Jide Osuntokun

As I write this, the outgoing president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in his characteristic way, has not conceded the election to his opponent Joseph R. Biden of the Democratic Party. On the contrary, he is busy whipping up emotions about Biden stealing the presidency from him and calling on his supporters to embark on fruitless but dangerous demonstrations all over the United States. What a legacy! Trump without any concrete evidence is alleging there were fraudulent practices indulged in by his winning Democratic Party opponent in his defeat at the concluded election. He had actually said before the election that he was not obliged to hand over the administration of the USA to his opponent, unless he felt sure that he had been roundly defeated at the election. This means he was going to be his own umpire rather than the Federal electoral Commission. He had done everything to hinder the electoral process by handing over the administration of the United States Postal Service to a Republican Party supporter when he realized supporters of his opponent were more inclined to vote either before the election date or by postal mail because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Post Master General immediately went to work by boarding several transportation vehicles and equipment of the postal service and also vastly reducing postal drop boxes to limit the availability of postal boxes country wide on the pretext that he was saving money. The post master general, as I write, still has cases in court bordering on constituting himself as an obstacle to the smooth running of the United States electoral process.

On a general note, supporters of the Democratic Party are the more educated whites and suburban white women and minorities who listened to admonition from experts that it was safer to vote by mail in order to protect themselves by limiting physical contact with others because of the coronavirus pandemic. On the other hand, Trump dismissed scientific advice on the coronavirus and advised his supporters to only vote physically on Election Day. When the elections were held on November 3, for the election of the president and also to some gubernatorial positions at state level as well as some seats in state assemblies and to some seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the votes cast physically were the first to be counted. The mailed in votes and votes before the election were by law those that were counted last. The result was that the Republican candidates across the board had head start and some of them including the president were overtaken when all the mailed in votes were counted. This is not rocket science. President Trump in a premeditated plan, ran to the press when he saw the first tallies of votes that he had won a reelection. But this was not so and up till now he has refused to see what is obvious to every reasonable person that all votes both cast by mail, and those cast before the election and those cast during the election have to be counted to get the final tally and decide who has won and who has lost.

Trump was clinically defeated when all the votes, or most of the votes were counted. The reasons for Trump’s defeat are clear and obvious. People got tired of his innumerable tweeting every day and running government including foreign policy by tweets and embarrassing his own officials who had to explain or plead with the public and foreign governments for understanding of an unusual and unpredictable president. Yet this is a man carrying the United States nuclear codes capable of burying the whole world five times over. It is one thing to be a non-politician trying to “drain the swamp” in Washington DC but when it comes to serious work of governance, it requires more sobriety than what the wheeling and dealing Trump was used to in the corporate world.

By his actions had isolated the United States from key allies like Germany, France and even the United Kingdom. He was closer to the world of the dictators like Vladimir Putin’s Russian federation, Viktor Urban’s Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea, and Narendra Modi’s India and until they fell apart, Xi Jinping’s China. He was particularly abusive to Angela Merkel of Germany and Justin Trudeau of Canada.

I am particularly surprised about his behavior to Germany. Many American presidents before him celebrated their ancestral homelands and knowing that the Trumpfs (their original German name) came from Bavaria towards the end of the 19th century. Trump’s grandfather was actually found guilty of some crime and to avoid punishment ran to United States perhaps this is why he associates more with Scotland where his mother came from.

The Trumps have a long and unforgiving memory which President Trump has unfortunately inherited. His relations with Putin was rather suspicious because he apparently owes money to some Russian interests while he is still indebted to the German Deutsche Bank. His enemies have a dance and song issue about how his indebtedness was not too good for America because this may have beclouded his views and consequently his policies towards these foreign countries. As an international businessman, he was too exposed and some countries may have had some dirt on him. But I personally see nothing wrong in his fraternal relations with Russia the other nuclear power that can destroy the whole world several times over. I think Trump was just being realistic in reaching a modus vivendi with Putin over the concession to Russia of influence in the Slavic states of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine, Belarus and the former Soviet States in the Caucasus even though they are all technically independent sovereign states. Even Biden will not be able to change America’s policy towards Ukraine unless he is prepared to risk an all-out nuclear war with Russia.

Trump’s policy towards China, to a certain extent was correct in holding China to international scrutiny in the South China Sea and in China’s sometimes unscrupulous trade and economic policies to foreign countries including the United States whose liberal trade policies the Chinese had been exploiting for several decades. His policy towards North Korea has been exploited by Kim Jong UN to become a nuclear power state. It will be realistic for Biden to follow Trump’s policy by accepting this reality. Whether this makes for world peace is another issue. This may lead to nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia with Japan and South Korea feeling the need to become nuclear powers too. Perhaps with this eventuality of proliferation, may in the long run, be possible to have a comprehensive nuclear ban or disarmament regionally and globally.

Biden has said he would resuscitate the nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called P5+1 to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power. The world has become very dangerous in the Middle East partly because of Trump’s pandering to Israel and organizing a coalition of Arab states against Iran. It will take a lot of diplomatic wizardry to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear quest especially bearing in mind that Israel has the bomb. Biden has said he would rejoin the global effort to save the environment by re-joining the Paris protocol to reverse global warming and environmental degradation which Trump has said unnecessarily burdened the United States economically. It is because of these international issues and Trump’s mercantilist and protectionist economic policies that had made the world breathed a sigh of relief when it learnt that Trump has been defeated.

Why am I even bothered about who wins power in the United States? It is simple, when people sneeze in Washington D.C the world catches cold.! The American dollar for now is the global reserve currency. America is a global hegemon with a military reach to everywhere in the world. Recently a company of American special forces sneaked into northern Nigeria to rescue a kidnapped American hopefully with the knowledge of our people. But they could have done this without our knowledge. The fate of blacks in America is intricately tied with our fate bearing in mind our historical responsibility for selling our own people into slavery and the way their descendants are treated has ramifications for the way all black peoples are treated. So, when Trump sees nothing wrong in white policemen strangling or shooting black people as if they were game animals and calling our continent “shithole”, all black and brown people should have a problem with him. This is why I cannot understand why so-called African Pentecostal Christians are supporting Trump because he is a Christian, which he is not. Some are also saying he has committed himself to “Biafran Independence” and that he is protecting us Christians from being Islamised by Muhammadu Buhari! These fables as far as I am concerned remain conjectures. They also say Biden supports freedom of sexual choice. All these means nothing to high politics of international and inter-state relations.

Trump was evil and a threat to international order as well as a threat to internal peace, law and order based on equity and justice and cohesion in the United States itself. That’s why he was rejected and roundly defeated and the rest of the world understands and applauds this impending change of  the captain of the American ship of state.

By Jide Osuntokun

I was planning to appeal to all Nigerians, young and old, to give peace a chance in the current struggle for the soul of our nation even before I read the pastoral intervention of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. I read with much appreciation the appeal to our common sense by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said this as a friend of Nigeria and the primate of the Anglican global communion.  I was particularly touched when the archbishop mentioned the fact of the potentiality of Nigeria as a global player if only, we run our affairs on the basis of justice, equity and inclusion. He particularly said without justice there can be no peace.

There are about 20 million members of his Anglican communion in Nigeria which is a substantial part of the Anglican Church in the world. These are not just nominal members of this church and unlike in Great Britain, the Anglican Communion in Nigeria is an active one. I should know because I am a baptized and confirmed Anglican communicant in spite of my current membership of the Redeemed Christian Church of God of which the General Overseer Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, has himself been very vociferous and loud about the need for peace in Nigeria. Without peace there can be no development and if there is no development, there would be no jobs and we all know that it  is idle hands that are the devils instruments of destruction and destabilization.

What happened in the last few weeks since the shooting in Lekki of demonstrators and the destruction that preceded and followed the unfortunate situation should convince all Nigerians how fragile our post-colonial state is. If we do not learn the simple lesson of our fragility as a country, then we will never learn and our future will be very dicey.  It is not only our country that is fragile, our society itself is quite close the state of nature which the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes claimed is nasty brutish and short and in which there can be no civilized way of living. It is because of the awareness of this horrible state of nature that governments are instituted by man. Even a dictatorship, some kind of Leviathan, would be preferable to this state of anarchy that those of us in Lagos and environs saw, experienced and endured some weeks ago.  What began as an apparently well-organized protest by young people who justifiably felt they had to make their anger felt about the way a particular special branch of the police treated any overtly successful young person. In their protest they received overwhelmingly support and understanding of their older folks if not countrywide support, at least support in the southern part of the country where the protest was domiciled. It is also not surprising to anybody that the large proportion of the innovative and upwardly mobile young people in Nigeria who don’t depend on government jobs and patronage appear to be concentrated in the Lagos area which for many years has been a crucible of nationalist and progressive feeling which tended to mirror the future of a progressive Nigeria where scant regard will be paid to ethnicity and religion. So the fact that the #End SARS demonstrators were concentrated in the Lagos area and to a certain extent in the Southwest and the southern part of the country generally does not detract from the fact that this was a Nigerian expression of anger against the way they are being ruled.

It must also be said that when one part of Nigeria hurts a little, the whole country suffers from the pain. The destruction of Lagos in the last rampage is going to have a lasting damage on the Nigerian economy since Lagos is pivotal to the growth and development of the Nigerian economy. The way Lagos goes determines the direction of the Nigerian economy. What New York is to the American economy is what Lagos is to the Nigerian economy. In our warped way of looking at national politics divorced from the political economy of Nigeria, some people feel if they destroy or slow down the economy of Lagos, the more politically privileged and advantageous section of the country will benefit and gain at the expense of Lagos. The economy does not work that way. Americans will say the dollar does not discriminate between black and white so it is in Nigeria where the naira is no respecter of tribe or language! It follows therefore that, it is in our overall interest as a nation, if we all build together rather than planning to destroy the most vibrant and viable part of our economy.

I say all this because after the dust of the destruction in Lagos had settled down some people seriously felt that there was an unseen hand determined to bring the economy of Lagos and perhaps that of southwestern Nigeria down. There may not have been any deliberate desire or attempt to do this but sometimes perception can be more important than facts. I personally felt the destruction we witnessed in this part of our country was self-inflicted arising out of petty political jealousy and struggle for political relevance. The way the noise over succession to the presidency and the loud claim to it by all sorts of people suddenly sprang up just after the madness of these last weeks gives one the impression that there is more than meets the eye over the targeting of certain individuals for destruction so as to render them hors  de combat  even before the contest begins. I personally feel it is totally inappropriate if not immoral to start campaigning for 2023 election when the burial of those killed in the Lagos disturbances had not taken place nor the ashes of the destruction settled down.

With the way things are going will it not be more appropriate for us to bind our wounds first and then seek the face of the Lord for the blood that was shed during the rampage in Lagos and in the Southwest and Edo, Enugu and Rivers states than to begin campaigning for 2023 election?

Weeks after the commotion, policemen have refused to return to their beats. Other security personnel have followed the example of the police. Can anybody blame them? The insensate murder of some policemen in some towns should make us ashamed and should be condemned. The fact that some security people in the past committed extra-judicial murders does not justify meting the same measure to some innocent men in uniform. No one deserves to die by the hands of fellow human beings. Even soldiers who go to war are given orders of restraint unless their lives are in danger. While it is wrong for armed security operatives to kill unarmed individuals, it is equally wrong for any security personnel to be wantonly wasted no matter what cause one is fighting for.

It was apparent to observers that life matters very little to some of us Nigerians and this is why armed robbers or herders and brigands kill almost for fun those not resisting them. Yet many of the perpetrators of these dastardly acts are votaries of one religion or the other. There is no religion from the universal monotheistic ones of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other non-monotheistic religions including traditional African religions that tolerates taking of human lives. It is against the law of God to kill a human being and this is why in almost all parts of the world, capital punishment has been abolished. It stands to reason therefore to think of killers as people suffering from permanent insanity or temporary madness induced by taking hard drugs.

This brings me to the rampant consumption of hallucinogenic drugs by young people in Nigeria. So apart from serious economic problems of unemployment and social immiseration, we also have the health issue of drugs ingestion by the underclass and even some deluded young people who see its consumption as a temporary relief from their depression.

Our problems are legion. We do not need to add to it by state policy of discrimination in employment and appointments based on ethnic and religious considerations. There can be no peace without justice and equity. There is no point for those in government to be appealing for national unity which they say is not negotiable when they themselves do everything through their action of preferences to work against national unity.

I wonder how some people can sleep at night! This is a time for some kind of national moral rearmament to save this country. This is the only country the black man has that possess a chance, all things being equal, to defend black humanity in an increasingly competitive and wicked world.  Archbishop Justin Welby made this point also. But do our politicians realize that while we are still here on this side of the heavenly divide, we should help build a future where the labour of our heroes’ past will not be in vain? The foundation of that future must be laid on equity, justice, fairness, inclusion and political realism. There is no point burying our heads in the sand and saying all is well. All is not well. God will not come down from heaven to rule us. He has given us human intelligence and what we require is willpower to face our problems of population explosions, laziness, refusal to face the reality that in order to build a thriving future based on political stability, we have to rejig and restructure the governance architecture of this potentially great country which its temporary rulers have rendered largely unhappy. Those who make change impossible, as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, make revolution inevitable.

By Jide Osuntokun

My oldest daughter Fola asked me if I have ever gone through the kind of psychological pain and experience that I as a Nigerian have gone through in the last few weeks following the tragedy of the shooting of innocent demonstrators at the Lekki toll gate. My answer was I had never gone through this kind of experience in which we went through this kind of existential challenge to the country. But after a few days, I now remember that I went through this kind of agony in 1968 as a post-graduate student in London when the civil war was raging in my country. The newspapers and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) were involved in massive covering of the tragedy in Nigeria for the British public. We saw every day, pictures of starving pot-bellied kwashiorkor children crying and dying in the public glare of television cameras. As a sensitive black young man in his mid-twenties living a lonely studious life in a white racist society, the worst thing that could happen to one is for one to see his kind suffering needlessly. Then one day, the 3rd Marine Division of the Nigerian Army commanded by the mercurial Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, the most successful commander on the Nigerian side of the civil war, made a sea-borne landing in Bonny and then invaded and captured Port Harcourt. The British commentator on the BBC said the “…Federal Nigerian troops have captured the oil rich city of Port Harcourt and all British oil wells are safe in federal hands”! It then occurred to me that my countrymen were fighting each other to preserve British oil wells!  I immediately went into depression as a sensitive person.

In those days we could not call home by telephone as you can do today. Once you left home, you were completely on your own except through the very slow letter writing. Racism in those days hit me like a thunderbolt because before I left home, I felt important and not inferior to anybody but by living in a white man’s country, I was daily humiliated and without my knowing it and almost imperceptibly, I became a radical and militant Blackman as some kind of resistance against racism. It was with difficulty and the help of an Egyptian neurologist that I was able to complete my studies. I felt this same kind of pain as if my country was again needlessly hurting itself.

I was in Lagos and I had wanted to go home to Ibadan but I am now marooned in Lagos because the whole country seems to be embroiled in some kind of leaderless Jacobinism descending into some kind of proletarian fury in which the underclass is bent on taking revenge against the whole society that had confined them to the margins of society for a long time. Even when the youths had gone home, the underclass or what Marxists call the lumpen– proletariat had taken over and are apparently determined to ruin the country through looting of shops and destruction of private property. All other kinds of dark forces including politicians going after their perceived enemies appeared to be driving the poor people into rebellion. Even the lame broadcast and appeal of the president have fallen on deaf ears. The rampaging poor people appear to be occupying the public places abandoned by the police and other security forces, who for fear for their lives, have simply melted away and abandoned their posts. The curfews declared by state governors are obeyed in their breaches. It is as if there is no government at all in Lagos and most of the southwestern states including Edo State. The inter-city roads which brigands had made unsafe in the past are even made more unsafe now by the lumpen proletariat and the rural equally poor peasants who have barricaded the highways and are now collecting tolls from the traveling public. The situation is bad and the earlier we go back to our senses and a semblance of normalcy the better.

This breakdown of law and order appears to be confined particularly to the southwestern states and the southern part of the country in general. The northern states which were previously suffering from the Boko Haram insurgency and other social and criminal dissonances undermining peace and harmony in the polity was not affected by the present uprising and if affected, it is certainly not in the same degree. This raises a fundamental problem of analysis. If there was despair and disappointment with the federal government’s performance, how National was this perception?  If it was not national what was responsible for this? Could this be because of the government’s exploitation of religious, ethnic and regional differences in the country? Or could it be due to educational disparity underscoring the fissiparous tendencies in the country? Whatever it is, the disunity in the country is very apparent. No common front, it appears, can ever be forged to demand for reforms that would make a better Nigeria possible. This is sad and for as long as this exists, whoever controls the levers of power will always be in vantage position to indulge in misrule and bad governance knowing that he or she would be protected by the cultural fault-lines existing in the country.

Now that the dust of the rebellion is settling down, what is the way forward? First of all, let me say I disagree with people trying to identify a dichotomy between the innocent and educated children of the middle class and unemployed graduates and the hoi polloi or the underclass or lumpen proletariat. As far as I am concerned, both groups had legitimate reasons to be angry with society that spawned them. Unemployment affects and afflicts both groups. If our economy was buoyant, even poorly educated people would find work suitable for their level of education or lack of it. They would be able to use their brawn while their more fortunate cousins would be able to use their brains. Secondly, if jobs were given out on merit based on careers open to talents, no one would feel angry. But when young people see open and rampant discrimination in the country on the basis of region, religion and ethnicity, then there builds up a sense of frustration, depression and anger against society and the political order. In other words, the ball is in the court of those in authority to change course and embrace justice, equity, fairness and inclusion. Thirdly, we need to develop some kind of plan to embrace and train the so-called hoodlums. They were not born hoodlums. It is the circumstance of their birth and the unequal opportunity in our society that created the underclass. We must also find a way to create jobs for the young and unemployed graduates from our colleges and universities or make agricultural loans and land available to those who want to go into commercial agriculture. Fourthly, we need a new security architecture which will involve an expanded police force organized on state basis while small federal police will coordinate inter-state policing. All other security forces would have to be subjected to the mean test of ethnic, regional and religious fair representation.

Fifthly, the humongous salaries of elected representatives would have to be drastically reduced to reflect our economic level of development. A situation where our representatives are earning four or five times what their counterparts earn in the United States is simply insane and uncalled for. We need the excess for national and state development. We also must reduce the number of representatives and have a unicameral legislature at the national level. The current unwieldy and unnecessary number of states and local governments must be drastically reduced to what is economically feasible.

Finally, it is obvious to anyone who wishes Nigeria well to realize that the current military diktat of a constitution imposed on us by the military is not working and must be renegotiated. This is necessary to preserve the union. If this is not done, we will be postponing our eventual collapse. No one wants this but history is not on the side of those who want to keep by force an arbitrary and unworkable structure that will not work if frontally challenged. All these suggestions except the question of the structure of government can be effected through an executive order or what students of history call a revolution from above instead of waiting for a revolution from below.