The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Ololade

  • Mr. Adesina, Buhari is hardly all that…Not yet (1)

    (The perils of being Special Adviser on Media Affairs to Mr. President)

    The Nigerian infatuation with moral personae is reflective in the trending fascination with President Muhammadu Buhari. Be it positive or negative, the opposition and public’s fixation with the retired Army General is recipe for recrudescent theatre. The dictator with unpopular morals eventually emerges as the country’s best hope (at the moment) of navigating its lattices of disaster and death to safer clime. How instructive.

    At Buhari’s emergence, various segments of the country experienced radical re-awakening to the severity of his moral character. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), major opposition to Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), consider him bad news; they cringe from his crusader mentality and imminent gale of prosecutions and corrective measures accruable from his much hyped anti-corruption campaign.

    Pro-Buhari movement, comprising Nigeria’s impoverished and fading middle class however, cheer him on; even when his action (s) reek dangerously of injury to certain interests or sociopolitical divide. This is not to lampoon the president as most of his actions till date, seem absent of premeditated intent to gall or punish anyone or group unjustly. My view though, given the public’s predilection to read infinite meanings to everything and anything deemed political.

    At his second shot at power, Buhari also experiences a rude arousal; his heartfelt dream of presiding over 173.8 million Nigerians or thereabouts has suddenly come true. An adult thing has happened, now he has to respond as a fully evolved adult. His virulent critics believe he is set up for a disastrous spell, his ardent loyalists ceaselessly affirm his competence yet Nigeria and the world depends on the Spartan conservative from Daura to affirm or dispel the wanton speculations and insinuations about him. Can he?

    Buhari seemingly restores frantic theatricality to governance and leadership. What would have been impossible and unacceptable in previous regimes is suddenly becoming the public language of personae. The APC’s ‘change’ ideology meshes with the retired general’s anti-corruption stance in a dramatic dance of whim and political maneuverings.  Governance becomes a stage and Buhari is chief performer. Will he be hero or villain?

    Buhari until his ascendance to power was a work of self-sculpture. Then he assumed power and became a statuette; everybody’s unfinished model. By becoming President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Buhari assumes an incompleteness. Innumerable expectations and traits seep into him by his personal and implied contact with loyalists and foes, in person and on the traditional or new media space.

    The new Buhari will become what we intend him to be. It is beyond his will. His innate constitution is not enough to ride the tide of our collective degeneracy or sterling citizenship. Having played degenerate for too long under previous administrations, it’s about time we attempted the pursuit of noble citizenship in the interest of our fatherland. While we embark on such noble enterprise, Nigeria deserves the partnership of a humane and humble leadership. Is Buhari really such man?

    In the run up to the March 28 presidential elections, the PDP persistently pitched former president, Goodluck Jonathan, as the ‘devil’ we know, advising haughtily, that we kept faith with his ‘transformation agenda’ even as it ushered us down the steep plane of disaster. The APC however, identified Jonathan as irredeemably less than, and passionately dismissed him as the faithful would, a rowdy wine god, or the abstemious would, the chronic tippler or mirth maker.

    No doubt, Nigeria urgently needs a traditional moralist whose convenient morality would ultimately serve as a bridge and extinguisher of decadence but while we set Buhari up for such arduous and usually under-appreciated task, there is need to monitor him and the men seemingly responsible for inputs into his manifestly popular and unpopular acts.

    Hardly anyone knows what the portfolio of “Special Adviser” signifies under President Buhari but going by its implied connotation, one could not be too wrong in assuming that the holders of such title wield immense influence in the presidency.

    If that be the case, there is urgent need for Mr. Femi Adesina, former editor of The Sun newspapers to tread gently and fawn sparingly irrespective of the intensity of his love and admiration for President Buhari.

    In a recent published article, he said of the incumbent president, “But what is bred in the bones never goes out through the flesh. Immediately after Buhari returned on May 29, Nigerians knew that discipline was back. Stealing is now corruption…And this one! Even our foreign reserve knows that a new sheriff is in town, and has responded appropriately. In June, just one month into office, and with the plugging of some leakages and loopholes, foreign reserve surged from $29 billion to $31.89. Holy Moses! Just in one month. Well, that is what a new sheriff can do. He brings sanity, confidence and probity to the system. And you would agree that Nigeria needs such shot in the arm, if we consider recent past experiences, when our treasury was like a bag filled with holes.

    “President Buhari has spent time trying to clean the Augean stable he inherited. And he is succeeding. Sheriffs can either come in with guns blazing, shooting malefactors to kingdom come, or simply stamp their authority on the situation by sheer force of personality and presence. The Nigerian sheriff seems to have opted for the second option for now. But we should never forget that sheriffs are licensed to shoot. And those shots can be lethal for lawbreakers. In a matter of months, you can ask those who had bled our treasury to the point of death. They’ll have stories to tell.”

    Mr. Adesina sure has stories to tell, at the moment. The details however, rankles with ominous note for the new Special Adviser on Media Affairs and the president. The presidential spokesperson’s recent article reads like a deep tissue massage of President Buhari’s ego. Agreed, certain details in the piece, barring embellishment, could be substantiated but the job of a Special Adviser on Media Affairs, I believe, should be ennobled beyond what it was in the time of Reuben Abati and what Mr. Adesina seem to be making it out to be.

    I would love to believe Mr. Adesina commands the respect of President Buhari; that with him the Nigerian presidency would desist from seeing the average journalist as nothing more than an errand boy or obsequious pawn to be played in pursuit of selfish objectives.

    Power infinitely generates and attracts sycophancy. The blasphemous flattery of Nigeria’s past presidents by their media advisers was not a mere culture of survival but a sign that the position is persistently regarded as an end in itself. Mr. Adesina as representative of the nation’s fourth estate should never be involved in the production of such fawning literature about his principal. His job is to caution and pitilessly offer harsh but constructive criticisms from a patriot and the media’s perspective of the president’s intended policies or actions before they are made public.

    That was hardly the conduct of past occupants of the office in previous administrations. The former occupant of the office for instance, issued flattery like secular prayer and worship of his principal, Goodluck Jonathan, to the latter’s detriment. Mr. Adesina should never morph into such grotesqueness. Until he assumed the post, he was never an insincere flatterer. He wasn’t a leech nor was he a polluter of language and media integrity. Unlike his predecessor.

    • To be continued…
  • Babatunde Fashola as the APC’s broken idol (2)

    Babatunde Fashola as the APC’s broken idol (2)

    Babatunde Fashola’s descent shows politics as a barbaric ritual drama where the performers periodically trade masks. His frightful demystification presage the capitulation of hubris to karma’s tyranny. At the beginning of his term as Lagos governor, the perceived dominance of Bola Tinubu, as his godfather and puppeteer seemed so complete and absolute. Fashola, to cynical opposition parties and apathetic citizenry, was inert human matter, a pitiful puppet manipulated by an omnipotent godfather, Tinubu. The latter allegedly controlled Lagos while Fashola served as a pitiable front. Critics of Fashola substantiated their claims by tracing his subservience to Tinubu to the period when he served as the two-time governor of Lagos’ Chief of Staff (COS).

    Fashola was severally dismissed as a stringed instrument plucked by Tinubu. However, under the latter’s imposing stature, Fashola forged an enviable identity, his bid reinforced by his brilliance, infectious optimism and natural biological authoritarianism. Fashola thus proceeded to serve against a bulwark of antagonism by Lagos elite class and struggling human segments of the backwaters. Governor Fashola proceeded by seemingly tested ideological apparatuses, brandishing a pieta, where the old guard becomes a virgin bustling with bleeding youth and buoyancy. But few months into his administration, one thing led to another and the chummy relationship he shared with Tinubu reportedly deteriorated. The ‘subservient’ godson allegedly sought freedom from his godfather and subsequently challenged the latter to a joust in apparent bid to tame him and cast him in a bind. The disconcerting test of might and will raged through Fashola’s first and second terms as Lagos governor; in the ensuing melee, various interests emerged and several people took sides, the media inclusive.

    Now, this is hardly about the cause of conflict between alleged godfather and godson – as most of such stories widely perpetuated across the political circuits and media space often turn out to be lies embellished to serve the interests of warring parties – it is about the metamorphosis of Fashola from APC’s poster idol to a broken toy. So, if you are hell bent on establishing Tinubu or Fashola as a monster of sort, you can drop this page right now to seek other writers amenable to your quirk.

    Predictably, Fashola exulted in the subtle and often rabid cheers accorded him by his ragtag army of loyalists comprising disgruntled, hungry politicians, civil servants and journalists, all desperate to make a fortune via sycophancy and goading of the former Lagos governor to his doom. Loyalties switched on the political plane . Deceit flared and floundered in the intense political drama. Pride too. Fashola’s brazen challenge to the ‘wailing wailers’ and ‘pigs,’ his perceived political foes eventually, incited backlash that devastated his strut and seeming invincibility with choreographic ritualism. It’s like a parody of ancient turf battles where the weaker clan buckles after launching preemptive strikes to tame and crush stronger opposition.

    A flurry of allegations severely rattled him, stripping him of his confidence and characteristic hauteur. His fate is energized by explosive requiem of the repressed citizenry of Lagos, those whose dreams lay buried in the cavernous chasms of infrastructural lack and perceived maladministration by the immediate past Lagos governor.

    It doesn’t matter if this segment of the citizenry comprising the impoverished human integers of the backwaters, struggling working and professional classes among others, are responsible for whatever grievous fate they suffer, it is trendier for them to blame the ruling class for their predicament rather than own up to certain bad choices and quirks of character.

    In some cases, this segment of the repressed considers itself justifiably outraged at been unduly shortchanged by their leader. Market women of the sidewalks in Alimosho Local Government Area (LGA) of the state for instance, perpetuate news about the former governor’s recent travails like some urban legend to which they are contentedly disposed. Park urchins, jobless graduates and muscles for hire roaming Alimosho’s bad lands argue that but for their bias for the APC machinery and lack of better alternative, they would have voted against the party. According to them, the district produces decisive votes in the interest of the APC yet it grovels in abject lack  compared to Lekki, Victoria Island, Yaba, Surulere and other parts of the state considered major recipients of the former governor’s mega city agenda.

    Fashola was and is still variously seen as a governor of the elites or rich upper class by these segments of Lagos populace. While they are entitled to their views, such impressions about the ex-governor may peter out to more favourable testimonies and commendations for his service in parts of the state allegedly favoured by him in his megacity plan.

    This undoubtedly negates the argument by Fashola’s media team that he was a governor of the people. What manner of people? What segment of the people? I, for instance, was appreciative of the former Lagos governor’s refusal to compromise as he cleared Oshodi of miscreants, squalid shanties and market settlements. But that decision was severely frowned at by the unemployed, commercial motorists, park urchins and market women of the sidewalk that erstwhile profited from the township’s squalor – these human elements no doubt constitute the decisive segment of the Lagos electorate.

    There is no gainsaying the government of Fashola took purposeful steps to set Lagos on the path to irreversible progress but at what cost? Recent disclosures by the state under the incumbent administration of Governor Akinwumi Ambode allege financial improprieties against his predecessor hence eliciting shrill cries from Camp-Fashola of perceived witch-hunt by his successor.

    Lending his voice to the debate, Tinubu condemned the attacks on his successor claiming Fashola would emerge victorious at the end. He said: “I for one will not bend to the artificial provocation of those seeking to tear at what we have painstakingly built over the years. In my mind, Governor Fashola and I are and shall always be political allies and fellow travelers on a vital journey; that alliance is unshakeable and our journey must not be interrupted. I would no more attack his character or his administration than I would attack myself.”

    Apparently, the former Lagos governor and APC leader has dissociated himself from what he termed ‘rancid’ attacks against his successor. Perhaps this would put to rest insinuations that Tinubu sponsored this piece. Nonetheless, some frivolous boob would read this and call it an attack on Fashola. I would rather you call it premeditated assault on the vanities and vaingloriousness that gradually nibbles at the core of Fashola’s acclaim, diminishing it, stripping him naked and vulnerable to the charge of random radicals lusting for his ruin in real time.

    Considering the huge allocation and Internally Generated Revenue available to him, Fashola didn’t do enough regarding the level of performance expected of his administration. He must come out to convincingly affirm or dispel the insinuations of financial impropriety levelled against him by the obviously over-exuberant incumbent administration.

    I do not care what trenchant undertones are ascribed to this as long as Camp-Fashola understands that he was the architect of his misfortune. Brilliance may serve him in oratory and political grandstanding but the incidences leading to the ‘rancid’ disclosures about him could have been better managed with tact and maturity.

    Yet the imagery of Fashola as the quintessential APC mascot is merely sullied, not destroyed. If he could learn from his recent predicament and reestablish himself as the citizenry’s true advocate, his ‘indestructible record’ will cease to mesh with his indestructible ego to impede his ascent the rickety ladder of power.

    • To be continued…

  • Money ruins all of us

    Money ruins many men. It impairs the moral fibre thus making the average human inhumane but that is because man often fails money. The Nigerian man in particular, fails money and so doing loses his right to lord over it and own it.

    Money, like a wild mongrel needs to be tamed. It requires firmness, chariness, deliberate conservatism and modesty of a full man to tame it, own it and control it. But that is hardly the case; many a man is owned by his money. The Nigerian man, woman and society in particular, are owned by money; that is why contemporary Nigeria worships money.

    Like fire, money becomes a bad master due to our incapacities at taming its flare and controlling it; consequently it consumes us. Money corrupts the brightest amongst us and renders the most promising man and woman worthless; it consumes all who would do anything and everything to acquire it, whatever the consequence.

    Hence the domestication of yesterday’s ‘heroes’ and corruption of the shrewd – men and women by whose citizenship and wisdom we aspired to freedom and progress have being tamed, house-trained, like hunt dogs and pastoral cattle. Eventually, we suffer the transmutation of such established, self-acclaimed defenders of the people’s rights into despicable lapdogs, attack dogs and junkyard dogs of the ruling class.

    Little wonder Sunday of Isabo, Abeokuta, Ogun State, ditched his noble job as foremost columnist and chairman of a national newspaper’s editorial board to become the attack dog and junkyard dog for President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Many of his readers and fans bemoaned his ‘betrayal’ but from Sunday’s perspective, it is unarguably selfish of anyone to expect him to cling to the drudgery and emptiness of his former job and scorn a-chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of Nigeria’s high-society be it as errand boy or disposable ‘bingo.’

    Who would have thought that the unrepentant critic of inept and oppressive ruling class would dump his pen and cape of honour to become an attack dog for the ruling class that erstwhile incited his vitriol? Today, Sunday is speaking from every side of his mouth; having patrolled Aso Rock corridors as the greyhound would the premises of its master, he has beaten a retreat at the ouster of his master to hibernate in safe haven abroad . It must have been lucrative being an errand dog.

    In Sunday’s descent subsists the irony of a contrived metaphor; the former columnist’s desertion of his sanctimonious high ground and renunciation of his self-touted activism and crusade for justice, government accountability and morality aptly illustrates contemporary Nigeria’s self-love and enslavement to mammon.

    An inordinate lust for money drives this generation to self-destruct. Having perverted the natural order that places man above money, the animate cowers to the inanimate; Nigeria submits to mammon, and science, technology, power, property and other bastions of materialism own and controls us. The consequences are rampant and discernible for all to see.

    Our lust for money has put paid to that staunch historic adherence to a cultural value system that supposedly distinguishes the Nigerian in the larger comity of nations and universal citizenship. Gone are our touted values; incontestable code of personal and societal ethics that supposedly humanizes the average Nigerian and moulds him into a fuller and better breed of mankind than any other in Africa and across continental divides.

    The current generation, the youth especially, manifests a dissonance with future bliss and progressive leadership anticipated of it. This generation is not only the most knavish but also the most effeminate of all generations; I will not bother over the shortcomings and atrocities we inherited from preceding generations lest I tow the oft beaten path and glamourize our claims to victimhood and base sentimentality. If the Nigeria we inherited is truly shorn of values and promises of a brighter tomorrow, must we aggravate the circumstances that foist upon us such hopelessness?

    One of the most curious kinks of this generation is its sustenance and obeisance to the cult of the ruling class. Take the immediate past administration of former President Jonathan for instance; men and women that erstwhile professed to champion the people’s rights united to defend Jonathan’s honour and justify defiantly, the unceasing ineptitude and mindlessness of his administration.

    They conveniently forgot that the administration’s insensitivity, clumsiness and gluttony cost Nigeria thousands of lives. Evidences of the government’s incompetence and tactlessness abound in its appointment of men and women unfit to run a roast corn kiosk to man the nation’s finance, aviation, health, defense, foreign affairs, education, works and housing ministries to mention a few. Inefficiency of such characters fostered corruption, violence and deaths across the country.

    This anomaly incited harsh criticisms and disillusionment among the citizenry, however, as had always been the case, the leading critics took no part in the pursuit and actualization of majority will beyond lip service; nonetheless they proceeded with the most vulgar extravagances courting power and projecting it, irrespective of the nature of men and women that wielded it.

    It is incontestable that many of such men, including the former president’s media attack dogs, attracted to themselves much that bespoke psychosis and common crime. Like the minority that paraded themselves as the former president’s apologists, they cackled like a coven of unbalanced enthusiasts that saw every illicit and sentimental act of bestiality as cause for political theatrics and hysterical spinning.

    Renowned turncoats like Sunday of Isabo for instance, were very useful to the ruling class; wobbly in intellect and infinitely handicapped by greed, they repeatedly paraded themselves as pirates amenable to crimes and accessible to venal enterprise. These purchasable characters eventually shed their pretensions to heroism and honour to unite with the ruling class in its savage war against the citizenry.

    We have fought many wars in Nigeria; wars for Biafra and Niger Delta, the ongoing war for and against the soul of the Northeast currently asphyxiating in the grip of terrorist sect, Boko Haram; these wars are ultimately triggered by our failures with money and its innumerable material vestiges. Yet these wars are never enough; every day, we embroil in fresh wars for self-actualization but the wars of the underdog, Nigeria’s impoverished lot, has a greater significance than all of the others.

    This daily battle for the soul and survival of the struggling working class and barely existent middle class is merely an episode of the universal war that constitutes the true nature of humanity and history of the world—the war of good against evil, ruling class against working class, the haves against the have-nots.

    These wars however, are lost on all fronts even before the masses march on to the battle field every day. This is a consequence of the knavery of men entrusted to serve as our moral sentinels, custodians of culture, value and hope for a brighter tomorrow. These men, contrary to their touted crusades in the interest of the citizenry, unconscionably mutate into more savage destroyers of hope and forms of life than the ruling class they were known to despise. But rather than call them out for the savages and murderers of hope that they have become, the Nigerian masses continually rationalize their betrayal arguing that they were only being smart. Perfidy and greed thus become noble enterprise in the Nigeria of our dreams.

     

    • To be continued…

  • Babatunde Fashola as the APC’s broken idol (1)

    The All Progressives Congress (APC)’s mantra of ‘Change’ flaunts a supreme theme: that of the remarkable radical – or reformer if you like. Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos State, impressively rose to become the poster-icon of the ‘Change’ movement. In APC-speak, he actualised the development master plan facilitated by his predecessor, Bola Tinubu, a two-time governor of Lagos State and leader of the APC. Fashola soon became the worst nightmare of Lagos’ brutish crowd. Parts of the coastal city that erstwhile listed like a vessel bearing the coastal city’s rejects cum worst elements, cleared out to the purge of Cyclone-Fashola. Oshodi for instance, pulsated in the throes of the brilliantly rigged catharsis – a paroxysm that rid the transit township of the city’s worst’s elements, to birth an enchanting vista of change. Lagos had a no-nonsense governor. There was bound to be change. There was.

    Armed robberies, the Ebola scare, impunity of Lagos motorists, educational hiccups, dwindling revenue and infrastructural collapse were some of the maladies Fashola faced and tackled with admirable zeal. Large segments of the citizenry were of course, appreciative and enthusiastic of his radical and transformational style of governance, despite its shortcomings. Fashola thus enjoyed the resounding applause of a turbulence-weary citizenry that earnestly acknowledged his significant contributions to the progress of the coastal city.

    Citing Fashola’s achievements among others, the APC campaigned for its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari and Lagos governorship candidate, Akinwumi Ambode, before an increasingly critical Lagos electorate. While the APC campaigned, Fashola was a sight to behold; memorable punch lines and poetic depiction of facts and pro-APC slogans leapt from his mouth to persuade and titillate the consciousness of a wary and increasingly critical electorate. The responses were habitually awesome, particularly when platitudes meshed with facts to substantiate the party’s promising imagery of change.

    The polls took place and the APC’s candidates emerged victorious with the party claiming gubernatorial victories in 22 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The party was ecstatic; the future seemed promising for the new power bloc. But like Ola Rotimi would say, “Joy has a slender body that breaks too soon.” So does change. If anything, the APC’s much hyped change suffers the affliction of prodigal vigour, in Lagos State to be precise.

    Fashola, the APC’s prodigious prince of change soon evolved to become primping peacock in the estimation of certain interests within the party. Scandalous snippets of a ‘progressive’ rebellion drifted from the party’s circuits, spilling beyond its ideological walls and sullying its promise of change. In the ensuing drama, Fashola is serially pitched against Tinubu, the man widely acknowledged as his benefactor and mastermind of his ascension to power and political acclaim. But like his staunch loyalists would say, Fashola rode to acclaim on the wings of his excellent performance as Chief of Staff in Tinubu’s cabinet and two-time governor of Lagos State.

    “Therefore, asking him to man the driver’s seat was arguably on merit…Those who settled for him knew they merely gambled for obvious selfish extrapolations,” reads a recent diatribe against the political machinery that produced Fashola. The article, titled, “Fashola’s indestructible record,” makes an interesting read on web and social media.

    This comes in the wake of the former governor’s rebuttal by a press release, of what he considers “manipulated and unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing.” According to his statement, “They range from allegations of extramarital paternity of children, to mundane and phantom conspiracy in the National Assembly, a debt profile for Lagos State and lately a website upgrade contract of N78 million, which is being distorted.”

    All is clearly not well with the APC’s golden boy. But he keeps an appearance of calm anyway, like a bejeweled idol, exulting, self-intoxicated in the electric moment before lightning strikes. Lightning struck the former governor recently as the APC’s top hierarchy and all its prominent governors stayed away from his recent book launch thus leaving him severely shaken and bereft of spunk.

    The APC’s golden boy has lost his fabled swagger and equilibrium, what is left is a feeble  attempt at valour, a necessary performance of will. But how did things degenerate to this point?

    Are the rumours about him unfounded or is his recent rebuttal of the allegations a frantic quest for empathy and recapitulation of facts? Various unprintable stories pervade the social media and junk online publications. If his rumoured spat with Tinubu is indeed true, are the several versions of the truth worth acknowledgment? Has Fashola fallen to hubris or a chthonian overflow of the elements that entwine the fate of every promising politician?

    There is no gainsaying he performed remarkably in certain areas of governance; Fashola no doubt deserves the applause he earned. However, contrary to the sentimental drivel of his army of self-confessed loyalists, Fashola hardly qualifies for a Messianic status. He is a leader still in process. But the former Lagos governor, sadly, is entangled in the designs of self-seeking characters around him. The latter spiritedly ply him with earned and unearned plaudits as a practiced lecher plies a starry-eyed maiden with exaggerated flattery. Like the proverbial maiden, they draw him into a maenadic dance of death. Not mortal death per se but the demise of his legend even before the exhaustion of its prologue.

    Fashola is very much alive but the golden boy of APC dies by the sedition of his own fable; the intelligible momentarily loses to the irrational, manifested as a fiery ego, an army of intellectual thugs and habitual fops gratuitously fostered by an innate lust for acclaim. The APC’s golden boy, trapped by his tar-baby loyalists and burdensome ego thus mutates into a crusted corpse in the party’s garden of change.

    The impending crisis may be averted once affected parties agree to sheathe their swords and rein in their attack dogs. It was hypocritical of camp Fashola to claim that he was appointed Chief of Staff to imbue the administration he served with credibility. If Fashola was truly a man of integrity, he’d steer clear any political environment that could sully his name and dignity.

    It is an open secret Fashola would never have emerged Chief of Staff and proceed to become governor had he not soared on the platform of the one (s) who his attack-dogs claimed “merely gambled for obvious selfish extrapolations” by choosing him – whatever that was intended to mean.

    Truth is, Fashola became governor because Tinubu took notice of him and enabled him.

    As governor, he did what he was paid to do. And he was handsomely rewarded for being governor too. Fashola did Lagos no favour, he was simply doing his job as governor. Lagos however, did him great favour by allowing him serve despite the fierce antagonism initially accorded his candidature by interests allegedly in disagreement with Tinubu’s belief in him. Nonetheless Lagos appreciates Fashola but if he erred in his duty as governor, the law will make him pay. If not, he will experience the karmic onslaughts of the universe.

    Those that pushed Fashola to rebel, goading him with sophistry and sycophantic allusions to his invincibility are urging him to his doom. In time, Fashola will learn that they simply see him and his estranged benefactor as meal tickets, projects to be exploited and profited from. It’s about time he extricated himself from the vicious grip of sycophant journalists, politicians and so on, deviously urging him to his end, in pursuit of their own meals. Tinubu is already yoked to such mad men and specialists in greed – but he seems to have mastered the art of navigating through the folds of their treacherous ways. Fashola should simply mend fences with Tinubu and retire to his law practice for a while. He would be stunned to see his self-confessed army of loyalists disperse to realign with fresh ‘projects’ or mugus to fleece.

     

    • To be continued…

  • If our world is ruined, we are to blame

    We speak in several pitiful tongues. And every tongue reels a different story of identical loss and misery. And so one comes to callousness, a savage ruthlessness and culture of protest that drives us to ruin our world; dateline Boko Haram, MEND, Ombatse and the complex bigotry, avarice and bloodlust characteristic of all. Yet this page will not contain the genocide, amorality and grotesque body count we have learnt to perpetrate not because they are too horrendous and unwieldy to keep tab of but because there is neither wisdom nor tact in rehashing the consequences of our towering silliness and bloodlust.

    We blame the older generation for everything. We claim they created a very difficult world for us to live in; a world that is rigged to booby-trap our efforts to survive and that is why many of us fail. We also accuse the ruling class of keeping us unemployed, prone to corruption, exploitation, crime and the devastation of our economy and social infrastructure. We accuse them of denying us access and right to the Nigerian dream.

    What have we done with such world that they have given us? What are we doing to make it better for you and me and the generation that will succeed us? Nothing. Rather than evolve in thought and attitude, we choose to rant impotently and wallow in self-pity. And when we choose to productively engage our faculties, our conscious quest is marred by our inclinations to self-destruct.

    If our world is ruined, we are to blame for it. This is because we are major actors in every tragedy and perpetrators of every calamity that accentuates our ruin. We are the hoodlums causing chaos at random, according to the whims of benevolent godfathers. We are the policemen mounting road blocks to fleece hardworking compatriots of the little money they manage to make, everyday. When they refuse to cooperate, we simply shoot them to death.

    We are the bankers pilfering the lifesavings of the poor. We are the bank chiefs stripping Peter to pay Paul and robbing the downtrodden to feed our wantonness and greed. We are wives to the thieving governor, and gigolo to the rogue bank chief. We are the journalists who sold out, the watchdog who became lapdogs and then, dung-dogs. We are armed robbers and thieves. We are the activists exploiting the downtrodden to perpetuate our grand schemes of greed.

    No matter the ills visited upon our generation, we lost the right to howl and cry ‘foul!’ the moment we agreed to do everything and anything to make money, including serving as instruments for the attainment of the perverse goals of the criminal ruling class.

    Shame that we have to look unto the same generation that we accuse of ruining our world to take measures necessary to save our world. The current ruling class won’t save us. They can’t. And that is because like you and me, they are held captive by greed, irrationality and base immoralities.

    Every generation considers itself uniquely challenged like we do and each generation truly is, in different ways. But I don’t buy into over-generalizations and self pity. Like we accuse older generations before us, successive generations will accuse us of ruining their world claiming we had better chances to resolve our crises and recreate the world that they would inherit from us.

    Our sense of entitlement goads us to believe that we are entitled to a good, fair life but for the ruling class and older generation that continually thwart our dreams of bliss. When the older generation claim that we are ill-educated and unemployable, we respond in kind, claiming that they render us so with visionless leadership and substandard education. Truth is, school is a bore to many of us. And artisanship doesn’t quite do it for us. We breeze through school and apprenticeship unenthusiastically, thinking that somewhere or somehow, something would give and we would chance on bliss. Ill bliss to be precise.

    Notwithstanding, some of us enter the labour market thinking it wouldn’t hurt to be exploited a little. Having being raised on the mantra that “Slow and steady wins the race and tiny drops make an ocean,” we subject our will to the grindstone and stoically tread the path of obedience and honest labour. But the path of industry and honesty hardly ever pay off in the long run.

    Eventually, we realize that the system is designed to thwart our dreams while enabling the dreams of the exploitative one per cent at the top, and we get mad. We get mad because our leaders do not see us as human beings with cosmic value and rights anymore. But despite our dissatisfaction, we keep them in power and keep asking them for handouts. Our rage and rant hardly ever articulates our towering need for realistic opportunities.

    We do not choose to be treated with dignity. That is why the government and our employers become entitled to take away our dignity. That is why we are entitled to expect nothing from our politicians anymore. We should be ashamed of our sense of entitlement. We should be embarrassed by our failure as a generation. We should be ashamed that we go through life thinking the world’s a sweepstake.

    We believe the world is for the taking by a lottery; this is understandable as a carrot on a stick that the top one per cent – comprising government and big business – perpetually dangle before us. Thus the Nigerian dream has evolved from a promise and belief that every Nigerian will get to have a good life, a job they enjoy, a generous paycheck, affordable housing, healthcare and transportation and a secure retirement, into some reality show fantasy and a pipedream.

    Today, the Nigerian dream comprises a tall fantasy that every Nigerian will get to live a charmed life. It offers attractive fantasies of palatial residences in exclusive neighbourhoods home and abroad, fancy cars, easy money, consequence-free indolence, sex, fraudulence and violence to mention a few. The Nigerian youth consider these perks their birthright and they heartily pursue them on the streets and now ubiquitous reality TV shows where parents and their children from relatively humble backgrounds engage in funfest of foolishness and inordinate lust for unearned riches. The tragedy of this development resonates in the number of ‘has-beens’ and reality show runners-up still loitering the red carpets for the barest chance to hug the limelight for no justifiable reason or attainment.

    Each generation has a responsibility to wisely develop itself and become indispensable to the world despite all odds. It is the only way we could equip ourselves to take over the country’s leadership and use the resources and power available to us to provide this generation and the next, a secure, sustainable country that will be stronger than the one inherited.

    We need to stop whining and begin to take action now to reverse the rapid decline of our country. If we wait until we are older, it will be too late. Life in the future will be worse.

    Our hubris and sense of entitlement is sickening and truly mind boggling. It’s about time we seek our Nigerian dream not because we are ‘special’ but because we truly deserve it.

  • Banks, billionaires…as Nigeria’s Black Death

    The Nigerian bank is diseased; a contemptible ogre in the mould of the bubonic plague, or Black Death of 1348 if you like. Like the bubonic plague – which killed up to 40 per cent of Europe’s population – banking operation in the country presage our gruesome death as a republic and careworn economy. It foreshadows the traumatic realities that ruined Europe by devastating every aspect of civilisation and vestige of humanity. Boccacio describes the breakdown of law and government, the desertion of child by parent and husband by wife in the wake of the Black Death. A noble woman who fell ill was nursed by a male servant: “Nor did she have any scruples about showing him every part of her body as freely as she would have displayed it to a woman…; and this explains why those women who recovered were possibly less chaste in the period that followed,” notes Boccacio. The Black Death apparently wore human will and weakened social controls. It had a glacial effect, pushing some toward debauchery and others, like the flagellants, towards religiosity.

    Like the Black Death, Nigerian banks are out for the kill. However, unlike the bubonic plague that afflicted both rich and poor, nobleman and commoner, Nigerian banks by their operations, choose to discriminate. Banks in the country are smitten by a mad lust to obliterate or destroy those segments of their customers and the citizenry that are classifiable as ‘commoners.’ Ask Tejumade Adeyemi. The latter cried helplessly, as her account with Union Bank got pilfered and drained of all her savings, on the bank’s watch. Adeyemi accuses Union Bank of complicity in the alleged illegal withdrawal of the sum of N251, 447 from her account with the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch of the bank. Still smarting from the vileness of the attack carried out on her account, Adeyemi threatened to take legal action against the bank if it refuses to refund her money but the bank has called her bluff.

    Union Bank persists in misdemeanour riding on a wave of presumed invincibility and disdain for customers that probably fall outside its classification of deep-pockets. Union Bank has denied liability, blaming the victim for the fraud. According to the bank, Adeyemi’s savings got stolen because her account was used to make purchases online. Union Bank attributes the victim’s plight to possible compromise of her confidential card details.

    Union Bank’s reluctance to admit culpability no doubt flies in the face of reason, in the estimation of the lawyer and his client. Why did the bank refuse to suspend further transactions on the account as instructed by Adeyemi? Was it such a hard order to carry out?

    Consider too, the on-going fraud perpetrated by Nigerian banks in response to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s directive that they publish the names of chronic debtors in a “name-them-and-shame-them” exercise; several bank chiefs, afflicted by terror of what misery may come in the wake of their shady liaisons with chronic billionaire debtors by whose bidding they plunged the financial sector in its current mess, have resorted to desperate measures.

    To protect themselves and their billionaire cohorts from shame and prosecution, bank chiefs in the country have severally scorned the CBN’s directive, publishing instead, fictitious lists of presumed chronic debtors in the media. There is no gainsaying the country’s bank chiefs are in cahoots with their billionaire friends and chronic debtors. And the reason is hardly far-fetched; many of the country’s bank chiefs are on the leash of the country’s so-called superrich or ‘billionaires.’ In exchange for various goodies and freebies ranging from exotic automobiles to posh apartments in exclusive gated communities; membership of exclusive clubs for the rich and admittance into periodic orgies and other guilty pleasure fests, Nigerian bank chiefs facilitated the acquisition of several multibillion naira non-performing loans (NPLs) to the detriment of the financial sector and the country’s economy.

    Consequently, banks in the country have been plunged in a financial crisis that has them contending with the scariest surge in bad loans since 2011. Economic pundits warn that the trend suggests banks in the country will eclipse the CBN’s minimum non-performing loan (NPL) ratio target of five percent at the backdrop of random fears that the NPL ratio could increase to seven per cent by the end of 2015. Another desperate tactic adopted by the banks is to arbitrarily increase the interest rate on lending by its struggling, less privileged customers. For instance, a customer whose loan attracted an interest rate of 22 per cent at the time it was taken, is currently paying 25 per cent interest on the loan in the wake of his banker’s  arbitrary hike in interest rate. Many banks afflict their helpless, loyal customers with such ridiculous charges in desperate bid to raise money and make up for losses suffered by bad and non-performing loans they had granted their billionaire friends.

    The decision to publish the names of serial bank debtors was taken at the 322nd meeting of the Bankers’ Committee in July. The conference set a deadline of August 1, for every bank to publish the names of its chronic debtors but the bank chiefs rather than comply with the directive, are collaborating with the culprits to avoiding repayment of the loans.

    Tokunbo Martins, CBN’s Director of Banking Supervision, claimed the measure is in response to mounting non-performing loans, which he said had risen to N490 billion sector-wide. The deteriorating macro – environment indicate that some loans may go sour for lenders. The uncertain macro – economic environment may lead to a rise in credit losses for banks in 2015, according to Standard and Poor’s analysis. Banks’ reduced profitability will consequently, lead to rapid loan growth in sectors where risks are not fully understood, including small and midsize enterprises.

    Banking operations in the country, like the plague of 1348, certainly works in reverse; giving birth to a renaissance of poverty and ill bliss, by destroying the middle and lower classes to perpetuate the epoch of the Nigerian billionaire. This epoch of the contemporary billionaire is forged in the crucible of Nigeria’s equivalent of the Black Death.

    The poor and the working class in the country know what it is to be afflicted by an equivalent of the Black Death. They what it is to be financially handicapped. They understand what it means to be so endangered. They know underemployment and unemployment. They know what it is to live through each day without dependable livelihood. They know life without pension. They know existence on a few naira a day. They know getting their kids kicked out of school because of unpaid tuition. They know the crippling weight of debt. They know being sick and unable to afford medical care. They know the profound despair and abandonment that come when schools, libraries, neighborhood health clinics, day care services, roads, bridges, public buildings and assistance programs are neglected or closed. They know the financial elites’ hijacking democratic institutions to impose widespread misery in the name of austerity. They, like the unfortunate Europeans of 1348, know what it is to be afflicted.

    And they, not the rogue billionaires and banks, should inform the bedrock of humane and progressive palliatives proffered by the CBN and President Muhammadu Buhari to the country’s financial crisis.

  • Beasts of no gender

    To be a ‘modern’ feminist, if not a defect, is at least a fetish; like porn. The ‘modern’ 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 pioneer 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 flipside, 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.

  • Union Bank vs. Citizen Tejumade Adeyemi (2)

    (Trader’s savings mysteriously disappears from bank account as pensioners accuse bank of withholding their pension)

    Without prejudice, there is something gnomic about banking at Union Bank; late American business executive, Sarnoff, would describe it as the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears. It is. Ask citizen Tejumade Adeyemi. She cried helplessly, as her account got pilfered and drained of all her savings, on the bank’s watch. This makes Union Bank look like an ordinary pick-pocket. Is it?

    Adeyemi accuses Union Bank of complicity in the alleged illegal withdrawal of the sum of N251, 447 from her account with the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch of the bank. Still smarting from the vileness of the attack carried out on her account, Adeyemi threatened to take legal action against the bank if it refuses to refund her money but the bank has called her bluff.

    Union Bank persists in misdemeanour riding on a wave of presumed invincibility and disdain for customers that probably fall outside its classification of deep-pockets. Not even the intervention of Lagos-based lawyer, Adejumo Omobolaji, could guarantee a refund of Adeyemi’s missing cash. Omobolaji intervened in Adeyemi’s interest after reading the first installment of this article about three weeks ago. But despite his intervention, the situation looks bleak for Adeyemi. Union Bank has denied liability, blaming the victim for the fraud. According to the bank, Adeyemi’s savings got stolen because her account was used to make purchases online. Union Bank attributes the victim’s plight to possible compromise of her confidential card details.

    Union Bank’s reluctance to admit culpability no doubt flies in the face of reason, in the estimation of the lawyer and his client. Why did the bank refuse to suspend further transactions on the account as instructed by Adeyemi? Was it such a hard order to carry out?

    At this juncture, it becomes imperative to restate the facts, according to Adeyemi.  Adeyemi allegedly received SMS alerts from the bank on May 4, 2015, notifying her of unauthorised withdrawal of the sum of N30,000 from her account through ATM. Worriedly, she rushed to the Iju branch of the bank to report the matter and was advised by officials of the branch to report the incident at the Oba Akran, Ikeja branch where her account was domiciled. On her visit to the Oba Akran branch on May 5, Adeyemi said she was shocked to discover that the illegal withdrawals actually started on May 2nd  and May 3rd and that she was never notified by the bank.

    She said: “On May 4, 2015, I received an alert indicating that the sum of N30,000 had been withdrawn by unknown persons from my account. I quickly went to the nearest branch of Union Bank at Iju Road, Ifako-Ijaiye, from where I was advised to visit the branch where I opened the account on Oba Akran Road, Ikeja, after I explained to the officials of the bank that my ATM card was with me and that its details were not in any way compromised by me. The next day, May 5, I visited the Oba Akran branch and I asked that further transactions be suspended on the account until further notice. When I asked for the details of the transactions, I was shocked to discover that the illegal withdrawals started between May 2nd and May 3rd, wherein about N45,747.35 had been taken from my account and no alert or notification was sent to me till date. I also discovered that there were other illegal withdrawals totaling N180, 000 made on May 4, yet the bank did not notify me.”

    According to Adeyemi, she was assured by both the Manager of the bank and the Head of Customer Service that further transactions on her account will be suspended including ATM withdrawals. “By then, I was having about N25,190 as balance in my account. The money was still in my account as at May 14, when a statement of account was given to me but I was surprised to receive further notification of illegal withdrawal of the remaining balance a few days later. Immediately, I called the secretary to the manager of the branch on his mobile phone and I was assured of prompt remedy that has not been fulfilled to date. In all, N251, 447 was illegally withdrawn from my account and I strongly suspect an insider in the bank is behind the illegal withdrawals from my account. The bank has refused to take blame for its complicity in this fraudulent withdrawal of my money and I am going to consider a legal option if the bank refuses to refund my money,” she said.

    When The Nation’s Chief Correspondent that handled the story, contacted the Head of Media and Special Projects of Union Bank Plc, Francis Barde, via an email, his reply was cryptic and muddled in officialese; that is, unclear, pedantic, verbose language characteristic of shady official correspondence.

    Nothing is so fatal to enterprise as indifference to customers’ worries and pains; for Union Bank to willfully and disdainfully shirk responsibility for Adeyemi’s plight translates to a cruel and unusual sort of grotesqueness. But if you are taken aback by Union Bank’s shabby treatment of Adeyemi, you just might be mystified by the bank’s alleged mistreatment of pensioners. Amid the flurry of tragic testimonies of inconveniences suffered by customers of the bank, the case of pensioners dealing with the bank rankles a melancholic note. One such message reads thus: “Sir, I loved your write-up captioned ‘Union Bank vs. Citizen Tejumade Adeyemi’ in The Nation of June 12, 2015. We, the pensioners of Union Bank of Nigeria Plc nationwide (pensioners from 2006 to 2012 of which I am one) have been maltreated, pauperised, traumatised, dehumanised and some have been sent to their early graves.

    “For over two years, Union Bank has refused to pay our legacy fund/accrued pension rights to our various Pension Fund Administrators (PFA). It is impossible for us to access our pensions. After many entreaties to both PENCOM and Union Bank and despite the directives by PENCOM to Union Bank to payus, the bank remains adamant and unperturbed; this is sheer impunity. We are in a dilemma and this is our plight for you to intervene and help us. I have been making frantic efforts in this regard  but to no avail…We have facts and evidences to support our claims and pursuits.”

    The writer of the message subsequently called to lament the impunity by which Union Bank visits interminable hardships and financial constraints on him and his fellow pensioners. It was disheartening listening to the poor old man as he gave vent to his grief over Union Bank’s perceived iniquities and intransigence to their plight.

    It is pitiful yet instructive to see Union Bank severally betray the trust reposed in it by its customers. It is even more enlightening to note that the bank perpetrates such perfidy despite legal and moral expectations that it protects its customers from fraud committed by its agents, directors , partners in making  payment orders and so on; perhaps the bank is aware of this crucial obligation, it simply chooses to flout and pervert it.

    There is something seriously wrong with Union Bank’s management and operational culture. And the situation calls for the urgent intervention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

      To be continued…

  • Nigeria will be finished

    We belabour the ‘Nigerian dream.’ We abuse the idea that life will get better, that progress is assured if we keep faith, obey the rules and work hard, that prosperity is guaranteed if we continue to tread the slow, steady path to progress and a prosperous future. And in pursuit of these lofty ideals, we pervert the steady, measured, impartial course of the universe; hacking pliant paths to our dreams, from the crossroads where gluttony fosters depravity.

    Eventually, we awaken to a cold, bitter truth: We are being sacrificed. The Nigerian dream we are sold isn’t worth our sacrifice. And the individual dreams we pursue, aren’t worth a smidgen of what we make them out to be. By the time we all struggle to achieve our dreams; Nigeria will be finished. Enter Boko Haram and the resurgent dreams of Biafra.Given that each tribe may finally achieve its dreams of nationhood via secession, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw to mention a few may establish their new nations.

    When we do, the swollen belly of our idiocy and pride shall become clearly visible to us. When it does, it shall suddenly dawn on us that, all along, we had been blindly acting to a script prepared by career predators from Western nations of Europe, America and our ruling class.

    The truth shall become clearer to us in intensity and impact and we shall hopelessly realize that we are being sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed; some of us much quicker than others. As it is now, so shall it be in our new nations, the Biafran youth, Ijaw youth, Oodua youth and Arewa youth to mention a few, shall become disposable indices in the scheme of things.

    But until then, we will continue to have today and squander it on the altar of racism and greed. Today, it’s impossible to see any offspring of our ruling class engage or become embroiled in the familiar tragedies that mar our lives. It’s always the children from the breadlines, struggling middle class and backwaters that are involved. We are the youth divide traditionally expected and required to function and serve as unquestioning muscles and ordinary cannon fodder in the ruling class’ blueprint of pillage and destruction.

    The decline of Nigeria is a story of gross injustices by the ruling class to the citizenry. But that is only an aspect of it, the greatest injustice is that meted out by individual citizen to self – the youth particularly. And this predominant malaise often plays out in our corruptibility and disinclination to foster a more humane leadership and society.

    Today, we suffer declining standards of living, stagnant and falling wages that are hardly paid at due time; we suffer curtailment and absolute denial of our basic wages, long-term unemployment, slave labour, escalating crime wave, among other ills.

    Together, we perpetuate gruesome realities of the weakest being crushed decisively and maniacally by the affluent and strong. Together, we perpetuate a story of unbridled sectarian, ethnic and corporate power that has taken our government hostage, overseen the dismantling of our cultural heritage, societal and entrepreneurial values.

    But if the ruling class, in connivance with predatory nations and institutions from the so-called ‘first world’ is responsible for plundering our natural resources and bankrupting the nation, we, the youth, are responsible for even worse atrocities.

    We serve as the tools by which the ruling class and its cohorts overseas plunder and destroy our nation. The virus of political corruption, the perverted belief that only political and material profit matters, has spread to distort our thoughts and understanding of right and wrong. Today, it manifests in endemic proportions plaguing our communities with religious and political terrorism, economic and cyber-terrorism to mention a few.

    Today, the Nigerian society dies a gruesome death basically because we lay to waste, our youths and we, the latter, by our suicidal actions and thoughts, submit ourselves as hopeless prey to the Nigerian ruling class and their cohorts overseas.

    Everyday encounters with gluttonous gangs of struggling youth reveals among other things, that many of us are the same social products as our peer from the aristocratic divide. Conditioned by life’s harshest vicissitudes to survive at all cost, we lay in wait, striving and bidding our time until we are ably positioned and strong enough to serve or rob the rich whose life we earnestly covet and decry.

    A visit to any night club, party, religious organization or office still attests to this fact. Ambitious and upwardly mobile youth from the breadlines or struggling working class families engage in a variety of excesses to the applause of mates yearning to be in their shoes. Either as advance fee fraudsters, bankers, journalists, accountants, secretaries, factory hands or ordinary clerks, youths from the breadlines daily engages in a bitter, desperate struggle to chance on the shortest possible cut to sudden and stupendous wealth.

    We seem beset by a greater and unexplainable fear beyond the fear of poverty amongst other harsh realities of their lives. Fear plays a greater part than hope: we are infinitely buoyed and obsessed with thoughts of the money that we could make or the possessions that might be taken from us or elude us, than of the joy and value that we might add to our own lives and to the future of our fatherland.

    Most of us, like our more privileged peer crave the best of everything without actually sweating for it. And when we do sweat for it, our industry is tainted by vigorous dashes of impatience and duplicity. In our work, we are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and a fleeting interest in the actual work that has to be done. We spend greater time and passion defending unjust privileges that we are desperate to enjoy.

    Such appalling youth constitute a greater segment of the human element expected to salvage Nigeria from eternal ruin and bloodbath. Consequently, our society becomes more rudderless and unstable and vulnerable, on our watch. Now that Nigeria as our fathers, ‘the wasted generation’ made it, and we the youth, aggravate it, have begun to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and instead choose to exploit the infinite possibilities in our fragility and predicted collapse.

    It’s about time the Nigerian youth started postponing immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices spurred by conviction that the future can be better than the past. Beyond the politics and inanities of our existing ruling class and political parties, we face far more difficult questions at our moment in history: How do we reconcile reality with promises that have been made to us? How do we make the best of our circumstances at the backdrop of indefensible leadership failure and disillusionment of the citizenry?  How do we evolve and nurture to fruition, a new vision to help us deal with our gruesome realities, even as we chart a promising story of the future? How do we divorce ourselves from the pains and disappointments of the past – particularly those that many of amongst us had no stake in but yet internalize and perpetuate unexplainable miseries thereby?

    How do we redefine “Peace, Unity and Progress” with our lust for “Life, Liberty and Happiness?”  How do we become more human than we are now?

  • The way music dies (2)

    There is something pathetic about Mavin music: Dorobucci, Eminado, Surulere to that recent medley about rumour mongers, the artistes, song writers and their producer seem trapped in a musical dystopia of sort that makes them repeat identical drivel in every song. A lot is seriously wrong with the thinking of the artistes to make them believe that Nigerians are too dense musically to appreciate better music of any kind.

    Music mixes with reality; every era boasts of artistes and a music culture that manifests as a rallying cry against oppression, apartheid, sexual violence, kidnap for ransom among several afflictions plaguing that era. But even as Nigeria grapples with myriad of evils from terrorism, advance fee fraud, unemployment, insensitive leadership to gang violence, artistes at Mavin records can only dwell on the superficial. They tell the same story in every song: “We are making money,” We are big spenders,” “We are the elite pack,” “We are the jocks amid Nigeria’s middling music crowd.”

    Contemporary Nigerian music hardly ventures from such conurbation of raw energy into the much sought hamlet of genius and commercialism which pioneer local musicianship initiated; neither does it enrich the global party or exit it into the uninhabited isolation of experimentalism. The norm is for artiste, music journalist and enthusiast to simply jump on to any trending musical train without knowing what they are getting into or where they are going. Taste has become a big issue in contemporary music; talent too. Then there is the most crucial aspect, which is the dearth of tastemakers: that is, competent music journalists cum critics. Many music writers are casualties of a broken system; pitiful pawns perpetually engaged in disgraceful surrender to the forces that determine the sound of music. They do not put up a good fight anymore thus the lack of discernible Zeitgeist in Nigerian music.

    This emphasises the role of the music journalist and critic. No apologies, but besides Benson Idonije, Victor Akande, Ayo Animashaun, Damola Awoyokun, Femi Akintunde Johnson (FAJ) and a few good intellects here and there, music journalism suffers a dearth of constructive criticism, competent writers and intellectuals. This makes the idea of a progressive, unfettered, cross-fertilization of ideas and opinions manifest like fading vignettes of a utopian wet dream.

    Sadly, the reality of the internet, despite its palpable benefits, presents a malignant tumour of sort to music journalism. No thanks to the social media, we are afflicted with a parade of musically challenged bloggers impatiently hustling to broadcast their ignorance, bigoted ripostes and uninformed judgment to the pleasure and appreciation of equally dim folk.

    Consequently, local music asphyxiates in the sickly babble of bloggers and self-acclaimed music critics tirelessly propagating their middling and formulaic opinions, riddled with errors and inadequate music knowledge. For a lot of these music bloggers, music didn’t start before Remedies, DBanj, P-Square, Inyanya, America’s Rihanna and Beyonce Knowles. So shallow is the trough from which they cull that their much hyped reviews often resonate like the dying shrill of a vanishing storm.

    Many music bloggers are too busy chasing adverts and perpetuating music streaming that they no longer encourage their readers to buy albums. Eventually, the artistes are deprived of due income and in this culture of mediocrity and entitlement that the internet fosters, the listener and music enthusiast loses out on quality, a sense of ownership and loyalty to the artiste.

    An opinion expressed on tweeter possesses less depth, it’s all about pushing sales; but a well written album review or music feature, isn’t just about generating hits, its more about creating that ideal amphitheatre where the impetus of an album chugs away like a locomotive as it constantly gravitates towards a new sound or improve upon a previous one.

    Good old music journalism is all about projecting good music and giving it the care and attention it deserves, while maintaining a spirit of questioning curiosity that constantly explores why a particular album is good, and how artistes can continue to push boundaries. It’s this interchange between artiste, journalist and music lover that gives rise to fertile discourse and creative experimentation, rather than pathetic trend-chasing.

    Nigerian music dies because the music journalist forgets how sacred his relationship with his readers should be; he is too star struck and covetous of the success of confused music stars he helps create; he believes that success subsists in crafting captions for pathetic artistes’ drivel and heavily photo-shopped portraits.

    True; hatchet pieces could be fun to write, but you aren’t spending much time with songs and art as you are conjuring stock phrases and currency-activated analogies. The few discerning readers and music enthusiasts that are still around know this; that is why they skim through contemporary music reviews like distressing poetry. They find that more writers are desperately justifying bad music and getting ‘paid’ rather than examine sonic chemistries or the lack thereof.

    The internet may have expanded our breadth, but little has guided the Nigerian music journalist to piece it all together or put it into some kind of historical or social perspective other than what he has been paid to publicize and our ears can piece together, regretfully.

    The commitment and depth of the music journalist goes a long way in enriching or diminishing the music; a competent music journalist will be well-versed in the minutiae of his most dreaded sound as the eternal harmonies of his preferred “hit.” Wrongly appreciated songs, ill-prescribed genres, and cliché evocations are hardly the stock of music journalism as we would love to read it. And is it not thoughtless that those who judge professionally desperately seek not to be judged in kind? The alternative to such naivety is that bland specialty wherein the music journalist remains wedded to a genre, becomes baffled by outside forces reigning in on such genre, or wrongly accuses all other music aficionados of “trespassing.”

    More disturbing, is the premise that an authentic reaction to music shouldn’t involve our minds—only our hearts and groins; that is ridiculous, isn’t it? Forget Beethoven, Johnny Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Billy Paul, The Manhattans, Tupac Shakur, Marshall Bruce Mathers III (Eminem), the best of our melodies from Highlife to Apala, Juju, Fuji and Afro Hip hop touches us everywhere at once but hardly anyone gets to really feel it today.

    The best music journalism should set the standards for the industry and regulate it. It should be more than an attempt to wrap writers around the fingers of every artiste, record label and corporate sponsor with a “flava” plan. It uses the language of everyday musicality but too much of Nigerian music journalism lacks such passion and artistry.

    That is why we are inundated by crappy music. That is why Nigeria currently fields no artiste worthy of global acclaim save Bukola Elemide (Asa), Tuface Idibia, late Irikefe Obareki (Kefee), Babatunde Olusegun (Mode 9) and budding, misguided rap whiz, Olamide, to mention a few.

    Every album contains a bit of truth, true lies or fantasy; it is the job of the music journalist to justify the album’s existence and the need to write about it in the first place. It’s not that I, who write this, will succeed in doing a better job but it’s about time we understood that much as we desperately depend on music art, among others, for pleasure, livelihood and escape; we depend on professionals, like the music journalist to guarantee us the transcendence of such pass.