The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Lock-down apocalypse

    Lock-down apocalypse

     Olatunji Ololade

    The COVID-19 calls for a reckoning. It reveals hard truths; that Nigeria may attain healing through pestilence, and rebirth from death’s bowels.

    It reveals that wealth’s conceit soon stifles to shredded corpse and power’s prideful strut eventually cripples to a hobble. Ask the ‘Excellencies’ whose diplomatic passports and stashed loot have been rendered worthless by the virus.

    COVID-19 blooms by mirroring previous plagues, afflicting the old and young, rich and poor, the powerful and weak, government and the governed alike.

    It began like a signal fire bouncing across Asia, Europe and American power summits. Despite being blessed with the gift of a head-start, Africa again plays catch-up. In the absence of proactive leadership and preventive measures, Africa catches the bug, but for apocalypse, not evolution.

    Pathogen asserts mortality in Europe, rides America roughshod, and strips Asia to wild nature, tearing families apart, reducing society to a trickle. Civilisation relapses to wild nature. Even in Nigeria, the affliction progresses like an infectious agent on demolition derby.

    If government continues to gamble with the citizenry’s lives, Nigeria too, may fall to her knees before COVID-19’s savage spread. The United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Iran, Spain, Turkey, to mention a few, have bent the knee before the pandemic.

    As the pandemic persists, the random traveller becomes invader and plague, harbinger of disease, bleakness and death. Nations shut borders against invisible transmission; super-powers cower and cringe despite their stockpile of nuclear warheads.

    Through the crisis, Europe’s left and right wings pick sides, projecting narratives that suits their cast of mind, yet Nigeria’s government and her cynical public embrace the wild side. They jointly project a doomsday theory weaponised to create panic and accelerate the onset of dystopia.

    The greatest focus is on numbers; everybody obsesses about the statistics of death and the infected. Add that to the lockdown political circus by the government vis-a-vis rising citizenry angst and dissent, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

    It doesn’t matter what the stats are, what could it profit us to indulge in a game of panic and numbers, of which the only victors are the country’s ruling class?

    The virus reveals more bitter truths in real time; that the incumbent leadership, like its predecessor, lacks the competence, humaneness and will to protect and serve the citizenry.

    If the worth of a government is truly known in time of crisis, this government has done too little to assert its worth through the COVID-19 pandemic. Asides issuing caustic and juvenile retorts to national treasures and citizens of the world, like Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, through its spokesperson, President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership has been lethargic and inept at addressing the impact of the lockdown and pandemic on the citizenry.

    The greatest focus is on numbers; everybody obsesses about the statistics of death and the infected. Add that to the lockdown political circus by the government vis-a-vis rising citizenry angst and dissent, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster

    Save Lagos, the crisis’ epicentre, where Governor Babajide Sanwoolu and his team are working against the odds to provide palliatives to citizenry affected by the lockdown, very few states have showed convincing resolve to contain the pandemic and its impact. And yes, while Lagos could do better, more worrisome is the federal government’s ill-fated approach at distributing palliatives to citizenry affected by the lockdown.

    Just recently, the leadership of the National Assembly criticised the approach adopted by the federal government to distribute social grant to Nigerians suffering the brute end of the COVID-19 lockdown.

    Calling for legislation for the programme in line with global best practices, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, expressed their concerns at a meeting with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, and some top officials of the ministry on Tuesday.

    The meeting, convened by the leadership of the National Assembly, was against the backdrop of the ongoing federal government intervention initiatives aimed at reducing the impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable Nigerians, following the 14-day lockdown order issued by President Buhari, on March 29, in Abuja, Lagos and Ogun States.

    It would be recalled that in the wake of the lockdown, the president stated that the most vulnerable segments of the citizenry would be compensated. The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs subsequently announced the distribution of the first tranche of N5 billion compensation to the vulnerable segments but Lawan and Gbajabiamila noted that the programme needed a reform to make it more efficient and effective.

    Lawan, rightly, identified issues with the conditions and guidelines for the intervention programmes, that requires beneficiaries to go online, through the internet or BVN, even though majority of prospective beneficiaries have no access to power or the internet. Many have no bank account let alone the BVN.

    “In fact, many of them don’t even have phones and these are the poorest of the poor. Yet, some of the conditions or guidelines which you set inadvertently leave them out,” he argued, and added that the poorest of the poor have not been sufficiently captured by the programme thus calling for a review of the process.

    Gbajabiamila also stated, that, “We need to put on our thinking cap and work out some strategies on how to identify the poorest persons in Nigeria.”

    Indeed, among other truths, the COVID-19 has revealed that national governments, as David Runciman opines, really matter. It really matters the nature of government you find yourself under, he argues, stressing that though the pandemic is a global phenomenon, the impact of the disease is greatly shaped by decisions taken by individual governments.

    We are at the mercy of our national leaders. That is something else Hobbes warned about: there is no avoiding the element of arbitrariness at the heart of all politics. It is the arbitrariness of individual political judgment.

    What is the quality of judgment of Nigeria’s political leadership? How arbitrary or humane are Mr President, the state governors and lawmakers in their political judgment? We are past seeking answers to such rhetoric, Nigerians should instead seek the safest pathways out of the valley of death into which we have been led by generations of bad leaders.

    Pertinent questions we must ask include: Why is COVID-19 less devastating in the country and Africa? What are the factors responsible for this? How do we exploit these factors to protect ourselves and fight off the virus?

    Why the astonishment over the pandemic’s slow pace at decimating Africa? How can Africa protect herself from affliction by a more severe strain of the virus? Irrespective of so-called conspiracy theories alleging deliberate maleficence in the evolution and spread of the virus, Nigeria and other African nations must evolve measures to check influx of foreigners from nations established as hotspots of the pandemic on any pretext – this isn’t the time to welcome foreign doctors, scientists and other medical experts into the country.

    And if we must truly be on lockdown, government must enforce lockdown with a human face, knowing that such measure can only be effective with viable income replacement among vulnerable populations.

    Given that Nigeria can’t afford to massively scale up her welfare systems in a short time, as Rachel Strohm rightly suggests, its combination of donor support and targeted interventions to keep markets open while protecting vulnerable people, may keep people from going hungry while also reducing the spread of the pandemic. People will only follow social distancing measures if they can meet their basic needs while doing so.

     

  • Covid-19 as poetic justice

    Covid-19 as poetic justice

    Jide Oluwajuyitan

    ‘With COVID-19 forcing us to temporarily cede our only known paradise to animals, and rendering our commonwealth, confiscated by a few, now useless to everyone, it is hoped those who have refused to be their brother’s keeper will realize that what joined all of us together is our common humanity’

    The official global death toll from ravaging coronavirus pandemics has by last Wednesday risen well over 80,000. America and European nations with the best health facilities wealth can buy account for more than 50 percent of recorded deaths so far. Rampaging COVID-19 has also shown it is no respecter of colour, race, religion; the poor, the affluent and the powerful. The Canadian prime minister and his wife, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, the hospitalized British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, now under intensive care are just a few of its celebrated latest victims. The World Health Organisation has said the only armour against CONVID-19 is to give up all forms of licentiousness including private jets, yatch and hide in our rooms.

    Airports, hotels, night clubs are closed. The once bustling streets of New York, the financial capital of the world, London, Paris and other European cities emptied of humanity are today desolate. What we now have are deserted cities. COVID-19, in the words of Pope Francis, “has brought darkness over our squares, our streets and our cities; while we find ourselves afraid and lost”.

    We now also know nature does not need man, his arrogance, excesses and greed. As proof, many of the streets and parks deserted by man for fear of sudden death have opened their welcoming hands to rat, rodents, goats and monkeys. That these animals are immune to COVID-19 seem to once again validate the long-held anthropologists’ belief that of all creations, man is the least equipped to face the wrath of mother nature if and when she chooses to fight back.

    Unfortunately, driven by unbridled greed, man in his arrogance and shortsightedness believes in his invincibility.  And Just because God in His wisdom said: “Let us make mankind in our image; let them be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, the livestock …that he may give the word of command” (Genesis 1:26). Man huffs and puffs forgetting that to be a leader is to be a servant to all as Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the teacher and the greatest social crusader had admonished those who wish to be Christ-like.

    Industrialised West, notably Portugal, Spain Italy, Britain France and Belgium, and their ‘Christian leaders, without the spirit of Christ, are the source of iniquity and inequality in the world. They built their wealth on the sweat and blood of the poor and at the expense of the environment.

    They first integrated Africa into the world economy through slavery and in what was nothing but a change in paradigm, institutionalised capitalism and in recent years, globalization which in itself is the worst form of slavery. It is instructive to note that, Ivory Coast, the world biggest producer of cocoa earns less than 10% of the annual profit of just one of many companies manufacturing chocolate in the US. Other poor countries in the world whose priceless minerals and farm produce are exploited by the West share similar fate.

    Today only one per cent controls 95% of the world’s resources. The struggle therefore is about institutionalisation of environmental justice that guarantees equitable distribution of resources from mother earth as against current environmental injustice which insulates those who destroy the environment from the consequences of their actions. For now, it is only among the poor we see those who experience higher cancer rates and overall poorer health as a result of pollution of air, land, water, and food arising from nuclear testing, mineral extraction and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons.

    Of course, the greatest victim of the unbridled greed of the affluent is the mother earth herself or in the words of Pope Francis – “the only paradise we know”, which often has her “sacredness violated and the ecological unity and the interdependence of all species disrespected” by man.

    But perceptive minds knew it was a matter of time before Mother Nature fought back as it did during the Bubonic plague, the great plague of London, the cholera plague and the small pox plague that decimated many lives. It is on record that Bill Gates who had after the 2016 Ebola outbreak warned: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war”. He went on to predict that the next global pandemic could be worse than Ebola that killed about 11,000 people, a possibility he believed most countries were not prepared for, and therefore urged “governments to prepare for viral outbreaks in the same way they prepare for war”.

    But President Trump preferred serving his Republican Party, the owners of America, by undoing everything his predecessors did to give relief to the overburdened poor in America or elsewhere in the world including Cuba and Iran. Trump as Dr. Femi Orebe reminded us last Sunday, “Cancelled the 2006 National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza promulgated by President George W. Bush, and, the 2016 Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats developed under President Barack Obama”.

    But they reckoned that in the event of outbreak of virus infection, the poor will bear the brunt as it was during HIV and Ebola attacks. Instead of preparing for virus attack, Trump deployed his $700b 2018 defence budget not just to protect immorally acquired affluence but to prevent the poor, fleeing from poverty in Africa, violence death from South America and devastating wars in North Africa and the Maghreb from selling their labour even under globalization, the new god they said we must all worship.

    With COVID-19 forcing us to temporarily cede our only known paradise to animals, and rendering our commonwealth, confiscated by a few, now useless to everyone, it is hoped those who have refused to be their brother’s keeper will realize that what joined all of us together is our common humanity.

     

  • Human guinea pigs!

    Human guinea pigs!

    Lawal Ogienagbon

    ‘If herbs can do the magic in treating Coronavirus, we should not stop people, who choose to, from using those roots under the claim that there is no known cure for the disease’

    HEARD of any war without firing a shot? The Coronavirus conundrum easily passes for one. It has been a war like no other since the outbreak of the pandemic last December. It is a disease which China, the index country, thought it could handle in its own way  and bring relief to the first set of cases. Its decision turned out to be wrong and the Asian country has yet to recover from it.

    China hates to be in the limelight for the wrong reasons; no self-respecting country does. Now to be known as the epicentre of a deadly disease like Coronavirus otherwise known as COVID-19 increases the shame. Little wonder that, for long, it did not want the world to know what was going on in Wuhan where the virus originated from until people started getting infected in their hundreds and then thousands.

    The rate at which people were contracting the virus was alarming not only in China but also outside the country. The enormity of the pandemic was driven home when people from Wuhan began to export the disease to other parts of China. The authorities quickly moved to restrict movements in and out of Wuhan to avoid the spreading of the virus. This has become one of the measures adopted worldwide to contain COVID-19. Sadly, despite the enormous resources being spent on research into the virus, there is no known cure for it yet.

    Eventhough, many have lived to tell the Coronavirus story, how they overcame the disease seems to be shrouded in secrecy. How were they managed? What drugs were they given? Did their survival have anything to do with their immune system? Was it about their age? These are some of the issues those searching for a vaccine for the virus must know in order to aid their work. In the search for cure, the medical world appears to be looking in only one direction. It believes that the problem can only be tackled well trained scientists..

    There is no dispute about that really. Science, no doubt, is the way to go because whatever results that are eventually come up with must be verified for the sake of posterity. But is the world not neglecting something in the process? Herbs and roots discovered in Africa have from time immemorial come in handy in matters like this. Our ancestors used herbs in the treatment  of diseases with positive results. Why then is science shying away from looking at this potential of finding a cure for Coronavirus?

    I am not saying that scientists should not carry on with their experiments into Coronavirus, my argument is that they should not shut their eyes to alternatives, if any, no matter how crude. If herbs can work for Africans, they can also work for other people of the world since we are all part of the human race. What differentiates us from one another is the pigment of our skins. Aside from that, we share all other traits. Our blood is of the same colour red. There is nowhere on earth that we will find the blood that matches the colour of the human skin. Whether black or white, the colour of our blood will forever remain red.

    It is because the human race is one that we are working collectively to find a cure for COVID-19. The thing is as Africans we  should let our people’s voice also be heard in finding a cure for the disease. We can only do this by standing in defence of our home-grown solution to diseases like this. This is where our scientists have a job to do. Our forefathers have done their own bit in charting the path for us. They have shone the light and what is left is for us to follow the way.  We cannot leave this for foreign scientists who do not believe in such things. They never took herbs while growing up nor were they force-fed with brewed roots.

    Those of us who experienced such things and can attest to their efficacy should not be ashamed today to tell the whole world the power in local herbs and roots in treating ailments including COVID-19. We have heard the story of how Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde, who tested positive for Coronavirus,  was cured within a week with the use of local herbs, among other drugs. We should not wait for the World Health Organisation (WHO) before we do what is right by our people. If local herbs can do the magic in treating Coronavirus, we should not stop people,  who choose to, from using those roots under the claim that there is no known cure for the disease.

    Many of our doctors use these things in the comfort of their homes only to come out to despise these herbs, that is not good. We are where we are today because many of us lack the courage of our conviction. In finding  solution to the Coronavirus pandemic, our scientists have a major role to play and that is to sell to their foreign counterparts the efficacy of our herbs and roots. This is no time to keep quiet because we are in the midst of a war which if not well handled may wipe away the earth. The only consolation though is that God is merciful and He will not destroy the work of His hands.

    I am happy for a survivor, Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi, who in her own words, “murdered” Coronavirus. But it was not an easy battle. She took 31 tablets daily – eight in the morning, 13, afternoon,  and 10 at night for the over two weeks she spent at the Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH), Yaba, Lagos, where COVID-19 patients are quarantined. Mostly, she said, she vomitted the drugs and had to be on oral rehydration therapy (ORT) to remain hydrated. Other patients can be saved the agony of swallowing such huge number of drugs daily all in the name of Coronavirus treatment, if they go for the local therapy, which has been found efficacious, but not scientifically proven.

    I insist that it is the job of our scientists to make that scientific proof happen and there is no better time than now for them to do so. As Queen Elizabeth said on Sunday in her address to Britain and the Commonwealth, “this is an increasingly challenging time… while we have faced challenges before,  this one is different”. So, the world must look for a different solution to the problem.

    If our scientists do not make their voices heard now, their foreign counterparts will come up with series of experiential drugs on COVID-19 and use Africans as guinea pigs to test them. Two French scientists are already thinking along that line. Although, WHO has kicked against such plan, saying: “Africa will not be a testing ground for any vaccine”. WHO described the scientists’ comments as “racist and a hangover from colonial mentality. It is a disgrace and appalling to hear during the 21st Century; to hear from scientists that kind of remark. We condemn this in the strongest terms possible,  and we assure you that this will not happen”.

    Much more than WHO’s assurance, what is required for this not to happen is for African scientists’ to take the continent’s destiny in their hands. Will they rise up and take the bull by its horns? Or will they allow their foreign counterparts to turn Africans into human guinea pigs?

  • Balewa and Nigeria’s Southern African policy 1960-66

    Balewa and Nigeria’s Southern African policy 1960-66

    Jide Osuntokun

     

    When Nigeria became a sovereign nation in1960, expectations were high not only in Africa but in the world at large. The reasons for this was the size of the new nation and its considerable natural resources of oil and gas, tin and columbite and agricultural produce particularly palm oil, groundnuts, cocoa, cotton, hardwood timber and its potential large market to absorb industrial and consumer goods from the West. In the Cold War era, its large population was an asset which the West could count upon. Unlike the much-troubled Congo which crashed into chaotic independence, Nigeria with its relatively large middle class and highly educated elite, presented the picture of stability and gradualism even in its march towards independence which was not marred by revolution or any form of rebellion or general industrial protest or what Kwame Nkrumah called “positive action “ in old Gold Coast ( Ghana).

    The West also saw the emerging conservative political leadership in Nigeria much to its liking as contrasted with the radicalism and socialist tendencies of Kwame Nkrumah and his large African following. In spite of whatever differences the political leadership of the West saw in the ascendant conservative political leadership in Nigeria and the radical political tradition growing around Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, there were areas of convergence of policies such as demand for fair trade and the end to colonial rule but particularly the end to racial humiliation of Africans on their own continent as represented by the apartheid regime in South Africa and white settler regimes in Southern Africa, and France’s brutal killings of Algerian Arabs justly struggling to be free. The style was of course different but the goal was the same in the two camps of African nationalism whether perceived as conservative or radical.

    When Nigeria became independent, the entire Southern African half of the continent from Gabon, Central Africa, Congo Brazzaville, Belgian Congo, the Great Lakes region of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika down to Mozambique, Nyasaland, the two Rhodesias (North and South), Angola, Southwest Africa and South Africa were all under settler regimes of the British, Belgian, Portuguese and apartheid South Africa. The question of independence was a forlorn hope but many Africans realized that keeping quiet at the injustice and humiliation was not an option. The precipitate granting of independence to the Belgian Congo was also a poignant lesson about the desirability for preparation and gradualist approach which was what the political leadership of Nigeria under Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa championed. At independence, Sir Abubakar decided to be his own foreign minister for a while. During that time, he enunciated the guiding principles of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

    On October 7, 1960 on Nigeria’s acceptance as the 99th member of the United Nations at the 15th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Sir Abubakar said among other things, the setting out of the enduring principles which have guided Nigeria’s foreign policy since then. He said: It was the desire of Nigeria to remain friendly with all nations of the world and to participate actively in the work of the United Nations. Secondly, Nigeria, a large and populous country of 35 million had no territorial ambitions or any expansionist intentions. This was a sobering statement to allay fears of small neighbouring states of Niger, Dahomey, Chad and the Cameroons where there were substantial irredentist populations of people of the same ethnic groups with Nigerians. Thirdly, he said Nigeria would remain a member of the British Commonwealth of nations but “…nevertheless, we do not intend to ally ourselves as a matter of routine with any of the power blocs”.

    This was an indication that Nigeria wanted to remain positively non-aligned to assure critics at home who feared that the British were still pulling the strings of their Nigerian puppet regime. He continued that Nigeria working with other African countries will work for the progress of the continent and help to bring other African countries to what he called “… responsible independence”. He made allusion to the fact that Nigeria got its independence without bitterness or bloodshed and felt all countries still chaffing under the burden of colonialism and racial domination can learn from the Nigerian paradigm. He dealt at length at the precipitate granting of independence by Belgium to the Congo without consultation and adequate preparation before independence was foisted on the people the result of which was the chaos the whole world was faced with. He boldly stated that Africa must not be made a theatre for world power contestation and ideological struggle between the communist and the capitalist powers.

    Without saying how it could be done, he said African solutions must be found for African problems. He suggested a United Nations-supervised elections in the Congo from local government to national government level. He suggested that it may be necessary to consider a federation or confederation to preserve the unity of the country. He regarded the idea of the Congo being considered as a United Nations Trust Territory as some big powers were suggesting as retrogressive. He was however receptive to an active role of the United Nations for maintaining law and order while local administration settled down with United Nations expert advice. He suggested that Nigeria was prepared to assist with a technical team and administrators and called on other African countries to offer such assistance that they could muster. He was soon to send troops to the Congo on the United Nations request. In this way, Nigeria got sucked into the problem of Southern Africa. On one occasion the prime minister said: “On the question of colonialism and racial discrimination, I am afraid that Nigeria will never compromise”.

    He recognized as Harold Macmillan the British prime minister had opined that the wind of change was blowing across Africa and that colonial powers must recognize this before it became a hurricane and that independence for African countries was inevitable. He knew his country was to get engrossed with the South African situation following the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960 even before independence. Public opinion would force the government whether it liked it or not to take a strong stand on the issue of apartheid. Sir Abubakar while welcoming political independence said this was not enough unless it was accompanied by economic development. He asserted that “economic weakness is evident in a new country open to every kind of pressure and results in other countries depriving its people freedom to choose a form of government which they feel suits them best. Spreading political propaganda or more insidious infiltration through technical assistance can virtually rob any underdeveloped country of its freedom I, therefore feel that if the advanced nations of the other continents are really desirous of seeing the new African states stand on their own feet and make their own particular contribution to the peace of the world and to the happiness of mankind, they should make a real effort to desist from fomenting trouble in any of the African countries. The best way for them to assist us in reaching maturity is not by ideological propaganda, in whatever form it may be disguised, but by helping us genuinely with really good will, to develop our resources and to educate our human material up to those standards which are necessary for proper development”.

    Sir Abubakar was naive to expect moral preachment would sway big powers and former colonial powers from following whatever they consider their national interests in Africa irrespective of what Africans want. In his long speech at the United Nations, he identified the haphazard partitioning of African territories by the European colonizers and even before the inviolability of colonial boundaries became an abiding principle in the charter of the yet to be formed Organisation of African Unity, he said “… The colonizing powers of the last century partitioned Africa in haphazard and artificial manner and drew boundaries which cut across former groupings. Yet, however artificial those boundaries were at first, the countries they have created have come to regard themselves as units independent of one another. We have seen them all seeking admission to this organization as separate states. It is therefore, our policy to leave those boundaries as they are at present, and to discourage any adjustment whatsoever. I hope that this policy will bring about an atmosphere of trust and that if each country is given proper recognition and respect as a sovereign state, it will be possible to have effective cooperation on all matters of common concern to us”. He recommended consultations on non-political matters such as coordination of transportation and communications systems, research and education.

    He was far sighted in suggesting educating young people especially at universities together across national boundaries and he felt this would make stationing of troops at each other’s borders unnecessary. He said: “I must say I do not rule out the possibility of eventual union. But for the present, it is unrealistic to expect countries to give up their sovereignty which they have so recently acquired, and I am quite sure that it is wrong to imagine that political union could of itself bring the countries together. But on the contrary it will follow as a natural consequence of cooperation in other fields”. He continued: “In the fullness of time, as political relations develop and there is more consultation between the states of regional groupings, then political union may well be a natural result, but it would be wrong either to impose it or seek to hasten the process unduly”.

    Even though the idea of friendship with all nations sounded good at independence, it soon dawned on the prime minister that each nation must do whatever it must do to defend its national interest. In April 1960 when Nigeria was still under colonial rule, France exploded an atomic device in the Algerian desert. Many Africans protested to no effect. In December the same year just two months after Nigeria’s independence, France again tested another bomb without caring about the radioactive fallout on West African countries. By this time Nigeria was forced to protect its people by breaking diplomatic relations with France in January 1961. This signaled to the whole world that where its interest was threatened, Nigeria would take strong measures considered necessary. The severance of diplomatic ties was extended to French shipping and trade with Nigeria. Again, following the declaration of South Africa as a republic in October 1960, the prime minister, Dr H.F Verwoerd went to London in March 1961 to seek Commonwealth acceptance of his country as a republic within the Commonwealth. Nigeria led the opposition to South Africa’s continued membership not because it was a republic, after all India was a republic, but because of its racist policies. Nigeria was joined by all African members and India and South Africa was humiliated out of the Commonwealth. The die was cast; from that time onwards, Nigeria’s position on dismantling the racist regime in South Africa became unshakable. The strategy adopted was to use the United Nations forum to mobilize world opinion against South Africa. Secondly, Nigeria decided to support the African National Congress (ANC) financially. This strategy was refined to include supporting all liberation movements in Southern Africa which included those in Mozambique, Angola, Southern Rhodesia, South West Africa (Namibia) so as to weaken South Africa economically and to isolate it. This was the plan and even though Sir Abubakar did not see the evolution of the plan, but he set the stage and others followed after him. The last public engagement Sir Abubakar had was to chair a Commonwealth conference on Rhodesia in Lagos a few weeks before he was assassinated in 1966.

  • Nigeria’s viral reset (2)

    Nigeria’s viral reset (2)

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    NIGERIA’S leadership handles the country as a funeral economy, where the public officer is a slayer and pallbearer.

    Think of him as ‘His Excellency’ who refused to build good roads but scurries to accident scenes to mourn the dead.

    Think of him as a mass murderer, who embezzles security and health funding thus afflicting the country with lingering terrorism and rising maternal mortality.

    Think of him as a cold cook, the mortician who denied Nigeria a functional health system that he might exploit citizenry panic, to steal, in the throes of a global pandemic, like the coronavirus.

    Ultimately, he fulfills the role of a grim-reaper. Apology to the honest, humane public officer, if he truly exists.

    As the coronavirus aka COVID-19 presents in full bloom, it offers the random public officer and his billionaire associates in the private sector interminable prospects as patriots and saviours, mourners and providers.

    For public officers in the executive and legislative chambers, COVID-19 conveniently becomes a vehicle of compassion. Every gesture of love is, however, an assertion of power. They affect neither selflessness nor self-sacrifice, only refinements of self-love and domination. The guiltless may speak for themselves.

    Through the pandemic, Nigerians expect the government to stabilise and strengthen the nation’s economy and healthcare systems. Saudi Arabia’s bold, swift response to COVID-19 offers valuable lessons. For being decisive and proactive, there have been, so far, minimal cases and only one death in the country.

    Compare this with the casualties in neighbouring Iran, where the death toll has exceeded 3,000 with 138 new fatalities. As the virus strikes terror across nations and class divides, one crucial element is its manifestation among the political class.

    There is the joke in Nigerian circuits, that, had the pandemic started in the country, claiming the highest casualties, the political class would abscond from the country with their families and govern by proxy, through civil servants.

    However, a curious thing has happened; their usual destination points overseas are the pandemic’s flashpoints. The death toll in the United Kingdom has risen by 563 in the last 24 hours, a record jump that brought the number of patients who died in hospital to 2,352. In the United States, the death toll has exceeded 4,000. Globally, more than 42,000 people have died, about 860,000 have been diagnosed with the virus, and some 178,000 have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University.

    In Nigeria, 12 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) thus increasing the tally to 151 cases. Nine patients have reportedly been discharged and just two deaths have been recorded by the affliction in the country.

    As Nigeria effects Day 3 of its lock-down in Lagos and Abuja, the government would do right by the citizenry to imbibe a strategy that would protect lives and preserve public peace. The virus flourishes because the government failed to check traveller influx, particularly from COVID-19 hot zones – certainly because they needed their families, living abroad, to return to the country before shutting the nation’s borders.

    Frantic measures by the government to shut schools, markets, shopping malls, and public gatherings, should have been taken in previous weeks, before the virus attained notoriety as a pandemic.

    That would have given the citizenry ample time to acquire food supplies, provisions and services, in an atmosphere devoid of panic.

    At the moment, government assaults the citizenry with mixed messages and enforcement of the lock-down has been heavy-handed and driven by uncouth resource staff. It’s astonishing to see COVID-19 taskforce assault the citizenry, chanting that Nigerians need ‘iron hand’ and the government has empowered them to use the gun, baton and horse-whip on defaulters during the lock-down.

    If anybody needs whipping, it should be the public officers on whose watch Nigeria became a talking point of the pandemic.

    Its about time government evolved an enlightenment strategy founded on gentle encouragement and practical palliatives rather than authoritarian instructions. Government must evolve more coherent strategies driven by humane concerns to save lives.

    This minute, the nation’s health system is in shambles. Senior doctors with tertiary health facilities affirm that the quality of response at the nation’s hospitals is very poor; operations are hampered by a dearth of essential personnel and medical consumables.

    Pre-COVID-19, patients were forced to buy plaster, gloves, gauze, syringe, other consumables at secondary and tertiary hospitals. These are unavailable even in the throes of the pandemic. With seven test centres for over 190 million Nigerians, public officers enjoy easier access to test facilities.

    Nigeria had it coming, given her paltry health funding estimated at four percent of the annual budget vis-a-vis the recommended minimum of 15 per cent. Notwithstanding the political class divert crucial funding to the purchase of official cars and outrageous allowances. For the newly elected public officer, governance commences by the entombment of truth and his campaign promises. To circumvent the public trust reposed in him, he deploys artifice, and artifice flowers robbery.

    He pilfers public chest via phantom projects; sometimes, he resorts to armed robbery, using militarised state security to rob the citizenry of their rights and freedoms.

    The citizenry, on the other hand, aren’t without fault. Large segments of the electorate, the youth in particular, have in time foisted upon the country the worst forms of tyranny and inefficient leadership by selling out at the polls.

    The media, supposed voice to the nation’s voiceless, equally celebrates politicians and public officers for their ability to hoodwink and hover at the crest of their leaps, even as they sever ties to electorate earthlings.

    Emboldened by a docile citizenry and fawning media, the public officer mutilates his conscience to remain inhumanly shrewd. And COVID-19 offers him priceless opportunity to hoodwink or chisel off awareness atop the citizenry’s growing dissent.

    Thus the flagrant display of compassion by governors, lawmakers, who have declared half of their salaries as donation to the anti-COVID-19 campaign. Banks and billionaire entrepreneurs equally hop on the bleeding saints’ wagon, donating generously to the cause.

    Predictably, large segments of the citizenry heap plaudits on the donors, extolling their seemingly noble actions. Of course, such actions should be praised, for they are the stuff patriots and national heroes are made of, especially in a crisis situation.

    The question Nigerians have failed to ask is: “How selfless and patriotic are the donors outside a crisis situation?”

    Consider the health system, for instance, why were the donors conveniently blind to its dismal state, pre-COVID-19? Several bank chiefs, governors and the president, attained notoriety for hopping on a plane to enjoy medical tourism abroad, until their supposedly safe havens, became the most dangerous zones of the world. Shaken and scared silly, they are scrambling to improve Nigeria’s health sector, making frantic donations.

    Amused, the citizenry needle them in vicious humour celebrating every news of the political class’ affliction by the virus. They are excited that the ruling class would finally enjoy a dose of their own poison. They have become vulnerable to the perilous health sector they failed to develop.

    But this isn’t the time for schadenfreude. What the gloaters forget, is that, when push comes to shove, the public officers and their families would enjoy first dibs at premium medical care and bed-space before an average citizen and the impoverished.

  • Military and crisis of nation-building

    Military and crisis of nation-building

    By  Jide Oluwajuyitan 

     

    The modern state exists at the behest of the military which also defines the state’s well-being by repelling external aggression and suppressing internal insurrections.

    But by far, what makes the fate of the nation-state intricately tied to the military institution beyond state formation is the process of nation-building.

    This perhaps explains why the Nigerian military, as the custodian of the nation’s constitution has continued to pay heavy prize as it confronts crisis of nation-building exacerbated by both professional and military politicians since it first dabbled into politics, an uncharted terrain for which it was ill-equipped in 1966.

    First, it was prevailed upon by politicians to wage unjust wars against popular uprising by those seeking self-actualization in the Middle Belt and the Isaac Boro-led Ijaw insurrection in Rivers.

    Then in the manner of the old Greek tragedies, they descended on themselves, eliminating the most gifted military officers in their rank and file in January and July 1966.

    They were then rail-roaded by professional and military politicians into civil war with a harvest of some three million deaths including the best and the brightest of our soldiers.

    In the last decade, they have been in the forefront of a war against Boko Haram Islamic insurgents that have killed about 3.6million and condemned about 1.8 million to IDP camps.

    There was a sign of relief, however in 2016 with the celebrated liberation of the Sambisa forest, the epicentre of Boko Haram operations.  Celebrating the capture of ‘Camp Zairo’ in Sambisa forest  which he said was the last stronghold of Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs), Major General Leo Irabor  had told Nigerians: “On 22 Dec 16 at about 0800hrs, our troops commenced advance for the capture of Camp Zairo which was the main Boko Haram Terrorists (BHT). The air component and artillery were effectively employed during the operation before the final assault by the troops”.

    Commending President Buhari for ‘“restoring integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the pride of all Nigerians”, the Alumni Association of the National Institute, AANI, Kuru Jos had said “Nigerians at home and in Diaspora are proud of the enormous sacrifices and patriotism of the Army High Command and the troops of the Operation Lafiya Dole on the successful capture of the Boko Haram enclave in Sambisa Forest.”

    The Leadership newspaper of December 27, 2016 quoted the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai as saying liberated Sambisa forest, “will now serve as training centre for the army”, adding that he had “directed that the Nigerian Army small arms championship for 2017 should hold in the forest”.

    But there has been a renewed killing of soldiers and civilians by insurgents in the Northeast region. In early March, 30 innocent Nigerians were killed in an attack that took place at a gate only eight kilometres to the University of Maiduguri, which the military authorities said needed to be closed at 5pm to enable them carry out counter-insurgency activities.

    Read Also: ‘Boko Haram commander among over 100 killed’

     

    The military authorities blamed the victims claiming “the incident would not have happened if the travellers respected military directive, which bans plying of the road from Benishek, a local government headquarters to Maiduguri, after 5p.m”.

    Last week, 29 soldiers were again killed in an ambush inside the ‘liberated Sambisa forest’. This figure was down from the initial over 40 quoted by the military and those of some Nigerian newspapers quoting AFP that claimed “at least 70 Nigerian soldiers were killed in an ambush by terrorists who specifically targeted a truck loaded with soldiers with RPGs and incinerated the vehicle, killing all on board”.

    Apart from the figure of casualties, this was not markedly different from the account of the Theatre Commander, Maj.-Gen. Olusegun Adeniyi. He had admitted leading the troops to Harbour, about five kilometres ahead of captured and cleared Gorgi only to have the rear elements of the advanced force “where the Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher and Sink Yellowbucket Truck loader where soldiers were positioned attacked with more than a hundred mortar bombs at 80 to a hundred RPGs; in addition to eight to 10 gun trucks firing at us from all sides”.

    The embattled theatre commander with injured solders lying on the ground around him blamed the ambush on false military intelligence supplied by the military authorities.

    Although the military as a disciplined institution is intolerant of character flaws that civilians ordinarily get away with, soldiers’ excesses must be contained in the interest of the military institution as a whole and for the good of the larger society.

    It is for the above reasons and the fact that soldiers don’t have the luxury of errors of judgment which have grave implications for society, that the military institution as powerful as it is, must be answerable to civilian control.

    If modern state quibbles about civil-military relations, they have a lesson to learn from the old Yoruba traditional administrative system where a General’s only choice in war is victory after which he is resettled at the outskirt of the city to keep an eye on would-be enemies of state but also accept his fate by committing suicide if he loses a war.

    There are so many unanswered questions about the nation’s change of fortune in Sambisa forest. First is there a link between Buratai’s relocation back to Abuja and the increased exploits of Boko Haram insurgents inside “captured sambisa forest’?

    What are the effects of relentless war by the National Assembly that passed two different resolutions calling on General Buratai to resign on account of under-performance, a call backed by Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF; Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) and other informed Nigerians as well as retired military strategists?

    The theatre commander amidst his injured soldiers last week complained of inadequate resources. Could this be responsible for the decision of our soldiers many who are experts in strategic studies to literarily embark on a suicidal mission by packing over a hundred soldiers along explosives and other munitions in the same vehicle?

    The theatre commander with injured soldiers littering everywhere also told journalists: “I’m standing here with Sector 2 Commander; the armed helicopter has just come to hover our air”. While it is possible for an ambush to occur as result of infiltration of the military intelligence network by Boko Haram elements, but what is the explanation for the absence of a back-up or air force protection which exposed the advance force to  rear attack ?

    It is not of any relief that we have been told “only 29 of our gallant soldiers were killed with 61 injured in the ambush. The soldiers who paid the supreme sacrifice were not just numbers but some people’s children, husbands and fathers.

    They have siblings, school mates and friends. They laid down their lives for a nation facing crisis of nation building, exacerbated by politicians who condemn 70% of their youths kept out of school to poverty and easy recruits for religious fundamentalists.

    That their sacrifice may not be in vain, is it not time  to put aside the culture of secrecy in the military and like other participatory democracies, celebrate these fallen heroes through publications of their pictures, those of their spouses and the children they left behind?

    Besides promoting the spirit of patriotism among our youths who know nothing about our history, I think it is one way of keeping alive the memories of those who paid the supreme sacrifice for our avoidable but very often self-inflicted crisis of nation building.

  • Life first

    Life first

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    AT LAST, the President addressed the nation on the Coronavirus pandemic on Sunday. His long overdue national broadcast covered some lost grounds in the country’s battle to tame the virus.

    The global race to find a cure for the new Coronavirus otherwise called COVID-19 has been long and tedious. Considering how sudden the pandemic broke out, it has tasked the brilliance of scientists who are working round the clock to find a cure for it.

    There is light at the end of the tunnel, though.  There will soon be a breakthrough in getting a medicine for the disease. American President Donald Trump broke medical protocols for announcing such discovery when he hinted weeks ago that hydroxychloroquine may be the magic pill for COVID-19. Popularly known for his garrulity, his disclosure did not go down well with American scientists who were still working on coming up with such cure.

    They disowned their president, saying the drug was still undergoing clinical test before it could be confirmed as the much-awaited medicine for the treatment of the virus.

    President Muhammadu Buhari noted this fact in his broadcast. ‘’As of today’’, the President said, ‘’COVID-19 has no cure. Scientists around the world are working very hard to develop a vaccine… for now, the best and most efficient way to avoid getting infected is through regular  hygienic and sanitary practices as well as social distancing’’.

    But Nigeria may have latched on to Trump’s claim of hyroxychloroquine being the cure for Coronavirus, following the submissions of National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) Director-General Prof Moji Adeyeye on Monday.

    She said chloroquine was now being mass produced in the country to meet the needs of COVID-19 patients. Those in the market, she said, were being mopped for the use of those patients. Has the World Health Organisation (WHO) endorsed the use of chloroquine for the treatment of the virus?

    No, it has not. America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is pushing the case for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine because, according to it, ‘’it is worth the risk of trying unproven treatments to slow the progression of the disease caused by Coronavirus in seriously ill patients’’.

    This hard and fast rule is not allowed in medicine. Scientists are exact and certain in their works because human lives are at stake. This is why guinea pigs and not human beings are used in experiments so that when fatalities occur, people’s lives are not unduly wasted.

    Did Nigeria jump ahead of itself in embracing chloroquine as cure for COVID-19 without WHO’s directive? Our leaders are in a hurry to cover lost grounds, but in doing so, they should avoid putting the lives of those infected in jeopardy as they are not guinea pigs.

    From the President’s address, it is clear that the government is ready to do everything to safeguard lives because Coronavirus is highly contagious. According to him, ‘’in Nigeria’s fight against COVID-19, there is no such thing as an overreaction or an under reaction. It is all about the right reaction by the right agencies and trained experts’’.

    In line with this, he announced a lockdown of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Lagos and Ogun states for two weeks in the first instance with effect from last Monday. The rate at which people are being infected in the capital city and those states is quite alarming really.

    As at Tuesday, it was reported that Lagos had 81 cases, FCT, 25, Osun, five and Ogun, four. What this means is that the country must be on its guard before the virus spreads like wildfire across the country.

    If that happens, it will stretch our medical personnel’s capacity to handle the problem. For one, we do not have all the needed equipment for managing the pandemic.

    Testing kits are not enough. This is why many patients said to be indigent have not been tested. Priority is being given to the high and mighty from who many of the poor patients contracted the disease.

    Read Also: COVID-19: FG releases guidebook on lockdown Policy

     

    Singling Abuja and Lagos out as places where people from other states easily get the virus, the President said: ‘we are therefore working to ensure such inter-state and intra-city movements are restricted to prevent further spread.

    Based on the advice of the Federal Ministry of Health and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), I am directing the cessation f all movements in Lagos and FCT for an initial period of 14 days with effect from 11pm on Monday, 30th March, 2020. This restriction will also apply to Ogun State because of its close proximity to Lagos and the high traffic between the two states’’.

    The President’s action touched a raw nerve in Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, Ebun Adegboruwa (SAN) and Femi Falana (SAN). They believe that the President usurped the powers of Lagos and Ogun governors by that action.

    The governors of those states, they argued, are the only ones constitutionally empowered to take such action. They may be right, but I beg to disagree. Buhari is the President of Nigeria and every part of the country, including the states, defer to his authority.

    No doubt, we are in a constitutional democracy, but that does not mean the President should keep quiet when developments in certain states can adversely affect other states.

    We are seeing how Coronavirus is ravaging the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Italy, among other developed nations of the world, despite their strong healthcare system. What does Nigeria have to fight the virus if it should spread like wildfire nationwide?

    The nations we will go to for help  already have their hands full. In some cases, some of the nations can no longer cope with the problem and are now seeking external help.

    So, any step that is taking to stem the spread of the pandemic should be lauded. The nation is in an emergency even though the President did not declare a state of emergency in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja.

    The Coronavirus pandemic is a clear and present danger which requires urgent and coordinated steps to tackle before things get out of hand. What matters most now is the protection of lives. But while doing this, we should not shut our eyes to upholding the rule of law.

    The Constitution clearly emphasises this in Section 305 (3) (f) which confers the President with power to declare a state of emergency when ‘’there is any other public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the federation’’.

    The President has not used his emergency powers yet, he only did what a concerned leader should do when his country is faced with public danger,  by restricting people’s movement to avoid the spread of COVID-19. He has not usurped the governors’ powers nor breached any law.

  • This is not a time to hate

    This is not a time to hate

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    This is the worst of times in the world with the tragedy of coronavirus bringing out the best and the worst in many people. Doctors are risking their lives to save many even when they have no protective gadgets to protect themselves.

    It is not that they have conquered the fear of death but because of the Hippocratic oath they have taken and their individual consciences, they will rather risk their lives to save others than selfishly keep their own lives when they know they can make a difference.

    It is this commitment that made my late brother, Professor Kayode Osuntokun to say in the 1970s that going on strike by doctors is a betrayal of their oath to save lives.  He was very unpopular for saying this but he could not be bothered.

    While doctors are saving lives, there are others involved in price gouging by buying available stuffs including medicines, toiletries, ventilators, clinical masks and so on and charging huge prices in order to make unearned profits at the cost of human lives.

    Recently when President Donald J. Trump of the United States said chloroquine may help in the management of coronavirus, the drug commonly used against malaria disappeared from the various pharmacies in Nigeria. I would not be surprised if our intrepid Nigerian traders have exported this drug to earn the much sought-after foreign exchange.

    Thank God, we Nigerians do not generally eat foreign food. If we did, by now all the shelves in our supermarkets would be empty because those with money would have cleared them from the shelves whether they need them or not.

    What really worries me is not the human propensity for looking after himself or seeking comfort for oneself but the hatred that has become noticeable since the outbreak of the coronavirus against people in authority and people of certain age.

    It is common in the social media to read or hear vituperations against certain categories of people for alleged non-performance of duty while in government the consequence of which has brought us to this pass where nothing works in our country.

    I agree that people have the right to be angry against the generations before them. But to wish them dead is ungodly. I have seen and heard of people celebrating the news of people in Aso Rock the seat of the federal government of Nigeria, being hit by the coronavirus. People do not only rejoice at this bad news but go further to wish that those afflicted should die!

    There is never a time to hate. Those who hate others for whatever reasons are destroying themselves. Their reason is that those in power are responsible for the suffering of the masses. How will the death of a few people in positions of power solve our problems of underdevelopment?

    Our Holy books say God does not want the death of sinners but rather that they should repent and live. Anybody wishing another person dead has committed a mortal sin because no one has the right to seek the death of another person except as a punishment for murder.

    I heard and I read online, angry young Nigerians saying since the coronavirus is deadly for people over 70, Nigerians should welcome it because in Nigeria this is the category of people who have ruled and ruined the country. They assume that after that generation are wiped out Nigeria will suddenly become a great country run on perfect moral principles and the country will in fact become a utopia on earth.

    This of course will not happen.

    Read Also: Coronavirus: Spain reports new record of 864 deaths in one day

     

    I am one of those who believe Nigeria can do better taking into consideration our human and material resources. There were signs of this at independence. I was in secondary school in 1960 in the year of our independence. We had high aspirations and the sky was the limit of our aspirations.

    We were also inspired by the kind of leaders we had. This was not only in politics but in the society as a whole among the teachers, bureaucrats, the clergy, the farmers and peasants, the traders, the military, police, paramilitary forces and businessmen.

    There was little or no crime and most people did honest jobs to earn honest income. Crime was small and containable. It was not utopia and no country was perfect. We also had five-year development plans in which we matched planned development with resources.

    We had good boarding schools and good hospitals and the University College Hospital, Ibadan was one of the best hospitals in the Commonwealth. The hospital was so famous that some members of the Saudi royal family used to come for treatment there.

    We lost all this  with the advent of easy oil money and with the military incursion into politics and the introduction of federal character, ethnic balancing, bringing everything into the same pedestrian level and abandoning institutions of excellence in the name of if there is great university hospital in Ibadan, Kano, Maiduguri and Zaria must  have one not minding if there was money for this.

    If there was no money for federal character hospitals, then no city would have one. This is how we brought everything down to the level in which the elite go abroad to treat headaches!

    We can make a case against all the governments we have had since 1966. What I object to is to blame the present government for the accumulated faults and neglect of all the former governments. This is not to say the present government has not been shooting itself in the foot by its lopsided appointment based on preferred ethnic and religious considerations.

    It is really sad that the Nigerian academic community which in 2015 said anybody but Goodluck Jonathan and passed the word round that Buhari was the man on the high horse to deliver our country now feels let down. We feel the pain as the ordinary man.

    How come most of our governments including this one has not been able to change our country and our lives for the better? The answer lies in two things. The first is corruption which permeates everything in the country particularly in politics to the detriment of everything.

    The late Right Honorable Nnamdi Azikiwe said in 1959 that Nigerians play the politics of poverty. He said politicians came from poor beginnings and that when they get into power and see the opportunity to make money, they determine to make as much of it that no one in their families up to the fourth generation will ever be poor again.

    Side by side with this is the politics of “stomach infrastructure” where greedy plebes prefer eating and voting for those who stuff their stomachs with food than those who can lift them out of the underclass they find themselves. So, all our corrupt ways can be sociologically explained.

    Politics has become a means of resource allocation even on a personal level. The second reason why nothing works is because we have replaced our previous competitive and cooperative federalism with unitary government in which the individuals who capture the centre can do whatever they want with our resources while those at the peripheries look sadly at them.

    To change the situation, we have to tackle the two highlighted issues above. There is no need dancing around the issue of development when we know the key to unlocking our problems.

    Yes, mistakes have been made. My generation and that before me are responsible for the problem. As individuals, only some few of our generation can be held responsible but whether we like it or not, all of my generation are vicariously responsible for our general underdevelopment.

    We owe it to the up and coming generation to plead with the Buhari government to put in motion a way forward out of this morass in which we find ourselves. He can look for young people to draw up an actionable plan possibly extracted from the Vision 2020 gathering dust in Aso Rock archive.

    This time around, it should be young people who should see vision while old people dream dreams. We cannot continue to do things as before and expect to see changes. That will be pure insanity.

    But having said this, my generation should not be prayed away and handed over to coronavirus to deal with us for errors of commission or omission in not planning properly for the present. As Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese billionaire said recently, the old guard of African leaders in their 70s, 80s and 90s should yield their positions to the youth.

    He asserted that a 90-year old president leading a nation can only lead that nation to the grave! But let us pray for the young people who are destined to rule our country that they would not repeat the mistakes of the past. It will be a tragedy if they do that.

  • Nigeria’s viral reset (1)

    Nigeria’s viral reset (1)

    Ololade Olatunji

    The coronavirus aka COVID-19 affirms the rabid assertions of Nigerian nature. The virus presents Nigeria as a food for worms.

    Faith advocates describe it as a divine punishment for our mortal sins, a viral whiplash mimicking God’s plague on wayward Israel. Atheists argue otherwise. Liberals, scientists, common sense proponents, health experts and political pundits moot dangerous versions of relative truth, arguing that Nigeria would soon be overwhelmed by the disease, because she ignores the strife of contraries that births her plummet down dystopia’s steep ravine.

    The chickens have come home to roost. The depth of decline of the country’s health system is best illustrated by President Muhammadu Buhari’s penchant for medical tourism abroad at the inception of his administration.

    The President, like the very few wealthy Nigerians and privileged public officers, who could afford it, embarked on recurrent trips abroad for medical care. There is no gainsaying Mr. President sought the benefit of state-of-the-art health facilities overseas, necessity persistently denied to the Nigerian citizenry.

    Even as the nation’s public health centres deteriorated, several governors and lawmakers brazenly hopped on a plane to receive treatment for health issues, from the mundane to the severe.

    As the malady persisted, the press, presumably the last hope of the common man, answered differently to the miseries of the downtrodden. Driven by a fixation for politics and desperation to meet the bottomline, a large swathe of the mainstream and digital media scorned the grisly narratives of the citizenry to focus on politics and gossip as prime time news.

    Thus we heard little about the failing health system and its impact on the people. Save a handful of media, the majority focused on illusions. They fed the people comforting myths, often from the perspective of the government and big business.

    The corridors of power thus became our Versailles, from where prominent journalists relaunched their practice as government courtiers. Driven by hunger pangs and a lust for the good life, most TV pundits and supposed leader writers, learnt to beguile the citizenry by the hollow stagecraft of political theatre.

    They gifted the powerful with a fawning forum mimicking a critical rostrum. At the same time, they pretended to have investigated and vetted government claims of efficiency. It was a dirty quid pro quo. The journalists got access to the elite as long as they faithfully doctored their analyses and reports to suit government agenda.

    The culprits forgot that tragedy has a revolving door through which they too, must travel, given their complicity in the poor governance of the nation’s health sector, among others.

    Before the advent of COVID-19, it was hardly surprising to see supposedly well-to-do journalists, brag like their peer in other disciplines, about their medical tourism abroad. “I just came back. I went to London for medical check-up,” they would say. Characteristically, they saw nothing wrong with the ruling class’ inordinate junketing abroad for “medical check-ups.” Hence public officers squandered public fund on reckless medical tourism abroad. Some had the effrontery to add their relatives, concubines and commercial sex workers, often patronised by them, as beneficiaries of such reckless spending.

    Enter COVID-19 and Nigeria undergoes a moral reset. The coronavirus is a status leveller; hence its affliction of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, the Governor of Bauchi, Bala Mohammed, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s son, Mohammed, among others.

    The sudden death of a former Managing Director of Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Suleiman Achimugu, who was reportedly the first to die of the dreaded coronavirus in Nigeria has incited morbid fear around his former base in Abuja and the nation’s seat of power.

    Achimugu, who reportedly died over night from the virus in Abuja, was said to have returned from the United Kingdom two weeks earlier.

    Suddenly, the nation’s ruling class have bitten the humble pie. They can no longer embark on reckless medical tourism abroad as their favourite destination points are currently hot-spots of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The truth has dawned on them in a moment of eternal damnation; they and their families are suddenly at the mercy of the health systems they deliberately neglected in savage fits of fiscal and official irresponsibility.

    The consequences of their actions, were hitherto, exclusively borne by the impoverished citizenry, who suffered dearth of quality medical care due to medical braindrain. According to conservative estimates, about 2,000 doctors have departed Nigeria over the past few years, for greener pasture abroad. Many have blamed the exodus on poor working conditions, government insensitivity and illiteracy in health administration.

    The figures are startling; only four percent of Nigeria’s budget is allocated to health annually. While the annual healthcare threshold per person in the United States (US) is $10,000, in Nigeria it is just $6, according to an Al Jazeera report.

    A senior nursing staff at a Lagos tertiary health facility lamented to me, recently, that, aside the inadequacy of medical doctors, the hospital also suffers a dearth of adequate nursing and support staff.

    She lamented that her medical facility assigns two nurses to 15 to 20 patients. “How do you expect them to work effectively? I have to walk the length and breadth of the hospital taking patients to theatre, receiving patients from the theatre, admitting patients and attending to daily callers. We nurses also have to sweep and mop the hospital floor by ourselves, due to lack of health attendants (janitors). We shouldn’t be doing such work but we have no choice since there is just one health attendant serving about eight wards. As a nurse, you won’t leave the unattended wards to stay unkempt.

    “There is also persistent failure of electricity supply. Imagine having to work with torchlight in a hospital ward. Most times, we resort to the use of torches to operate in our hospital wards due to epileptic power supply, and this usually happens overnight,” she said.

    Another grievous failing at several medical facilities across the country is the dearth functional conveniences including ceiling fans and air-conditioners. From the nurses’ rooms to the patients’ wards, many public health centres lack such facilities.

    Consequently, patients blame nursing personnel for failings they have no control over; many patients are admitted into hospital wards with neither fan nor AC units. So doing, they are subjected to unbearable heat by hospital staff, who have to keep the windows locked to keep out armed robbers, rodents and mosquitoes.

    Patients are also human hence it is understandable that they would complain. A recent investigation into the operations of one such teaching hospital revealed that surgical patients are admitted into poorly ventilated wards. Their experiences before and after surgery in the ward beggars urgent intervention; out of the six fans in a cubicle, for instance, just one was functioning and it was faulty as at press time. Due to the extreme discomfort experienced by one of the patients on admission, his relative had to start fanning him with a hand fan.

    Many a patient have likened their stay in such facilities to sleeping in a tomb. Due to poor ventilation, nurses often advise patients coming in for surgery to bring fans from home if they hope for their temporary stay in the hospital to be conducive.

    The toilets are very bad too. Most of them won’t flush; they are broken, discoloured and unusable.

  • Oshiomhole’s many wars and victories

    Oshiomhole’s many wars and victories

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    What Adams Oshiomhole, the APC chairman lacks in physical attribute, he has in abundance in courage.  He has since his foray into partisan politics waged wars against powers and principalities, the invincible and the untouchable, wrestling all to the ground with little or no bruises. He started his exploits from his native Edo, where the late Chief Anthony Akhakon Anenih, the Iyasele of Esan was regarded as PDP’s “Mr. Fixer”, rigging elections across the country between 1999 and 2009. But that was until he met his nemesis in Oshiomhole who after retrieving from him, his stolen mandate, retired him from politics.

    He then took on Chief Gabriel Igbinedion and his son, Lucky who had left Edo State like a war-ravaged city at the end of his tenure. When all Lucky got after EFCC took him to court over financial malfeasance was a slap on the arm, Oshiomhole dragged him and his father to the court of public opinion. He alleged that “Igbinedion the son entered into agreement with Igbinedion the father, that the Central Hospital shall be reserved for medical students of Igbinedion University, Okada”, to the detriment of medical students of Edo State government-owned university. “So I revoked it and directed the commissioner to write to terminate the MoU and to demand that Igbinedion pay about N30 million per year for those periods and I directed he should be charged to court”, he had told a crowd of shouting students and marginalised Benin youths.

    “You are here looking for a small parcel of land and Lucky Igbinedion, former governor here gave out to his own father, Gabriel Igbinedion over 200,000 acres of government land.   They took that land on the ground that they will use it for mechanized farming but leased to cocoa farmers”, he had also alleged. And claiming “his motives are not personal but that he fights with clean conscience to secure the collective future of our people,” he reassured the crowd the allocation had been revoked.

    Then Oshiomhole, rolled the battle tanks to Ilorin, capital of Kwara, controlled as a personal fiefdom by Saraki the father for over 50 years before it was ceded to Saraki the son following his father’s death.  Saraki who had secured about 100,000 votes to win the Kwara Central senatorial seat by his own confession admitted trading his APC party’s victory to the opposition PDP in order to secure the senate presidency seat.  In that position, he held the nation to ransom for close to four years.

    Saraki who had had all his battles fought for him got the first shock when Oshiomhole as APC chairman, issued him a query and threatened him with impeachment. Speaking later of the Tsunami tides that finally swept Saraki away, Oshiomhole said “We went to Kwara, we did ‘otoge’ (Enough is enough). “As a senate president, we uprooted him as a senator, we uprooted his nominee for governor and senators, while we were saying that we will impeach them, their people said they would rather bury them”.

    Then he crossed over to Imo State where he ended Governor Okorocha’s dream of establishing a dynasty in Imo Government House.  “What is painful”, Okorocha later lamented, “is that Adam Oshiomhole that I literarily put into this position…has become part and parcel of this high level of conspiracy to bring down Rochas politically”.

    In Ogun State, Amosun was the lord of the manor. He disallowed candidate Abiodun from campaigning in Abeokuta where his supporters also disrupted President Buhari’s campaign rally. He, according to Oshiomhole, prevented his preferred aspirant from “participating in the primaries organised by the working committee; picked himself as a senate candidate to replace the incumbent, picked the governorship candidate and his deputy, the next speaker and deputy speaker, and declared that of the eight House of Representatives members, seven will not return. Oshiomhole taught him a lesson in humility.

    But of all his wars and victories, last week’s victory over those Bola Tinubu the national leader of APC claimed launched an attack “solely because they perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions” was in my opinion the sweetest.  The battle was tough and viciously fought by those whose toes Oshiomohole had stepped on in the process of doing the right thing.  And Chris Ogiemwonyi, former Minister of Works and a supporter of Oshiomhole believes “the comrade is a victim of doing the right thing.”

    I consider the victory the sweetest because the triumph of forces of evil against truth, fairness and justice constitute the twin evils fueling our crisis of nation-building since electoral contest took root in our country in the 1920s except for the brief period of Macaulay’s NNDP control of elective positions between 1923 and 1939. Even then, experts including James Coleman reminded us those elections were not contested on the basis of ethnic representation and that Macaulay and his contemporaries, like John Payne Jackson, Egerton Shyngle, C C Adeniyi Joes J C Zizer although accepted Lagos and Yoruba as their homes, saw themselves as Africans fighting white racism and were in fact opposed to territorial nationalism.

    Our nightmare started in 1941 when the contest was between Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw and Akinsanya an Ijebu. Awo and his group had supported the former on principle because of NYM constitutional provisions.  Zik along with his Igbo supporters pulled out of NYM accusing Awo of tribalism.

    In 1952 Awo and his colleagues mobilized their people to prevent Zik who had a few years earlier publicly said something to the effect that the “god of Africa had ordained the Igbo people as natural ruler of Africa” from becoming premier of the West in the circumstances where a northerner was presiding over the affairs of the North and an easterner, the East. For the forces against truth, fairness and justice, Zik was cheated out of power in the West by Awo who they claim instituionalised tribal politics in Nigeria.

    In 1962, Premier S. L. Akintola was constitutionally removed from office for anti-party activities, a decision upheld by the Privy Council, the highest judicial body in the country back then. But NPC and NCNC coalition partners imposed an illegal state of emergency on the West, put Awo in detention, and returned Akintola to power without election at the end of the emergency.

    Up to the 1958 independence conference in London, Awo stood by ethnic nationalities fighting for self-actualization. But while in prison in 1963, forces against truth, fairness and justice joined hands to carve Mid-West (23.6%) out of the West leaving the North with its 45% minority and East with its 35%minority intact.

    Of course, APC like PDP has not met the aspirations of Nigerians, but the treatment for eye pain is not eye removal as President Buhari once said. Political parties are needed as tools for political socialization and as modernization agents. This is why I think  Oshiomhole’s victory over  those Tinubu claimed  “went to court knowing full well the party constitution prohibits such action” and those “individuals”, who are according to Ogiemwonyi “are for their selfish reasons ready to pull down an organisation the moment a leader does not do their bidding,” is a victory for the country.