The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Threat to our republic

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Nigeria is a republic. And sovereignty in a republic belongs to the people. The ruled within the republic expect their elected or appointed representatives to be guided by the rule of law.

    Unfortunately 57 years after Nigeria became one of the world 159 sovereign nations that go with the “republic’ prefix, President Buhari and some his political appointees have become the greatest threat to the survival of our republic.

    President Buhari who seems to be driven by messianic complex is hardly moved to action by public opinion. His administrative style, best described as “delegation by abdication” which allows his political appointees to operate in their own world does not help matter.

    We have therefore in a federal republic seen a minister of defence coming out to attribute the mindless killings of subsistence farmers on their lands by intra-national and international cross border herdsmen to the blocking of grazing route by federating states.

    We have seen an attempt to smuggle an indicted fugitive offender back into the bureaucracy. We have seen an abuse of   the Department of State Service (DSS), a security arm of the state by the president’s political appointees that hijacked and used it to invade the National Assembly chambers, desecrate hallow chambers of justice and undermine rule of law, the pillar of a republic.

    Tragically, everything is done in the name of President Buhari who sometimes forgets the buck stops at his table.

    And because of the president blind’s faith in the goodness of his political appointees, they on their part don’t think they are answerable to Nigerians whose taxes sustain them.

    Those who have kept Dasuki in detention for over three years despite judicial pronouncement did not even bother to proffer explanation for their perfidy or betrayal of our republic.

    For keeping Sowore, a social media tiger who lost woefully in the last presidential election in detention after securing a court bail, he became a rallying point for President Bhuhari’s domestic and international detractors. He was turned to an instant hero as a result of ineptitude and disloyalty of some people in government to our republic.

    Because of their folly, major Nigerian newspapers took turns to condemn President Buhari’s lawlessness and his administration’s assault on freedom and liberty of Nigerians. They in their different editorials waged a common war against government’s assault on rule of law.

    Civil society groups joined forces with the media, organizing protests and staging demonstrations in Abuja and other cities. International media and American State Department also joined the campaign against what was described as President ‘Buhari’s creeping dictatorship’.

    Through all this, The Attorney General and the Minister of Justice who has committed treachery against our republic kept on acting as if Nigeria is a private property of some people or a nation not governed by law.

    But last week, following the intervention of people described as the president’s “confidants, including governors and ex-security chiefs,” who reportedly pointed out the “political and international implications” of continued detention despite court’s ruling, Dasuki and Sowore were released by a presidential order. By ordering the immediate release of the duo in line with pre-existing judicial pronouncements, the president clearly understands Malami’s folly and betrayal of our republic may at the end define his presidency.

    Malami in a statement admitted directing “the State Security Services to comply with the order granting bail to the defendants and effect their release in line with the provisions of Sections 150(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), and in compliance with the bail granted to Col. Sambo Dasuki (Rtd) (as recently varied by the Court of Appeal) and the bail granted to Omoyele Sowore”.

    To confirm he was reluctantly carrying out an order, he added “Whilst the Federal High Court has exercised its discretion in granting bail to the defendants in respect of the charges against them, I am also not unmindful of the right of the complainant/prosecution to appeal or further challenge the grant of bail by the court having regards to extant legal provisions, particularly Section 169 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015.” Malami did not tell Nigerians while he did not take that route before the president’s action which was an expression of lack of confidence in his competence.

    Read Also: How we waged ‘Wetie’ crusade of the First Republic -Basorun

     

    Close observers of the presidency would have noticed that Shehu Garba, the president’s senior media adviser shares the same mindset with Malami. It was therefore not a surprise that like Malami, he in his own press release wants Dasuki and Sowore to regard their temporary relief a pyrrhic victory reminding them of existing provision that allows federal government to appeal against their release.

    On Sunday, Malami who had earlier claimed the decision to release them was necessitated by compliance with the bail granted the duo by the court without telling Nigerians why the court order had been met in default for over three years in the case of Dasuki and four months in the case of Sowore said “the release of the duo was not due to pressure but was done out of compassion.”

    Abubakar Mallami was undoubtedly on top of his games.  But even Nigerians are suffering from collective amnesia, they live in Nigeria and not on planet Mars.

    In all this, I think the greatest loser is President Buhari whose presidency at the end may be defined by the follies of those who many suspected serve as fifth columnist in his administration.

    It was only last Monday Kogi State’s Governor Bello reacting to to those who describe President Muhammadu Buhari as a dictator said “Mr. President is the most democratic president I have ever seen.

    This is the first time we are seeing a former military head of state that is so democratic to the extent of allowing things happening in his home front to be democratized”.

    While this might resonate well with Nigerians who could recollect Buhari’s predisposition to his loss of three presidential elections that went up to the appeal court or the hijacking of his APC victory by Saraki and Ekwerenmadu in 2015 while trying to advertise his democratic credentials  by not interfering in the election of principal officers of the National Assembly, it will not resonate with victims of abuse of rule of law and Nigerians who feel diminished by government assault on rule of law under the leadership of minister of justice Malami in the last five years.

    With the over-ruling of Malami, by an embarrassed President Buhari whose own democratic credential is in tatters, if it were to be in other climes he would have resigned honourably.

    But as with DSS recruitment scandal, the Dubai misadventure and Maina scandal, Abubakar Malami will stay on inflicting more injuries on President Buhari’s administration and more assault on sensibilities of Nigerians.

  • If fathers build and sons destroy…

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    Fathers earn and sons spend. Moguls acquire and sons deplete. Pacesetters in politics, arts and business hack their way through mortal wilderness to acclaim. They forge their path to identity, amassing fortunes and a name that they bequeath to heirs. The latter, having it all, however, suffer the burden of freedom.

    Freedom binds them to the slaughterhouse of choice. Where they make the right choices, they soar into trance and society salts the earth they walk upon. If condemned to wrong choices, freedom chillingly shut their eyes to the truthful and humane, in a deadly game of blindman’s bluff.

    In the latter scenario, ignorance becomes Eden and the sanctuary of heirs, where too many sons of famous fathers become spendthrifts, alcoholics, drug addicts, dilettantes. They deplete what their fathers procured.

    The son, often heir to fortune on a silver platter, has nothing to measure or be measured against, except the accomplishments of his father – most of which gets squandered.

    Fathers build and sons destroy. But not every child depletes what his father built. A generation may forcefully reinvent itself out of the declining fortunes of its forbears.

    The current generation of youth, for instance, could recreate the Nigerian dream from its deplorable state as the fantasy of thieves, looters and blinkered murderers into a progressive, realistic and awe-inspiring vista.

    To do, so we must rid our souls of moral lesions, conflict and contradictions; we must quit being shameless and grand in disarray.

    We could start by substituting the lowliness of our mental skies for the bold flying of progressive mental kites.

    We must redefine consciousness and progress to mean a lot more than random irresponsible sex, shortcut to wealth, cutthroat politics, degenerate sexuality, interminable gender wars, and corrupted sociology funded by NGOs and advanced by modern feminism.

    To achieve this, we must decisively change the thrust of scholarship and learning in the country, from the primary through the secondary and tertiary school levels.

    The consequences of our dysfunctional public education system and the shallow, over-priced private education sector are coming home to roost. We are afflicted by a youth divide comprising individuals whose education was corrupted from an early age by a lethargic system continually playing catch up with the rest of the world.

    Ultimately, the Nigerian system teaches scholars to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. The learner becomes adept, writes Richard Hoggart, at a technique of acquiring facts. He learns how to receive a purely literate education, using only a small part of his personality and challenging only a limited area of his being.

    He begins to see life as a ladder, as a permanent examination with some praise and some further exhortation at each stage. He becomes an expert imbiber and doler-out; his competence will vary, but will rarely be accompanied by genuine enthusiasm.

    Such a student rarely feels the reality of knowledge, of other men’s thoughts and imaginings, on his own pulses. He has something of the blinkered pony about him; sometimes he is trained by those who have been through the same regimen, who are hardly unblinkered themselves, and who praise him in the degree to which he takes comfortably to their blinders.

    This is hardly a fruitful way to proceed in the world we despise, in pursuit of the future of our dreams.

    Many yearn for a better tomorrow but we have “today” and fail to make the best of it. The Nigerian tragedy persists because it is a human tragedy and not a quirk interred in some mythical ‘system.’

    Some Nigerians are beasts in the closet. Left to their devices, they display unforgivable inhumaneness and lack of character. Nigeria still reels from the shock of the dastardly murder of Favour Daley-Oladele, 22, who was decapitated and had parts of her eaten up by her supposed boyfriend, Owolabi Adeeko and his mum, in fulfillment of a money-making ritual. Of course, the Adeekos and their spiritual father, Pastor Segun Phillip, are ‘ordinary people.’ You could hardly ascribe such grotesqueness to them, close up, or from a distance.

    Of course, Owolabi is hardly the poster image of the Nigerian youth but he projects the burgeoning mentality driving hordes of Nigerian terrorists, kidnappers, advance fee fraudsters (Yahoo Boys), call girls, armed robbers and political thugs in their youth.

    We were wrong to think it a matter of years and decades that we would improve in humaneness  and insight. We pride ourselves on our education but fail to understand that true knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of kindness, truth, hope, superior culture, humaneness and progress to every segment of the human race: the rich and poor, old and young, male and female, weak and strong, literate and unschooled,

    We forget too that the true essence of learning, that is, both intellectual and vocational learning, is never simply to teach breadwinning, furnish teachers for the public schools or be an epitome of polite society. It should above all be the appendage of that fine adjustment between reality and the growing knowledge of life. An adjustment which discovers the secret of civilization and the solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

    Du Bois writes that the final product of learning must be neither a medical doctor nor journalist but a man. A full man to be precise.

    To make such men, our learning process must be borne of ideals and inspiring ends of living. Not desperate, sordid, money-grabbing sound bites. The end product of our educational process must have learnt to work for the glory of his calling, not simply for pecuniary gains. The intellectual must think for truth and progress, not for fame or the applause of the gallery.

    Its about time we evolved useful knowledge and a culture beneficial to all. Until we attain a broad, busy abundance of such understanding, not all the finest flavours of the proverbial national cake – be they oven-baked or sand-baked – can save us from our lusts and the affliction by the predatory ruling class.

    Currently, we suffer the lack of honest and broadly cultured men. Patience, humility, good breeding and taste. Comprehensive high schools and kindergartens, universities and polytechnics, industrial and technical colleges, teacher training colleges, literature, tolerance and tact – all these spring from proper learning and culture.

    We cannot achieve these overnight, however. If we must elect the fine women and men, borne of catholicity of will and conduct, we should begin the process by which they would emerge right now.

    It’s about time we engaged in pursuit and dissemination of knowledge devoid of loose and careless logic, like the type that produced and still produce a good number of the Nigerian electorate and ruling class.

    The Kingsley Moghalus, Omoyele Sowores and the Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) collective must rise from the ashes of their dormant platforms to re-engage with the citizenry. Beyond their hastily convened townhall meetings, corny platitudes and revolutionary chants at election time, the status quo offers them wonderful opportunities to reconnect with the youth, academia, pensioners and market women of the sidewalk, among other broad segments of the electorate in realistic terms.

    Its 2020 and about time they stopped trumpeting off the failings of the incumbent ruling class and get actively involved in addressing our social crisis, outside lethargic perimeters of thought.

    The following are suggestions by which they could engage with the rest of us…

     

  • Merry Christmas and Happy new year

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    As we celebrate the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ may the peace and goodwill associated with the day radiate to all our people in this country and to mankind worldwide.

    May rivers of peace and prosperity flow into our individual lives so that we can again have a country that we used to know in our youth.

    In those days we used to travel to our towns and villages to be with our loved ones and the extended families. Alas ! those days are gone because of fear of kidnappers, killers ,herders and highway robbers.

    Christmas was first celebrated in Rome about 336 AD but did not become a major Christian festival until the 9th century.Christmas has evolved overtime from an embrace and incorporation of two pagan traditions of the Germanic and Nordic Yule and the Roman Saturnalia which were celebrations of  the winter Solstice of revelry involving eating ,drinking and giving of gifts in midwinter in both Northern Europe and the Roman Empire .

    The introduction of Christmas trees was  a unique German tradition which has now spread to the whole world . There is evidence to suggest that our Lord Jesus Christ was born in early spring and not winter but that the early missionaries in Europe took over the pagan celebrations  of Yule and Saturnalia and imposed the birth of Jesus on them for the purpose of conversion of European pagans to Christianity.

    Whether Jesus Christ was born in early Spring or midwinter is immaterial and insignificant. What is important is the arrival of God in human body which is central to Christianity not the date of the birth of Christ. December 25 is the symbolic date of the birth of Christ and indeed christians celebrate the  birth  of Jesus everyday.

    To Christians worldwide ,it is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that gives us the hope of a life hereafter for those who believe  that Jesus is the son of God and part of the indivisible Trinity of God the father , the son and the Holy Spirit  , three in one , a concept which cannot be easily grasped by ordinary mortals .

    Today  Christmas is celebrated everywhere in the world even among non Christians .This is the danger that this religious mass ( Mass of Christ) faces because of its commercialization. It is now more Associated with shopping, parties and exchange of gifts than the solemnity the birth of our Lord deserves .

    Thank God Easter has not been as commercialized as Christmas because that would have been a tragedy. The United States of America  ,the heartland of capitalism ,has even gone further in its political correctness to celebrate at the same time of Christmas an eight day  Jewish celebrations of Hanukkah, from December 22nd to 30th December commemorating the rededication during the second century B.C of the second Temple in Jerusalem where according to legend ,Jews had risen up against their Greek- Syrian oppressors in  the Maccabean Revolt .

    African – Americans will not be left behind they also celebrate KWANZAA from December 26 to January 1 to honour African heritage. It is obvious that Christmas has not only been commercialized in the United States,it has also been politicized .

    Since American culture is globally dominant , I can foresee their idiosyncratic celebrations  of these three distinct festivals spreading to many parts of the world particularly to Europe and Africa.

    The idea of Santa Klaus riding on a convoy of  Reindeers and coming down through the chimneys bearing presents to children is a western innovation to the Christmas feast .

    One of my grand children was worried about her grandpa not receiving his gifts because there is no snow in Nigeria for reindeers to travel on ! I wonder which part of the Christmas story resonates with my grandchildren ,whether the birth of Jesus Christ or the Santa Klaus bringing gifts .

    I remember contributing to this myth when my children were young and when I was living in Canada and America. The tradition of  Christmas tree in my house continued while home in Nigeria and did not cease until the passing into glory of  Abiodun my wife .

    Today Christmas to me is just another day to remember how God in his infinite wisdom and mystery came down enveloped in a human body to reconnect with fallen humanity through the eventual sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a  propitiation  for mankind’s manifold sins .

    In other words we should celebrate Christmas and Easter everyday at least in our minds and in our character of showing humility characteristic of Jesus’ birth and sacrifice symbolized by his death and the triumph of his resurrection.

    When I was young Christmas was a Major feast  in Nigeria. In Ekiti in those days ,we abandoned our perennial dish of pounded yam and bush meat for rice and chicken .

    Read Also: Christmas: Pope defends migrants, seeks peace

     

    Like Indians we ate the rice with our hands not with forks and knives , of course later we started using table spoons . When the chicken was served , we children ate the heads , wings ,feet and toes .

    The parents who actually did not need to eat too much meat since they had stopped growing told the children that the better parts of the chicken belonged to the older members of the families and if young people ate too much meat they will become thieves as adults especially if and when they could not afford to buy chicken.

    There is probably some logic in their reasoning ! We ate rice on such big occasions  like Christmas not like now when our country is addicted to imported rice from the Americas and Asia . In those halcyon days we ate what we grew . When we ate rice it came from Nupeland , Abakaliki and from Igbemo in Ekiti.

    Later upland rice was grown in what is now Effon and Ekiti West . Rice is still grown in these places today and if there were  correct and sufficient inputs the productivity of the farmers can be increased to satisfy local needs .

    In those days it was obligatory for our parents to buy shoes and clothes for us  and if not many children took ill .I remember our clothes were sewn by local tailors. Sometimes we deployed ourselves like troops around tailors to ensure they did not disappoint us .

    No children would follow their parents to church in old clothes no matter how new and fashionable they were . It was a psychological thing .

    Christmas also marked the end of the academic year and kids who did well and were promoted to the next class had double reasons to celebrate. During the festive  season children also visited their parents’ friends to collect gifts and to join in the merrymaking.

    Our Muslim friends and relations were not left out in the joy of Christmas just as they did  not leave us out of their celebrations of Id -el  Adha ( Ileya) .In some places children put on masques to dance around like in Brazilian carnival.

    This may be the impact of Afro – Brazilian returnees to places like Lagos and Abeokuta which then eventually diffused culturally to other parts of yorubaland .Carols were and are still sung in Orthodox Churches and even the Pentecostal churches that did not celebrate Christmas have now begun to have Christmas carols just to join the merry making .

    But they do not have special masses as in the Orthodox Churches . The Redeemed Christian Church of God , one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Nigeria use the time of Christmas festivities to embark on “ fishing for men” that is embarking on evangelization among non Christians .

    Just as in the western world Christmas is seen as time for family reunion. In Nigeria people travel long  and dangerous journeys  because of bad roads to be with their families.

    Some whose families are spread all over the world travel out to meet their children and grand children. For the old and elderly and particularly widows and widowers ,Christmas can  be really lonely ,and it si incumbent on Christians to remember such people and extend the hands of Christian fellowship in remembrance of the humble beginning of the baby Jesus. I say again to all who follow me on this column.

    Merry Christmas and happy new year in advance .

  • Nigeria and Vision 2020

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    VISION is not all about the ability to see the future and tell people which seeds will grow and which ones will not. But where people talk about vision these days what comes to mind is what the future holds for them.

    The Bible talks about vision so that we can have a direction in life. ”Without a vision”, it says,”the people perish”. The difference between the successful and the slothful is the ability to dream big.

    They go further to think of how to achieve their dreams. The vision is to achieve the goal they set for themselves. Few years ago, Nigeria set a goal for itself to be among the first 20 economies in the world by the year 2020.

    In six days, we will be in 2020,  but are we near achieving that vision? As good as the 20:2020 dream is, it has not been pursued with the seriousness it deserves. It was a lofty idea borrowed from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    IFPRI launched the 2020 initiative in 1993 at a time of growing worldwide complacency about international food security issues.

    Twenty-six years down the line, food security remains an issue across the world, especially in Africa, where poverty has become a way of life.

    When the Federal Government came up with its Vision 2020, it set dates for attaining this dream. It also raised some organs to work towards making the dream a reality.

    Just as our leaders  set 2000 as the magical year for ”housing for all”, 2020 also has that magical halo around it as the year Nigeria will join the world’s top 20 economies

    These organs are National Council on Vision 2020 headed by the President; National Steering Committee comprising 70 persons from the public and private sectors; National Technical Working Group made up of 20 – 25 experts in specific thematic areas from the public and private sectors; Stakeholder Development Committee consisting of state governments, federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and other key institutions and the Economic Management Team which constitutes the think-tank to drive the process.

    A solid foundation was expected to be laid for 20:2020 under stage one of the scheme between 2008 and 2010. Under stage two, the millennium development goals (MDGs) were to be achieved between 2011 and 2015 en route to Vision 2020 and Nigeria is expected to become a top 20 economy by 2020 between 2015 and 2020 under stage three. 2020 is at hand.

    Will Nigeria join the top 20 economy club in 2020? Nigerians will know in the next 12 months how much their leaders have put in, in the past five years to attain this height.

    Politically, 2020 promises to be interesting. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are battling with internal crises.

    APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole and the governor of his home state Godwin Obaseki who he anointed to succeed him are no longer seeing face to face.

    Obaseki wants Oshiomhole out of office. There are words that Oshiomhole too may not support his ‘wayward’ political son for second term in the forthcoming election in the state. Will Oshiomhole survive the onslaught from Obaseki, Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), amomg others? Will Obaseki get a second term ticket? Will the Ahmad Lawan committee reconcile them before much damage is done to the party? We will know in the new year.

    As it is in Edo, so it is in Ondo where Governor Rotimi Akeredolu and his deputy Agboola Ajayi are engaged in a battle of wits. Ajayi plans to challenge his boss for the top job in the forthcoming election.

    Read Also: Govt to scale up implementation of Vision 2020 ‘Right to Sight’

     

    Will he have his way or will his governor beat him to the ticket? Will the infighting in APC not cost the party Edo and Ondo in the forthcoming governorship polls? Does PDP, which also has its own palaver, have what it takes to take both states from APC? Can PDP Chairman Uche Secondus lead his party to take over these states or will he fall to the forces pushing for his ouster?

    Some other things expected to be done in the magical year 2020 are eradication of polio, measles and other childhood-killer diseases.

    Then, the first landing ship tank in 40 years will berth in Nigeria. What will make the people happy most in 2020 will be the rescue of Leah Sharibu, the girl, who was abducted from her school along with 109 others on February 19, 2018. Others have since been released.

    But she is still being held because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. Will government get her out in 2020? It will be the greatest news of the year if it does. Happy New Year Nigeria.

  • Defective mothers, damaged nation (2)

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    An encounter with Taiwo Ajai-Lycett is awe-inspiring, for only a woman cast in her mould could uninhibitedly play the role of mother and godmother to the son and grandchildren of a man who subjected her to physical and sexual violence.

    Only a woman like her could survive the trauma of rape by ‘simply moving on.’ Although she doesn’t approve of rape, she hadn’t the nerve to turn what happened to her into a performance theatre for the police, wolfish ‘friends’ and women’s rights activists to exploit. She hadn’t the nerve to ‘bare it all’ on social media while shopping for sympathy and marketable grief.

    “When you are able to understand that its not about you, you move beyond past and present hurt, and then you are approaching freedom. You become fully grown. The universe gives you whatever you need to grow, and I am not talking in terms of material things. I would rather build than destroy and leave the universe to judge,” she said.

    Indeed, she is all about building worlds. In her neighbourhood, she helps families grow. She is an enabler, who doesn’t focus solely on women. She extends her humaneness to both gender and the family.

    For instance, she offered for free, part of her residential space for neighbourhood carpenters to practice their craft. It was her way of ensuring that they are employed and able to cater for the needs of their families.

    She said, “I know it’s not easy being a man, particularly in contemporary Nigeria. They needed that space and I gave it to them as long as they kept it clean.” Ajai-Lycett counsels young couples to make beneficial choices. She urges young men, wearied by toil, vicissitudes and age, to support the dreams of their wives. Where need be, she supports their families financially. Thus everybody calls her ‘mummy’ in celebration of her nurturant role.

    If Ajai-Lycett is a feminist, she projects that brand of African feminism that developed outside sullied and biased academia. She practices feminism in which the inclusion of men and women is evident, in the nurturing of family across social, economic, and political strata.

    Her brand of feminism, as Awapa would say, is about people, their children, their work, their day to day experiences, their stories of the past and hopes for the future. It fosters the participation of women in placing the food on the table. It is a brand of feminism that complements and humanises the patriarchy.

    Far from her Eden, however, misandry eats deep into the contemporary female psyche, like a virus. It corrupts the middle-aged and young adult female, and burrows deeper, infecting 13 and 14-year-olds. ‘Modern’ teens at 15 through 20, swim in the slurry of misandry, slurping it all up even as they flounder amid its infinite storms. It is the point at which they discover and authoritatively declare on social media that “All men are scum,” among other obscenities.

    By age 21 through 30, they hasten through various stages of awareness, confusedly, embracing furry anti-male slogans, weaponising felt and ‘unfelt’ grief into savage animosity towards men.

    Yet they need men to fulfill random impulses thus social media becomes their performance theatre, where they share everything online, mostly of a sexual nature, in a no-holds-barred fashion.

    A popular misandrist, for instance, loves to post the adventures of her soul as she masturbates, on Facebook. She brags about her capacity to attain mind-blowing orgasms and denounces the existence of God in the same breadth. She recounts with relish how she screams to taunt her very religious siblings and extended family, in the heat of a squirt.

    She condemns adultery but boasts about flirting and sleeping around with other women’s husbands. Last year, she got pregnant for a supposedly perfect hunk, who identified with her misandrist ideologies. The latter, she bragged, begged to be with her knowing she could only offer him an “open marriage.”

    Unknown to her, her perfect beau simply belted out notes he knew she loved to hear. He was the liberal, alpha feminist male, who joined her in scoffing at ‘chauvinistic’ men, online and offline, while raiding her secret places.

    Her gravest mistake was getting pregnant for him. Like this curious character, many a misguided female shops for non-committal sex with random boys and men on social media. She brags about how many ‘oafs’ and ‘scums’ she had bedded and kicked out of her door following random, passionless sex at the back of her ‘personal car,’ her ‘personal sofa’ and ‘six-foot bed’ in her ‘personal apartment.’

    If she gets pregnant, she either terminates it or keep the baby. Either way, she becomes very bitter, slipping into default modes: ‘spiritually embittered’ or the ‘sapiosexual’ man-hating feminist, who lives by her own terms and ‘does not give a hoot what anyone thinks.’

    Innately she craves for someone to love and trust. Outwardly, she seeks solace in bitter and ‘daring’ feminist literature. She would probably write a daring, ‘feminist’ novel or think-piece that gets celebrated among her herd.

    Far from the glitter of acclaim, however, she is just some weak, needy girl craving a man’s love and attention. Sometimes, she chooses to experiment and runs into the arms of a fellow woman or girl, justifying her lesbianism by the claim that men can’t just get her off.

    From frolicking with fellow vixens, she moves on to bored housewives or married women who flirt with her on their digital devices from the confines of their offices and homes. Eventually, the latter find her boring, her touches, gross, and her rant too repetitive and a middling kind of brainy. Then they run back to their husbands whom they never left for her anyway.

    At this juncture, she realises that it is only on the pages of feminist literature and misandrist fairy tales that married women ditch their husbands to marry or move in with lesbian, feminist lovers, no matter how earth-shattering their joint orgasms are.

    She hovers around 35 to 40 years of age at this period. Forty creeps on her while she is busy posting anti-male messages on Facebook and Twitter; and penning yet another feminist-lit blockbuster.

    But where she attains no literary or artistic renown, she simply fades frustrated, into her life’s eternal midnight.

    Eventually, she finds Jesus. She finds Allah (SWT). She discovers sudden wisdom in religious scriptures that she hitherto pilloried as too anti-feminist and pro-patriarchy. She has no more use for tired slogans and banal anger. Most of her peers are now quietly married away and severing connection with her kind. She begins to covet the marital securities and stability that she scorned in her youth.

    She realises that she had gone through life on the wrong track. She finds that she was never created to compete with man but to complement him – as he was created to complement her.

    She tries to live again but its too late. She discovers that she had actually been enjoying for hours, her 15 minutes of fame. The truth dawns on her in a moment of eternal damnation. Her orchestra is done playing and it’s time to exit the stage.

  • The hatemongers

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    THE National Assembly is to make laws for the general well-being of the people and also act as a check on the executive. As the most important arm of government, the legislature is the hope of any nation.

    It feels the people’s pulse and makes laws to make life comfortable for them. Legislators are not called the people’s representatives for nothing.

    They are so called because they are closer to the people. This closeness should be an advantage in law making, but it is not in our clime.

    Rather, the lawmakers abuse this closeness and become law unto themselves once they get into office. The constituents who they courted before their election suddenly become their foes that they shut their doors against.

    The lawmaking process has not been what it should be because legislators are far removed from their people to really know what they want.

    A lawmaker who wishes to make his mark will live and work for his constituents and not against them. Lawmaking is not all about buying grinding machines, motorcycles, generators, JAMB, WAEC and NECO forms for indigent pupils. No, lawmaking is much more than that.s

    Lawmaking is to ensure that laws are in place to enable the executive do its job of providing all these and other social amenities for the people.

    But many of our legislators now see themselves more as members of the executive than the legislature. So, they want to compete with the executive in providing social amenities for the people.

    Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that a legislator should not help the needy in his constituency.

    The point being made is that they should not turn this to their main job at the expense of making laws that will make life more meaningful for the people.

    Yes, there may be pressure from their constituents, which in many instances they brought upon themselves ab initio.

    They do most of these things because of their promise to the electorate during campaign. They forget that running for a seat in the legislature is different from aspiring to be in the executive.

    Read Also: Senate and Hate-speech Bill

     

    We do not only need voter education, but also tutorials on democracy for many of those aspiring to lead us. If you ask many of our lawmakers the purpose of their being in the legislature, they do not know.

    So, if a man does not know why he is in the legislature, how will he know the kind of laws to work on for the benefit of his constituents.

    What then is the need of the Hate-Speech Bill now before the National Assembly? Of what benefit will it be to the people, if passed into law? The National Assembly is just being afraid of its shadow.

    We do not need a hate-speech law. How will it better the lives of people in Kaura Namoda, Daura, Michika, Ada, Jagbe, Nsukka, Etinan and such other places that may not be found on the map?

    The National Assembly is interested in this bill for selfish reasons. It wants to use it to protect itself from criticisms.

    But can you occupy public office and run away from criticism? It is not possible. Unfortunately, it is being helped in this adventure by the executive.

    What is hate speech in saying that ‘’my representative is not serving me well’’ and then mobilise others to recall him.We are faced with this situation because our lawmakers do not like to hear the truth.

    To them, the truth is hate speech. I am pained that a law like this was initiated under an administration which the people believed would be tolerant of all views, no matter how harsh.

    Senate President Ahmad Lawan was not saying anything new when he said the people will decide whether or not they want the hate-speech law.

    The people have long decided that they do not want such a law and you will soon be confronted with the cold, hard fact at the public hearing, if it is not stage managed to achieve a predetermined purpose.

    Criminalising hate speech when there are laws in the statute books to take care of such matters does not portray our lawmakers as serious. Why are they more interested in protecting themselves and other high up instead of the commoners?

    The sponsor of the bill, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, having seen the groundswell of opposition against his proposal for the death penalty for offenders, has promised to remove that harsh punishment.

    The best thing for him to do is to simply withdraw the bill. But he will not. He and his ilk are planning to have their way at the public hearing on the bill, which may be organised to shut out those opposed to it.

    For sure, they will plant their own men at the hearing to argue why the bill should be passed.

    A warning though. The Senate should not test the people’s will by holding a sham public hearing in order to have its way on this bill.

    Getting people from some ministries, departments and agencies to speak in support of the bill, without allowing the civil society organisations and rights activists to have their say will not augur well for the polity.

    To get as many people as possible to speak against the bill is not a problem. The issue, Mr Senate President, is will they be allowed to present their case?

    Those behind this bill, I daresay, are actually hatemongers. What they are doing now, if they do not know is hate-mongering.

    They cannot deny people their constitutional right to freedom of expression by slapping them with a law that even in closed nations does not have a place.

    What the people want now is more openness and freedom, and not to be pigeon-holed by those they voted into office.

  • Oshiomhole vs Obaseki the dearth of democratic ethos

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Democracy has its own ethos. As a representative or majoritarian rule, character, or what Aristotle described as ‘balance between passion and caution” of political actors is important if democracy is to be anything other than the tyranny of the majority.

    For democracy to thrive therefore, political actors must be committed to a set of ideals. Unfortunately for us our political space has been largely populated since independence in 1960 by political actors without character.

    But it should be a relief if it is understood that by the very nature of man coupled with  today’s unbridled individualism, men of character are in short supply everywhere.

    In fact it was for this reason that when democracy became an idea some three hundred years ago, philosopher Michel de Montaigne according to James Kloppenburg’s ‘Toward Democracy’, rejected democracy saying he did not believe ordinary people were capable of the self-restraint democracy required.

    The ongoing Oshiomhole and Obaseki feud must therefore be seen as a symptom of our crisis of democracy- a new value system we embraced without its ethos.

    The feud also has a parallel with what happened in the old western region between Awolowo and Akintola and during Obasanjo and Atiku in the fourth republic, when men generally regarded as patriots rose to power exploiting democracy as a process for attaining power only to undermine democratic ideals in other to cling to power either by resorting to violence or by engineering constitutional amendments.

    Awolowo had preferred Rotimi Williams or Anthony Enahoro to Akintola as successor in 1959 but gave in to party supremacy.

    But Akintola was to ignore the democratic ethos by refusing to step down following his constitutional removal by the same party.

    He instead sought and got the help of coalition partners who were desperate to settle scores with their political opponent to interfere in the affairs of a federating region in breach of the constitution.

    Realising his vulnerability in the parliament, as soon as motion for vote confidence was raised, Akintola’spocket of supporters led by Chief Remi fani Kayode resorted to violence, throwing chairs indiscriminately, an excuse the federal government needed to declare state of emergency in the west.

    At the end of the illegal emergency, Awo remained  incarcerated while Akintola was installed Premier without election.

    Nigeria judiciary upheld Akintola’s decision to undermine the democratic ethos that aided him in his rise to power.

    Even when the Privy Council, the them highest judicial body in the land upturned the victory Akintola secured through Nigerian court, it was a pyrrhic victory as political actors without character passed a retroactive law to make the privy council’s ruling unenforceable.

    We have no evidence Obaseki loves Edo state less than Oshiomhole, his god father who in 2016 used power of incumbency to impose him at the expense of other APC stalwarts such as Chris Ogiemwonyi(former minister of state for works) former army general Gen.

    Charles Arihiavbare and former deputy governor, Dr. Pius Odubu. If anything, Oshiomhole attested to Obaseki’s passion for Edo. Asked by reporters on October 24 2016 the reason for his blind faith in Obaseki, Oshiomhole had said Obaseki was “more competent than him and would bring more development to Edo”.

    Reporters are known to be cynical. One had asked how he would take betrayal by Obaseki if that ever happened. He shot back “I have no interest to be betrayed”, adding “I am not the state; I am only one out of about four million Edo people. So his obligation and his loyalty should be to the people of Edo State.”

    Today, with his second term bid threatened, Obaseki is on the offensive. He started by first removing the only commissioner his estranged god-father nominated to his cabinet.

    Read Also: Edo APC crisis: Oshiomhole’s faction dares Obaseki

     

    Attempt has also been made by Obaseki through his media adviser, Taiwo Akerele to rubbish some of the projects Oshiomhole initiated.

    Obaseki as a good student of Nigerian politic has refined Akintola’s 1962 strategies thereby foreclosing the possibility of being impeached by Edo House of Assembly.

    Represented in Abuja by a PDP senator and PDP member of the lower house, Obaseki understands he has a week political base and has decided to take the bull by the horn.

    The Clerk of Edo House of Assembly, Yahaya Omogbai, was said to have ushered seven members in a house of 24 laws makers-elect into the chamber at midnight and read out the Obaseki’s letter of proclamation with which Honourable Frank Okiye the governor’s anointed candidate for speaker was elected.

    With that coup, it has been victory after victory for Governor Godwin Obaseki.

    Following The Senate and the House of Representatives resolutions on the findings of committees led by Senator Sabiu  Aliyu Abdullahi and Honourable Abdulrazak Namdas for the respective chambers to invoke section 11, subsection 4 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria “In the event that a new proclamation is not issued as recommended within the period of three weeks”, Obaseki sought and got a relief from Justice Kolawole Omotosho’s Federal High Court Abuja.

    The national assembly was told “it could not compel Obaseki to issue another proclamation within the lifespan of an existing proclamation”.

    The court also ruled “NASS lacked the power to take over the functions of Edo Assembly or any other state House of Assembly in the country”.

    Beyond judiciary victories, Obaseki is consolidating his otherwise unassailable position by befriending the erstwhile political enemies of his estranged god-father.

    Thus after attributing the underdevelopment of Edo until 20006 to “non-state actors empowered by political class, collecting revenues as an alternative government and constituted themselves into an army that were used for political activities”, Obaseki who also confirmed his government is training 4000 youths to provide security in the state has decided to partner with the same non- state actors as 2020 draws near.

    Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, the Esama of Bénin Kingdom and a chieftain of PDP  who was fought to a standstill by Oshiomhole for allegedly confiscating land and other resources of the state and whose son, Lucky Igbinedion, a two-term governor was indicted for financial crime against Edo state was at the government house to praise Obaseki  for his sterling performance. Chief Igbinedion thereafter endorsed Obaseki for a second term.

    Similarly Tom Ikimi a former PDP stalwart, who became a founding member of APC before retracing his way back to PDP, was reported to have visited Obaseki to discuss how his oil palm plantation could be supported.

    While endorsing Obaseki for a second term, Ikimi also lauded him for what he described as “the on-going development, especially in healthcare, education, infrastructure and housing across the state’

    Also on endorsement mission was Chief Osamede Adun, another PDP chieftain who hailed Obaseki for his “focus on infrastructure and development-oriented projects” after declaring ‘APC is my house.

    I went to PDP before, but I have come back to my house.’ Chief Adun’s motor park along the Oba Market government had before the visit ordered ‘must be removed’ because “it is built on a major drainage”.

    As these PDP stalwarts  and erstwhile powerful non-state actors were falling over each other to praise and endorse Obaseki for a second term, the Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Chris Nehikhare was blaming Obaseki for the “growing level of poverty, insecurity and unemployment” in Edo while alleging “commissioned” 5 star specialist hospital is still home to reptiles, Tayo Akpata University of Education, an unfulfilled political greek gift, College of Agriculture Ogierieki, a victim of policy lip-service, the gele gele sea port project is still a mirage and the industrial park is still at the MOU level”

    In an age of unbridled individualism when politics has become brinkmanship with unscrupulous political actors openly celebrating private affluence amidst public squalor, Obaseki is entitled to the choice he makes.

     

  • Sowore, the DSS and parody of valour

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    FOR several critics of President Muhammadu Buhari, citizenship pirouettes in polemics. But for Omoyele Sowore, the patience for passionate arguments has fizzled out.

    Like a situational hero sculpted of spunk and spittle, he invites the ambling spectator and spiritless wanderer to admire his votive rant against President Buhari’s administration, which he accuses of inefficiency and manipulation of the citizenry.

    Having lost his bid for the presidency, Sowore mooted the #RevolutionNow movement and fixed a date for what should be his epic protest. However, on the eve of the protest, operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) invaded his home and arrested him. Ever since, the publisher of Sahara Reporters, an online medium, has engaged in a bitter joust for his freedom.

    The DSS seeks to prosecute Sowore quoting his July 25, 2019 statement: “I’m not talking of protest. I’m embarking on revolution… Don’t tell me about legal implications or what a Judge will say. I don’t care.”

    Sowore’s plotting of his RevolutionNow took no cognizance of its likely fallout on the fragile peace and stability endured by millions of Nigerians. Would he have stayed back to own the chaos if miscreants and terrorists had seized his protest to foment a bloodbath? Or would he have fled back to his base in America?

    Sowore, who was charged with treasonable felony was released a day before his court hearing last week. However, DSS officials stormed the court premises to re-arrest him, sparking nationwide outrage and international criticism against the government.

    In Sowore’s defence, civil societies are angry. Even his critics are angry. They jointly condemn the DSS for being overzealous and desecrating Nigeria’s last bastion of justice and hope, the court of law.

    The DSS made a mess of things. And trust Sowore to make a fine pudding of the chaos. Whatever his shortcomings, the DSS has lionised Sowore. Its operatives have strengthened his claim to the status of ‘revolutionary hero,’ ‘justice advocate,’ and ‘political martyr.’

    The DSS’ re-arrest of Sowore undoubtedly bears strange fruit: Sowore has re-emerged a hero, at least on social media and international circuits, which runs contrary to the security outfit’s labelling of the 48-year-old.

    Of particular interest is a trending video in which Sowore’s supporters make a feverish scramble to protect him from the reach of invisible DSS operatives trying to whisk him away from the courtroom.

    While the DSS attracts flaks at home and abroad for its perceived misdemeanour, the service in a statement, argues, that, “in actual fact, it was his (Sowore’s) people who seized him…Eye witness and several media accounts have disclosed that the Court had adjourned peacefully without an untoward incident when suddenly the unruly crowd imported into the Courtroom went into frenzy on the mere suspicion that DSS was sighted at the court premises. The eventual re-arrest of Sowore by the DSS was effected outside the courtroom. His lead counsel has affirmed this.”

    Now that he has been re-arrested, what does the DSS seek to achieve? The security outfit must understand that prolonged incarceration of Sowore can only bolster his campaign; already, it has earned him a cult following, on and off the social media.

    President Buhari must also understand that even if his government succeeds in muzzling Sowore, it wouldn’t deter others from amplifying dissent. Dissent is a key component of every democracy.

    It becomes a key component of revolutionary calls when the gap between what people want, and indeed expect, and what they get manifests amid mounting scarcity, declining wages, joblessness, government insensitivity, and assaults on civil liberties. Amid the gloom, it was hardly surprising that the proposed social media bill which initially recommended the steep penalty of capital punishment for hate speech, incited outrage among the nation’s internet savvy youth and professional business class. It was no doubt a move rooted in conceit, intolerance and insensitivity to the people’s plight.

    The sudden transition to wealth and obscene living standards enjoyed by the Nigerian ruling class and anyone lucky enough to ascend the political ladder as a public officer equally incites the outrage of millions of Nigerians, youths in particular, who are forced to watch and endure the vulgar display of illegal acquisitions by their elected representatives.

    The Buhari government, like previous leadership, has continually skirted the issue of vulgar remuneration and privileges of lawmakers, the executive and the judiciary, thus incurring like previous administrations, an outrageous recurrent expenditure to the detriment of more crucial spending encompassing infrastructure, health, and education sectors.

    Although the government makes a spirited show of curtailing executive profligacy, occasionally jailing a convicted high profile treasury looter, this offers little conviction to the anti-Buhari movement.

    Nigerians, deprived of humane leadership and truth for too long, need earnest conviction about the selflessness, sensitivity and progressive intent of the incumbent ruling class. They are definitely not getting it thus the sporadic outbursts of temper, criticism and protest against President Buhari.

    Internal wranglings within his ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the gradual mutation of his wife, Aisha, into an increasingly vocal and relentless critic of his administration further aggravates discontent against his leadership.

    Enter Sowore’s #RevolutionNow and his frantic supporters. Amid the din of expletives and propaganda war, it’s difficult to separate the patriots from the anarchists, the wreckers from the builders.

    For instance, among them, we have a legal luminary who allegedly mutated from Buhari’s staunch supporter into his sworn enemy simply because Buhari failed to make him Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation. We have journalists and media editors who are embittered by Buhari’s refusal to ply them with pecuniary bribe and luscious contracts like they enjoyed in previous regimes.

    We have corrupt oil magnates, power-brokers, lobbyists and bank chiefs, for whom the incumbent government is everything but a bazaar.

    We have outright criminals including Yahoo Boys, corrupt bank chiefs, civil servants, political godfathers and hooligans for whom Buhari’s ‘tightfistedness’ and deployment of the EFCC manifests as “bad harvest.”

    In time, pro-government and RevolutionNow apologists would find that neither divide boasts saints or deities, just hustlers in familiar flesh.

    In the resultant hustle, epiphany is romanticised and personality ritualised. The forces re-enact the trite cult of sentimentality in reckless abandon. Its a prerequisite for wooing educated illiterates and the unthinking hordes of the social media to assimilate incendiary angst.

    This writer still hopes that Sowore, at his release, would quietly join brilliant minds and builders from the ill-fated Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) collective, and commit to a take-it-back styled movement, with greater purpose, maturity and unflagging spirit – within the rule of law.

    As the battle intensifies, neither the DSS nor Sowore, or their dedicated herds, emerge as the hero Nigeria deserves.

    The true heroes are the soldiers braving extreme heat and cold, sandstorms and landmines among other elements, daily, to repel terrorists we created from intruding the peace and freedoms we take forgranted.

    Just recently, a battle-weary army sergeant told me in the northeast theatre of war: “Here, when we read of our people’s bickering and hatred for each other on the social media, we ask ourselves, are these the people we are dying for? Is this the nation we are dying for?”

  • A time to speak out

     

    HERE is a time for everything under the sun. A time it was we were born and the time will come when we will be no more. So, whether we live or we die, we must fulfill that purpose of time and this can only be done when we are alive. It is when we are alive that we can commend or condemn. We praise those who are good; we condemn the bad.

    But whatever we do, one thing is constant: what is good is good and what is bad is bad. This is why the public rises as one to condemn what it considers bad and also praises what it considers good.

    On such occasions, it does not bode well for those known to be outspoken to keep quiet. In our society, we have men and women that are ready to confront those who misuse power.

    These people can be found in all walks of life. They are the ones who put those in power in check. Without them, many of our leaders would become dictators.

    At times, these people stray, but some of them quickly retrace their steps and remain relevant. Many of us know the story of the late Dr Olu Onagoruwa (SAN), who parted way with his friends in the human rights community in 1993 to serve in the Abacha junta.

    He shunned all entreaties not to serve in that regime, saying he was going there on a ‘’reform mission’’. Onagoruwa lived up to his promise. In 1994, he disowned the eight decrees issued by Abacha, saying he would not be a party to laws that ousted the courts’ powers.

    Not many of his colleagues, including those who condemned him for taking up the job of attorney-general and minister of justice under Abacha would have done what he did.

    It is now obvious that not many rights activists are in the mould of Onagoruwa. What happened at the Federal High Court in Abuja last Friday has shown that Onagoruwa towered above many of his associates who took him to the cleaners for serving in the Abacha regime.

    If Onagoruwa could risk his life and that of his family by repudiating the Abacha decrees, what will some so-called activists serving in the Buhari administration say is holding them back from condemning what happened last week at the Abuja court?

    Times like this separate the activists from the pretenders. You are not an activist just by shouting aluta! Anybody can do that. You are an activist when you rise to the occasion to condemn what is unjust and inequitable.

    An activist should know no friends or foes. His only focus should be justice and equity. What happened in Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu’s court was terrible and every rational person must condemn it and demand that those behind it be brought to justice.

    Was the invasion of Justice Ojukwu’s court the proper way for the Directorate of State Service (DSS) to rearrest Omoyele Sowore barely 24 hours after he was released on her ladyship’s order? Was the invasion organised?

    Who orchestrated it? Sowore and his lawyers are pointing fingers at the DSS, but the agency denies having anything to do with the invasion.

    It is hard to believe the DSS in this matter. Everything points to the fact that it knew about the incident. As the Yoruba will say, the baby died today, the witch cried yesterday, who does not know that the hag is behind the child’s death.

    There is a running battle of sorts between Sowore and DSS which arose over his RevolutionNow Campaign. The agency held on to Sowore for 140 days despite a court order that he should be released.

    It finally complied with that order last Thursday after Justice Ojukwu gave it 24 hours to release the online publisher or face her wrath.

    So, if Sowore and his lawyers are accusing the DSS of invading the court to get him, they are justified. Denying the claim, the DSS alleged that Sowore’s supporters mobbed him when he ran back into the court in a bid to shield him from ‘’an imaginary arrest’’.

    The agency added: ‘’A critical look at the videos in circulation would convince any objective viewer that there was no DSS personnel during the entire period the Sowore crowd acted out its orchestrated drama… and from the latest development, it has become obvious that it was meant…to serve a propagandist purpose as well as bring the Service to disrepute’’.

    The DSS boxed itself into a corner on this matter. It talked of ‘’an imaginary arrest’’. Was the agency not in the court to rearrest Sowore? If it was not there to rearrest him, what then was it doing in the court’s vicinity?

    Its story is hard to believe and that is why those who naturally would have supported it are condemning it for playing into the hands of the enemy as it were.

    The law is the law and you do not need to be aggressive to enforce it. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said as law enforcement agents, the DSS operatives are not above the law.

    Read Also: Reps to probe Sowore’s re-arrest

    It called for the prosecution of those involved in the incident. Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) Chairman Prof Itse Sagay (SAN) said Sowore’s rearrest looked bad on the surface because he was released a day earlier, adding: ‘’I feel Nigerians are entitled to an explanation. It’s not something you can do and keep quiet. It’s not alright. There’s something wrong in that…”

    Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has also spoken his mind. Giving reasons for not attending the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism ceremony where he was to be conferred with an award, he said, among others, ‘’in view of of the development on Friday in the Sowore case, I think it will be insensitive and inappropriate to attend the ceremony’’.

    To Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, ‘’the bar must be terror to demagogues. It is when our voice of the bar is heard consistently that it will earn respect. Will people go and desecrate our courtrooms and we keep quiet? The bar must condemn it. There is no explanation anybody can give’’.

    Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka urged the government to rein in the DSS operatives before they do more harm. As expected, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said the ‘’invasion was not a desecration of the temple of justice because the DSS has explained how things played out’’.

    So, we should take the DSS’ explanation hook, line and sinker. That cannot be the gospel truth because there are two sides to a story.

    Surprisingly, Festus Keyamo (SAN), Minister of State (Labour), a vociferous voice in the rights community before his appointment, has not found it necessary to comment on the incident. It is not in Keyamo’s character to keep quiet over matters like this.

    He will come out forcefully to side with the victim and condemn the aggressor. May be that is now in the past. A true activist, just as Onagoruwa did, must not keep quiet in the face of tyranny because he is holding political office. Anyway, not every activist can be like Onagoruwa and the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), who will not see evil and keep quiet.

  • Social maladies and criminality in Nigeria

    I got a distress call from one of my former students in the United States about Sowore and the DSS invasion of a high court in Abuja to re-arrest and seize their quarry. She said a video was trending on the internet and showed Nigeria in a bad light.

    This young Ph.D. student in one of the universities in Illinois, United States was actually crying about the situation in our country. She said she saw the lady judge handling the case take to her heels with her files and gown flying in different directions while her police orderly was trying to help her.

    I tried to calm her down by telling her all will be well and that she should face her studies and not become an emotional wreck. I have not seen the video she alluded to but I have read the account in the papers. I then told the young lady about my own experience as a Ph.D. student during the Nigerian civil war and how I was emotionally traumatized.

    The International media particularly the BBC was suffused with starving children of Biafra dying of Kwashiorkor. Then when the then Colonel Benjamin Adekunle and his 3rd marine commando division captured Port Harcourt in 1968, the BBC announced the event and the newscaster said “British oil wells are safe in Nigerian hands”.

    As a young radical, I broke down in tears telling myself that the two black armies were fighting to secure “British oil wells” in Nigeria. From that time on, I could not continue with my research.

    My General Practitioner (GP) in London could not help. I went and saw an Egyptian neurologist who put me on Valium three times a day. This did the trick and I was able to complete my programme.

    When I finally submitted my thesis and I wrote in the introduction that I suffered a psychological breakdown, my thesis supervisor, Professor John Edgar Flint, who is still very much alive, advised me to remove it because people in future might think I went mad.

    I removed it but I know what I went through. I knew I was knocked down but not knocked out!  I told this story to calm my former student who is emotionally tied to the wellbeing of her country that it is not a strange phenomenon.

    When some of us worry about our country, it is because of our experience. The young lady said to me “if Nigeria was ok what would I be doing in the USA where for the first time in my life I became aware of my colour being my defining factor?” I told her I went through the same experience. This is why we all must do something to build this country together.

    I saw the video of Jerry Rawlings, former president of Ghana recently saying that if Nigeria gets its act together by restructuring its polity along regional lines, our country has the potential of being the greatest country not only in Africa but in the world.

    All things are possible, but it will require a lot of discipline and unity and perhaps tears, blood and iron, to parody what Otto von Bismarck said about German unification in 1870. What do I mean by this?

    I will give four examples of unacceptable criminal behavior of our people which should elicit tough and strong reactions. There was a news item of bolts being removed by thieves on the new rail line under construction from Lagos to Ibadan.

    When I heard about this, the first thing that happened to me was that I lost my appetite the whole day. I wish the Air Force will deploy one or two helicopter gunships to shoot at sight anyone found tampering with such strategic assets.

    The same treatment should be meted to those tampering with oil pipelines anywhere in the country. Sometimes last week, a so-called pastor in Isheri-Olofin  while baptizing a member of his church was said to have mistakenly poured petrol instead of “holy water” on one of his parishioners.

    The burning candle in front of them set the pastor and parishioner alight. The fire then spread to vandalized oil pipelines nearby setting the entire area on fire.

    Now where else in the world could this have happened but in Nigeria? We just lack discipline in every facet of our life and draconian steps must be taken to put out the fire of indiscipline before we are consumed by deliberate acts of criminality.

    Recently it was reported that the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai installed in the Rigasa area of Kaduna, solar street lights. He did this with the usual publicity characteristic of politicians. Within a week, all the street lights went dead.

    On investigation, it was discovered that all the batteries had been removed and stolen. He called all the police DPO and councilors in the area giving them a week to find the batteries or lose their jobs. The batteries were immediately found and the solar lights restored.

    Now what kind of country is this where citizens will deliberately vandalize facilities put in place to make their lives better? The governor should have continued with his investigation to find out the culprits and hand them over not to the police but to the EFCC.

    Some years ago my church parish in Ibadan on finding out that the police office in our area was always plunged into darkness when there was power cut, which occurred frequently, bought a generator and donated it to the police. A few weeks later the DPO was transferred.

    Read Also: Sowore planned court drama to embarrass Nigeria, says coalition

     

    He simply took the generator with him and returned the office to the dark nights which we tried to end by our generosity.

    Whenever I travel on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway under construction, I notice that the flyovers across the expressway are being repaired because the steel barriers on both sides of the flyovers have been removed and fabricated into long spoons sold to caterers.

    Government at extra cost has to replace these steel barriers with concrete slabs. They will have to do this at about ten overhead bridges crossing the expressway.

    What a country! Recently, Raila Oginga Odinga, former prime minister of Kenya was comparing corruption in Nigeria and Malaysia.

    He said ministers in Malaysia take ten percent of the cost of projects as bribes while in Nigeria they take one hundred percent.

    Does anybody blame him for ridiculing a fallen elephant being ridden by ants? Our High Commissioner in that country should write him a stiff protest and make a video telling the ingrate how he irresponsibly brought his country to the brink of civil war twice over election and what role Nigeria played when he came crying to Nigeria for intervention and that his country calling Nigeria corrupt is that of a kettle calling the pot black!

    The time has come when we really have to shape up. For how long will our potentialities as a country remain latent? This question was asked us by Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State at a breakfast meeting sometimes in 2013 in Abuja.

    In the past we used to have five year development plans before Babangida came and dispensed with it and replaced it with “rolling plan” which apparently gathers no moss.

    Now we do not have any plan at all and we seem to live from day to day depending solely on the vagaries of rise and fall of crude oil and gas. In the meantime our population is growing at galloping rate and the inevitable crisis of youth rebellion stares us in the face in the various manifestations of violent youth resentment.

    We need to summon up the courage of looking at the political configuration of our country to cut down costs through restructuring into six or eight states and allowing each to develop at its own pace while contributing to fund the centre and maintaining an irreducible minimal national development.

    The present over concentrated political and economic power at the centre is not working and it is in everybody’s interest to replace it with what works in other federations of the world.