The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Balance of terror in Rivers

    Chibuike Amaechi and Nyesom Wike are two of a kind. They both belong to Ikwere Igbo sub ethnic group of oil-rich Rivers State of Niger Delta. Both suffer from a ‘sense of entitlement’ syndrome, a common affliction among youths of this oil-rich area that remains underdeveloped despite accounting for 80% of the resources freely deployed by a dysfunctional centre to develop other areas.  As products of an environment where ‘self-help’, a euphemism for anarchy  has unfortunately come to be seen as an acceptable prevailing culture, it is no surprise both do not regard their periodic unleashing of their thugs and militants on hapless people of Rivers as a national embarrassment  and a disservice to high offices they hold.

    Amaechi first tried the self-help option to consolidate his judicial victory with moral victory over Obasanjo who wanted to play god by unilaterally disqualifying him after winning the River’s PDP governorship primary election in order to accommodate his favourite. All he did back then to win the sympathy of his people was to portray himself as a victim of an overbearing representative of dominant ethnic group. However, by the time President Jonathan was attempting to undermine his candidacy in a governors forum election, self-help strategy for him, had become an art. This time around, all he did was to identify with opposition’s grievances over government handling of the Sovereign Wealth Fund, the mismanagement of the Excess Crude Account and PDP fuel subsidy’s N1.6t fraud. He went on to defeat President Jonathan’s candidate, Jonah Jang of Plateau State by 19 to 16. Jonathan’s attempt to portray him as enemy of South- south to which they both belong for refusing to endorse him for a second term only earned him a bruised nose as Amaechi’s shrill cry and lamentation became “They have taken our oil wells from Etche; they have taken our oil wells from Kalabari; they have taken our oil wells from Andoni and they are battling to take over those in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni. We are losing our oil wells every day; if I speak, they will say that I am stubborn, but we have to defend our rights; part of the problems we are facing now is that we are fighting to protect our oil wells.”

    When five members of Rivers House of Assembly swearing in the name of their messiah, Patience Jonathan, the President’s wife, purportedly impeached the House Speaker supported by the majority of members with the connivance of the police, Amaechi, now a veteran of self-help tactics, invaded the house with his own thugs and policemen. He personally took charge not only to rescue his loyalist lawmakers but to teach the five lawmakers that they did not have a monopoly of violence. Okey Chinda, leader of the five lawmakers loyal to Mrs. Jonathan had his head battered with the maze and had to be flown abroad by PDP for medical treatment.

    President Jonathan was also no stranger to self-help tactics. When Rivers State House of Assembly, with little encouragement from Amaechi suspended the chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area which had become Wike’s recruiting base for thugs in readiness for the 2015 election, Jonathan responded by directing Joseph Mbu of Rivers State Police command to illegally take over the LGA, an action described by Dakuku Peterside, a federal legislator from the area at the time as ‘the height of lawlessness which each day moves us closer to anarchy’.

    The experiences Wike garnered as Amaechi’s faithful ally, trusted Chief of Staff and chief enforcer of his self-help tactics before politics threw them asunder came handy during his 2014 gubernatorial battle. By demonizing Buhari and APC as northern parasites trying to steal the resources of South-south, he was able to whip up such sentiments that some of his supporters were prepared to shed their blood. Wike has continued to hold on to power backed by a Supreme Court verdict and a threat to visit more violence on his opponents with his thugs and militants in the event of another re-run election.

    Amaechi and Wike’s last week clash in public was but a display of balance of terror by two friends turned arch-enemies. It will be recalled Wike as minister for education never skipped a weekend without being in Port-Harcourt to mobilise his thugs and militants for the 2014/15 election even at a period when the ministry he was supervising was in disarray with all federal universities and polytechnics on a strike which in the case of the polytechnics dragged on for close to a year

    It is not difficult to see the obvious parallel between Amaechi’s last week trip to Port Harcourt and those of Wike as minister of education. Amaechi came fully prepared. It was as if he was going to war. According to Wike’s spokesperson, Simeon Nwakaudu, who claimed his principal was attacked while on project inspection at Nwanja Junction on Trans-Amadi Road, Port Harcourt., “the Minister of Transportation had over 50 SARS personnel, soldiers and mobile policemen in his motorcade.”  He further alleged it was “the SARS personnel and soldiers in the minister’s convoy that knocked down the governor’s escort rider and attacked the policemen in the pilot car”. He did not however say how this translated to an attack on Governor Wike who did not arrive the scene until about 10 minutes later.

    On his part, the minister  claimed in a statement, that while being “accompanied  by cars of many of his supporters, the minister’s black jeep was intercepted and blocked at the junction by the security motorcycle outrider attached to Wike after two cars had passed through. Suddenly, gun-toting security men attached to Wike’s convoy surrounded the minister’s car, threatening to shoot”.

    The question to ask Amaechi is what he was doing in Port Harcourt with 50 SARS and a bullet-proof SUV and accompanied by several cars of his supporters if he was on a peaceful mission and not on a show of force. It will not be out of place to conclude that at a time Amaechi was expected to be working as a minister of transport, he was engaged in juvenile show of force probably to raise the morale of his thugs and militants just like Wike, his estranged ally did as minister of education.

    Beyond the assault on our sensibilities by merchants of violence and patrons of thugs and militants, our greatest tragedy is that Nigerians had expected from President Buhari and his APC, an end to the monumental wastes that defined the Jonathan era. Instead, we are daily assailed and assaulted by governors and ministers’ convoys of over a dozen expensive cars with lorry loads of security personnel, all at taxpayers’ expense. It is more tragic that these office holders and public servants are wasting resources at a time many states owe unpaid arrears of workers’ salaries.

    Leaders who consider themselves as legitimate representatives of their people have no need to run away from those they are elected or appointed to serve if they have nothing to hide. Most members of our current political class are too young to know we once had an organised society when our leaders like those of developed societies of Europe, take buses, drive their own cars and lived among those they served unlike today when what defines leadership of small sub ethnic group like Ikwere of Rivers State is balance of terror.

  • The change we need

    A great majority of Nigerians of commonplace roots live through each day without ever contemplating or criticizing their living conditions. They find themselves born into dehumanizing squalor or somewhat indecent circumstances and they accept such unpleasantness as their fate. Thus they exhibit no conscious effort to better their lot beyond what their immediate circumstances dictate.

    Almost as impulsively as the beasts of the wild, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought and consideration that by sufficient endeavor, they just might improve their living conditions.

    However, a certain percentage, constituted by men and women of higher status among the nation’s working class, guided by personal ambition, consciously strive in thought and will to attain more privileged status that remains the exclusive preserve of more fortunate members of the society.

    Very few among the latter are inspired to secure for all, the advantages which they seek for themselves. This explains the number of self-centred, treacherous human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists and columnists parading our streets.

    Very few men are indeed capable of that kind of love that drives martyrs to persistently rebel against glaring social evils in the interest of less fortunate members of the society. But there exists a few however, that are truly bothered by the impoverishment of their fellow citizens occupying the lower rung of the societal ladder regardless of any risk or  discomfort it might attract to them personally.

    These few, driven by compassion tirelessly seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape; some new system of society by which life may become richer, more joyful and devoid of avertable evils that mars the present. But surprisingly, such men oftentimes, fail to curry the support of the very victims of the injustices they wish to remedy.

    More unfortunate sections of the Nigerian population are hopelessly ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and disillusionment, apprehensive through the imminent danger of instantaneous chastisement by the holders of power, and morally defective owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation.

    To excite among such classes any conscious, deliberate effort in pursuit of general improvement of the status quo proves basically a hopeless task, as antecedents of such efforts have proven.

    Thus despite our claims to modernity, higher education, sophistication and relative rise in the standard of comfort among wage-earners in the country, the Nigerian society or working class to be precise, have failed woefully to achieve better living conditions and a better society even in the throes of rising demand for more radical intervention and reconstruction of the social order.

    It is no surprise however that the Nigerian working class has persistently proved a dismal failure. And the reasons are hardly far-fetched: Nigerians have a problem with differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate political behavior.  That is why the nation’s democratic experiment like any other system of governance practicable by us was doomed from the start.

    What exactly has democracy offered? A 4-1-9 progressive plan that booms circumspectly like it had been doctored as part of a cold-war era propagandist scheme? But despite our self-righteousness and persistent cynicism with the current order, we really cannot explore a more worthy alternative than what we have now.

    The average Nigerian can’t bear to be led by a truly honest, visionary and accountable leadership. It’s the way we are programmed to live. I’d say we possess an overwhelming and oft-convincing inclination to self-destruct thus our lack of a coherent and defensible political ideology essential to the evolution of a progressive leadership and state.

    The average Nigerian is no more electable than the leadership he endures yet he loves to speak truth to power, even as he functions simultaneously to smother his own voice in the riotous gabble of his exultation of the same ruling class. No matter who is elected, the demographic and economic realities of Nigeria will persist, and there is a very limited range of politically-viable solutions for dealing with them.

    No man, be he a distinguished columnist, lawyer, soldier, or public officer in any office can command the tides of history. The few that appear to have done so–the Napoleon’s, Caesar’s, Hitler’s–were really nothing more than the most capable at making it appear that they command the tides, when in fact they were simply skimming along with them.

    Thus the need for the Nigerian working class to consciously evolve in thought and will in pursuit of a more balanced social order. Such conscious evolution can only be achieved by a re-orientation in scholarship and purification of thought and action.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be tirelessly reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advance — problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life. This informs a greater need for study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of past and current mistakes in the journey towards the avoidance and reduction to the barest minimum of future mistakes.

    The answer to Nigeria’s widening income and social gap – which has so far manifested in preventable crises and persistent state of insecurity – is to found an educational process geared to steer successfully, the commonplace trains of thought away from the dilettante and the fool stereotype.

    It’s about time poor, struggling members of the nation’s working class learned to scorn the maxim that holds that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains; the paths to stable peace and security winds between honest toil and dignified manhood. That proverbial better society that we seek calls for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the low income earners and ambitious middle class emancipated by training and culture.

    Such human elements would no doubt be conscious of the fact that not even the sustenance of oil subsidy, higher wages and a fairer economic system could protect its members from the usual handicaps and monstrosity constituted by the incumbent and predatory ruling class.

    Hence they would be able to understand that such social enterprise and gesture towards change must be mooted and achieved by the working class itself in further substantiation of the working class’ capacities to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to posterity.

     

    • Piece inspired by timeless works of WEB Dubois
  • The Senate: More probes beckon

    The Senate: More probes beckon

    When the Senate Committee invited police chief Ibrahim Idris over the allegations by Senator Isah Misau, I knew a problem was in the offing. Idris rejected the summons and told the lawmakers that a case was in court on the matter. Honouring the summons, reasoned the Inspector–General, would be prejudicial.

    The senators, ever dutiful and diligent – isn’t that why they are revered as distinguished? – insisted that the probe must go on.

    Misau, by way of introduction, is the senator representing the good people of Bauchi Central. He hurled a truckload of allegations at the IG. Some of them bordered on financial misappropriation, mismanagement and misapplication – not stealing, please note. The police were left scampering for weapons to fight back. They did. Misau was slapped with an allegation of being a deserter. He defended himself desperately.

    All this while, the Senate did not lift a finger either for its own or for the IG, at least in protection of the office. Then, as if stung by a swarm of bees, the lawmakers sprang up to action when Misau accused the IG of some inappropriate behaviour that bordered on what the lawmaker described as the chief’s propensity for sexual peccadillos. He peppered it all with some salacious details, some of which are not fit for this space, this being a serious journal of repute and not some popular kiss-and-tell sensational publication.

    The committee threatened to issue a warrant for the IG’s arrest. Who will arrest the IG? Thankfully, the IG appeared before the committee yesterday. But he refused to answer questions, leaving observers to wonder what kind of questions would have been fired at him.

    Is it true you had a girlfriend who is now an officer and married to your good self? Did you actually put her in the family way as alleged? How did you do that? When? Where? Who are your witnesses? Was it with her consent or she was intimidated into it? Who are your witnesses?

    Can an officer fall in love while on duty? Are such acts common in the police? If so, how have you been checking the rank and file? Can a police chief’s private affair, including his bedroom deportment, affect his role as the chief crime fighter? Is a police chief expected to have a soft side in a country infested with vicious criminals, with jackals and hyenas in high places? Where is that tough-man image, the mere thought of which should keep criminals restless? Can an IG be seduced? How?

    Just before the IG elected to shun the committee, a senior lawyer, I am told, was getting set to storm the landmark hearing, which promised to be a watershed in the development of our criminal jurisprudence.

    Among the questions he planned to ask the distinguished senators are: why was there no probe when a senator was rumoured to have married an underage girl? Was the Senate’s image not tarnished by that act, with child rights activists describing the respected chamber as a den of pedophiles, drug pushers and robbers? Why the probe now that Misau has been charged with forgery, intent to harm the IG, peddling falsehood against the IG and lying, among several other practices?

    In other words, vigilantibus non dormientibus aequitas subvenit. That is to say, “Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights”.

    I advise the Senate to resist this attempt at circumventing its rights and duties. It is its responsibility to go ahead with the probe and, in fact, launch into several others that it has been threatening to undertake: The Maikanti Baru – Ibe Kachikwu kerfuffle; the Paris Club refund; the Nigeria Content Development Fund and many others.

    Consider the fact that suicide cases are rising. In Lagos, it is fast becoming fashionable for those who are disaffected with life to end it all by taking the final plunge – into the lagoon. Why are people taking their  lives?  Are the gods thirsty for blood? Is the economic situation that bad that some would like to see if it could be sunny on the other side? A Senate enquiry will, no doubt, provide answers to these questions. It should begin today.

    First, it was the State House Clinic. We were told by the President’s wife that it was a “mere consulting clinic”. No facilities. No drugs. Nothing. Now, we have heard of how some of our compatriots – 91 in all – have died of snake bite in Gombe and Plateau states because hospitals lack snake bite venom. Health Minister Prof Isaac Adewole says we haven’t run out of the essential drug to tackle the poison. So, what happened?

    I trust the Senate will launch a probe after a member must have raised a motion on “matter of urgent national importance.”

    The other day in Kabba, Kogi State, distinguished Senator Dino Melaye, a man not many will accuse of being saintly in disposition, of being urbane and placid, was pelted with stones and other missiles. We were told that hoodlums did it. Who are the so- called hoodlums? Whom were they working for? Were they masked? Why were no suspects arrested?

    These are the questions a probe will unravel. Over to the Senate.

    Many discerning observers of the polity are surprised that not even a tepid attempt has been made to institute a major probe into the seemingly vacuous allegation that the change that the Buhari administration  promised is yet to manifest. “We haven’t seen any change,” many have been crying. They are obviously those disillusioned fellows who won’t stop lamenting what to them were the good days of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when oil sold at over $100 a barrel and we had so much to fritter away.  This has been the stand of government officials.

    But a doctor-turned-politician has thrown in the medical angle, suggesting  that those who claim not to have seen changes may have problems with their eyes. “Are we short of ophthalmologists?” he has been asking his aides.

    The Senate will do well to take up the challenge.  It should probe the strange thinking that propels some of our compatriots to ask, “where is the change?” Is the number of the blind growing? How many ophthalmologists do we have? Are they being owed salaries? Why will so many people be complaining of poor vision at the same time? Is there an epidemic or some strange eye condition?

    Despite its furious response to the allegation that its members draw jumbo salaries, the Senate has not been able to convince the public that it has not taken more than its legal dues from the treasury. In fact, a source close to a senator who is said to be in love with fast cars, movie stars and choice beverages, says the lawmaker often derides the purveyors of such rumours as nonentities.

    That is too mild.

    Senators should end this malicious allegation that won’t just go away once and for all by launching a grand probe that will lay the matter to rest – finally. All questions must be resolved, including the most troublesome of them all – how much exactly do senators earn?

     

     

    Eau de Akwa Ibom

    New perfume in town? Not quite. But some news – about good old, foxy tortoise of the folklorist era.

    Somewhere in Akwa Ibom, the poor animal is being hunted for a love potion, which in the local language is called kop nno mi (do as I say).

    Poor Dr Edem Eniang. The director of the Biodiversity Preservation Centre (BPC) has been having problems reining in those women who believe in the magical powers of this potion to arrest their men- body and soul.

    The University of Uyo teacher says the animal is endangered. He appeals to residents to help save the tortoise. I join him in this campaign.

    The fate of the tortoise in Akwa Ibom reminds one of those days of bloody politics in Oyo State.  One of the actors, Busari Adelakun – may his soul rest in peace – was well known for romanticising the powers of his juju. One of his fashion accessories was a small  live tortoise that he wore as a necklace, dangling from his neck. His opponents quaked at his appearance.

    The story is told of how he, as commissioner for Local Government carried out some reforms that were far-sighted but which the powers that-were resisted. He was unceremoniously moved to the Health ministry, but he did not like that. Adelakun (aka Eruobodo –the river dreads nothing) was said to have sworn that his successor would not stay long on the seat.

    When the new commissioner died suddenly, Adelakun was quoted as saying: “Kinkin ni mo fun. Mo ro pe okunrin ni, a se kii sokunrin (I gave him just a little. I thought he was a man… .”

    Ah, those good old days. Who will bring back some of the colour?

  • My take on the Awolowo statue

    I have followed with keen interest the debate on the new Awolowo statue in Ikeja. On one hand, some people have dismissed the new statue on the grounds that it does not bear any resemblance or image of Chief Awolowo that they knew. On the other hand some have said the artist has a right and artistic license to bring his imagination to bear on his work.

    May I commend the Lagos State government for commissioning the work in the first place. I have always said our country must honour those who deserve to be honoured. Those who deserve to be honoured should be those who have made great contributions and impact on our lives. We have mythical figures like Oduduwa, Oranmiyan, Bayijiddah of Daura whose visages nobody knows. We have recent leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries that we can easily identify. They should not be politicians alone they should include leaders in commerce and industry, education and science, sports and entertainment.

    It is of course easy to identify our past political leaders without whom we would not have had our independence at the time we had it. And for those of us who are historically minded, there are leaders of the Nigerian area going back to as far back as the 9th century who deserve to be honoured. The only problem with the men of antiquity is that we do not know how they look. But we have pictures of some of our leaders of the 19th century like Usman Dan Fodiye, founder of the Sokoto caliphate, Alaafin Ladigbolu 1 of Oyo and Ooni Ademiluyi of Ile – Ife who were on their thrones when the white man came for example. We also have photos of Sarkin Mohammad Abbas, of Kano and king Jaja of Opobo and so on.

    In relatively recent times we have photos of Bishop Ajayi Crowther and later on, the photos of Sir Ibikunle Alakija, Herbert Macaulay,  Dr Adeniyi Jones, Ernest Ikoli,  Samuel Akisanya, H. O. Davies, Nnamdi  Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Kashim Ibrahim, Ahmadu Bello,  Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Michael Okpara, Ibrahim Imam, Anthony Enahoro, Joseph Sanwuan Tarka, Samuel Festus Okotie-Eboh, Aminu Kano, Saadu Zungur, and Adegoke Adelabu to mention a few.  I know the religion of Islam frowns at making representational image of God’s creation including man, but Turkey with its old and exceptional civilization permits this. There is no religious tradition in Christianity that is opposed to all kinds of art including imagining what God and our Lord Jesus Christ may have looked like to the artist.

    Now to the Awolowo statue. Some two or so years ago, some primary school children in Ikenne the home town of Chief Awolowo were asked who Obafemi Awolowo was and none of the children could hazard a guess except one intrepid little boy who put up his hand to answer the question. The teacher was relieved and asked the boy to educate his class of dullards only for him to say Obafemi Awolowo was a footballer. The teacher was surprised and was told by the boy that Obafemi played centre forward for Nigeria. This was how the teacher knew the young child’s Obafemi was Obafemi Martins. The little boy should not be blamed. Many of our university students do not know who the founding fathers of Nigeria are. We have spent most of our post-independence life under the military who apparently to keep our people disconnected from their past, banned the teaching of history in our schools. It is heartening to hear that the present government is trying to return historical pedagogy to our schools.

    This is where monuments come in. A visit to nearby Ghana will show us how this is done. The slave castles used by the Dutch slavers in the 16th to the 18th centuries are well kept and are visited by fee paying Black American tourists in their hundreds of thousands every year thus contributing to the Ghanaian economy. The residences of their colonial governors are still maintained and put to official use. The Race Course where Kwame Nkrumah proclaimed independence in 1957 still has the busts of Nkrumah, Ako  Adjei, Krobo Edusei and  Komla Agbedi Gbedemah standing there with correct-visages not as idealized by an artist. The Ghana government went all the way to Lincoln Pennsylvania to bring home the bed used by Nkrumah at the Lincoln University where he was a student in the 1930s having been predated by our own Nnamdi Azikiwe by almost a decade. His body and that of his wife Fatimah are preserved in a mausoleum in the Race Course.

    I remember visiting New Delhi sometimes ago and being shown the small bed Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister was sleeping on when he led a country of one billion people. It was not a golden bed but simple wooden bed without mattresses. Of course the bust of Nehru was the realistic image of the man as we see in his photographs. Any visit to the United States and either to the Lincoln column or the Kennedy centre would see the correct facial image of these two iconic presidents. Recently I was in the House of Commons in England and I saw the standing busts of British prime ministers from Walpole to John Major. I noticed the giant sizes of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher which illustrates the bias of the officials of parliament to the Conservative Party. I was particularly impressed by the figures of Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone whose rivalry and competition dominated British politics for most of the 19th century. What you see in any public square in England is not the imagination of artists but the way their heroes looked not necessarily in sizes but certainly in their faces. There  is no doubt about the  likeness of these figures to the real people being celebrated at least for those from the 18th century to the present  when photos were available and those before that time were copied from painted images of their heroes.

    In Nigeria, we have no idea of how to preserve the past especially the recent past.  What have we done to our First Republic parliament? Our Prime Minister’s official residence is now an army officers’ mess!  The official residence of our Governor -General/ president was abandoned for years until it was recently handed over to the Lagos State government. The Premier’s Lodge in Ibadan has been converted to a High Court. The one in Kaduna is housing, I believe, the Gamji Foundation. The premier’s house in Enugu may have been put to other usage. The governors of the south-western states could have approached the estate of Chief Awolowo to buy his private residence which he used when he was premier of the West and convert it to Awolowo centre, open to the public to hold his library and memorabilia and to keep the flame of his memory burning.

    I acknowledge the fact that governments at various levels have honoured our past heroes. We have universities named after Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Balewa, Ladoke Akintola, Michael Okpara, Michael Ajasin, Olabisi Onabanjo. None is yet named after Kashim Ibrahim, first central minister of education and governor of the whole of northern Nigeria. There are also roads and avenues named after some of them in Lagos and Abuja and other cities. In essence, their families cannot complain. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. A statue should look like the one it is made to replicate. It should not be left to the imagination of any artist to tell us what Awolowo looks like whether sitting or standing. It is my considered opinion that this Awolowo statue should be removed and somebody who knows how to make a look-alike statue of Obafemi Awolowo be contacted and contracted to do it.

  • Battle to revive the economy

    We are winning the battle to revive the economy. We are fighting corruption like never before. We are tackling insecurity with renewed vigour. The bottom line is that as things continue to improve, Nigerians will begin to feel the impact in their daily lives.” – Lai Mohammed.

    It is just as well Lai Mohammed admitted that the battle to revive the economy is an ongoing enterprise. It is far from being won. He was honourable enough to also admit Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of government activities on their daily lives. But since ‘hope rises eternal in the human breast’, one can safely conclude that his, is a message of hope to his fellow compatriots, 70% of whom live below $1.3 a day as a result of betrayal by our successive leaders.

    This however is not to say that Buhari administration has not made some giant strides. We have seen evidence of this in the reduced threat to the territorial integrity of our nation and in the drive towards food sufficiency for our people. There is therefore no doubt as the minister rightly observed that “discerning and well-meaning Nigerians cannot but appreciate and encourage some of the good works of Buhari’s administration” against the backdrop of obstacles mounted on his path by his APC-dominated self-serving National Assembly, his warring kitchen cabinet members and his PDP detractors who see nepotism, selective anti-corruption crusade and drive to Islamise Nigeria in every policy thrust of his government.

    But I think the minister must not be allowed to get away with the wrong impression that it is only “the naysayers who engaged in past- time of acting as distraction” that are dissatisfied with Buhari and his APC government of change. Nigerians that invested so much in Buhari’s government of change want him not only to fulfil his promises on such issues as restructuring not only as an answer to our crisis of nationhood, but also as a response to periodic invasion of our villages by Fulani herdsmen and our urban centres by kidnappers and lawless street traders and restive groups canvassing for fiscal federalism.

    It is understandable if the minister is unrestrained in his celebration of what he perceived as the success of the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption crusade. The irony however is that what the government has been doing in the last two years is to attack the symptoms rather than the real cause of corruption which is the dysfunctional federal government that controls virtually everything including ‘residual powers’, the defining feature of a federal arrangement. What the Buhari administration has done in the name of fighting corruption therefore is running after common thieves who stole government funds. Paradoxically, ex-President Jonathan has said “stealing government funds is not corruption”. We may not agree with Goodluck Jonathan, but the truth of the matter is that common thieves, the targets of Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade, are not the source of our nightmare but the all-powerful dysfunctional federal centre.

    It was the might of a dysfunctional centre that General Babangida who called himself the evil genius exploited to set up the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC) with a decree in 1988.  Babangida thereafter went on to dispose off the following national assets: Assurance Bank, African Petroleum, Unipetrol, National Oil and Chemical Co. Plc, West African Portland Cement, Ashaka Cement, Northern Nigeria Cement, Nigeria Cement company,    Festac 1977 Hotel,   Nigerdock, Niger Insurance, Nigeria Re-insurance, Savannah Sugar, National Trucks Manufacturing, Electricity  Meter Company, Zaria, Hamdala Hotel and Federal Palace hotel  among many others.

    Similarly, Obasanjo who always like to play god hid under the might of the same dysfunctional centre to foist his 1999 Public Enterprises Privatisation and Commercialisation Act on the country in spite of opposition by many well informed Nigerians. Waving  aside opposition, his administration went on to sell off the following national assets: Delta Steel Company valued at $1.5 billion for $30m; NICON Insurance worth N6b but allegedly bought with fake MoU and fake cheques, Ajaokuta Steel Company valued at $1.5 billion but sold for $30 million, ALSCON valued at $3.2b but sold for $130m, Nigeria Re-Insurance Corp. worth N50b but sold for N1.5b (see Adamu Adamu: “BPE: Behind Closed doors”(Daily Trust,  August 12, 2011).

    The Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) that probed the sales of federal government houses was also told of how a German firm, Hans Grenmly bought the Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers built at a whopping $300m in 1986 for a paltry $34m” and how “Sofitel Hotel (NICON Luxury Hotels) built with a German loan Of $139m in 1990 was bought by the federal government which it later sold off for $50m. (This Day, April 23 2008).

    Obasanjo’s monetisation policy finally paved the way for converting all GRAs in the country to private use by members of the ruling elite and the confiscation of Abuja houses including lawmakers’ residential quarters, Senate President’s mansion and other principal officers’ residential buildings, built with taxpayers’ money by bureaucrats, lawmakers and their fronts.

    As against manufacturing, most of those who confiscated our national assets embarked on asset stripping. They found it more profitable to import the labour of other societies while our own qualified children roam the streets. The PDP crooks who hijacked the dysfunctional centre introduced self- serving policies such as reduction of tariffs on imported finished products while increasing tariffs on raw materials to frustrate companies like Michelin and Dunlop out of the country. They gave themselves import tax waivers on luxury items such as state-of-the-art SUVs and bullet proof cars. Fake and substandard products continued to flood our markets in spite of billions of naira budgeted annually by our dysfunctional centre to protect our monitor our borders and protect our markets.

    The above acts of banditry by those who did not understand the policy thrust of our founding fathers that set up the industries and established the GRAs  rather than mere stealing of government funds by common thieves under Goodluck Jonathan, is responsible for massive unemployment, grinding poverty and  deaths from fake drugs and substandard vehicle parts at home and in the desert and on the Atlantic Ocean of thousands of Nigerian youths seeking greener pastures in Europe to escape grinding poverty at home.

    Nigerians believe President Buhari, like Vladimir Putin of Russia is uniquely favoured by history to address the source of our nightmare. Like Putin, Buhari enjoys the goodwill of many Nigerians. And like Putin, he has the strength of character to take on those who have continued to impoverish Nigerians after paying a paltry $1.6 to confiscate assets acquired according to El Rufai, the former BPE helmsman, between 1970 and 2008 at a cost of over $100b.

    If President Buhari in his current battle of reviving the economy, lacks the political will to adopt the Putin paradigm which forced those who, like our ruling class, confiscated Russian assets to cede the same back to the state, he can try the Obama option of spending state funds to keep sick companies afloat in order to create employment and encourage consumption. What we lose, we gain not only through employment of our youths, safety  of our motorists but also savings from billions our dysfunctional centre and the activities of federal institutions that have proved ineffective in protecting our country from influx of substandard goods.

  • Tragedy in the Sahara and Mediterranean

    Countless Nigerians are dying almost daily in the Sahara Desert beyond Nigeria’s northern borders and in the Mediterranean Sea north of the desert. These are part of the large numbers of Nigerians who, in total desperation, are attempting these days to flee to Europe from the hopelessness of Nigeria. Many are those who have become tired of standing on line fruitlessly and endlessly for visas at foreign visa offices, or those who are downright unable to put together even the little money needed for application for any visas, or those who hear of some other persons who have made it to Europe through this enormously dangerous route and who believe that they too will be lucky, or those who are influenced by equally desperate and ignorant friends to jump at what they believe to be a viable option but is essentially a jump into the hands of death.

    The news of this disaster that is consuming countless citizens of our country never fails to come these days. Stories of groups of Nigerians and other Africans getting stranded in some small oases in the desert are common. So are stories of groups perishing on the desert sand, or in poor, out-of-the-way and isolated oasis. Quite commonly, guides who contract to take groups across the desert are not as informed about the desert conditions as they claim to be; and, in such cases, the groups are simply defrauded of the money they collect among them to pay the guides. It is not uncommon for parents at home in Nigeria to suddenly receive telephone calls from unknown persons from some strange place in the desert, with demands for more money for their son or daughter who is said to need more money to get on further beyond a point in the desert.

    Some months ago, members of a family in my large extended family suddenly called me in the night to tell me, in great agony, that their daughter was in the Sahara Desert somewhere, and that they had not known until a telephone call from the desert that she had left Lagos where she had been living. It was a sad and scary development. Through a long chain of connections, we managed to contact the office of a Nigerian agency that was handling such matters. By and by, we learnt of a Nigerian woman who is located in the said agency abroad, and who has been doing very excellent work in finding and extricating some of the Nigerians who get themselves enmeshed in this terrible, and potentially deadly, mess.

    But only a very few ever get so lucky as to be successfully traced, retrieved, and sent back home to Nigeria. As for the rest, a few do make it to Europe – there to find themselves in a life with countless, and mostly harrowing, possibilities; many never make it to Europe, but perish in the desert or in the sea.

    A few days ago, the Nigerian media reported on the same day two stories in this tragedy. One story was about some 140 Nigerians who were rescued in the deserts of Libya and brought back home to Nigeria. These 140 are part of the minority who, from time to time, get lucky. The other story on the same day was about 26 young Nigerian women whose dead bodies were delivered to Italian authorities by a boat that had crossed the Mediterranean Sea from the North African coast.

    The instances are not infrequent of large numbers of people dying on boats that do make it across the Mediterranean Sea. In such cases, no information is usually available about the circumstances leading to the mass deaths. There is no information available about the mass deaths of the 26 Nigerian women of a few days ago.

    Much larger numbers of people are known to be dying by drowning in the Mediterranean. The causes of the drowning are fairly easy to tell. The boats that carry the desperate immigrants across the sea are smugglers’ boats. Most of these boats are poor in condition, and also poor in the quality of their crews.  And, for the voyage across the sea, they are almost always grossly overloaded – because very many immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and even parts of the Middle East are desperate and rushing to reach Europe, while the smugglers are eager to collect as much in fares as possible. The boats therefore often run into trouble, or sometimes even break up or capsize, on the high sea, resulting in the drowning of many people.

    There have been reports of smugglers packing people in the holds meant for cargo, holds where no humans are supposed to be carried. And there have been reports of people suffocating and dying in such holds. Could it be that this is what happened to the 26 Nigerian women whose dead bodies arrived in Italy a few days ago on a Spanish war boat? Were the officials of the war boat engaging in some share of the human smuggling business, or had they merely offered the good service of collecting dead and living immigrants from distressed boats on the high sea and bringing them to the nearest port in Italy?

    It was reported that the boat brought the dead bodies of the Nigerian women in its refrigerated holds, and that there were as many as 375 smuggled immigrants abroad the boat. Italian officials are reported to have promised a thorough investigation of this horrid story, and there have been indications of suspicion that the women might have been sexually abused and then killed on the voyage across the Mediterranean Sea. However, as has commonly happened in the past, the world is likely to hear no more about this whole incident.

    The Nigerian media reported this past Tuesday that the federal government intends to evolve policy to curb illegal migration of Nigerians to other countries. Naturally, every patriotic Nigerian would welcome even this bare intention, in the hope that some welcome direction will soon emerge in this situation. The development involving continual deaths of large numbers of Nigerians in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea has long deserved the most serious attention of our federal government. It dehumanizes countless Nigerians on a regular basis, and it casts deep aspersions on our country’s image – and even on our country’s presumption of itself as a viable country in the word.

    So, we look eagerly to see our federal government’s policy. We Nigerians must all hope that it will not take the form that our federal government’s policies have tended to take in recent years in response to serious social situations – the direction of resorting to authoritarianism, of calling out the military, and of supporting all these with grand statements of threats, of drawing red lines in the sand – and of ludicrously claiming that change had been thus achieved.

    No. Such directions will not work. What we have here is a very serious socio-economic and ethical malaise, with very deep roots not only in the poverty that our rulers have foisted upon us as a country, but also in the pattern of relationships that predominates over our country. The tap root of it is the poverty – deep and hopeless poverty. But the general atmosphere of mutual hostility and hatred among Nigerian peoples is a major strand of the roots. Large numbers of our youths cannot see how they belong in this country. Many psychologically regret being born in Nigeria, and are prepared to take even the most manifestly dangerous steps to get out. Many of these young people do hear the stories of the frequent death and ruin on the Saharan and Mediterranean path out of Nigeria, but that does not deter them from trying that route. A wise country would not threaten such people or set up measures for constraining or coercing them. Fundamental changes are needed to convince these people that their country and the rulers of their country love all its citizens and all its peoples, that the topmost government of their country is not there by conquest but by love, that such love holds out some hope of general change and improvement, and that, even though the poverty is yielding only slowly, Nigeria is nevertheless a home and a heritage worthy to hold on to. For Nigeria to have any chance of making it in the world, this kind of new direction must plainly begin to evolve.

  • Like unbidden offering on the altar of greed

    We belabour the ‘Nigerian dream.’ We abuse the idea that life will get better, that progress is assured if we keep faith, obey the rules and work hard; that prosperity is guaranteed if we continue to tread the slow, steady path to progress and a prosperous future. And in pursuit of these lofty ideals, we pervert the steady, measured, impartial course of the universe; hacking pliant paths to our dreams, from the crossroads where gluttony cavorts with depravity.

    Eventually, we awaken to a cold, bitter truth: We are being sacrificed. The Nigerian dream we are sold isn’t worth our sacrifice. And the individual dreams we pursue, aren’t worth a smidgen of what we make them out to be. By the time we all struggle to achieve our dreams, Nigeria will be finished. Given that each tribe may finally achieve its dreams of nationhood via secession, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw to mention a few may establish their new nations.

    When we do, the swollen belly of our pride shall become visible to us. When it does, it shall suddenly dawn on us that, all along, we had been blindly acting to a script prepared by career predators from Western nations of Europe, America and our ruling class.

    The truth will become clearer to us we shall hopelessly realize that we are being sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed; some of us much quicker than others. As it is now, so shall it be in our new nations, the Biafran youth, Ijaw youth, Oodua youth and Arewa youth to mention a few, shall become disposable indices in the scheme of things.

    But until then, we will continue to have today and squander it on the altar of racism and greed. Today, it’s impossible to see any offspring of our ruling class engage or become embroiled in the familiar tragedies that mar our lives. It’s always children from the breadlines, struggling middle class and backwaters that are involved. We are the youth divide traditionally required to serve as unthinking muscles and cannon fodder in the ruling class’ blueprint of pillage and destruction.

    The decline of Nigeria is a story of gross injustices by the ruling class to the citizenry. But that is only an aspect of it, the greatest injustice is that meted out by individual citizen to self – the youth particularly. And this predominant malaise often plays out in our corruptibility and disinclination to foster a more humane leadership and society.

    Today, we suffer declining standards of living, stagnant and falling wages that are hardly paid at due time. We suffer curtailment and absolute denial of our basic wages, long-term unemployment, slave labour, escalating crime wave, among other ills.

    We perpetuate gruesome realities of the weakest being crushed decisively and maniacally by the affluent and strong. Together, we perpetuate a story of unbridled sectarian, ethnic and corporate power that has taken our government hostage, overseen the dismantling of our cultural heritage, societal and entrepreneurial values.

    But if the ruling class, in connivance with predatory nations and institutions from the so-called ‘first world’ is responsible for plundering our natural resources and bankrupting the nation, we, the youth, are responsible for even worse atrocities.

    We serve as the tools by which the ruling class and its cohorts overseas plunder and destroy our nation. The virus of political corruption, the perverted belief that only political and material profit matters, has spread to distort our thoughts and understanding of right and wrong. Today, it manifests in endemic proportions plaguing our communities with religious and political terrorism, economic and cyber-terrorism to mention a few.

    The Nigerian society dies a gruesome death because we lay to waste, our youths and we, the latter, by our suicidal actions and thoughts, submit as prey to the predatory ruling class and their cohorts overseas.

    Everyday encounters with gluttonous gangs of struggling youth reveals among other things, that many of us are the same social products as our peer from the aristocratic divide. Conditioned by life’s harshest vicissitudes to survive at all cost, we lay in wait, striving and bidding our time until we are ably positioned and strong enough to serve or rob the rich whose life we earnestly covet and decry.

    A visit to any night club, party, religious organization or office still attests to this fact. Ambitious and upwardly mobile youth from the breadlines or struggling working class families engage in a variety of excesses to the applause of mates yearning to be in their shoes. Either as advance fee fraudsters, bankers, journalists, accountants, secretaries, factory hands or ordinary clerks, youths from the breadlines daily engages in a bitter, desperate struggle to chance on the shortest possible cut to sudden and stupendous wealth.

    We seem beset by a greater and unexplainable fear beyond the fear of poverty amongst other harsh realities of our lives. Fear plays a greater part than hope: we are infinitely buoyed and obsessed with thoughts of the money that we could make or the possessions that might be taken from us or elude us, than of the joy and value that we might add to our own lives and to the future of our fatherland.

    Most of us, like our more privileged peer crave the best of everything without actually sweating for it. And when we do sweat for it, our industry is tainted by vigorous dashes of impatience and duplicity. In our work, we are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and a fleeting interest in the actual work that has to be done. We spend greater time and passion defending unjust privileges that we are desperate to enjoy.

    Such appalling youth constitute a greater segment of the human element expected to salvage Nigeria from eternal ruin and bloodbath. Consequently, our society becomes more rudderless and unstable and vulnerable, on our watch. Now that Nigeria as our fathers, ‘the wasted generation’ made it, and we the youth, aggravate it, have begun to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and instead choose to exploit the infinite possibilities in our fragility and predicted collapse.

    It’s about time the Nigerian youth started postponing immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices spurred by conviction that the future can be better than the past. Beyond the politics and inanities of our existing ruling class and political parties, we face far more difficult questions at our moment in history: How do we reconcile reality with promises that have been made to us? How do we make the best of our circumstances at the backdrop of indefensible leadership failure and disillusionment of the citizenry?  How do we evolve and nurture to fruition, a new vision to help us deal with our gruesome realities, even as we chart a promising story of the future? How do we divorce ourselves from the pains and disappointments of the past – particularly those that many of amongst us had no stake in but yet internalize and perpetuate unexplainable miseries thereby?

    How do we redefine “Peace, Unity and Progress” with our lust for “Life, Liberty and Happiness?”  How do we become more humane than we are now?

  • Farewell… October

    The month packed so much tension.

    Kudos to the North’s youths and the conscientious elders who ensured that the threat to force the Igbo out petered after a peace agreement was signed. In the Southeast, except for occasional violent crimes, there has been peace. “Operation Crocodile Smile” seems to have shed its controversial tendencies, ending on a cheery note.

    But some events have threatened to send the polity into a tailspin. One will need those exceptionally long strides of speedster Usain Bolt to cope with the dizzying  rate at which news breaks.

    The Maina matter hit us like a bolt from the blues. It was not all that new. Here was a fugitive on the INTERPOL watch list just strolling in to take up a new job after being elevated. All that was left was a national honour and then the bubble burst.

    The President fired former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir Lawal and Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA) Director-General  Ayo Oke.

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan is asking for N1b transport fare to honour the subpoena in the trial of former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh, who is accused of receiving $2m from the arms deals funds.

    These are complex issues. The television debates and radio shows featuring renowned experts have thrown little or no illumination at them. How does the man in the street see it all? Pummelled by hunger and troubled by devilish criminals, has he any time to think about the polity?

    Where else to gauge the public pulse other than the barber shop. And what a spectacle! From the lone speaker just outside the door, Fela Anikulapo – Kuti’s timeless song. Trouble sleep yanga wake am blarred. The house is in full session. Papi D presiding. He is decked out in a pair of black trousers and a short sleeve khaki shirt that has obviously seen better days. The day’s crowd is unusually big. A premiership match has just ended, I’m told.

    A middle-aged man in a pair of jeans trousers and a blue T-shirt set the ball rolling, asking Papi D a question: “Sir, what’s your take on the sacking of Babachir Lawal and Oke? The matter has been trending on the Internet.”

    “Take that back, young man. I didn’t take anything from Babachir, Babacha, Babaku or whatever you call him. Having said that, it is a simple case that turned complex. And I will explain. If you take a N220m contract to cut grass and you fail to use the appropriate equipment, a mower, deploying a bulldozer, you risk bringing down everything, including the trees. When the trees get dry, they become firewood for making bonfires. The bonfires will be used to make a barbeque during a dance of jackals and hyenas. In other words, Babachir has been barbequed on his own bonfire. Consumed.”

    “As for Oke, it is as simple as ABC; no house is safe when money is involved. Cash, big cash, is like smoke; you can’t hide it. Everybody is looking for money; not so? So if you hide some in a safe house, you’re merely joking. Remember, this is the era of whistle blowing and TSA. Banks even find it tough handling some cash.”

    “Papi D. You’re the master of logic. One can rarely fault your logic,” the fellow in jeans screamed. Another in the crowd fired the next question.

    “Sir, what’s your take on Maina, the pension man?”

    “Again, I protest. Take that back. I took nothing from Maina, Mainama, Mininini or whatever you call him. He has been naming those he claimed to have settled; he bribed nobody o; please, note that. But the trouble is that the young man won’t come forward to talk.

    “But the lesson is clear. When you hit it big, don’t spend big. Don’t paint the town red, like a Rock star. In those days when elders dashed us some coins, our mothers used to tell us, maina o in Yoruba; that is to say ‘don’t spend it yet o‘. We kept such money in a safe made of clay, a little pot with a small opening for coins. We broke our safes a few days to Christmas and stormed the market for firecrackers and other stuff.

    “As the Maina matter stands now, we need to hear from Attorney-General Abubakar Malami and his colleague Interior Minister Abdulraheem Dambazzau who have been named as the facilitators of his returns. Did they plan and execute what has now turned out to be the apotheosis of Maina’s chequered career? If so, are they fair to the President? Is this not a betrayal of trust? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

    Papi D begins to cough.Hau! Hau! Hmmm! Tears are streaming down his face, landing on his wild beards. He brings out a brownish handkerchief that obviously used to be white, wiping his face and struggling to steady his cracked voice. The atmosphere is choked with the smell of whisky. He brings out a little sachet and tears up the seal with his thick front teeth, devouring its content. His face wearing a big frown, the old man who hails himself as “an experienced lawyer and member of the Innermost of the Inner Bar”, resumes his theatrics.

    “I’m sorry for that short break, gentlemen. You know it’s a weekend and it’s so difficult not to be in the spirit nowadays. If you must remain in high spirits, you need to be in the spirit – always. Anyway, that is by the way.”

    “Papi, that’s ok. We understand. Former President Goodluck Jonathan says he needs N1b to testify in the Metuh case. Is that …?”

    “Yes. That’s a man of style. The former president, who is never known for half measures, is just being modest. His entourage is large – security men, including policemen, soldiers, members of the secret service, local hunters, Ijaw youths and area boys. Chiefs and their palace jesters, not to mention women in uniform Ankara -remember those who showed up the other day to protest Mama Peace’s persecution over her ownership of some chicken feed – and loyal PDP members who number in millions. Will just one Boeing 373 flying from Port Harcourt and other cities be enough to ferry them? How about their hotel bills? Feeding? Incidental allowances? And others?

    “You see, Metuh doesn’t know what it takes to summon a former president to mount the witness box. He should face his case with the bravado he demonstrated before it started. Jonathan should be allowed to enjoy his well deserved rest.”

    “Sir, Diezani says she would like to be tried in Nigeria and the Federal Government won’t allow that. Why?”

    “Smart gal. She saw what happened to that guy in the UK. Here, there will be adjournments, the question of locus, jurisdiction, summons, subpoena, adjournments and all that. At the end of the day, you can even obtain a nolle – our attorneys-general are global authorities in criminal jurisprudence, you know; they subscribe to Blackstone’s Principle–it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. I don’t blame Diezani. After all, how much is said to be her loot? I’ve heard some of my kinsmen wondering: die sani (It’s just a small fraction of the entire loot).”

    The barber removes the speaker as the clouds begin to gather for another rainy evening. Papi D carries his bag and announces: “Gentlemen, I rise.” The gathering disperses.

  • Re-Taxation, then and now

    Taxation , then and now”  reminded me how taxes were collected from unwilling tax payers when I was growing up at Ilesa in the fifties.  Tax collection at Ilesa in the fifties was carried out by Council workers led by a  no- nonsense burly man known as Edaogbogun ( a man reputed to be immune to diabolical medicine). To evade being caught by the dreaded tax collectors, people usually fled to their farms as early as 4a.m only to return home at around 8pm when  the marauding tax collectors must have left the streets. In view of this, the tax collectors devised various strategies to trap tax dodgers.

    I  remember the case of an itinerant barber  who was caught by one of these strategies. On one sunny day as he was going round to meet his clients, he saw a group of people drinking palm wine in an abandoned store, and as he could not resist the temptation of a midday palm wine treat, he branched to join this group. He was offered two rounds of drink and he felt at home with the group. Just as he was settling down with his new drinking mates, he saw like an apparition the unmistakable image of  Edaogbogun. Before he could make sense of the situation, he was brought to reality with the booming voice of Edaogbogun who demanded his tax receipt. The barber was astonished since he could not fathom that tax receipt could be demanded at a drinking joint. Since he could not produce any receipt, he was bundled with his bag containing his clippers and other accessories  into a  waiting truck with other tax dodgers  and taken to “Oke Teniteni”( remand  prison) where he stayed until somebody came to pay  his tax.

    Tax collection was a serious business. In the old Western Region,  taxes were necessary to implement the free education and health programmes .  Tax collection was neglected as a result of ‘awufu’ ‘ money from oil after the civil war. Now that the ‘awufu’ money from oil has drastically reduced, the government  wants to revive payment of taxes. This is not going to be easy because for over 50 years there has never been any conscious efforts by the government to make people  pay. A whole generation of Nigerians do not know that it is their duty to pay taxes. To them, only government workers pay taxes.

     

    • Professor Olabode Lucas

    Old Bodija, Ibadan

     

  • Kim Jon Un and end of balance of terror strategy

    To end the tenacity of the Japanese and their kamikaze bombing of United States’ ships in the pacific and their soldiers readiness to commit harakiri rather than surrendering in the face of overwhelming forces, the United States decided on the orders of President Harry Truman to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and soldiers in 1945 thus ending the Second World War with a bang. With this, the genii got out of the bottle and warfare changed for ever. In 1945 the United States was the only nuclear power but by 1949 the USSR caught up with them. It took one or two years before the USSR developed bombers that could reach the United States which by then had bombers in European bases spread from Britain, Germany to Turkey. Thus began the arms race and American strategy of containment in the face of being outnumbered by Soviet and East European land forces. Containment relied largely on massive nuclear retaliation in the case of Soviet land attack on American forces and their allies in Europe. Decades later, the USSR’s strategy of putting nuclear missiles in communist Cuba led to the missile crisis of 1962 when the whole world faced the possibility of nuclear war between the two superpowers of USA and USSR. This brinkmanship was resolved when in a secret deal, President John F. Kennedy agreed with the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev of Russia to move out its missiles from Cuba while the USA moved out its own from Turkey on the border of the USSR. From then onwards, the emphasis shifted to development of ICBM and nuclear submarines carrying Polaris missiles as well as developing and deployment in various silos in the USSR and USA intercontinental ballistic missiles. This military advancement gave both superpowers second strike capability. This is to say if the USA were to hit the Soviet Union, it would have had the capability to retaliate because all its missiles would not have been taken out or destroyed. Realizing the futility of further development after the failed attempt of President Ronald Reagan anti-missiles system to be deployed in space to destroy on coming intercontinental ballistic missiles, the so-called Star Wars programme, serious negotiations to limit nuclear weapons by the two superpowers began. The previous SALT (strategic arms limitation talks) moved to the START (strategic arms reduction talks) by which considerable reductions were made in the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. In spite of whatever reduction that have been made, each of the nuclear weapons state of the USA and now Russian federation has enough nuclear weapons to bury the world six times over. The destructive awesomeness of nuclear weapons was captured in the statement of Albert Einstein when he said if there was a Third World War, the Fourth World War would be fought with sticks and stones meaning human civilization would have been destroyed and we would be back to the Stone Age. This was before China joined the nuclear weapons states in 1964 adding more explosion to the possible nuclear Armageddon. While the possible use of nuclear weapons in Europe was inconceivable because of the strategic balance then prevailing, it was not ruled out of consideration in other theatres of war outside Europe. For example, before China developed its own bomb, there was a move by General Omar Bradley of the US army and endorsed by his commander in the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur to prevail on President Harry Truman to authorize the use of nuclear weapons against China until he was relieved of his command in 1951.

    Because of the awesomeness of nuclear weapons, there has been no direct military conflict between the two major super powers since 1945. There have been proxy wars between the communist world and the USA and her allies as was the case in Korea (1950-1953) and in Vietnam 1955-1975). There have been other proxy wars in Southern Africa and South America. The main reason why there has been relative global peace was because of nuclear weapons since everybody knows that in a direct exchange of nuclear weapons, there will be no winner and the whole world will be victims. Those who survive being incinerated will die as a result of radioactive fallout. It is this fear of the consequences of nuclear exchange that has underpinned the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and of nuclear deterrence.

    The relations between USA and Russian federation which inherited the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union have been based on this strategy of deterrence. When China joined the club, the same equation applied. Before the accession to the NNPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty), other countries such as Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, covertly Israel and North Korea became nuclear weapons states. Iran has nuclear ambitions and apartheid South Africa actually became a nuclear weapons state clandestinely around 1975 but destroyed this nuclear infrastructure when it realized a black government of South Africa might inherit it. The new comers and prospective comers into the nuclear club argue that it is an insurance against being run over by powerful countries. This is the argument of Israel, Pakistan and apparently North Korea. But none apart from North Korea has threatened to use it to preserve itself or to threaten potential adversary especially the much more powerful USA. This has been the case since the young and impetuous Kim Jon-Un took over the reins of government in North Korea after the death of his father Kim Jon il.

    The Kim dynasty officially called the “Mount Baektu Bloodline” is a three generation lineage of North Korean leadership descending from the country’s first leader Kim il- Sung in 1948. Kim came to rule the country after the end of Japanese rule in 1945 led to its division into north and south Korea. He ruled with iron fist and led his country to the brutal Korean War in which he wanted to unify the country under his own rule and failed because of American resistance supposedly under United Nations auspices. Kim il Sung was succeeded by his son Kim Jon-il in 1994 and remained in power till his death in 2011. After his death, one of his teenage sons Kim Jon Un took over and began aggressive development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them. He has tested middle range missiles and once launched an ICBM over Japan and threatened to destroy American forces in Guam and Okinawa. The seriousness of this issue has led twice this year to unanimous condemnation of North Korea by the UN Security Council including the concurrence of China and Russia which usually do not see eye to eye with the United States.

    The open threat by North Korea to hit the USA has elicited strong reaction from the pugnacious United States President Donald J. Trump who openly declared before the United Nations General Assembly in September that if provoked the USA will destroy completely the government and presumably the people of North Korea. Since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the possibility of use of nuclear weapons has not been seen anywhere in the world, not even in the eternal conflict between India and Pakistan which developed nuclear weapons in the fear of being attacked by each other over their rival claims of the disputed territory of Kashmir over which they have fought several wars since the partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan 1947.

    The world is actually facing the breakdown of a long established strategy of world peace. This breakdown is occasioned by the apparent lack of fear of retaliation by North Korea, unless its leaders are engaging in a policy of dangerous posturing.  In a conflict between the USA and North Korea, there are several arsenals in the possession of the United States such as tactical nuclear bombs and neutron bombs that can be used to kill people without destroying physically the country. But of what use will the country be if its people are destroyed. Unless it is possible to take out its leadership surgically without the use of nuclear weapons, the present policy of North Korea may lead it to national suicide. If it can only moderate its rhetoric and behave responsibly as a nuclear weapons state, the country may survive. This will mean North Korea embracing the theory and practice of deterrence because it will be futile and dangerous for the USA to attack it if it is accepted as a nuclear weapons state. Then North Korea would have avoided the fate of Muamar Gadhafi’s Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that were invaded because of not having nuclear weapons. It is to avoid this fate that is also driving the nuclear ambitions of Iran in spite of its protestation of pacific intentions and innocence.

    The United States’ policy and  the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty which is internationally subscribed to by most non-nuclear  weapons states  has failed in the case of North Korea because  of America’s non-pacific intentions to North Korea. It may also fail in Iran because of the same reasons if America  under President Trump walks away from the carefully negotiated international agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (USA ,China, United Kingdom, Russia, France and Germany). It is ironical that while working for a peaceful world, America’s policy of intervention or threat of intervention is driving some of its potential enemies like Iran and North Korea to want to acquire nuclear weapons as some form of insurance against invasion. While Iran can still be prevented from becoming a nuclear weapons state, it is too late to talk about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula because North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. The fear of course is if North Korea does not behave responsibly as a nuclear weapons state should behave, Japan and South Korea, for strategic balance, may develop their own independent nuclear deterrence with or without American encouragement and sadly, the world will be less safe.