truly exists in contemporary Nigeria?

    As you read, Nigeria manifests as the tainted fantasy of the perverted mob home and abroad. The virtues that builds character, fosters community and sustain a nation-state, from honesty, self-sacrifice to transparency and sharing, are ridiculed  everyday in public sphere and every night on TV as rubes stupid enough to cling to unrealistic fantasies and bestiality are celebrated on network news, perverted sitcoms and the now ubiquitous reality TV charade.

    It is due to a lack of moral courage and character that the Nigerian youth tirelessly obsess about the decadent and perpetrate the obscene just to be seen as hip and flowing with the times. Hence the attractiveness of the vulgar, such as the fast-circulating homosexuality and trans-sexuality bugs, internet scam, terrorism, bribery, official fraud, wild, rampant and uninhibited sex.

    The Nigerian youth has been flipped upside-down and inside-out that it has become increasingly difficult to identify by them what constitutes acceptable values and culture of civilization representative of the Nigerian spirit and psyche. Today we praise the woman who tries to be the toughest career girl in the office and applaud the man who tries to be the prettiest drag queen in the bar.

    Consequently, the country embraces depravity and perpetuates society on series of pathetic illusions. So doing, it amplifies the kind of twilight disconnect that accelerates the disappearance of dying empires. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is agitation for acceptance of homosexuality, acquittal of a corrupt public officer or insidious civilization, Nigeria takes surefooted strides into perdition.

  • Ode to Iya Legun

    Dear Great – Grandma,

    Forgive me for thrashing the bucket you bought without pricing, the earthenware you dusted free of cobwebs and the excesses you obliged me. Another year has passed but I hope it’s not too late to find my voice in the folds of your silence and among other things, acknowledge the gift of the weaning years.

    I remember the two great gourds from which I nourished like a drunk. It was in those days when papa was a god and mama was an angel; when heaven was, sneaking to your eko and gbure while Alhaja kept the flies away from our rice.

    I remember Christmas in Itoku when Iya Onigaari could still see us. I remember our trips down to the cathedral in Isale Ake, where we sang hymns in harmony with the Anglican choir. Those were the better days. Now our lives are very complicated. We have grown from kids with bright future to people who should be living their future and making the best of it. We get mad when we think we are not living the life of our dreams and we get lost when we think we are.

    While we fret, we do not worry about what we have done with the world you left us nor are we bothered about what state we would be leaving it for our children. You counted your destiny in moons and seasons, we measure our lives against mishaps in passing seconds. Our roads are still death-traps and the roof still crashes on our children during lessons, across the boondocks where trodden kids resume to learn with tears and inverted joy, every day.

    Too many of us got extinguished in split seconds, on the watch of Goodluck Jonathan the ‘meek’ and ‘timid’ President that perverted our luck. Now, we are in the era of Muhammadu Buhari and our hearts still hang in our mouths, like crushed porgies on ice or the proverbial trout wriggling in the beak of the starving pelican.

    It is the season of the holocaust. The drizzle at dawn has harvested the unripe cobs and mother earth writhes in painful throes of a belated abortion. Daylight jostles with the darksome splendour of our might and Nigeria capitulates in obeisance to the demonic stance. Little wonder we suffer terrorist attacks, religious bigotry, racial profiling and so on.

    Thus is our new awakening; we have found fresh joy in knowledge that comes with a dark shade but you spoke of knowledge in glowing terms. You said in pursuit of enlightenment, it is alright to be connoisseurs of facts and random sentiments, but only if we drink from the brightest springs. We have drunk water from an unnamed stream and our lives have become tragicomedies in process. Guess you see us as we feed our inner demons by gorging on other people’s demons.

    Your fables, folklores and colourful tales on moonlit nights are passions lost on us and our children. The new dawn you extolled as our brighter future is radiant with moonshine. Some of us labour daily to turn it into the triumph you swore it would become but many more among us struggle to turn it into everlasting dystopia.

    Now everyone lives the lie that’s marketed to us on TV. In any case, you wouldn’t understand the thrills and frills; you wouldn’t understand the toll and flicker of ravenous klieglights, the vanity of our ‘Reality Shows’ and the price we have to pay for glamour.

    The price of living has become very steep. Very few of us can afford three square meals and our mores of morality are accommodating greater excesses by the day.

    I remember the harmattan of 1984 when your favourite grandson bought a new Volkswagen Beetle car. It cost just N3, 000 and we all pranced and danced about it in joy, stealing for the fleeting second when we could cop a feel of the dazzling piece of steel. You said it was a gift from Eledumare. Today, no one prays for such heavenly gift.

    Everyone wishes to drive the big man’s car. We all want to live the big man’s life. And we are prepared to do so even if we have to sell our souls at the crossroads of vanity, to the devil. So I hope you understand even if many of us do not; why the congressman obtains the commoner’s vote with a dazzling smile only to bargain his fate away with a toothy grin in fits of greed and conceit in the legislative chamber.

    I am sure you understand even though it befuddles us still, why the orphan is always left to his own devices and the widow’s cry is forever smothered in the raucous din of greedy kin.

    Like heat-maddened summer flies, we swarm towards annihilation, armed with lust, gluttony and a yearning for the good life. I guess you have heard of the human parts dealer, the street prostitute, the corrupt policeman and the duplicitous journalist. Guess you’ve heard of the scheming evangelist, the unrepentant Reality Show contestant, the disillusioned student and the starving, idle graduate patiently biding his time for the nanosecond when his fortune will change and he would become the devil’s chosen one in the workshop of the idle.

    Everything you feared has come to pass; the white man’s civilisation is a double – edged sword. It cuts both ways. We have survived the curiosity and covetousness that made your generation barter our youth, our pride and future for the novelty of looking glasses and silver chronometers into the century that spliced the genes, separated the atom, probed the psyche and cloned a sheep. Today we incline towards more devious enterprise, like the mutilation of humaneness for the love of a buck.

    We have risen from the ashes of our misadventures in military dictatorship, civil war, aviation and space technology, nuclear democracy and perverse sexuality, into a scarier millennium. Now we sit faithless at bare tables, cursing our luck and cursing the times. We wonder if our children would have better lives.

    We wonder if the future of our dreams will ever come. I hope it does. And if it doesn’t, I will seek the comfort of your wise cracks from dawn through dusk. I will remember your sudden heaviness at every sunset and the weight of your silence as we swallowed your maize morsels with gbure.

    I will live for those moments when you sat on goatskin to mutter heartfelt prayers and our mothers rejected the part where you wished that their husbands married a second wife. Even Abewo worries I might take a second wife, many decades after your heartfelt prayer.

    I will remember your silences so that I can speak them. If I could do so perhaps I would understand my deepest scruples and rediscover the essence in your definition of humaneness and life.

    In my confusion, I hasten to your bedside seeking the eloquence of your headrest. I reach for the balustrade that cushioned your deadly falls as you stubbornly made your way to and fro our neighbourhood bath.

    An intuitive fellow once said that there is no life so pure it can thrive without its incarnations. Papa is still a god. Mama is still an angel. But will memories of yesterday comfort the reality of today?

    Still, you refuse to rise from your slumber. Iya Onigaari has stopped groping in the dark. She finally discovered the path that leads to yonder. And those of us left behind grovel in the ruddy radiance of a tyrant eternity.

    I long for your “good old days.” I would like to know you once again over your chipped plates steaming with wheat.

  • Women Are Not Beasts: A response to Olatunji Ololade ‘Beasts Of No Gender’

    We have too many women reading too much meaning into everything and agitating about anything, like the television commercial in which a joyous father of a newborn yells into his mobile phone’s mouthpiece; ‘Mama na boy o’. To them, such an advert constitutes an offensive patriarchal mindset.’

    ‘To be a feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The feminist is that woman who dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities, in order to satisfy her emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed’…like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such woman is an emotion junkie – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her lust for unearned benefits…’

    And it goes on and on. There is a Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. The first time I read this very troubling rant by Olatunji Ololade against feminists/women’s rights advocates was three or four years ago when it was serialized in The Nation, a leading national newspaper  in Nigeria. I think one of two things must have happened. First scenario – Olatunji probably got so many horrified responses from women, it gave him a serious high which took him a long time to come down from, hence the need for another shot of adrenaline. The second possibility is that he did not get enough  push back the first time, so he became emboldened and decided to up the ante. In the interim, Olatunji became an award-winning writer, receiving CNN Multi Choice African Journalist awards back to back, as well as other local ones. Of course we are always proud of our fellow country men and women when they bring home well deserved laurels, it is great to have something to celebrate about Nigerians other than news about us being perpetual scoundrels.

    After wincing and grimacing through the January 2016 version of what passes for Olatunji’s analysis of the state of gender relations and women’s rights activism in Nigeria, I have decided to raise a number of issues with him in the form of some unsolicited advice as follows:

    Olatunji needs to take his responsibilities as a leading journalist and writer in Nigeria more seriously. Research, analysis, reflection, empathy and empirical evidence are critical to any nuanced understanding of an issue as complex as feminism and gender relations. The quality of debate you have in private spaces is not the same as the one you place on the pages of a national newspaper – in all its three part, problematic glory.

    I advise our award winning brother to do more reading. The more writing you do, the more you have to read. Olatunji needs to read the work of Nigerian feminist thinkers such as Ifi Amadiume, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Bolanle Awe, Ayesha Imam, Ronke  Oyewunmi, Amina Mama, Bisi Aina, Simi Afonja to mention a few. He would also do well to look at what other African women such as Sara Longwe, Abena Busia, Sylvia Tamale, Awa Thiam, and so many others have to say. These women, alongside scores of others, have worked to produce a body of knowledge and thought on African feminist theory and practice. The summary of their definition of Feminism is one of a global struggle against all forms of patriarchal oppression. Their analysis includes not only a critique of white, western feminist hegemony, but also serves to create a unique space for the conceptualization and practicalisation of a feminism that resonates with the lived experiences  of every day African women. One of the greatest contributions of African feminist thought, has been its insistence on locating feminist discourse within Africa’s historical realities of slavery, colonialism, globalization and marginalization. In essence, you cannot talk about an empowered woman in Africa without liberating her entire community from poverty and lack of opportunities. This includes the men and boys in her life. Some of these women I mention are my teachers and mentors, some are peers, and they are all my friends.  Most of them are mothers, wives and grandmothers. I am sure none of us ever dreamt that a day would come when a privileged, educated African brother would liken us to ‘porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists.’

    Mr. Ololade needs to broaden his analytical horizons. Patriarchy is real. It is not in our minds. It has never simply been about Men versus Women. It is about the use of male dominated institutions and structures such as politics, religion, education, economics, culture and tradition to create a universe in which one gender becomes superior to the other. Olatunji said women made a big deal out of a seemingly innocuous ‘Mama na boy ‘advert. Even his fellow men understand why the fuss was made. Let us call the new baby boy John. In some cultures, on the 8th day of his birth, a goat will be killed. If the baby is a Mary, they will kill a chicken for her. John will grow up to be the first to have a shot at education if his family is poor. Mary will have to learn how to be a good wife because that is where her career prospects will lie, if she is to lift her family out of poverty. Perhaps Ololade missed the drama we all witnessed,  approximately ten years ago, when a wealthy politician celebrated the first birthday of his first son after five daughters, with the gift of a Rolls Royce to the little boy. Yes, Olatunji, ‘Mama na boy’ means something.   (To be continued…)

    Mrs. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is a renowned feminist, women’s rights activist and wife to Minister of Solid Minerals,Kayode Fayemi.                       

     

    Re:Beasts of no gender…

    There is no gainsaying Mrs. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi and her peer raised valid points reflective of their politics in response to my serialised article, “Beasts of no gender.” However, I reiterate, like I stated in the first part of the article that it is not an attack on women but a condemnation of feminist-misandry, the desperate politics and towering monstrosity of man-haters pretending to be pro-women.

    Adeleye-Fayemi has since asserted that she deliberately feigned ignorance of the thrust of the article in order to score a point against the writer. She disclosed in subsequent conversation with the columnist that, while she is aware that certain self-confessed feminists pervert the cause of feminism by engaging in misandry, she needed the author to know that it was insensitive of him to generalise in his postulations which categorised progressive African feminists with misguided feminist-misandrists.

    I see nothing wrong with feminism without its blemishes just like I see nothing wrong in the patriarchy without its shortcomings. We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away and another will take its place. The feminist movement thus flagellates between its campaign for women’s rights and an insatiable lust to replace the patriarchy with matriarchy. This is understandable as nature fluorishes by hierarchies.

    But as there are hierarchies in nature, there are alternate hierarchies in society fostered by survival of the fittest. Nonetheless, in Nigeria’s patriarchal hierarchy, there are protections for the weak. We simply need to weaponise them against the vile in patriarchy. Nigeria evolves even as you read, to protect the interests of every human constituent, the vulnerable girl-child, boy-child and woman in particular. This is good news.

    I understand that no form of patriarchal stricture could vitiate or supplant the traditionally-vested roles of a woman as mother, wife, vessel of life, nurturer of character, provider and conscience of humanity. Thus the need to protect and seek an expansion of the rights of the female folk within the ambits of fairness and probity.

    This is one of the reasons I engage in crusade journalism. With total humility, I stress that, my CNN African journalism merit award for “This marriage will kill me – Tragedy of Nigeria’s child brides,” addressed the evils of female genital mutilation and Vesico Vagina Fistulae (VVF) on underage girls forced into marriage in northern Nigeria. Most of my award-winning stories addressed vile cultural practices and atrocities being perpetrated against the country’s vulnerable divide comprising women, the girl-child and boy-child in particular. There is need to highlight this fact at the backdrop of injudicious feminist rage at my serialised article.

    I understand that misandrists that fall in the bracket I likened to ‘porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists’ and other emotion junkies would naturally pick a fight with me. I also appreciate Mrs. Adeleye-Fayemi’s maturity and brittle wit in all of these. Like most progressive feminists, she expressed her dissatisfaction like a mature human seeking to prick my emotive faculties. But many others, in juvenile fits of exuberance, sent hate messages and incoherent vitriol. The latter remain the bane of the feminist cause.

  • Parable of the grifter calling the con-artist…’fraud’

    If I should hesitate to say these things, it will not be because they are untrue but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my imperfection: Nigerians are the last people on earth who should have children; because we are very, very bad people. Having children is akin to nurturing more hyenas at home and breeding a nest of sorrows. Whether rich or poor, aged or young, the poverty of our souls and our hatred for humaneness leaves us unworthy of such worthy enterprise as procreation.

    A cursory look at our families excites the creepiest form of marvel. The Nigerian family unit today parades the worst form of savagery. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child hurt an annoying neighbour’s dog or cat; and such wise fathers we have now that consider it a notable mark of martial spirit when they see their son domineer his weaker peer. And there are those whose parents raise righteously, breeding them in their images, to conform to and perpetuate the worst forms of religious bigotry and inhumanity, according to the holy scriptures.

    Ultimately, our parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see us cheat and oppress our peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see us evolve into ‘lovable’ brutes at a tender age. They claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

    Thus from adolescence through adulthood, they greet every dishonesty we perpetrate with cheer, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason. Our parents nurture vile in us and we perpetuate it in attitude, learning from their misconduct, till we start procreating and perpetuating within our lineage, grosser forms of grotesqueness and bestiality.

    It starts from the very little things, like nurturing us to be brutes through childhood and grooming us to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.

    Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal, perverse adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena, if I may insult the poor animals by comparing such with them.

    Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; at the end, we have brutes and savages running our lives and determining our future. At this juncture, I guess, many would dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 170 million-strong families or thereabouts.

    I whole-heartedly disagree but if they insist, I hereby reiterate that, such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with the current ruling class. Such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with thieving bank chiefs and corrupt law enforcers.

    Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with slothful civil servants, light-fingered bank clerks, desperate, treacherous journalists and lawyers. Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with prostitutes, armed robbers, Yahoo boys, and currency-activated clerics to mention a few.

    One degeneracy gravitates into the other and we have for ourselves, a nation of finely bred brutes, idiots and foetal adults, pitifully programmed to self-destruct. I do not apologize for my abrasive choice of words. Were it acceptable, I would depict the average Nigerian with more colourful choice of words. We are very, very bad people.

    Driven by greed, selfishness, indolence and appalling inclinations to play “God,” we embark on a never-ending quest to ruin Nigeria…righteously. The argument that it’s the lack of good leadership that forces us to be corrupt does not hold much substance anymore; let each one of us be accountable for his actions.

    How many leaders do we have? If we count the number of politicians and every hoodlum plaguing our industries, politics and occupying our seats of power, will they add up to a million? Let’s assume that they add up to a million; there are 170 million Nigerians or thereabouts, of this lot, should a paltry million lead about 169 million astray?  Is the fault not with the 169 million?

    Our nation perishes by our gluttony and lust for fleeting and perishable vanities. It was greed and a disgraceful strain of cowardliness that drove our touted “men of god” to endorse former President Goodluck Jonathan’s candidacy, claiming his emergence was sanctified by their “god.” It was gluttony, cowardice and an unconquerable strain of prejudice that drove millions of Nigerians to troop to the polls to endorse the worst form of the ruling class.

    Bestiality, like blood, seems to run perpetually in the veins of the Nigerian ruling class. It is not that the working class is any wiser. Age is of no value within our clans, likewise experience. Our old have no important advice to give to our young. Their experiences have been so partial and fraught with fraudulence that at the end, they pass off as miserable failures.

    Indeed, it is good to be bad and bad to be good in contemporary Nigeria. Let us consider for a moment the caliber of leadership we have; the Nigerian ruling class tirelessly appropriates for itself what is meant for the benefit of all. Likewise, the poorest constituent of the breadlines is capable of meaner grotesqueness were he opportune to play with money and power. As it is with the rich, so it is with the poor. Poverty and affluence brings out the worst in us.

    Every Nigerian is a law breaker. The rich believe they are above the law and the poor believe they could sneak under it, through it and away from its grasp. I would like to believe that the worst of our kind constitutes just a minor fraction of 170 million of us but as you read, our ruling class is busy pilfering our coffers even as it plays Russian roulette with our lives. The rich still connives with the ruling class to impoverish us further. The poor still curses the ruling class and curse the times even as they die daily to serve the whims of the ruling class.

    As you read, parents are purchasing seats and liberties to cheat for their wards at JAMB and SSCE “special centres.” Our bankers are pilfering our accounts 50 kobo, N1 to N1000 by the second. Motorists are hastening off their normal lanes to face oncoming vehicles on the wrong lanes. Public administrators are stealing pension funds meant for elderly retirees. Journalists are receiving money to doctor and tilt stories according to the whims of shady politicians, business class and criminal masterminds. Doctors are forgetting surgical knives in helpless patients; lawyers are twisting the law to serve the whims of the worst creatures ever and you are reading this thinking I am just another ‘grifter’ calling the con-artist, ‘fraud.’

  • If Buhari is frugal, he should learn to lead like José Mujica

    If President Muhammadu Buhari, his executive cabinet, the judiciary and eighth National Assembly possess the capacity to be truly humane and progressive, they would seek greater understanding of their role as Nigerian public officers and more importantly, attain true purpose and direction by the wisdom and example set by former Uruguayan President, José Mujica.

    Mujica, 77, served as leader of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015. He was elected in 2009 but he had no interest in taking on the grand presidential lifestyle. As president, he reportedly donated 90 percent of his salary to the impoverished and small scale entrepreneurs. He scorned the vulgar opulence characteristic of contemporary presidencies like Nigeria’s, to live in a farmhouse, off a dirt road in Montevideo; there he and his wife worked and still work the land themselves, cultivating chrysanthemums for sale, having declined to live in the opulent presidential palace or use its staff. He also scorned the official presidential motorcade.

    The austere leader earned $12,500 a month but reportedly kept only $1,250 for himself. “I do fine with that amount; I have to do fine because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less,” Mujica disclosed in a newspaper interview.

    While in power, he rode a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle car. In 2010, the value of the car was $1,800 and represented the entirety of the mandatory annual personal wealth declaration filed by Mujica for that year. In November 2014, the Uruguayan newspaper, Búsqued, reported that he had been offered $1 million for the car; he said that if he did get $1 million for the car, it would be donated to house the homeless through a programme that he supports.

    Mujica was able to improve quality of life for the citizenry via populist economic policies. Uruguay thus enjoyed an impressive GDP considering it’s the second-smallest nation in South America. He was known for speaking his mind, defending basic human values and attacking the dark sides of modern life. He did so in a remarkable speech at the sustainability summit in Rio de Janeiro four years ago. In September 2013, Mujica reiterated his philosophy of leadership and humanity to the United Nations General Assembly, with a very long discourse devoted to humanity and globalization.

    The speech called on the international community to strengthen efforts to preserve the planet for future generations and highlighted the power of the financial systems and the impact of economic fallout on ordinary people.

    As a Colombian newspaper said, it was ‘the speech world leaders did not want to hear, but is shared by the rest of the world.’ The speech has been called poetic, prophetic, romantic, lyrical and flat out weird. It’s not exactly your 16-minute TEDtalk, but it definitely projected ideas worth reliving.

    Excerpts of the speech:

    “We have been talking about sustainable development, about rescuing the masses from the claws of poverty…What is it that flutters within our minds? Is it the model of development and consumption, which is shaped after that of affluent societies? I ask this question: what would happen to this planet if the people of India had the same number of cars per family as the Germans? How much oxygen would there be left for us to breathe?

    “More clearly: Does the world today have the material elements to enable seven or eight billion people to enjoy the same level of consumption and squandering as the most affluent Western societies? Will that ever be possible? Or will we have to start a different type of discussion one day? Because we have created this civilization in which we live: the progeny of the market, of the competition, which has begotten prodigious and explosive material progress. But the market economy has created market societies. And it has given us this globalization, which means being aware of the whole planet.

    “Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us?…Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental.

    “But if life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society is the engine-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet.

    “And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short useful life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard”, and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture.

    “I belong to a small country well endowed with natural resources for life. In my country, there are a bit more than three million people. But there are about 13 million cows, some of the best in the world. And about 8 or 10 million excellent sheep. My country is an exporter of food, dairy, meat. It is a low-relief plain and almost 90% of the land is fertile.

    “My fellow workers, fought hard for the 8 hour workday. And now they are making that 6 hours. But the person who works 6 hours, gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer than before. But why? Because he needs to make monthly payments for: the motorcycle, the car, more and more payments, and when he’s done with that, he realizes he is a rheumatic old man, like me, and his life is already over.

    “And one asks this question: is this the fate of human life? These things I say are very basic: development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness, of love on earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness. When we fight for the environment, we must remember that the essential element of the environment is called human happiness.”

    Mujica is a farmer. Buhari is a farmer. The difference between both men’s touted simplicity is that, while Mujica practiced what he preached by scorning the trappings and vulgar luxury of presidential office, President Buhari curiously, is unable to do so. Nonetheless, Buhari represents Nigeria’s best hope at the moment, amid the pack of hounds masquerading as ‘Change Agents’ in the presidential cabinet and National Assembly.

    In these hard times, Almighty Eledumare help Buhari navigate his way through the luxury-traps and political landmine hindering him from steering the nation’s ship to the promised land. If he could truly aspire to a simple life like Mujica’s, he may enjoy the citizenry’s unflinching support at taming the gluttony and alleged excesses of his colleagues in the National Assembly.

    And let’s hope the younger generation of Nigerians are able to present worthier replacements for the Buhari generation or what Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, aptly described as the ‘Wasted Generation’ come 2019.

  • Beasts of no gender (3)

    To be a feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The feminist is that woman who dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities, in order to satisfy her emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

    Like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such woman is an emotion junkie – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her lust for unearned benefits. And when she seems truly deserving of sought benefits, gluttony and wile pervert her claims until her agitation attains the tenor of a ruckus, much like the ghastly cries of feral cats jostling for the largest chunk of carrion flesh.

    To do American feminists justice, many of them have publicly repudiated the ideas they once held: Betty Friedan now talks of the importance of the family. Judy Goldsmith (former president of NOW) deplores the feminization of poverty due to easy divorce laws, and Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, laments the effects of sexual liberation and the feminist adoption of the lesbian cause: “We tried to make people proud of who they were” says Brownmiller, “…but then the sadomasochists came out of the closet and became proud of themselves.”

    Unfortunately, Nigerian feminists, always five leap years behind the American sisterhood, have not seen the light yet and attempt to pervert State and Federal policies even as they lay to waste, the traditional family. Feminists, without doubt, should not enjoy the natural ‘privilege’ of having children. They are taking care of that anyway – as you read; the “Free the Nigerian Woman” movement is working assiduously to achieve total liberation from patriarchal fetters for the Nigerian woman and girl-child.

    However, like their foreign feminist heroes, the feminism they propagate presupposes and necessitates male blame. It espouses man-hating as an intrinsic part of its modus operandi thus institutionalizing misandry as a central tenet of its crusade. Although, many a Nigerian feminist will contend that “the feminism we espouse does not require man-hating, we simply choose to liberate the Nigerian woman from servitude and patriarchal dominion…”; reality tells differently. Feminism cannot exist without man-hating and that is the cold-hard truth.

    Blaming socialization for women’s predicament constitutes the worst of feminist claptrap.

    The socialization-learned roles-sex stereotyping feminist argument to excuse feminists’ claim to  perpetual victimhood has no basis in fact. If social forces and upbringing have such a profound effect and influence on women’s choices then they must also have a profound effect and influence on men’s choices – if considered within the feminist parameters that both male and female gender are created as equals. This means that nobody, anywhere, under any circumstances, is capable of making a ‘free choice.’

    The concept is arrant nonsense; if it had any validity then none of us could be held morally or personally responsible for the consequences of our actions. Picture a society that operates by this belief system: thousands of men locked up in prisons could use the same defense for shooting, robbing, raping, drug dealing and so on. Why not argue for example, that the culture of masculinity, a background of poverty, and a materialistic and religiously intolerant family  makes them behave in anti-social ways? Individual men are held responsible for their decisions and actions, so how can feminists legitimately claim that women should be exempt from personal responsibility?

    Misandry and demonization of men, has devalued men’s worth to the extent that it has made society blasé about the disposability of men and the boy-child. This is responsible, for example, for the shocking bias in the lack of attention to men and boys’ health in general while the mass media and health advocacy groups perpetually obsess about women’s health and the girl-child’s.

    The idiocy of this mindset is that while girls are badgered with crucial health information even before puberty, boys, with whom they engage in random acts of sexual misdemeanor and experimentation are virtually ignored.

    The cultural and institutional misandry perpetuated by the feminist aggravates the destruction of the family system and denies the boy-child the comfort of an external role model especially when he has to seek outside his family for his role models.

    This is one reason boys are perpetually in trouble; due to the lack of positive male role models in their lives, they would get what they could from TV, violent films and video games. All they need is someone whose exemplary footsteps they could follow but the society provides them only men they could dumb down to.

    A recent analysis of 2, 000 mass media portrayals of men and male identities, found that men were depicted mostly as villains, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers. From this stock-pile of anti-heroes, the boy-child is expected to navigate for a good male identity. Promoting the image of men as juvenile, mean and stupid is cynical and exploitative; which makes the tide of inverse sexism that has swamped out television screens for instance, even more appalling.

    In modern Nigeria, boys and young men have a dire lack of good role models; especially if they are raised in a single-parent home, as one in eight children now are. The situation is worsened by the lack of positive role models in government, and the perpetuation of overwhelmingly negative images of men by the media and feminist scholarly research. Ultimately such portrayals lead to negative social costs for society in areas such as male health, rising suicide rates and family disintegration.

    Women need to be thought of as ‘victims.’ Without the banner of victimhood to rally around, feminist coffers would run dry, career feminists would be unemployed and mortgages would go unpaid. Hence thousands of professional feminists can’t just declare victory and go home, because without the feminist movement they would have no homes to go to; they would have no jobs, no families and no job prospects. And neither would they have a platform from which to pound their ideological drum.

    The irony of feminism’s ‘forever feminism’ is that the sense of perpetual victimhood precludes the concept that the members of the victimized group, women, could actually rise above their assigned position in society and meet that society, and be part of that society, on equal terms. To do that would mean taking personal responsibility for their choices and the condition of their own lives. Instead, feminism has designed an ideological crutch to serve as the average woman impediment to self-actualization.

    Feminism has gained a monopoly on the subject of gender studies.  Men don’t have a gender identity anymore, only women have a gender identity and an intrinsic value to society and this sentiment is perpetuated by carefully articulated propaganda and research.  The concept of authoritative, strong, independent, passionate and intelligent manhood is persistently repudiated except it exists to serve the feminist cause. So when a young boy reaches the age where it’s appropriate for him to be initiated into manhood, we find the whole idea of “reaching manhood” laughable.

    On the flip-side, a new womanhood is fast evolving. Stripped of its swathe of fortune and status symbols, it reveals a kind of corpse in future argument with itself, a dead voice hollering and bearing witness to its own achievement, passionate in self-love and incest with its past.

  • Scarred at Birth

    Scarred at Birth

    Hope rises for Adetomiwa as Ogun summons doctor over his scalding with hot water
    Parents and physician to meet with Justice Ministry officers Feb 10
    Legal experts highlight medical negligence and duty of care
    They took the baby away during treatment —Doctor

    A rafter of pain hangs jarringly above the household of Tella. The family of four lives in abject terror of the sad fate of Adetomiwa, the baby of the house. The four-year-old still hobbles back and forth the compact expanse of their residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    Four years after he was scalded at birth by Dr. Biodun Akinola, the 73-year-old physician who delivered the mother of the child, Adetomiwa is handicapped by the wounds he sustained from the tragic and life-threatening incident.

    However, one week after The Nation exclusively published the report of his traumatic experience in the labour room of Akinola’s Tobiloba Clinic and Maternity Home, off Tobiloba Way, off Lubi Drive in Adigbe, Abeokuta, a semblance of hope has risen for the child as the Citizens’ Rights Department (CRD) of the Ogun State Ministry of Justice has summoned Dr. Akinola to its office to arbitrate in the matter involving him, the four-year-old and his parents.

    The CRD, in a letter dated January 25, 2016 and titled: “In matters affecting medical negligence on Master Adetomiwa Tella,” requested the presence of Dr. Akinola at a meeting involving the victim, Adetomiwa, and his parents on February 10, 2016. The CRD invited Dr. Akinola at the directive of the state’s Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Olumide Ayeni.

    Parents of the handicapped child, Biodun and Yetunde Tella, expressed their profound happiness at the state Ministry of Justice’s prompt intervention in the interest of their child. According to Biodun, “It is encouraging that the government has taken interest in the case of my son. It is always heart-rending to see him waddle about the house. He can’t play football with his mates because of the handicap he suffered as a result of Dr. Akinola’s negligence while delivering the mother of the baby. My son can’t play football or race with his mates. It is very sad to see him sit by and watch despondently as his mates kick the ball around. He can’t play police and thief with his friends; his handicap has effectively ruled that out. There is no greater sadness for a parent than watching your four-year-old son grieve over a handicap he can make no sense of.”

    Corroborating him, his wife, Yetunde, lamented that, she retires to bed and wakes up with a heartbreak every day. Most nights, she cries herself to sleep as she silently prays for a miracle, an intervention from a higher power and the government, in securing justice for her scalded son.

    “It was my earnest wish that the government intervened in the interest of my son. Now that the government is involved, I hope the Ministry of Justice will make Dr. Akinola understand the gravity of the pain and handicap he inflicted on my son. The psychological trauma he has been going through is agonising to behold. The emotional torture I experience watching him grow with the handicap everyday is killing me. Let all well-meaning Nigerians come to our aid. Please. Hear a mother’s cry. Dr. Akinola should pay for what he has done to us,” she said.

     

    What the Tellas want…

    Biodun and Yetunde demand that Dr. Akinola write a formal letter of apology to Adetomiwa. “The letter will be given to the child once he grows up to enable him understand what happened to him at birth, to enable him understand how the doctor that took his delivery hurt him as a child. In case he decides to study medicine and become a doctor in future, he would learn to take great care and not visit on his patients, the kind of hurt Dr. Akinola visited on him at birth. It is noteworthy that Dr. Akinola gave my child the name, Iyanuoluwa – which translates to ‘The Lord’s miracle’ – because he was apparently astonished that the child could survive after what he did to him,” said Biodun.

    More importantly, the couple wants the embattled doctor to foot the bill of corrective surgery abroad of their child’s handicap and badly scarred back. “We want him to pay the travel expenses, the cost of corrective surgery and associated medical treatment of Adetomiwa in developed countries where facilities for such treatment are available. We do not intend to be difficult but Dr. Akinola needs to be responsible for what he has done to our child. All along, he had been apathetic to the child’s plight,” said Biodun.

    Reacting to the claim by Dr. Akinola that she visited his clinic to take away Adetomiwa before the completion of his treatment, Princess Adepeju Ajibike Tella (nee Gbadebo), matriarch of the Tella family and grandmother of Adetomiwa, stated that his claim is untrue.

    “I never visited the clinic to take away the child. We did Adetomiwa’s naming ceremony in Dr. Akinola’s clinic because it would be foolhardy to take him home given the severity of the injuries he sustained from the scalding. The child and mother stayed at the clinic after the incident but they were discharged by Dr. Akinola after one month apparently because he needed his bed space. I only visited the clinic to urge Dr. Akinola to issue a medical report for the child to aid travel arrangements for a corrective surgery abroad. And on the day of my visit, Dr. Akinola was not around,” she said.

     

    Genesis of the dispute

    Akinola, a medical doctor, incurred the wrath of the Tellas soon after he took delivery of Adetomiwa from his mother Yetunde; because the infant child did not cry at birth, the 73-year-old medical doctor ordered one of his nurses to place a bottle containing hot water on his back.

    According to Akinola, “The baby was delivered but it was weak after delivery and we were resuscitating the baby. While we were doing that, we wanted to keep the baby warm. We did not know that the hot water bottle placed on the baby’s back leaked. The hot water gave the child burns.”

    Thus soon after he was delivered from his mother’s womb, Adetomiwa Tella suffered severe burns from the very hot water placed on his back in the labour room of Tobiloba Clinic and Maternity Home, off Tobiloba Way, off Lubi Drive in Adigbe, Abeokuta, Ogun State. He was four minutes old. In five minutes, the wound had caused severe burns all over the child’s back and along his spine.

    The hot water scalded the child badly, causing his mother, Yetunde, to forget her postnatal pains and instead, worry about the safety and survival of the newborn. As you read, Adetomiwa treads with infirm steps through infanthood. Unlike his peers, he cannot walk normally; the burns he suffered at birth severely handicapped him, causing him to waddle and bend sideways every time he attempts walking.

     

    Dr. Akinola’s defence

    “I will never deny what happened. And if I was not there personally, I would have said maybe the people did it wrong. I took the delivery of the baby personally. He had prematurity. That is why I said the case is with my lawyer and it is not different from what I am telling you. You see, when you tell the truth, the fact will never change. By the grace of God, I cannot crucify myself. Let anybody who wants to judge everything we have said do so. How can I say I made a professional error to resuscitate the baby? Is it an error to try and keep the baby warm? If the bottle leaked, that was an accident. An accident is not something done intentionally.

    “So, what should I have used? That is why I said if they want to go to court, by the grace of God, my licence will not be seized. If my licence should be seized today, at 73 years old, I can take a forced retirement. Look, when I retire from civil service,…I retired as a Permanent Secretary from Federal Civil Service. This incident happened in the eighth year into my retirement. I retired in January 2003.  This thing happened in November 2011; what do I want to gain in injuring people’s children? I have my children. My first born is a medical doctor; he is in Britain. I have a lawyer among my children, I have an engineer, accountant.

    “All my children had become what they are before this incident happened. If the baby had died and I am being accused of using the child for rituals, they will feel happy. But this child sustained an accident while resuscitating him. If that is professional incompetence or whatever they want to call it, it is fine. I still have it on record that we succumbed to the pressure for them to take the baby away,” he said.

     

    What the experts say about medical negligence and duty of care

    According to the Tellas, Dr. Akinola exhibited negligence while treating their child. They claimed he chose to use steaming hot water in a leaky water bottle to resuscitate their child even though he had oxygen lying on the floor of the labour room.

    Experts opined that Dr. Akinola should have used a bag and mask ventilation technique or oxygen to resuscitate the child  instead of the hot water measure that scalded and eventually handicapped Adetomiwa five minutes after his delivery.

    A central concern of contemporary medical ethics has been the relationship between physician and patient. Aspects of this relationship continue to be the source of ethical dilemmas. For instance, what is the extent of the doctor’s duty to a patient if treating the patient places the doctor at risk?

    Oyinkansola Sulaiman, a Lagos-based lawyer, argued that medical negligence translates to a failure on the part of a medical practitioner to exercise reasonable degree of skill and care in the treatment of a patient. “If a doctor administers medical treatment to a patient in a negligent manner and causes him harm, the patient can bring an action of negligence against the doctor claiming damages for the harm suffered. The plaintiff must, however, prove the following three conditions in order to succeed in an action of negligence against a doctor: (a) That the doctor owed the patient a duty to use reasonable care in treating him or her; (b) that the doctor failed to exercise such care, that is, he was in breach of that duty and (c) that the patient suffered damage(s) as a result of the breach,” she said.

    According to her, “Once a doctor undertakes to treat a patient, whether or not there is an agreement, a duty of care arises. The doctor must exercise reasonable care and skill in treating the patient; it is immaterial that the doctor is rendering such a service ex-gratia. A doctor in the hospital owes a duty of care to patients in the ward in which the doctor is employed to work, a private physician who has contracted to provide medical services for the employees owes a duty of care to such employees who are on the clinic’s list. Medical centers and hospital authorities also owe the same duty of care to patients accepted for treatment in their facilities, whereby they must provide proper medical services for them.”

    Corroborating her, Otaobayomi Sanya, a lawyer, stated that, a medical practitioner may also be liable criminally and may be asked to pay damages by way of civil remedy where it is discovered that the act or omission of the medical practitioner falls below expectation.