Ben Sasse in his book “The vanishing American adult” gives a litany of what is wrong in the United States. Yet we all agree that the destiny of the world is tied up with that of the United States. Never in the history of mankind has so much depended on the political leadership in one country as it is with contemporary America. This is why since the past 100 years, we have referred to these times as American century. American historians and even their politicians have described the achievements of the country in the past as their “manifest destiny”. This destiny manifested itself in the expansion of the original 13 colonies’ on the Atlantic Ocean coast in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, incorporating former territories of France in Louisiana and that of Spain in Florida and defeat of Mexico and annexation of its territories in Texas, New Mexico and California and purchase of Alaska from Russia.
Thus the small English and Dutch settlements on the Atlantic coast in the east metamorphosed into continental United States of America. America is so vast that traveling from new York in the east to San Francisco in the west by modern jet planes takes up to six hours or more. The same will be true of flying from Montpelier in Vermont in the North to Houston Texas in the South. Apart from continental United States, the country through war in the latter part of the 19th century acquired several territories five of which are inhabited. These are Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana islands, Samoa, and US Virgin Islands. It had earlier on annexed Hawaii in 1898 during its war with Spain. With such a vast country and the idealism of its leaders, the domination of the world by this youthful country was a matter of time. There was however a flaw in the foundation of the country in its massacre or genocide against Native Americans and its building of its economy on the sweat and blood of African unpaid labour of slavery. Resolution of this twin evil was to plague American history up to contemporary times. But this has not stopped America from realizing its manifest destiny. The frontier has always been an important theme in modern American history whether in terms of expansion to the west or even the conquest of space. It is not just a coincidence that iconic American President Kennedy saw putting an American on the moon within 10 years beginning from 1961 as conquest of another frontier. In fact, his regime was dominated by the concept of Americans being “frontiers men”. But this new frontier was for good as it witnessed the sharing with the rest of the world American education and science through the Peace Corps and bringing hundreds of thousands of young men on American scholarship from the developing world to study and train in American excellent universities and colleges. This age of idealism was to terminate in the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers – John and Robert, and Malcom X and Martin Luther King jnr.
Since the end of the Second World War in which America reluctantly played a major and decisive role culminating in the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on recalcitrant Japan to bring the war to an end with a loud bang, the country has thrown up some leaders of varying character and stature. These include Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower , John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, James Earl Carter, Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Walker Herbert Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama and now Donald J Trump. The USA since the time of President James Monroe in the early part of the 19th century has been pulled in different policy directions of isolationism and internationalism. Going back to its founding fathers, America has always wanted to avoid entanglement in old world politics and wars but has always been drawn into it reluctantly as was the case with the First and the Second World wars. The roles of its presidents such as Woodrow Wilson in the formation of the League of Nations, a first attempt at international governance and collective security and the part played in the drawing up the Atlantic charter and the formation of the United Nations by President Roosevelt confirm American global leadership. But in spite of this, the lack of wisdom and moral inadequacy of America arising from its domestic problem of inequality, injustice and violence always exposed the flaw in American leadership. On top of this was its runaway capitalism which put profit before morals and global expansion in the name of democracy brought it into conflict with the other globalizing ideology of communism in Europe, Asia, Africa and in its backyard of Latin America. But in spite of whatever difficulties it faced, America to the widest spectrum of mankind remains a shining light on the hill that can never be extinguished. This is why its failure is seen as human failure all over the world. Because of its preponderant power, it is correct to say that when one sneezes in Washington the rest of the world catches cold. But this leadership imposes moral responsibility on America. It is a moot question whether America meets its moral responsibilities and obligations.
We know of course that for years America paid sometimes a third of UN budget although it has now been scaled down to about 22% but in terms of humanitarian support, America bears substantial burden especially in global food security. American science is also at the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation and conquest or mitigation of the scourge of diseases and epidemics. But all these positive things the country does is vitiated by its internal problems of racial discrimination and violence especially gun violence.
The recent violence in Las Vegas, Nevada in which an apparently deranged man killed 58 innocent people and wounded more than 500 people calls into question the maturity of the United States as a civilized country. It is the only country in the world that constantly goes through this kind of man made tragedy in peace time. American so-called right for all individuals to carry arms is based on warped historical interpretation. In the formative stage of American evolution in a wild and hostile environment and in the absence of organized police and army, everyone protected himself by carrying weapons. This so-called Second Amendment to its constitution is a curse on America where more people have died in domestic violence than all the soldiers America lost since the Second World War. The gun lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA) has made it impossible for commonsensical gun control to be put in place in America. The NRA argues “guns don’t kill people kill” and it says “it takes a gun in the hands of a good man to silence an armed bad man”. This kind of asinine logic is said often to confuse those who want to take guns from American society. This is one of the evils of American capitalism where profit comes before life. This carnage has become as American as apple pie.
In its long history, four American presidents have been assassinated; another seven barely escaped the assassins’ bullets or survived the bullets. Those killed include Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. Those seven who survived include-namely Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, attempts were made on Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. It can thus be seen that almost 25 percent of American presidents have either been shot or escaped assassination narrowly.
The terrible shooting in Las Vegas in which 59 people died and more than 500 people were wounded followed other ghastly shooting in Orlando Florida when a lone gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 people in June 2016.This followed other shooting in Virginia Tech University in April 2007 which saw 32 dead and 17 wounded. Perhaps the most shocking was the slaughter of 26 children with two severely wounded in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. This killing brought tears to the then President Obama’s eyes yet it did not move lovers of guns to kick their addiction.
These are just a few examples of gun violence in the USA but in actual fact one person is shot every minute in the USA. The question to ask is what kind of civilization will tolerate this kind of barbarism and violence in the 21st century? All this killing is done on the basis of the right to bear arms! This right was meaningful at the formative years of America but the country has just refused to grow up. It is this refusal to grow up that has led the country to elect a juvenile elderly man as president .This is a man who has broken all accepted norms of social behaviour and democratic tradition in the United States. The recent violent language of President Trump in the United Nations General Assembly goes against not only the tradition of the UN but of the USA. Yet all he said could have been said in diplomatic language craftily drafted and conveying the same meaning. But by engaging in “tono fascista” he allowed himself to be insulted by those countries he attacked.
We live to a devastating stereotype. Like stray ducks, we waddle against the walls of institutionalized pigeonholes as the ram thrashes in its soul at the descent of the butcher’s knife. But we are no ducks neither are we cattle. We are humans, living like livestock and preys of the wild, because we think it’s shrewd and fashionable to do so.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, however contented, never know, writes Cowper. The tragedy is in the details. And the details are all around us. In our past glories and defeat, infinite quirks and measured sobriety. It is in our fabled heritage and defunct humanity, colourful history and grand inadequacies.
It’s what separates our mistakes from what we term fate; what symbolizes our mental inferiorities and political expediencies. But necessity, like William Pitt the Younger would say, is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves. Slaves like the Nigerian nigger.
A 27-minute video among other things, distinguishes a select few of Nigeria’s pioneer statesmen from the gangs of glorified eejits – if I may insult poor eejits by comparing them to the country’s ruling class – that currently occupy the country’s corridors of power. The video is of the July 1961 visit of Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to the United States of America (USA).
Great thanks to Farooq Kperogi, a Nigerian scholar resident in the USA; after he stumbled on the video on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, he promptly shared it with friends on Facebook. The video is intense with charm and instructive with lessons in manhood, desirable pride, poise and refinement epitomized by the league of extraordinary statesmen that served Nigeria at independence.
Between July 25 and 28, Kperogi, enthused and it could be confirmed in the video, the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and a modest entourage of about 10 key government officials visited the United States on the invitation of the late President John F. Kennedy during which Tafawa Balewa visited major historical landmarks in representative parts of the United States and addressed a special joint session of the United States Congress that was convened in his honour.
Only a select few, as Kperogi noted, “are accorded the honour of addressing a joint session of the United States Congress. Certainly no Nigerian head of state has been accorded this honour since Tafawa Balewa.”
According to the website of the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, since 1874 when the King of Hawaii first addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, there have been only 112 such privileges granted to foreign leaders and dignitaries.
The video delightful; Balewa’s enchanting address to the joint session was persistently “punctuated” by thunderous, standing ovation. In all the cities he visited with entourage, Americans waved at them hospitably, and U.S. government officials bowed very respectfully when they shook hands with the Nigerian Prime Minister. Thus was the depth of respect the pioneer Nigerian leader inspired in 1960s America.
Men like Balewa and his contemporaries at the period including late Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe to mention a few, personified the infectious grandeur, unimpeachable character, progressiveness, patriotism, depth and self-assurance that remains the prime requirements of statesmanship that Nigeria and the African continent deserves. These men, despite their shortcomings, were no Nigerian niggers. The same can hardly be said of incumbent Nigerian leadership and citizenry.
If you separate President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo from the herd, a greater segment of the incumbent leadership could be likened to men gifted with the mentality of the hyena and the sensibility of the guinea fowl. Their lust for unearned riches, acclaim and Western approval illustrates their ignorance and awfully preadolescent mind.It reiterates a very shrill cry for help that’s at once self-seeking, infantile and regressive.
It is what makes Nigerian public officers pilfer and deplete the nation’s treasury in order to finance reckless trips abroad, to learn Western-European governance styles. It is what makes them lobby and pay for interviews with foreign cub reporters even as they avoid Nigerian reporters.
During such interviews, they assume the poise of inveterate boobs by their utterances and demeanour, which are tailored to glorify disturbing plots and agenda of foreign newshounds and their sponsor nations.
The citizenry is guilty of same ridiculousness as indicated by widely broadcast documentaries on Niger Delta militancy; the insidiously “professional” and manipulative ‘This is Lagos’ and ‘Law and Disorder in Lagos’ documentaries which glorifies shanties and street urchins as the essence of Lagos.
Such media fare reveals contemptible plots and derogatory news agenda, to the delight and pitiful acquiescence of the news subjects.
I am yet to see a Nigerian journalist travel to the United Kingdom or the US for instance, to enjoy similar courtesies and exhibition of idiocy from the countries’ leadership and citizenry. It’s even more worrisome to note that the incumbent Nigerian leadership has never enjoyed and will never enjoy the kind of respect accorded late Balewa, Awolowo and their ilk.
The kind of inferiority complex projected by the ruling class and passed down to generations of Nigerian youth affirms the western belief that we are not as mentally proficient as they are. Consequently, they see us as irredeemably ignorant, inept, corrupt and susceptible to inexplicable violence and inferiority complex. Unfortunately, the average Nigerian’s sociability and prodigal nature manifests to further serve as evidence of a collective inferiority of a crude race that recognizes and accepts its intolerable limitations.
That we are very accommodating and hospitable like Akin Akindele rightly notes shouldn’t make us “bend over backwards to impress any white or yellow man more than we would any other ordinary person.” But the import of such admonition is lost on us; mediocre and highly incompetent foreigners come to Nigeria and are immediately regarded as ‘expatriates.’
Yet many brainy and exceedingly talented Nigerians are treated with contempt and suspicion at home and abroad. Abroad, they are despised for being talented and Nigerian, based on blinkered generalisations about the average Nigerian’s presumed fraudulence and deviousness. At home they are despised for being different and capable of evolving the process that would lead to that progressive and prosperous socio-economic system that we seek.
If we are to be judged by indigenous mores of morality or what Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, deems the human measure of all things, we shan’t fare excellently well, not by a smidgen. We have fared diffidently for too long; that is why local and international ‘idiots as fragile as clay toys’ have evolved into outsized heroes and gods, on our watch. To the rest of the world, we are just a bunch of contemptible niggers; still.
It’s about time we rejected the nigger stereotype. It’s about time we de-institutionalised corruption, tribalism and greed. Neither restructuring nor true federalism would rid us of woe. And no highfalutin solution could work under the leadership and citizenship of unrepentant bigots and self-aggrandizing characters like you and me.
For long she kept quiet as her reputation suffered insufferable assault from those who ordinarily should protect her – even adore her. They mounted a massive campaign of calumny against her and everything that she stood for. They called her names, some of which I dare not report here for fear of being accused of hate speech and crass indecency.
Without iron cast proof – or any proof at all, according to her legal counsel – she was accused of theft (of all offences; as if she is a common Lagos pickpocket); yes, theft, not stealing or corruption or misappropriation or misapplication or diversion as people of her status are often accused.
Poor woman. Former First Lady Dame Patience Faka Jonathan went through a lot. Her patience apparently overstretched, she has come out to fight. She broke the ice with President Muhammadu Buhari, urging him to rein in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and its boss Ibrahim Magu.
She accused Magu of planning to destroy her and her family in a statement signed by her Chief Press Secretary, Belema Meshack. Dame Patience believes she is being “persecuted because of her unflinching support for her husband during the 2015 elections.”
“President Buhari should be reminded that his wife also supported him in all the elections he contested against her husband, former President Jonathan, but Dr Jonathan did not at any point in time carry out personal vendetta or go after Buhar’s wife,” she said in an emotional tone.
Dame Patience said Michelle Obama campaigned vigorously for her husband, “but we are yet to see President Donald Trump move against her.”
Good logic. Instead of praising her courage, those disgruntled fellows to whom the pursuit of any noble cause is an opportunity to exhibit their frustration, descended on the former First Lady. All the fine points she made in her defence against the accusation of theft, which the EFCC hurled at her, made no sense to them.
If her mother willed to her the billions –in local and hard currency – she claims to own legitimately, what did the old woman do to earn such a fortune? Was she also a first lady? How much does a permanent secretary earn in Bayelsa State? Could her pay have got her the N6b property just discovered in Abuja? She said some of the cash came from her ice cream trade; is she Unilever?
The inquisition went on and on. Even Imelda Marcos, in all her excesses, was not this relentlessly pilloried. When shall we begin to respect our dearest ones? Now all that must stop. Buhari will call Magu and his men to order and the Dame will go in peace to enjoy the life of bliss she has so hard to prepare for.
Indeed, feminists are winning. Their campaign about women’s rights seems to be working, going by the events of the last few days.
After a long silence, First Lady Aisha Buhari has launched a scurrilous criticism on our healthcare services, dismissing them as poor. She specifically cited the State House Clinic that attracts huge budgetary allocations yearly as lacking basic facilities. The x-ray machine has broken down. There are no syringes, but buildings are being erected, she said.
I wonder why the President’s wife would expect any official worthy of his Villa access card to pay attention to syringes, plasters, cotton wool and such imperceptible items . They are bought with peanuts. All eyes are on the big projects in which billions are sunk, understandably so. We need such buildings to keep those equipment Mrs Buhari spoke of. Besides, when the time comes to account for the funds received by the clinic, no serious auditor will be talking about syringes, plasters and such trivial details that cost some millions.
Besides, is the clinic really meant for the First Family? The Villa is a big community – of gardeners, body guards, drivers, cleaners, stewards, clerks and others, including domestic animals.
Before Mrs Buhari vented her anger, Her daughter Zahra had asked the clinic’s management to justify its N3b allocation. The query is yet to be answered. The Zahra query reminds the attentive audience of a former minister of Works who was asked by the Senate to justify the ministry’s N300b allocation in the face of the near collapse of all major roads. Chief Tony ‘the Fixer’ Anenih simply told the lawmakers to get educated; allocation is different from release, he said. That was the end of the matter.So, dear first daughter, there you have it.
Just like Dame Patience, former Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has suffered untold verbal assaults from people who could never have been qualified to know even a little about her lifestyle. They said she stole N47.2b and $487.5m, bribed INEC officials with N362m to rig the 2015 election, bought choice property in Dubai and other cities of note and travelled the world in private jets.
With remarkable stoicism, she bore it all – insults, lies and abuses. Perhaps buoyed by the new wave of women activism, Mrs Alison-Madueke has told a court to order that she be allowed to defend herself in one of those numerous cases filed against her associates.
Since she made that bold move, some cynical fellows who will never fight for their own rights let alone stand up for others, have been calling her names. She is shameless. Shouldn’t greed have a limit, even by her standards? Why will she not just stay in Britain, go through her trial quietly and stroll into jail or freedom? They did not spare her?
Not to be outdone in the game, the Federal Government through Attorney General Abubakar Malami announced that Mrs Alison-Madueke would not be allowed to return now.
That is unfair. Why won’t they admire the former Minister’s courage – that she is threatening to return home and clear her good name? How many of those who have been indicted of looting the treasury are willing to return home?
Let us spare a thought for women of courage. With so many weak men at the helm of affairs now, who knows, our salvation may well lie in their delicate hands.
Until he brought in the women angle, nobody listened to Senator Isah Hamman Misau ( Bauchi Central). He accused Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris of corruption on a scale beyond imagination. He challenged the anti-corruption agencies to move in. The police fired back. They accused the senator of being a deserter and threatened to make him account for his unpatriotic action.
All was quiet. We all thought the matter had been settled in the usual way when big boys fight. Suddenly, Misau showed up in the Senate and accused the police chief of putting an officer in the family way and marrying her to cover up the misdemeanor. That was expolosive or salacious enough for the Senate to set up a high powered committee of members who have been distinguished in such oversight duties to probe Misau’s allegations.
Now, Idris will have to face the Senate – in uniform – to explain how it all happened. Was it consensual or forced? Who started it all? Was it a case of seduction? Who seduced who? Are police officers allowed to think about matters of concupiscence while on their delicate duty? In other words, are officers allowed to display their soft side while on duty? Is conjugal disloyalty a reflection of professional laxity? How soft is a police chief’s heart in matters of affection?
Like a bolt from the blues, allegations of levelling “injurious falsehood” against the IG have hit Misau. The hunter is now the hunted. Nigeria we hail thee.
Whichever way it goes, our women should be happy. They are winning.
Ala – Baru versus I- Kachikwu
The barber shop crowd – of analysts, emergency experts and loafers – was there again on Saturday. With Papi D presiding, as usual, it was a visitor’s delight.
A young man fires the first question of the day.
“Sir, what is this Baru, Kachikwu matter all about?”
Papi D smiles mischievously and begins with a lengthy reply. All is quiet.
“You see, when you’re confronted with this kind of wuruwuru situation, with Baru threatening to dabaru everything, you draw from your philosophical and etymological experience.
“In Oyingbo market, alabaru is the porter. He is onye-ibu in Ariaria market and mai-kaya in Geri Kasuwa. If you don’t watch him closely, he may disappear with your goods. He may also slip and fall, spilling it all, if he is tired or his basket is overloaded. What you have here is an NNPC chief Baru who has refused to be a porter (alabaru), threatening to destroy (dabaru) everything and spill the beans because of the intrigues (wuruwuru).”
“That’s a bit complex sir. Can you break it down? Expound your argument, Papi D.”
“Okay. Listen. Kachikwu means ‘who is greater than God’. Right? Put an ‘I’ in front of that and merge it with the first two letters, taking off ‘Chukwu’; what do you have? “Ika” (evil). When a Baru feels a Kachikwu wants to visit him with evil, you have this kind of situation, which Fela Anikulapo- Kuti (my respects, always) called roforofo.”
There are many questions. Why will a minister find it difficult to see the President? Did Kachikwu’s letter get to Buhari? They told us no money changed hands; so? Who hasn’t heard about the cashless policy? Why have an NNPC Board with members whose job is just to drink tea and share jokes? What does the future hold for Kchikwu? Not cheery, I’m afraid.
It is difficult for any sentient being not to have a feeling of enveloping global insecurity. What with the possibility of nuclear holocaust being threatened by Donald Trump and Kim Jon Un, the uncertainty in Europe following the Brexit vote in the U.K.; the hurricanes destroying the Caribbean and several states in the USA, the rim of fire and the earthquakes in Mexico and the perennial suffering in Africa as a result of bad governance, sit- tight rulers, economic problems and poverty occasioning ethnic conflicts.
Charity begins at home and in Nigeria we have more than our own share of conflicts and insecurity. The demand for devolution and restructuring is a manifestation of political instability. Demands for action in this respect range from calls for a return to the independence and republican constitutions of 1960 and 1963 respectively championed by opinion leaders in western Nigeria to outright secession by the so-called Biafrans in Eastern Nigeria. In the North of the country, we have heard people like Professor Ango Abdullahi apparently in moments of exasperation asking for outright independence for the North. Yet men and women of good conscience in Nigeria know we have no other country than Nigeria and in the words of the then General Muhammadu Buhari as military head of state “we must stay here and solve the problem together”.
Our problem is that rather than finding practical solutions to whatever structural inadequacies confronting our country in a win-win situation that will endure for a long time and making adjustments where and when necessary, those in power see it as losing power and all the benefits that flow from it .But the point is that it will be better to hearken to the people’s demand for devolution than allow revolution from below. Local government workers, their counterparts at state level and even some staff of federal bureaucracy and parastatals have not been paid their salaries for months, most roads and vital infrastructure are dilapidated yet we pretend all is well. With everybody blaming the federal government, this is the time for the federal government to shed some of its weight and burden to the devolved proposed regions and states. If this is done, the federal government will have breathing space and the problems of the country will not fall on the head of whoever is unlucky to be president at a given point in time. The share of honour and or blame will fall not on the federal government alone, but on all the regions to which power, responsibility and financial resources would have been transferred .How this is to be done remains the problem.
Ordinarily a constitutional conference should be convoked made up possibly of all elected persons at the Senate and House of Representatives including all governors, members of the Council of State, special interest groups like the intelligentsia, the press, labour, religious bodies, retired federal permanent secretaries, select groups of generals and former secretaries to the federal government to dialogue on the way forward. This body should be given legal status by a presidential proclamation. What I am suggesting means that I do not believe we can leave the future of Nigeria in the hands of the elected representatives alone. Whatever they agree upon must be the grundnorm on which our future constitutional architecture must be based. This can be accomplished within months and a new constitution can be put in place well before 2019 election. If the government embraces this suggestion, we can lay to rest the current agitations and while people are working on the evolution of a new constitution, government can face the task of governing. This country’s problems cannot wait while we engage in interminable disputes on the form of government and its underpinning structure. Whatever is worked out must be in consonance with our local reality and cultural environment. There is room to borrow front existing global best practices but we must not be too pedantic in the emulation of what works in other climes.
One of our major problems is the fear of non-inclusion in government by certain areas or ethnic or religious groups in the country. While I feel that this fissiparous tendency needs not remain with us for ever, yet while it remains we must take care of it. In Singapore and India, minorities’ fears are taken care of by allowing them to hold posts of presidents albeit in ceremonial positions. Thus ethnic Indians in majority Chinese Singapore and so-called harijans( untouchables) and Muslims become president in India. The idea of rotation which has been embraced informally in Nigeria could be written into the constitution just to allay the fear of power being perpetually resident in any region or religion.
Since I have been observing Canadian politics, power has oscillated between French-speaking Canadians and their English fellow citizens. Despite the fact that French speaking Canadians constitute only 28 percent of the population, they have occupied the post of prime minister more times than their English counterparts. In a well-developed economy, it will really not matter who is in or out of power. So the solution to our problems is the economy. An economy based on extraction of minerals whether liquid or hard is not sustainable. I say this to warn those who glibly say we have enough hard minerals under our soil to replace the diminishing hydrocarbon resources that we need to build our economy on the principle of self-reliance. We must produce what we eat and what we wear as well as what we need. We must move away from foreign imports and unnecessary esoteric goods that add no value to our lives. An economy based on using our hard earned foreign reserves on importing junks from India and China is not contributing to the growth of the country. Industries that produce consumer goods and that add value to our agricultural produce must receive highly favoured priority. Industrialization based not on imports substitution but on adding value to local produce and raw materials must be the new industrial paradigm. The point being made is not that we should cut off ourselves from global trade because we cannot isolate ourselves from the global economic community, but we must build on our comparative advantages in tropical produce and cheap labour to build a formidable economy that would not be subjected to the vagaries of global commodity prices manipulated by the advanced global capitalist economies. Once done, then we will have enough food in the national port to go round. Each of our constituent states or regions would also produce what it is best at. Thank God our country spreads across four geographical and vegetational belts namely mangrove swamps, rain forest , savannah and Sahel each of which if well exploited is suitable for one kind of agricultural ecology or the other. This is where we should direct our research and development effort in such a way that we can bake a national cake that we can share among ourselves while each of the states will be baking its own cakes without waiting for the national cake.
This is why we must move away from revenue allocation based on population, geographical size and so on to sharing revenue on the basis of contribution, national development, innovation, peaceful coexistence, production and productivity as well as stability of the country. It is obvious to everyone that what is at the root of our ethnic conflict is economic disequilibrium and sharing of scarce resources. These resources are in most cases not earned but are products of locational accidents of oil or other minerals being found below the ground of one ethnic group or the other. This locational accident has bred a life of laziness and indolence whereby our people have abandoned the land and are now quarrelling over commission paid by foreign oil companies. Is it not even a shame that unlike all other oil producing countries that started this oil journey with us in 1956, we are the only one who cannot fabricate the means of production and cannot even maintain the refineries built at great cost and because of our failure we are spending the proceeds of crude oil export on importing of refined petroleum products with little resources left for diversification of the economy?
Our sins of ineptitude and corruption have caught up with us because soon the hydrocarbons which have caused us so much problem over sharing will soon be rendered useless or no longer the black gold it once was because of advancing technologies and concern for the global environment. With our galloping population, we do not have the advantage of time to waste in solving our structural problems or it will be the “fire next time” in the words of James Baldwin when our young people may kill those of my generation who survive the crash of the fast approaching train of violence in the country unless we change our current political trajectory of doing nothing and politics as usual as if the rest of the world owes us a living.
Our inability as a continent to solve our problems and our remaining global laggards is already giving some right wing ideologues to think of a second era of recolonization. If this were to happen, the down trodden people under the rulership of people who had been in power for up to 30 or 40 years may actually welcome this. Nigeria owes it to the black humanity to prevent this from happening but it must not be a wish only but it must be followed by positive action. The only way we can prevent a future tragedy arising from the present chaos is to ensure that the foundational structure of our country is solid.
Dame Patience Jonathan, our amiable former first lady who kept Nigerians laughing in spite of their challenges has in the last two years gone through a lot of stress and strain in a bid to have access to some $15m frozen in four bank accounts which although bear neither her name nor her signature, but insists belong to her. Her only remote connection with the accounts, according to EFCC, are Dame Jonathan’s driver, house boy and two other domestic staff, all of whom have denied knowledge of the existence of the bank accounts or their deposits. But the former first lady is determined to take the battle to the presidency, the legislature, the judiciary and in to the court of public opinion.
Madam Patience Jonathan, according to EFCC, was never the target of their probe. However, as part of investigations into a money laundering case against a former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to ex-President Jonathan, Waripamowei Dudafa, the EFCC had traced four company accounts to him with a balance of $15m. The ex-first lady turned up to lay claim to the money. But neither she nor her supporters – the Bayelsa youths and some PDP stalwarts have been very explicit as to the source of the $15m. While one of her lawyers, Charles Ogbodi first told Channels TV’s Sunrise that the money belonged to Dame Jonathan’s late mother, Madam Charity Fyneface Oba who was never known to have been an investor or industrialist, others claimed it was not unusual for an amiable ‘peoples’ first lady’ like Dame Jonathan to receive such amount as gifts from Nigerian joyful givers who clothe her lawmakers and buy aircrafts for some of her many prosperity prophets.
That the source of the money is shrouded in secrecy or that Dame Jonathan has no connection with the bank accounts would not have been sufficient reasons to deny her access to the accounts during her husband reign of impunity when as a non-elected official, she could subject civil servants to public inquisition or prevail on a Minister for Federal Capital Territory appointed by her husband to retrieve for her, a prime plot that was allocated to Mrs Yar’Adua , the first lady before her , just to satisfy her lust.
But there is a new sheriff is in town who insists the rules must be followed. “The EFCC and ICPC Act , according to Itse Sagay the chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption “have provisions under which they can ask the court to freeze the account of a person if a person’s capacity to earn is below the amount of money that the person appears to have”. The implication of this is that Dame Jonathan, who as a civil servant lays claim to owning $15m ware-housed in banks, must be probed.
This was how Dame Jonathan’s nightmare started. The probe according to EFCC first led to the discovery of another account in Skye Bank with a deposit of $5m owned by Patience Jonathan. The investigations later revealed that apart from about 15 properties in Abuja including six choice properties secured by proxy in Abuja, Patience Jonathan allegedly owns the following nine properties in Port Harcourt and Balyelsa: Former Customs Service officers mess; two duplexes at 2/3 Bauchi Street; Landed property at Ambowei Street; Three luxury apartments of 4-bedroom each at Ambowei Street; Grand View Hotel on Airport Road all in Port Harcourt while two marble duplexes at Otioko GRA by Isaac Boro Expressway; Glass House on Adaka Boro Expressway;Akemfa Etie Plaza by AP Filling Station, Melford Okilo Road and Aridolf Resort, Wellness and Spa on Isaac Boro Abacha Expressway which they estimated at N10bn with their Royal suite costing a princely N367, 000 per night, are all in in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
It is not a crime for first ladies to own properties. It is in fact on record that Babangida, Abacha Yar’Adua and Obasanjo at different periods during their presidency gave tacit support to their spouses through their ministers for housing or for Abuja to corner prime properties belonging to the state.
In her petition to President Buhari however, Dame Jonathan was silent on her ownership of properties. Instead she went on to accuse Magu of exhibiting “vindictive disposition towards her family” and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), he heads of “relentlessly plotting to destroy her family”.
The focus of her petition to the House of Representatives was on the frozen $20m. She is asking the House to prevail on Magu to defreeze her accounts. She has already secured some listening ears in the House where Hon. Abonta Uzoma Nkem (PDP, Abia), who as chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions, has already issued a warrant of arrest on Magu, the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), for failing to appear before the committee for the third time.
And finally, Madam Jonathan has taken her case to the court of public opinion. In a statement signed by her media aide, Belema Meshack-Hart, she informed Nigerians that “For almost three years, this agency of government has beamed its searchlight on her and her family members, including siblings and parents, as well as her Foundation ….with an intention, “to disgrace, intimidate, dehumanise and ridicule her and her family, through sheer cheap propaganda, sensational investigation and media trial’.
She then went on to make two important clarifications. First, that there is an existing tradition of the country’s first ladies coming up with “one pet project or the other, with which they sought to intervene in the lives of less privileged.” And second, she denied ownership of “all the magnificent edifices in Abuja, Yenagoa or Port Harcourt that had been presented to the media as belonging to Mrs. Patience Jonathan.”
The problem however is that, the former first lady, after playing the victim, went on to slam a N2 billion Fundamental Human Rights suit against the EFCC alleging the invasion of her property by the body’s officers in her absence was a breach of her fundamental right among others. How can you claim damages for invasion of properties you claim you did not own as at the time of the invasion?
We however have no reason to doubt the former first lady’s claim that EFCC was out to call the dog a bad name in order to hang it. And by publicly disclaiming ownership of the Abuja, Port Harcourt and Yenagoa choice properties after what she described as ‘two years of media trial by EFCC’, she has now made the job of the body easier. Her public disclaimer of these choice properties is the ‘certificate of occupancy’ the body needs to attract serious buyers. At the end the sales, it is hoped, EFCC will have no difficulty paying Dame Jonathan damages that may might follow her N2b suit.
And far more important, that the former first lady has encountered difficulties in accessing humongous amount of funds we have no evidence she earned, is but a confirmation of the giant strides the nation has made in the battle against corruption in the last two years. Even if Nigerians, including civil society groups do not admit this, last week’s verdict of the former ex-US envoy to Nigeria, John Campbell that although “Patience Jonathan who she described as “flamboyant, arrogant”, “has yet to be convicted of a crime. But that, it is curious how a person who spent most of her career in public service could accumulate an acknowledged $35 million in a poor country” is evidence enough that the era of impunity when it is believed ‘stealing government fund is no corruption’ is gone forever.
DEATH is another fable that shouldn’t be said aloud, in the house of Idrisu. It rages in unspoken words. Rukaya, the surviving child of the family, has learnt to speak of it quietly, in a whisper. If you move close enough, you could hear the authoritative pellets and barbed arrows, poisoned spears and pointed swords, as they hurtled through the air, to hack down her family and defenseless neighbours.
Stoically, the 53-year-old rehashed the scenes in which her parents and younger brother were bludgeoned to death by the rampaging hordes of Zangon-Kataf, Kaduna State, in May 1992. In a voice laden with grief and the feral nuance of a bereaved survivor, Idrisu recalled that the violence was triggered over a “childish” dispute over ownership and control rights to a local market between the native Atyap farming community and their Hausa neighbours, a settler community.
“I was grinding locust beans for my mother at the backyard when I heard a shrill cry from within our house. Fearfully, I rushed inside to meet a gang of armed youths, mostly teenagers, marching through our corridor. They caught me and hit me repeatedly with blood-stained clubs. They dragged me into our living room where I saw my father gasping for breath over the lifeless bodies of my mother and younger brother.
IPOB members
“I screamed and tried to rush to his aid but I was held back and made to watch as one innocent-looking boy laughed maniacally and dealt a final blow to the back of his head with a digger (backhoe).
“I heard the crunching sound of his skull breaking and I watched helplessly as my father choked to death, on his own blood. They promised not to subject me to such painful execution. They promised to be lenient with me,” disclosed Idrisu.
But if the 53-year-old learnt anything from her experience, it was that leniency could at times be worse than death. The assailants raped her repeatedly urging her to be thankful. “They said I was going to enjoy myself to death. When my screams became unbearable to them, the sixth boy to take turn on me stuffed my mouth with his dirty boxers. It was then that I began to feel dead. I became very dizzy and everything turned black. I feigned unconsciousness,” she said.
Yet the hyperactive teenager “continued doing it until he was satisfied,” said Idrisu. Then he got off her and took after his gang as they engaged in hot pursuit of some other victims. Idrisu, shaken and awfully worn, removed the boxers from her mouth staring at the spilled guts of her mother and the innards of her father’s skull.
•A scene during the Kaduna mayhem
The grotesqueness of the sight and the rancid smell wafting from her genitals made her very nauseous, she claimed. Thus she vomited twice all over their carpet. “I felt sick to the stomach. Those boys were very smelly. Days after I was rescued and relocated to Makurdi to live with my uncle (her late mother’s younger brother), I could still perceive the terrible stench wafting from their mouths, armpits and genitals. I can still smell them now,” said Idrisu, adding that she had been having persistent nightmares ever since.
But despite the magnitude of her loss and the recurrent nightmares, Idrisu couldn’t stay away from Zangon-Kataf. “It’s the only home that I have come to know. My uncle’s wife thinks it was foolish of me to have returned here but she wouldn’t understand. I cannot leave my father’s house to be inhabited and destroyed by strangers. It’s all that I have left to remind me of my family and the love we once shared,” she said.
•A scene from a Boko Haram attack
A vintage glass shelf stands over the spot of her family’s execution like a shield positioned to wipe out unpleasant memories of her past. But Idrisu claimed that it was never her intention to use the shelf as a screen. “I have moved on. That shelf stands there because there is no other place that I could put it in the house. As you can see, I have rented out most of the rooms in the house. Life goes on,” she said.
But life drags like a rickety wheel to Tanko Maijeida. The septuagenarian is caught in the violent web of his past. Although no shot from the buried wars can kill him now, a bullet from resurrected skirmishes killed his son. Consequently, Tanko Majeida welcomes every new dawn like a setting sun.
“There is really nothing left to live for,” said the native of Jema’a, Kaduna. Maijeida lost Mahmud, his only son, to the rampaging hordes of Bulbulla, Jos. Woefully, he recounted the scene in which his son was shot to death in the sectarian crisis that pitted the Berom and Jasawa tribes in the state against each other in the twilight of 2008.
According to him, Mahmud was hacked to death by people who were supposed to be his friends and co-apprentices at the furniture company where he worked.
“It’s so sad that our people have learnt to think with the machete and speak with bullets. My son had nothing to do with their fight. He wasn’t Berom and he wasn’t Jasawa. And he resided in a part of town heavily populated by the Yoruba and Igbo. Yet they killed him. They pushed him out to the warlords who attacked the house of a client in which he was working.
•A scene during an electoral violence
“Eye witnesses said that his co-apprentices, after pointing him to his assailants, joined in beating him. Then they held him as he was shot in the neck…My late wife died giving birth to his only sister. She is all I have left. I have no son to carry on my lineage,” lamented Maijeida, choking back tears.
Despite his irreparable loss, Maijeida believes in the capacity of the average Nigerian to be good. “As there are bad people, we also have good people. There are still some very kind Nigerians in this country. I was rescued by a Berom family on the day my son was hacked to death by members of the same tribe. I wish they had killed me instead,” he lamented.
Not ethnic enough
And while Milda Ogoka’s grief may seem milder, it is of a more insidious nature, she claimed. The native of Abia State lamented her inability to progress professionally due to her employer’s knack for placing ethnic interests above merit.
“He is Igbo and yet he discriminates against fellow Igbo. He prefers to employ and promote people from his native Anambra to plum positions. And he is brazenly supported by his wife who is also from Anambra. I have spent 13 years working for them and even though I was in line to become the next General Manager, Southwest Operations, after the former one resigned, our chairman ordered the Administrative Manager to rescind the management’s initial recommendation to appoint me to the position. To pacify me, he increased my salary and gave me an official car. It’s so unfair. I would have resigned but the new GM pleaded with me to stay. She is my friend and she admitted that she knew I had been wronged. She arrived four years after I started working at the company and she got employed by my recommendation. Yet she was given my spot because she hails from the chairman’s hometown,” said Ogoka.
A similar sore festers within the cadres of a southwest civil service (currently under investigation) where non-Yoruba are allegedly denied the opportunity of progressing beyond a certain grade level.
“If you are not Yoruba, you cannot become a director or permanent secretary in the state. It is wrong. Promotion should be handed out by merit. Your ethnicity shouldn’t be criteria for rewarding your efficiency,” stated Ifeoma Ahaegbuna, a victim and staff of the affected ministry.
But in a swift response, a senior staff of the establishment stated that Ahaegbuna’s claim is unfounded.
“Nobody does that here. Not in any state in the southwest. It is what they do to our people in the state civil services in southeast Nigeria. Many Yoruba come back dejected after being robbed of their due positions and rewards because they are not Igbo. There was a case of a woman who remained assistant head teacher till she retired even though her Igbo contemporaries and subordinates got promoted and became head teachers. She did the promotion exams and passed, yet she was never invited for oral interview. She eventually resigned and came back home against the counsel of her Igbo husband,” he said.
Tribal love and other stereotypes
The manifestations of the ethnic scourge permeate every aspect of life across the country. Even the hallowed and much romanticised confines of love and marriage aren’t impermeable to its blight. Consider the case of Bisi Shogbade, a lecturer and widower; his fiancée’s parents have been against his proposal to wed their daughter right from the moment he disclosed his intentions.
“Even though her father hails from Anyagbai, Kogi State, and her mother, a native of Benin, Edo State, are both products of inter-ethnic marriage, they vehemently refused to let me wed her. They claimed they would never let their daughter wed a Yoruba man,” lamented the native of Osogbo, Osun State. And to his chagrin, his fiancee of seven years succumbed to her parents’ wish.
“I met and pleaded with her mum but she was adamant. And their daughter followed suit claiming she could not go into a marriage her parents wouldn’t bless with consent,” said Shogbade.
Ethnic chauvinism has so far been responsible for the wanton stereotypes of Nigerian tribes. Each tribe is associated with vices and anomalies peculiar to them.
Beyond the sanctity of love and wedlock, and the cutthroat world of business, ethnicity has become a common feature and bargaining chip in local politics. This, Abiodun Akande, a sociologist and historian, attributes to the fact that Nigeria’s national identity has been at odds since the colonial era, with the appeal of more exclusive ethnic identity as fostered by the country’s colonialists.
•Bereaved mothers and wives mourn loved ones in the wake of anethno-religious conflict
Birth of prejudice
Akande is probably not too far from the truth; in pre-independence Nigeria, party politics and formation assumed an ethnic colouration, even as it metamorphosed into the post-independent First Republic. The Action Group developed from the political wing of the cultural association of the Yoruba educated elite, the Egbe Omo Oduduwa; the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC) was closely allied with the Igbo State union and played a significant role in the internal affairs of the party, while the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was founded by the Fulani aristocracy. In the smaller ethnic groups, a local political party was often indistinguishable from the cultural association. And more significantly, the division of the country into three regions for administrative convenience by the Richards Constitution of 1946 led to the development of strong regional feeling.
The consequence of this was that by 1953, the major political parties in Nigeria – NCNC, AG and NPC, were associated with the major ethnic groups and the three regions, Western, Eastern and the Northern regions. To further crystallize the tripartite ethnic cleavages, the party leaderships were structured accordingly: the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, led the NPC of the North; Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe held the ace for the Igbos’ NCNC, while Chief Obafemi Awolowo led the AG in the Yoruba southwest – each leader representing his regional divide.
It was, however, the absence of well organised, strong, visionary and purposeful cross national political parties with organisational depth that led in part to the collapse of the First Republic, according to Ademola Azeez, Department of Political Science, University of Ilorin (UNILORIN).
According to Emmanuel Udogu, a Professor of International, Comparative and African Politics, it is safe to contend that many individuals might not consider it insulting to be referred to as ethno-nationalists, “Because the concept generally implies the love for one’s ethnic group. Yet there is often a hidden problem stemming from the psychological and primordial attachment to one’s ethnic group in a pluralistic society. The situation in a polity such as Nigeria becomes more problematic when the politics of who gets what, when and how, gravitates toward ethnic clashes and antagonisms.”
You don’t sell your father’s house to buy a land
The political equation no doubt becomes more confounding and discordant in democratic and pluralistic societies like Nigeria where an overwhelming sense of communal solidarity tends to intensify ethnic preference, so much so that in the struggle for power, to promise less for one’s group in the spirit of harmony and impartiality, was tantamount to betraying ethnic interests.
Little wonder then that another influential minister in the country’s Second Republic, allegedly expressed, proverbially, his concern about the inauguration of a national conference by the late Sani Abacha’s military administration. He reportedly said: “No man becomes a hero by selling his father’s house to buy a land.”
What the minister implied, was that Abacha, a northerner, was by the scope of the national conference he inaugurated, selling off northern interests without surety of what he would get in return. Although the assertion was later refuted, the moral within is applicable to many ethnic groups and their disposition to both grassroots and national politics.
Nigerians won’t forget easily the ugly resurgence of desperate tribal agitation in the wake of President Goodluck Jonathan’s defeat at the March 28, 2015 presidential elections. Jonathan lost his seat to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Just recently, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), led a very bitter and hostile campaign for the Southeast’s secession from the Nigerian state in vehement protest against the leadership of President Buhari. Kanu, in flagrant violation of his bail terms, constituted a hostile Biafra Secret Service and made pronouncements classifiable as hate speech.
Activities of Kanu’s IPOB led to the Nigeria Army’s inauguration of Operation Python Dance in his southeastern base of operation. Kanu’s whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery, while security agencies are still hunting for him. His IPOB group has also been classified as a terrorist group by the Nigerian state.
•A Borno trader examines damaged ware in the wake of aBoko Haram bomb attack
A never-ending bloodbath
Religious polarisation and ethnic bigotry feed upon one another to spark bloody clashes across the federation.
Boko Haram a.k.a Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād (Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad), an Islamic extremist terrorist group based in Northeast Nigeria and active in Chad, Niger and Northern Cameroon, has killed tens of thousands and displaced 2.3 million from their homes since its advent in 2009. It was currently ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index of 2015.
And very few people would forget the massacre of 2, 000 people about 16 years ago in communal clashes sparked by introduction of Shari’a (Islamic law) in Kaduna State. Two years, later, violence triggered in part by a controversy surrounding plans to hold the Miss World beauty contest in Northern Nigeria claimed about 250 lives.
Despite the massive loss of lives and property in past conflicts, acts of violence recurred in the troubled zone. On April 18, 2011, for instance, hell was let loose in Southern Kaduna, particularly in Zonkwa, following the post-election crisis that erupted in many states in the North.
Residents fled from Zonkwa, Kafanchan and other trouble spots during the post-election violence. During the fracas, fleeing youths hid in pit latrines and wells but the unlucky ones were gunned down, slaughtered, burnt alive or dumped in wells. Although most women and children were spared, they were subjected to humiliation.
Out of the 38, 976 displaced persons, over 90 percent are women and children, according to the statistics obtained from the Nigerian Red Cross.
In addition to providing a new set of triggers for violent conflict, the increasing tendency for communal tensions to be expressed in religious terms has drawn groups into violent conflict that have no interest in the deeper underlying causes of ethnic and religious violence across Nigeria.
“Ignorance of the followers of our different faiths and manipulation of religion for personal gains by the political class with the help of clerics from both religions has made it difficult for Nigerians to enjoy harmonious coexistence,” according to Rev. Joseph Hayab, Northern Coordinator, Global Peace Foundation of Nigeria (GPFN) and former Special Adviser on Religious Affairs (Christian Matters), Kaduna State.
“To guarantee religious freedom and peace, we must fight ignorance and replace it with good knowledge. We must not allow our religious leaders and groups to instigate us against one another by bringing unhealthy debates and competition into every issue of national discuss,” he said.
Burying the ethnic divide
Dr. Rahman Lawal, the Head of Mission, Nadwat, an Islamic religious group, argued that, “From time immemorial, religious sects had harmonious relationship amongst one another; even the minorities were not sidelined or intimidated. It’s modern day politicians that broke the bond of brotherly existence and mutual respect amongst the various religious faiths, through their Machiavellian approach of polarisation via ethnic bigotry and hegemony.”
Lawal advised that the Nigerian press, “As Fourth Estate of the realm should foster interfaith, ethnic harmony and tolerance by producing balanced and unbiased reports. Hate must not be fed by the government and the press.”
Rahman and Hayab were participants in a recent Interfaith Leadership and Human Rights project, under the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) sponsored by the United States Department of State. The duo with eight other Nigerian clerics and a journalist met with colleagues in the US over a three-week period to deliberate on measures of achieving religious freedom and tolerance amid diverse populations and secular government.
Rev. Cyprian Imandeh, Catholic Priest, Archdiocese of Abuja (FCT), however, argued: “Justice is what we need. A system that has respect for rule and order can guarantee peaceful coexistence amongst all regard less of religious affiliation. Once there is justice we can all arrive at our goal.”
Head, Legal Department of the Christian Home for the Needy (CHN), Helen Agbonkonkon, argued: “Section 38 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) clearly guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion but in practice, such freedom is only an illusion. Religious freedom and peace can only be guaranteed in Nigeria, if and only if there is a platform for equality, tolerance and acceptance. There must be concerted effort by all and sundry to work for it. We can borrow the American concept of describing freedom of religion as inalienable right which no state or government can control,” she said.
Pastor Wale Afelumo of the Inspiration Life Community Church, Abuja, said: “Until we see our differences as a strength and not as a threat, peace will elude us. We must welcome one another as equal contributors and brothers. I end with Martin Luther King Jr’s words…’If we do not learn to live together as brothers, then we will perish together as fools.”
Angela Madueke, Pastor of Enugu-based Excellent People Intercessory Ministry noted that, “Nigeria is a country blessed with rich cultural and language diversities. It’s unthinkable to assume that all these people should worship God the same way.” She stated that, “for religious freedom and peace to exist, freedom of worship must be succinctly observed and everybody should be treated with dignity and respect they deserve. The golden rule, “live and let live” should be enshrined into the body politics of the nation and tolerance must be a watchword,” she said.
Sheikh Taofeeq Ibrahim, National Missioner, Peace and Conflict Resolution, Islamic Movement of Nigeria (ILMAN), stated that, “Religious freedom and peace can only be guaranteed in Nigeria if corruption can be given a spiritual vaccine. Also, there should be a bill that will distance religion activities from the politics of the nation.
This is because the manipulation of religion by some powerful individuals who hide under the guise of religion to pursue selfish interests remains a major bane to peace, ethnic and religious tolerance in the country.”
Udogu, however, suggested the writing of a new constitution capable of resolving the country’s resource control and ethno-religious and political conflicts. He advocated the composition of a truly representative governance system and constitutional framework with federal character. It is the only way to detribalise governance and politics in the ethnic mosaic that is Nigeria, he said.
On another note, Umar Habila Dadem Danfulani of the University of Jos (UNIJOS), stated that the use of military force and emergency powers cannot permanently resolve the problem posed by sectarian violence given its historical, ethnic, elitist, class and religious character.
The Nigerian citizenry must be mobilised towards engaging and embracing the political reality of multiculturalism and on the basis of this recognition, address the challenge of multicultural citizenship.
If we should go our separate ways, we shan’t stop being the brutes we are. We shan’t stop pretending to have answers to everything, except our duplicity and greed. We shan’t stop exulting by sick dialectics like treacherous revolutionaries in a dusk of compromise.
A simple lust remains our woe; it invalidates the elite class and its infinite abstractions. It amplifies the tragedy of the working class and the Nigerian youth. It is the lust for luxury and unearned greatness.
Like pond scum over moss, the Nigerian elite ingratiate himself to the predatory ruling class in every circumstance and clime even as he makes a big show of speaking all manner of truths, except “truth” to power. Now that his duplicity drags, like a rickety wheel caught in quicksand, the Nigerian elite will forswear youth.
Not a few people, self-acclaimed elite and progressives, have written to fault my call for the Nigerian youth to save Nigeria. They claim the Nigerian youth is incapable of such human qualities like wisdom, altruism, maturity and tolerance. One particular “progressive elite” wrote to say that “Nigeria can never thrive in the hands of the Nigerian youth.” He said leadership and nation-building are serious matters that shouldn’t be left in the hands of youth whose idea of citizenship revolves around the acquisition of the trendiest luxury ride and whims of every political predator and criminal mastermind.
I am tempted to believe him given the brutal reality of his assertion. But then this “progressive elite” goes on to recommend bloody revolution to wipe out the incumbent ruling class and a secessionist palliative by which “every ethnic group would go its separate way “peacefully or violently” to forge its destiny away from the madness of the Nigerian dream.” This secessionist agenda, he claims, “should be driven by the Nigerian youth whose fire and spark is variously misapplied in the current political enterprise.”
In a nutshell, our “progressive elite” and lest I forget, an Associate Professor of Political Science, believes the Nigerian youth is incapable of leadership and positive steps at nation-building but this same youth, he argues, would serve well in a bloody massacre of the ruling class and secessionist agenda of every ethnic group.
If you are in your youth and you are reading this, then you have known what the almighty elite and articulate hero of practicable politics thinks of you. Maitama Sule, Anthony Enahoro, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa to mention a few, united to build the heritage we destroy, in their youth. But you and I are never considered as worthy of such dignified human endeavours as conscientious leadership and statesmanship, like our late leaders (although Maitama Sule is very much alive). Of course, they had their faults, they made mistakes, but every unforgivable blunder of theirs is acceptable to our next best attribute.
Today, the Nigerian youth becomes the butt of damaging critiques and interminable cynicism. Are we going to do anything about it? Or shall we continue to wallow in self-pity and hate even as we continually pursue an agenda to self-destruct, according to the whims of the incumbent ruling class?
We should never serve as cannon fodder by which familiar shady politicians and activists will achieve their secessionist agenda. If every Nigerian soldier, police officer, student, banker, journalist, doctor, accountant – to mention a few – in his youth could endeavour to scorn the call for bloody revolution or secession and rather advise its propagators to recruit their sons and daughters, mothers and wives, fathers and other blood relatives to propagate their agenda, the end result will spell infinite good for you and me. Trust me.
But many Nigerian youth and self-acclaimed “progressive elite” will continue to pound the drums of violence and bloodshed from their safe havens abroad while they stay far away from the scenes of genocide they incite. Many more have their escape strategies activated and their escape routes marked, in preparation for the hour when Nigerian drowns in the bloodbath they excite.
Such elite class represents the purely physical evil whose limit we can never be sure of. Our ultimate goal should be to neuter them, everlastingly to be precise. The abolishment of the infinite evil they epitomize can be achieved by the ballot box. We cannot totally abolish the inhumanity of such contemptible characters but like pestilence, we can diminish their influence by securing a fair and healthy socio-political system for all.
It’s about time we accepted the racism and infinite prejudices of this class of Nigerians as a grievous fact, unpardonable in its intensity, unfortunate in results, and dangerous for the future, but nevertheless a hard fact which only time and conscientious efforts can efface.
The Nigerian youth owes it to themselves and subsequent generations to assume that selfless citizenship and leadership that the Nigerian situation so eloquently demands.
Let us dispel notions of our incapacities to produce such leadership and citizenship by exorcising ourselves of the damaging culture and common insensibilities of modern political civilization. Let us rise to the imperative demand for trained youth leaders of character and intelligence; men and women of ability and missionaries of culture, thoroughly adept at harmonizing traditional and modern civilization in the establishment of precepts of self-sacrifice and the inspiration of common identity and ideals.
But if such men are to be effective they must have political power; they must be backed by the best public opinion and be able to wield for the attainment of our aims, such weaponry as the experience of the world has taught, are indispensable to human progress.
Of such weaponry, the greatest perhaps, in the modern world is the power of the ballot. The only effective means to deny the patent weaknesses and shortcomings of the Nigerian youth is to dissociate from such weaknesses and shortcomings. This could be achieved by positive citizenship and incursions into political activity.
It would never serve us to remain armchair Trotskys like a reader satirically noted penultimate week. It is time for the Nigerian youth to champion the cause of that prosperous future of our dreams by effecting a change of guardianship of the Nigerian State. Let us do away with the predators we have allowed too much leverage on our power plinths. Let us deny their wives and children continued access to our seats of power.
It is no longer acceptable for us to bemoan our luck and curse the times while we serve as pawns in the designs of every politician and lobbyist with deep pocket. The Nigerian youth should establish a veritable platform to prosecute its pursuit of freedom and self-determination. To achieve this, we need to establish political leverage, like a youthful and citizenry-centred political party and interest group.
It is not enough for us to declare that the incumbent ruling class is the cause of our social condition and for us to aver that our social condition would spell the doom of any promising political enterprise. We must change in order to effect the change in leadership and governance that we seek.
Last week was indeed a week to remember – on the political scene.
Former Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu – remember him? – was gracious enough to let us into the secret of his new-found spiritual fortune. He said with the confident demeanour of a Bar Beach preacher: “I’m now born again. Whatever I say now is the truth. Some people came to the PDP with nothing and left with billions… . We need to be sober and apologise for what we have done wrong in the past.”
He wasn’t done. Mantu went on after that arresting preamble: “After fasting and prayer; I fasted for 30 days and nights, asking God to show me who would lead the party. God showed me Adeniran.
“Let’s now look forward and make sure that we elect a credible chairman. We should make sure that nobody shortchanges us at the national convention.”
Some leading parapsychologists have since confirmed that Mantu’s apparitional experience, which some have described as mere hallucinations resulting from a long hibernation in political solitude, is real. Ever seen a born again liar? The PDP, going by the Mantu theory, should go into the convention for the acclamation of Professor Tunde Adeniran who seem to have snatched away the prize even before the race begins.
Will the PDP, sober and contrite, listen to Mantu ? Will the former largest party in Africa beg Nigerians for forgiveness?
PDP ran Nigeria for 16 years as part of its plan to rule for 60 unbroken years. It was on the way to fulfilling this self-appointed mission to perdition when nature supervened to halt the gravy train. Now the party is threatening to return to power in 2019 – apparently to finish up what it started. Nigerians have been put on notice.
Concerning Mantu’s assertion that some people came to the PDP as poor as a church rat and left as rich as dwarves: Are the anti-graft agencies slumbering? Mantu has joined the growing army of whistle blowers. He needs to name these billionaires. Who are they? Will the EFCC accept the challenge to invite Mantu to help out in the investigation?
You may accuse him of inconsistency and some other minor indiscretions for which our leading politicians are constantly criticised. But you can’t claim that Mantu is naïve, vacuous and untruthful. He surely knows what he is talking about. He is now born again; remember?
Talking about being born again, the former Deputy Senate President must have by now forgiven Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai who once accused him of demanding a bribe – an allegation he vehemently denied but on which he won little sympathy. In the heat of the allegation, Mantu threatened to sue El-Rufai for alleged defamation. He never did.
Reason, as usual in such matters of integrity and politics, prevailed, I suspect.
Also last week, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stepped up its battle to ensure the good people of Kogi West exercise their power to recall Senator Dino Melaye.
Unable to serve the senator the legal papers for his recall, INEC officials stormed the National Assembly and dumped the documents at his door. But the rambunctious lawmaker insisted that the law was on his side.
He has been unusually withdrawn since the recall battle hit a crucial stage. Will the INEC action cure Melaye of his kindergarten excesses? To his opponents, he is an insufferable loudmouth who suddenly found himself in a position of importance after a successful foray into the rent-a-crowd trade. His supporters hail him as a loyal bodyguard to the Senate leadership. How many will shed tears for him, should he be forced out?
Also last week, former President Goodluck Jonathan took some time off the lecture circuit on which he has been so active to serve notice that he would speak on how and why PDP lost the 2015 election that swept him out of office.
With unusual eloquence, Dr Jonathan told a delegation of former speakers who visited him: “PDP is still the strongest party. We know the reason why we lost. People may be writing left and right; at the appropriate time, some of these things would be properly addressed because of history,
“There are certain things you don’t write now because it would be misunderstood as if you are playing politics. After some years, five or eight years when the beneficiaries have left, you can state it in writing and people will not fight you.”
How very disappointing! Is His Excellency afraid of an intellectual fight? What is so sacred about PDP’s loss that is too big for his presidential mouth to say? If we have to wait for “eight years when the beneficiaries have left”, what then is the PDP’s threat to return to power all about – empty, Ibadan motor park threat of touts?
How long will it take Dr Jonathan to put together his memoirs? The other time he spoke about being “caged”. The nation is eagerly awaiting details of his days in power. Who caged him? Was he caged physically or spiritually? Or by his own indiscreet devices?
A prominent PDP chief told me yesterday of his plan to hire the famous musician Charly Boy (does he still play music?) to mobilise a large army of okada riders and other members of his Our Mumu Don Do group for a huge 21-day rally to force Dr Jonathan to shed his fears and talk. I wish him all the best in this venture.
Of all the events of last week, the most exciting – and moving, many would insist – was Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose’s threat to join the yet-to-be-opened 2019 presidential race. His Excellency announced his intention to run in Abuja. With him were some party stalwarts and a crowd of supporters, many of them from his home state and obviously grateful beneficiaries of his much envied Stomach Infrastructure programme – going by their protruding tummies and robust cheeks.
Former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode spared some time from his court matters to add colour to the event. So did Otunba (sorry, I take that back; a slip there) Dr Iyiola Omisore, who an uninformed fellow said was shifting in his seat because EFCC boys could storm the place any moment.
Dr Tope Aluko – yes; the one who went on television to display with so much bravado how he claimed the election that brought Fayose to office was rigged – was also there to lend him a hand. There were many other dignitaries who were falling over one another to shake hands with the man of the moment.
Renowned for his integrity, Fayose vowed to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari and fight corruption with greater vigour. God, said the governor, told him that he would lead the country. On that, some innocent commentators retorted: “Will God be so benevolent?”
With a straight face devoid of any emotion, the governor said: “My party leaders, standing before you is Peter ‘The Rock’ Ayodele Fayose, the man already destined by God to take Nigeria out of the present political and economic stagnation.”
An attentive politician remarked: “The Rock”? Where is Peter Obi?’’
Fayose did not see zoning as a stumbling block to his ambition. He likened himself to the biblical Joseph, stressing that God had ordained him to win the much coveted trophy. Besides, he said the party should not beg aspirants from the North to show interest in the race. He also reeled off a list of politicians from the North who ran in 1999 and 2003 when the ticket was zoned to the South.
Our elders are right; one’s enemy will never kill a big game. Instead of admiring Fayose’s courage, some political pundits, who have never got it right, went to town. They said he was in the race to prevent any major calamity that might assail his future. “They are after me because they don’t want me to run o,” the pundits are already quoting Fayose as saying.
Why can’t he settle down and find a way of paying the state’s suffering workers? they wonder. They seem to have forgotten that other states are also owing workers. Should paying salaries be elevated above the divine task of saving Nigeria? Is it a personal matter? Is Fayose the one owing them?
Trust his supporters and admirers who number in millions. Ever since His Excellency’s announcement, they have been celebrating. The Stomach Infrastructure programme will now be a national affair. All Nigerians will be well fed with chicken and rice handed out occasionally by the president himself.
Such delicacies will no longer be the exclusive preserve of the rich and powerful. To hell with roads, schools, hospitals and all such distractions.
Never again will the budget be stuck at the National Assembly. The president will go there, dressed in a casual polo shirt, his own gavel in his hand and a retinue of aides and youths hailing. That way, development will be faster.
Traders will have a great time. The president will surely be with them every market day. Roadside corn sellers, rejoice. Now your most famous customer will be president. Paradise is on the way.
Fayose’s shoulders are full of glittering epaulets. “Architect of modern Ekiti, Leader of the Opposition, Ore mekunnu (friend of the poor), Osokomole, Irunmole to’n je jollof rice ati ponmo (the deity that eats jollof rice and cow hide), Apesin”, and more.
Now coming into your lives as a fixture : President Ayo Fayose. How does that sound?
NOTE : OVER six years ago, Justice Ayo Isa Salami faced one of the hardest times of his life. He was hounded out as President of the Court of Appeal (PCA) by the government of the day for standing for justice in the Sokoto State governorship election dispute. Nigerians watched in awe as some of his fellow judges in the National Judicial Council (NJC), especially the then Chief Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, joined hands with the government to deal with him. But the stone, which they rejected has become the cornerstone of the house. Justice Salami has returned as chairman of the NJC committee on looters’ trial. This column, which was first published on February 17, 2011, is being rerun today in honour of the man who stood for justice at the risk of his job. All thanks to the reader who reminded us of the column.
The National Judicial Council (NJC) may face its stiffest test yet since it was established. For NJC, the case between the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and President of the Court of Appeal (PCA) Justice Isa Salami will, to a large extent, determine its continued relevance in its watchdog role for the judiciary. Will it come out with its head held high or bowed in shame? Time will tell.
In their wildest imagination, those who mooted the idea of ‘elevating’ Justice Salami to the Supreme Court never thought that he would fight back the way he did in the face of the plot to render him ineffective. Really, how effective will Justice Salami be at the Supreme Court? Will he be more useful in the highest court in the land or at the appeal court?
No doubt every worker looks forward to being promoted but what many abhor is when they are offered sinecure positions. The planned ‘promotion’ of Justice Salami is nothing but a ploy to humiliate him, to make him serve under those who were once his juniors and put him at the mercy of the CJN. In the Supreme Court, he will only sit on cases if and when the CJN deems it fit to include him in a panel. He won’t wield the sort of power he wields now in the Court of Appeal at the Supreme Court and the learned CJN knows this too well.
Beyond justice Salami’s planned ‘promotion’ is the intrigue surrounding the whole thing and his grace allegations of impropriety against the CJN. The plan to move him ‘upstairs’ was hatched by a few people, who felt that his continued stay in the appeal court is not in their political interest. Now politics and justice do not mix. Where they mix, there will be a miscarriage of justice. This is what the CJN did not avert his mind to before joining the plot to ‘promote’ justice Salami in order to ‘strengthen’ the Supreme Court. Justice Katsine-Alu, his man in the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and their political godfather in the Senate knew what they were up to when they conspired to get Justice Salami out of the appeal court.
That is all what the ‘promotion’ is about – to get Justice Salami out of the appeal court at all cost. Unknown to them, Justice Salami may look quiet and simple, but he is not stupid. He moved many steps ahead of the conspirators by going public with his case and followed it up with a suit at the Federal High Court. But we all know how terrible and mean people can be in their determination to achieve their aim. The steps Justice Salami has taken may count for nothing to them because they think they have the power and means to run him out of the Court of Appeal, if they so wish. But will NJC look on while Justice Salami is being maltreated? I don’t think NJC should just watch and allow Justice Salami or any judge for that matter to be messed up by the authorities.
This matter will have to be eventually resolved by NJC, which unfortunately is headed by Justice Katsina-Alu, who is a party to the dispute. In law, a man cannot be judge in his own case. Will this principle apply in this case? Or will it be jettisoned because of Katsina-Alu? Whether or not the averments in Justice Salami’s affidavit in his suit against the CJN are true, is not relevant at this stage. The court will decide that. Eventhough there is no petition before NJC accusing the CJN of any wrongdoing; the allegations made against him by Justice Salami are too weighty to be ignored. As a judge, Justice Salami knows the implication of his action, so he couldn’t have made those allegations for the sake of it.
Are those allegations true? This is one question that I have been asked over and over again by people. The issue even cropped up in one of our editorial meetings. As a party to the suit, NJC is also aware of these allegations. The NJC is a constitutional body created to ensure sanity in the judiciary. It has disciplined many judges in the past for one offence or the other. But it has never been faced with a situation whereby its chairman stands accused of interfering with the administration of justice. This is a litmus test for NJC. It cannot afford to shut its eyes to these allegations just because its chairman is at the receiving end.
Unfortunately, NJC is already showing its bias in the case. It is leaning towards the CJN. An advertorial in this paper last Friday shows its thinking on this matter. To NJC, the planned ‘promotion’ of Justice Salami is still on the cards, even after he has rejected it. In one breathe, NJC said a nominee has the right to reject the appointment, just as Salami did, but in another breathe, it said it would not consider the PCA’s nomination because of the case he filed in court.
Part of NJC’s advertorial reads:
NJC…. In accepting or rejecting the advice of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) takes several factors into consideration, one of which is if the person put forward by FJSC is available and willing to be recommended to the President for appointment.
Council confirmed that the opinion of a candidate shortlisted for appointment to the Office of a Justice of the Supreme Court is usually not sought. However, Council firmly resolved that the name of any person who has signified in writing that he or she does not want to be considered for appointment to the office of Justice of the Supreme Court will be withdrawn from the list of person submitted to it by the FJSC.
FJSC acted within its constitutional powers when it considered all the four candidates, including Justice Salami, for appointment to the Supreme Court bench.
It was, however, noted that the candidature of Justice Salami was sub judice as the Council is one of the respondents in the suits filed in the court. Therefore, the advice of the FJSC on appointment of Justice Salami was not considered by the Council.
Why didn’t NJC withdraw the name of Justice Salami from the FJSC list since he has rejected the ‘promotion’ offer? Why is NJC hiding under the cover of the cases in court in order to achieve the aim of some people to get Justice Salami out of the appeal court by all means? NJC should be above board in this matter. It should not do or be seen to do anything in support of either party. It must be just and fair. The issue is no longer that of ‘promotion’ but the alleged interference of the CJN in a case before the Court of Appeal.
Did the CJN ask Justice Salami to disband the panel of justices that heard the Sokoto governorship election dispute? Did the CJN ask Justice Salami to direct the Panel to decide against the appellant? These are some of Justice Salami’s allegations, which should be probed in the NJC tradition of ensuring that all is well in the judiciary. In the past, NJC recommended the removal of some judges for lesser offences. It cannot afford to do otherwise in this case, whether or not there is a petition before it. On the other hand, if Justice Salami’s allegations are found to be wild and frivolous, NJC should not hesitate to punish him. That is if this case does not end in the usual Nigerian way – a sudden withdrawal of the suit without going into the merit of the matter.
Our 57th independence anniversary which came up for celebration on Sunday ordinarily ought to have provided another opportunity for sober reflection on where we are coming from, where we are, and the direction we wish to follow in our tortuous journey towards nationhood. Unfortunately what we got from President Buhari’s APC government of change was not dissimilar to what we got from his two immediate predecessors, ex-Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan who swore never to allow Nigeria disintegrate under them. Of course, no one was expecting President Buhari, a product of a military institution that owns the society and who as an officer saw the horrors of war to be patient with those threatening to plunge the country into another civil war. But insisting he would not allow Nigeria to disintegrate under him is no substitute for his own vision of a just society, his strategy for attaining it, or for tactical withdrawal to where we started if he has none.
If we cannot reach a consensus on where we are going after 57 years, I think it is time we seek help instead of living in denial. After all, sovereignty by which most nations once swore died long before the age of globalization. Seeking help and support have become imperative because a journey through memory, clearly shows the giant strides the nation made up to 1960 was as a result of overweening influence and periodic intervention of Britain, our colonial overlords. Riven by greed and opportunism, our dominant ethnic groups were unable to agree on any issue including the self-evident truth of our heterogeneity in the run up to independence. We sold ourselves a fraudulent thesis that ‘our differences have been amplified by the accident of colonial rule’. Our British colonial overlords had to call our attention to sociological and anthropological studies that define us a multi-ethnic society of groups ranging from the social, anti-social to some naked groups occupying some hills in the savannah and mangroves of the tropics, all, at different levels of cultural development .They did not forget to also remind us that there are ‘differences between the Bantus tribesmen of Benue valley and the Hausa of Zaria’.
There was similarly no consensus on Nigeria’s structure which ranged from Zik’s eight arbitrary regions to Awolowo’s 10 dominant ethnic groups and Ahmadu Bello confederal until the British embraced Bode Thomas’ ‘suggestion of regionalism as the structure that best approximate British policy thrust of “a national self-government that secure for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and nationality; its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and experiences of generation of its forbearers”.
Similarly, the credit for the 1958 London Independence Constitution – a product of mischief and opportunism, went to the colonial overlords, the master of ‘divide and rule’ tactics. It would be recalled that it was while Awo and his group staged a tactical walk out over the deadlock on creation of states for the restive minorities and the status of Lagos which some members wanted detached from the West that the British, an interested umpire, stampeded Zik and Ahmadu Bello to overlook their differences and agree on other disputed issues arguing that the two leaders, after all, represented majority of Nigerians. Although Zik was to later congratulate himself for ensuring the unity of the country by preventing disintegration, but that opportunism is the reason a segment of the country today pretends not to understand a British policy enunciated by Governor Hugh Clifford on December 29 1920; it was the reason for Isaac Boro’s popular uprising for the emancipation of his Ijaw people, and the Tiv popular uprising both of which were suppressed with the use of the military immediately after independence.
As if to validate the British thesis that it was their presence that had ensured stability and that their departure would lead to a disastrous descent into turmoil of warring groups, we have for 57 years demonstrated our inability to govern ourselves. After the Ijaw and Tiv popular uprising, we have had sectional inspired military coups, pogroms, civil war, ‘political sharia’, and Niger Delta militants’ quest for resource control, Boko Haram insurgency, the Avengers and IPOB’s attempts at dismembering the country. Two constitutional conferences have failed to produce a consensus as to how to address the causes of this restiveness. In fact, the only consensus ever reached after the departure of the British overlords was the Aburi Agreement supervised by Ghana leaders. Its collapse is partly on account of failure of leadership led to the civil war.
Greed was a vice that also thrived among the new emergent leaders long before independence. This was why Awo observed in the late forties that ‘given a choice between the emergent new educated elite, traditional rulers and the Europeans, the choice of Nigerians will be in reverse order starting with the Europeans’. What kept some of the new pre-independence leaders under check however the presence of the colonial powers. For instance, Trevor Clark, Tafawa Balewa’s biographer had observed that when Balewa moved from Bauchi to Lagos as a central minister in addition to being a member of the House of Representatives on a total package of #1,500 which was the equivalent of a First Class District Officers’ (DO) salary, some of his colleagues were agitating for more. Macpherson according to him simply ignored the agitators. It is however worth mentioning, for the benefit of our lawmakers, that Balewa as a minster took a personal salary advance to buy a Chevrolet car which he used as his official car. What he got was only monthly allowance to offset the cost of the car.
With independence and the departure of the colonial masters, the newly emerged leaders started by buying government properties which they sublet back to government at a hundred fold. By the fourth republic, a self-serving monetization policy was introduced which allowed our new leaders to confiscate the national patrimony inherited from the colonial masters and our founding fathers. Today our lawmakers who have been described by ex-President Obasanjo as ‘corrupt’ and ‘worse than armed robbers’, in addition to taking advance loans to buy personal cars maintained by the state, also deployed taxpayers money to buy themselves exotic cars. They have become laws onto themselves as they openly defend budget padding and constituency projects which have been described as ploy for siphoning state funds.
Some have suggested that our journey to nationhood must start with enthronement of justice which is best assured with restructuring of the country in line with the dreams of our founding fathers and British policy thrust on Nigeria stated as far back as 1920. In the face of this stalemate arising from opposition by those benefitting from the current system and bearing in mind that we have not on our own arrived at any consensus since our flag independence 57 years ago, I think we need an umpire like the United Nations (UN). This was first suggested by this columnist some four years back. Indeed, Chief Bisi Onabanjo, alias “Aiyekooto” a veteran journalist and former governor of Ogun State had suggested before his death that we should invite the British back to start from where they stopped in 1960. With the British, as Awo had argued long before independence, Nigerians are assured of justice and fair-play, attributes that are essential for nation building but in short supply among our past successive leaders.
The barber shop crowd – of analysts, emergency experts and loafers – was there again on Saturday. With Papi D presiding, as usual, it was a visitor’s delight.
