The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Great Britain and the decline of a global power

    The defeat of the so called Spanish Armada in 1588 by the English navy during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 marked the beginning of the dominance of the British Navy which later provided the means by which the British Empire was built.  Admiral Alfred Thayer Mayan in his seminal book on sea power has demonstrated admirably the influence of sea power on history and how this is a key to understanding the rise and fall of the British empire. At the height of the empire it was usually stated that the sun never set on the empire that stretched from Canada in the North American continent in the west to India and Australasian countries of Australia and New Zealand and islands in the pacific. As the sun is about to set in North America, it will be rising in the eastern possessions of the empire. The British were justifiably proud of the awesome achievement of a small island nation dominating the world. It achieved this feat not through territorial expansion in Europe as the other European powers like Spain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and Russia tried to do. In fact, Britain’s power was based on staying away from European diplomatic and military entanglement.  Whenever Britain intervened in Europe, it was to maintain a balance of power. This policy of “little Englanders” sufficed for a long time and saw Britain come out victorious in two world wars. Of course it was the power of the new world redressing the balance of the old world of Europe that secured victory for Britain in the two world wars. If not for Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and less celebrated efforts of people in the sub-continent of India and our own people in the Anglophone countries in Africa south of the Sahara, Great Britain would not have remained great for this length of time.

    It was therefore understandable for Winston Churchill after the Second World War In 1945 to declare that he would not be “the  First Lord of the Treasury (prime minister) to preside over the liquidation of the British empire. “Unfortunately for Churchill, there were potent forces at work undermining the empire and in hindsight, it seems no one could have stood against the force of history. Beginning with India and Pakistan in 1947, Ceylon in 1948 to be followed by Sudan in 1955 and the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1957 and a host of others including Nigeria in the  1960s the British Empire dissolved into its various national entities.

    While this was going on, France and Germany after the Second World War decided to  co-operate  by pooling their resources together shepherded by their two illustrious sons of General Charles de Gaulle of France and Konrad Adenauer  of Germany by forming what later evolved into the European Economic Community ( EEC) and now the European Union(EU). Britain following its well laid down tradition of distancing itself from European entanglement, kept away and continued to manage its empire whose size after the war was still considerable. By the 1970s it occurred to the leaders of Britain that it could no longer afford to cut itself  off from the economic development  and regional integration in Europe, particularly as its trade was beginning to be closely tied up with Europe. On January 1, 1973 Great Britain became a member of the European Economic Community. Even at that time not every one of its leaders were persuaded that membership in the economic community was absolutely desirable. Thus developed two groups of Euro- sceptics and pro-Europeans within the British political spectrum. As European politicians began to dream big of a federal Europe, the British became worried about losing their peculiar British tradition in a Europe economically dominated by Germany – the biggest economy in Europe, and politically dominated by the French who always had the support and understanding of Germany as founding nations. European integration gathered more speed with most of the countries with the exception of a few refuseniks like Britain  adopting a common currency the Euro on January 1, 1999. Then followed the Schengen Agreement by which most of the countries in the European Union adopted more or less a common immigration policy that permitted freedom of movement of one country’s visa holders entering  all countries of the Schengen group. The admission into  the European Union of countries in Central Europe just coming out of communist domination and granting them right of movement in the union and many of them flooding British cities upset many Britons who felt they should have control on those who come to live in their country . What seemed to have finally made some Britons to agitate against remaining in the European Union was the possibility of the admission of  Muslim Turkey. Euro-sceptics whipped up emotions of  Britain being swamped by uncontrollable foreign immigration and possibly of Muslim Turks  when Turkey becomes a member of the European Union.  The rising British opposition to Europe forced the government of David Cameron to negotiate for Britain’s control of its immigration. The EU was not going to have the British benefit from the European market while having power to keep Europeans from living in Britain. This was what forced David Cameron, the prime minister  in 2016 to gamble on a referendum of whether to leave the European Union or stay. He had hoped and campaigned that Britain should stay but the rise of nationalism  and nativism triumphed over economic common sense and the British people voted to leave in a vote that sharply divided the country into 52 percent leavers and 48 percent remainers. Analysing the vote shows people in Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain while people in wales and England voted to leave. The youth to which the future belongs voted to stay while the older generation who are less educated and more inclined to be xenophobic voted to leave. As an  honourable man, David Cameron resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Theresa May who after  three years of negotiations with the European Union got a deal which the British parliament rejected three times thus forcing her to resign. The new prime minister, Boris Johnson who is regarded as  an unprincipled and ambitious man is now saddled with getting a deal with Europe which the British parliament would approve. Boris Johnson has made it clear that with or without  a deal, Britain will leave the European Union on October 31. He has asked for radical changes in the deal negotiated by Theresa May. He is particularly piqued by the so-called Irish backstop, an agreement to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland which is part of Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Removal of this Irish back stop could conceivably undermine carefully negotiated peace deal between the nationalist forces of Sin Fein and  its armed wing the Irish Republican Army ( IRA) and the British. Undeclared war has been raging between the British and the Irish  Catholics in Ulster since the division of their Island between the Catholic south and the largely Protestant Northern Ireland which has substantial catholic minority who feel discriminated against.

    American meddling in this crisis is changing what is an internal affair of Great Britain. Barack Obama as president of the USA had advised against Britain leaving the European Union. Trump has  now promised post-BREXIT United Kingdom a rapidly negotiated trade deal to replace whatever the United Kingdom may be losing by withdrawing from Europe. The United States House of Representatives has said through its speaker Nancy Pelosi that no matter what President Trump may promise his British mimic, Boris Johnson, the U S Congress will not pass a USA- UK trade deal if there is a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. People of Irish descent are well mobilized against any British – European Union agreement that will jeopardize peace on the island of Ireland. Furthermore the Scottish  National Party( SNP ) which is the ruling party in Scotland has said since the people of Scotland did not vote to leave the European Union, any precipitous British withdrawal from the European Union will trigger another referendum in Scotland about whether Scotland should remain as part of the United Kingdom or not. If Scotland were to withdraw  from the United Kingdom, the status of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom will now have to be determined either by a referendum or continued Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign. If Britain were to withdraw without a deal with the European Union,  there will be serious consequences. In spite of continued security alliance with Britain, the European Union will not be economically open to Britain as a partner. A  new agreement would have to be fashioned out which will not be as favourable to Britain as when it was in the European Union. The upshot of all this will be rapid decline of the country because its products will not continue to receive most favourable conditions in Europe and London which for many years has been perhaps the most important financial centre in the world will lose its pre-eminent position to cities like Paris, Frankfurt,  and Dublin with devastating effects on the British economy. This could lead to the unravelling of United Kingdom with Scotland voting to leave the country.

  • The cave and the darkness

    BIG Brother Naija (BBN)’s Pepper Dem Gang perpetuates a fable, not of hope, but disintegration. The current edition of the reality show celebrates the pre-adolescent mind stuck in a grave of delusions. Participants on the show, like their predecessors, personify a deep cry for help, like Hoyle’s misdirected mortals, they will learn from avoidable mistakes, not from example.

    An inmate of the BBN house, Khafi Kareem, who is also a Metropolitan Police officer in the United Kingdom, is reportedly being investigated for appearing on the reality TV show despite being refused permission by her employers.

    The 29-year-old, who joined the UK Police as a Constable in 2015, is being investigated after she was allegedly filmed having sex repeatedly, with 31-year-old inmate, Ekpata Gedoni, on the show.

    The Metropolitan Police said it had not granted Kareem’s request to appear on the show and that an internal investigation would be carried out.

    A spokesman said, “The Directorate of Professional Standards has been informed and will be carrying out an investigation into the circumstances. The Met does not support the officer’s appearance, nor does she represent the Met whilst appearing on the show.”

    Well, if she doesn’t represent Metropolitan Police, at least, she represents her family. Even if Kareem’s employer eventually sacks her, she has the ‘love,’ ‘votes’ and backing of her family and fan base.

    It is instructive to note that while the UK Metropolitan Police is embarrassed by the conduct of Constable Kareem, the 29-year-old has become something of a folk hero, a pop idol to millions of Nigerian youths rooting for her to win the show mainly because of her sexual exploits.

    Sex possesses a far darker power than society has admitted. It is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.

    Kareem, for instance, participates in the show “to do societal good” and in pursuit of the prize money, she has unfurled interestingly.

    As I asserted in last week’s piece, a show like BBN posits reality and entertainment by dignifying decadence and seduction.

    To remould society, the show’s producers target the youth, and successfully sever their audience’s mental connection with moral roots. The so-called leaders of tomorrow are thus lured backward, away from menarche into the womb of regression.

    The inmates are enclosed in a zone of morbid ecstasy. They are untouchable, carriers of charisma kept under quarantine, till they emerge as bearers of dirt.

    The BBN inmate, irrespective of gender, is a non-person, subject to mass cheering and shunning. The eventual winner, like other participants in the show, emerge blinded by celebrity and severely crippled to function as a normal constituent of a humane society.

    As BBN inmate, his imagination is free, but his body is bound in ritual restriction. He is a daemonic tool, a sacrificial totem maddened by intoxicants: alcohol and human milk, fluid of slovenly genitals.

    The heated debate over sexual indulgences of the show’s participants is rife with sentiments as societal segments engage in a clash of obscenities in defence or condemnation of goings-on on the show.

    The disconcertingly awkward sex between participants on the show has, reportedly, been untidy and shattering. Viewers’ morality has been seduced and conquered as DSTV/Multichoice keeps sensuality aglow in gothic gloom. Surely, the show’s producers legitimise carnal depravity. They broker pornography via BBN’s bedchamber of rank and malodorous sex.

    Any critic of the show is, however, deemed ‘hypocrite,’ a disgruntled visionary who feels too deeply and sees too much and is tortured by his own vision.

    Shall we seek import, still, in a social media post by a certain Shakeerah S. It goes thus:

    In 2018, the total number of votes on the BBN show was 170 million. In a sharp contrast, the total number of votes cast at the 2019 general election was 27 million.

    Then she writes: “A practical reality of who we are as a people and where our priority lies as citizens. The funny side in all of these; we still go to bed, have a good sleep and wake up with the hope to meet Nigeria we didn’t create.”

    This brings us to the Nigeria of our dreams vs the Nigeria of our plots and intrigues. Do we deserve Nigeria as it is? Yes, we do.

    Nonetheless, the country’s youth clamour for change. They want a revolution and a radical improvement on the status quo. But how can they exact change while they are perceptually enslaved?

    In The Republic, Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world above are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality.

    If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he will suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to see anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated.

    He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well.

    Plato, argues Hedges, feared the power of entertainment, the power of the senses to overthrow the mind, the power of emotion to obliterate reason. Plato, he notes, said that the enlightened or elite had a duty to educate those bewitched by the shadows on the cave wall, a position that led Socrates to quip: “As for the man who tried to free them and lead them upward, if they could somehow lay their hands on him and kill him, they would do so.”

    We are chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture, the spectacle of the arena and the airwaves, the lies of advertising, the endless personal dramas, many of them completely fictional, that have become the staple of news and BBN’s disconcerting reality.

    In contemporary culture, writes Boorstin, the fabricated, the inauthentic, and the theatrical have displaced the natural, the genuine, and the spontaneous, until reality itself has been converted into stagecraft. We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so “realistic” that they can live in them. We are the most illusioned people on earth. Yet we dare not become disillusioned, because our illusions are the very house in which we live; they are our news, our heroes, our adventure, our forms of art, our very experience.

    Boorstin goes on to caution that an image is something we have a claim on. It must serve our purposes. The image is made to order, tailored to us. An ideal, on the other hand, has a claim on us. It does not serve us; we serve it. If we have trouble striving towards it, we assume the matter is with us, and not with the ideal.

    A greater problem manifests where the BBN reality becomes the Nigerian ideal.

     

  • Climate change: The fire next time

    In the 1960s, the American black author James Baldwin wrote a book about the future of American race relations and entitled it “The Fire Next Time” which was an attempt to re-echo what God allegedly told Noah that He would not destroy the world by water as he did in Noah’s time but that He will destroy it by fire when man’s cup is full, to put it Biblically. Some people when they think about the possibility of nuclear war always feel that it is the way the old prophecy of destroying the world by fire would be fulfilled. It is of course clear to everybody that in the event of a nuclear war, nothing will be spared. The late President J.F. Kennedy said that in the event of nuclear war, “the living will envy the dead”, meaning those who survive the immediate incineration will die painfully of radioactive fallout. Perhaps man may avoid this if we play our politics right. That is , if the nuclear arms states can somehow manage universal nuclear disarmament. This is provided for by appropriate United Nations protocol. Whether this will happen remains a moot question.

    But there is the possibility of the world burning out through anthropomorphic activities by which human beings have sought to dominate the environment since time immemorial through agriculture and animal husbandry and the modern life styles of man such as industrialization and other appurtenances of modern existence. It is obvious that human activities of production and existence have led to unprecedented and unparalleled emission of greenhouse gasses into the environment causing global warming. Experts have now warned that the world must not only reverse global warming but that it cannot afford an increase of more than 1.5 Celsius in temperature.

    Read Also: Anambra students, others protest global warming

    I remember attending the climate change conference in Copenhagen some years ago and it was then decided that the world must not only reverse greenhouse emissions but should even go back to the level of 1970 or there about. The argument common among those of us from developing countries was that the polluters must pay for all abatement measures that needed to be taken to clean the global environment. Since most of the polluters were countries in the industrialized North of the world namely Europe, America and Japan, they should bear the brunt of the measures needed to be taken to reverse environmental abuse of the world. The developing world reasonably argued that they needed to be developed before joining those concerned with global warming. This meant huge polluters like China and India would continue to use dirty fuels like coal in their industries. Countries in OPEC like Nigeria are always very defensive when the consumption of hydrocarbons like oil and gas are flagged as polluters. This struck at national economies of many countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin American countries like Mexico and Venezuela and even Russia that depends on its export of gas and oil to Europe. The campaign designed to save the environment has not been easy because there are many complex issues and interests involved, yet this is a task that must be done if man and his environment must survive.

    The vagaries of national and international politics have also not helped the campaign. The work of a UN experts group that toiled for years to establish the scientificity of global warming leading to the Paris protocol on global warming is being undermined by politicians like Donald Trump, the current American president joined by his Australian counterparts who have refused to accept the unarguable facts of global warming. The manifestations of global warming can be seen in the unseasonably high temperatures and other extremes of weather all over the world. This current year is regarded everywhere as the hottest in recorded history. Many people especially the aged, infirm and children have died as a result of extreme heat not only in Europe and America as the world press tend to publicize, but in Asia and Africa as well. Perhaps the most alarming effect of global warming is the regular forest fires in America in particular and now in the Arctic, Alaska, Canada’s northern territories, Norwegian and Swedish northern territories and Russian Siberia and the Arctic. The fires in the arctic circle has been burning since June and because of the inaccessible nature of the areas to mechanical fire fighters, they are being left to burn themselves out thus causing damage in terms of the spewing of carbon dioxide into the environment leading further to global warming. Added to this is the burning of the peat and bog in the Arctic and releasing even greater carbon dioxide into the air. On top of this is the melting of the icecaps thus leading to eventual rise in sea rise and coastal flooding. The reduction of the trees which act as carbon sinks further reduces the ability of the global environment to recover. The huge emissions of carbon is also damaging global oceans whose ability to absorb more carbon has been reduced because there is only a limit to how much carbon the seas which are getting saturated can absorb. The emissions of automobiles and the entire industrial processes had primarily been responsible for greenhouse gasses but the problem has been compounded by our agricultural processes. For example, the rearing of millions of cows all over the world and their emission of green house gasses like the methane they belch into the air has led to calls for a change of diet away from consumption of beef and eating more grains. In this regard, Nigeria must begin to think about what we are going to do to the millions of cows whose methane emissions is adding to global warming. The world may be moving to a point where there might be international protocol about the number of cattle people and countries can hold.

    What is to be done? The automobile industry is at least doing something about automobiles’ emission by planning to replace cars and autos powered by hydrocarbons with those powered by electric batteries and liquefied hydrogen with zero emissions to the environment. Industrial processes are also receiving same attention of moving away from hydrocarbons as sources of fuel. The problem in some countries like China, India and some parts of the USA like West Virginia is that electricity is still being produced from coal instead of from renewables like tide, wind, thermal and at worst nuclear energy sources. Even though Trump and his co -travellers in some countries may not be environment friendly, sub national authorities like California, Colorado and several cities in the USA are taking measures to ensure that they are environment compliant. The same thing is being done in most of Western Europe and Japan where as in the case of Great Britain, the government hopes to have zero emission by 2050. Most of the European Union countries are even targeting earlier years for environment compliance. The rise of Green parties in these countries has put pressure on their governments to do the right thing. In order to make whatever measures being taken in all these countries to be effective, same measures have to be taken globally because the global environment is one. You cannot pollute somewhere and clean in another place and expect positive global results.

    The fight for saving the common global environment has become an imperative recently because of the Arctic circle fires and the gradual denudation of the Amazon forest in Brazil , the Guyanas ( Dutch and French) and the former British Guyana now an independent country. But the global eye is on Brazil where the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil who does not believe in the evidence of global warming, has opened the Amazon forest of Brazil to capitalists who are interested in logging, agricultural and animal husbandry to cut trees in the basin thus removing the forest providing carbon sink for substantial global carbon emissions. Not only that, the Amazon basin is responsible for substantial amount of the oxygen in our air and if the basin were to disappear, the world will be in trouble. The slash and burn agriculture in the Amazon basin and in places like the Congo basin and the tropical forests of Indonesia  as well as our own rain forest are inimical to global environmental wellbeing.

    What then must be done to avoid global calamity. This will require radical changes in the way we live and even what we eat. But to begin with, countries with vast rain forest like Brazil must be assisted to preserve the rain forest for the world and the indigenous people who live there. These countries would have to be compensated through the GEF (Global Environmental Fund) which will have to be substantially increased to take into account what the countries owning the tropical forests would be losing by not allowing whole sale exploitation of their forests. Where the forests have been already cut as in West Africa, efforts at afforestation must be assisted through financial transfers from the OECD counties that were responsible for global warming. All oil exploration in the Arctic would have to stop and what is causing fires to flare up there must be examined and an end must be put to it. The world cannot continue to dilly dally on the issue of climate change caused by global warming.

  • Dead or alive

    IT was a mission accomplished but the victory turned sour, with the killing of some of the policemen. They were killed by those who under normal circumstances should have lent them a hand in that operation. The friction between the police and the army did not start today but what happened on August 6 should not have led to a bloodbath, except there is more to it that the public does not know about.

    The army and the police are key to the security architecture. The army protects the territorial integrity of the nation; the police maintain law and order. Whether or not they have cordial relationship,  they owe it a duty to work together in the interest of the society. But what do we get from them?  Unhealthy rivalry which has cost the nation a lot in man and material resources.

    The August 6 tragedy should not have happened at all. The usual cause of friction between the police and the army is when  one kills the other. But this was not the case in this instance to  warrant what led to this black Tuesday. The police were on a mission to arrest a suspect and they successfully did. But getting out of town with the suspect became a problem for the policemen. Self preservation,  they say, is the first law of nature. Having been arrested,  Hamisu Bala (Why Do You Mean) Wadume did the next best thing – he raised a false alarm.

    The guilty, we are told, are afraid.  Wadume seemed to have prepared well for a day like this. Through his philanthropy, he has wormed his way into the hearts of many in Ibi, a small fishing community in Taraba State,  where he ruled the roost. From a nobody (see The Nation of Tuesday), Wadume suddenly became a multi-millionaire, dispensing favours to family and friends. There is no doubt that the army and the police also benefited from his patronage. If not, Wadume would not have lasted this long in his kind of work.

    People with his tendencies know what to do to beat the law. They put the security operatives in their domains on their pay roll. Once that is done, the coast is clear for them to do whatever they like. But should dog eat dog in order to save a suspect? What happened to esprit de corps? What happened in Ibi is a shame on our security institution. It shows that even among themselves our security personnel are not safe. You cannot trust the soldier to watch the policeman’s back and vice versa. It should not be so.

    Something must be wrong somewhere for our security operatives to take sides with suspects at the expense of their colleagues. If a soldier is ready to sacrifice a policeman for a suspect then we are in trouble as a nation. Here, we are talking of three policemen and not one shot dead, with two others or more lying critically ill in hospital. How did we get to this pass? That our security operatives will become hired guns for those they should bring to justice. No matter their inter-agency rivalry, our security agencies should close ranks when it comes to fighting crime.

    If they do not unite in crime fighting,  society will suffer. There are many Wadumes in the land. It will take the cooperation of our securuty agencies to bring them to book. If they work at cross purpose, criminals will seize the land. Look at what bandits,  kidnappers, insurgents and robbers have turned the country to. The people can no longer sleep with their eyes closed. Yet, we have the police, army, navy, air force,  Department of State Service (DSS), Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). Is crime rate on the rise because they are all on the take?

    That cannot be, but what happened in Ibi has left the citizenry with no choice than to doubt the integrity of their security operatives.  Men of the 93 Battalion, Takum,  have questions to answer on the Ibi tragedy. If they could kill three policemen and some civilians all because someone – a kidnap suspect at that – raised a false alarm that he was being kidnapped, where then is the suspect, who was in handcuff and leg chain? How did he get away despite being shackled?

    Such a suspect could not have got away without being helped as he could not have gone far in that condition. Who aided his escape? Men of the 93 Battalion and their captain described as Wadume’s friend should know. The nation is waiting for them to produce the suspect dead or alive. May the sacrifice of the slain Inspector Mark Edaile, Sergeant Usman Danzumi and Sergeant Dahiru Musa not be in vain. They deserve medals of honour.

  • Angry youths and misplaced aggression

    It is a season of anger. As institutional fighting replaces bargaining and compromise, cherished values of the democratization process; anger takes control of all: the federating nationalities,  the power addressees, election losers, those short-changed by the system: kidnappers, bandits, armed criminals, herdsmen and farmers with everyone playing the victim. There also those past leaders who led us to this sorry pass showing their own anger by sowing seeds of discord and divisiveness. There are of course our frustrated  angry youths who without proper articulation of Nigeria’s crisis on nationality last week angrily declared a day of rage for the take-off of their now aborted revolution to take over the country from democratically elected President Buhari.

    It is not as if there had not been periods of anger in our land in the past. In 1953, as a result of the insult hauled at northern leaders over their rejection of Chief Anthony Enahoro’s 1956 motion for independence, Ahmadu Bello had sworn when next he was coming to Lagos, he would come with his sword. Chief SLA Akintola’s subsequent attempt to mobilise northern Kano youths for his AG party’s support ended in Kano 1953 violence which left 46 dead and over 200 wounded. But at the end, reason prevailed among leaders whose strained relationship caused the anger. They sat down to negotiate Nigeria’s future and came up with a working constitution. In the spirit of give and take, they inserted a safety valve in form of non-interference clause in the affairs of federating regions to prevent the take-over of the country by the north with advantage of land space and population. If that arrangement failed in 1962, it was as a result of brinkmanship of Ahmadu Bello who celebrated the takeover of the country by giving a horse to Zik and a copy of the Quran to Balewa, the prime minister while expressing satisfaction for handing over the country to his two trusted loyalists. And when Zik fell out of favour after the constitutional crisis of 1964, he was promptly replaced with Chief SLA Akintola, who in turn received a gift of a sword from Ahmadu Bello.

    The difference between then and today is that we are confronted with poverty of ideas. Our past ill-equipped leaders who by their acts of commission or omission  between 1975 and 2015 reinforced  Ahmadu Bello’s  ‘mainstreaming’ agenda are the same people fuelling the institutionalised fighting currently going on in the country. Instead of sitting down to negotiate our defective structure, they are busy demonizing Buhari, a mere symptom of our crisis of nationality. Unfortunately, our youths who should know better have forgotten that it was Babangida who after fraudulently declaring ‘for their tomorrow we sacrifice our today” introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme that turned Nigeria to importer of the labour of other countries leaving today’s youths to roam the street without job. Our social  media tigers who have no knowledge of  yesterday do not know that it was  Obasanjo who after declaring  that “youth constitute Nigeria’s only hope for a real future”,  took off from where Babangida stopped, selling off through ill-implemented privatization programme, public enterprises set up at a cost of over $100b by our founding fathers to take care of the less privileged, build a foundation for a middle class and guarantee an egalitarian society,  for a miserable $1.5b to the members of  the political class. The angry youths probably don’t understand that Obasanjo, Atiku and other government officials under-funded our universities that once compared favourably with the best in the world in order to pave way for their high fees paying universities. Since many hardly read, they probably don’t understand these angry past leaders came up with government monetization policy that allowed them to share prime properties dating back to colonial period kept in their custody for our children yet unborn among themselves, their family members and their in-laws. If there is darkness in the land, the angry youths are not asking why those who allegedly spent $16b on the power sector generated only darkness. While our teaching hospitals remain consulting clinics, they are not asking those using them as pawns why huge contracts for the refurbishment of the teaching hospitals were awarded as patronage to party stalwarts who ended up supplying obsolete equipment. If President Buhari is now borrowing money to construct standard gauge  railway lines, our angry youths did not bother to read about how a section of the media celebrated what was described as ‘a railway revolution’ when all the late Samuel Ogbemudia did was to repaint some old railway coaches.

    Of course President Buhari can do better. He was after all elected because of the above betrayals by his predecessors in office. But the response to his imperfections is not anger but strategic thinking and planning. Inpatient Sowore did not take pains to digest what the late Dr Okadigbo described as the ‘arithmetic of Nigeria elections’. He did not also take pains to find out why Chief Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello, both celebrated for their successes as regional premiers started as at the local government level .But all the same, Sowore and others  who have never been registered members of political parties, contested elections or demonstrated proper articulation of Nigerian crisis of nationality thought they could defeat President Buhari who as a result of his cult-like followership among the northern masses, secured 13million votes during each of his three previous outings as opposition candidate.

    Sowore and his angry youths who after failing to achieve their objective through the constitutional process, threatened to take over power by force did not bother about history. Our current defective federal structure works in favour of any candidate supported by the north. That was the case in 1964, 1979 and 1999 when the north arrogantly chose Obasanjo as Yoruba candidate and elected him president without Yoruba vote. Experience since the birth of the fourth republic has also shown that constitutional amendment not supported by the north cannot sail through the National Assembly, state houses of assembly and the 774 LGAs.

    Sowore did not also attempt to take advantage of the experiences of his illustrious Yoruba forbears who have been in the forefront of the struggle for a restructured Nigeria since the end of the civil war. Besides the old guard represented by Pa Ayo Adebanjo, his children, Bola Tinubu, Segun Osoba and Wale Oshun, Professor Akin Oyebode recently disclosed to close friends that the Yoruba were the only group at the Jonathan 2014 Confab armed with about 400 page document to support restructuring. Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who was also a member of the confab not long ago said Buhari, because of his massive support in the north, is perhaps the only northern leader uniquely placed to convince the northern political elite that by acceding to restructuring, the north would not be committing political suicide. Governor Fayemi also reminded Yoruba social media tigers and others calling for Yoruba withdrawal of support for the Buhari administration on account of his body language on restructuring that ‘Yoruba alone cannot effect restructuring of Nigeria’.

    By his demonstrated impatience and contempt for Yoruba traditional leaders and Yoruba political office holders, it is doubtful if angry Sowore understands Nigeria’s crisis of nationality can only be resolved through debates, dialogue and bargaining.  His temporary incarceration one hopes will afford him an opportunity to reflect on the futility of his reported suicide threat which according to Fela Kuti will amount to “dying wrongfully”, a crime DSS say it is trying to forestall by his detention.

  • Sowore and the porn of revolt

    Omoyele Sowore likens himself to a revolutionary. His followers call him truth-sayer, the voice of the youth. He is the situational hero sculpted of spunk and spittle. Certain youths idolise him.

    In their fantasy, Sowore transfigures by patriotic ecstasy, defeats all odds hauled at him by the predatory ruling class. He causes Nigeria to implode and through the implosion, he emerges to rescue all from the stranglehold of the predatory ruling class.

    He causes Nigeria to implode and through the implosion, he emerges to rescue all from the stranglehold of bad leadership.

    Nonetheless, the ageing leadership holds tenaciously to power, never letting go. When they do let go, they reinsert themselves via stooges, their children and sworn associates.

    Amid the malady, the youth romanticised the emergence of a ‘young’ presidential candidate like Sowore, among others. The fable persisted through the 48-year-old’s establishment of the African Action Congress (AAC), through which he vied for the presidency in 2019 and lost, coming a distant tenth and polling 33, 953 votes to Buhari/APC’s 15,191,847 winning votes even as PDP’s Atiku scored 11,264,977 votes to come second.

    Sowore’s supporters feigned stupefaction over his defeat, mocking and ‘shaming’ fellow youths on social media for deserting their ‘own,’ but the founder of Sahara Reporters took it in good stride, as if he envisaged the shellacking.

    This writer, and perhaps others, quietly hoped that Sowore, despite his defeat, would 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 – under the rule of law.

    Instead, he embraced militancy. Sowore made the news recently over his calls for nationwide protests against the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government. He accused the government of inefficiency and manipulation of the citizenry, claiming that they were the real enemies of the people.

    Consequently, he called for a revolution and fixed a date. On the eve of his #RevolutionNow protest, the DSS invaded his home and picked him up.

    Fisayo Soyombo, former Editor of Sowore’s Sahara Reporters writes: “On intent and method, I am on his side. However, on expediency and his utterances, I see gaping holes. If Sowore attempted to lead a political revolution pre-2019 election, the altruism of his intention wouldn’t be up for debate. But having offered himself as the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) and lost by a distance, this move would definitely be interpreted in some quarters as an attempt to seize power through a revolt having lost it through the ballot. That’s the expediency.

    “On utterances, he was caught on tape saying the “DSS would no longer exist” after the revolution. That was probably a slip and still fails to justify the Gestapo-style invasion of Sowore’s home; otherwise, the northerners who issued a threat to southerners over RUGA should have been languishing in jail by now. There is no justification for arresting Sowore,” argued Soyombo.

    The DSS accused Sowore of threatening the harmony of the nation by plotting to overthrow a democratically-elected government. While that, truly, is an ‘overkill,’ Sowore needs to re-examine his modus operandi and evolve more peaceful, mature, and decisive method of leading his ‘teeming’ supporters to take Nigeria back from perceived predators.

    In truth, he hadn’t such support while he vied for the presidency. A great deal of his supporters, on the streets and social media, never truly believed in him or the candidacy of his peers in the PACT assembly.

    Besides talking tough on social media, what do the youth seek in their preferred leader? What do they see now in Sowore that they didn’t see in him during the last elections?

    The youth regret their inability to take over power from the same ruling class that recruited them as thugs to disrupt the elections, maim, kill and scuttle the ambition of promising young aspirants. Yet they make a living as social media hooligans (e-rats), whose job is to hoodwink, bully, spread falsehood and thwart the ambition of promising change-makers.

    They will retire to rant, on their digital devices, and as paid protesters, about the their urgent desire and right to take over power. Their only argument is that, they are Nigerians, in their youth.

    There is need to evolve a credible opposition platform particularly as the PDP fades out and resurges in the APC. This requires the active participation of the nation’s youth; it’s about time, however, that they grasped certain bitter truths about their incapacities.

    Save a few stunning breed, contemporary performances of most youth in social and political theatres emphasise Nigeria’s descent from a moral cloud into a dissolute fenland. Freedom of persona is magical but often destabilising. If married to an excessive lust for money, it becomes very frightening and overwhelming. Ultimately it destroys.

    Revolutions throw up hierarchies thus new castes are dramatized in the noisy climax of Sowore’s #RevolutionNow. The castes are scary. Rather than sound off on a fallacy, Sowore and cohorts will do well to sensitise the youth to a visionary, peaceful revolution, founded on altruistic ideals. This brings us to the quality of youth mooting #RevolutionNow.

    Let us seek import in a social media post by one Shakeerah S. It goes thus: Topic 1: Big Brother: Tasha caught on camera having sex with Ebuka attracted 60, 700 comments; 100, 300 likes and it was shared 70, 800 times on the spur of the incident. Topic 2: Nigerian government signs power generation contract with Siemens to boost electricity, elicited 4 comments, 2 likes and the news was shared 6 times.

    I would add that Soyombo’s defence of Sowore equally got paltry page views. At the last count, the post attracted five comments and zero shares.

    In 2018, the total number of votes on the BBN show was 170 million. In sharp contrast, the total number of votes cast at the 2019 general election was 27 million. A practical reality of who we are as a people and where our priority lies as citizens. The funny side in all of these; we still go to bed, have a good sleep and wake up with the hope to meet Nigeria we didn’t create, lamented Shakeerah.

    A show like Big Brother Naija (BBN) posits reality and entertainment by dignifying decadence and seduction. In the house, inmates lie and seduce in order to get laid. Poisonous words lead to poisonous sex. It’s a win-win situation. But in Sowore’s arena of revolt, the porn assumes a darker shade as passion runs where dissent rebounds.

    To the youth, Sowore’s passion for power translated to gibberish en route the 2019 presidential elections; his words hovered in an interpretative cloud. Today, the same youth that scorned the AAC candidate tout him as Nigeria’s messiah.

    Trust Sowore to exploit their energy until the fascination wears out. But let all be guided by the curious example of Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader, who led hordes of Igbo youth to a deathly bed, in his ritual couvade mimicking Biafra’s rebirth.

  • Jumbo cabinet of 43 persons

    After the long wait of more than two months, President Muhammadu Buhari finally announced the names of a 43-member cabinet. Even though the president had promised that he was going to choose those whom he personally knows, there is no evidence that he knows most of the people he has chosen. This is not an indictment by any means. A cursory look at the list makes me feel he did not dig enough to unearth many hidden gems in human resources of Nigeria. We seem to be confused about what system of government we are really running. Is it presidential or cabinet/prime ministerial government? From the way we operate in Nigeria, we seem to be running a hodgepodge system neither “rat nor bird” as we say in this part of Africa. If we were running a truly presidential system, the president should have gone beyond just naming only politicians into his government and found very knowledgeable people who can help him translate his wishes of development into actual reality.  He has completely ignored the academics, professionals and the youth and non-political types. He could also have brought into his government some of those young people who ran for the presidency in the last election like the Fela Durotoyes and Moghalus, who in my opinion represent the yearning of our country’s youth and knowledgeable people. By not recognizing them, he is alienating the critical mass of the intelligentsia; the same group who represent the future of our country .Choosing politicians alone is a total misunderstanding of the presidential system of government.

    The Abacha constitution we are running the country with, states that each state must be represented in the federal cabinet. This requirement of course is understandable in a plural society like Nigeria but do we have to go beyond having more than 36 ministers which is the number of states we have? As far as I know, there is no state House of Assembly that has more than 43 members which is the number of the Muhammadu Buhari cabinet. How does one run a 43-man cabinet? Is it by voting? This is an anomaly. Even a cabinet of 36 ministers would be unwieldy. The present cabinet to me looks like another parliament or a talking shop where not much will be achieved if everything had to be subjected to normal cabinet discussion and scrutiny which underpin the idea of “collective responsibility” In the case of this huge cabinet, the president will have to have a cabinet within a cabinet more like a “war cabinet” in an emergency situation. Nigeria of course is in emergency. What with a stagnant economy that is not expanding to cope with the employment needs of a growing youthful population. We are also beset by enormous security problems as well as ethnic antagonism largely the result of political manipulation and the inability or refusal of the security forces to cope with the security needs of a bedraggled and helpless people. If the country by the nature of this huge cabinet has to be run by a war cabinet which is really not a bad idea, the war cabinet must be made up of intelligent people cutting across the ethnic, religious and regional divide of this country. This can be done since we now generally agree on the six zonal divide in the country. If however the war cabinet or “cabal” seems to come only from the president’s part of the country, then the hue and cry will begin all over again thus immobilizing the country . What President Buhari should try and do is to bring up constitutional proposals along with the need to prune down the size of government. This will also involve the idea of a unicameral parliament and doing away with present wasteful and expensive senate while radically reducing the number of the House of Representatives while cutting down by half the wasteful do-nothing 774 local governments. As far as I’m concerned, the present states should be the unit of effective administration in a much decentralized government with power and financial resources transferred from the centre to the periphery where the people live. This will not only reduce tension in the land, it will also enhance security because the states and the much stronger local governments will be able to design appropriate security architecture as desired and determined by the peculiarities of each state and local governments away from the current lumbering homogeneity and the inefficiency of the present.

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    The president does not have all the time in the world to make these changes and to write his name into our nation’s history. These are not normal times, in fact these are unusual and abnormal times in our country and these things call for extraordinary efforts and vision. The president because of this present situation may have to use executive powers to make necessary changes. It is a case of the end determining the means. A situation in which after four years the country has not been able to increase exponentially electricity generation and distribution calls for a change of direction if not personnel. Within the same period, Egypt with less resources than Nigeria increased its power generation by 11,000 megawatts while our installed capacity hovers around 5,000 megawatts in the so-called biggest economy in Africa. Imagine how big this economy would be if we were able to generate enough electricity to power the economy! For how long are we going to wait? Some of us have spent all our lives for ever waiting for the day when like any normal country, we will have regular supply of electricity and other normal infrastructure characteristic of a developed country. The only way to get to our development destination is through enlightened and effective government and this will not be achieved nor attained through an oversized cabinet whether at the centre or at the states’ level of governance

    The great achievement made by the Obafemi Awolowo government  in the old Western Region which some of us experienced which covered the present states of Ogun, Osun ,Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Delta parts of Lagos and Bayelsa was accomplished by a cabinet of about 11 ministers . The Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa federal government between 1957 and 1966 was made up of less than 25 ministers. Where we got this federal character mammoth of a cabinet government goes back to the Obasanjo federal character regime which meant well but the Abacha constitution which ignored the fact that many of the 1979 states had been subdivided into small units embraced without modification. This has made the whole thing counterproductive and rather unwieldy and unmanageable .This has become a cog in the wheel of development and efficiency. If we don’t know where we are going, we should at least know where we are coming from. When you add the innumerable numbers of special advisers, special assistants and assistants at presidential, ministerial, parliamentary and state governors and commissioners level, the level of over administration becomes intolerable and uneconomic. We should at least embrace what worked in the past instead of going on like a beheaded chicken with the present situation.

    I have always wondered when our governments at all levels will begin to cut down on cost of administration before it is too late. We have a mono-cultural economy that depends on hydrocarbons export of crude oil and liquefied gas which are not infinite. Not only that, with the revolution in energy resources away from global warming climate changing sources and increasingly towards renewables like sun, wind, tide thermal and at worst nuclear energy, it is only a matter of time that our overdependence on hydrocarbon exports will become economically suicidal to put it mildly. We should imagine the scenario where we have nothing to sell to the rest of the world and no money to maintain the replete of our administrative, political and infrastructural architecture.  If we have insecurity now, by then we would have reverted to a state of nature where life is nasty brutish and short. In other words, it is high time we made hay while the sun still shines. Other countries are preparing for the coming Industrial Age of artificial intelligence and robotics while all we seem to be doing is sharing political offices and crude oil commissions of unearned income .We should be investing in what will replace the present economy by funding innovation and setting up industries directly related to adding values to our agricultural produce where we at least have comparable advantage vis a vis the rest of the world.

     

    • Continue on staging.thenationonlineng.net

  • Beyond Presidency/Yoruba Obas politics

    Obaship in Yoruba nation is service. And the Obas are powerful to the extent they identify with the aspirations of their people. With the six southwest states controlled by APC in the run up to the 2019 presidential election, the courtesy visit to President Buhari by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, along with the Awujale of Ijebu, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona and other monarchs from the Yoruba country was in the service of their subjects. As expected, they insisted the visit was not political but to point out the good things the government is doing and ask for more because as the Ooni put it: “the only politics Yoruba Obas who are fathers to all play is the politics of development of their people”. As kidnapping, armed robbery, herdsmen violence and other crimes continue to claim lives and devastate the southwest country with people no more safe neither in their homes, farms and highways, the Obas led by the Ooni were last Wednesday again back in Abuja, all in the service of their subjects, to ask the president to stand up to his constitutional responsibilities.

    The president admitted the traditional rulers ‘form a critical part of governance structures, especially in their respective communities, where they feel the pulse of the people at the grassroots level”. As the ‘guardian of our culture and the pivot on which our security rests’, the president expects traditional authorities in their communities, to provide government and the security agencies with details of those coming in and out of their communities. In this regard, the president spoke of his administration’s planned “commencement of community policing, a robust revamping of police intelligence gathering capacity and the significant boosting of the numbers of security personnel in our local communities which in specific terms will include recruiting a lot more police officers and doing so right from their local government areas, where they would then be stationed in the best practice of community policing.” Finally the president assured the Obas of his commitment to protecting lives of all Nigerians and ensures that every Nigerian in every state is safe; enforce the law, prosecute lawbreakers and secure an atmosphere of tranquillity for all Nigerians wherever they choose to live..”

    Apart from the president’s political foes, I am not sure if the Obas or other Nigerians doubt President Buhari’s good intentions and commitment to the wellbeing of Nigerians. The problem however is that good intentions are not enough. The president after all had four years to address our crisis of nation building but squandered away the goodwill of many Nigerians by what those who claim to know him describe as his provincialism manifested by his lopsided appointments and slow response as commander-in-chief to the mindless killings of farmers and confiscation of their farmlands by suspected herdsmen from neighbouring countries. Few are impressed by the lethargy that seems to have defined President Buhari’s first term. For instance, many will say the demand he was making on the traditional rulers’ amount to putting the cart before the horse.  The traditional rulers would have been better-equipped to protect their immediate environments from immigrants from neighbouring states or countries if he had hearkened to popular demand for restructuring, devolution of powers including state and community policing.

    It is on record that the president has in the last four years turned blind eyes to some provisions even in his party manifesto, the recommendation of a committees on restructuring set up by his party as well as the wise counsel of many credible Nigerians on the steps to take in addressing our crisis of nation-building if we were to achieve unity in diversity. But giving the impression that he and he alone knew what Nigerians wanted, he had dismissed the interventions of patriots like Wole Soyinka and Emeka Anyaoku, going outside the shores of Nigeria to feign ignorance as to what they meant by restructuring.

    Pained by tragic turn of events, Soyinka who like Buhari went through his own purgatory by spending  over three years in prison for a just and united Nigeria, whilst admitting last week that governance is not “an easy task in a country like Nigeria with her complexity, its culture, historical background, and its formation  and the need for balancing here and there” insisted “Nigerians problems had overwhelmed the president” and has therefore called for “a national dialogue among all the people across party and ethnic lines”.

    On his part, Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General and one of Nigeria’s most respected opinion leaders, last week once again reminded the president that “Every diverse federal country throughout the world achieves political stability and socio-economic development through successfully managing its national diversity, either through inclusive central government which gives the peoples of the component parts of the federation a sense of belonging or adequate delegation of powers to the federating units to enable them to handle their internal security and significant aspects of their socio-economic development.”

    Demand for restructuring, since the president is at a loss as to what it means, is a call for a federal arrangement which has the potential to liberate individuals and groups from the tyranny of the state. It is a call for an end to the war against a negotiated federal arrangement by President Buhari and his predecessors which has so far resulted in grooming of disgruntled and disloyal groups and individuals. Today nearly all Nigeria’s major ethnic groups-the Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Ijaw, Tiv Biron, Ogoni, and Munshi etc. are at war with the state. Last Saturday, a coalition of 406 indigenous youth groups in Nigeria and the Diaspora, under the aegis of the Nigerian Ethnic Nationality Youth Leaders Forum (NENYLF), also raised an alarm about the creeping anarchy in the country admonishing “no responsible government and its leadership could continue to fold their arms pretending that all is well”.

    If groups and their representatives are not loyal to the state, it is foolhardy to assume institutions manned by disgruntled representatives of these groups will be loyal to the state. The report of herdsmen/farmers violent clashes during Obasanjo’s administration which led to the killings of about 50,000 people accused the Nigerian police of taking side. General Theophilus Danjuma, a credible opinion leader from the north-east recently accused not only the police but even the army in the ethnic clashes between his people and herdsmen. Some concerned critical minds have raised an alarm that the federal police might be aiding criminals that have turned southwest high ways and forest to hell since no cows have so far been traced to these new highway/forest herdsmen.

    Beyond the presidency/Yoruba Oba politics, President Buhari must understand that equipping the police force with advanced technology and equipment; approving licensing for states requesting the use of drones to monitor forests and other criminal hideouts” and putting plan in place “to install CCTVs on highways and other strategic locations are not answers to nation building. Nation building is giving the people what they want. And what the federating groups and all Nigerians want today is for government to get off their back so that they can take control of their lives.

  • The revolution that never was

    Give it to him. Omoyele Sowore, founder of the African Action Congress (AAC), has a way of drawing attention to himself. The SaharaReporters publisher is also good at forcing the hand of government. When a few weeks ago, he unveiled his plan for what he called #RevolutionNow protests, the former students leader set tongues wagging. Not a few asked: “What is Sowore up to this time?” As a veteran of many battles, he knew what he was doing, but many in government did not.

    In his characteristic manner, he wanted to draw the government out and he succeeded in his mission. I had hoped that the government would just look the other way and allow him and his co-travellers to hold their rallies in the 21 cities they were billed for. Rather than do that, state security officers went to smoke him out of his hotel room in the wee hours of Saturday. Really, you do not talk of revolution and expect the security agencies not to act. But they should have known better.

    Sowore may have used the word “revolution”, but going by his antecedents,  he is the last person that will seek a forceful change of government, which is the meaning of revolution. What did he have in mind when he spoke of #RevolutionNow protests? The protests in the slogan should have given the game away. But the police and the Department of State Services (DSS) read it differently. They saw a revolutionary in the making and quickly moved to stop him before he could ‘’overawe’’ the government! The intention of the champions of #RevolutionNow was not to unseat the government.

    Their plan was to draw attention to the shortcomings of the government more than two months after its second coming. Those in power read ulterior motives into Sowore’s move because he contested the February 23 election and lost to President Muhammadu Buhari. So, the thinking in government was that an election loser could not be up to anything good with such a plan. It was then decided that he must be stopped before he caused trouble. Sowore, like many of his compatriots have had it up to their throats with the government, but one thing is for sure, they will never seek to ‘’overawe’’ the President.

    Losing an election should not be used as an excuse to  stop a contestant from criticising the government. To seek to use that to stop people from speaking out against the government will amount to denying them their right to freedom of expression, thought and good governance. The government does not have the monopoly of wisdom. It needs ideas from others, especially the opposition for the good governance of the country. Speaking out against the government is not a crime and it must not be made to look like one. Sowore may have assumed too much with his slogan #RevolutionNow.

    By that slogan, he was not out to lead a revolution; he was only using it to remind the people of the need to hold the government accountable. He knows that you cannot talk of a revolution with a sitting government in place, except the people are so resolved to push it out. The people may be disenchanted with the present administration, but they know they can only change it at the polls and not on the streets marching. For now, revolution is not the way to go and that may be why, the #RevolutionNow protests ended before it even started on Monday.

    If only the security agencies had bide their time, they would have seen that the much expected #RevolutionNow was only full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Declaring it as treason, as Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu did, even before the day of the event, was a panicky measure. To compound things, the DSS arrested Sowore. At the end of the day, they may spoil an otherwise good case by their hasty actions. They should have allowed Sowore and his people be and let the citizenry determine the fate of the AAC founder as they did at the February 23 presidential poll. They have held Sowore for over 48 hours now, without bringing any charge against him. If he should go to court to enforce his right, chances are that he may win. In the course of writing this on Tuesday, DSS went to court to seek an order to keep him in custody for 90 days.

    The security agencies should not assume that they can think for the people. Nigerians are no fools. They can no longer be led by the nose. They know when to take to the streets and those who can lead them out. More important, they know the cause they should support and the one they should not be part of. Sowore has called for his revolution and seen the answer. The people spoke loud and clear – revolution is not the way to go. The people, and not the police with their guns, stopped the protests on Monday. If the people had turned out in large number for the protests, the police would have been overwhelmed. No amount of shooting and teargas would have stopped such a people.

    By the way, we should draw a line between revolution and protest. There is nothing wrong in protesting against government, but revolution is a different ball game. If a revolution fails, the consequences are dire for its champions. But has Sowore committed any offence under the present circumstance because of his call for #RevolutionNow protests? Was it a call for revolution or for protests? It was more a call for protests and not for the taking up of arms against the government. The government should rest this matter now and release Sowore and others arrested on Monday.

  • BBN’s guinea-fowls: The blooming

    The battle for Nigeria’s soul may be won and lost on the screen, and between the lines of the printed, spoken word.

    Word denotes newspapers, magazines, the audiovisual but never the book. Screen alludes to TV, new media and illusions of our multiple ethnic, religious bigotries.

    Living in a world of words and images, we have grown from people who spoke words and painted images to folk who speak images and paint words.

    We have learnt to interact in varnished dialect; amid the racket of voiced imaging and painted words, a pagan illusion triumphs over the moral eye and mind. It is fitting, therefore, that heathen idolatory subsists in the absence of national heroes and heroines.

    It is the latter that we should seek but Nigeria defies the tenor of lore and wisdom indigenous to us. Thus we ditch heroes to create gods by the dozen. In our lust for deities, we romance and spread to fickle idolatory.

    We all have gods, Martin Luther said, it is just a question of which ones. In Nigeria, our gods are celebrities thus religious belief and practice, business, economy, advocacy and politics, are modeled around the idolisation of personages.

    In contrast, China prospers by native intelligence despite her love of celebrities. Likewise Japan. Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Korea. These countries’ socioeconomic and technological progress were built on a sturdy foundation of autochthonous intelligence and wisdom. Such wisdom should see Nigeria through her dark passes; left to our own devices we are retrograde.

    There is no gainsaying modern Nigeria inherited the achievements and perversions of her ancestor generations. Then she lays waste to the latter’s achievements, even as she modifies their perversions and gives them new form.

    Nigeria lusts for western-styled progress but the only modern parallels we have to the west occurs in politics, the arena where gladiators whip up artifice. Then we have cinema, our machine of the aggressive, amoral eye.

    As amoral eye, cinema penetrates time and space. Enter Big Brother Naija (BBN) and its house of nasty realities. Big Brother’s culture of filth and voyeurism reflects the unacknowledged prurience of the Nigerian mind.

    With money in contention, families ditch morals to embrace mammon. A so-called disciplinarian family, led by a cleric, learnt to turn a blind eye as their beloved and presumably well-groomed daughter gets ravaged in a public toilet; a lavatory frequented by 20 people in the Big Brother house during its last edition.

    It didn’t matter that her body, a supposed ‘temple of God’ got plundered and sullied like a befouled orifice, by a fellow inmate fulfilling his role as a random buck.And the fable persists. Many a defeated, disciplinarian father, mother, sibling, granny, and other blood relative, impotently watch a loved one enthuse wild profanities on live TV, in frantic bid to emerge winner of the BBN sweepstake.

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    Such parents learn to ignore the rape of their elevated mores, values they hitherto inculcated in their child, painstakingly and pray for their ward to win.

    As the travesty progresses, millions of youths and families participate actively from the sidelines, arguing mindlessly; their beclouded vision peering aggressively through labia of daemonic nature, cheekily eulogised as a DSTV/Multichoice’s social, experimental broadcast.

    The show thus becomes a pornographic parable of Nigeria’s submission to amoral sex and power. It localises lust. Defiance, seduction and domination are precepts of the show’s blooming. Values hitherto idealised as Nigeria’s sunny, flowering fields are wilted in the searing of BBN’s bestial, infernal substratum.

    Producers of the show strive to prove, that, success has too little to do with being a genius or smart workaholic, and everything to do with playing the game for the sweepstake.

    The ongoing edition of the show incorporates wilder ingenuity by its producers as the inmates include supposedly made men and women; a banker, psychotherapist, human resource manager, Mr Universe Nigeria and a grandson of late sage, Yoruba and national icon, Obafemi Awolowo. Some alpha breed.

    DSTV/Multichoice certainly mistakes its selection of Awolowo’s grandson as one of the 12 inmates of its morality jailhouse, for a work of pure genius; whatever outrage or applause results from its coup is expected to generate wider buzz about BBN and give it traction. But this is discussion best saved for another day.

    By vetting the continuous broadcast and viewership of the show, the Nigerian government establishes itself as DSTV/Multichoice’s eternal wimp cum yard dog, and the nation, as the broadcaster’s doormat.

    Yes, government and the broadcaster’s apologists will continue to rave that the BBN show is broadcast on paid digital service and that “It’s not a must that you watch!” and that “It’s a matter of choice.” Yet the government has no scruples outlawing what it terms “indecent dressing and behaviour.”

    Government, for instance, disapproves of two public officers or citizens having sex in a car by the roadside, even if the vehicle’s windshields are tinted and the act takes place in front of their house or a remote street.

    The culprits would be arrested for constituting ‘public nuisance’ although BBN apologists would argue that they committed the act in the private confines of their car.

    The show’s producers argue that it creates stars, heroes and empowers youths. They would claim it propagates ‘values’ too. After all, former inmate, Teddy A’s values and moral compass led him to ‘appreciate’ fellow inmate, Bambam, by having sex with her in the toilet.

    Picture the duo as candidates for Nigeria’s Presidency and Presidency. If the imagery scares you, wait till you read rationalisation of the BBN perversion by society’s supposed leading lights; so-called fiery critics of government and societal corruption mutate into DSTV/Multichoice’s lackeys or errand boys in real time. What do they still seek? A seat at the broadcaster’s annual gala or movies award night?

    Kids are witnesses to BBN inmates’ perversions. They watch it on the internet and read frenzied reports of goings-on in the show by mainstream and new media.

    Desperate rationalisation of the show, routinely, ignores its imminent repercussions on society; BBN apologists drone about how lucrative it is. To whom? It’s still the show’s producers and sponsors that pocket all the profit. Even its N60 million prize – increased from N45 million – remains devilishly exploitative of participants who ultimately become fame junkies and commercial sex workers by the end of the show.

    They bend and break and distort into hideous forms in pursuit of the prize money. Such character is unworthy of young men and women persistently touted as Nigeria’s future leaders. To this end, let us hope Seyi Awolowo, a medical doctor, would remember his pedigree as grandson of the sage ancestor, who blessed generations of Nigerians with free, quality education cum civilisation and withdraw from a show, which perverts civilisation. But on the flip-side, his family and friends would argue that it is his choice and a free world.

    At a time when Nigeria needs young men and women of unimpeachable character to wrest leadership from predatory leadership, the BBN show cloaks the minds of prospective patriots in wantonness, wild ego and muck.

    This minute, their chants resound like the crusted corpse’s muffled groans in a garden of dirt.