The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Zamfara killings and challenges of nation building

    With the savagery going on in Zamfara State, the mindless killings by herdsmen in the middle belt region, reprisal killings in Southern Kaduna and kidnapping for ransom between Kaduna highway and Abuja seat of power which has now extended to other parts of the country, the chickens have finally come home to roost.  Concerned Nigerians  have been warning since Babangida’s  whimsical annulment of the 1993 elections, considered  the most credible election in our nation’s history, that  an election, a mere divisive periodic ritual through which the elite decide who takes over power is not an answer to our crisis of nationality. They called for the convocation of a sovereign national conference to work out a new constitution to determine how we live together in peace in spite of our ethnic diversity. This was roundly rejected by those who are benefitting from the nation’s current nightmare, especially the northern political elite and their like-minded counterparts from the south who prefer the culture of ‘labourers born labourers’ to that of building a more egalitarian society.

    Today, we are haunted by consequences of the betrayal of the less privileged in our society with the nation held to ransom by bandits, kidnappers and herdsmen who have nothing to lose. Unfortunately, these are symptoms of crisis of identification, participation and legitimacy, often associated with nation building which can neither be resolved through elections or use of force.  The less than 35% (lowest in Africa) that participated in the 2019 election, cannot in good conscience be said to be evidence of fidelity or genuine sense of duty by all Nigerians. While the voting pattern reflects the deep division in the country, the endless dispute over unfair distribution or sharing of resources questions the moral legitimacy of any segment of the elite that take over power.

    Political stability as Aristotle pointed out in his ‘Politics’ a long time ago, depends on distributive justice-the proper allocation of rewards according to merit. When there is distributive injustice, on the other hand, the government, he says, becomes unstable. Unfortunately the natural instinct of those with power without legitimacy is to resort to force, and resorting to force as we have now seen cannot resolve our crisis of nation building. If anything, it only prolongs our nightmare.

    The killings of about 11,000 male adults which started in Shinkafi and Maradun Local Government Areas in 2011  according to Aminu Sani-Jaji, (Kaura-Namoda/Birnin-Magaji Federal constituency and  chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on National Intelligence and Security, first forced the president to accede to the request of the Minister of Defence, Brig-Gen. Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) for the stationing of a full battalion of Special Forces in Zamfara State, and the operationalization of the newly-established 8 Division of the Nigerian Army in Sokoto in the new Order of Battle (OBAT).

    That did not prevent the killing of 203 people from Zamfara among the 1,071 persons killed, and 685 persons kidnapped across the country in the first quarter of 2016. The response of the former IG, Ibrahim Idris to the killings was the launching of    “Operation Maximum Safety” with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”. This according to Jimoh  Moshood, the police spokesman, was followed by  a “Joint Intervention Team of about 1000 police personnel comprised of seven mobile police force units headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, and conventional policemen”. Their mandate: “rout-out, arrest and prosecute armed bandits, vicious kidnappers for ransom and cattle rustling gangs operating in some parts of the state.” The DIG arrived Zamfara State in November 2018 ‘with three surveillance patrol helicopters and crew members to coordinate the operation to completely rout-out all armed bandits from Zamfara and other contiguous states”.

    The Nigerian Air Force was not left out. According to its Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, it  also launched  its own Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of two attack helicopters after intensive Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions .

    There was also the launching of “Operation Puff Adder,” by  Mohammed Adamu , the current IG aimed “at taking the battle to the doorsteps of the criminals” especially in Zamfara.

    All the above show of force by the police army and air force personnel could not  prevent  the mindless killings of about 50 people and wounding of over 31 others when Dangurgu, Kunkilai, Birnin Magaji, in Maru, Gusau and Birnin Magaji local government areas of the state came under attack over the weekend. The Emir of Bungudu, Alhaji Hassan Attahiru, has also confirmed that killings by bandits are not abating in Zamafara State despite the military operations against the criminals. In his words:  “Just on Saturday, in my domain, the bandits struck in broad daylight and killed 15 people. Thirteen people died instantly, while two others gave up the ghost later.”

    After all the blunders by a government that only listens to itself, the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, was said to have met with the expanded executive council of the northern traditional rulers at the Arewa House in Kaduna State where he directed the traditional rulers to start community policing and establish local security councils in their domains to tackle banditry and other security crises in the region.  He was quoted as saying “community policing in your various domains so that more information about criminal elements can be obtained in real time.”

    Since it is on record that northern governors, including those of besieged Zamfara (the ‘political Sharia’ former governor, Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima and his godsons Mahmud Shinkafi and Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari) have always been opposed to devolution of power including state and community policing, revenue sharing based on derivation or fiscal federalism, one is not sure if Dan Ali is saying the north can unilaterally choose which of these items they like or dislike and whether his directive also covers the southern states.

    If Ali’s sectional approach to a crisis of nationality is indicative of government’s new thinking, one can guess the narcissistic Buhari administration has finally seen the futility of using force to settle crisis of legitimacy. It is only but a dysfunctional government with  unhindered access to revenues it does not generate that would opt for  massive security operations involving deployments of ‘Air force Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of two attack helicopters, 1000 policemen with counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, “Operation Maximum Safety”  with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”, followed by “Operation Puff”  when there are far cheaper options such as ‘institutionalisation of compromise relationships’ open to an embattled president facing legitimacy crisis over the challenges of nation building.

    But for the opponents of workable federal arrangement, a fraction of the resources wasted on Zamfara failed project would have changed the face of a state with a population of three million, 23 hospitals with 23 doctors, 300 public primary schools manned by a single teacher each while many others in remote rural communities, are not that lucky as they have no teachers” according to the state Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB)’s Executive Chairman, Hon Murtala Adamu Jangebe.

  • In defence of an accidental godson

    EVEN before descending from the podium after making his “godfather can be defeated” statement in Lagos, Nasir El-Rufai had come under attack.

    Now, the governor of Kaduna State is being called names, scorned and derided like a drunken motor park tout. To his traducers, His Excellency’s right to free speech means nothing. Hence, he must be pilloried and spanked like a common Lagos pickpocket.

    First, a flashback. El-Rufai was in Lagos last weekend to deliver a speech at a forum organised by the Bridge Club, a group of eminent businessmen. Muiz Banire (you remember him; the Lagos lawyer not many would shy away from describing as noteless before being vaulted to commissioner and later legal adviser of the APC?) had remarked that “godfathership” was hindering professionals and businessmen from going into politics. El-Rufai replied with characteristic gusto. He dismissed such fears and went on to tender a proof – he had retired four godfathers in Kaduna, he boasted.

    “With about N2bn; if you start, you see, these guys in black ties, they will give you the N2bn. Many of the godfathers are either on paper or in the minds of people in politics. They are defeatable. We retired four of them in Kaduna State within a four-year time and they are gone. One of them boasted that he put me in the government house and he would take me out,” the governor said.

    The social media was on fire. Many thought His Excellency was actually attacking Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the frontline politician and one of the key midwives of the ruling APC on which  platform El-Rufai became governor. Tinubu has been described as the “godfather of Lagos politics”.  Could El-Rufai have been referring to him? Doubtful. Tinubu is not in the league of “chop and quench” godfathers who have grown fat by milking their states dry. The former Lagos governor has bred worthy leaders whose impact is verifiable. They are some of our leading lights.

    To many, who claim to be ardent observers of progressive politics and its focus on service delivery, El-Rufai’s comment was at best a blow below the belt and at worst an unnecessary incitement. They pounced on him.

    They challenged El-Rufai to name the godfathers he had defeated and asserted that he rode to power on President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity, not on account of his antecedents either as head of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) where, according to them, public companies were sold to friends and cronies of those in power or as minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) where, according to the critics, he was immersed in nauseating land scandals.

    Those, it is to be noted, however, are the charitable critics who spared a thought for objectivity. The unsparing ones tongue lashed El-Rufai like a pupil who soiled his new uniform. They tried to draw a parallel between what they called his petit stature and his proclivity for sudden anger and outbursts. They said (without any scientific proof whatsoever) that short people –among whom I number – are prone to sudden anger and rambunctious tendencies that get them noticed in a crowd. Are these comments fair?

    They said Hell (a slip there; I take it back) El-Rufai has always been a godson to benevolent godfathers. Atiku Abubakar, the former vice-president on whose back he rode to government; former President Olusegun Obasanjo who gave him prominent roles and unfettered access in his administration and now President  Buhari before whom he grovels, kneeling down subserviently and disgustingly in public. “It’s all deceit,” they said.

    If they had stopped at that, many would not have paid much attention to them, but El-Rufai’s traducers went on to describe him as a traitor who, they claimed, never showed loyalty to anybody or any cause, no matter how noble. Instead, whatever he would not dominate he would either bring to disrepute or destroy.

    They, the critics aforementioned, averred that El- Rufai  betrayed Atiku, calling him names after their parting of ways . He, they alleged, betrayed Obasanjo. His Excellency, according to them, betrayed his colleagues in the APC with whom he fought to snatch Kaduna State from the PDP’s firm grip. He is as treacherous as Judas, they alleged.

    For proof, the critics referred to Obasanjo’s description of El-Rufai in his trilogy, “My Watch”. Wrote the former President:”Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological. Why does he do it? He is brilliant and smart. I grant him that also. Very early in my interaction with him, I appreciated his talent and brilliance. At the same time, I recognised his weaknesses, the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long but only to El-Rufai. He barefacedly lied, which he did to me against his colleagues and so-called friends. I have heard of how he ruthlessly savaged the reputation of his uncle, a man who was like, in the African setting, his foster father. I shuddered when I heard the story of what he did to his half- brother in the Air Force who is senior to him in age.”

    He went on to say that “character wise, Nasir has nothing much going for him”, adding that when Osita Chijoka suggested El-Rufai as his (Obasanjo’s) successor, “I did not hesitate to point to Nasir’s naivety and immaturity, talk less of his inability to give honour to whom honour is due.”

    Obasanjo, it is to be noted, was reacting to El-Rufai’s claims in his controversial book, “The Accidental Public Servant”. “I read the book and it confirmed my impression of him as a man of first-class brain but arrogant, full of himself, immature and nauseating, trying to make up for his diminutive stature in what is called ‘the small man syndrome’.”

    To the curtain-twitching busybodies, El-Rufai’s glowing achievements in Kaduna should be discountenanced. However, to His Excellency’s credit is the peace that has become the lot of the hitherto troubled residents. Gone are the days when gunmen would storm a village in the dead of the night when men and women and children were asleep, shooting indiscriminately, killing residents and setting homes on fire. Now, just scores are killed. How did the governor do it? He inadvertently let out the secret the other day- he paid the herdsmen- gunmen to hold their fire.

    Instead of praising his ingenuity, his critics lampooned the idea and said El-Rufai was culpable in the killings. The governor, never a timid man who would be easily intimidated, challenged them to provide proof of their allegation. Nobody did. The matter ended, but the media would not let a sleeping dog lie; they continue to report killings in the state. They say blood continues to flow even as His Excellency remains on the lecture circuit.

    Talk of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.

    To El-Rufai’s credit is also the conquest of the political space in a way no governor has ever done. His style is as simple as it is inventive. When he had a disagreement with some politicians, including Senators Shehu Sani and Suleiman Hunkuyi, and all attempts to settle the matter failed, the governor pulled up a joker. When residents were still snoring in bed, he led at dawn a demolition squad to Hunkunyi’s property and rumbled the bulldozer through the edifice. The property was subsequently acquired for public use.

    It should be noted, however, that some men, such as Sani, aforementioned, kicked against El-Rufai’s unique formula which, I am told, other governors are signing up to copy. Sani, riled by the governor’s style, railed in the Senate: “El-Rufai is an affliction on Kaduna State. He is a curse to us. We want to call on Buhari to caution his son…We in Kaduna State cannot accommodate somebody who has the tendencies of Adolf Hitler, Mobutu Sese Seko and Nebuchadnezzar.”

    Another governor, unsure of what to do with such pesky and pesty comments, would have ordered the senator’s arrest. Not El-Rufai. His Excellency took it all on the chin. Instead of praising his reticence, his critics started talking about El-Rufai’s “huge capacity for mischief, his unbridled ambition, and his tempestuous and abrasive mannerism”.

    It has also been asserted that el-Rufai was, by his comments in Lagos, setting the stage for a big fight over the presidency in 2023. Some people, who have remained nameless, are beating the drum to which the governor is dancing, the critics said. That is neither here nor there.  Again, El-Rufai has remained unmoved. Does the governor not deserve some praise for his stoicism?

     

    A prince departs

    HE was in many ways a prince. His exquisite sartorial taste – he loved white clothes. His love for good food and nice drinks – the common ones and the exotic for special occasions. His love for automobiles – the Mercedes Benz series. His philanthropy – many got education though his generosity. And his passion for the arts.

    We will miss all that. Prince Kehinde Adeniyi, fondly called Penny K after the fast food company he set up in the 70s (he was one of the pioneers of the trade in Lagos), an industrialist and music enthusiast, has passed on. His remains will be buried tomorrow in Lagos after a funeral service at the Archbishop Vinning Memorial Church in Ikeja.

    The late Adeniyi

    It has been floods of tears since his passage on March 30. Amid the tears, many recall his good deeds, his roaring laughter, and his peaceful disposition to all even as he detested cheating in any form.

    To many musicians, he was a father. He gave out his equipment, one of the best in the city at a time, for no fees. He once ran a night club, not to make money, but to bring his large circle of friends closer to him.

    Prince Adeniyi once threatened to sue Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey for dumping secular music without, according to him, considering his numerous fans. Such was his jocular nature. When his mother died, King Sunny Ade was on the bandstand right in his commodious backyard–free of charge. He was a giant in the Lagos social circle.

    He raised capital for many small business owners. They called him Baba (father) not on account of his age –he was 72 – but for his generosity.He was a good man.

    This is the consolation for his relations, associates and friends. Farewell, egbon.

  • Royal change of batons in Japan and Thailand

    Two interesting history-making events took place in the kingdoms of Thailand and Japan last week. Thailand got a new king Vajiralongkorn with his coronation after the death of his father, King Bhumibol at the age of 88 two and a half years ago. The old king reigned for nearly 70 years as a divine king. The new 66-year-old king was a pilot and his new queen, who is his fourth wife, was courted and married from among the hostesses in his plane. The new king has travelled widely maintaining residence in Germany and by all standards he is a thoroughly modern king ruling over a medium power in Southeast Asia. Thailand is a country famous for its rice production and its tourism and hospitality business.  The world will be watching how this new king who is the most powerful king in the world almost wielding absolute power fares in a modern world of democracy and constitutionalism.

    As an aside, Thailand used to be called “Siam”. When I entered Christ School, Ado Ekiti in 1956, one of the rites of passage was that we were told that the king of Siam was called “Whatanass” and we were taught to sing its “national anthem” with the music of British ”God Save the Queen “in the presence of the whole school.  We then as greenhorns sang “Oh Whatanass Siam” three times, repeating it many times while our seniors laughed at us before we were told what we were singing was “Oh what an ass I am”! This was a secret initiation we all kept to ourselves and not even revealing to our junior brothers since none of our own brothers told us about this prankish rite of passage. Nobody can joke about Thailand today because it is a reasonably prosperous and contented country whose divine king provides a rallying point in its fractious political environment.

    On  a  more serious note, historically, the more important change of royal baton took place in Japan when Emperor Akihito after  being on the formidable Chrysanthemum imperial throne for 30 years abdicated and handed over to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito. Akihito saw the economic miracle of growth in Japan but his reign also witnessed several disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes and even an explosion of a nuclear reactor. He abdicated because of poor health and handed over to his well prepared and educated son, Naruhito whose highly educated wife and former diplomat, Masako had suffered some depression because of too much pressure as a result of being caged more or less in the palace because of imperial traditions. The abdication is significant because no Japanese emperor has abdicated in more than two centuries; certainly none after the Meiji restoration in the 19th century.

    After the surrender of Japan to Allied forces in 1945 following the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Americans on the order of President Harry Truman which promptly incinerated close to half a million people and perhaps more by collateral damage, Emperor Hirohito, the 124th emperor of Japan  was to be tried for war crimes and deposed. The reason for possible trial of the emperor was that the armed forces of Japan fought and died for the emperor and it was considered a sacrilege for any Japanese soldier to surrender and rather than surrendering, it was considered honourable to commit hara-kiri. Wise counsel prevailed and the emperor was allowed to stay on the throne as a constitutional monarch. He had ascended the throne in 1926 and remained on the throne until 1989 when he died and was succeeded by his son, Akihito who has now abdicated.

    The Japanese had fought with fury during the Second World War under their war time Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who, along his military generals were accused of holding the emperor hostage. The important thing is that Japanese people and soldiers were ready to pay any price and endure any hardship in the defence of their country and the Japanese throne. The Japanese before the outbreak of the war had carved out an area of China (Manchuria) and imposed colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula and during the war had occupied Taiwan and the Philippines and many other pacific islands. Even British rule in India was threatened by the militaristic state of Japan. Many war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Japanese including forcing women in occupied territories in China and Korea to provide sexual service for Japanese soldiers as “comfort women” for which Japan has had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to surviving comfort women and their families. So strong was the animus against Japan in 1945 that the imperial throne was earmarked for abolition just as was done to the Emperor of Germany in 1919 after the First World War. Japan as a result of its defeat lost its prestige and Russia has refused up till today to hand over Japanese northern territories it occupied in 1945.  Russia against all pleas by Japan has refused to return Japanese northern territory to Japan perhaps because of the humiliation of defeat Russia suffered in the hands of Japan by Czarist Russia in 1905.

    From the ashes and humiliation of defeat and without substantial natural resources but with the ingenuity of its people and commitment of the political leadership of the country, Japan for years became the second most powerful economic power in the world before being recently overtaken by the People’s Republic of China. If Japan wants to be a nuclear power, it has the resources and the knowhow. In fact, in recent times as a result of thereat from nuclear armed North Korea, its former colony, there is a strong movement within Japan and encouraged by President Trump that Japan should be able to defend itself against nuclear threats from North Korea and China. This is a departure from the pacific constitution imposed on Japan by America in 1945 limiting it to small armed forces with only defensive capabilities. This was before North Korea became a threatening nuclear power.

    What happens in Japan has global significance because of the economic power of the country and its potential military power. Japan for now does not need to worry too much about nuclear attacks from potential enemies in Beijing and Pyongyang. This is because it enjoys protective nuclear umbrella of the United States which stations troops on Japanese mainland but particularly on the island of Okinawa where it maintains hundreds of thousands of American troops and on nearby American territory in Guam. But questions are being asked in Japan whether America would sacrifice the interest of Japan in trying to accommodate China and North Korea in the age of Trump where politics has become transactional. In this kind of scenario, the influence of the new emperor may become decisive. He is the 126th in a dynasty that has existed for more than 2000 years, certainly before the birth of Jesus Christ and it is the oldest dynasty in the world today. The mystical love and respect for this dynasty is deeply embedded in the Japanese psyche. There are millions of modern Japanese to whom the emperor remains a god that they are willing to fight and to die for. Below the superficial modernity of Japan is a deep conservative culture which gives the country its solidity which many marvel at because they cannot understand its culture. The new emperor is 59 and a very modern man and unlike his predecessors, he is widely travelled. After a first degree in History from a prestigious university in Japan, he spent three years for a post graduate degree in Oxford University in England. He speaks English and has a smattering knowledge of other languages while his wife, a former diplomat is said to speak English and French fluently. This modernity did not save the new queen Masako from the vitriol of criticism for not having a male child because the throne is reserved for only males. This has led to the nephew of the new emperor being declared the heir apparent to the throne. It seems some kind of Sallic law of royal succession which had been abolished in Europe for quite a while remains in Japan.

    But it must be noted that until recently even in England, the male child takes precedence in order of succession to the throne. Recent attempt to change the law of succession in Japan was rebuffed by the aristocracy and the government. Kingship has its mystic and mystery and to remove these may seal the fate of the institution. This does not only apply to Japan but to all countries where the royal institutions continue to be revered, embraced, venerated and respected. When kings lose their aura and become ordinary people, the justification of the institution becomes tenuous and unsustainable.

  • The patriot as gelded horse

    The true patriot, like the Delphic oracle, is maddened by vapours. His dissent is incensed by fertile consciousness; having seen and felt the towering injustice of the predatory ruling class, he chooses to rebel.

    His rebellion, however, is neither funded nor fathered; like an androgynous earth mother, it self-fertilises without help from society’s captors and oppressors: the corrupt presidency, venal governors, legislators, and international NGOs with a bleeding heart. He understands that they are all spawns of the same ogress womb; carnivores of the same badlands.

    But society and peer, like their captors and oppressors, consider him victim of an errant demon. “Is he the only one? Must he rebel at all times?” they drone as he subjects all to the unforgiving spokes of his blind sight. Neither society nor its oppressors appreciate being derobed or called out, he would learn.

    Like the unappreciated hero, the true patriot is eventually abandoned. An outcast, he is constantly assaulted and stigmatised for lacking modern society’s essential traits of being: narrow-mindedness, base sentimentality, and a hankering to traverse gloomy straits. Then he must nurture a taste for funded outrage, lust for sullied money and political passivity.

    The true patriot is absent in Nigeria, perhaps because the nation thrives on inertia; submissiveness, bred by a culture of illusion, is exploited by demagogues, who present themselves as saviours to a groveling citizenry.

    Demogogues promise glory without sweat, success without sudor, and get significant segments of the citizenry, mostly youth, hung up on the fantasy of a world without hardship.

    Eventually, the youth discover that they had been conned; high-strung and embittered over the immateriality of their much coveted Eden, they become suicidal and apathetic.

    Such jadedness becomes a powerful element in ushering society’s submission to tyranny. It rids democracy of vibrancy, leaving it beleagured. It afflicts a nation with spiritless youth.

    Where the youth participate actively, they are unperturbed by pressing social concerns. Where they exhibit concern, they display scripted outrage. Their lack of political literacy makes them susceptible to a pitiful range of diversions, like demogoguery and platitudinous chant.

    Wolin would call them victims of imperial politics but I would call them unbidden offering on an altar of vultures.

    A spectre haunts Nigerian youths. Having entered an unholy alliance with the predatory ruling class, they do not constitute formidable opposition to scare corrupt leadership aright.

    Negative, emasculated passivity  flourishes, when the youth  subordinate themselves, unquestioningly, to the ruling class.  Playing passive requires extreme sacrifice; the docile youth, in fulfilling his role as gelded, amoral being, must silence his mind.

    His predicament worsens by the government’s willful perversion of pedagogy. Where education festers as an affliction, scholarship and enlightenment become empty phrases and foisters on Nigeria, an illiterate, passive youth.

    Through the depths of his affliction, however, the Nigerian youth is efficiently managed by his oppressors. The corporate hierarchy that holds government and the citizenry hostage, effectively manages the youth by keeping him ignorant and manipulable, via donations to youth-driven NGOs with cosmetic purposes, for instance.

    The government equally does its part in keeping the youth docile and deployable towards selfish ends. How? By destroying Nigeria’s educational foundation as well as the possibility of its rebirth.

    A foundering educational system accentuates ignorance and apathy, particularly among the youth, whose inherited task includes the fosterage and sustenance of democratic consciousness for national rebirth.

    An educated mind is a questioning mind, which conflicts with the whims of Nigeria’s oppressors. Public officers, irrespective of party affiliation, would rather see the citizenry stew in ignorance than enjoy quality education and attain true enlightenment, lest they begin to pulse with discontent over the status quo.

    Aspects of government policies and spending render the average youth poorly educated. This year’s education allocation, like previous years’ may not enjoy a rare boost beyond seven per cent of the national budget.

    President Muhammadu Buhari allocated a paltry 7.04% of the N8.6 trillion 2018 budget to the education sector, lower than the 26 percent recommended by the United Nations to enable nations adequately cater for rising education and development exigencies.

    But who knows? Buhari may eventually attain a rude awakening, and understand that Nigeria would appreciate at least an 18 per cent allocation to the education sector.

    His emergence as President-elect for the second time, constitutes a treat, and Buhari should make the best use of it.

    He should scorn the ‘highly informed, expert opinions’ that counsel an ‘expedient’ and ‘radical’ recourse to the policies foisted on us when ‘structural adjustment’ forced Nigeria to reduce spending on education, health, and infrastructure, among others.

    There is no way a team of government apologists comprising ex-journalists, politicians, lobbyists and party loyalists can effectively spin a precarious education budget for the second time. No degree of righteous umbrage and frosted psycho-babble could manage public dissent and discomfiture arising from such ill-advised spending.

    The bankruptcy of Nigeria’s economic and political systems are attributable to her comatose education sector, and an elite given free rein to organise education and society around ”predetermined answers to predetermined questions.”

    It doesn’t matter that the system has been effectively rigged to produce what many corporate hierarchies persistently cite as “unemployable graduates.”

    The few “employable” ones, are mostly scions of Nigeria’s leadership, and they are recruited from Ivy League and mushroom universities abroad, where they have been schooled only to fulfill responsibilites and find solutions that willpreserve the status quo.

    They are incapable of asking the broad, universal questions – staples of a deeply grounded, socially conscious educational process. Both “employable” and “unemployable” graduates were never equipped to challenge the superficial and deepest assumptions of Nigeria’s decadent economic and political culture.

    They can neither discern nor convincingly evaluate, superficial aspects of popular culture vis-a-vis the harsh realities of political and economic mismanagament.

    They are ignorant, because they had never been taught to condemn and scorn human nature’s propensity for moral grayness, when confronted with a choice between good and evil.

    Lacking a contemplative spirit, they do not understand why Socrates identified all virtues as forms of knowledge and why such knowledge may foster privileged civilisation.

    To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs or PriceWater HouseCoopers, Hedges would argue, is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate experiential, systemic, and humanist ways of grappling with reality, however, is to educate them in values and morals.

    Indeed, a culture that mistakes management techniques for wisdom, and fails to understand that the true measure of a civilisation is its compassion, not its speed at conquest and consumption, spiritedly condemns itself to death.

    Humaneness is the product of enlightenment, a comprehensive, adequately funded, and supervised educational process,but Nigeria’s leadership are ignorant of such civilisation. They are products of society’s moral void.

    Blinded by greed and bigotries, they neglect the gaping inadequacies of the country’s educational policies and spending, to service enduring, institutionalised corruption, like outrageous executive, legislative and judicial salaries.

    Buhari could midwife an unforgettable, far-reaching civilisation by treading the path less taken. An 18 per cent budgetary allocation, or thereabouts, to the education sector, followed by an eagle-eyed monitoring of “projects,” could yet trigger Nigeria’s progressive rebirth.

     

     

     

     

  • State vs. private enterprises: A personal odyssey

    It independence, many developing countries including those in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean were forced as a result of paucity of private capital to directly take on the role of private investors through state companies and corporations.It is now fashionable to deprecate state intervention in state economies everywhere because many of the companies and corporations set up became conduit pipes for stealing and embezzling state funds. But it is doubtful if the post-colonial states would have developed at all without direct state investment. Even in The United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, the Asian countries and most of Europe, state intervention was necessary in the development of their physical infrastructure of railways, roads, waterways and airports. Even up till today the debate is still on whether in critical areas and for security reasons the state should not still hold on to some important sectors of the economy. The debate has become ideological with socialists committed to state intervention in the economy while conservatives, liberals and capitalists are committed to free market and free enterprise and deregulated economies. But what seems to be gaining economic favour nowadays is mixed economy in which private and public enterprises compete with each other. This makes more sense than blind ideological embrace of either the socialist or capitalist mode of economic development.

    I have a personal theory that government must never be involved in hospitality business either directly or through a government company. Governments, if they are interested in any hospitality business, should only have minority interest. If not, the company would always be inefficient and unprofitable. I have the privilege to have travelled everywhere in Nigeria and I have seen the miserable management of such government-sponsored hotels like Owena in  Ado -Ekiti, Zaranda in Bauchi, Hamdala in Kaduna, Central Hotel in Kano, Hotel Presidential in Enugu and Port Harcourt, Concord  Hotel in Owerri, Metropolitan Hotel, Calabar, Hill Station, Jos, Lake Chad Hotel in Maiduguri, Sokoto Hotel in Sokoto, Old Owena Hotel in Akure, LafiaCatering  Hotel in Ibadan, Airport Hotel in Ikeja and Premier Hotel  in Ibadan to mention those hotels that I have stayed  in, usually with unpleasant memories.  If any of these hotels is still being run by government or government parastatals or companies, they better be sold immediately.   My friend, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, former chairman of the Oodua Group that owns the Premier Hotel wanted to lease out the hotel but was stopped. The time is now ripe to sell all the hotels in the Oodua Group. In most cases, these hotels are located in strategic and central parts of the state capitals or cities so they should naturally attract clientele and customers.  But alas, many of them are notorious for their inefficient operations. They are also notorious for the swarms of prostitutes roaming around them at dusk.

    Last Easter Monday, April 22, some of my grandchildren wanted to go out for Easter picnic and I felt since they came from Lagos, I should show them what we have in Ibadan. I remembered that Premier Hotel was a delight when I was in the University of Ibadan in the 1960s and that we used to go there to have drinks and usually piping hot meat pies.  With that in mind, I and my assistant took these two little children to Premier Hotel. What we found was most discouraging. The lobby was completely empty. We sat down in one of the few easy chairs in the vast lobby. The security man asked me what we wanted. I was surprised by the question and I told him we wanted some soft drinks and “small chops”.  He then told me to move to an area where there were some school type chairs and tables. Eventually I was told we could go to the poolside. When we wanted to go there we were told we had to pay N1,000 each as entry fees. I quickly paid this at the so-called poolside. The swimming pool water was green instead of being blue. We saw quite a crowd of excited children and their moms. After going round looking for where to sit, we found a pile of chairs and tables. We grabbed some and sat down hoping that someone would come and ask what we wanted. After a while, I asked my assistant to go and buy drinks and meat pies. He bought the drinks and there were no glasses to drink the soft drinks. After calming down the toddlers with me, we left quietly and then we drove to the staff club at the University of Ibadan where at least we were served.

    Before leaving, I left my card with the hotel asking their manager to call me because I was told he was not around.  These people are never around when they are running public companies! He did not call me of course. If he had called me, I would have told him my experience and asked him to do something to change the situation. I kept asking myself why everything is being run down in our country.

    I observe that our people want to have money without sweating as Americans will say. People are looking for so called “breakthrough “without serious work. Our people go to churches and mosques, pray and fast without realizing that the holy books ask us to work hard and that God will only bless the work of our hands. I don’t know where we missed the road to doing the right things in this country. I suspect the time we abolished secondary boarding schools was when our problems started. In my old school of Christ School Ado Ekiti, we were at young age responsible for cleaning the dormitories and class rooms, toilets and bathrooms. We also cut the grass and once a week on rotational bases, in the lower classes, we were exposed to either carpentry, brick-laying and farming. We manned the dispensary and power house where electricity for our campus was generated in the absence of national power grid which did not extend to our town or campus in those days. Yet we combined these with serious academic work that by the 1980s, old boys of my school constituted more than 25% of the teaching staff in all Nigerian universities.

    I used to boast that until a Christ School boy was made governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, stealing and looting in the banking sector will continue. Our people had the kind of integrity known and appreciated by peasants whose wealth was calculated in their honesty and hard work. We now have a country of fraudsters and people wanting to have money by all means. This is why government companies and institutions are run down with no qualms. People working in private and public companies do not know it is in their interest to contribute to growing the companies so that they can keep their jobs for life. It seems people work while they keep looking for greener pastures at home and abroad. The effect is lack of commitment to their places of current employment .There is also no commitment to the country and most young people are praying and fasting to go abroad. If they do go abroad, they will be shocked that for every penny they get abroad, they would have to earn it. There is no free lunch anywhere and once you lose your job as a result of laziness, you are on your own. Within a month of losing your job your landlords will throw you out if you miss payment of your rent. It is not like here where you will now start begging the landlord “in the name of God”.

    If you are not used to working hard in your country don’t begin to dream of making it in a strange land with different culture and cuisine. It is the inability of some of our people who think the roads of countries abroad are paved with gold and that they would not have to work that has led to many of them committing crimes wherever they are in the world, be it in Saudi Arabia, the USA and Canada and Europe as well as China. These people have unfortunately given us terrible names and reputation. A young former student of mine working for Masters’ degree in Pennsylvania in the USA phoned me crying that other African students jokingly tell each other to be careful when Nigerians are around because they might steal their phones or wallets.

    We have problems and these are translating to insecurity, unemployment and moral collapse which our political and religious leaders seem unable to tackle. We need a campaign of moral rearmament. If we don’t do serious thinking on how to change the trajectory of this country, those who are already fighting for who will hold different offices in 2023 will discover to their chagrin that there will be no country to govern.

  • Pa Adebanjo’s fury

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo is passionate about Nigeria. The struggle for a better and more prosperous nation is his life. For him, the shortest route to greatness is a return to our derailed 1958 independence constitution which granted autonomy to the federating units.

    On this broad objective, I am not sure there is much disagreement between him, some of his Afenifere colleagues and his children he is currently at war with. I believe the only point of departure is that while he believes he can do the same thing over and over again and get a different result, his children seem to be saying there are other ways of killing a chicken other than cutting its throat.

    For this dissimilarity, Pa Adebanjo has become an oligarch within his Afenifere larger family and a terror to his Afenifere children. Unlike the way Awo, the sage, treated the younger generation of his time, he simply ordered those of his children who disagreed with him to leave Afenifere which they happily did to form their own Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG). As the national leader of AD, he directed those who did not subscribe to the principles of party supremacy which from the examples he cited will include elected governors consulting the Afenifere elders before appointing commissioners and board members, to leave his AD. They obliged him and formed AC. Under the umbrella of ARG and AC platform, they first retrieved the five southwest states lost to Obasanjo and PDP as a result of Afenifere’s rigidity in 2003. They later joined other parties to form the APC which won the 2015 and 2019 elections. But Pa Adebanjo has continued to live in denial. He says Afenifere has not lost touch with the Yoruba nation which it claims to advocate for. He insists that there is nothing like Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG).

    Pa Adebanjo forgot so many things: that his Yoruba people who are always led from behind never had leaders – no matter how powerful – they could not handle; that they don’t forgive errant leaders who make wrong decisions and that they know what they want. As Awo his revered leader put it “The Yoruba will not vote for you because you are Yoruba if you have no programme that will impact positively in their lives”.

    IN 2003, he misled Yoruba to support Obasanjo who claimed he was about to be denied a second term by the Fulani, Nigeria’s hegemonic class led by Atiku Abubakar, his deputy. He secured the support of the elders who bought his dummy with the understanding he would convene a sovereign national conference to address Nigeria’s national question. Unfortunately, Yoruba paid dearly for that folly. Not only was there no sovereign national conference, Obasanjo exploited the elder’s miscalculation to marginalize Yoruba for disgracing him in 1999 when he could not even win his ward in Abeokuta. He illegally held on to Lagos State LGA funds. And Yorubaland lost the giant steps made in areas of education in the first and second republic resulting in massive unemployment of unemployable secondary school drop-outs who ended up as political thugs.

    Then after publicly acknowledging, that “Obasanjo has no interest in, or sympathy for the Yoruba cause, but has only his own interest for everything he does”, Pa Adebanjo staked his honour swearing the Yoruba would vote Atiku Abubakar, demonized for years by Obasanjo who later decided to canonize him few months to the 2019 elections to settle scores with President Buhari and Bola Tinubu, his nemesis in Yorubaland. Of course, the Yoruba who often read meanings to everything including ordinary greetings roundly rejected Atiku.

    Recently, Pa Adebanjo in a newspaper interview demonized all those who disagreed with his methods including Tinubu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, his two most successful children in politics since the end of the civil war. He swore not to support their candidacy for president or that of any other Yoruba in 2023. And as if Nigerian presidency can be acquired just by a sense of entitlement, he said it was the turn of Igbo to produce the president in 2023.

    Pa Adebanjo seems to have forgotten that with little or no presence in the Southeast, APC is not likely going to pick its presidential candidate from among the Igbos in 2023. And securing the PDP ticket will be only the first step as the party has to be able to win the support of APC states in the north, an uphill task. The implication of Pa Adebanjo’s position therefore is that he would rather have the north hold on to the presidency for another eight years than sheathe the sword and put his house in order.

    Pa Adebanjo also tried to present all those who disagreed with him as enemies of Yoruba race. He alleged that Bola Ige undermined the collegiate leadership of Yoruba nation with the support of Obasanjo, but he did not see anything wrong in seeking the support of the same Obasanjo in his current war against Tinubu and Buhari. He says: ‘Tinubu has sold the Yoruba nation’;  ‘Osinbajo has sold out’; ‘Ayo Fasanmi is using his name to sell the Yoruba interest’;  Wale Oshun as head of primary committee for election in Lagos was a ‘fantastic  member’  and a “fantastic member of Afenifere” but ‘lost his integrity’  the moment he decided to be his own man; Pa BisiAkande has been settled by Tinubu and the former governors who do not share Adebanjo’s views ‘have also been compromised’. None of his children has a fraction of some of the virtues he thinks he and he alone has. They are all trying to “sell the entire Nigeria to the north”.

    He was miffed by Kayode Fayemi’s caution that “Yoruba cannot do restructuring alone”. But Fayemi, Adebanjo’s grandson has only called his attention to the facts of our history. The truth is that the Yoruba nation is the only one out of Nigeria’s three dominant ethnic groups that has always struggled for true federalism.

    The northern political elite’s choice is between a federation they could control and confederacy. Awolowo had series of meetings with Ahmadu Bello in Kaduna, Lagos and in Ikorodu along with Alfred Rewane. Bello resisted any idea of creating states from the north. The Time magazine of November 10, 1958 in a piece titled “Independence without difficulties is a dream of Utopia” reporting the proceedings of the 1958 Lancaster constitutional conference wrote “In western eyes, Obafemi Awolowo of the Western Region seemed the most statesmanlike of the three premiers. When the conference took up the ticklish problem of how to protect the rights of minorities among Nigeria’s 250 tribes, Awolowo suggested creating three states. The north’s Sardauna not wishing to relinquish any of his territories vetoed the idea.” The military dominated by northern offices was to later midwife the current constitution which is only federal in name but unitary in reality.

    The Igbo never wanted a federal arrangement. NCNC until 1959 canvassed for a unitary system. Between 1959 and the collapse of the first republic in 1966, they were satisfied with the federal arrangement that allowed them to control key positions and institutions such the titular presidency, the senate presidency, ministries of education, finance , internal affairs and external affairs and  Nigeria Airways, Nigeria Railways, University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, Yaba College of Technology etc. And when the power equation changed in January 1966 with General Aguiyi-Ironsi as Head of State, he was ill-advised by Igbo political and intellectual elite to turn the country into a unitary state with Unification Decree 34 of 1966. In 1979, Igbo NPP formed a coalition with northern-dominated NPN. OdumegwuOjukwu, the Igbo civil war hero returned from exile after the brutal war to consolidate the relationship without making restructuring a pre-condition.

    These are historical facts, Fayemi, Adebanjo’s grandson was trying to present before him in case he has forgotten

  • The drug mafia

    THE mention of the name – mafia – anywhere in the world sends a chill down the spine of people. With its origin in Sicily, Italy, the mafia spread to the United States (US) and it remains as powerful today as it was in the 19th century when it started operation. The mafia was involved in everything evil and at times, it tried to hide its evil deeds under some worthy causes (?).

    Since the world worships money, the mafia uses its influence, connection and stupendous wealth to install puppets in power. In return, these puppets do everything to favour their benefactor. This is why the mafia has its hands in almost every pie in the countries they operate. You can only mess with them at your own peril. The mafia is evil through and through, no matter some of the humanitarian causes it dabbles into now and then in order to deceive the people.

    Drug trafficking, contract killing, protection racketeering, brokering and enforcing illegal agreements and transactions, and resolving disputes among criminals; you name it, the mafia is involved. It is not dreaded for nothing. It is feared because of its capacity for evil. It sounds far off when the mafia is mentioned because that evil does not stalk our land. That was then. Things have changed now.

    Even in the days when contract killing seemed to be the fad, it was never connected  with the arrival of the mafia here. The dastardly act was seen more as a way of settling disputes between feuding business partners and/or squabbling relatives. Times have changed and the people with it. Drug barons have adopted the mafia style of doing things. Gone are the days of using couriers or mule to traffic drugs. Innocent people are now being used without their knowledge to carry drugs to countries where the penalty for the offence is death.

    How the cartel got into our airports to pick victims whose tags appear on luggage they never packed is mind boggling. The mafia is indeed at work here. Some airport workers, are no doubt, in cahoots with these barons to do in unsuspecting passengers. The admonition we get in order not to fall victim of unscrupulous elements while travelling is do not help others with their luggage and do not leave your luggage with an unknown face. This is no longer the case. Whether or not you help someone with his luggage or you do not leave your luggage just with anybody is no guarantee that you may not fall victim of these heartless fellows.

    All they are after is money and they do not care how they get it. Whether or not someone ends up being killed in the country of his destination does not matter to them. But how does this cartel work? This is what the security agencies must find out. I will not be surprised though, if they are part of this horrendous business. It took the case of Zainab Aliyu, who was arrested in Saudi Arabia last December to bring to light the atrocious activities of these wolves in human skin.

    Last December 18, Zainab left for Saudi Arabia with her mother and sister to perform the lesser hajj. They had their luggage and nothing incriminating was in them.  Unknown to them, some monsters had packed another luggage and stuffed it with tramadol, a banned drug in Saudi Arabia. Even kolanut, which is commonly eaten here, is banned there. Zainab travelled with two luggage which she packed herself. Along the line, the third luggage containing tramadol, which was packed by the mafia at the Mallam Amimu Kano International Airport (MAKIA), surfaced.

    That third bag put her in trouble when she got to Saudi Arabia. She was arrested and taken into custody. Her family stoutly defended her, with her father, Habibu Aliyu, working assiduously back home to get her off the hook. It was a long and torturous battle. It is good to trust your child and that showed in the spirited defence of Zainab by her parents. Their belief in their daughter was total. They swore by their faith that she could not carry drugs and insisted on investigation of the case back home.

    Her case throws up the issue of safety and security at our airports. How is it possible for some people to stuff a bag with drugs and tag it with the name of a passenger? How did the mafia get the passenger’s name? Were they availed of the manifest? Who made the manifest available to them? There are all sorts of security agencies at the airports busy doing nothing there. All they are after is easy money. They have now found a convenient and  easy way of making fast buck. They are making blood money by stuffing their compatriots’ luggage with drugs and getting them to carry the illicit substances, unknowingly, to countries like Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Dubai and Hong Kong, where death awaits the passengers, if caught.

    By their training, security agents are to watch out for those under their protection. Rather than discharge their duty with the highest sense of responsibility, our security men are sending their charge, who are their compatriots to their early graves in countries that show no mercy to drug carriers. Should we be merciful to such people who investigations have shown are behind the travails of Zainab, who was lucky to have escaped the hangman’s noose on Tuesday, following her release from five months detention?

    They should be made to face the law and given a dose of their own medicine to deter others. The blood of those not as lucky as Zainab,  who were executed unjustly,  is crying for justice. That justice can only be served if these people are made to go through what they did to others. May God save us from the hands of these greedy villains.

  • New elements of political lexicology

    SINCE the elections ended somehow, they have played prominent roles in our leaders’ discourse. Not that they are new or strange. No. The new thing about them is that they have been brought out and pressed to service in a creative manner that has no doubt drawn the attention of many who love elegance and precision.

    They have been deployed in seminar halls, meetings, church services and at victory parties. Even at the tribunals, where many have taken their grievances, they have come in handy as conveyors of the thoughts of litigants.

    In case you have started wondering what “Editorial Notebook” is up to this morning with that rather long and loose introduction, let me quickly reassure you that it is no voyage to an empty island, dear reader. Neither is it an attempt to bore you with unnecessary details and waste your precious time. No.

    It is all an attempt to put on record the uses to which our politicians have put some words and phrases since the general election moved from the polling stations to the tribunals. I wonder how we could have understood the mood and thoughts and actions as well as inactions of our leaders without these grammatical elements.

    So bloody were the elections in Rivers State that the military set up a panel of inquiry to probe the role of its men in what Governor Nyesom Wike described as a “shameful conduct”. He claimed that soldiers invaded the collation centre, fired shots, battered the INEC officials and snatched away the result sheets. At a point when  His Excellency recalled the gory events of the elections, he broke down in tears and reminded his audience that he had warned stridently that his victory was not worth anybody’s blood, yet so much blood was spilled. Poor fellow.

    The opposition  African Action Congress (AAC) disagreed. It claimed that Wike was the aggressor who stormed the collation centre with thugs and an army of policemen. They grabbed the result sheets and left after attacking some soldiers who had urged them to be peaceful, the opposition said. There were photographs of some soldiers lying on hospital beds, their heads smashed.

    It is not yet clear if the probe unravelled what went wrong, but Wike, apparently not one to bear any grudge against anyone, has put all that behind him. He has been promising an “inclusive” government. His opponents have been asking: “What is an “inclusive” government?” “Which one be dat? Perhaps His Excellency got a security report that the phrase was too complex for his audience, he changed it and vowed to run “an all-inclusive” government.

    “All-inclusive”; what is that? his friends and foes are asking: ‘Does an ‘all-inclusive’ government mean that the opposition will get some executive council seats? Will leaders of the opposition be asked to nominate candidates for some “juicy” positions? Does it mean that all sections of the society will be represented in the government? Why can’t the government be “exclusive”? The questions have been coming from friends and foes.

    Before observers could grab the essence of His Excellency’s thoughts, another phrase had hit the scene, with the media reporting that Wike was “waving the olive branch”. He delivered a statesman’s speech in which he urged the leading lights of the opposition to join him in developing the state.

    What kind of “olive branch” is that, a leading opposition figure was quoted as saying. How about those who lost their loved ones for no reason? Is he extending the “olive branch” also to them? “Do we believe in the same ideology?”

    Kwara State Governor-in- waiting Adulrahman AdulRasaq has also promised an “all inclusive government”. Not many understand him, I am told. Residents have been asking: “Is an all-inclusive government one that will absorb members of the opposition PDP who were swept off the scene by’ Cyclone O to gee’? Does it mean a bit of the old order mixed with the new and everything in-between? What exactly is “an all-inclusive government”? A new wine in an old wineskin?

    Kwarans may have to wait till May 29 and beyond to find answers to these nagging questions, but an aide of the governor-elect has told me that” good times are on the way”. He says that all the vestiges of the situation that sparked and fuelled the “O to gee” (enough is enough) phenomenon will be cleared off for a new day in which all Kwarans will have a sense of belonging.

    In Lagos State, the PDP is in turmoil. Party leaders are asking governorship candidate Jimi Agbaje to explain how he spent the cash he got during the campaign. They are angry that Agbaje “did not carry them along”.  When are party leaders expected to be “carried along”? How; driving them to campaign grounds? Informing them about how the party’s programmes should be sold to the electorate? Sitting with them at those all-night meetings?

    It’s really not clear. What is clear is that PDP chiefs had been at war even before the party suffered a crushing defeat in the election. Party chair Adegbola Dominic has accused Agbaje of ruining the party’s chances by “running a solo campaign” and not “carrying party leaders along”. He recalls how presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar sent some money to the party for its campaign and how Agbaje got the cash and shared it as he liked without “carrying along” the party’s leaders. They were not privy to how the cash was shared, the sharing formula;  who got what and what for.

    Agbaje has fired back, saying he has been under attack because he refused to leave the party’s structure in the hands of “self-centred” chieftains. Besides, he is threatening a legal battle of integrity against those maligning his reputation.

    From all indications, the party chiefs would not have grumbled that they were not “carried along” if Mr Agbaje had surrendered the cash. How much did he get?  Were the funds audited? Who did he “carry along” in this matter?

    Will the elders forgive Agbaje if he promises to “carry them along” next time? What does the PDP constitution say about candidates who fail to “carry along” the elders? What will make a candidate not to “carry along” these VIPs? Greed? Ignorance? Arrogance?

    As Agbaje heads for the court to reaffirm his integrity,  others are at the tribunals in desperate battles to retrieve his “stolen mandates”.  Many are searching for their “stolen mandates” in Sokoto, Benue, Kano, Oyo, Kaduna and others.

    If a mandate is such an important possession, a friend has asked me, why allow a thief to steal it? If it is such a precious belonging, why won’t our politicians be wise enough to insure it so that when it is stolen, the insurer will be the one to undergo the often rigorous search for it? Why do they prefer lawyers to go in search of their “stolen mandates”? Why don’t they provide enough security for their mandates? Most Nigerians are scared of kidnappers and bandits; politicians are afraid of mandate thieves. Why?

    I really don’t know, but going by the huge number of politicians looking for their stolen mandates, will it be out of place to suggest that the police should create a Special Protection Unit (SPU) for the protection of mandates and their owners?

     

    Lucky girl Zainab Aliyu

    NOT many have been as lucky as Zainab Aliyu, a student held in Saudi Arabia for alleged  drug trafficking. She knew nothing about the substance planted in her luggage by wicked officials at the Kano Airport. Drug trafficking is a capital offence in the Saudi Kingdom.

    After a thorough investigation had shown that Zainab and Ibrahim Abubakar were innocent, the Federal Government stepped in to secure their release. They escaped death by the skin of their teeth.

    It has been kudos all the way for the government. But many are imputing ethnic and religious sentiments into the swift action that got the duo off the hook. They are asking why such an action has not been taken concerning Leah Sharibu, the Boko Haram captive. They are right to be so concerned about the poor girl who is suffering because she failed to renounce Christianity. The government should do everything possible to secure her freedom. Others being held by the group, which has tested the might of our military, should also be freed by whatever means.

    The situations are, unfortunately, quite different even if the circumstances are similar. Boko Haram is an organisation of anarchists whose mode of operation defies reason. It is pure savagery. The group’s leaders are impervious to logic and the clarity of thought that governs human engagements. Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country governed by rules; a sane society.

    •lucky girl: Zainab…after her release in Saudi Arabia
    03420/30/4/2019/FMFA/HB/NAN

    The government should do more to unmask other members of the evil gang that plants drugs in people’s luggage. Some of them have been arrested; others should be fished out and made to face the law. No fewer than 23 Nigerians are on the death row in Saudi Arabia. Some of them may be victims of these airport officials’ cruelty. It will be nice if the Presidency can make a case for a review of their cases.

    Where is the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in all this? Why do our airports lack CCTV facilities that can ensure that criminality does not flourish? How do we recruit airport officials?  Kudos to Hon Abike Dabiri – Erewa, the Senior Special Assistant  to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, who has been leading the battle against this evil.  Her work is not done, until the nonsense  stops and the perpetrators are punished.

  • An education anthem

    The illusion of progress becomes a bane to development, where a nation’s leadership, pawns her sovereignty for hefty tokens from the industrial complex.

    Where such malady subsists, the government becomes lackey to big business and provides little more than technical expertise for corporations and business elites bereft of ethics and a concept of the common good.

    The government, beholden to corporate hegemony, preaches resilience to the average Nigerian. To be resilient, however, is to be pliable, docile, exploitable.

    Resilience is touted as the core value of Nigerian culture hence the term, “suffering and smiling,” to which millions of Nigerians earnestly subscribe to.

    The highest form of patriotism is presumably attained where dissent is smothered by the racket of “national progress.” All we need is the right attitude, the willingness to be politically-correct.

    Political campaigns of national rebirth are built around this idea of subjugating the self to national interest. This involves the creation and amplification of slogan over substance, E.g. “Good People, Great Nation,” and material over mind, as reflective in the country’s “cash for vote” culture.

    Sloganeering thus attains the depth of a religious revival; chants are composed to trigger sentiments. The political and business elites and agents obligated to them, assist them in preying on the populace; journalists, advocacy gurus and civil societies, among others play muscle in this moral and emotional carnage.

    For instance, a fawning press highlights the political class’ pillaging of public treasury as beneficial investment relations and courting of foreign investors. Hence the photosplash of grinning, esurient governors signing bilateral trade agreements with foreign investors.

    The most crucial details are often left out of the reportage: like the fact that most of those agreements are legitimised ponzi schemes, geared to fleece unsuspecting states and citizenry of Nigeria’s collective wealth.

    Despite her vast oil riches and promise of economic growth, Nigeria has failed to lift her people out of extreme poverty over the past three decades. The World Bank’s 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals, revealed that 35 million more Nigerians were living in extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 a day) in 2013 than in 1990.

    While the World Bank and sister organisations are oft criticised for releasing damning ‘reports’ and ‘revelations’ borne of malicious intent, its recent SDG report is worth contemplation at the backdrop of Nigerian leadership’s frenetic plundering of the nation’s wealth for a privileged few.

    A recent revelation served up another reminder of how much malfeasance costs the country. Emails leaked by anti-corruption charities, Global Witness and Finance Uncovered, suggested that a $1.3 billion payment by two multinationaloil corporations in 2011 for a lucrative but undeveloped Nigerian oilfield, never went to the public trust for which it was intended. Instead, almost all of the money, nearly half of that year’s national education budget, was divvied up as kickbacks between high-ranking government officials, notes Yomi Kazeem.

    Such flagrant abuse of public office is possible where the citizenry are apathetic to governance issues and ingratiated by an institutionalised culture of corruption.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria suffers the lack of a humane culture and progressive educational system.

    Matthew Arnold’s 1869 treatise, Culture and Anarchy, holds that a broad knowledge of culture, “the best that has been thought and said,” would provide standards to resist the errors and corruptions of contemporary life and ask the broad moral and social questions.

    Sadly, most universities have become high-priced status enhancers and occupational training centers. As Donoghue writes, prestige is the paramount commodity. Hence the obsession with Ivy League schools’ certificates, and First Class degrees.

    The latter should be seen as mere appendages, offering leverage by which the graduate or individual could assert his worth or value to his immediate and larger society.

    Where the individual is found wanting in morality, professional and personal ethics, he becomes retrograde to the rebuilding process. Where he is considered amenable or subservient to national goals, an illusion of progress is fostered and celebrated. The truth, however, is that such individual accepts tyranny of the political party and leadership in power.

    In Nigeria, party vanities and public officers’ selfish whims are perennially disguised as ‘national interest’ and are aggressively pursued by a misappropriation of national resources.

    Whatever the devastation wrought on the state and the populace, in their pursuit of such selfish interests, politicians and the party in power expect the citizenry to maintain a stiff upper lip. They are expected to buy into the fantasy of progress, promised at the end of the pillage.

    The Nigerian crisis is a human crisis. The foundation for progress is non-existent in the country because the human elements that should construct such eonian monument are inherently corrupt.

    Consequently, we have a ruling class that is essentially, degenerate, predatory in nature, and a working class that religiously fulfills the role of a docile, self-flagellating lower brute.

    A recourse to educational foundations, in the light of Arnold’s 1869 treatise, would Nigeria’s interest, given that herformal and informal education process is theoreticallyand practically defective.

    Western scholarship, religious education and ethics have been so corrupted, that, they evolve like communicable diseases – neutering culture and claiming lives, for the sake of a few relative truths, idiosyncrasies and currency.

    The enlightenment we flaunt is basically a ghost of human education. Under its foul stench, we fight a lost battle for survival against politicised corruption, social strife and entrepreneurial selfishness.

    Nigeria regresses by lack of honest and broadly cultured men. Patience, humility, integrity, honesty, good breeding and taste spring from proper learning and culture.

    It’s about time we engaged in pursuit and dissemination of knowledge devoid of loose and careless logic. The final product of our educational system must be neither a  medical doctor, nor journalist but a learned and humane patriot.

    To produce such men and women, our learning process must be borne of pure, practicable ideals and broad, inspiring ends of living. Not desperate, sordid, money-grabbing sound bites.

    True knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of truth, hope, superior culture and progress. It is never simply to teach breadwinning, furnish teachers for the public schools or vocation for the unemployed. It should above all, bean appendage of that fine adjustment between what Du Bois calls reality and the growing knowledge of life. An improvement of civilisation and solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

    Thus the end product of our educational process must have learned to work for the glory of his or her calling, not simply for pecuniary gains. The intellectual must think for truth and progress, not for fame or the applause of the gallery.

    This is attainable by conscious endeavour. President Muhammadu Buhari could start by laying the foundation for such a monument. He should improve Nigeria’s education budget beyond the disgraceful 7% fraction as allocated in the last two years.

    Then he could supervise the founding and redesignation of the primary school for the secondary, and the comprehensive high school for the polytechnic, university and teacher training colleges.

    If we could successfully weave such a progressive and connected process, we could establish an educational system and not a distortion of it.

    More significantly, we could establish the Nigeria of our dreams, where the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the humane, enlightened and true.

     

     

  • Nigeria on my mind

    There are many things that I worry about in Nigeria and that makes me pessimistic about our future.I am naturally interested in the foreign policy of our country because this is an area in which I have experience, expertise and practice. I am equally interested in the area of higher education because I have spent all my life in academia. The two areas are actually related and intertwined and my academic training and teaching nurture my understanding and involvement in foreign policy formulation and execution and operation in Nigeria. Unfortunately in recent times, the two have witnessed increasing decline.

    The profile of Nigeria internationally has suffered for many reasons. First the domestic situation in Nigeria has been undermined by political instability and insecurity caused by ethnic tensions and violence. The rebellion and insurgency in the northeast has become a blight and an open sore on Nigeria which has refused to heal after more than a decade of military pacification. Insecurity is becoming a new normal in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Although things are quieting down, thanks to the gallantry of our armed forces and the police and the cooperation of our neighbours in the Chad Basin. But there is a growing feeling that the springing up of several NGOs supposedly taking care of displaced people has become an industry with vested interest in perpetuating the status quo. Some people are profiting and are interested in unending counter-insurgency operations. The armed forces are trained for war but not war at home but the northeast situation has come in handy for our armed forces to demonstrate their skill and professionalism and some cynics would say to earn a few more bucks for their labour and exertion. Unfortunately people, whether armed or unarmed, are dyingfrom this protracted and perhaps unwinnable war unless political and economic measures are adopted to tackle the issues of unemployment, underdevelopment,poverty,marginalization and oppression by local political hierarchy.

    Unfortunately like cancer, this banditry and insurgency in the northeast have metastasized into widespread insecurity and rebellion in many parts of the north particularly in Benue, Kaduna, Taraba and Zamfara. The situation in Zamfara has the potentiality of spreading to Sokoto and Katsina.When one adds the insecurity in oil-producing states in the Niger Delta, it is no exaggeration to say Nigeria is under siege or is at war. At this rate, the insecurity will envelop the whole country and whether we like it or not, we would be perceived as a failed state by the international community. Already many of us are even now afraid of traveling within the country. Kaduna-Abuja highway was recently infested by armed robbers that even army generals were seen scrambling to get on the Abuja- Kaduna trains. We better pray these same bandits will not begin to stop and rob trains. We are in serious trouble.

    Reports are daily filed by embassies in Abuja to their home governments about Nigeria being a “No go” country. This has serious repercussions on foreign direct investment ( FDI)without which our economy will not grow and expand to absorb into employment our ballooning population growing at geometrical proportion in the absence of a serious and enforceable population policy. The upshot of all this is that Nigeria has been hollowed out because of these domestic problems. We are a country with strong potentialities but weak actuality. The sad thing is that the whole world knows this and are beginning to treat us as a pariah nation. Just try to get an ordinary visa these days and see how long it takes. Most countries in the world in Europe and the Americas as well as Asia and even African countries don’t want our people to visit, study or reside in them. Our people are dying in droves in the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea. Those who managed to get to Europe are fighting on the streets of Italy as prostitutes. Others who are caught smuggling drugs during the solemn hajj to Saudi Arabia are being beheaded in Jeddah and other cities in Saudi Arabia. Recently 20 people were sentenced to death in the UAE for robbing forex banks and operations. In Indonesia alone, many Nigerians are on death row. Some of those who went to Russia for the World Cup are in jail for refusing to return to their country.

    A country’s image is not nurtured by the foreign affairs ministry and its embassies abroad but by the ordinary citizens of the country. If Nigerian citizens are perceived as potential fraudsters, armed robbers, drug and human smugglers, pimps and prostitutes, no amount of propaganda would remove the odium and opprobrium attached to that country. I know there are many fine Nigerians making waves all over the world in all fields of human endeavours. My children and nephews and nieces are part of this vibrant Nigerian diaspora. Just last year, Nigerians in diaspora contributed $24 billion to our country’s foreign exchange in terms forex they send into our domestic economy. This great contribution is unfortunately marred by the black legs and dregs among our people abroad.

    Recently I was in Ghana and my hosts after being very nice to me quietly mentioned the invasion of their country by Nigerian armed robbers to my total embarrassment. When I was ambassador in Germany, the German Foreign Office (AuswartigesAmt) once sent me several letters addressed to the German chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl purportedly asking him if advance fee fraudsters could use his bank account to move out money from Nigeria to him and to be later shared between the German chancellor and the Nigerian fraudsters! Imagine how embarrassed I was. So when one criticizes the country for punching below its weight internationally, it is because one does not know that foreign policy reflects the strength or weakness of a country at home. A strong domestic polity translates into a strong voice abroad.

    One of the strong points of our country in the international community was our peace-keeping and peace-enforcement roles under the UN. We were in fact with India and Bangladesh the main suppliers of troops and policemen for UN operations all over the world. With disintegration at home, who will call on us for peace-keeping operations outside our borders? So if we want to be regarded as a hegemon in the ECOWAS subregion, we have to secure the home front and be a strong and prosperous country at home.  We don’t have to be loved in our region but we have to be feared and respected so that any country in our region and on the continent of Africa and in the rest of the world would think twice before maltreating Nigerians.

    Our good image in the past was predicated on our excellent educational performance at home and abroad. Our University of Ibadan was rated among the best in the world and doctors trained there could practice medicine anywhere in the world but not anymore. They have to spend, in some cases, as many as six years before being certified to practice abroad. Instead of our government realizing that we can educate our children for the global market in the face of shrinking employment at home, the same government is deliberately undermining the quality of our education by establishing and permitting to be established “universities “at the drop of the hat by unscrupulous politicians.

    How does one explain Governor RochasOkorocha of Imo State establishing six universities on the eve of his departure as governor? The NUC Executive Secretary recently said more than 300 applications to establish private universities are being processed. Should government not impose a moratorium on the establishment of private universities? Who are going to teach in these useless universities? What foreigners except the ones with fake certificates will come to Nigeria to earn $1500 as professors and $850 per month as lecturers? But ambitious and unqualified people would accept to be called vice chancellors of glorified secondary schools masquerading as universities. The situation has become so intolerable that all Nigerian graduates are being tarred with the same polish of having wishy-washy degrees. Politicians are not only bringing down the nobility of their trade, they are also determined to wreck every other sector and to bring down the whole national edifice on all our heads. Academics must stand up to people like Okorocha and refuse his poisoned chalice of vice chancellorship. Until people do this, vice chancellors will be treated like principals of secondary schools while professors that are already two for a penny will become like teachers which is what the French call “professeurs” from kindergarten to universities. With the collapse of our tertiary education, the circle of total decline at home and irrelevance abroad would be complete.