The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • What’s in a title, Mr. Governor or Excellency?

    A friend while discussing Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s dropping of the title “Excellency” for “Mr.  Governor” said; just tell him “to get on with the job”. Well, I agree. The governor was just being modest and humble. To put this discussion correctly, the first governor to decree this usage of “Mr. Governor” was my state governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. Aliyu Babangida, former governor of Niger State used to refer to himself as “servant leader” of his state. This did not stop the real servants from shouting “Rankya dedeh” while groveling before him. On a serious note, this usage of Mr. Governor is American. It is normal to say “Mr. President” or “Mr. Governor” in the United States. The British also say “Mr. Prime Minister”.

    On the continent of Europe, the French will say “Monsieur, le President”; the Germans refer to their chancellor” Herr Bundeskanzler” and if a woman “Frau Bundeskanzlerin” which is the same as Mr. President or governor. But when official letters are addressed to them, the title “Your Excellency” is appropriate. This is why all ambassadors also bear the title of Excellency because technically they represent the person and office of the heads of state or government who send them and not the countries where they come from. This is why when there is a turnover and when regimes change and if the ambassador must be kept in post, a new letter of accreditation signed by the new head of state could be required and requested.

    It is not the title that matters; it is the humility and sense of a mission that one brings to office that matters. Sanwo-Olu and Kayode Fayemi are right by suggesting they do not want to be flattered by titles as many sycophants would want to do. There is no need to over-spiritualise what is essentially a secular thing by saying only God is excellent. We all know that. Politicians should please not use God/Allah to cover their incompetence. It is how they are remembered by posterity that should matter. The story was once told about a farmer in Ekiti who during the presidential election of 1999 was found going to his farm and when accosted by electoral officials who told him about voting being part of his civic responsibilities, he said innocently with peasant simplicity and honesty, that he thought election had ended with Awolowo’s demise in 1987. As far as he was concerned, Awolowo was the “End of History “to borrow a phrase from the Japanese-American historian Francis Fukuyama’s book – “The End of History and The Last Man”. Awolowo’s legacy was etched into this poor farmer’s mind, not by the roads and buildings he constructed, but by the single stride taken to universalize education in the old Western Region. This is the same way Lateef Jakande is remembered for abolishing the shift school system in Lagos. Many young people in Lagos need to be reminded of this great Leap Forward. I doubt if the pre-Jakande system of some pupils starting school when the first stream finished at 2 p.m. existed anywhere in the world except Lagos Nigeria. Rauf Aregbesola, former governor of Osun State will also in the course of time be remembered for revolutionizing education in that poor state. If I were Sanwo-Olu, I would look critically at what I can leave as permanent legacy in Lagos for which children unborn would remember me  and which a million Excellencies would not do. He has a better chance to do this than many of his other colleagues like Kayode Fayemi but who are hampered by poor economic resources of their states. He has several choices he can make. He can make Lagos a real state by developing other towns in the state apart from the city of Lagos. Badagry, Epe, Ikorodu, Itoikin and other towns and villages are waiting to share in the Lagos development boom. Imagine building a bridge to link Lekki with Ikorodu! The Lagos government needs to open up the physical space of Lagos to avoid the city being suffocated by the unrelenting waves and flood of people from the Nigerian hinterland.

    It is not only the governor of Lagos who should have an enduring and lovely legacy. Muhammadu Buhari needs it even more. It will be wonderful if our president can, while fighting corruption, important as it is, face the mission of providing electricity for this country. He does not have much time left in his second regime. I pray that his government’s deal with the German company Siemens to do the kind of magic it did in Egypt where within five years, it delivered about 14000 megawatts into the Egyptian grid. The deal with this company backed by the governments of Nigeria and Germany is programmed to deliver 25000 megawatts of electricity by 2025. If this happens, Buhari’s name will remain forever blessed by Nigerians. Right now, our total installed capacity is less than 10000 megawatts and what is nationally available ranges from 3000 to 4000 megawatts which is ridiculous for a country of at least 160 million.

    One wonders what our governments have been doing since 1960. Yet it is obvious that our country cannot develop without electricity. We will not be able to run electric trains in the future. Now that electric cars are in the horizon, we would not be able to join the civilized world in the new environmentally friendly automobile revolution of the future. Without electricity, we cannot run modern hospitals. Our universities cannot function properly and agricultural products would rot in our tropical heat. We cannot industrialize our production. In short, nothing will work unless we sort out the problem of electricity. Not only our economy depends on it but our lives as well.

    It is this kind of landmark achievement that distinguishes a man of action from an ordinary leader of a country. Mustapha Kemal, the Ataturk of Turkey with determination turned an effete remnant of a great empire into a modern state overnight. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was a lightning rod in the modernization of Egypt. General Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle pulled out France from humiliation and defeat to the status of a major power in modern times. Winston Churchill mobilized the British to successfully resist the Germans during the Second World War. Joseph Stalin after the loss of millions of his people to the indomitable Germans was able to roll back the German panzer divisions that made mincemeat of his country and successfully got to the German capital in 1945. There are African avatars like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, and Nelson Mandela who occupy unique positions in modern African political history. Of what use is life if all we do is to live and die without leaving a mark. If anybody has the opportunity to lead his people whether at the national or sub national level, such a person should count himself of herself lucky and try to make a mark and not get bogged down with semantics about titles.

    Having said this there are titles that may be worth keeping because of traditions. The religious orders are hierarchical. There are cardinals, Arch bishops, arch deacons, canons and reverends and reverend fathers in the Christian religion. There are sultans, caliphs, grand Ayatollahs, Ayatollahs, imams, sheiks, Amir and so on in the Islamic world. The military is also hierarchical in organization and you have field marshals, generals, lieutenant- generals, major-generals, brigadier-generals, colonel, and lieutenant colonel, majors, captains, lieutenant and second lieutenants in that order and corresponding equivalents in the navy and air forces. The same goes for the diplomatic corps where you have ambassadors, consul generals, consuls, ministers, minister counselors and so on. Removing their titles would cause chaos because these institutions conform to certain norms of universal order which hardly varies in meaning from one country to the other. The title of governor as head of a unit of government is not universal. They may be called prefect as in France, minister- president as in Germany and excellencies usually do not apply to sub national heads of government. Of course there is nothing stopping Nigeria from reducing titles from elsewhere  to their own  pedestrian level as we have done by calling village and clan heads their majesties and rulers without empires their imperial majesties !

  • Nigeria has a male problem (1)

     Olatunji Ololade

     

    Nigeria suffers a crisis of the male gender. The lobotomised male was manhood’s dirty secret. It’s not much of a secret anymore, however. Culturally benumbed to maleness, he loiters at ethical crossroads. He is stuck at being a man while juggling traditional and modern precepts of his becoming.

    Essentially, he must unlearn customary norms and notions of manhood. To unlearn what makes him man, however, is to fall, fatally.

    His fatal fall is a consequence of losing his role as the lead in the gendered mating dance. But he can blame no one for falling for female belly magic. It’s a consequence of getting smitten by woman’s uncanny being.

    Picture, for instance, the pathetic case of a southwest governor whose masculinity was recalled and cancelled out by his wife, in their youth. The wife, to the chagrin of the governor’s relatives, performed a cultural lobotomy on him. State House legend contends that Madam First Lady continually boasts to peers and aides that she is the de facto governor of the state.

    Her husband, His Excellency, had found in her, both a mentor and sex vixen, in their youth. Consequently, she placed him on a leash of cash, connections and sexual grooming, she bragged.

    That was all it took to reduce His Excellency. Now, stunted in full bloom, he is being kept as a parlour pet by his wife. The consequences of his failing, however, manifest dangerously on the poor citizenry of the state, who are forced to endure his inefficiency and absenteeism.

    Going by the First Lady’s boast, His Excellency must have suffered the grievous lack of a father-figure as a child.

    Masculinity flows from nature as an aspect of the birth mother, no doubt, but it is sculpted by society and a father figure into effective manhood. The boy-child learns by instruction, counselling, and imitation. The father moulds his character by careful nurturing, awarding punishment for vice and reward for virtue. So doing, he teaches him to be a man within acceptable precepts of culture and society.

    Whatever the bent of the boy-child’s evolution, his resultant blooming reflects the quality of guidance he received as a child and his experiences through adolescence. Thus the maxim: The child is the father of the man.

    Of course, there would be no man without the pivotal nurturing from the womb through lactation by the priceless sacrifice of a birth mother.

    Hence the child is caught in a swirl of historical indebtedness to his mother. Fathers earn such allegiance by the magnitude of their immersion into the role of father, breadwinner, protector, provider, and hero, in ideal circumstances.

    Manhood, encumbered by their debt to a physical mother through birth, and to the significant female other through romance, procreation and uxorial labour, created an alternate reality in which they could repay their debts by protecting women and fending for their needs.

    Woman, at first placid in man’s protections but now inflamed via feminist-misandry with desire for her own illusory freedom, invades man’s systems and corrupts them by starting a gender war and rewriting man’s origins.

    Thus the corruption of Gender Studies and its fallacy that gender is a social construct. Overdosing on theoretical dope, the feminist-misandrist channels juvenile rage to usurp man’s roles at home and in the society.

    The manifestations are all around us. At the backdrop of aggressive misandrist campaigns at work, in arts, literature and the media, subsists international fellowships, strictly for women professionals, and the general ones for which “women are strongly advised to apply.”

    Consider too, the periodic conferences of Nigerian and African women on professional and sociopolitical platforms. The Women in the Media conference has become a thing, likewise the various “Coding,” vocational and self-help gatherings of undergrads, high school students and housewives.

    It may be decently inferred too, that Nigeria’s female folk deservedly dominate literary publishing as writers, critics, readers and publishers. The genres of literary fiction and chick-lit are particularly dominated by female narratives. Where the writer isn’t female, he must present a female protagonist and patronise feminist perspectives to gain acceptance and literary acclaim, oftentimes.

    Of course, there is nothing wrong if the protagonist is female, its the tenor and intent of the narrative that become cringe-worthy, oftentimes. But art must mirror reality, some would argue.

    How real and didactic are the narratives? Consequence-free promiscuity, lesbianism, denunciation of marriage, and outright misandry are common themes. Even the brilliant themes of self actualisation and financial independence of the Nigerian woman are weaponised and rooted in the sex, lesbianism and misandrist wonderland.

    The movies are a different kettle of fish entirely as the highlighted themes are aggressively cued into plots of numerous ‘blockbusters’ and social dramas. Kudos, however, to Stephanie Okereke, whose movie, Dry, addresses the challenges of child marriage in progressive, resonant reels.

    While it is inspiring to see the Nigerian woman assert herself and take the lead in the politics and

    plots of her becoming, its saddening to see her male counterpart stew in criminality and ignorance.

    Little wonder that, misandry, masquerading as feminism, has gained a monopoly on Gender Studies. Men don’t have a gender identity anymore, only women have a gender identity and an intrinsic value to society and this sentiment is perpetuated by carefully articulated propaganda and research.

    The concept of authoritative, strong, independent, passionate and intelligent manhood is persistently repudiated except it serves the misandrist cause. So when a young boy reaches the age where it’s appropriate for him to be initiated into manhood, we find the whole idea of “reaching manhood” laughable.

    Nigeria’s malefolk, however, make no attempt to improve their lot. While the successful woman makes conscious efforts to mentor protegees, influencing their growth, her male peer, in contrast, breeds proteges as thugs, assassins, terrorists, internet hoodlums to mention a few.

    Nobody can blame the woman for stealing his thunder. In euphoria, she asserts her dominion in aspects of culture, sex and gender politics. Her campaign is heavily funded too, by international NGOs seeking to destabilise the African family and social space.

    Having perverted the politics of influence, she seeks to decisively put the Nigerian man in his place. But what really is the Nigerian man’s place? Where is his place? Confusion leads to grave consequences. Confusions about masculinity has led to a situation whereby Nigeria is afflicted by men who do not know how to be men.

    The predominantly male political and business classes, for instance, are constituted by amoral men and weaklings whose claim to courage reposes in predatory policies and transactions; then perverse sexuality and whoredom. This shady manhood persists in the shadowy middle class to the boondocks.

    Their vulturine disposition to governance, citizenship and family afflicts Nigeria with an army of young, virile males who are condemned to survive, daily, as Marlians, treasury looters, school drop-outs, assassins, Yahoo-boys, kidnappers, terrorists, armed robbers, political thugs, ethnic warlords, land-grabbers, prostitutes and rapists to mention a few.

    Many among these grew up without appropriate father figures and male guardians. They grew up without the nurturing of appropriate mother-figures too.

    There are very few models of fatherhood in the country at the moment. Many men have ceded their roles to their wives, who in turn, have ceded motherhood and their inherited roles as fathers, to their wards’ teachers, family pastors, neighbours, house-helps and extended family members.

  • Aisha’s moral recourse

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    AISHA Buhari, Nigeria’s First Lady, makes a rousing recourse to moral nature. By urging parents to see to the moral upbringing of their wards, she addresses Nigeria’s supreme pestilence, our moral problem. Nobody pays attention to this. Save a paltry few in the country’s performance theatre, whose chief intent is usually to grandstand or pay lip service as a rite of artifice.

    Whether Aisha’s recourse is bland performance or not, her acknowledgement of the nation’s moral canker is noteworthy.

    Mrs. Buhari challenged parents to take charge of their families and ensure good moral upbringing of children to minimise crime in the society. She gave the advice on Monday while hosting a special prayer session for Nigeria, at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    Aisha said the lack of moral upbringing of children and the collapse of family values was largely responsible for the social crises facing Nigeria. She, however, fell short of identifying her generation and that of her husband, President Muhammadu Buhari, as one of the country’s afflictions.

    Save occasional spasms and pretensions to high ethics, there is little the younger generation can imbibe as moral fibre from their ruling class.

    Nigeria cannot escape impending doom until we modify our attitude towards nationhood. But first, we have to build character. Character is the spool by which we would spin the colourful yarns of citizenship and leadership.

    It is an artificial construction, no doubt. Our defense against animalism. Without character, we would get ship-wrecked in the barbarous deep that it is nature, or animal instinct, if you like.

    It was a lack of character that afflicted us with the incumbent ruling class. It’s poetic irony, therefore, that Aisha would recommend to us a remedy to rid Nigeria of afflictions constituted by her class.

    Modern Nigeria careens in flight and fear, as you read. Millions yearn to flee from bad leadership, economic failure, power outage, corruption, insecurity, infrastructure collapse, substandard health and education among others.

    Fear is the next pandemic; many commit crimes and die in fear of poverty and financial insecurity thus our afflictions by Boko Haram, career kidnappers, murderous herdsmen, trigger happy policemen, soldiers and vigilante groups.

    Amid the blooming dystopia, Aisha rose from her chambers to mastermind a rite of redemption. Perhaps she meant to cast spells to lull the punishing elements. But then, she understands that presidential chants and paternosters won’t rid Nigeria of her current afflictions.

    The battle must begin at the home-front. A cursory look at our families excites the creepiest form of marvel. The Nigerian family unit today parades the worst form of savagery. Parents contract marabouts, Christian prophets and native doctors to invoke God’s mercies and protection on their wards engaged in cyber-scams (Yahoo-Yahoo) and prostitution at home and abroad.

    The indoctrination starts quite early, from childhood. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child hurt an annoying neighbour’s dog or cat; and fathers consider it a mark of martial spirit to see their son tyrannise his weaker peer.

    Lest we forget those whose parents raise righteously, breeding them in cages of holiness, to perpetuate the worst forms of bigotry and inhumanity, according to the scriptures.

    Many parents consider it a sign of great courage and astuteness to see their wards cheat and oppress their peer. It gladdens their hearts to see their little children evolve into ‘lovable’ brutes at a tender age. They appreciate it as a worthy demeanour for the very tough world out there.

    Thus from adolescence through adulthood, they greet every dishonesty their children perpetrate with cheer, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that such children are “smart” and inured to the ways of the world.

    These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason. Parents nurture vile in their wards, who perpetuate through lineages, grosser forms of grotesqueness.

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

    Such wards, who had been trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to success eventually mature into foetal adults. All through their lives, they navigate challenges and shoals of reality with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena.

    The seeds of indolence and bestiality sown in them, grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society, codified as custom. Eventually, we have brutes and savages running our lives and determining our future.

    Many may dispute this, claiming that such characters constitute a minor fraction of the country’s 190 million population. I whole-heartedly disagree, but if they insist, I hereby iterate that such wonderful families we have now that blessed us with the current ruling class, thieving bank chiefs and corrupt law enforcers.

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

    One degeneracy gravitates into the other and we have for ourselves, a nation of finely bred brutes and foetal adults programmed to self-destruct.

    The argument that it’s the lack of good leadership that breeds corruption does not hold much substance anymore. Let each one of us be accountable for his or her actions.

    Bestiality, like blood, runs in the veins of both the government and the governed. Age and experience have lost good measure and our old have no important advice to give to our young anymore. Their experiences have been so partial and fraught with fraudulence that at the end, they pass off as miserable failures.

    Every Nigerian is a law breaker. The rich believe they are above the law and the poor believe they could sneak under it or wiggle through it and away from its grasp.

    While it may be easy to dismiss Mrs. Buhari’s supplication conference as yet another religious show-boating, her recourse to moral instruction is worthy of attention.

    Aisha urges parents to instil good morals in their children but the same parents constitute the rich lobbyists conniving with her ruling class to impoverish Nigeria further. They are the poor folk cursing the times and her ruling class even as they vie daily to serve the whims of the same class.

    They are the parents purchasing seats and liberties to cheat for their wards at JAMB and SSCE “special centres.” They are the bankers pilfering our accounts at 50 kobo, N50 to N5000 by the second.

    They are the motorists hastening off their appropriate lanes to face oncoming vehicles and endanger lives. They are the public administrators stealing pension fund meant for elderly retirees and using same money to fund presidential candidates at national elections.

    They are the journalists receiving money to doctor and tilt stories according to the whims of shady politicians and the dangerous business class.

    They are the lawyers twisting the law to serve the whims of Nigeria’s worst criminals ever. They are reading this thinking the writer is just another ‘grifter’ calling the con-artist, ‘fraud.’

  • NYSC’s misguided youths and their warring pastors

    Last week, it was reported that the authorities of Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) decamped one Miss Tolulope Ekundayo, from Sagamu Orientation Camp in Ogun State for insisting on wearing skirt as against trouser which she claimed negated her Christian faith. The NYSC Director in Ogun, Mrs. Theresa Anosike, however defended NYSC position saying “ by insisting on wearing skirt instead of trouser, Ekundayo acted against the undertaking which she had earlier signed along with her colleagues on dress code.’’ She also disclosed that the misguided young lady swore she “will rather forgo the service year than wear the kits.’’’

    Development later confirmed she was egged on by her father and her pastor.  Not long after boasting to the NYSC authorities that the person her father sent to pick her was on his way, a man who “identified himself as Apostle Adenuga Otaru of the Antioch Church, Sagamu, who also doubled as chairman, Remo chapter of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, turned up and signed an undertaking to take the girl away.

    And within the same weekend and for a similar reason,  two female corps members – Okafor Love Obianuju and Odji Oritsetsolaye, – were said to have been expelled from the 2019 Batch C Stream 1 in Ebonyi NYSC camp . What runs parallel between the Ekundayo, Okafor and Odji cases was the encouragement of their Pentecostal pastors. In fact in the latter case, the  Christian Association of Nigeria’s (CAN) Special Assistant on Media and Communications to the CAN President, Rev. Adebayo Oladeji, issued a statement  to warn that the ‘two ladies should not be victimised for holding on to their faith.’

    First, logic would have suggested the wearing of long trouser in mosquito invested camps where these young girls and other members engage in various sporting activities and paramilitary training which involve climbing, running and jumping would have made more sense except that we also know that for Nigeria, Christians and Muslims clerics and their poor miracle seeking youths, there can be no meeting point between reason and religion.

    But let us first examine what the Holy Books say about dressing. All the holy books especially those of the Abrahamic religion- the Torah, the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran demand of women is decent dressing. Thus First Timothy 2:9-10 admonishes women “who profess godliness to adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty”. First Corinthians 6:19-20 also advises women to “glorify God in their body by dressing modestly and not provocatively” to prevent men lusting after them because their “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit”. Similarly, the Holy Quran (7:26] says “O children of Adam, we have provided you with garments to cover your bodies”, stressing that “the best garment is the garment of righteousness” while in 24:31, God orders the women to “cover their bosoms whenever they dress up”.

    Most scholars believe Hijab as a dress code therefore has nothing to do with the Torah, the Bible, Islam and the QURAN. It had its origin in Greco-Roman culture, of women wearing the veil and men, head-cover, a cultural practice adopted by the Jews who wrote it in the Talmud and later by Christians while the Hadith book writers, after the death of Prophet Mohammed took after the Jews as they did with other Jewish traditions.

    The purpose of religion in society according to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Abrahamic religion we subscribe to in this part of the world, as demonstrated by Jesus Christ, the Messiah and the greatest social crusader the world has ever known as well as Mohammed, the last prophet, is promotion of peaceful co-existence to avoid bloodshed between the privileged avaricious few (the 1% that control the resources of the world) and the underprivileged majority in society.  Jesus Christ underscored this when He said to the pastors of His day “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees; you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint and dill and cumin. But you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy and faith, and for serving as blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Mathew 23:23-26).

    Read Also: Why we evicted Corps Members from Ebonyi Camp- NYSC

    Jesus seems to be speaking of today’s Nigeria prosperity prophets and pastors who exploit the fears of the most vulnerable, especially the youths in our society. They abandon their primary role of providing the moral tone desperately needed to create a moral society and are busy breeding Christian and Muslim fundamentalists who when not fighting with authority over the right to wear veils in law courts, are engaged in fruitless struggle over wearing of skirt in mosquito invested NYSC camps where youths undergo some form paramilitary and other forms of physical training.

    In the circumstances where Jesus admonished his rebellious Jewish kinsmen to “give on to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, our pastors are sponsoring rebellion of youths against the state. And for maximum effect, they are adopting blackmail as a weapon.

    Today their battle-cry is ‘“In this country, religious right is an inalienable right that must be respected”. Or “If our government agencies have no regard for the way people worship God, then it means they are satanic”. And they are advising affected corps members to go to court, citing the way the Muslims sued the Nigerian Law School over the hijab controversy.

    The pastors have however not told Nigerians how decisions of some state institutions to enforce dress code constitute a breach of religious rights of Nigerians.

    Unfortunately, our nation is the greatest loser. As students in the universities – fertile ground for great and sometimes grandiose ideas, who are being trained to manage society, the youths are expected to be at home with all the religions of the world from Pre-historic religion or belief in Supreme Being and fear of the unknown to Egyptian belief in afterlife; Judaism and its Babylonian origin; Christianity and the mystery of the incarnation and Divinity of Christ; Hinduism and Law of Karma, Buddhism; Confucianism; Taoism and Shintoism. Tragically our youths hardly read anything. The result is that prosperity prophets, pastors and Imams become pathfinders for those who by virtue of youth are expected to curious, discerning and adventurous.

    And as products of our universities,  youths are regarded as the  ‘salt of life’, saddled with onerous responsibility of managing society, through policy conceptualization, policy formulation and implementation  that will determine the fate of children yet unborn, those in school , the working population and the aging. That we have a dysfunctional system and a decaying society is precisely because our bureaucracy is populated by ill-equipped youths.

    Tragically, our warring pastors and Imams, who are currently engaged in unproductive arguments over the wearing of veils and trousers don’t believe our young girls have anything to learn from Israel, (the chosen people) where religion is not allowed to stand in the way of reason and consequently lead the world in science, commerce, arts, literature and communication and Saudi Arabia where girls serve as pilots of some of the world biggest commercial aircrafts and jet fighters.

     

    ‘Logic would have suggested the wearing of long trouser in mosquito invested camps where these young girls and other members engage in various sporting activities and paramilitary training which involve climbing, running and jumping would have made more sense…’

     

  • No roads like ours!

    ‘We have some of the best roads in the universe! Go to any part of the country, you will see things for yourself. You do not need a minister to tell you how good or bad our roads are’

     

    ANY Nigerians are outraged by the statement credited to Minister of Works & Housing Babatunde Fashola that ‘’Nigerian roads are not that bad’’. I am not joining the fray because I do not believe that the honourable minister will ever say that. He has since accused the media of misquoting him. As someone observed at our meeting on Tuesday, ‘’they (public officers) are always accusing us of misquoting them’’.

    As a polished person, no one ever expected the minister to speak like that in public. He is too refined and urbane to lend himself to such inanities. We  know the state of our roads. We have some of the best roads in the universe! Go to any part of the country, you will see things for yourself. You do not need any minister to tell you how good or bad our roads are.

    Whether in Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kano, Rivers, Kaduna, Gombe, Bauchi, Nasarawa, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Borno, Plateau, Yobe, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Bayelsa, Osun, Anambra, Imo, Abia, Delta, Edo, et al, our roads are a beauty to behold. From afar, you will see the roads gleaming in the sun. Like a mirage, it will appear as if you are seeing an ocean ahead of you while driving. The roads are just too good and well paved. Not even the developed countries have our kind of roads.

    I will take you on a journey on some of them, especially in the Southwest, so that you will know how lucky and blessed we are to have such infrastructure. So, if the minister said our roads are ‘’not that bad’’, he sure knows what he is talking about. Our roads are not bad. It is as simple as that. If you say they are bad, the onus is on you to provide the evidence. Do not forget that the minister is not only a lawyer, but a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) for that matter.

    Read Also: Roads situation: I was misquoted, says Fashola

     

    If you expect me to say the roads are bad, after the minister’s pass verdict on them, you are wasting your time. Who am I to challenge the minister who knows all our roads like the back of his hands? The man who sleeps and wakes on these roads should know what he was saying when he said the roads are ‘’not that bad’’. Go through those  three-letter words again. The man was not saying what you and I do not know after all. He did not say the roads were not bad; he said they were ‘’not that bad’’.

    So, why do some people want to skin him alive on the social and mainstream media? If people do not have work to do, they better go and look for one. Is it an offence for a public officer to be frank with his countrymen. This is the problem with us; we prefer leaders who lie to us. When we see one as honest and brutally frank like Fashola, we start to call them names. ‘’What does he know? Why should he say the roads ‘are not that bad’? Is it because he does not ride on them? Pray, if the works minister does not ride on our roads, why is he holding that post?

    Our people are bellyaching for nothing. They should let the minister be. Come with me to the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway where Julius Berger and RCC have been working for the past two years. The road cannot be said to be in the best condition. If it were, will Berger and RCC be working on it? No, dumb head. That’s what the minister was saying that you are calling for his head. Check out the Lagos – Badagry Expressway. As governor of Lagos State between 2007 and 2015, Fashola began work on the deplorable road, but could not complete it before he left office.

    In his first coming as minister of power, works and housing in this present administration, he wanted to finish what he started on that road, but the differences between him and his successor as governor did not allow that. Today, contractors have returned to the road, courtesy of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. I refuse o accept that our roads are death traps! They are not. I just pray that motorists will not come to harm driving on them. How can roads that are so smooth be death traps and the haven of highway robbers? Ask me o, as if I don’t know.

    But wait a minute. Have you ever travelled on these roads – Ibadan – Oyo – Ogbomoso. Ibadan – Iwo – Osogbo. Ibadan – Ife. Ibadan – Iseyin – Shaki.   Agbara – Magbon – Atan – Sango.  Sango – Ifo – Abeokuta.  Lokoja – Okene – Auchi – Ekpoma. Asaba – Enugu.  Benin – Port Harcourt.  Egbema – Omoku – Ahoada, Calabar – Uyo. Enugu – Onitsha. Aba – Ikot Ekpene – Calabar – Itu. Abuja – Minna. Kano – Saminaka –Ugwan Bawan – Jos. Maiduguri – Ngala.  Biu – Gombe. Damaturu – Biu? If you have, you will get what the minister was saying about ‘’Nigerian roads not that bad’’. You drive on these roads with your heart in your mouth. You have to move slowly because virtually every portion of these roads has collapsed. As you are dodging one crater here, another will just pop up in front of you and if you are not careful, you will end up in it and be at the mercy of prowling hoodlums looking for who to devour.

    Are we not lucky to have such good roads on which we sleep and slip into dream world as we cruise on them? Why won’t the minister boast of them?

  • My recent visit to Barbados

    As a young man in 1971/72 academic year, I taught at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. I had read that historically Barbados was regarded as one of the gems on the British crown on account of its richness as one of the largest producers of sugar for Great Britain.

    The name Barbados comes from the Spanish word “los Barbados” meaning the bearded one. The island had native trees that looked like full grown beards and this feature gave the island the sobriquet of Barbados.

    Students of history know that the sugar could not be grown by the British themselves because of tropical diseases like malaria found on the island.

    Although poor English and Irish prisoners were shipped down there, the experiment failed because these unfortunate people died quickly like flies.

    It was in this situation that the British resorted to using the native Caribs of the island but they too could not bear the hard work and rigour needed to produce sugar. Then the Africans came into the picture.

    As far back as the 15th century, the Portuguese who by the papal bull of demarcation ”Inter Caetera” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493 had the eastern part of the world as their preserve for naval enterprises and exploitation and exploration while their Spanish counterpart had the remaining western part had become familiar with West Africa.

    The Portuguese had by this law been visiting Africa and the Far East, first as explorers and later as traders. Their first contact with West Africa was with the Upper Guinea coast. According to Professor Walter Rodney, the Portuguese used to buy “blue cloth” from the Nigerian coast and traded it to people in the Upper Guinea Coast.

    This blue cloth were indigo dyed native textiles woven in Yoruba and Bini areas of present day Nigeria and the industry even though  now dying still survives until today.

    But with demand for African labour in the new American plantations in the 17th century, the Africans themselves became the article of trade. By the time the slave trade was abolished, about 15 million hapless Africans, according to Professor Joseph Inikori, had been shipped to the Americas which included the Caribbean where Barbados is located.

    This figure does not include the millions of Africans thrown into the ocean when they fell sick so that they would not contaminate the remaining black cargoes.

    Professor Eric Williams in his path-breaking study of the slave trade entitled “Capitalism and slavery” from his Oxford University Ph.D. thesis of 1947 said it is one of the ironies of history that producing such a sweet thing like sugar would have entailed the commission of such act of cruelty and bitter sorrow to fellow human beings like the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

    Eric Williams in later years became the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago arguably the richest of the British West Indian islands on account of its production in recent years of crude petroleum and gas.

    When sugar could be gotten from India and Canadian beet tree, the West Indian islands became expendable to the British by the beginning of the 19th century and it was in this circumstance that the so-called abolitionist movement associated with William Wilberforce took root and grew to the extent that by the early 19th century, slave trade and then slavery were officially abolished but the trade continued illegally for decades later. The capitalist interpretation of the abolition of slavery got me into trouble during my days at graduate school in Canada when one of my conservative professors nearly had an heart attack on hearing me say the slave trade and slavery were not abolished because of British humanitarianism but on account of struggle for power and market by the British merchants making money from the Indian trade as opposed to those old oligarchs of the West Indian sugar trade.

    It is necessary to put my visit to Barbados within the context of history and my intellectual exposure to the West Indies. When I went there as a lecturer in 1971, I was already armed with all the facts of the place and what to expect. Of course one had met several West Indians in London and Canada during the course of my studies.

    African students’ relations with fellow young West Indians were sometimes prickly to put it in diplomatic language. The reason for this was that Africans were ambitious and wanted to finish their studies and return home as soon as was possible. West Indians on the other hand felt at home in England and Canada. Secondly, some Africans foolishly looked down on West Indians and black Americans on account of their servile origin. Thirdly and perhaps most explosive reason was that young West Indian girls seemed to like African boys perhaps out of curiosity and sentiment.

    This was the baggage I carried to the West Indies as a young lecturer. Needless to say I was very popular in the university. I was the exact opposite of the bumbling Tarzan the people had felt an African would be. But racism was nevertheless rearing its ugly head in the place.

    There was a statement which captured and perhaps still expresses the predicament of the black person in the West Indies today in terms of employment in the predominant services industries of banking, finance, tourism, and insurance.

    The saying was “if you are white, you are alright; if brown, stick around and if black, get lost”. Looking around Barbados like an intelligence officer spying on the people, I noticed that the blacks constitute a preponderant proportion of the unemployed or underemployed.

    They are more likely to be found as waiters in the hotels and workers cutting cane in the rum industry. They are also the rank and file of the police and lifeguards on the beaches where mostly white tourists and the Barbadian middle class go to relax.

    They are also the musicians who make the calypso that the Eastern Caribbean is famous for. They also peddle drugs such as marijuana and stronger ones like cocaine. Any tourist is more likely to be propositioned to buy drugs!

    What blew my mind is the phenomenal development that had taken place on the island in the last 40 seven years since I lived there. The aviation industry has prospered and the airport is welcoming and of international standards.

    The major roads are dualised and the smaller parish roads are well maintained. The island also has well maintained drainage system. The educational sector is well provided for. When I was in their university campus at Cave Hill, the University of the West Indies had campuses in Mona Jamaica, St. Augustine Trinidad and Tobago and Georgetown on the mainland of South America in Guyana.

    All the campuses had the humanities and social sciences but the professional courses in engineering and medicine were in Trinidad, Basic sciences and pre-medical sciences were in Jamaica and Barbados had law. The campus in Barbados was the smallest and served the eastern Caribbean islands of Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguilla, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis and it offered courses in law, social sciences and humanities.

    It was a small campus when I was there but it has now blossomed into many faculties including medicine. Seeing the place brought back memories of my youth of traveling round the world.

    Two of my colleagues, Woodvile Marshall and Keith Hunte have been knighted by the British Queen and also have colleges named after them. If I had not hurriedly returned home in 1972, perhaps a building like the library may have been named after me.

    Who knows?  Barbados is very British with members of the British royal family having estates where they spend their winters.

    The late princess Margret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth was a frequent resident and visitor there. The people are also very British with cricket being a national past time and the island in the past produced one of the greatest cricketers in the world, the legendary Sir Garfield Sobers. In 47 years, the island has been so completely transformed that I could hardly recognize the place. This is the way Nigeria should go!

  • In defence of Okoi Obono-Obla

    Whether the battle is fought with ‘deodorant or with insecticide’, President Buhari’s commitment to war on corruption has never been in doubt. His refrain has always been –  “if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill us”. Because of a mindset that everyone is a thief until he or she can prove his innocence, he was during his first coming as military head of state unable to make a distinction between   politicians who spent state resources to set up private banks, marry new wives and those who spent such resources to build universities and provide infrastructure for their people. They all without discrimination got long jail sentences ranging from 100-200 years. He has remained focused despite being described by political enemies as one-issue president. Fighting corruption is what Buhari probably wants to be remembered for.

    But now we are in a democracy which allows for  dissent even within his kitchen cabinet just as it provides a breeding ground for people like Obolo-Obla , former chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SIPRPP)  who  shares his passion for and mindset on anti-corruption war.

    Following its inauguration by the then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo in August 2017, Obono-Obla  went after everyone –lawmakers, judges, public servants  including those working in the offices of the vice president and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. He asserted albeit without proof that “most of the buildings in Abuja are owned by directors in public service” and threatened to recover from ‘’‘public officers who have assets that are beyond their legitimate earnings’’.

    By October 2018, Okoi Obolo-Obla was reeling out list of his achievements: recovery of N4 billion and $7 million in cash as well as physical assets by the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for Recovery of Public Property (SPIPP) in its various operations. He said the $7 million was recovered from the previous management of the Nigeria Export and Import (NEXIM) Bank who had “illegally placed” it in Heritage Bank. The naira component of the recoveries, according to him, include N533 million and land valued at N1.5 billion also from the former NEXIM management. He also reported the recovery of  N24 million misappropriated by some directors of the National Theatre, and two hectares of land worth N2 billion, belonging to the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC). Other recoveries include 86 assorted vehicles valued at N500 million from a director in the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. He also claimed the panel was “investigating the failure of a contract awarded to a company to dredge Calabar Channel, after the company had received 12 million dollars.”

    A gale of petitions greeted the announcement. Ten of them were sent to the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami for investigation. His report found Obono-Obla guilty of alleged ‘abuse of power, intimidation and harassment of innocent citizens’. With threat of arrest by EFCC and ICPC, he went into hiding from where he has been appealing to APC and the president who gave him a difficult task which he faithfully implemented and to Nigerians he said must understand the campaign of calumny is all about corruption fighting back.

    And what were the charges? Two cases were sent to Obono but he went on to unilaterally investigate 50 cases. But many will argue what Obono deserves for his resourcefulness is commendation and not condemnation. And by the way, did he by any chance discover evidence of corruption in the 50 cases he unilaterally investigated? His accusers were silent on this.

    Obono was also accused of working with a team of 100 policemen including one ASP Suleiman who was carrying out investigation without the knowledge or approval of the panel. But Obono-Obla, many will argue is not the IG and could not have assigned 100 policemen to himself without the approval of the IG or the president and commander-in-chief. And even if he had applied his wits to seduce 100 policemen to wage war on corruption, most observers would think the endeavor was for a good cause for which he deserves commendation. After all, we are daily driven off the roads by police escorts protecting senators facing criminal charges in courts and daily assaulted by distressing scenes of armed policemen following India and Chinese boys to fish markets or those with AK-47 in one hand with another hand holding umbrella to shield wives of big men from inclement weather in the market.

    Other charge includes unauthorised investigation of judges. Obono’s tormentors say the “singular act by the chairman of the panel could easily have been misconstrued as a form of intimidation and interference by the executive on the judiciary, contrary to the principles of separation of power”. But Nigerians can see through this type of hypocrisy. They understand Obono-Obla was only trying to establish his loyalty by what his principal not too long ago did when DSS men invaded houses of justices of the Supreme Court in the dead of the night raking in millions in local and foreign currencies as exhibits for their trial.

    Okono-Obla was also accused of appointing Mr. Victor Osita Uwajeh as a private investigator, despite the fact that the person was facing prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)”. But is anyone saying Osita cannot earn a living because he was facing EFCC charges? That will amount to double standard. Nigerians are aware of 21 senators, which represented about 21 per cent of the 109 lawmakers at the 8th upper legislative chamber who were earning their living as senators while facing criminal charges in the courts or were under intense investigation or interrogation by the security operatives or anti-graft agencies. They include the 8th Senate President, Bukola Saraki, the deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu who the Okoi-Obono-Obla-led presidential panel had on March 21, 2018, filed an ex parte motion against seeking an order of interim forfeiture of his 22 houses pending the conclusion of the investigation. Others were Godswill Obot Akpabio currently President Buhari’s minister, Kashamu Buruji, Joshua Chibi Dariye, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu and Ahmed Sani Yarima among others.

    In any case, with the endless war of attrition between EFCC, DSS, NSA and other security forces including the military, how does Obono-Obla’s tormentors expect him to make sense out of the chaos and absence of co-ordination that seem to define President Buhari’s security architecture?

    Obono also stepped on powerful toes for what was described as “attempted arrest of the executive secretary of TETFUND with a truck of mobile policemen” and the arrest of the Deputy Director (Maintenance) in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. And finally, Obono was accused of “Flagrant acts of disrespect, indiscipline and insubordination against members of the panel” and of tampering with his WAEC result and ‘parading a questionable academic credential’.

    We have no evidence Obono’s advertised vices and alleged certificate forgery in anyway impeded his performance as ant-corruption crusader. In any case, certificate forgery is a problem common with Nigerian politicians and identified cases have always been referred to the courts and not ICPC.

    The irony is that Malami who wasted millions of taxpayers’ money in a failed attempt to re-integrate Abdulrasheed Maina who EFCC described in court on Monday, October 4 as ‘not a responsible citizen but a fugitive of law who stole about N3billion pensioners’ fund” back into the bureaucracy through the back door and was rewarded with a ministerial appointment for his pains, is the one deciding the fate of Obono-Obla whose only sin from evidence presented to Nigerians so far is over-enthusiasm.

  • Niggers with attitude

    By Olatunji Ololade

    Life as a freeman is simply unthinkable to a Nigerian nigger. Outwardly, he lives to a devastating stereotype. Inwardly, he brawls against typecasts as the ram thrashes in its soul at the descent of the butcher’s knife. But he is neither brawler nor ram. He is a human living like livestock because he thinks it’s shrewd and dapper.

    The Nigerian, channelling his freedoms wholesomely and with integrity might have no gripe about this. But who determines what it is to be free? What determines a Nigerian nigger? Some would argue that it is somewhat tyrannical to deny a man of his rights, particularly the freedom to answer as a nigger.

    Freedom, indeed, has a thousand charms to show that slaves, however contented, never know, writes Cowper. The tragedy is in the details. And the details are all around us, in our past glories and defeat, infinite quirks and measured sobriety.

    It is in our fabled heritage and defunct humanity, colourful history and grand inadequacies. It distinguishes our mistakes from what we term fate; our mental inferiority and political expediencies.

    Necessity, like William Pitt the Younger, would say, is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. Slaves like the Nigerian nigger.

    It is not what you call him, however, but what he answers to that defines him yet this minute, another innocent child is born into the world as a Nigerian nigger. His parents shall name him Clinton, Dave, Cregg, Oliver, Richard, Lovett, Colet, Da Silva, Humphrey, Jackson, to mention a few. His real names: Akanbi, Chiedu, Ijeoma, Chimaroke, Isichei and so on shall become his “native names” or “middle names.”

    At a tender age, he shall be taught to despise most things Nigerian, by parents who would eventually bemoan the erosion of the Nigerian culture.

    He will be enrolled in schools that teach the superiority of western civilisation and be taught to accept his place as member of a hostage race and generation. Growing up, he would learn to evolve a masochistic appetite for racial rebuke and fashionable humiliation.

    Time and over again, he would learn to assimilate and project “imported condescension” as the next best palliative to his innate malaise.

    In time, he would get too impatient for his dosage of indoctrination and imported disdain and doggedly sweat his way through standoffish, ill-bred and disdainful immigration officials in order to enjoy his share of dishonour and racial profiling overseas.

    Abroad, he would labour to be part of what kills him, trying the patience of unwilling hosts by his fractious misconduct and commitment to disgrace. He shall seek a better life sweeping the streets, doing the dishes, driving cabs and washing the anuses of elderly Caucasians with the desperation of one who would rather die in penury abroad than return to Nigeria.

    If he were born into money and enjoys the good fortune of schooling abroad, he shall dwell fostered by the lowliness of his mental skies. He would die to impress judgemental class mates and neighbours by insane parties and acquisitions.

    He will wander well kept streets – by immigrants like him – of London and New York to purchase forgetfulness at the mall.

    So pronounced is his inferiority complex that the tragedies of his civilisation perpetually wail in the slightest details; he will host extravagant weddings and birthday parties often to the benefit of his host country and obsess about foreign football leagues, politics and disasters.

    Like a tadpole in an Iju-Ishaga pothole, he would bathe in puddle and muck, hoping to grow scales and scissor-tail like an alligator in the English wild.

    An inelegant grifter, he channels joy and fulfillment from the attainments of his exploiters while cursing his homeland on social media.

    Ultimately, he seeks escape by renouncing his roots. He conveniently forgets that, no matter how long the tabby cat postures as a lion, it will forever remain a cat, a pitiful, whiny parlour pet.

    He will justify his entitlement to ‘greener pasture abroad’ arguing that the so-called “first world” was built from the blood and sweat of his slave ancestors. Through modern servitude abroad, he shall endure verbal nettling as a ‘third world nigger’ by less enlightened employers.

    An arrogant fellow, he considers himself a higher specie than the Asian, whom he derides as ‘Chinko.’ In turn, the Asian views him condescendingly as a ‘lazy nigger.’ While he hustled across the Mediterranean to serve his exploiters in the West, the Asian built from the rubble of his exploitation by the West, till he became an exploiter of his exploiters.

    China, for instance, has risen from the detritus of its sweat factories to colonise her exploiters and recolonise Africa. The Nigerian nigger, Giant of Africa, is busy making excuses, blaming capitalism and hugging it in one breath thus personifying Chika Onyeani’s “Capitalist Nigger” depiction of the black race as a consumer race and not a productive race.

    “The Black Race depends on other communities for its culture, its language, its feeding, and its clothing,” argues Onyeani, adding that blacks are economic slaves because they lack the ‘killer-instinct’ and ‘devil-may-care’ attitude of the Caucasian and the ‘spider web economic mentality’ of the Asian.

    Contrary to Onyeani’s claims and Western propaganda, there is no perfect nation to be born. The crises in modern Europe and America: financial meltdown, unemployment, homelessness, extreme narcissism, sexual perversions, state-sponsored terrorism, racism among others, puncture far-fetched arguments about their invincibility and wisdom.

    In order to halt the exodus of our wards overseas, where they answer to the modern nigger stereotype, Nigeria must seek economic liberation through hard work, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and fiscal discipline. We must build better Nigerian neighbourhoods to prevent our youth from moving to hostile white neighbourhoods. We must learn to seek progress in unity too, because when spider webs unite, they attain the strength of a lion, according to an Ethiopian adage.

    Then let us seek to be honest and good. Good people produce good leaders. Bad people produce and ennoble bad leadership. The attitude of the Nigerian mind towards citizenship and democracy as political measures of self-determination must be divested of the toxicity of greed and bigotries.

    It is time to heal. The youth must seek progressive engagement in President Muhammadu Buhari’s government even as they unite on a new political platform, immune to the ravages of ethnicity, materialism and greed.

    The tragedy of our generation subsists in our prospects and desperation to be lorded over and contained, at a price.

    The offshoot is grisly. It made a Nigerian President nurture insults from reprobate Caucasians threatening to withdraw financial aids if Nigeria fails to legitimise same-sex marriage. It makes a misguided money-bag vie to purchase a British club even though his planned splurge might conveniently improve the fortune of his home league.

    It is what excites the Nigerian lust to be less-than, to the perverse pleasure of the so-called “first world.”

    It is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops when someone threatens your life, takes away your freedom, and doesn’t kill you.

    It is what causes the Nigerian to bark like a stray dog, pitifully seeking the collar end of the leash of the “first world.”

  • Motorcyclists as killer gangs

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    Driving on Nigerian roads in the best of times is a great challenge. Drivers are not properly trained on road usage, driving regulations and laws and what side of the road to take while driving. It sometimes seems to me that drivers are totally oblivious of the rights or presence of other road users while driving on the roads. It is almost normal to see trailers and long articulated lorries driving in the inner curbs of the roads rather than on the outside leaving other drivers to overtake them wrongly on their right rather than on their left side of the roads. When a long lorry or slow drivers stay in the fast lane, others overtake them wrongly causing unnecessary accidents and deaths. Furthermore drivers avoid potholes and other portions of the roads that are bad and drive and weave here and there possibly colliding with other road users. The saddest part of this whole tragedy on our roads is that drivers are not aware that they are doing anything wrong. Obviously there is a need to overhaul the licensing regulations and the role of vehicle inspection organizations to remove crazy drivers from our roads. To make matters worse, many of these drivers are intoxicated on alcohol, drugs and all kinds of mind-changing substances.

    Sometimes in the 1970s, a famous economics professor in the University of Lagos was run over by a trailer on Lagos-Ibadan expressway. When the killer truck driver was arrested, he was found to be high on drugs and marijuana. When he was interrogated, he confessed that the big and long Chevrolet car of the professor looked like a small loaf of bread that he simply ran over! He said this with little human emotion. He had killed a Harvard university trained professor whose contribution to the country’s development was cut short by an illiterate driver. In 1982 I arrived from Washington D.C and was on my way to the University of Maiduguri where I had been appointed a professor of History. I hired a trailer to drive my containerized luggage to Maiduguri while I drove my car from Lagos all the way to Maiduguri a distance of over a thousand kilometres. The trailer driver and I took off around the same time and I drove straight to Maiduguri stopping only to ease myself or refuel my car. This looks like an impossible dream in today’s Nigeria where people dare not drive over a few kilometres without the fear of being kidnapped! I finally arrived at my destination about 4am the following day with a stiff neck. I was telling my wife about my adventure when the trailer driver showed up. I could not believe my eyes. The question I asked was how it was possible for him to nearly catch up with me driving a heavy Volvo 264 compared with his long truck. When I asked him he laughed and went to his truck, brought out a large stone and an empty bottle of local gin. He said in the night, trailer drivers usually put a large stone on the accelerator after having taken the alcohol and God save anybody who tried to stop them on the road!  I will never forget this story and whenever I see a trailer, the terrible thought of the story always came to my mind. There was another day when there was a long traffic snarl on Western Avenue now renamed Funso Williams Avenue in Surulere Lagos. A motor assistant to a petrol tanker came down and started smoking under a fully loaded petrol tanker in front of me. I came down and shouted on him to stop smoking and forcefully took the cigarette from him. Thankfully he didn’t beat me up! There are many more stories of this craziness on our roads. Even if one reported to the police, nothing will be done. The police, who rather than anticipate crime and prevent its commission, are more interested in arresting after the crime has been committed.

    In the 1950s as a manifestation of poverty there were bicycle taxis in what is now South-south and South-eastern part of Nigeria. But these were nonviolent people eking out miserable existence in pre petroleum rich Nigeria. Now a new road rage has arrived in Nigeria in the form of motorcyclist gangs. Thousands of young men who after school cannot find jobs and are not ready to learn a trade or take to farming have become commercial motorcyclists. The problem is that these ones are totally out of control. There is no test conducted before they are issued permit to operate. In most instances they don’t even wait to be issued permits before they jump on their motorcycles and head for the roads including the highways. They are totally out of control. Politicians buy and distribute these machines to their supporters as part of “democracy dividends” and the young people then take liberty for license when they hit the roads. At a time they were told in their own interest to wear protective headgears and provide for their passengers. They were told they could only carry one passenger at a time. Now we have a situation where neither they nor their passengers wear head gears. The number of passengers they carry depends on their ingenuity. It is not uncommon or strange to find a family of five dangerously clinging to one motorcycle. The number of motorcyclists in Ibadan where I live has been dangerously increased by young people from the northern part of the country fleeing from Boko haram and insecurity of one type or the other. These ones who are not familiar with the maps of the cities where they operate can stop right in the middle of the road or make wrong turns or speed at breakneck speed fatalistically believing “God is in control”. With this lawless situation, accidents are bound to occur and they do occur rather frequently. Sometimes the motorcyclists collide with one another. When this happens, there does not seem to be much of a problem, but when they collide with other road users particularly cars, all hell will break out. All other motorcyclists will gang up against the car owners. They will smash their wind screens, beat up the drivers and owners and sometimes burn and kill the drivers while their motorcyclists’ colleagues cheer them on or ask for bloody revenge.

    Read Also: 5,181 died in road accidents in 2018, says FRSC

    I have witnessed this scenario in Lagos and Ibadan and it seems to be happening all over the country as a manifestation of some crude class war of motorcyclists against car owners and even innocent pedestrians.  A friend and former roommate of mine in Ibadan Grammar School and an Oxford University educated lawyer, High Court Justice Supo Okunrinboye was simply run over by one of these wild motorcyclists and killed while trying to buy newspapers in Lagos. The culprit ran away and was never caught till today. One fellow church man of mine, John was killed in Ibadan when he was knocked down while strolling in Oluyole area. The hostility and hatred of motorcyclists for car drivers and others including pedestrians is palpable. You would think that whatever problems they have were caused by pedestrians, car and motor drivers. I sometimes cynically feel how nice it would have been if responsible people had the right to carry concealed weapons. At least the poor drivers would have had a fighting chance to defend themselves. This is not the solution. It would probably add to the problem and quickly bring up a class war much faster than anticipated.

    What is to be done? If the police were up to it, one would have suggested that street patrol like they have in civilized countries should be intensified and increased by the police.  We can borrow a leaf from The Beninois book where punishment is meted to erring motorcyclists and drivers on the spot when they commit traffic offenses. This usually came in form of heavy fines on the spot which must be paid before the cycles and cars are released.

  • The mascot and the stake

    By Olatunji Ololade

    The most prescient portrait of the 36 states unfurl in the twilight of 2019. The image is instructive: governors disagree with labour and the federal government over N30,000 minimum wage.

    Rising from a meeting in Abuja, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) said, through its chairman and Ekiti governor, Kayode Fayemi, that governors would not pay beyond their individual capacity.

    Fayemi told reporters that the federal government cannot determine what happens in the states.

    In Fayemi’s statement, we glimpse the grotesque laws of primitive earth-cult: the federal government cannot compel state governors to pay the N30, 000 minimum wage but the governors can go cap in hand to seek alms and loans from the federal government to ‘run their states’ and pay workers’ salaries every month.

    It’s a curious case of entitlement. But the governors present their argument persuasively, stating that, while “States were part of the tripartite negotiation and agreed to N30,000 minimum wage, states also know there will be consequential adjustments. That would be determined by what happened on a state-by-state basis because there are different numbers of workers at the state level, there are different issues at the state level.

    “We have always been clear that this was a national minimum wage increase, not a general minimum wage review…Every state has its own trade union, with a negotiating committee and they would undertake this discussion with their state governments.”

    The outcome of such negotiations are better imagined. Previous deliberations of such nature didn’t end in favour of the underdog, the underpaid workers.

    The federal government and labour on October 18 announced an agreement on the implementation of the N30, 000 minimum wage thus averting a labour strike.

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its meeting, presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, approved the agreement and set dates for the take-off of the new wage and payment of the arrears between April 18 and December 31.

    But Fayemi said the agreement and directive apply only to federal workers. The governors, no doubt, present persuasive arguments about constraints that may result and hinder their capacity to pay workers’ salaries and smooth running of their states, if they should attempt to pay the N30, 000 minimum wage; not with the dilemma of ghost workers, dwindling internally generated revenue (IGR) and an over-bloated civil service.

    While such argument could be dismissed as duplicitous whining by the governors, it behooves civil societies and the citizenry to facilitate a forum whereby issues bordering on states’ insolvency, governors’ reckless spending, inflated budgets, unjustifiable borrowing, among others, can be debated with progressive results.

    It also calls to question the current political system and its constitutional pitfalls. While most governors and politicians pay lip-service to fiscal integrity and true federalism, reality asserts that very few among them actually walk their talk.

    Governors and deputy governors are entitled to N2,223,705 and N2,112,214 as annual salaries, states the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) but there are numerous allowances, including the controversial security vote not reflected in the figures.

    Thus very few individuals, less than 50 in number to be precise, cost over 196 million Nigerians hundreds of billions of naira, every year, as salaries and other allowances for serving as governors.

    The poverty report of the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated the poverty rate at 67.1 per cent of the total population, indicating that over 120 million Nigerians live below the poverty line.

    Amid the begrimed imagery, each governor nurtures a frantic lust to gift his state with an airport. This obsession is, largely, driven by a craving to embezzle state funds and provide a hanger for their existing or ‘soon to be acquired’ private jets.

    The logic of constructing airports by governors, whose states are less than an hour’s drive from each other, like Lagos and Ogun, flouts managerial wisdom and common sense. Even so, former Ogun governor, Ibikunle Amosun sought to build “an international cargo airport in the state” thus rendering over 5,000 farmers landless and incapacitated, in a severely depressed agricultural economy.

    If the roads were in good condition, Governor Fayemi would have no need to pursue a similar venture in Ekiti State. Funding and efforts wasted on such initiatives could be deployed in facilitating good roads and rail system by the governors across the 36 states of the federation.

    But rather than reprimand culprits for being profligate and purblind, the federal government cuddles them with free oil cash and loans from the federation account. A 2016 report revealed, that, of the 25 airports managed by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), only the two in Lagos and Abuja are viable, according to aviation experts.

    More governors have taken steps to establish their own airports thus adding to the Nigerian landscape, an assortment of dystopic airfields.

    Its about time the NGF discarded the serpent desires of bowel and belly and seek realistic solutions to their states’ development challenges. Beyond their hysteria to construct airports, prospect for oil and embark on borrowing sprees, they could energise their states from the bottom up – grassroots.

    Airports hardly cultivate economies outside Lagos and Abuja. Most of the governors preside over impoverished states with unexploited consumer markets, untapped potential for commercial agriculture  and under-employed labour pools.

    Governors must imaginatively engage grassroots and state-level actors in driving economy, combating insecurity and addressing post-conflict needs, in northeastern Nigeria, for instance.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, as Page suggests, must also strike a balance between collegiality and coercion in his dealings with state governors. Let him deploy the carrot and stick approach with juvenile governors; he could give them loans in exchange for full transparency of state spending and accounts. He could also withhold financial bailouts from governors who shun needed reforms, thereby leaving them cash-strapped and politically vulnerable.

    Regardless of these tactics, the onus is on the citizenry to vote out inefficient governors. But this can only be achieved in the long-run via better voter education – a reality that the youth and INEC are unable to actualise.

    In the short-run, the 36 states will deservedly endure the affliction of mostly corrupt, inefficient governors – empowered by the constitution and cuddled by the NGF.

    The latter’s stance substantiates my previous assessment of governors’ immoderate spunk as they resumed office, few months ago, as Initial Gra-Gra (IGG), sporadic outbursts of a feigned vigour.

    Nonetheless, Fayemi bears the plague of validating the NGF as a ritual precinct of tin gods.

    He is burdened to explain, refute and justify fellow governors’ established and future misdemeanours.  He cannot control them but he endows their failings with his face and voice thus synthesising glassy intellect with the forum’s coarse flux.

    Like I opined few months ago, it’s a good thing that Fayemi became NGF’s chairman, perhaps. But despite his initial flurry as the voice of the virile statesman, he flaunts no virility yet. Right now, he is forced to endure perception as the sacrificial mascot who may end up on a stake.

    Sometimes, his colleagues would truly err. Sometimes, they would be misunderstood. But at all times, Fayemi would be parodied as an NGF idol and object, champion and captive, till he is buried – politically – or canonised as the bulging mass of NGF’s constipated frame.